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To the Readers:

When I was in Japan last December at the invitation of the recent publisher of my book, From Yale to Jail, in Japanese, I met a number of nonviolent activists who are opposed to the extremes of wealth and poverty in both Japan and the US. Many of them want to do away with the US military installations in Okinawa. They want a Peace and Friendship Pact instead of the current military treaty. As a step in this direction, they proposed that a White Ship would come to the US filled with Japanese who want to get to know their counterparts and explore ways of working together for an improved world in which human rights, economic justice, and environmental sanity will be primary. read more

Plans to bomb Iraq may be on hold — for awhile. But the anti-war activists who took over Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s office on Monday Feb. 23 don’t trust the government any more than Bill Clinton trusts Saddam Hussein. Thus, even after learning that UN chief Kofi Annan’s eleventh hour agreement had been cautiously accepted, 18 people refused to leave until the governor endorsed their peace program. Even if Dean hadn’t been in Washington, DC, with other state leaders, however, that wasn’t in the cards. Fortunately, both the protesters and the cops opted for nonviolence, and no one got hurt. read more