Opinion Forum

Iraq: Hot News and History

December 29th, 2011

By Jan Barry “Crisis plagues Iraq as U.S. troops depart — As the last U.S. soldiers exited Iraq Sunday and debate was raging about the nation’s future, political crisis erupted in Baghdad that raised fears of more sectarian strife to come. Iraqiya, a powerful political bloc that draws support largely from Sunni and more secular [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Britain, casualties, costs, democracy, hubris, Iraq, U.S., violence
Categories: History, Military, News, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

Writing the Way Home

December 20th, 2011

By Jan Barry Across America, a special gift is arriving at numerous homes this week. This gift is a new book by Warrior Writers titled After Action Review: A Collection of Writing and Artwork by Veterans of the Global War on Terror. What makes this book decidedly different from so many other gifts this holiday [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: After Action Review, photos, poetry, PTSD, veterans, Warrior Writers
Categories: Arts, Life, Military | Comments (1) | Home

Happy Holidays

December 17th, 2011

By Jan Barry

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Afghanistan, Combat Paper Project, Holidays, Iraq, veterans, Vietnam
Categories: Arts | Comments (9) | Home

A Commitment to Uncovering Local Environmental Issues

December 8th, 2011

By Jan Barry The headlines in a recent newspaper series unveiled a shocking story: “DEP let poison flow for decades” … “North Jersey riddled with failed cleanups” … “Desperate to move, but bound to stay; Residents say homes in Superfund site are worthless.” Got your attention? That’s the intent of the “Toxic Landscape” series that [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: chemicals, environment, Garfield, New Jersey, Ringwood, superfund, toxic
Categories: Media, News, Science | Comments (1) | Home

What Would Woody Say?

December 1st, 2011

By Jan Barry “Woody Guthrie spoke plain About deportees and dust bowl days… So what would Woody write? Right now in these hard times” That’s the sobering, yet enticing question that activist-songwriter Sharleen Leahey raises in her new CD collection, entitled “Rumors of Peace.” What would the “Poet of the People” who sang about plain [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: activist, music, peace, Rumors of Peace, Sharleen Leahey, Woody Guthrie
Categories: Arts, Media, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

At the Movies: Rising Up Down South

November 23rd, 2011

By Jan Barry The myriad marches, sit-ins, camp-ins and other protest demonstrations sweeping across America these days didn’t spring up out of nowhere. Such actions against entrenched injustice were honed in the civil rights movement that shook up authorities in the 1950s and 1960s. That movement energized and inspired a groundswell of grassroots movements against [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: civil rights, democracy, demonstrations, dissent, environment, film, protest
Categories: Arts, Life, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

Planting a Peace Pole

November 18th, 2011

By Jan Barry Dedicating a Peace Pole at a community cultural center in Teaneck, NJ drew a small crowd of local officials, school children and war veterans the other day. The carved wood pole was dedicated at the Puffin Foundation, as a band from Thomas Jefferson Middle School played and adults took turns exhorting the [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: activist, NJ, peace, peace pole, Puffin, Teaneck, war
Categories: Arts, Life, Politics | Comments (4) | Home

Weather Wise

November 15th, 2011

By Jan Barry Early Warning Winter dropped from the October sky Two days before Halloween— Tree branches smothered in snow On summer leaves snapping deep into the night Made darker by downed power lines Global warming! skeptics scoffed— As this part of suburban civilization Staggered for days without electricity, Closed schools, postponed Halloween Until tangled [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: electricity, global warming, New Jersey, snow, weather, winter
Categories: Arts, Life | Comments (1) | Home

Celebrating Drew Cameron’s Healing Art

November 14th, 2011

By Jan Barry Remarks I gave at “Envisioning Tomorrow,” the Printmaking Center of New Jersey’s awards dinner at the Somerville Elks Lodge, Bridgewater, NJ on November 12. The center honored Drew Cameron, the co-founder and co-director of Combat Paper, “a touring project with a compelling mission to use the healing power of art to transform [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Combat Paper, Drew Cameron, poetry, PTSD, uniform, veteran, workshop
Categories: Arts, Military, News | Comments (3) | Home

Saving America

November 5th, 2011

By Jan Barry Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party have a lot in common, not least of which is an historic mission to save the America that every public school class, politician and public officeholder pledges allegiance to. That’s the message that Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig is taking around the country in lectures, [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: book, Lessig, Occupy Wall Street, politicians, Rootstrikers, Wall Street
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

The War at Home

October 29th, 2011

By Jan Barry In Boston, Massachusetts and Oakland, California, Veterans For Peace members have been assaulted by police while peacefully demonstrating on behalf of Occupy Wall Street protest groups’ constitutional rights. The most seriously injured is Scott Olsen, a Marine vet of two tours in Iraq, who was hospitalized with head injuries after police in [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Iraq, Marine, Occupy, police, San Francisco, Scott Olsen, veteran, VFP
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (7) | Home

From Making War to Book Making

October 28th, 2011

By Jan Barry Tearing a leaf from Edgar Allan Poe’s literary leave from the US Army, a similarly brash band of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans called Warrior Writers is raising money from friends, family and fellow vets to publish a collection of their own poetry, prose and art drawn from military experience. Poe parted [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Afghanistan, anthology, Iraq, poetry, veterans, war, Warrior Writers
Categories: Arts, Life, Military | Comments (0) | Home

Protest at Wall Street

October 9th, 2011

By Jan Barry

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Military Families Speak Out, Occupy Wall Street, protest, Veterans for Peace
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

Saving Grace

October 7th, 2011

By Jan Barry Saving a corner of the Earth in its natural state is increasingly hard work. It takes many hands and, often, many organizations. So it was that, the other day, an eclectic crowd of people gathered beside a forest-fringed lake about 38 miles northwest of New York City, to celebrate the latest conservation [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: 9/11, Arrow Park, conservation, FDNY, Native American, New York, NY-NJ
Categories: Arts, Law, News | Comments (0) | Home

Republican Peace Piper

September 18th, 2011

By Jan Barry Ron Paul is the kind of presidential candidate the American people haven’t seen in a long time—one who’s dead serious about ending overseas military adventures. That’s a stance that is increasingly popular with disgruntled voters across the political spectrum, which could well spell trouble for President Obama. Activists on the left and [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Afghanistan, foreign policy, Iraq, libertarian, Ron Paul, war, withdrawal
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (4) | Home

Peace Beat

September 11th, 2011

By Jan Barry War drums began beating across America before the dust settled at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It’s an all-American tradition to march to the beat for military action, the fountain of flag waving excitement that produces legions of war correspondents, bugle-blaring headlines and armchair commandos in newsrooms. It is rare [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: 9/11, Afghanistan, budget, Iraq, Keller, peace, Pentagon, war
Categories: Media, Military, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

Vietnam: Another Kind of Adventure

August 23rd, 2011

By Jan Barry W.D. Ehrhart has been turning the tragedy of the Vietnam war inside-out, upside-down and sideways in a whirlwind of memoirs, articles, poems, poetry anthologies and travel pieces since surviving the battle of Hue in 1968—and living to ponder what the hell all the death, destruction and desperate encounters in Indochina added up [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: DMZ, Ehrhart, Hanoi, Hue, Japan, Marines, Takenaga, Vietnam, war
Categories: History, Life, Military | Comments (2) | Home

Welcome Home

August 10th, 2011

By Jan Barry Bob and Moe Eaton’s marriage, shadowed for more than 30 years by nightmares from the war in Vietnam, was about to implode. Ken Kraft, an Army officer who proudly served in Iraq, felt betrayed by his son’s refusal to carry on the family tradition of military service. Eli Painted Crow, a former [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Afghanistan, film, Iraq, Oregon, PTSD, The Welcome, veterans, Vietnam
Categories: Arts, Military, News | Comments (0) | Home

Poetry and Cannons

August 7th, 2011

By Jan Barry The last time cannons were fired in battle at Governors Island in New York harbor was in 1776. After a long run as an Army and then Coast Guard headquarters, the ancient forts and cannon, 19th century officers quarters and rows of barracks were given over a few years ago to New [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Bowery Poetry, festival, Governors Island, poetry, veterans, Warrior Writers
Categories: Arts, Military, News | Comments (0) | Home

Uncle Sam’s Dioxin Cover-Up

July 19th, 2011

By Jan Barry Vietnam and New Jersey, despite the vast distance between them, share a deadly link. Both places, lushly beautiful this time of year, were poisoned by United States government actions regarding one of the most toxic chemicals, dioxin. In Vietnam, dioxin was widely spread as a contaminant in forest-killing Agent Orange herbicides that [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Agent Orange, dioxin, EPA, Ford, HBO, Mann, New Jersey, pollution, toxic
Categories: News, Politics, Science | Comments (0) | Home

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