Faith Fippinger

The U.S. Department of the Treasury said in a March letter to Faith Fippinger that she broke the law by crossing the Iraqi border before the war. This is a direct quote from the CNN.com website, first paragraph. I wonder how much of a fine or prison time we should give George Bush and his little gang of warriors on lying to the American people about Weapons of Mass Destruction that are nowhere to be found? What is the justification in how our government handles those who do not agree with them? This administration moves quickly on those individual’s who disagree and usually act out on these people with such fervor that it just scares the hell out of the rest of us. Of course the monster that is our news doesn’t help.

God's Promise MCC Will Be There at the OHIO Lesbian Festival, Will You??

Lesbian Festival is on SEPTEMBER 13, 11 am to 11 pm, at the Frontier Ranch in Kirkersville as it has been for thirteen previous years. Kirkersville is 30 miles east of Columbus in a natural, private setting.

Our MCC (God's Promise of Granville, OH) is sponsoring two workshops.  The first is with presenter and writer Donna Brooks on being single and staying sane . There will be an opportunity to meet all the other singles who come to this!  We also will have a "singles' dating service," for the day at our booth!  The other workshop is for people already in relationships. Believe it or not, we will learn about  the support for, and healing of, our relationships,  found in the Bible, both Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

Was the White House Behind the California Recall Effort and the Candidacy of Arnold "The Groper" Schwarzenegger?

You Bet.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

BuzzFlash is a little bit tired of the press hedging about whether or not the White House is behind the recall effort and Arnie "The Groper's" candidacy for governor of California. According to Molly Ivins, when BuzzFlash interviewed her, one of Karl Rove's few strategic mistakes against the Democrats was backing former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan in the Republican primary. But, the right wing Republicans in California revolted and supported William Simon.

So the way BuzzFlash sees it is that Rove was planning the recall initiative probably within days after Davis beat Simon last November. They got a multi-millionaire California Grand Hypocrisy Party (GHP) Congressman (are there any other kind?) to pay petition gatherers for a recall less than a few months after the actual election!

Not In Our Name protester arrested

Greetings,

  As you may know, I was in court yesterday for the start of my anti-war trial. I face a year in jail for participating in an anti-war protest in Cleveland on March 28, 2003.  I wanted to give you an update on what happened. For background info, get the current "Free Times" and read my Statement on page 9.  

  A spirited march and rally took place outside the Justice Center before we went into the court.  There was a lot of interest among passersby, with people eagerly taking fliers.  Stationed nearby was the crew of plainclothes cops that have been following peace activists for months.  I was interviewed by channel 19/43 and WCPN.  

  As people entered the courtroom, the bailiff immediately announced that no one wearing shorts would be allowed in!  Huh?  This was just the beginning of an atmosphere of arbitrariness and hostility from the City that would mark this day.  It's a good thing for the plainclothes cops that followed us into the courtroom that they weren't wearing shorts.

National credulity fitness

DUBLIN, N.H. -- What a summer for national credulity fitness. My credulity gets a lot of exercise, since I cover Texas politics. Like Alice in Wonderland's White Queen, years of practice have enabled me to believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast. But here we are with a perfect feast of mind-bogglers, everyone's credulity stretching and straining in a giant national workout session.

            Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California. Well, sure, I can handle that one. Manna from heaven for political humorists of all stripes. I'm afraid the joke will begin to wear thin, however. I know we all like to make fun of California as the epicenter of nuttiness, but in fact that big, beautiful state is in terrible trouble. A $36 billion deficit is not amusing. Teachers are being fired, programs to help the most helpless -- the oldest, the youngest, the most frail -- are being cut.

            The state's economy took a terrible blow in the artificially created energy crisis of 2000-2001. Enron and the other corporate thieves -- empowered by years of the Republican mania for deregulation -- drained as

Democracy Is Under Attack -  Let's Take it Back

Harlem, N.Y. - July 31, 2003

                      How proud I am to stand at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem USA!

Thank you Reverend Butts, Bob, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Sonia Sanchez, Ralph Carter, Hakim, the Coalition of Artists and Activists, and all who worked hard to put this rally together.  And thank you for inviting me.

How appropriate that we gather here at this Church, with all its rich history of proud resistance and indignant defiance of a social order that relegated the giants of their day to second class citizenship.

And what an honor for me, to stand among the giants of our day, if only for a moment, and see America's landscape from their gaze.

What this rally means, is that America's vista has now become as ravaged in its pristine hillside villas as it has always been for those of us who muddle behind the cities' shadows.

Our people are dying.

On the streets of America our people are dying.

Gathered tonight in this room are people from all walks of life; and for that reason, this is a very dangerous meeting for the powers that be.

A question almost unthinkable

Did President George W. Bush and his governing consortium know of the impending attack on the Trade Towers and the Pentagon and intentionally allow it to occur?  

This question seems almost unthinkable, yet it is so obviously in need of an answer that it may as well be written across the sky.  The report of the House and Senate intelligence committees does not address the question, which now belongs to the National Commission on Terror Attacks Upon the United States, chaired by Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, to report by May 2004.  The following narration is meant to enable the reader to understand the situation giving rise to the question.

NPR's ombudsman responds... and a debate on CNN

Thought you might be interested in these two items:

*  The ombudsman at National Public Radio has written a piece that’s partly a response to a recent column I wrote about media attacks on Rep. Jim McDermott for going to Baghdad and questioning the veracity of President Bush. The NPR ombudsman’s piece is at: www.npr.org/yourturn/ombudsman/2003/030730.html

*  I was in a live debate on CNN today that included a discussion of the California recall and Iraq-related events. The transcript is posted at: www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0308/08/nfcnn.04.html

Best wishes,
Norman Solomon

NPR Correspondents: Impartial Journalists or Corporate Media Pundits?

It seems as though the issue of NPR journalists casually airing personal opinions on other media outlets has drawn complaints from many listeners and caused a bit of an internal ruckus, so much so that the news service is reviewing its ethics policies.  

A recent column by NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin refers specifically to an episode last fall in which NPR correspondent Mara Liasson, speaking on Fox News, chastised Congressmen Jim McDermott of Washington and David Bonior of Michigan for visiting Iraq and suggesting that President Bush was misleading the nation about Iraq's weapons capabilities in order to win support for an military invasion.

Here, exactly, is what Liasson said: "These guys [McDermott and Bonior] are a disgrace. Look, everybody knows it's 101, politics 101, that you don't go to an adversary country, an enemy country, and badmouth the United States, its policies and the president of the United States. I mean, these guys ought to, I don't know resign."

We found the weapons of mass destruction. They're in the President's budget.

As the Bush administration's deception about Iraq's potential nuclear capacity has come to light, the administration and Congress have begun to quietly re-ignite the nuclear arms race.

  a. They are preparing to build new nuclear weapons and resume nuclear testing.
  b. The administration's official nuclear plan lowers the threshold for using nuclear weapons and calls for developing "more usable" nuclear weapons for "certain battlefield situations."
  c. The administration is threatening non-nuclear countries with nuclear weapons. These are some of the most dangerous developments in two decades. They could decimate international efforts to control, and ultimately abolish these weapons.

We are launching ads nationwide as part of our Campaign for a New Foreign Policy in order to challenge these hypocrisies.

With your help, we are going to run ads just like this one across the county:

You can make this ad campaign happen. Just go to: www.peace-action.org/forms/WMDads.php

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