Search Results for Toward Freedom Journal

Dave Dellinger’s father was a well-connected Massachusetts lawyer and friend of Republican   Governor Calvin Coolidge. One of his grandmothers was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and his father’s ancestors went back to North Carolina — before the Revolution. In fact, Benjamin Franklin was a direct ancestor, by way of a grandnephew and a full-blooded Cherokee Indian.

With such a pedigree, it was hard to see why Dave would become an all-American radical, an internationally respected nonviolent activist and a leader of peace and justice movements for more than 60 years. But the young man from the Boston suburb of Wakefield took a less traveled path from the start, living with the poor, attending seminary, and refusing to register for the draft at the brink of World War II. Then and later, he went to jail for his beliefs. By the 1960s, he was a legendary figure, able to forge an alliance between anti-war activists and civil rights leaders. He was America’s Gandhi, advancing the theory of pacifist resistance through his words and deeds. read more

When almost-elected President George W. Bush announced his “war on terrorism” in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, he also launched a campaign to advance the agenda of the reactionary Right at home and abroad. This includes rolling back an already mangled federal human services sector, reverting to deficit spending for the benefit of a wealthy creditor class, increasing the repression of dissent, and further expanding the budgets and global reach of the US military and other components of the national security state. read more

Until it imploded last October, Enron — long known as End-Run by its critics — was often described as just another aggressive corporation eager to expand its portfolio and open routes into new markets, albeit sometimes with "strong arm" tactics. The implication in most press reports was that, so long as consumers and shareholders came out on top, how it operated was a matter of little public concern.

But Enron was never just another company. It was a major architect and proponent of utility deregulation, with close friends in both the Clinton and two Bush Administrations. Headquartered in Houston, TX, it was also the largest contributor to George W. Bush’s presidential campaign, giving at least $550,000 to Bush himself and an estimated $1.8 million to the Republican Party during the 2000 elections. Since then, however, it has also emerged as one of the biggest corporate rip offs in history. Early evidence indicates that its executives hid at least half a billion in debt while enriching themselves through insider trading and financial gimmicks. In the end, they ran the company into the ground. Citgroup, J.P. Morgan and other banking houses were either hoodwinked or accomplices. In either case, they lured in shareholders with empty promises. read more

Since the president is in the mood to confess and atone, here’s a suggestion: ‘fess up to the wrongdoing, hypocrisy. and misleading statements at the heart of US foreign policy. For starters, he could admit that the year-long campaign to scare the world about VX gas has gone drastically off-track. In August, for example, it provided the excuse to bomb a factory in the Sudan that was actually producing antibiotics and medicines for malaria, rheumatism, tuberculosis, and diabetes, all desperately needed by Africans. read more

Uncovering a secret plot can quickly become a dead-end trip, guided by the researcher’s paranoid half-fantasies and the eerie vibration that everything is under hidden control. Yet you don’t have to be paranoid to realize that history isn’t only what scholars write, and that newspapers often edit — and sometimes even alter — the facts that they report.