I read that Phil Berrigan is gravely ill. I have been out of the U.S. for 23 years but Phil and Dan were heroes for me when i was a college kid contemplating jail or flight should I be drafted. I never summoned the courage, burning my draft card in private, and they never called me anyway.

But hearing that he is ill fills me with both sadness and a determination to keep fighting the machine.

We are also trying to get a Japan Indymedia started, a small thing, but one that is important.

And I am encouraged that many of my young students, when given information that the media here too hides from them, decide to fight against the monster of militarism, or corporatism that steers this nation, now allied with the #1 rogue state (yeah--the one that once gave them Hiroshima)in its quest for world domination.

Phil's resistance stirs me to try to stir them to say no to illegitimate power, which is most power. Though I think of myself as an atheist, I find no contradiction in saying GOD BLESS YOU, PHIL