Guerrilla Performance Against the War in Times Square

“Our Grief is not a cry for War!”–this was the statement that 70 artists and writers made in a guerilla performanceat Times Square earlier this week.

The Women of Afghanistan: Terror's First Victims

One thing that the international women’s movement has demonstrated over the past few years is that the first victims of war are always women and children. Already, women have been the harshest victims of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Wherever the Taliban came to power, they banned women from working, prohibited women and girls from attending school, and forbid women from leaving their homes without being accompanied by a close male relative and wearing a head-to-toe burqa shroud. Women who violate Taliban decrees are beaten, imprisoned, or even killed. Women’sgroups on the ground in Afghanistan, like the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, have long worked to transform gender relations in Afghanistan.

A Grieving Family Tells Bush "Not in Our Son's Name"

Despite the Bush Administration’s refusal to actually release evidence that might link Osama Bin Laden to the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the mass media has lined up almost without exception in support of wide ranging military action against Afghanistan and perhaps other countries.

Thich Nat Hanh, Part 2

We continue now with a major address at the Riverside Church by Buddhist Peace Activist Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich NhatHanhis a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. During the US war in Vietnam, he worked tirelessly for reconciliation betweenNorth and South Vietnam. He championed a movement known as “engaged Buddhism,” which intertwined traditionalmeditative practices with active nonviolent civil disobedience against the South Vietnamese Government and the US.Martin Luther King, Jr. nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. Hanh’s Buddhist delegation to the Parispeace talks resulted in accords between North Vietnam and the United States, but his pacifist efforts did not endwith the war. He also helped organize rescue missions well into the 1970’s for Vietnamese trying to escape frompolitical oppression. He now lives in exile in a small community in France called Plum Village. Thich Nhat Hanh haswritten more than seventy-five books of prose, poetry, and prayers and continues to be banned from his native country of Vietnam. He spoke Tuesday night at the historic Riverside Church in Manhattan, where Martin Luther King firstspoke out publicly against against the Vietnam War. The subject of his talk was “Embracing Anger.” We pick up wherehe left off.

Women and Afghanistan Continued

The subjugation of women in extremist Islamic states like Afghanistan is carried out in the name of Islam, but itdoes not have much basis in the religion itself. In fact, when the religion of Islam was founded in the 7th century,it guaranteed women status in society, and offered them property and inheritance rights.

Scapegoating: The Wartime Pattern? Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson Attack Gays, Feminists,and Progressives

Two days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, television evangelists Jerry Falwell and PatRobertson, two of the most prominent voices of the religious right, said liberal civil liberties groups, feminists,homosexuals and abortion rights supporters bear partial responsibility for Tuesday’s terrorist attacks because theiractions have turned God’s anger against America. On September 13, during one of his regular appearances on PatRobertson’s “The 700 Club,” a TV show on the Christian Broadcasting Network, Jerry Falwell said,

“And I fear, as Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, said yesterday, that this is only the beginning. And withbiological warfare available to these monsters; the Husseins, the Bin Ladens, the Arafats–what we saw on Tuesday,as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact–if, in fact–God continues to lift the curtain and allow theenemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.”

Tape:

Attacks Against the Asian American Community Continue Unabated Across the Country: The South Ssian Community Speaks Out

The British newspaper the Guardian is reporting that US and British officials backtracked yesterday on threats to oust the ruling Taliban, after Pakistan threatened to withdraw its cooperation. Pakistan’s foreign minister reminded the western allies of failed attempts to impose governments on Afghanistan, and said that any attempt to repeat the mistakes of the British and the Soviet Union “is a recipe for great suffering for the people of Afghanistan.” Earlier in the week, the US announced the lifting of sanctions on Pakistan and India in an attempt to solidify the alliance.