Thursday, one day to the weekend and I just want to crawl in bed. When it's cold, I think that's my thing to do and I've been cold all day. Even when everyone else wasn't!
But it's time to talk about WBAI's Law and Disorder (on WBAI Monday, it also airs on other stations as well). Remember that they are moving the website and if you go WBAI archives looking for the program it's under "OUT FM" on Mondays.
Michael Ratner and Michael Smith discussed the Supreme Court's decision to refuse to hear the case regarding the Guantanamo prisoners. Instead we have "an alternative system of justice" that "tomorrow it could be for any of us." They talked about enemy combatants and how Bully Boy can designate anyone that (even US citizens) and could torture you, "use hearsay evidence against you," and basically anything at all. "You don't have a lawyer, you don't have a right to go to court" you just get a military committee.
This episode wasn't the Michaels only. Their first guest was Howard Bass who is an ACLU member and attorney and he was one of the ones handling the Minnesota "photo cop ordinance." These are the cameras that photograph people going through a red light. The registered owner is the one who gets the ticket sent to them. It is then the responsibility of the owner to pay or provide the name of the driver of the car. This raised the issue that our court systems are built on: innocent until proven guilty. The red light photo system presumes guilt and the burden of proof is on the guilty. Heidi Boghosian was on this segment and she had several strong questions and points, including who was targeted and how this impacts insurance.
The next segment's guest was NYU law professor Paul Chevigny to discuss the Handschu Consent Decree "the police couldn't surveil" pure political activity. If they suspected criminal activity they needed two civilians and a police's approval per the Handschu Consent Decree. The case was on police abuses and spying. Barbara Handschu, of the National Lawyers Guild, was one of the lead attorneys and Chevigny was also an attorney on this case. In the mid-80s, the decision was reached. In 2002, NYC police claimed Handschu was too restrictive and harming their investigations. So now they only need approval from the NYC Director of Intelligence. That's how they get to film and photograph protests. Heidi pointed out that they are keeping the film and not destroying it. It was supposed to be heard, the case, yesterday but
I'm not finding any news article on it.
I need to correct two things. Margaret Ratner Kunstler was a guest last year and I said she was Michael Ratner's sister. C.I. thought that was funny in real time and corrected me that she wasn't Michael's sister, she was Michael's ex-wife. C.I. said not to worry about it and it was an innocent mistake. But I said the next time I had something, I'd note it. I quoted C.I. a few weeks back on Stanley Abramowitz and pulled something out of the quote. C.I. was here last Friday and Rebecca was joking about that. I had pulled out a thing about Stanley Abramowitz's wife. I didn't realize it was known that C.I. knew her. Rebecca was laughing about that and I was going, "Who was his wife?" It was Ellen Willis and C.I. did write an obit on her so I could have used C.I.'s full quote if I'd known that at the time.
Oh, Heidi also got the ending commentary about how the Justice Department is using 'agreements' and not 'decrees' because they're less binding and they're participating with the local police in the breakdown of our rights to privacy. So that was this week's episode.
Now I mentioned the National Lawyers Guild above (Heidi, the Michaels and Dalia Hashad are all members) and I'll offer a bit of this from an article by the National Lawyers Guild's president, Marjorie Cohn. This is called "U.S. Attorneys and Voting Rights:"
The Bush administration is shocked, shocked, that the firing of a few U.S. attorneys has caused such a stir in Washington. After all, the Oval Office says, the President can choose whomever he wants to prosecute federal cases. But the Supreme Court declared in Berger v. United States that a prosecutor's job is to see that justice is done, not to politicize justice. The mass ouster of the top prosecutors had more to do with keeping a grip on power - by manipulating voting rights - than with doing justice. And like the Watergate scandal, the evidence points to a cover-up.
This cover-up revolves around efforts by the Bush administration to disenfranchise African-American voters in communities where the vote would likely be close. George W. Bush came to power in 2000 by a razor-thin margin awarded him by the Supreme Court. During the 2004 election, there were allegations of attempts to disenfranchise African-American voters, especially in Ohio. Yet no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African-American or Native American voters from 2001 to 2006.
Instead, the administration instigated efforts that would further disenfranchise these voters. U.S. attorneys were instructed to prosecute "voter fraud" cases. "Voter fraud" has "become almost synonymous with 'voting while black,'" the New York Times' Paul Krugman observed. Also, Republican lawmakers enacted voter ID laws which established new hurdles for voters to jump.
Former staffers in the Justice Department's civil rights division said they were "repeatedly overruled when they objected to Republican actions, ranging from Georgia's voter ID law to Tom DeLay's Texas redistricting, that they believed would effectively disenfranchise African-American voters," Krugman added.
The administration's effort to prosecute voter fraud is a sham. The New York Times reports that voter experts have found "widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud." However, the Election Assistance Commission, a federal panel charged with election research, skewed the findings of the voter experts.
Now I'm not adding anything to that. How come? If you don't know, Rebecca's been covering this for weeks now. When we all went to Texas, she rode (in Treva's RV) and didn't take a plane because she's still nervous about the pregnancy (or was up to that point) and so she ended up diving into this and pretty much covers it every night. She's going to highlight this tonight and discuss it and other Gonzales stuff so check out Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude. Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Thursday, April 12, 2007. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq, war resisters continue standing even when little jerks attack, the puppet pushes the privatization of Iraq's oil, and Kurt Vonnegut is dead.
Starting with war resisters, it must have been a full moon. You had the overgrown "girl" going after war resisters and then you got Little Priss (at the most laughable student newspaper of any college in the US) doing the same. It takes a special kind of voice to 'sing' so passionately about the tough life when Daddy's a big league coach but we're not supposed to talk about that, I'm guessing. Just like we're all supposed to pretend Junior's slug line is in anyway authentic (Little Boys from Suburbia have nasty cases of Big City Envy that force them to lie -- something that was frowned upon in the private, religious school they attended to avoid mixing with other races). Maybe Little Priss can join the overgrown "girl" and assist her in basket-weaving her home-made maxi-pads. What has them up in arms? A nasty case of toxic shock syndrome?
No, a hatred of war resisters such as Camilo Mejia whose new book, Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia, will be published by The New Press next month (May 1st). Kirkus Reviews found it, "Timely, courageous and cautionary." Mejia, as noted in Amy Goodman and David Goodman's Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders and the People Who Fight Back, served six months in Iraq and, after returning to the US, applied for c.o. status and self-checked out of the military. Mejia was convicted of desertion and sentenced to a year at Fort Still. Upon release, Mejia declared, "Peace does not come easily, so I tell all members of the military that whenever faced with an order, and everything in their mind and soul, and each and every cell in their bodies scream at them to refuse and resist, then by God do so. Jail will mean nothing when brekaing the law became their duty to humanity." Another quote Camilo Mejia is known for, noted by Eric Ruder (Socialist Worker), is "Behind these bars, I sit a free man because I listened to a higher power, the voice of my conscience."
Mejia's book follows Joshua Key's successful The Deserter's Tale and joins other books exploring the resistance in the military today including Peter Laufer's Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq. Mejia is also featured in the documentary To Disobey.
As Monica Benderman, wife of Iraq war resister Kevin Benderman, has noted, there has been little on resistance in many bookstores. Monica and Kevin Benderman intend to do their part to change that by writing their own book.
Mejia and Benderman are a part of a movement resistance within the military that also includes Ehren Watada, Dean Walcott, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Joshua Key, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia, Patrick Hart, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
In Iraq today the violence continued. So badly that US Secretary of State Condi Rice felt the need to issue a laughable statement: "We know that there is a security problem in Baghdad." "We know"? Speaking for the rest of the world, "we hope so." We hope you know there is a problem in Baghdad. Still, it is an improvement over her usual "no one could have guessed" statements.
The most shocking incident of violence today for the US administration may have been the bombing inside the Green Zone. NPR's Tom Bullock notes that the explosion took place "inside the Iraqi parliament building" in the heavily fortified section of Baghdad known as the Green Zone and that it was "a major security breach." BBC offers that the cafeteria where the bombing took place "is for MPs and their staff, some of whom were having lunch there."
AFP, noting that the Green Zone is "the country's most heavily guarded site," observes that the bombing took place "despite a massive US-Iraqi security crackdown". Qassim Abdul-Zahra (AP) notes that the bombing was caputed by "news video camera" revealing "the blast: a flash and an orange ball of fire causing a startled parliament member who was being interviewed to duck, and then the smoky, dust-filled aftermath of confusion and shouting." The news team was from Al-Hurrah, the US based and US tax funded propoganda outlet. Abdul-Zahra also notes that two legs, apparently belonging to the person who detonated the bomb, can be seen on the videotape. There is dispute as to whether a person carried the bomb in and it exploded on his/her person or whether the bomb was planted somewhere in the cafeteria. Dean Yates and Ross Colvin (Reuters) sketch out the basic procedures of entry: "the confrence centre is restricted to accredited parliamentary staff, deputies, security guards and journalists. Only MPs, police and kitchen staff can access the cafeteria. Two Shi'ite lawmakers said the metal detector used at the VIP entrance was working, but a Sunni legislator said when he arrived there was a power cut and bags were being manually searched. A Reuters cameraman said the scanner at a second entrance used by staff and journalists was operating." Those steps are to access the cafeteria. AFP notes gaining entry to the Green Zone "is restricted to visitors carrying picture identity cards and required to pass through multiple checkpoints and metal detectors."
James Hider (Times of London) explains the bombing, in "practical terms," means "the incident also whosed that the bombers can get straight into the heart of what was meant to be the most protected place in Baghdad. Therefore, in effect, it serves to send out the message that nobody is safe and that the insurgents can get suicide bombers in anywhere. The reality is that, despite its reputation as a heavily fortified and protected area, the Green Zone isn't actually that impenetrable. Within the zone itself live 15,000 Iraqis who go in and out every day." CNN states that 14 MPs were wounded (reported number is currently as high as 20). AP notes three members of parliament dead -- Taha al-Liheibi (Sunni), Mohammed Awad (Sunni) and Niamah al-Mayahi (Shi'ite) -- and that they are part of the total eight reported dead. Martin Seemungal (CBS News) spoke with a parlimentarian in the cafeteria who stated that 6 MPs may have been killed in the bombing.
The Green Zone is where Iraq's puppet government offices are, where the stadium-size US embassy is, where many journalists are. As a result, that bombing has cast a lengthy shadow over an earlier one today. BBC reports that a truck bomb took out the Sarafiya bridge in Baghdad during rush hour traffic and that it "sent several cars toppling into the River Tigris below." CBS and AP report: "Cement pilings that support the bridge's stell structure were left crumbling. At the base of one laid a charred vehicle enigne, believed to be that of the truck bomb." CNN notes 10 dead, 26 wounded and that "two large sections in the middle of al-Sarafiya bridge collapsed into the river." AFP reports that "River police raced to the scene on patrol boats and divers donned oxygen cylinders to search the murky waters for survivors after officials said four cars tumbled off the bridge." Reuters reminds that, "The Tigris River cuts Baghdad in half and the Sarafiya bridge is a key artery in the northern part of the city."
James Hider (Times of London) offers his opinion of the message sent with the bridge bombing, "the attack on the al-Sarafiya bridge is also believed to be extremely symoblic. The east of Baghdad is mainly Shia while the west is mainly Sunni, and the Parliamentary speaker today said that the insurgents are conspiring to divide Baghdad in two. The particular bombing -- destorying one of the main access points uniting the city -- illustrates this well. . . . There are, of course, other ways to get across the city apart from this particular bridge. But the fewer there are, the greater the chance of those who use them getting caught up in the bombing." BBC News' Jim Muir observes that both "attacks are major blows to the much-trumpeted security surge now in its third month".
The puppet of the occupation, Nouri al-Maliki, is in Seol and, from miles away, issued a statement on the bombings. It was apparently more important that he be present in South Korea for the big push that Iraq will raise producting of oil to 3 million barrels per day. In doing so, he was also selling the privatization of Iraq's oil (something the US Congress is on board with). Reuters notes: "The world's top oil comapnies have been maneuvering for years to win a stake in Iraq's prized oilfields such as Bin Umar, Majnoon, Nassiriyah, West Qurna and Ratawi, all located in the south of the country." In Baghdad, however, it was all smilles as Hoshyar Zebari (Iraq's Minister of Foreign Affairs) met with Hassan Kazimi Qumi (Iran's ambassador to Iraq) where they discussed the upcoming meeting in Egypt and Iraq's help in obtaining the release of one Iranian diplomat. Strangely, considering Little Willie's big press conference yesterday, bombings and weapons weren't a topic of the meeting.
As Norman Solomon (CounterPunch) observes, the US government has their eyes on Iran and US presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are 100% all options for war (all repeating the "no option" off the table mantra). Despite this, Solomon notes, WalkOn.org is pushing the myth that "Hillary Clinton has provided some much needed leadership on" the issue of war with Iran -- apparently Hillary cried, "To the barricades!" Solomon concludes: "To praise Hillary Clinton for providing 'much needed leadership' on Iran -- and to mislead millions of e-mail recipients counted as MoveOn members in the process -- is a notable choice to make. It speaks volumes. It winks at Clinton's stance that 'no option can be taken off the table.' It serves an enabling function. It is very dangerous. The stakes are much too high to make excuses or look the other way."
Meanwhile, in the ruins of Iraq, another anniversary passed yesterday but it wasn't as crowd pleasing as the staged take-down of a Saddam statue. Haydar Baderqghan (Azzaman) reminds that it is four years of "the looting of Iraq Museum," that the Ministry of Archaeology and Terrorism issued a statement condeming "the barbarism of wars and their destructive outcome," and that only 4,000 of the 15,000 stolen artifacts have been recovered (four years later).
In other violence today . . .
Bombings?
Reuters reports 2 roadside bombing in Kirkuk killed 6 and injured 21, a Baghdad mortar attack that left one person dead and one wounded.
Hussein (McClatchy Newspapers) notes a Baquba bombing that killed 4 police officers and injured two more and another Baquba bombing that wounded two people;
Shootings?
Hussein (McClatchy Newspapers) reports one person shot dead in south Baghdad and another shot and injured and one person shot dead in east Baghdad. Reuters reports a police officer "guarding civil servants on a bush" in Mosul was shot dead.
Corpses?
Hussein (McClatchy Newspapers) offers a breakdown of the areas of Baghdad that 12 corpses were discovered in today.
Finally, in the United States, a passing deserves noting, from Democracy Now!:
And finally, the author Kurt Vonnegut has died. He was eighty-four years old. Vonnegut authored at least nineteen novels including "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle." In recent years, Vonnegut was a fierce critic of the Bush administration and a columnist for the magazine In These Times.
Transcript, audio and video of Vonnegut can be found here at Democracy Now!
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Thursday, April 12, 2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Dave Zirin, Matthew Rothschild
Hump day. Brody e-mailed to say that the Law and Disorder website is up. Kinda. There's a message that they're moving their site to another webhost and you can't listen. If you try to access a show, Brody says that you get an error message. So we know now that the website is moving thanks to Brody. I also got my CD in the mail today so I'll be noting this week's episode tomorrow. Also, Rachel e-mailed that Monday's episode is under "OUT FM" in the WBAI archives.
Okay, now Dave Zirin has a new book on Muhammad Ali that we've noted here before and he was on Democracy Now! Monday and this is from "Sports Columnist Dave Zirin on Muhammad Ali's Career and His Groundbreaking Political Involvement:"
AMY GOODMAN: Let's talk about Muhammad Ali and what he would say out loud. DAVID ZIRIN: What Ali would say out loud would be -- well, he certainly would say, I think, "I have a quarrel with Don Imus." I mean, and he would say -- you know, even say, "I ain't got no quarrel with the sisters at Rutgers University." I mean, that's the thing about Muhammad Ali in the 1960s that's so incredible. I mean, he finished in the bottom 1% of his high school class. He barely graduated from high school. Yet, on all the important social issues of the day, on the edge of the black freedom struggle, on the Vietnam War, while all the best and the brightest were talking about "all deliberate speed" for integration and talking about war in Vietnam, Muhammad Ali knew what side he was on, time and again. He knew there was right, and he knew there was wrong. And because he had that direct connection both to a black political tradition that was antiwar, through people like Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, Marcus Garvey, and also because his own family came from the black working class in the South, he knew which side he was on, on a series of these questions, when the leading edge of politics, of the so-called "experts," were so patently wrong.
Wasn't it funny how professional athletes stayed out of this? If you're a big b-ball star, would it kill you to say something in favor of the Rutgers' team? This goes back to a point Dave has made before (and he makes the point in the interview too) which is that you've got a whole generation of sports stars who don't think they have to contribute anything. They think they just have to play and do commercials. That's not everyone. Like Steve Nash spoke out against the illegal war. But you've got a lot of people who won't say a damn word.
They just aren't interested in anything that's going to hurt their chances to make money or that might lead to them being made fun on sport's radio. I really think "sports hero" is a term that should be retired, like Jackie Robinson's number (42) because there really aren't enough to use the term.
Maybe I'm just feeling negative but that's how I feel. Lot of people playing ching-ching, not a lot of people standing up. And that's not just sports, you can see that in music and other stuff too.
And there is a small group in any field you can count on but it's a small group.
Dave Zirin's written before about how a basketball wonder was endorsing homophobia. I think you're looking at a kid who doesn't know a thing about the world (Zirin made a similar comment). But he points out, in the interview, that Ali came up knowing what was going on and not afraid to speak out.
Me, I think it's the difference between being real and fake. Look at the Dixie Chicks. They won all those Grammys and a lot of us were real happy because they had spoken out. They didn't just make some music and check out of the real world. And it made their music better.
I was asked what I'm listening to besides Bright Eyes and that would be a CD Kat just reviewed in "Kat's Korner: Holly Near Shows Up" -- Holly Near's new CD Show Up. That really is an amazing CD. I can listen to it over and over. I especially like putting it on at night right before I crawl into bed. I should say it's not a 'light' CD, it's not this soothing, put you to sleep music. It really kicks ass. If you haven't checked it out already, you should.
Now this is from Matthew Rothschild's "Feingold Leads the Way on Iraq Again, But Does Not Go Far Enough:"
This morning, April 10, Senator Russ Feingold introduced an important piece of legislation on the Iraq War. But unfortunately it does not go far enough.
According to a press release from his office, the bill would "effectively end U.S. military involvement in Iraq."
But that's not exactly what the bill says, and it’s not, in fact, what the bill would accomplish.
Instead, the bill provides enough loopholes for Bush, and his successor, to keep U.S. troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future.
"The President shall commence the safe, phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq that are not essential to the purposes set forth in subsection (d)," the bill says, and it would cut off all funds for the continued deployment of U.S. forces to Iraq after March 31, 2008, except as stipulated in subsection (d).
So let's look at subsection (d).
It reads: "Exception for Limited Purposes--The prohibition . . . shall not apply to the obligation or expenditure of funds for the limited purposes as follows:
"(1) To conduct targeted operations, limited in duration and scope, against members of Al Qaeda and other international terrorist organizations.
"(2) To provide security for United States infrastructure and personnel.
"(3) To train and equip Iraqi security services."
But Bush today could say, with only his average amount of distortion, that this is what U.S. troops are doing now in Iraq.
Yeah, they do nothing and then they want us to fight for them. Want us to send e-mails to the networks and cable channels screaming how unfair they were, want us to give over our money for their elections, want us to vote for them. My attitude right now is that if you're not trying to end the war don't count on me for any support, you're on your own.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Wednesday, April 11, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, Crazy John McCain intends to continue running for the GOP presidential nomination until the men in white coats cart him away, The Savannah Morning News merges with the US military, the International Red Cross issues a report that doesn't contain the preferred amount of happy talk, and the refugee crisis grows.
Today the US military announced: "An MND-B Soldier died and two others were wounded when an improvised explosive device detonated near their patrol in an eastern section of the Iraqi captial April 11." And they announced: "One MDN-B Soldier died and another was wounded after their unit came under attack in the southern portion of the Iraqi capital April 10." This brings the total number of US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war to 3294 with 47 for the month of April alone, reports ICCC.
We're starting with the above for a reason, Crazy John McCain. Last week, Crazy John McCain took The John McCain Showboat Express to Baghdad and became a topic of ridicule for his boldface lies that things were getting better in Iraq and that he could walk freely through a Baghdad street. Robert Knigh ( Flashpoints, Monday, April 2nd) described the 'free walk' this way: "McCain, in defiance of various independent reports that Iraq's daily death toll actually increased last month, nevertheless declared that the so-called 'surge' was 'making progress' and that Americans were 'not getting the full picture of what is happening in Iraq'; however a zoom out from McCain's photo op shows that he was actually surounded by orbiting F16 fighter planes, three Black Hawk attack helicopters, 2 Apache gun ships, more than 100 US troops, snipers and armed vehicles, a flak jacket and personal body armour. The presidential contender and Congressional comedian concluded his celebration of April Fool's Day by declaring with a straight face that 'There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods today. These and other indicators and reasons for cautious optimism about the effects of the new strategy'."
Crazy John McCain lost some of his luster over that and went on CBS' 60 Minutes Sunday where Scott Pelly asked him about the claims he'd made re: Iraq and Senator Crazy responded, "Of course I'm going to misspeak and I've done it on numerous occasions and I probably will do in the future. I regret that when I divert attention to something that I've said from my message but you know that's just life, and I'm happy frankly with the way I operate, otherwise it would be a lot less fun." Never deny a crazy their fun. Speaking at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, Crazy John McCain was at it again, kissing ass and telling lies and he asserted that he was speaking "to an audience that can discern truth from falsehood in a politician's appraisal of the war," then went on to dub the illegal war as "necessary and winnable" and attempted to drum up sympathy by stating his Crazy Walk through Baghdad left him at the mercy of "a hostile press corps". Crazy spoke of "memorable progress and measurable progress" and some probably fell for the crap. Those who did probably have forgotten the outline General John P. Abizaid presented on March 14, 2006 (link goes to Centcom, click here). He's also bragging about Baghdad where, as AFP notes, "the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a new report that the operation had not yet stabilised Baghdad." His bragging comes as Bruce Rolfsen (Air Force Times) notes "more than 850 wounded and injured service men" and service women "out of war zones during March, according to the Air Force. In February, the Air Force flew out 767 patients.
Senator Crazy went on to declare that the armed battle included a "struggle for the soul of Islam" sounding as insane as the Bully Boy when he originally used the term "crusade." Senator Crazy was, no doubt, amusing himself again with thoughts of bombs being dropped, rockets launched, bullets shot all for a "struggle for the soul of Islam." Senator Crazy remains the undeclared GOP candidate for the 2008 presidential nomination and with all the crazy remarks he makes, it's easy for the electorate to miss some of them. When Scott Pelly (60 Minutes) pointed out that the majority of US citizens want and wondered to Crazy when Crazy would "start doing what the majority of the American people want?"
Well again, I disagree with what the majority of the American people want.
A memorable, if not winning, campaign slogan if ever there was one. Crazy John McCain is running for president on the premise that, his words, "I disagree with what the majority of the American people want." Vote Insane! Vote McCain!
Staying with the crazies, the Giddiest Gabor in the Green Zone, little Willie Caldwell, grabbed his feather boa and marched before reporters to declare, "They're arming the insurgents, dahling." With the five Iranian diplomats still not released (and US military command announcing today that they weren't going to be), Little Willie strutted and made broad statements. Or, as the BBC put it, "accused." AFP also uses the (accurate) terminology, noting that Little Willie "accused the Iranians of training Iraqi groups on how to assemble explosively-formed projecticles -- a type of armour-piercing roadside bomb that has caused many coalition casualties." Lauren Frayer, AP's frequent embed, paid to write for a living, somehow fails to utilize "accused" once; however, she did take down good stenography for Little Willie and deploy the term "said" eight times in a 300 plus word 'report' (324 -- check my math).
In other Press Shames, Joe Strupp (Editor & Publisher) reports what's what at The Savannah Morning News these days. On their front page, they are now running a column by Major General Rick Lynch -- at least it may be by him. The paper's editor, Susan Catron, asked of the names at the end of Lynch's opinion column offers happily, "I can't tell if they wrote it or not." Catron also reveals that the paper is not paying the general for his column. Hmmm.
The editor can't state for the record whether or not the column was written by the general and this weekly column (carried on the front page) requires no payment to the writer? For many, that would be enough to raise red flags but Catron's still recovering from the mighty Sunday comics war that so drained the paper's resources
Strupp reveals that the newspaper staff believes (and they are right) that if the column belongs anywhere, it is "on the opinion page . . . Is this appropriate for a 50,000-reader newspaper that purports to be free from government influence? Staff members feel it has undermined the newspaper's credibility and independence."
Turning to news of attempts to increase leisure time, AP reports that the US "White House is considering naming a high-powered official to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and report directly to President Bush".
There seems to be some confusion here so let's turn to the US Constitution, Article II, section 2 which reads:
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
If anyone's confused (and apparently the White House is) the role being discussed is a Constitutionally mandated role for the occupant of the Oval Office. It's really not something that can be "delegated." Possibly Bully Boy's all tuckered out from his vacation in Crawford? Mimi Kennedy (writing at Truthout) notes that Camp Casey was in full swing in Crawford last weekend with the Bully Boy in town. Kennedy reports that Friday was spent at the checkpoint singing "We Shall Overcome" and chanting "We are here with Cindy/We're here to ask/What noble Cause/We are here with Cindy now" dying Easter eggs and singing; with Saturday revolving around Pink Police actions. On the topic of CODEPINK, they have redesigned their website adding many new features and one of the new campaigns revolves around the video "Toy Soldiers" -- watching it and passing it on.
Cindy Sheehan will be speaking in Indiana Thursday. The South Bend Tribune reports she will deliver "Speaking Peace to Power" at 10:30 Thursday morning on the campus of Saint Mary's College (auditorium in Madeleva Hall). The event is free and open to the public. On last weekend, Cindy (writing at BuzzFlash) notes, "At our five acres of Camp Casey, we also announced phase two of our development from a protest camp to a peace facility. The Camp Casey Peace Institute is partnering with Farm Hands to create a therapeutic farm for Vets and their families and active duty soldiers. We are having our first build on Memorial Day Weekend to put up our lodge building."
Staying with peace news, we'll turn to US war resisters. Meghan Eves (Canada's Eye Weekly) takes a close look at three war resisters who are among the 300 attempting to find refuge in Canada. Eves notes that Jeremy Hinzman was the first to apply for refugee status and that Hinzman's currently appealing the rejection by the Immigration and Refugee Board "to the Federal Court of Appeals but no date has been set"; that Joshua Key, his wife Brandi and their four children await the response of the Federal Court of Canada on his appeal (all war resisters have been refused refugee status by the Immigration and Refugee Board) and notes his book The Deserter's Tale, and Dean Walcott who self-checked out and went to Canada at the end of last year (December 2006) -- someone could pass it on to Paul von Zielbauer that Walcott and Key both suffer from PTSD.
Key, Hinzman and Walcott are part of a movment of resistance within the military that also includes Ehren Watada, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia, Patrick Hart, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum. Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
Turning to Iraq, yesterday on Flashpoints, Emily Howard spoke with Darh Jamail about the Doha conference and Iraq. On Iraq, Jamail noted the growing Iraqi refugee problem and how nothing was being done about it. They discussed his recent article at IPS on the topic of refugees and Jamail spoke of how when attacks were on going, the lucky ones were able to buy themselves or a relative out but, having exhausted their money with that, they were left to wander around or live in refugee tents. Those who could afford to get out, such as doctors, have already left. Dahr spoke of how the problem now was that a country was now in a situation where the people trained and needed for basic needs (electricity, water, etc.) are now leaving. Writing today at IPS, Jamail interviews Iraqi refugees now in Damascus including 68-year-old Abdul Abdulla who recalls of his family's time in Baghdad prior to leaving, "We stay in our homes, but even then some people have been pulled out of their own houses. These death squads arrived after (former U.S. ambassador John) Negorponte arrived. And the Iraqi Government is definitely involved because they depend on them (militias)."
Reuters reports that the International Red Cross has declared that "The suffering that Iraqi men, women and children are enduring today is unbearable and unacceptable" (ICRC director of operations Pierre Kraehenbuehl). BBC reports, "Four years after the US-led invasion, the ICRC says the conflict is inflicting immense suffering, and calls for greater protection of civilians." The ICRC issued their report in Geneva today.
The (PDF format) report is entitled "Civilians Without Protection: The ever-worsening humanitarina crisis in Iraq" and notes:
Civilians bear the brunt of the relentless violence and the extremely poor security conditions that are disrupting the lives and livelihoods of millions. Every day, dozens of people are killed and many more wounded. The plight of Iraqi civilians is a daily reminder of the fact that there has long been a failure to respect their lives and dignity. Shottings, bombings, abudctions, murders, military operations and other forms of violence are forcing thousands of people to flee their homes and seek safety elsewhere in Iraq or in neighboring countries. The hundreds of thousands of displaced people scattered across Iraq find it particularly difficult to cope with the ongoing crisis, as do the families who generously agree to host them.
The report addresses a number of issues including the medical care situation with the 'brain drain' and the violence causing many medical professionals to leave the country at a time when Iraqi hospitals are overcrowed. The report also notes this with regards to the water situation in Iraq:
Both the quantity and quality of drinking water in Iraq remain insufficient despite limited improvements in some areas, mainly in the south. Water is often contaminated owing to the poor repair of sewage and water-supply networks and the discharge of untreated sewage into rivers, which are the main source of drinking waters. Electricity and fuel shortages and the poor maintenance of infrastructure mean that there is no regular and reliable supply of clean water and that sewage is often not properly demanded.
On the subject of prisoners, "Tens of thousands of people are currently being detained by the Iraq authorities and the multinational forces in Iraq" -- often without any news of the prisoners being passed on to their families.
In addition to the above, Robert Fisk (Independent of London) reports on the latest efforts to turn Baghdad into a series of "gated communities" -- part of the 220 page plan FM 3024 -- which is based on the fact that the easy areas can be 'secured' and then the 'security' can be spread out wider. More logically, as Fisk notes, is the greater of spreading out and depending on Iraqi soldiers, the less loyalty to the US forces and the greater the ties to Iraqis. (Meaning the Shi'ite or Sunni trained officers is more apt to blow off US orders than turn against an Iraqi who may be a threat to the US but is not seen as an Iraqi threat.)
Bombings?
CBS and AP report a Hilla bombing that killed a police officer and left three more wounded, a Mosul bombing that killed a police officers, wounded two more police officers and left six other people injured. Reuters notes mortar attacks in Baghdad that killed one and left 4 others wounded.
Shootings?
Reuters reports two police officers shot dead outside their homes in Kut, Abdul Abbas Hashim ("general director in the Electricity Ministry" shot dead in Baghdad.
Corpses?
Reuters reports 11 corpses discovered in Baghdad and 9 in Mosul.
kats korner
holly near
law and disorder
the common ills
mikey likes it
iraq
robert knightflashpoints
joshua key
dahr jamail
cindy sheehan
dean walcottcodepink
Okay, now Dave Zirin has a new book on Muhammad Ali that we've noted here before and he was on Democracy Now! Monday and this is from "Sports Columnist Dave Zirin on Muhammad Ali's Career and His Groundbreaking Political Involvement:"
AMY GOODMAN: Let's talk about Muhammad Ali and what he would say out loud. DAVID ZIRIN: What Ali would say out loud would be -- well, he certainly would say, I think, "I have a quarrel with Don Imus." I mean, and he would say -- you know, even say, "I ain't got no quarrel with the sisters at Rutgers University." I mean, that's the thing about Muhammad Ali in the 1960s that's so incredible. I mean, he finished in the bottom 1% of his high school class. He barely graduated from high school. Yet, on all the important social issues of the day, on the edge of the black freedom struggle, on the Vietnam War, while all the best and the brightest were talking about "all deliberate speed" for integration and talking about war in Vietnam, Muhammad Ali knew what side he was on, time and again. He knew there was right, and he knew there was wrong. And because he had that direct connection both to a black political tradition that was antiwar, through people like Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, Marcus Garvey, and also because his own family came from the black working class in the South, he knew which side he was on, on a series of these questions, when the leading edge of politics, of the so-called "experts," were so patently wrong.
Wasn't it funny how professional athletes stayed out of this? If you're a big b-ball star, would it kill you to say something in favor of the Rutgers' team? This goes back to a point Dave has made before (and he makes the point in the interview too) which is that you've got a whole generation of sports stars who don't think they have to contribute anything. They think they just have to play and do commercials. That's not everyone. Like Steve Nash spoke out against the illegal war. But you've got a lot of people who won't say a damn word.
They just aren't interested in anything that's going to hurt their chances to make money or that might lead to them being made fun on sport's radio. I really think "sports hero" is a term that should be retired, like Jackie Robinson's number (42) because there really aren't enough to use the term.
Maybe I'm just feeling negative but that's how I feel. Lot of people playing ching-ching, not a lot of people standing up. And that's not just sports, you can see that in music and other stuff too.
And there is a small group in any field you can count on but it's a small group.
Dave Zirin's written before about how a basketball wonder was endorsing homophobia. I think you're looking at a kid who doesn't know a thing about the world (Zirin made a similar comment). But he points out, in the interview, that Ali came up knowing what was going on and not afraid to speak out.
Me, I think it's the difference between being real and fake. Look at the Dixie Chicks. They won all those Grammys and a lot of us were real happy because they had spoken out. They didn't just make some music and check out of the real world. And it made their music better.
I was asked what I'm listening to besides Bright Eyes and that would be a CD Kat just reviewed in "Kat's Korner: Holly Near Shows Up" -- Holly Near's new CD Show Up. That really is an amazing CD. I can listen to it over and over. I especially like putting it on at night right before I crawl into bed. I should say it's not a 'light' CD, it's not this soothing, put you to sleep music. It really kicks ass. If you haven't checked it out already, you should.
Now this is from Matthew Rothschild's "Feingold Leads the Way on Iraq Again, But Does Not Go Far Enough:"
This morning, April 10, Senator Russ Feingold introduced an important piece of legislation on the Iraq War. But unfortunately it does not go far enough.
According to a press release from his office, the bill would "effectively end U.S. military involvement in Iraq."
But that's not exactly what the bill says, and it’s not, in fact, what the bill would accomplish.
Instead, the bill provides enough loopholes for Bush, and his successor, to keep U.S. troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future.
"The President shall commence the safe, phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq that are not essential to the purposes set forth in subsection (d)," the bill says, and it would cut off all funds for the continued deployment of U.S. forces to Iraq after March 31, 2008, except as stipulated in subsection (d).
So let's look at subsection (d).
It reads: "Exception for Limited Purposes--The prohibition . . . shall not apply to the obligation or expenditure of funds for the limited purposes as follows:
"(1) To conduct targeted operations, limited in duration and scope, against members of Al Qaeda and other international terrorist organizations.
"(2) To provide security for United States infrastructure and personnel.
"(3) To train and equip Iraqi security services."
But Bush today could say, with only his average amount of distortion, that this is what U.S. troops are doing now in Iraq.
Yeah, they do nothing and then they want us to fight for them. Want us to send e-mails to the networks and cable channels screaming how unfair they were, want us to give over our money for their elections, want us to vote for them. My attitude right now is that if you're not trying to end the war don't count on me for any support, you're on your own.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Wednesday, April 11, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, Crazy John McCain intends to continue running for the GOP presidential nomination until the men in white coats cart him away, The Savannah Morning News merges with the US military, the International Red Cross issues a report that doesn't contain the preferred amount of happy talk, and the refugee crisis grows.
Today the US military announced: "An MND-B Soldier died and two others were wounded when an improvised explosive device detonated near their patrol in an eastern section of the Iraqi captial April 11." And they announced: "One MDN-B Soldier died and another was wounded after their unit came under attack in the southern portion of the Iraqi capital April 10." This brings the total number of US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war to 3294 with 47 for the month of April alone, reports ICCC.
We're starting with the above for a reason, Crazy John McCain. Last week, Crazy John McCain took The John McCain Showboat Express to Baghdad and became a topic of ridicule for his boldface lies that things were getting better in Iraq and that he could walk freely through a Baghdad street. Robert Knigh ( Flashpoints, Monday, April 2nd) described the 'free walk' this way: "McCain, in defiance of various independent reports that Iraq's daily death toll actually increased last month, nevertheless declared that the so-called 'surge' was 'making progress' and that Americans were 'not getting the full picture of what is happening in Iraq'; however a zoom out from McCain's photo op shows that he was actually surounded by orbiting F16 fighter planes, three Black Hawk attack helicopters, 2 Apache gun ships, more than 100 US troops, snipers and armed vehicles, a flak jacket and personal body armour. The presidential contender and Congressional comedian concluded his celebration of April Fool's Day by declaring with a straight face that 'There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods today. These and other indicators and reasons for cautious optimism about the effects of the new strategy'."
Crazy John McCain lost some of his luster over that and went on CBS' 60 Minutes Sunday where Scott Pelly asked him about the claims he'd made re: Iraq and Senator Crazy responded, "Of course I'm going to misspeak and I've done it on numerous occasions and I probably will do in the future. I regret that when I divert attention to something that I've said from my message but you know that's just life, and I'm happy frankly with the way I operate, otherwise it would be a lot less fun." Never deny a crazy their fun. Speaking at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, Crazy John McCain was at it again, kissing ass and telling lies and he asserted that he was speaking "to an audience that can discern truth from falsehood in a politician's appraisal of the war," then went on to dub the illegal war as "necessary and winnable" and attempted to drum up sympathy by stating his Crazy Walk through Baghdad left him at the mercy of "a hostile press corps". Crazy spoke of "memorable progress and measurable progress" and some probably fell for the crap. Those who did probably have forgotten the outline General John P. Abizaid presented on March 14, 2006 (link goes to Centcom, click here). He's also bragging about Baghdad where, as AFP notes, "the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a new report that the operation had not yet stabilised Baghdad." His bragging comes as Bruce Rolfsen (Air Force Times) notes "more than 850 wounded and injured service men" and service women "out of war zones during March, according to the Air Force. In February, the Air Force flew out 767 patients.
Senator Crazy went on to declare that the armed battle included a "struggle for the soul of Islam" sounding as insane as the Bully Boy when he originally used the term "crusade." Senator Crazy was, no doubt, amusing himself again with thoughts of bombs being dropped, rockets launched, bullets shot all for a "struggle for the soul of Islam." Senator Crazy remains the undeclared GOP candidate for the 2008 presidential nomination and with all the crazy remarks he makes, it's easy for the electorate to miss some of them. When Scott Pelly (60 Minutes) pointed out that the majority of US citizens want and wondered to Crazy when Crazy would "start doing what the majority of the American people want?"
Well again, I disagree with what the majority of the American people want.
A memorable, if not winning, campaign slogan if ever there was one. Crazy John McCain is running for president on the premise that, his words, "I disagree with what the majority of the American people want." Vote Insane! Vote McCain!
Staying with the crazies, the Giddiest Gabor in the Green Zone, little Willie Caldwell, grabbed his feather boa and marched before reporters to declare, "They're arming the insurgents, dahling." With the five Iranian diplomats still not released (and US military command announcing today that they weren't going to be), Little Willie strutted and made broad statements. Or, as the BBC put it, "accused." AFP also uses the (accurate) terminology, noting that Little Willie "accused the Iranians of training Iraqi groups on how to assemble explosively-formed projecticles -- a type of armour-piercing roadside bomb that has caused many coalition casualties." Lauren Frayer, AP's frequent embed, paid to write for a living, somehow fails to utilize "accused" once; however, she did take down good stenography for Little Willie and deploy the term "said" eight times in a 300 plus word 'report' (324 -- check my math).
In other Press Shames, Joe Strupp (Editor & Publisher) reports what's what at The Savannah Morning News these days. On their front page, they are now running a column by Major General Rick Lynch -- at least it may be by him. The paper's editor, Susan Catron, asked of the names at the end of Lynch's opinion column offers happily, "I can't tell if they wrote it or not." Catron also reveals that the paper is not paying the general for his column. Hmmm.
The editor can't state for the record whether or not the column was written by the general and this weekly column (carried on the front page) requires no payment to the writer? For many, that would be enough to raise red flags but Catron's still recovering from the mighty Sunday comics war that so drained the paper's resources
Strupp reveals that the newspaper staff believes (and they are right) that if the column belongs anywhere, it is "on the opinion page . . . Is this appropriate for a 50,000-reader newspaper that purports to be free from government influence? Staff members feel it has undermined the newspaper's credibility and independence."
Turning to news of attempts to increase leisure time, AP reports that the US "White House is considering naming a high-powered official to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and report directly to President Bush".
There seems to be some confusion here so let's turn to the US Constitution, Article II, section 2 which reads:
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
If anyone's confused (and apparently the White House is) the role being discussed is a Constitutionally mandated role for the occupant of the Oval Office. It's really not something that can be "delegated." Possibly Bully Boy's all tuckered out from his vacation in Crawford? Mimi Kennedy (writing at Truthout) notes that Camp Casey was in full swing in Crawford last weekend with the Bully Boy in town. Kennedy reports that Friday was spent at the checkpoint singing "We Shall Overcome" and chanting "We are here with Cindy/We're here to ask/What noble Cause/We are here with Cindy now" dying Easter eggs and singing; with Saturday revolving around Pink Police actions. On the topic of CODEPINK, they have redesigned their website adding many new features and one of the new campaigns revolves around the video "Toy Soldiers" -- watching it and passing it on.
Cindy Sheehan will be speaking in Indiana Thursday. The South Bend Tribune reports she will deliver "Speaking Peace to Power" at 10:30 Thursday morning on the campus of Saint Mary's College (auditorium in Madeleva Hall). The event is free and open to the public. On last weekend, Cindy (writing at BuzzFlash) notes, "At our five acres of Camp Casey, we also announced phase two of our development from a protest camp to a peace facility. The Camp Casey Peace Institute is partnering with Farm Hands to create a therapeutic farm for Vets and their families and active duty soldiers. We are having our first build on Memorial Day Weekend to put up our lodge building."
Staying with peace news, we'll turn to US war resisters. Meghan Eves (Canada's Eye Weekly) takes a close look at three war resisters who are among the 300 attempting to find refuge in Canada. Eves notes that Jeremy Hinzman was the first to apply for refugee status and that Hinzman's currently appealing the rejection by the Immigration and Refugee Board "to the Federal Court of Appeals but no date has been set"; that Joshua Key, his wife Brandi and their four children await the response of the Federal Court of Canada on his appeal (all war resisters have been refused refugee status by the Immigration and Refugee Board) and notes his book The Deserter's Tale, and Dean Walcott who self-checked out and went to Canada at the end of last year (December 2006) -- someone could pass it on to Paul von Zielbauer that Walcott and Key both suffer from PTSD.
Key, Hinzman and Walcott are part of a movment of resistance within the military that also includes Ehren Watada, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia, Patrick Hart, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum. Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
Turning to Iraq, yesterday on Flashpoints, Emily Howard spoke with Darh Jamail about the Doha conference and Iraq. On Iraq, Jamail noted the growing Iraqi refugee problem and how nothing was being done about it. They discussed his recent article at IPS on the topic of refugees and Jamail spoke of how when attacks were on going, the lucky ones were able to buy themselves or a relative out but, having exhausted their money with that, they were left to wander around or live in refugee tents. Those who could afford to get out, such as doctors, have already left. Dahr spoke of how the problem now was that a country was now in a situation where the people trained and needed for basic needs (electricity, water, etc.) are now leaving. Writing today at IPS, Jamail interviews Iraqi refugees now in Damascus including 68-year-old Abdul Abdulla who recalls of his family's time in Baghdad prior to leaving, "We stay in our homes, but even then some people have been pulled out of their own houses. These death squads arrived after (former U.S. ambassador John) Negorponte arrived. And the Iraqi Government is definitely involved because they depend on them (militias)."
Reuters reports that the International Red Cross has declared that "The suffering that Iraqi men, women and children are enduring today is unbearable and unacceptable" (ICRC director of operations Pierre Kraehenbuehl). BBC reports, "Four years after the US-led invasion, the ICRC says the conflict is inflicting immense suffering, and calls for greater protection of civilians." The ICRC issued their report in Geneva today.
The (PDF format) report is entitled "Civilians Without Protection: The ever-worsening humanitarina crisis in Iraq" and notes:
Civilians bear the brunt of the relentless violence and the extremely poor security conditions that are disrupting the lives and livelihoods of millions. Every day, dozens of people are killed and many more wounded. The plight of Iraqi civilians is a daily reminder of the fact that there has long been a failure to respect their lives and dignity. Shottings, bombings, abudctions, murders, military operations and other forms of violence are forcing thousands of people to flee their homes and seek safety elsewhere in Iraq or in neighboring countries. The hundreds of thousands of displaced people scattered across Iraq find it particularly difficult to cope with the ongoing crisis, as do the families who generously agree to host them.
The report addresses a number of issues including the medical care situation with the 'brain drain' and the violence causing many medical professionals to leave the country at a time when Iraqi hospitals are overcrowed. The report also notes this with regards to the water situation in Iraq:
Both the quantity and quality of drinking water in Iraq remain insufficient despite limited improvements in some areas, mainly in the south. Water is often contaminated owing to the poor repair of sewage and water-supply networks and the discharge of untreated sewage into rivers, which are the main source of drinking waters. Electricity and fuel shortages and the poor maintenance of infrastructure mean that there is no regular and reliable supply of clean water and that sewage is often not properly demanded.
On the subject of prisoners, "Tens of thousands of people are currently being detained by the Iraq authorities and the multinational forces in Iraq" -- often without any news of the prisoners being passed on to their families.
In addition to the above, Robert Fisk (Independent of London) reports on the latest efforts to turn Baghdad into a series of "gated communities" -- part of the 220 page plan FM 3024 -- which is based on the fact that the easy areas can be 'secured' and then the 'security' can be spread out wider. More logically, as Fisk notes, is the greater of spreading out and depending on Iraqi soldiers, the less loyalty to the US forces and the greater the ties to Iraqis. (Meaning the Shi'ite or Sunni trained officers is more apt to blow off US orders than turn against an Iraqi who may be a threat to the US but is not seen as an Iraqi threat.)
Bombings?
CBS and AP report a Hilla bombing that killed a police officer and left three more wounded, a Mosul bombing that killed a police officers, wounded two more police officers and left six other people injured. Reuters notes mortar attacks in Baghdad that killed one and left 4 others wounded.
Shootings?
Reuters reports two police officers shot dead outside their homes in Kut, Abdul Abbas Hashim ("general director in the Electricity Ministry" shot dead in Baghdad.
Corpses?
Reuters reports 11 corpses discovered in Baghdad and 9 in Mosul.
kats korner
holly near
law and disorder
the common ills
mikey likes it
iraq
robert knightflashpoints
joshua key
dahr jamail
cindy sheehan
dean walcottcodepink
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Where is Law and Disorder?
Tuesday and I was having a pretty semi-good day. Elaine and I had fun today and I thought I'd talk about that a little and a new CD and some other stuff and then I made the mistake of checking the e-mails.
So let me gripe. Lesley wrote to say, "I was going to listen to Law and Disorder, but where is it?" The site's down. I have no idea why. I called Tony who's smarter about websites than me and his guess is it is one of two things: (1) the show decided to do away with their website or (2) they forgot to pay their bill. That was "forgot," not didn't pay. That can happen and maybe that's what it is. I'm sorry Lesley was going to listen for the first time and couldn't. I'm glad she wrote. She's been reading awhile and I've never heard from her before. (She was talking about all the stuff and I only remembered writing about 1/2 of it.) So I'm sorry Lesley couldn't hear it. I was going to recommend a way for her to hear it but I can't. Why not?
Here's my beef, my gripe. WBAI has a website. It archives sort of. (It takes them down after 90 days which is just nonsense.) But it can't even get the programs right. If C.I. recommends the archives, you've seen C.I. type something like "It's under Building Bridges" or something like that because they never put the special broadcasts under that title. I thought it was automatic and that's why. But it's not automatic. I was going to say, "Go listen to the WBAI archives, Lesley and you can hear it." You may be able to. If you hunt around. They've got "Joys of Resistance" listed as the Monday program when it should be Law and Disorder. Okay, title's wrong. Fine. Tony goes to listen and, guess what, it's not Law and Disorder. It's Democracy Now!
Why does WBAI do archives if they're that useless? Seriously. If you can't have the right program under the right title, and if you can't even have it under the right hour, why do you do archives? It is supposed to be some damn puzzle? A brain teaser? It may be under "Out FM" and it may not be. I don't have time to play around, Tony doesn't have time to play around.
So I don't know what's going on Lesley. As far as I know, I'll be talking about the show on Thursday (the CD should arrive in the mail tomorrow). That's really all I can tell you tonight.
What else has me mad? Cowardly, chicken shit Democrats who wanted to hold office but don't want to do any work. Read Wally's "THIS JUST IN! DEMS DESTROY THEMSELVES!" and Cedric's "Their own worst enemy" which is funny (like it's meant to be) but it's funny because they're making fun of the Democrats (who deserve it). What the Democrats are doing isn't funny.
So what's good? Elaine and I both played hooky for a little more than half the day. We ended up getting Bright Eyes' Cassadaga CD. I really love it and we were listening to it in the park (we met half-way so no one had a longer drive between our cities). Elaine really has to plan ahead to play hooky and she had to keep office hours for two sessions this morning because she wasn't able to reschedule them even with us planning this four weeks ago. So I went to work and cut out early and then hit the road after getting her the Bright Eyes CD. She got it for me too so that was pretty funny. I asked C.I. what would be good for a picnic and was told a salad and fruit was all Elaine was probably going to eat. C.I. goes, "Get something with meat for yourself if you want, but she's just going to want a salad." So I go, tell me what she likes and I'll make a huge salad.
So I used butter leaf and what's the other. I'm forgetting but those two and a little iceberg. Carrots, radishes, dried cranberries, walnuts, red onions and tomatoes. C.I. goes, "She'll kill me for passing this on but 'junk food' for her is Kraft's Green Goddess salad dressing. That is her candy. She doesn't usually put it on her salad but when she does, she goes wild with it." C.I. wasn't kidding! :D She really loves it. I'd never had it before and it's pretty good but it really is like candy to Elaine. :D So we met up at the park that was the closest park at the halfway drive for both of us and listened to the new Bright Eyes on the jam box during the picnic and it was a pretty nice day.
Could you imagine what it would be like if we didn't have public parks? You know some on the right would like to get rid of them. I always loved parks growing up and still do. When I was little, my favorite thing wasn't the slide or the swings, it was the merry go round. I'd get on that even if it was just me and I had to push and push all by myself to get it going.
We had the park all to ourselves for most of the time. There were a few people probably at the lunch hour but that was really it for the longest and I was thinking, "Don't people go to parks anymore?" Then, probably around 2:30, this woman brought her little kids to the park and then, when school got out, there were all these kids there.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Tuesday, April 10, 2007. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq, Sara Rich continues to tell her daughter's story, the same Congress that won't end the war doesn't listen to the story of Suzanne Swift, and the lies that led to an illegal war are explored.
Starting with the final section of Robert Knight's "Knight Report" on yesterday's Flashpoints:
Meanwhile, there's little indication from London or Washington that the occupation will end any time soon. In London a confidential planning document drawn up by the Defence Ministry, called the "Operational Tour Plot," was obtained by the London Telegeraph which today disclosed that British troops will be serving in Iraq and throughout the Arab gulf at least until 2012. And finally in Washington, Congressional Democrats made it perfectly clear they have no serious intention of bringing the war in Iraq to an end before they can capitalize on it in time for the 2008 presidential elections. After a week's recess and backtracking on the non-binding and loophole laden timeline legislation which permits the Bush administration to continue the war in until the next presidential term Democratic leaders retreated even further than they did during the legislative debate. Among the retreaters Senator Carl Levin, the chair of the Armed Services Committee told ABC's This Week that, "We're not going to vote to cut funding." He said that after a veto "There's a number of options. Either we can keep the benchmarks part of the bill without saying that the troops must begin to come back and if that doesn't work what we will leave will be benchmarks for instance which would require the president to certify to the American people that the Iraqis are meeting the benchmarks for political settlement which they have set themselves." And that's some of the news of this Monday April 9, 2007 from exile in New York, I'm Robert Knight for Flashpoints.
Flashpoints is archived at its own website and at KPFA (which right now is having archive problems and has archived nothing since early Monday morning) and airs live from 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm, Monday through Friday online and over the airwaves of KPFA, KFCF, KPFB and other stations. (A full transcription of Robert Knight's "Knight Report" appears in Hilda's Mix today.) Knight was speaking, first, of the news from the UK. Sean Rayment (Telegraph of London) notes approximately half "of the country's armed services have now served in Iraq since the war began in March 2003" and that the revelations that UK forces will be in Iraq through 2012 and that report is "in marked contrast to a statement made by Tony Blair in Feburary giving the impression that British troops would remain in Ira for less than two years." On the earlier issue of the Democrats caving, as Joshua Frank (CounterPunch) notes, "The Democrats may not have enough votes to overturn a Bush veto, but they certainly have enough to filibuster the war-funding bill, which at this point is the only way to stop this god-awful disaster. One brave Democrat could take a stand, filibuster, and 40 more senators could then abstain from breaking the filibuster. That is all it would take. Bush would then have to be the one to compromise and produce a plan that was acceptable to the 41 Senate Democrats who want to end the war. But of course, we are more likely to see Dick Cheney drinking margaritas with Cindy Sheehan on the White House lawn before we'd witness this scenario play out." Tabassum Zakaria and Richard Cowan (Reuters) report that Bully Boy has "invited congressional leaders of both parties to the White House next week" to discuss the non-binding, toothless Congressional measure. That is the same measure he has stated he intends to veto and that Senator Carl Levin says, if he vetos, Democrats will immediately rush to fall in line (no power of the purse for Levin).
From the madness of the governments
To the vengeance of the sea
Everything is eclipsed
By the shape of destiny
So love me now
Hell is coming
Could you do it now?
Hell is here
Little soldier, little insect
You know war, it has no heart
It will kill you in the sunshine
Or just as happily in the dark
-- "No One Would Riot For Less" written by Conor Oberst, off Bright Eyes' Cassadaga
Turning to the topic of war resistance, Paul Rockwell (CounterPunch) offers an open letter to Major General Charles Jacoby Jr. where he reviews the court-martial of Ehren Watada. In June 2006, Watada became the first officer to refuse to deploy to Iraq. In February of this year, he became the first officer to be court-martialed for refusing to deploy. Rockwell notes that the court-martial ended in a mistrial over the objection of the defense, argues that "now is a good time to drop all the charges against the Lieutenant, to bring closure to a trial that, in my opinion, should never have taken place" and concludes that "history will vindicate the courage of Lt. Ehren Watada." Pretrial motions are currently scheduled for May 20th through 21st and the court-martial for July 16th. Watada is represented by the Seattle based Carney Bradley Spellman and his attorneys are Kenneth Kagan and James Lobsenz.
Ehren Watada is part of a movement of resistance within the military that also includes Joshua Key, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia, Dean Walcott, Patrick Hart, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum. Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
At a rally to show support for Ehren Watada, Sara Rich (AfterDowningStreet.org) writes, she and her daughter Suzanne Swift turned out to show their support and Swift asked, "Mom, where are the kids my age? Where is my generation?" Rich goes on to tell her daughter's story, sexually abused and harassed for the apparent 'crime' of thinking a woman could serve in the military, Swift was betrayed by the very system she attempted to defend. As Rich explains, her daughter did not self-check out because of an objection to the war but to save herself when the military refused to do so. Rich: "Confronting imminent redeployment she went AWOL. Later the Army would contend that she went AWOL because of her mother's political beliefs. I only wished it was that. If it was because of my political beliefs she never would have gone to Iraq the first place. Then they tried to say it was because of her own anti war beliefs. That would have been a dream come true. But the truth was that my daughter went AWOL out of pure fear; fear of what her command had done to her in the first deployment and rejection of being treated like a 'deployment whore' again. This was not a decision it was a reaction."
Though Suzanne Swift's reaction was perfectly normal, even before you get to the fact that she suffers from PTSD, not only was she abandoned by the military command that damn well should have prevented what she went through, the US Congress -- all those brave talking Senators, male and female -- sat on their collective asses which apparently kept their lips from moving. The military conducted a whitewash investigation (that still found validity and confirmation in some of Swift's charges), her offer was sign a paper saying she lied or face a court-martial. Swift was court-martialed, stripped of her rank, sentenced to 30 days and then placed back in the same system that not only did not refuse to ensure her safety, but failed to after she sought help. To repeat, Congress sat on its collective ass. That's Hillary Clinton, that's Carl Levin, that's Barbara Boxer, that's Russ Feingold, that's Susan Collins, that's Mr. uber-goodness Joe Lieberman.
Rich concludes, "It is amazing to me how much we have to be thankful to the Army for. They tried to break my daughter down and shut her up, and in the process created a strong advocate for women around the world. Imagine if they had done the right thing and protected from MLester in the first place or given her an immediate medical discharge when our attorney contacted Ft. Lewis right after she went AWOL and was diagnosed with PTSD. How simple and right it could have been. But the US military did not understand what they were doing or Suzanne's fortitude." A number of Congressional members who are also attempting to campaign for president have issued the "If only we knew then what we know now . . ." junk to excuse their support for an illegal war. What's their excuse for doing nothing about Suzanne Swift? She should have received an honorable discharge. Congress should have immediately initiated hearings into what women serving in Iraq are actually having to endure. It's not too late for that nor is it too late to push for Swift to get the honorable discharge she more than deserves.
Rich offers that the people her daughter's age are waking up to the realities and will be showing up at protests in greater numbers. In Iraq yesterday, hundreds of thousands participated in a Najaf rally against the occupation of the nation by foreign forces. Hiba Dawood (Free Speech Radio News) reported by speaking with Iraqis (an apparently novel and new thing to do when you consider how few others bothered to do so) taking part in the protest. One man noted 4 years have passed since the occupation of Iraq and what happened? Hundreds of thousands were killed, hundreds of thousands were wounded and arrested. They humiliate the Iraqi homes every day. The Constitution says that the Iraqi homes are protected but they invade homes anytime they want. We have to always remember Abu Ghraib and the abuses that has happened there including the sexual abuse against Iraqi women and the killing of those Iraqi women with their families." Ahmed Ali states: "The demands in this demonstration are different than the ones we had in 2005, for example. Then people demanded the condemnation of Saddm Hussein and called for the total and immediate departure of the occupation forces. Today, we demand that there should be at least a timetable set up for troops to leave. Our other demand is that want people in the occupying countries in the removal of their military forces from Iraq."
Following yesterday's cry for foreign forces to leave, the war drug on with all the violence that entails.
Bombings?
AFP reports: "A woman veiled in black and strapped with explosives blew herself up outside a police station in Iraq on Tuesday, killing 16 people, many of them volunteering to joing the polic eforce" in Muqdadiyah. CNN reports a Baghdad bombing targeting Baghdad Univeristy that killed at least six college students and left 11 more injured. CBS and AP report that "a rocket slammed into a schoolyard basketball court, killing a 6-year-old boy. AP Television News videotape showed children's backpacks and books still open on classroom desks, covered with shattered glass and debris. Blood was pooled on the dusty tile floor." -- the count given is 17 wounded. Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports two other mortar attacks in Baghdad that resulted in one death and four wounded.
Shootings?
Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) notes an Iraqi soldier was shot in Kirkuk and, in Baghdad, an ongoing clash between Iraqis and US & Iraqi forces has left one Iraqi soldier dead and four injured and that "an eyewitness" says "one American reconnaissance aircraft was shot down." CNN notes that the US military states that "minor damage" was done to a helicopter which did not, according to the US military, crash.
Corpses?
Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 9 corpses discovered in Baghdad.
Today the US military announced: "Three MND-B Soldiers died and another was wounded when an improvised explosive device and secondary explosion detonated near their patrol in a southeastern section of the Iraqi capital April 9. " And they announced: "A Soldier assigned to Multi-National Force-West died Monday while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar Province." On the tenth day of April, ICCC is reporting that 45 US service membrs have died in Iraq so far this month. 3292 since the start of the illegal war. 3292 dead. Why?
The mythical mushroom cloud that Condi and Bully Boy pushed? The 16 words in the State of the Union 2003 address (a Constitutional duty of the office of president): "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." That lie was explored today by Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!), La Repubblica's Carlo Bonini and the Washington Post's Peter Eisner -- excerpt:
Amy Goodman: So we're back to the day that President Bush made his statement within the State of the Union address about Saddam Hussein's attempt to get uranium from Africa.
Peter Eisner, what role did the CIA play in this statement?
Peter Eisner: The CIA actually had attempted to block the statement by President Bush relating uranium purchases in Niger. And, in fact, three months before the State of the Union message, on October 7, 2002 -- strangely, the same day that Rocco Martino handed over the documents to Elisabetta Burba -- President Bush was scheduled to deliver a speech in Cincinnati, and the draft of that speech said pretty much what he ended up saying in the State of the Union message. That was, that the British had found that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium in Africa. The CIA was given routinely a copy of that text in advance and argued that that sentence about uranium should be removed. There was quite an argument between the lower CIA officials and White House staff, including Stephen Hadley, at the time the assistant National Security Advisor, now the National Security Advisor, once Condoleezza Rice became Secretary of State. Finally, George Tenet, the head of the CIA, had to intercede on October 7 and demand that the White House remove the sentence describing uranium purchases in Niger. It was quite a dust-up. As a result of that, the White House, burned, decided that in the interim it would not provide advanced text of presidential speeches to the CIA to avoid having to withdraw information that it didn't want to withdraw. So, the day before the State of the Union message, no one at the CIA had seen the text of the State of the Union message, until the night before. Someone just mildly passed a draft text to George Tenet during a meeting, which was not the normal procedure for vetting a document. And basically everyone at the CIA was surprised when President Bush uttered that statement, which had already been excised three months earlier. The response by the White House staff was, "Whoops! We forgot."
Amy Goodman: And yet, what happened? This was still before the President's address?
Peter Eisner: Well, in effect, George Tenet, the head of the CIA, the day before, received the text, handed it off to an aide, and nobody took a look at it. It could have been stopped, but usually, you know, days before, as the text is being prepared, written, analyzed, someone would look at it. In this case, they didn't, although the Bush administration did have allies elsewhere in the CIA that were kind of giving them cover to be able to make this statement, while a vast majority, I would say, of the intelligence community in the United States did not believe for an instant that Iraq was trying to buy uranium or that Iraq was trying to restart its nuclear program.
Carlo Bonini is the co-author of Collusion: International Espionage and the War on Terror. Peter Eisner is the co-author of The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Cases for War in Iraq. Amy Goodman is the co-author of Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders and the People Who Fight Back and she will be speaking at Faneuil Hall in Boston next Monday (April 16th) with Howard Zinn -- event begins at 7:00 pm.
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Bright Eyes
So let me gripe. Lesley wrote to say, "I was going to listen to Law and Disorder, but where is it?" The site's down. I have no idea why. I called Tony who's smarter about websites than me and his guess is it is one of two things: (1) the show decided to do away with their website or (2) they forgot to pay their bill. That was "forgot," not didn't pay. That can happen and maybe that's what it is. I'm sorry Lesley was going to listen for the first time and couldn't. I'm glad she wrote. She's been reading awhile and I've never heard from her before. (She was talking about all the stuff and I only remembered writing about 1/2 of it.) So I'm sorry Lesley couldn't hear it. I was going to recommend a way for her to hear it but I can't. Why not?
Here's my beef, my gripe. WBAI has a website. It archives sort of. (It takes them down after 90 days which is just nonsense.) But it can't even get the programs right. If C.I. recommends the archives, you've seen C.I. type something like "It's under Building Bridges" or something like that because they never put the special broadcasts under that title. I thought it was automatic and that's why. But it's not automatic. I was going to say, "Go listen to the WBAI archives, Lesley and you can hear it." You may be able to. If you hunt around. They've got "Joys of Resistance" listed as the Monday program when it should be Law and Disorder. Okay, title's wrong. Fine. Tony goes to listen and, guess what, it's not Law and Disorder. It's Democracy Now!
Why does WBAI do archives if they're that useless? Seriously. If you can't have the right program under the right title, and if you can't even have it under the right hour, why do you do archives? It is supposed to be some damn puzzle? A brain teaser? It may be under "Out FM" and it may not be. I don't have time to play around, Tony doesn't have time to play around.
So I don't know what's going on Lesley. As far as I know, I'll be talking about the show on Thursday (the CD should arrive in the mail tomorrow). That's really all I can tell you tonight.
What else has me mad? Cowardly, chicken shit Democrats who wanted to hold office but don't want to do any work. Read Wally's "THIS JUST IN! DEMS DESTROY THEMSELVES!" and Cedric's "Their own worst enemy" which is funny (like it's meant to be) but it's funny because they're making fun of the Democrats (who deserve it). What the Democrats are doing isn't funny.
So what's good? Elaine and I both played hooky for a little more than half the day. We ended up getting Bright Eyes' Cassadaga CD. I really love it and we were listening to it in the park (we met half-way so no one had a longer drive between our cities). Elaine really has to plan ahead to play hooky and she had to keep office hours for two sessions this morning because she wasn't able to reschedule them even with us planning this four weeks ago. So I went to work and cut out early and then hit the road after getting her the Bright Eyes CD. She got it for me too so that was pretty funny. I asked C.I. what would be good for a picnic and was told a salad and fruit was all Elaine was probably going to eat. C.I. goes, "Get something with meat for yourself if you want, but she's just going to want a salad." So I go, tell me what she likes and I'll make a huge salad.
So I used butter leaf and what's the other. I'm forgetting but those two and a little iceberg. Carrots, radishes, dried cranberries, walnuts, red onions and tomatoes. C.I. goes, "She'll kill me for passing this on but 'junk food' for her is Kraft's Green Goddess salad dressing. That is her candy. She doesn't usually put it on her salad but when she does, she goes wild with it." C.I. wasn't kidding! :D She really loves it. I'd never had it before and it's pretty good but it really is like candy to Elaine. :D So we met up at the park that was the closest park at the halfway drive for both of us and listened to the new Bright Eyes on the jam box during the picnic and it was a pretty nice day.
Could you imagine what it would be like if we didn't have public parks? You know some on the right would like to get rid of them. I always loved parks growing up and still do. When I was little, my favorite thing wasn't the slide or the swings, it was the merry go round. I'd get on that even if it was just me and I had to push and push all by myself to get it going.
We had the park all to ourselves for most of the time. There were a few people probably at the lunch hour but that was really it for the longest and I was thinking, "Don't people go to parks anymore?" Then, probably around 2:30, this woman brought her little kids to the park and then, when school got out, there were all these kids there.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Tuesday, April 10, 2007. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq, Sara Rich continues to tell her daughter's story, the same Congress that won't end the war doesn't listen to the story of Suzanne Swift, and the lies that led to an illegal war are explored.
Starting with the final section of Robert Knight's "Knight Report" on yesterday's Flashpoints:
Meanwhile, there's little indication from London or Washington that the occupation will end any time soon. In London a confidential planning document drawn up by the Defence Ministry, called the "Operational Tour Plot," was obtained by the London Telegeraph which today disclosed that British troops will be serving in Iraq and throughout the Arab gulf at least until 2012. And finally in Washington, Congressional Democrats made it perfectly clear they have no serious intention of bringing the war in Iraq to an end before they can capitalize on it in time for the 2008 presidential elections. After a week's recess and backtracking on the non-binding and loophole laden timeline legislation which permits the Bush administration to continue the war in until the next presidential term Democratic leaders retreated even further than they did during the legislative debate. Among the retreaters Senator Carl Levin, the chair of the Armed Services Committee told ABC's This Week that, "We're not going to vote to cut funding." He said that after a veto "There's a number of options. Either we can keep the benchmarks part of the bill without saying that the troops must begin to come back and if that doesn't work what we will leave will be benchmarks for instance which would require the president to certify to the American people that the Iraqis are meeting the benchmarks for political settlement which they have set themselves." And that's some of the news of this Monday April 9, 2007 from exile in New York, I'm Robert Knight for Flashpoints.
Flashpoints is archived at its own website and at KPFA (which right now is having archive problems and has archived nothing since early Monday morning) and airs live from 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm, Monday through Friday online and over the airwaves of KPFA, KFCF, KPFB and other stations. (A full transcription of Robert Knight's "Knight Report" appears in Hilda's Mix today.) Knight was speaking, first, of the news from the UK. Sean Rayment (Telegraph of London) notes approximately half "of the country's armed services have now served in Iraq since the war began in March 2003" and that the revelations that UK forces will be in Iraq through 2012 and that report is "in marked contrast to a statement made by Tony Blair in Feburary giving the impression that British troops would remain in Ira for less than two years." On the earlier issue of the Democrats caving, as Joshua Frank (CounterPunch) notes, "The Democrats may not have enough votes to overturn a Bush veto, but they certainly have enough to filibuster the war-funding bill, which at this point is the only way to stop this god-awful disaster. One brave Democrat could take a stand, filibuster, and 40 more senators could then abstain from breaking the filibuster. That is all it would take. Bush would then have to be the one to compromise and produce a plan that was acceptable to the 41 Senate Democrats who want to end the war. But of course, we are more likely to see Dick Cheney drinking margaritas with Cindy Sheehan on the White House lawn before we'd witness this scenario play out." Tabassum Zakaria and Richard Cowan (Reuters) report that Bully Boy has "invited congressional leaders of both parties to the White House next week" to discuss the non-binding, toothless Congressional measure. That is the same measure he has stated he intends to veto and that Senator Carl Levin says, if he vetos, Democrats will immediately rush to fall in line (no power of the purse for Levin).
From the madness of the governments
To the vengeance of the sea
Everything is eclipsed
By the shape of destiny
So love me now
Hell is coming
Could you do it now?
Hell is here
Little soldier, little insect
You know war, it has no heart
It will kill you in the sunshine
Or just as happily in the dark
-- "No One Would Riot For Less" written by Conor Oberst, off Bright Eyes' Cassadaga
Turning to the topic of war resistance, Paul Rockwell (CounterPunch) offers an open letter to Major General Charles Jacoby Jr. where he reviews the court-martial of Ehren Watada. In June 2006, Watada became the first officer to refuse to deploy to Iraq. In February of this year, he became the first officer to be court-martialed for refusing to deploy. Rockwell notes that the court-martial ended in a mistrial over the objection of the defense, argues that "now is a good time to drop all the charges against the Lieutenant, to bring closure to a trial that, in my opinion, should never have taken place" and concludes that "history will vindicate the courage of Lt. Ehren Watada." Pretrial motions are currently scheduled for May 20th through 21st and the court-martial for July 16th. Watada is represented by the Seattle based Carney Bradley Spellman and his attorneys are Kenneth Kagan and James Lobsenz.
Ehren Watada is part of a movement of resistance within the military that also includes Joshua Key, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia, Dean Walcott, Patrick Hart, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum. Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
At a rally to show support for Ehren Watada, Sara Rich (AfterDowningStreet.org) writes, she and her daughter Suzanne Swift turned out to show their support and Swift asked, "Mom, where are the kids my age? Where is my generation?" Rich goes on to tell her daughter's story, sexually abused and harassed for the apparent 'crime' of thinking a woman could serve in the military, Swift was betrayed by the very system she attempted to defend. As Rich explains, her daughter did not self-check out because of an objection to the war but to save herself when the military refused to do so. Rich: "Confronting imminent redeployment she went AWOL. Later the Army would contend that she went AWOL because of her mother's political beliefs. I only wished it was that. If it was because of my political beliefs she never would have gone to Iraq the first place. Then they tried to say it was because of her own anti war beliefs. That would have been a dream come true. But the truth was that my daughter went AWOL out of pure fear; fear of what her command had done to her in the first deployment and rejection of being treated like a 'deployment whore' again. This was not a decision it was a reaction."
Though Suzanne Swift's reaction was perfectly normal, even before you get to the fact that she suffers from PTSD, not only was she abandoned by the military command that damn well should have prevented what she went through, the US Congress -- all those brave talking Senators, male and female -- sat on their collective asses which apparently kept their lips from moving. The military conducted a whitewash investigation (that still found validity and confirmation in some of Swift's charges), her offer was sign a paper saying she lied or face a court-martial. Swift was court-martialed, stripped of her rank, sentenced to 30 days and then placed back in the same system that not only did not refuse to ensure her safety, but failed to after she sought help. To repeat, Congress sat on its collective ass. That's Hillary Clinton, that's Carl Levin, that's Barbara Boxer, that's Russ Feingold, that's Susan Collins, that's Mr. uber-goodness Joe Lieberman.
Rich concludes, "It is amazing to me how much we have to be thankful to the Army for. They tried to break my daughter down and shut her up, and in the process created a strong advocate for women around the world. Imagine if they had done the right thing and protected from MLester in the first place or given her an immediate medical discharge when our attorney contacted Ft. Lewis right after she went AWOL and was diagnosed with PTSD. How simple and right it could have been. But the US military did not understand what they were doing or Suzanne's fortitude." A number of Congressional members who are also attempting to campaign for president have issued the "If only we knew then what we know now . . ." junk to excuse their support for an illegal war. What's their excuse for doing nothing about Suzanne Swift? She should have received an honorable discharge. Congress should have immediately initiated hearings into what women serving in Iraq are actually having to endure. It's not too late for that nor is it too late to push for Swift to get the honorable discharge she more than deserves.
Rich offers that the people her daughter's age are waking up to the realities and will be showing up at protests in greater numbers. In Iraq yesterday, hundreds of thousands participated in a Najaf rally against the occupation of the nation by foreign forces. Hiba Dawood (Free Speech Radio News) reported by speaking with Iraqis (an apparently novel and new thing to do when you consider how few others bothered to do so) taking part in the protest. One man noted 4 years have passed since the occupation of Iraq and what happened? Hundreds of thousands were killed, hundreds of thousands were wounded and arrested. They humiliate the Iraqi homes every day. The Constitution says that the Iraqi homes are protected but they invade homes anytime they want. We have to always remember Abu Ghraib and the abuses that has happened there including the sexual abuse against Iraqi women and the killing of those Iraqi women with their families." Ahmed Ali states: "The demands in this demonstration are different than the ones we had in 2005, for example. Then people demanded the condemnation of Saddm Hussein and called for the total and immediate departure of the occupation forces. Today, we demand that there should be at least a timetable set up for troops to leave. Our other demand is that want people in the occupying countries in the removal of their military forces from Iraq."
Following yesterday's cry for foreign forces to leave, the war drug on with all the violence that entails.
Bombings?
AFP reports: "A woman veiled in black and strapped with explosives blew herself up outside a police station in Iraq on Tuesday, killing 16 people, many of them volunteering to joing the polic eforce" in Muqdadiyah. CNN reports a Baghdad bombing targeting Baghdad Univeristy that killed at least six college students and left 11 more injured. CBS and AP report that "a rocket slammed into a schoolyard basketball court, killing a 6-year-old boy. AP Television News videotape showed children's backpacks and books still open on classroom desks, covered with shattered glass and debris. Blood was pooled on the dusty tile floor." -- the count given is 17 wounded. Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports two other mortar attacks in Baghdad that resulted in one death and four wounded.
Shootings?
Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) notes an Iraqi soldier was shot in Kirkuk and, in Baghdad, an ongoing clash between Iraqis and US & Iraqi forces has left one Iraqi soldier dead and four injured and that "an eyewitness" says "one American reconnaissance aircraft was shot down." CNN notes that the US military states that "minor damage" was done to a helicopter which did not, according to the US military, crash.
Corpses?
Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 9 corpses discovered in Baghdad.
Today the US military announced: "Three MND-B Soldiers died and another was wounded when an improvised explosive device and secondary explosion detonated near their patrol in a southeastern section of the Iraqi capital April 9. " And they announced: "A Soldier assigned to Multi-National Force-West died Monday while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar Province." On the tenth day of April, ICCC is reporting that 45 US service membrs have died in Iraq so far this month. 3292 since the start of the illegal war. 3292 dead. Why?
The mythical mushroom cloud that Condi and Bully Boy pushed? The 16 words in the State of the Union 2003 address (a Constitutional duty of the office of president): "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." That lie was explored today by Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!), La Repubblica's Carlo Bonini and the Washington Post's Peter Eisner -- excerpt:
Amy Goodman: So we're back to the day that President Bush made his statement within the State of the Union address about Saddam Hussein's attempt to get uranium from Africa.
Peter Eisner, what role did the CIA play in this statement?
Peter Eisner: The CIA actually had attempted to block the statement by President Bush relating uranium purchases in Niger. And, in fact, three months before the State of the Union message, on October 7, 2002 -- strangely, the same day that Rocco Martino handed over the documents to Elisabetta Burba -- President Bush was scheduled to deliver a speech in Cincinnati, and the draft of that speech said pretty much what he ended up saying in the State of the Union message. That was, that the British had found that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium in Africa. The CIA was given routinely a copy of that text in advance and argued that that sentence about uranium should be removed. There was quite an argument between the lower CIA officials and White House staff, including Stephen Hadley, at the time the assistant National Security Advisor, now the National Security Advisor, once Condoleezza Rice became Secretary of State. Finally, George Tenet, the head of the CIA, had to intercede on October 7 and demand that the White House remove the sentence describing uranium purchases in Niger. It was quite a dust-up. As a result of that, the White House, burned, decided that in the interim it would not provide advanced text of presidential speeches to the CIA to avoid having to withdraw information that it didn't want to withdraw. So, the day before the State of the Union message, no one at the CIA had seen the text of the State of the Union message, until the night before. Someone just mildly passed a draft text to George Tenet during a meeting, which was not the normal procedure for vetting a document. And basically everyone at the CIA was surprised when President Bush uttered that statement, which had already been excised three months earlier. The response by the White House staff was, "Whoops! We forgot."
Amy Goodman: And yet, what happened? This was still before the President's address?
Peter Eisner: Well, in effect, George Tenet, the head of the CIA, the day before, received the text, handed it off to an aide, and nobody took a look at it. It could have been stopped, but usually, you know, days before, as the text is being prepared, written, analyzed, someone would look at it. In this case, they didn't, although the Bush administration did have allies elsewhere in the CIA that were kind of giving them cover to be able to make this statement, while a vast majority, I would say, of the intelligence community in the United States did not believe for an instant that Iraq was trying to buy uranium or that Iraq was trying to restart its nuclear program.
Carlo Bonini is the co-author of Collusion: International Espionage and the War on Terror. Peter Eisner is the co-author of The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Cases for War in Iraq. Amy Goodman is the co-author of Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders and the People Who Fight Back and she will be speaking at Faneuil Hall in Boston next Monday (April 16th) with Howard Zinn -- event begins at 7:00 pm.
wbai
law and disorder
the daily jot
cedrics big mix
like maria said paz
the common ills
mikey likes it
iraq
flashpoints
robert knight
free speech radio news
ehren watada
suzanne swift
amy goodman
democracy now
peter eisner
the washington post
howard zinn
Bright Eyes
Monday, April 09, 2007
Third, Carter, more
It's Monday. I've got two things and then the usual Monday review. So let's hop in and all pray Monday passes quickly.
Okay, help me out here because I'm confused. This is from Scott Horton's "President Carter: Bush Ordered Me Not to Go to Damascus:"
More evidence of the White House's partisan manipulation of relations with Syria emerged yesterday, as President Jimmy Carter told a gathering in New York about his recent request to visit Syrian President Assad. The former president stated:
"I have known President Bashar al-Assad since he was a college student, and I thought it might be helpful if I went and urged him to support the peace process in the Middle East. But for the only time in my life as a former president, I was ordered by the White House not to go."
How does the White House order Jimmy Carter not to go somewhere? I think Carter means that he was urged not to go, that he was told it would be better not to go. If he was ordered, "ordered," not to go, I think he needs to explain that. I'm not defending Bully Boy and I'm sure there was strong arming going on. I just don't think the Bully Boy has the Constitutional power to order Jimmy Carter not to go. If he did "order" it, I'm very interested in how. By the way, Horton has a link in that to another site. Since I do not endorse sweat shop labor (using anyone to make crappy t-shirts or to churn out crappy campaigns), I removed the link. If you're interested, access Horton's article and you'll find it. But be careful of those Dem-Moonies who say they're all about the kids of today but just want to yoke us to campaigns and claim, "Look at our power!"
And to read an idiot and cluster-fucker, click here (you'll go to Common Dreams and won't get cooties). Read the comments and laugh. Hillary's health plan! Ha. Tell it to someone not from Boston where the movement started, where Hillary latched onto it, where she pretended she wanted input from the doctors and nurses and then sold out to insurance industry in her "private" meetings. What a little liar. Remember when Brian Monty-head used to link to his buddy Ezzie all the time and gush over Ezzie's looks when not bragging about their "clusterfuck." Monty-head built a new gas bag -- and not a better one. Don't believe the hype on Hillary and health care. She sold out to the insurance industry and no re-writing will ever change that. Again, that movement started in my area. Litte Ezzie doesn't know what he's talking about. (Maybe his brains got damaged in the clusterfuck?)
Okay, let's talk The Third Estate Sunday Review:
Truest statement of the week -- Ruth is so funny! It's true and it's really funny. Dad thinks this was a great choice.
A Note to Our Readers -- It's up, not the "sketch" but the full note. Jim said they did it after midnight Sunday. Jim covers everything pretty well so I'm not sure how much I'll have to write.
Editorial: Shameful -- Do people know who was shameful? I guess it tells you how closely you follow the news on whether you know or not. I like this editorial.
TV: The not-so-universal White Boy blues -- This is funny. Ava and C.I. said it wasn't, but it's really, really funny. And I like how they tie things together from the past and from today.
Talking with Ruth -- Great interview with Ruth and she's right that we don't need to be telling people to stop dreaming, stop fighting and settle.
Your Guide to the Horse Race -- C.I. really did not want to do this. I mean, groaning, complaining. I think Rebecca and me suggested it and C.I. was "No, no, no." But Jess wanted to do it so C.I. went along (and really contributed to it). I think this is pretty important. Election cycle after election cycle, we're all supposed to have amnesia and forget the pattern, year after year.
Roundtable -- I loved this. I know some people didn't. I know C.I. didn't want to do it. But I think it's one of the best roundtables we ever did. I love what Jess said. We all do and we all support Jess. But I think the fact that he was obviously ticked off by B.S. Somerby led a lot of people to think, "Oh . . ." about the roundtable. I think it's great. (And I'm delinking from B.S. after I post this entry.) And I also loved this part:
Wally: Yeah, there "big question" is a negative. Are students today more narcissitic? Than whom? Than the lazy adults at The Nation who think their crap is worth reading? It was the sort of attention getting question that everyone ignored. A strong argument can be made that the rag has promoted the notion of apathy in young people today than anything else on the left or 'left.' The real apathy is to be found in supposed grown ups who can't tackle the war crimes against Abeer. When Katrina vanden Heuvel comes down from her cloud, or falls off, and addresses the real world, I'll worry about apathy in my generation. While she's getting giddy over three men, I'll just laugh at her weak ass mind and realize that it's important for some to have money to buy themselves a seat at the table.
I'll probably pull more stuff from it throughout the week but I'm going with that first.
The Nation Stats -- When a woman's in charge of magazine, do you expect it to only print one woman writer for every four men? No? Well why does The Nation have that figure?
The winners are -- Congratulations to the winners of the Green Party contest. Use this link and check out the video.
Highlights -- Cedric, Wally, Betty, Rebecca, Elaine and me did this and did it real quick.
Message from Jim, Dona and Ty -- Jim, Dona and Ty explain the template change and the hold up.
So that's it from me and here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Monday, April 9, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, Iraqis march in Najaf, Democratic leadership caves again, and Winnie Ng told the truth.
Yesterday, Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called followers to take to the streets and protest the occupation of Iraq by foreign fighters. Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted this morning, "Hundreds of thousands of Shiites are staging a massive anti-U.S. demonstration in the holy city of Najaf to call for the withdrawal of US troops. Shiites from around Iraq have traveled to Najaf to take part in the protest to mark the fouth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. The Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr urged Iraqis to stop cooperating with U.S. forces." CBS and AP report that the Najaf rally lasted three hours, chants included "Get out, get out occupier!" and "Yes, Yes to Moqtada! Occupiers should leave Iraq!", that Iraqi soldiers -- wearing their uniforms -- "joined the crowd," and that US military flack and apparently fact challenged Steven Boylan pointed to the demonstrations against the United States and sighed that it couldn't have happened "four years ago" -- apparently alleging that Saddam Hussein would not have tolerated anti-US demonstrations. Boylan wasn't the only having trouble with the truth. Khaled Farhan (Reuters) reports that White House National Security Council spokesperson Gordon Johndroe also hailed the protest against the US forces as a sign of freedom and anticipates "much more progress". Saad Fakhrildeen and Ned Parker (Los Angeles Times) report that US and Israeli flags were burned in the protests. File it under "Spin that." As AFP notes of the difference in the demonstrations four years later, "Gone are the euphoric April 9 cheers of 'Good, Good, Bush' praising US President George W Bush for ousting the regime. Angry chants of 'Down with Bush' are a frequent background to brutal Shiite and Sunni sectarian strife."
Turning to the topic of war resistance, Dave Zirin discussed with Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) today one of the more famous war resisters, Muhammad Ali: "And, you know, going back to that Kinshasa fight, I think it's a great example of the redemptive power of Muhammad Ali, because by that time he was somebody who, you know, had returned to the world of boxing, had fought off through the Supreme Court a five-year prison sentence given down to him by the federal courts, an outrageously high sentence for a draft resister at the time, and by the end, after that fight, he was named 'Sportsman of the Year' by Sports Illustrated. So he makes this amazing journey from being the most vilified, hated athlete in the history of the United States -- and I don't think there's any contention about that -- to becoming a figure of reconciliation, who was invited by Gerald Ford to the White House to shake hands. And that's the thing about Ali, is that he was always bound up in the rhythms of the social movements of the day." Denying the social movement today in the New York Times, Paul von Zielbauer writes that self-check outs result soley from PTSD and the military lowering the standards of who is recruited -- no one, to read von Zielbauer's clampdown of an article, ever self-checks out because they are opposed to the war and he gets that point across, in article noting the increase in court-martials, by refusing to speak to any one who has been court-martialed or to any one who self-checked out and went to Canada. Someone who does suffer from PTSD and did self-check out because he turned against the illegal war after serving in Iraq is Joshua Key.
Last month, three men claiming to be Canadian police visited the home of Winne Ng who provided housing for Joshua, Brandi and their children early on when they went to Canada. Winnie Ng maintained that they identified as Canadian police but she suspected they were the US military. The three men were looking for Joshua Key and asking questions about him. Jeffry House, Key's attorney, immediately contacted the military which has not yet -- one month later -- bothered to return his calls. That certainly gives the impression that the US military was not interested in speaking to Key. But what of Winnie Ng who one 'helper' suggested might be lying? The Candian police swore none of their police officers had visited her home. It was suggested, by 'helpful' that Ng might have made it up or be lying.
Winnie Ng was not lying. At the end of last week, The Toronto Globe and Mail reported that Canadian police were now admitting one of their police officers visited Ng's home. In addition, who accompanied them? Two US military members. The Canadian police maintains that the two men were never presented as police officers. That claim is as believable as their earlier claim that they knew nothing about, that no police officer visited Ng's home, go down the list. Ng told the truth. It's the Canadian police which continues to change their stories. In one of the few moments of truth in his article, von Zielbauer notes that the military is upping their quest for those who self-check out. Until futher information is furnished, the possibility that the US military was there no to speak with Joshua Key but to attempt to take him back to the US remains a strong one.
Joshua Key is part of a movement of resistance within the military that also includes
Ehren Watada, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia, Dean Walcott, Patrick Hart, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum. Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
In US Congressional news, how does one cave after Democratic leadership in both houses pass non-binding, toothless legislation, that does not enforce ALL US troops leaving Iraq and that funds all of Bully Boy's requests and then some? Count on the Democratic leadership to find a way. As Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) observed today, "Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, a key Democratic leader has given new indications Democrats are prepared to back down on their call to cut off war funding if President Bush vetoes a bill calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Speaking on ABC Sunday, Armed Services Committee chair Senator Carl Levin said: 'We're not going to vote to cut funding, period.' Levin said a veto would lead Democrats to consider removing language calling for the withdrawal of troops." Guest Laura Flanders, host of RadioNation with Laura Flanders and author most recently of Blue Grit, noted that the Democratic leadership "had to be dragged kicking and screaming" to the topic of the illegal war and spoke at length of how the right-wing fuels the Republican Party while the Democratic Party is more inclined to run from their own base. (This is one of the themes of her new book Blue Grit, another theme is the power driving change is on the ground in local areas, not in DC.) More on Democratic leadership caving can found at BayouBuzz which also notes US Senator Charles Schumer's caving remarks. While Democratic leadership caves in the face of a threatened veto (one they knew of all along), Evelyn Pringle (CounterPunch) observes that "what is clear, is that Bush plans to leave our troops dying in a war without end indefinitely, and therefore, its up to American citizens to rescue these young men and women in the only way possible, by insisting that Congress cut off funding for Iraq to force Bush to get them out of that hellhole."
And in Iraq today?
Bombings?CBS and AP report a Baghdad mortar attack that left one person dead and two more wounded. Reuters notes: "A roadside bomb wounded four civilians when it exploded near a U.S. military vehicle in the southern city of Diwaniya."
Shootings?
Reuters notes two people (thought to be on their way to take part in the Najaf protest) were shot dead after they left Iskandariya, that Jalal al-Daini ("tribal leader") was shot dead in Khalis and that two suspect "al Qaeda militants" were shot dead by the police in Hit. CBS and AP note a civilian and a police officer were shot dead in Baghdad while clashes in Burnitz left at least 30 injured.
Corpses?
Reuters reports 17 corpses discovered in Baghdad, 1 near Kirkuk and 1 in Mahaweel. Note that frequent embed Lauren Frayer (AP) reports 25 corpses discovered in Iraq. That would make the total count 35. What? Frayer gives 7 for the corpses discovered in Baghdad and trumpets that the 7 (a wrong number) is "only the second time the number of sectarian assassination and torture victims had dipped that low in the course of the Baghdad security operation". Lay back in your stupidity Frayer, luxuriate in it, and ignore the snickers.
This past weekend, as Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted, the US military announced
the deaths of 10 US service members.
And on the troops who will be sent to Iraq shortly, Peter Spiegel (Los Angeles Times) reports that the four Army National Guard brigades being sent to Iraq ("entire Guard units") are "alerts to brigades in Arkansas, Indiana, Ohio and Oklahoma involves about 13,000 soldiers, who will begin their return to combat in December. The staggered deployments will extend into early next year. All four brigades had served in Iraq or Afghanistan in 2004 and 2005." On Camp Pendleton the news is being closely watched since recent returnees (last month) were informed they were now stateside and that, for the next six months, the US military would be pulling from east coast.
Meanwhile, the long praised (and softballed) Kurish region may soon receive more critical reporting. AFP reports: "The United States criticized Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani Monday for threatening to fuel Kurdish separatist fervor in Turkey amid a spike in tensions between the neighbors."
Finally, at Micah's request, we're reposting something from Friday's snapshot. While listening to Talk Back with Hugh Hamilton on WBAI today, Micah heard a caller bring up last week's disclosures but was unsure of them. Micah reports a follow up caller (Micah wasn't able to get on air) mentioned that the topic was discussed on Hardball; however, he (both callers were male) was unaware of print coverage and one caller seemed to think a report was being released this week. (Host Hugh Hamilton knew nothing of the government report and repeatedly asked if it even covered anything new -- yes, it did cover something new.) The report was released last Thursday. The Washington Post did a lengthy piece on it and others covered it as well. From Friday's snapshot:
Turning to other lies of war, R. Jeffrey Smith (Washington Post) reports today that a US Defense Department report (declassifired yesterday and written by Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble) states the obvious -- in 2002 the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency both knew the claims that Saddam Hussein had a links to al Qaeda were incorrect. Smith notes the report was released yesterday, "on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq 'before we ever launched' the war". Dick Cheney's remarks are not merely 'incorrect,' they are lies. Peter Speigel (Los Angeles Times) reports that "The Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA each 'published reports that disavowed any "mature, symbiotic" cooperation between Iraq and Al Qaeda,' the inspector general's report found." AP notes that US Senator Carl Levin "requested that the Pentagon declassify the report prepared by acting Defense Department Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble. In a statement Thursday, Levin said the declassified document showed why a Defense Department investigation had concluded that some Pentagon prewar intelligence work was inappropriate."
iraq
the new york timespaul von zielbauerjoshua key
democracy now
r. jeffrey smith
the washington post
laura flandersradionation with laura flanders
Okay, help me out here because I'm confused. This is from Scott Horton's "President Carter: Bush Ordered Me Not to Go to Damascus:"
More evidence of the White House's partisan manipulation of relations with Syria emerged yesterday, as President Jimmy Carter told a gathering in New York about his recent request to visit Syrian President Assad. The former president stated:
"I have known President Bashar al-Assad since he was a college student, and I thought it might be helpful if I went and urged him to support the peace process in the Middle East. But for the only time in my life as a former president, I was ordered by the White House not to go."
How does the White House order Jimmy Carter not to go somewhere? I think Carter means that he was urged not to go, that he was told it would be better not to go. If he was ordered, "ordered," not to go, I think he needs to explain that. I'm not defending Bully Boy and I'm sure there was strong arming going on. I just don't think the Bully Boy has the Constitutional power to order Jimmy Carter not to go. If he did "order" it, I'm very interested in how. By the way, Horton has a link in that to another site. Since I do not endorse sweat shop labor (using anyone to make crappy t-shirts or to churn out crappy campaigns), I removed the link. If you're interested, access Horton's article and you'll find it. But be careful of those Dem-Moonies who say they're all about the kids of today but just want to yoke us to campaigns and claim, "Look at our power!"
And to read an idiot and cluster-fucker, click here (you'll go to Common Dreams and won't get cooties). Read the comments and laugh. Hillary's health plan! Ha. Tell it to someone not from Boston where the movement started, where Hillary latched onto it, where she pretended she wanted input from the doctors and nurses and then sold out to insurance industry in her "private" meetings. What a little liar. Remember when Brian Monty-head used to link to his buddy Ezzie all the time and gush over Ezzie's looks when not bragging about their "clusterfuck." Monty-head built a new gas bag -- and not a better one. Don't believe the hype on Hillary and health care. She sold out to the insurance industry and no re-writing will ever change that. Again, that movement started in my area. Litte Ezzie doesn't know what he's talking about. (Maybe his brains got damaged in the clusterfuck?)
Okay, let's talk The Third Estate Sunday Review:
Truest statement of the week -- Ruth is so funny! It's true and it's really funny. Dad thinks this was a great choice.
A Note to Our Readers -- It's up, not the "sketch" but the full note. Jim said they did it after midnight Sunday. Jim covers everything pretty well so I'm not sure how much I'll have to write.
Editorial: Shameful -- Do people know who was shameful? I guess it tells you how closely you follow the news on whether you know or not. I like this editorial.
TV: The not-so-universal White Boy blues -- This is funny. Ava and C.I. said it wasn't, but it's really, really funny. And I like how they tie things together from the past and from today.
Talking with Ruth -- Great interview with Ruth and she's right that we don't need to be telling people to stop dreaming, stop fighting and settle.
Your Guide to the Horse Race -- C.I. really did not want to do this. I mean, groaning, complaining. I think Rebecca and me suggested it and C.I. was "No, no, no." But Jess wanted to do it so C.I. went along (and really contributed to it). I think this is pretty important. Election cycle after election cycle, we're all supposed to have amnesia and forget the pattern, year after year.
Roundtable -- I loved this. I know some people didn't. I know C.I. didn't want to do it. But I think it's one of the best roundtables we ever did. I love what Jess said. We all do and we all support Jess. But I think the fact that he was obviously ticked off by B.S. Somerby led a lot of people to think, "Oh . . ." about the roundtable. I think it's great. (And I'm delinking from B.S. after I post this entry.) And I also loved this part:
Wally: Yeah, there "big question" is a negative. Are students today more narcissitic? Than whom? Than the lazy adults at The Nation who think their crap is worth reading? It was the sort of attention getting question that everyone ignored. A strong argument can be made that the rag has promoted the notion of apathy in young people today than anything else on the left or 'left.' The real apathy is to be found in supposed grown ups who can't tackle the war crimes against Abeer. When Katrina vanden Heuvel comes down from her cloud, or falls off, and addresses the real world, I'll worry about apathy in my generation. While she's getting giddy over three men, I'll just laugh at her weak ass mind and realize that it's important for some to have money to buy themselves a seat at the table.
I'll probably pull more stuff from it throughout the week but I'm going with that first.
The Nation Stats -- When a woman's in charge of magazine, do you expect it to only print one woman writer for every four men? No? Well why does The Nation have that figure?
The winners are -- Congratulations to the winners of the Green Party contest. Use this link and check out the video.
Highlights -- Cedric, Wally, Betty, Rebecca, Elaine and me did this and did it real quick.
Message from Jim, Dona and Ty -- Jim, Dona and Ty explain the template change and the hold up.
So that's it from me and here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Monday, April 9, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, Iraqis march in Najaf, Democratic leadership caves again, and Winnie Ng told the truth.
Yesterday, Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called followers to take to the streets and protest the occupation of Iraq by foreign fighters. Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted this morning, "Hundreds of thousands of Shiites are staging a massive anti-U.S. demonstration in the holy city of Najaf to call for the withdrawal of US troops. Shiites from around Iraq have traveled to Najaf to take part in the protest to mark the fouth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. The Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr urged Iraqis to stop cooperating with U.S. forces." CBS and AP report that the Najaf rally lasted three hours, chants included "Get out, get out occupier!" and "Yes, Yes to Moqtada! Occupiers should leave Iraq!", that Iraqi soldiers -- wearing their uniforms -- "joined the crowd," and that US military flack and apparently fact challenged Steven Boylan pointed to the demonstrations against the United States and sighed that it couldn't have happened "four years ago" -- apparently alleging that Saddam Hussein would not have tolerated anti-US demonstrations. Boylan wasn't the only having trouble with the truth. Khaled Farhan (Reuters) reports that White House National Security Council spokesperson Gordon Johndroe also hailed the protest against the US forces as a sign of freedom and anticipates "much more progress". Saad Fakhrildeen and Ned Parker (Los Angeles Times) report that US and Israeli flags were burned in the protests. File it under "Spin that." As AFP notes of the difference in the demonstrations four years later, "Gone are the euphoric April 9 cheers of 'Good, Good, Bush' praising US President George W Bush for ousting the regime. Angry chants of 'Down with Bush' are a frequent background to brutal Shiite and Sunni sectarian strife."
Turning to the topic of war resistance, Dave Zirin discussed with Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) today one of the more famous war resisters, Muhammad Ali: "And, you know, going back to that Kinshasa fight, I think it's a great example of the redemptive power of Muhammad Ali, because by that time he was somebody who, you know, had returned to the world of boxing, had fought off through the Supreme Court a five-year prison sentence given down to him by the federal courts, an outrageously high sentence for a draft resister at the time, and by the end, after that fight, he was named 'Sportsman of the Year' by Sports Illustrated. So he makes this amazing journey from being the most vilified, hated athlete in the history of the United States -- and I don't think there's any contention about that -- to becoming a figure of reconciliation, who was invited by Gerald Ford to the White House to shake hands. And that's the thing about Ali, is that he was always bound up in the rhythms of the social movements of the day." Denying the social movement today in the New York Times, Paul von Zielbauer writes that self-check outs result soley from PTSD and the military lowering the standards of who is recruited -- no one, to read von Zielbauer's clampdown of an article, ever self-checks out because they are opposed to the war and he gets that point across, in article noting the increase in court-martials, by refusing to speak to any one who has been court-martialed or to any one who self-checked out and went to Canada. Someone who does suffer from PTSD and did self-check out because he turned against the illegal war after serving in Iraq is Joshua Key.
Last month, three men claiming to be Canadian police visited the home of Winne Ng who provided housing for Joshua, Brandi and their children early on when they went to Canada. Winnie Ng maintained that they identified as Canadian police but she suspected they were the US military. The three men were looking for Joshua Key and asking questions about him. Jeffry House, Key's attorney, immediately contacted the military which has not yet -- one month later -- bothered to return his calls. That certainly gives the impression that the US military was not interested in speaking to Key. But what of Winnie Ng who one 'helper' suggested might be lying? The Candian police swore none of their police officers had visited her home. It was suggested, by 'helpful' that Ng might have made it up or be lying.
Winnie Ng was not lying. At the end of last week, The Toronto Globe and Mail reported that Canadian police were now admitting one of their police officers visited Ng's home. In addition, who accompanied them? Two US military members. The Canadian police maintains that the two men were never presented as police officers. That claim is as believable as their earlier claim that they knew nothing about, that no police officer visited Ng's home, go down the list. Ng told the truth. It's the Canadian police which continues to change their stories. In one of the few moments of truth in his article, von Zielbauer notes that the military is upping their quest for those who self-check out. Until futher information is furnished, the possibility that the US military was there no to speak with Joshua Key but to attempt to take him back to the US remains a strong one.
Joshua Key is part of a movement of resistance within the military that also includes
Ehren Watada, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia, Dean Walcott, Patrick Hart, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum. Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
In US Congressional news, how does one cave after Democratic leadership in both houses pass non-binding, toothless legislation, that does not enforce ALL US troops leaving Iraq and that funds all of Bully Boy's requests and then some? Count on the Democratic leadership to find a way. As Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) observed today, "Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, a key Democratic leader has given new indications Democrats are prepared to back down on their call to cut off war funding if President Bush vetoes a bill calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Speaking on ABC Sunday, Armed Services Committee chair Senator Carl Levin said: 'We're not going to vote to cut funding, period.' Levin said a veto would lead Democrats to consider removing language calling for the withdrawal of troops." Guest Laura Flanders, host of RadioNation with Laura Flanders and author most recently of Blue Grit, noted that the Democratic leadership "had to be dragged kicking and screaming" to the topic of the illegal war and spoke at length of how the right-wing fuels the Republican Party while the Democratic Party is more inclined to run from their own base. (This is one of the themes of her new book Blue Grit, another theme is the power driving change is on the ground in local areas, not in DC.) More on Democratic leadership caving can found at BayouBuzz which also notes US Senator Charles Schumer's caving remarks. While Democratic leadership caves in the face of a threatened veto (one they knew of all along), Evelyn Pringle (CounterPunch) observes that "what is clear, is that Bush plans to leave our troops dying in a war without end indefinitely, and therefore, its up to American citizens to rescue these young men and women in the only way possible, by insisting that Congress cut off funding for Iraq to force Bush to get them out of that hellhole."
And in Iraq today?
Bombings?CBS and AP report a Baghdad mortar attack that left one person dead and two more wounded. Reuters notes: "A roadside bomb wounded four civilians when it exploded near a U.S. military vehicle in the southern city of Diwaniya."
Shootings?
Reuters notes two people (thought to be on their way to take part in the Najaf protest) were shot dead after they left Iskandariya, that Jalal al-Daini ("tribal leader") was shot dead in Khalis and that two suspect "al Qaeda militants" were shot dead by the police in Hit. CBS and AP note a civilian and a police officer were shot dead in Baghdad while clashes in Burnitz left at least 30 injured.
Corpses?
Reuters reports 17 corpses discovered in Baghdad, 1 near Kirkuk and 1 in Mahaweel. Note that frequent embed Lauren Frayer (AP) reports 25 corpses discovered in Iraq. That would make the total count 35. What? Frayer gives 7 for the corpses discovered in Baghdad and trumpets that the 7 (a wrong number) is "only the second time the number of sectarian assassination and torture victims had dipped that low in the course of the Baghdad security operation". Lay back in your stupidity Frayer, luxuriate in it, and ignore the snickers.
This past weekend, as Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted, the US military announced
the deaths of 10 US service members.
And on the troops who will be sent to Iraq shortly, Peter Spiegel (Los Angeles Times) reports that the four Army National Guard brigades being sent to Iraq ("entire Guard units") are "alerts to brigades in Arkansas, Indiana, Ohio and Oklahoma involves about 13,000 soldiers, who will begin their return to combat in December. The staggered deployments will extend into early next year. All four brigades had served in Iraq or Afghanistan in 2004 and 2005." On Camp Pendleton the news is being closely watched since recent returnees (last month) were informed they were now stateside and that, for the next six months, the US military would be pulling from east coast.
Meanwhile, the long praised (and softballed) Kurish region may soon receive more critical reporting. AFP reports: "The United States criticized Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani Monday for threatening to fuel Kurdish separatist fervor in Turkey amid a spike in tensions between the neighbors."
Finally, at Micah's request, we're reposting something from Friday's snapshot. While listening to Talk Back with Hugh Hamilton on WBAI today, Micah heard a caller bring up last week's disclosures but was unsure of them. Micah reports a follow up caller (Micah wasn't able to get on air) mentioned that the topic was discussed on Hardball; however, he (both callers were male) was unaware of print coverage and one caller seemed to think a report was being released this week. (Host Hugh Hamilton knew nothing of the government report and repeatedly asked if it even covered anything new -- yes, it did cover something new.) The report was released last Thursday. The Washington Post did a lengthy piece on it and others covered it as well. From Friday's snapshot:
Turning to other lies of war, R. Jeffrey Smith (Washington Post) reports today that a US Defense Department report (declassifired yesterday and written by Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble) states the obvious -- in 2002 the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency both knew the claims that Saddam Hussein had a links to al Qaeda were incorrect. Smith notes the report was released yesterday, "on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq 'before we ever launched' the war". Dick Cheney's remarks are not merely 'incorrect,' they are lies. Peter Speigel (Los Angeles Times) reports that "The Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA each 'published reports that disavowed any "mature, symbiotic" cooperation between Iraq and Al Qaeda,' the inspector general's report found." AP notes that US Senator Carl Levin "requested that the Pentagon declassify the report prepared by acting Defense Department Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble. In a statement Thursday, Levin said the declassified document showed why a Defense Department investigation had concluded that some Pentagon prewar intelligence work was inappropriate."
iraq
the new york timespaul von zielbauerjoshua key
democracy now
r. jeffrey smith
the washington post
laura flandersradionation with laura flanders
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