Free Republic

BALTIMORE (AP) _ Carrying puppets, signs and roses, hundreds accompanied a pickup truck carrying the coffin of peace activist Philip Berrigan as it wound its way Monday through the rough neighborhood where he once served as a priest. Family members stood in the back of the truck along with the plain wooden coffin, hand-painted with red roses, as bagpipers played ``Amazing Grace'' while the procession marched to the funeral at St. Peter Claver Catholic Church in west Baltimore. ``He was bigger than life _ extremely human and heroic and committed,'' said actor Martin Sheen, who marched in the funeral...

Guantanamo, Cuba—A group of anti-war protesters awaiting sentencing on charges of throwing blood on a soldier, a recruiting station and the U.S. flag are now in Cuba, protesting the alleged treatment of terror detainees at Guantanamo Bay.According to a Ithaca Journal, the three Ithaca residents, “Daniel Burns, Clare Grady and Teresa Grady, have joined about 25 other protesters fasting since Monday at a Cuban military checkpoint outside the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo Bay.” The group is demanding access to the hundreds of detainees being held at the naval base, some since just after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11,...

<p>Anyone who doubts that news media hostility to religious-based activism is often political at its core need only review the media's treatment of three Dominican nuns sentenced last week to federal prison in Denver for damaging government property at a missile silo. For months the three were regularly applauded in the Colorado press, the subject of tributes in columns and a number of one-sided news reports. One Rocky Mountain News writer started his commentary on the nuns' impending prison stint with the following warning: "We like to think of ourselves as a just nation. So if you want to hold onto that thought, you might want to stop reading here."</p>

BALTIMORE -- Philip Berrigan, the former priest whose fight against the Vietnam War and nuclear weapons helped ignite a generation of anti-war dissent, has died of cancer. He was 79. Berrigan's family said he was diagnosed with cancer two months ago and decided to stop chemotherapy last month. He died Friday night at Jonah House, the communal residence for pacifists that he founded. His brother, the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, officiated over last rites ceremonies Nov. 30, attended by friends and peace activists, family members said. Berrigan led the "Catonsville 9," a group that staged one of the most dramatic protests...

"Diogenes, who searched high and low for an honest man, might as well have taken his lamp in search of a pacifist. As opposed to those who disguise themselves as such, in America, real pacifists are almost as rare as virgins in a whorehouse. Every aggressive pacifist I have ever come across, understood pacifism to mean, 'My friends and I can kill, but our enemies may not.'"