By Cliff Cawthon & Irene Morrison

On April 16th and 18th in Buffalo and across the nation, libertarians and conservatives engaged in some very disingenuous “Tea Parties”. The gatherings supposedly alluded to the 1773 Boston Tea Party which revolted against taxation by the British without representation in the British government. Today’s Tea Parties were backed by right-wing political and corporate support—many of the people who got us into this current financial mess—making them fall flat as a cute concept but a poor history lesson.  

Americans are obsessed with their taxes. There seems to be so little understanding of the fact that the US has one of the lowest rates of taxation in the world. Or that taxes pave our streets, pay for our teachers, support us when we are too old to work, and so many other things. The idea that too many people abuse “the system” of social safety nets and therefore there should be less support for them is—like the Tea Parties—a case of misplaced priorities. Regulation would solve the problem of abuse of the system; less taxes would just make already stumbling programs worse off. Read more »

By Elea Mihou

Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently released a report entitled “War on the Displaced” about the killing of civilians in Sri Lanka. According to HRW, thousands of civilians are trapped by fighting between Sri Lanka’s government and rebel Tamil Tiger forces.

Reporters and humanitarian aid cannot enter the combat zone, so information and assistance are sparse. It is hard to find an accurate death toll. To understand how this humanitarian crisis developed, it is important to understand Sri Lanka’s history of centuries of colonial rule, dominance, and exploitation by foreign countries.

Sri Lanka is an island nation off the coast of India which has been engaged in a civil war for nearly 6 decades.  The country was under colonial rule for centuries, most notably in 1798 when the British established control after the Dutch and Portuguese. Read more »

By Russel Brown

As the US is about to release more photos of our abuse of war prisoners around the world, we continue to imprison our own soldiers who spoke out against the war and occupation. Although war resisters around the country have achieved some individual victories, many resisters are locked up in our prisons and others continue to face the same fate. Adopt Resistance has been working since 2008 with other organizations nationally to support resisters. Here are a few status updates on resisters we’ve been supporting: Read more »

By John Lloyd

I didn’t know him.  But I knew his father. Or it might be better to say that I saw his father. The old man was the night watchman at the American International School of Gaza where I taught 5th grade.

He used to greet the teachers in the morning as they started work. As I was watching him work one morning I realized that he would never leave the Strip.  No passport, wrong passport, relative of a fugitive, whatever. 

Thousands and thousands of people are trapped in Gaza for various reasons.  This old man was just one on them.  That weekend I was thinking of him while visiting the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.  I bought a set of prayer beads along the Via d’La Rosa.  Back in Gaza I pressed the beads into his hands when he greeted us at the beginning of our next school day.  I said: “ Al Haram Sharif” and “Al Quds” in my grade school Arabic; he got the idea.  His eyes teared a little and he thanked me. Sometimes kindness is all that Gazans have.

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