NEWSTERRORISM & HUMAN RIGHTS

Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was a traitor, a racist, and some say, a murderer--basically the trifecta of despicability.

Yet, despite this man's heinous history and outrageous character flaws,  Mississippi is seriously considering issuing an official state license plate in his honor.

Hell, while they're at it, Mississippi officials might as well crank out  state license tags honoring Osama bin Laden or Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

The plates, including the one for Forrest, could be marketed as the state's homage to terrorists.

Usually understood as a time to express gratitude for the people and things we sometimes take for granted, Thanksgiving and this year's holiday season can also have a different meaning.

George W. Bush, the now former president we still and should love to berate, is on tour to promote his new book, and one peace activist organization is making a point of un-thanking him for it wherever he goes.

CODEPINK: Women for Peace (men welcome, too) and their supporters are mobilizing around the country to protest against Bush's self-glorifications of torture and warmongering in his memoir Decision Points.

It's a must-read if you want to know how to get away with and justify horrifications such as waterboarding and starting the two longest wars in US history.

"With his book, media appearances and the opening of his library in Dallas, George Bush is being treated as a respected statesman instead of what he really is: a war criminal," said CODEPINK cofounder Medea Benjamin. "That's why we, the people, have to set the record straight."

CODEPINK's nonviolent actions have included the usual in-person protests, 'setting the record straight' in Milwaukee, Miami and elsewhere. Why not your hometown, too?

But CODEPINK has creatively gone well beyond protests, with a number of inventive and easy ways to un-thank Bush at a bookstores near you, such as printing out special bookmarks that read "Warning: This Book's Author is a War Criminal" and placing them in each copy of Decision Points, or gathering copies of the Bush memoir and moving them to the crime section of the bookstore. Check some visual examples here, and if you go ahead with some book-moving in your local bookstore, consider emailing a photo of your 'work' to the CODEPINK's "Where's W's Book Belong?" contest.

Dupont Circle: home to a park smack in the center of a historic neighborhood, this famous Washington, DC landmark is constantly host to meandering lovers, cafe-bound entrepreneurs, stressed out diplomats, think tank people and eager tourists. But last month it was host to something quite different: a drone attack.

Organized by Pax Christi USA, Foreign Policy in Focus, CODEPINK, and Voices for Creative Nonviolence, the mock drone attack was the latest in a series of attempts to bring the wars home for Americans. Similar actions in Madison, San Francisco and Boston resulted in a number of media hits, including the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, energizing the moral dimension of the national conversation about drone attacks in the war on terror.

You live in a complex city.

One of the gangs on the other side of town has been systematically killing as many blue eyed residents in their neighborhood as possible. They have also started a gang war against the southern section of the area, leading to countless deaths over the years.

Would you want the local authorities to financially ostracize, arrest and imprison this gang, or to offer them cushy presents in exchange for ending the gang war against the south, while continuing the killings of blue eyed citizens?

Apparently, according to US President Barack Obama and his special envoy to Sudan, Major General (Ret) Scott Gration, there is no need for the former, aggressive shananigans.