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Time has been kind to Joan Baez. Over peppermint tea in the restaurant of a South London hotel, the queen of America’s folk scene in the Sixties appears extremely youthful for someone in the fifth decade of her career. “We’ll sit here until we get thrown out,” she says, firmly but quietly, after the manager protests at our not wanting dinner. She appears the model of calm, unwavering serenity, but something about her unblinking stare — and her swift dismissal of a fussy maitre d’ — suggests that you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of her. Perhaps...

<p>Editor - I have attempted throughout my life to give a voice to the voiceless, hope to the hopeless, encouragement to the discouraged, and options to the cynical and complacent. From Northern Ireland to Sarajevo to Latin America, I have sung and marched, engaged in civil disobedience, visited war zones, and broken bread with those who had little bread to break.</p>

When rocker John Mellencamp performed for the recovering soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Friday night, a couple of things were missing. He squelched his typically blistering rhetoric against the war in Iraq. Also MIA, as it turned out, was folkie and antiwar activist Joan Baez, who says she was disinvited from the event by Army officials. In a letter that appears today in The Washington Post, Baez says Mellencamp had wanted her to perform with him and that she had accepted his invitation. "I have always been an advocate for nonviolence," she writes, "and I have stood...

Folk singer and anti-war activist Joan Baez says she doesn't know why she was not allowed to perform for recovering soldiers recently at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as she planned. In a letter to The Washington Post published Wednesday, she said rocker John Mellencamp had asked her to perform with him last Friday and that she accepted his invitation. "I have always been an advocate for nonviolence and I have stood as firmly against the Iraq war as I did the Vietnam War 40 years ago," she wrote. "I realize now that I might have contributed to a better...

Sure, the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group might be largely useless. But hey, check out all the wonderful consensus - and cue another chorus of Kumbaya! That, in a nutshell, is the message of the Boston Globe's editorial of this morning, Presidential Ingratitude.Excerpts: "Whatever might be questioned in any particular recommendation of the report, the bipartisan spirit and consensus-building purpose of the Iraq Study Group deserve grateful praise from the president, not a defensive rejection.""The Iraq Study Group may not have come up with all the right answers; in their pursuit of unanimity, they may have settled for split-the-difference...

Veteran US protest singer Joan Baez moved into a tree in Los Angeles along with famed tree-sitter Julie "Butterfly" Hill to prevent a local garden from being sold and destroyed. Baez, 65, doyenne of the 1960s folk music and protest movement, joined other protesters in hopes of saving the 14 acre (5.7 hectare) piece of land which has been tended as a community garden by about 350 urban farmers since the early 1990s. She is being accompanied in the garden tree-sit by Hill, 32, who spent over two years from 1997 to 1999 in the branches of a 600 year...

LOS ANGELES - Folk singer Joan Baez and tree-sitter Julia "Butterfly" Hill have taken up residence in a tree to raise awareness about a 14-acre urban farm threatened with demolition. Hill, who lived in a redwood in Northern California for more than two years to prevent loggers from cutting it down, said Tuesday that she, Baez and others will occupy the tree in shifts. Two door-sized platforms have been placed in the tree for the sitters, and a support group has set up an encampment on the ground. Hundreds of farmers could face evictions after The Trust for Public Land...

The "Central Committee of Conscientious Objectors" is an organization which "supports and promotes individual and collective resistance to war and preparations for war", according to its website. Among the resources available on the website are How-to guides on being AWOL, various reasons for getting out of the military, as well as a list of reasons one should not join the US military. The following picture on its website illustrates the goal of the organization: This organization lists among its sponsors former Democratic congressman Ronald Dellums of California. Dellums was an anti-war, anti-military radical who created a stir during the Vietnam...

Last week, John Walker Lindh  petitioned the president to commute his 20-year sentence for fighting with the Taliban, imposed in 2002.  It’s a shame that this pampered child of Marin County is sitting in a cell for something as trivial as treason. Under a plea bargain, Walker Lindh (AKA: Abdul Hamid, AKA: Sulayman Al-Lindh) pleaded guilty to supplying services to the Taliban regime and carrying explosives for  Afghanistan’s former rulers.Which is like to saying that Benedict Arnold supplied services to George III. Johnny Jihad trained in an al-Qaeda camp – where he learned to fire an AK-47 and rubbed elbows...

It was noted in Crawford that "Phoney Joaney" Beaz breezed into Crawford, TC to share Cindy Sheehan's spotlight in an SUV. Here's a report from a left wing wacko who fails to pick up on his side's hypocrocy...when Phoney Joaney again tried to ride Cindy's coattails. As the activists exchanged contact information and said their goodbyes in case they didn’t meet again, a black SUV stopped in the middle of the street, and out of it came Joan Baez. Hey Phoney Joaney: No War For Oil, Drill ANWR! This Raoul, Peace Out.

During Saturday’s rally, Cindy Sheehan let it slip that she was a little starstruck by folk singer Joan Baez. Baez, who has been called the patron saint of the peace movement, serenaded the audience on Saturday with “Amazing Grace” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” “One thing you missed is Joan was here the other night when she proposed marriage

“As Gandhi once said, yes there will be chaos, but it will be our chaos. Yes, there will be massive chaos, but nothing is going to stop the massive chaos. That’s my answer.” Finally, I asked Baez if she thinks there would be similar anti-war protests being held if John Kerry had won the 2004 election: “You know, the what ifs are so huge. I don’t think he would have invaded Iraq to begin with. He would have understood after 9/11, there was no connection with Iraq. I think that was really the Republican agenda and the work of Karl...

Charlottesville, VA—America's "culture war" was on full display last night at the Joan Baez concert. Tickets to the concert were a present to my mother-in-law for her 69th birthday. My mother-in-law certainly fit the demographic of the audience, or as she described it, "All the old hippies are out tonight." Let's just say that by attending, my wife and I dropped the average age of the audience by several months. Sixty-three year old Baez came out on stage and asked how the audience felt about the election? Of course the audience groaned and moaned—after all, this IS a Joan Baez...

WRITTEN BY LT.COLONEL CHARLES WADE Wednesday, October 13, 2004 Even before the primary elections, President Bush’s military service was a political issue as was Senator Kerry’s military service which he touted and others questioned. Reporters continue to seek comment from candidates, political operatives, and pundits. It seems that everyone is an expert, and everyone has an answer. Some of the more interesting responses have come from Republican senators who typically begin by asserting that they honor Senator Kerry’s Viet Nam service, but… Honor: What is that all about? What virtues are honorable? More important, what virtues are both militarily and...