Sami Moubayed of the Asia Times calls it the "Gaza Tea Party"
"Gaza is the Massachusetts of 2008. The 'Intolerable Acts' of 1774 are a child's birthday party compared to the 'Intolerable Acts' of 2008, committed by Israel. The Crossing of Rafah is the Port of Boston, 234 years later."

That figure above for the Cost of the War is now over $500 billion, but more than two years ago, Harvard's Linda Bilmes and Nobel-prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz determined that, after including things like medical expenses for injured troops, higher oil prices, and restocking the military, the war will cost the USA upwards of $3 trillion.

As pointed out in the Toronto Star, "...according to sources like Columbia's Jeffrey Sachs, the Worldwatch Institute, and the United Nations, with that same money the world could:
--> Eliminate extreme poverty around the world (cost $135 billion in the first year, rising to $195 billion by 2015.)
--> Achieve universal literacy (cost $5 billion a year.)
--> Immunize every child in the world against deadly diseases (cost $1.3 billion a year.)
--> Ensure developing countries have enough money to fight the AIDS epidemic (cost $15 billion per year.)
In other words, for a cost of $156.3 billion this year alone – less than a tenth of the total Iraq war budget – we could lift entire countries out of poverty, teach every person in the world to read and write, significantly reduce child mortality, while making huge leaps in the battle against AIDS, saving millions of lives."

Bush & Co. have never listened to such arguments, but the voices are getting stronger all the time. Alecia Beth Moore, that tough lady who calls herself Pink has some hard words for Bush in her song Dear Mr. President.

Dennis Kucinich was excluded from caucus debates in South Carolina, mainly because he says things that the corporate oligarchy doesn't want to hear, as described by Robert Scheer in his article Who Will Take On the Banks?
Now that Kucinich has dropped out of the race, the question arises: has democracy been excluded from the debates, and from the electoral process in general?

Driving Home
by Charles Simic, August 20, 2007

Minister of our coming doom, preaching
On the car radio, how right
Your Hell and damnation sound to me
As I travel these small, bleak roads
Thinking of the mailman’s son
The Army sent back in a sealed coffin.

His house is around the next turn.
A forlorn mutt sits in the yard
Waiting for someone to come home.
I can see the TV is on in the living room,
Canned laughter in the empty house
Like the sound of beer cans tied to a hearse.

» Previous APJ Blog articles can be found here.


Gene Sharp's 198 methods of nonviolent action are classified into three broad categories: nonviolent protest and persuasion, noncooperation (social, economic, and political), and nonviolent intervention.
As this is quoted from a 1973 book, we could now add two more to make 200:
199. E-mail
200. Websites