Cindy Sheehan

By Cindy Sheehan

I am sort of confused.

When I was only protesting George Bush, his administration and the wars, I received a fair amount of media attention, especially when we were in Crawford the first summer. As time wore on and the novelty of having a mother speak out against the atrocities wore off, the coverage dwindled, but never down to practically zippo until I ran for Congress against a "liberal," Nancy Pelosi.

After the Summer of Camp Casey and Katrina, it became really popular to protest and hate George Bush. George Bush slank out of office as the most detested president in American history. However, from the time Casey died until today, my focus has shifted from blaming George Bush only, to blaming the entire system: The Military-industrial-Congressional-Prison-Media-Banker Complex...or whatever you want to call it.

By Cindy Sheehan

Last week, after being bombarded with pseudo-patriotic images of graveyards, gravestones and flags, I decided to begin posting images of maimed and killed Iraqis, but especially children and transform the mega-pseudo-patriotic Memorial Day to Remembrance of Victims of US Empire Day.

I got a great response to this and my friend and videographer, Clifford Roddy put together a short film called: finaledit, with the images I posted and with images that he took at a national cemetery in Santa Fe, NM where we were together for my Myth America book tour. I have a Cindy Sheehan You Tube page so we posted it there.

The video was just yanked off of You Tube because it “violates the terms of service” but even before it was yanked, it had a warning: “This video is unsuitable for children.”

Day of the Dead, May 25, 2009
By Cindy Sheehan | Sheehan's Soapbox

I was on an airplane flying to Orange County from Sacramento to attend the al-Awda Conference; which is a Palestinian Right’s Conference. Al-Awda translates to “The Returning, “ when the Pilot voice filled the cabin to make an announcement that I think went unnoticed by most of my fellow passengers, but I heard it.

As the plane was on the approach to John Wayne airport, the Captain came on the intercom to remind us all to “remember our brave troops who have died for our freedom.” Even in this post 9-11 paranoid paradigm, if I wasn’t belted in for landing, I would have popped out of my seat at 13D and charged up to the cockpit to let the pilot know that my son was killed in Iraq and not one person anywhere in this world is one iota more free because he is dead.

As a matter of fact, the people of Iraq, the foreign country thousands of miles away where my oldest child’s brains, blood, and life seeped into the soil, are not freer, unless one counts being liberated from life, liberty and property being free. If you consider torture and indefinite detention freedom, then the Pilot may have been right, but then again, even if you do consider those crimes freedom, it does not make it so.

Here in America we are definitely not freer because my son died, as a matter of fact, our nation can spy on us and our communications without a warrant or just cause and we can’t even bring a 3.6 ounce bottle of hand cream into an airport or walk through a METAL detector with our shoes on. Even if we do want to exercise our Bill of Rights, we are shoved into pre-designated “free speech” (NewSpeak for; STFU, unless you are well out of the way of what you want to protest and shoved into pens like cattle being led to slaughter) zones and oftentimes brutally treated if you decide you are entitled to “free speech” on every inch of American soil.

US general linked to Abu Ghraib abuse
Leaked memo reveals control of prison passed to military intelligence to 'manipulate detainees' - Rape of teen boy by American alleged
By Julian Borger | Guardian UK

Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, head of coalition forces in Iraq, issued an order last October giving military intelligence control over almost every aspect of prison conditions at Abu Ghraib with the explicit aim of manipulating the detainees' "emotions and weaknesses", it was reported yesterday.

The October 12 memorandum, reported in the Washington Post, is a potential "smoking gun" linking prisoner abuse to the US high command. It represents hard evidence that the maltreatment was not simply the fault of rogue military police guards.

Read more.

By David Swanson

"Myth America: 10 Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and the Case for Revolution." That's the title of a booklet Cindy Sheehan is selling online. I know we have CNBC to set us straight on such things, but I thought I'd check out Cindy's take. Her full-length books have been terrific, and I've published 1,631 shorter articles by or about her, because Cindy is not just a grieving mother. She's a grieving mother who feels betrayed, is mad as hell, is uncorrupted by money, power, or party, would rather die than censor her statements, and gets straight to the heart of a question faster than anyone else I know.

By Cindy Sheehan

This Saturday on April 04th, my son Casey (and at least 11 other Americans and hundreds of Iraqis) will have been dead for five years. Casey, a humvee mechanic, was killed on 04/04/04 in Sadr City, Baghdad in combat after he had been there for only five days.

Five years have passed in the blink of an eye, and besides missing Casey so much our lives have changed about as dramatically as they could have, as has life of our country.

We just passed the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq with very tepid opposition and President "Change You Can Believe In" is following the path in the Middle East that was blazed by his predecessor, George Bush. Obama’s surge in Afghanistan and on the Afghan/Pakistan border guaran-damn-tees that there will be many more “Caseys” and the people of Afghanistan should not be made subject to more “help” from The Empire.

By Cindy Sheehan

No we are not, that's the point.

Tonight, President Obama basically said that we can't demonize every investor who earns a profit, because "we are all in this together." Sorry, but I am going to have to call a big fat "bull-shit" on this one.

When Obama said "we" did he have a mouse in his pocket? Obama, and his family have a very opulent, slave-built roof over their heads. He travels on the public nickel, his children attend an exclusive Washington, DC private school that has organic food on its menu, and has health care that covers everyone in his family from head to toe and side to side and inside out.

Even though he and every member of the administration, Congress and the Supreme Court are not hurting for anything, the bastard (sorry if your parents weren't married when you were conceived) Wall Street banksters are receiving billions of dollars of government welfare and are not so good about being in "this together" with us.

By Cindy Sheehan

I remember sitting in my living room, six years ago, watching the “Leader of the Free World” announcing that the United States military had just embarked in “shock and awe” against the country of Iraq.

The images made me physically ill, as they had 12 years before when the criminal’s criminal father was bombarding Iraq.

I was also personally sick with fear as my family had “skin in the game,” our son/brother, Casey. On that night, Casey’s life clock starting ticking down: He had exactly one year and 15 days to live from “shocking and awful.”

Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox Green 960 online and on radio!
Donate to Keep your Soapbox on the air! http://www.green960.com
This Sunday (the 8th, from 2-3pst), Cindy chats with super-activist,
David Swanson from After Downing Street Coalition
and
ProsecuteBushCheney.org

Cindy and David talk about the urgency of keeping the anti-war and pro-justice movements alive!

Let's Jam up the War Machine!

Don't forget to reserve your tickets for Let's Jam Up the War Machine! on Thursday, March 19th (6th Anniversary of the illegal and immoral invastion of Iraq) at 7pm at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland.

At the Grand Lake, Cindy (Nobel Peace Prize Nominee) will be joined by Legendary Anti-War Musician, Country Joe McDonald and Daniel Ellsberg (legendary Pentagon whistle-blower) and other speakers and entertainers. It will be a fabulous night to commemorate the occasion, yet renew our commitment to activism!

By Cindy Sheehan

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.
Barack Obama: October 2002

For the record, I did not support Barack Obama for President of this country. Of course the above quote was from his famous “anti-war” speech, that was not an anti-war speech, but an anti-Iraq war speech and this is just a sound bite from a mostly nationalistic and pro-war speech.

I opposed Obama, though, because I actually listened to what he said about foreign policy when he was Candidate Obama. He never, ever said that he was going to withdraw all troops from Iraq and he always said that he was going to increase troop levels, not only in Afghanistan, but also in the military over-all. His budget increases military spending at a time when education, health care, wages and jobs are declining. Obama is a militarist-corporatist and haven’t we had enough of this kind of “leadership” in the past three decades?

Dear President Obama,

Recently, your Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, said that the DoD would be "re-evaluating" the blockade on the press taking photos of the returning flag-draped coffins from the illegal and immoral occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 1991, George H.W. Bush signed an executive order banning those photos and early on in George W. Bush's War OF Terror, his mother, and the wife of the 41st president, Barbara, agreed with that order saying that she did not want to "bother her pretty mind" with the images.
President Obama, first of all, you do not need to have the DoD "re-evaluate" that order. In the transparent Republic that you claim to seek, the Department of War should never get to pick and choose what the members of that transparent Republic see. That seems like military tyranny to me. You can sign an Executive Order reversing the one that the first President Bush signed during the First Gulf War.

Is quality and easy to access health care a privilege for the wealthy, or a basic human right?

Listen to Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox as Cindy chats with two Single-Payer Health Care advocates (Dr. Clark Newhall and Donna Smith from Michael Moore's Sicko) in a very informative edition of the Soapbox. Cindy will also give you a way to get on your own Soapbox about this issue.
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By Cindy Sheehan

You call it hope- that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire.
Tamerlane: Edgar Allan Poe, 1827

The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. …..You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.
Morpheus, The Matrix

In the brilliant movie, The Matrix, reality is not as it seems. The reality that people think they are living is only an illusion, a dream. Keanu Reeves plays the main protagonist and when he becomes unplugged from the Matrix (humans are used as organic energy to perpetuate the Matrix), he becomes the super-hero, Matrix-resister, Neo.

By Cindy Sheehan

Webster's Dictionary defines empire as: a major political unit having a territory of great extent or a number of territories or peoples under a single sovereign authority; especially: one having an emperor as chief of state.

Even though most of us do not call our "chief of state" Emperor, the USA is most certainly an empire. We have all the trappings of empire (military parades, glorious coronation balls, an elite few ruling the empire) but the Oligarchs (rule by the few) call it a "democracy" so the plebes must buy into the myth that our nation is in any way democratic. Our military is used for spreading colonial capitalism all over the world. Even in the heyday of the Roman Empire, most conquered local governments retained some autonomy, unless, of course, the will of the people conflicted with the will of the Emperor.