politics

Cindy Sheehan, now a candidate for Congress, was in Charlottesville during my recent visit and I was invited to extend a welcome to the community on behalf of FOR at an event where she was speaking. David Swanson, member of Charlottesville’s Center for Peace and Justice had invited Sheehan to join him at last weekend’s “Building a New World Conference” at Radford University in Radford, Virginia.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to Cindy Sheehan for speaking truth to power, calling in to question the commitment of political leadership to their public promises to act to bring the occupation of Iraq to an end and to stop the killing. She has stepped in to the space of citizen leadership herself by running for public office.

As the value of a "Summer Holiday Oil Tax Break" is being debated between the presidential candidates, Oil companies are benefiting from the raise oil prices and wind fall profits. This windfall profits and high oil prices flow directly from an unwise, immoral, and illegal war on the precious people of Iraq.

Consumers for Peace has launched a campaign to hold at least one of these companies accountable and call upon them break with the conventional wisdom of capitalism and share in the wisdom of peace and justice.

"Kentucky at War," proclaims this week's issue of The Nation, the standard-bearer of the U.S. socialist-bending progressive community. The Nation has been publishing a series of articles looking at the political debates in so-called "red" states as the presidential campaign heats up.