Tuesday and I'm pissed. I'll probably be the first out of the gate posting and others will probably say things nicer. Screw it.
I just got off a conference call with:
The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, and Ava
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz,
and Wally of The Daily Jot
Rebecca's pulled a post (which I don't believe she should have). But as usual, when you have nothing better to do with your own so-called adult life, you go whining to C.I.
Supposedly it was whine to C.I. because Rebecca's e-mail address is not visible.
When we switched to Beta, all of our e-mail addresses stopped displaying. We didn't realize that until today when it was whine to C.I.
(C.I. and Jim are speaking on campuses in Tenn. today. They move to Betty's state tomorrow. They did not participate in the call because they were speaking.)
So whine to C.I.? Really? That's your excuse for whining to C.I.?
How about being a DAMN grownup? Want to write Rebecca? I just googled "sex and politics and screeds and attitude" + "e-mail address" and you can go here for the results. You will find Rebecca's e-mail address in the eighth link. You don't even have to click on it, it's visible right in the search results, it's a post that Elaine did in 2005 when she was filling in for Rebecca:
Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude: 07/31
You can e-mail me at common_ills@yahoo.com and C.I. will forward it. Rebecca's address is sexandpoliticsandscreeds@yahoo.com but she's not reading e-mails ...
By the way, Elaine did have Rebecca's e-mail address. She said she didn't because Rebecca's stalker was e-mailing how they were "meant for each other" and how Rebecca wrote about a song from the 70s and that was a song he listened to just a month ago and he was in love and blah, blah, blah. The guy was sick and Rebecca's husband (then ex-husband, now husband again) hired a bodyguard because the sick f**k wouldn't stop trying to locate her. Calling people who had worked for in the p.r. business, narrowing down where she lived, etc.
But that's funny that a stalker -- a crazy can all do that -- but supposed journalists can't do a simple Google search where they would have found Rebecca's e-mail address without even having to click on a link.
So today was once again a case of "They wrote something about me" and not being adult enough to take it up with the person who did but bothering C.I. with this sh*t. Again!
You know what, if you're a journalist, act like one. That means grow the hell up. That means, with few exceptions, you have nothing to say to anyone about any criticism because you sure as hell haven't covered Iraq.
You've been a bullsh*t artist going off in a 100 directions. Now you want to be whining to C.I.? As if C.I.'s not already doing everything possible to stop the illegal war? As if the focus of The Common Ills isn't Iraq? As if C.I. hasn't spent every month since before the illegal war began going campus to campus to speak out against the illegal war?
I was feeling one way about this. We all were. Rebecca said she'd pull her post and I said, "Don't." Others did too but I said it the loudest (I was screaming). (Members will remember, I started my site when C.I. got ripped off and I was pissed that it had happened. Of course, that 'brave' independent media ripped off my first post but ___ thinks I'll never say a word. Again, I'll be ___ blank in my final post in 2008. And ____ may better represent independent media than anything else.)
But Rebecca said, "I know C.I., this is creating a tense, uncomfortable position. I appreciate what C.I. said" (Jess read the reply that was written by Jess, based on what C.I. said) "but it's not worth it to me because I don't want to see C.I. upset, there's enough stress already."
So we were all mature and resigned to that. And we stayed on the line so Rebecca could read to us what she was writing in her Monday post (she took out the parts that resulted in the e-mail -- took out tonight) and the gang's got you know what on in the background and DAMNED if it's not just what we were talking about and damned if Dahr Jamail (who will be pulled from my links as soon as this posts) isn't saying that it's only FAIR and Project Censored that follow coverage and follow up on it.
UH, BUY A CLUE, DARH JAMAIL, C.I. wrote about it on the 29th, wrote about it at The Third Estate Sunday Review at the start of the week. FAIR didn't "follow up" they printed one thing on Monday!
I heard gasps during that interview but I wasn't gasping, I was the first to start cursing.
Rebecca quickly joined me.
Guess what, DAHR JAMAIL, sell your own book on Iraq by yourself. I'm not helping you. If I mention it at all, it will only be to rip it apart.
Or mabye to note it's by the author of the website "Iraq Dispatches" who took summer of 2006 off to cover . . . Lebanon. While appealing for money to continue covering . . . Iraq.
And to hear the hosts of that show, a show C.I.'s defended online and, more importantly, offline with the board of the network, also go without crediting The Common Ills?
I'm with Rebecca, outside of the snapshot, that show will never EVER be mentioned here. And I will scream and yell as loud as I can when I help out at The Third Estate Sunday Review if anyone (which is really just going to be C.I. at this point) tries to work in a plug for that show. I'm delinking from it and from Dahr Jamail when this is done.
Let's be clear on this, C.I. didn't take summer of 2006 off. Jimmy Breslin and Molly Ivins didn't. But everyone else? They seemed to forget Iraq existed. So my attitude is, "You've used the community and you've spat on it. Get the f**k out now."
This is my attitude. C.I. wasn't a part of the conversation but we all know C.I.'s take which will be, "Oh, who cares?" I care. I care because C.I. is my friend and C.I. regularly plugs people who ask even though they don't do sh*t in return. A lot of people and programs and organizations get "heat" because C.I. talks them up at the site and talks them up with big media.
Rebecca and I were both saying, "Maybe we should just note big media from now on?" I agree with her. If that's the thanks C.I.'s going to get, maybe we should?
If independent media thinks they can use The Common Ills community and never give back, maybe that's how it should be. They have wants but never give back, so we stop giving.
Dahr Jamail and tonight's program are off my lists. Four words "and The Common Ills" wouldn't have killed Dahr Jamail (or the show) but no one could say those words. Well screw you both.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Tuesday, June 12, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, a new Gabor sprouts in the Green Zone, Iraqi children seek employment, and more.
Starting with Iraq Veterans Against the War Adam Kokesh who was interviewed by Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) today and explained some issues that the press has misreported:
That is a very good question because a lot of the coverage has grossly simplified the issue and said that I wore my uniform to a protest, which isn't really accurate at all. What we were doing was conducting something called Operation First Casualty. And it's called that because it has long been said that the first casualty of war is the truth. So what we did was conduct a mock combat patrol through the streets of Washington, DC, in order to bring a small part of the truth of the occupation home to the American people and give them a small sense of what it's like to have squads of men in uniform, with rifles, although we were simulating them of course, running around the streets of their city. And we also had civilians playing affected peoples. They weren't playing Iraqis or pretending to speak Arabic or anything like that, but we treated them as we would treat Iraqi civilians on a daily basis. So it was more street theater than general protest, and I do not need to show up to a protest in a uniform to represent myself as a veteran. But for this particular demonstration we were simulating a combat patrol, and so that is what we did, that's why it was appropriate in that setting. Now, normally, as I did -- or as I am doing today, I should say, I wear this Marine Corps boonie cover, and that is how I choose to represent myself as a veteran.
Kokesh, along with Liam Madden and Cloy Richards, is being targeted by the US military for speaking out. Last week, a (kangaroo) hearing was held regarding his discharge from the Interactive Ready Reserves. Kokesh addressed the status there noting "you may recieve multiple discharges throughout your military career. But it's your last one that is revelant in terms of your benefits" which is why the US military is now attempting to override the honorable discharge he received from the marine corps in November with an other-than-honorable discharge. He also addressed how this issue effects more than just himself, Richards and Madden and the reception he's receiving:
Adam Kokesh: Well, actually it's been quite surprising to see a lot of people from my old unit contacting me and supporting me in my efforts in trying to get, to ensure that the Uniform Code of Military Justice is not applied beyond it's jurisdiction into the inactive reserve. They appreciate that, and I think a lot of people in the military appreciate what I am doing and why am trying to fight this case so hard. Even though the board recommended me for a general discharge last week, which wouldn't affect my benefits if it's approved, it does not do anything to establish a precedent and the next guy facing the same charges might receive an OTH or something worse potentially. And everyone in active duty is going to be in the IRR at some point, if they're not past their eight-year contract when they get out of the military, most are on four-year contracts, and they spend -- they stand to spend about four years in the inactive reserve. And, if it's not safe for these combat vets coming home to speak their minds, then it's not safe for anyone.
Evan Knappenberger also appeared on today's Democracy Now! and discussed his actions last Thursday in Washington state, "I decided a couple of weeks ago that I needed to do something to affect a positive change in all these kind of negative things going on. I figured the best way to do that would be to draw some attention to these policies that the military is using to fight this war without actually -- you know, a war without conscription, basically. So in the middle of the night I had this great idea, just as a symbol of something kind of similar to what Operation First Casualty is, you know, to bring the war to the American people, because there is a big disconnect between the civilian population and those of us who were in Iraq. We can see -- as veterans of Iraq -- we understand kind of the way that these policies get perpetrated, and the American people need to be made aware of that. So I had this great idea to bring that home and ended up on a tower for eight days."
Amy Goodman: Ended up what?
Evan Knappenberger: I ended up sitting up on this tower for eight days, wearing my uniform, kind of like I did in Iraq, when I was guarding these fields in Iraq.
Knappenberger also spoke of the study he did while serving in Iraq which "concluded that there were close to 3/4 of a million civilian deaths over the course of the Iraq war. Now I would guess it is probably upwards of a million."
Amy Goodman: Well that actually coincides with the two studies done most recent, a million, and before that The Lancet, the British medical journal published that study from Johns Hopkins University, saying around 655,000 soldiers -- rather, civilians, had died in Iraq.
Evan Knappenberger also spoke of suicide and noted he questions the official US military figure of 122 suicides by service members while serving in Iraq noting that his unit "had 45 combat casualties and 15 suicides" and explaining that these are suicides taking place in Iraq and that suicides of vets taking place in the US "are not counted . . . The army does not want to admit to taking any more losses than they possibly can." Yesterday, CNN reported on a study for the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health led by Dr. Mark S. Kaplan which found "The risk of suicide among male U.S. veterans is double that of the general population." This study did not include any veterans who have served in Afghanistan or the current illegal war in Iraq and, presumably, no women. Meanwhile, the Kavkaz Center noted a recent US army survey which "showed that 20% of soldiers and 15% of marines suffered from acute depression, anxiety or stress."
Meanwhile, Joel Bleifuss (In These Times) writes about the topic of war resistance, noting the brothers Kamunen -- Leo, Leif and Luke -- who self-checked out January 2nd of this year. Bliefuss is the editor of In These Times. For those needing a scorecard, two of the big three independent print magazines are weighing in -- The Progressive and now In These Times -- which leaves Katrina vanden Heuvel (editor and publisher of The Nation) as the only 'voice' of a magazine that elects to be silent on the issue of war resistance. Katrina vanden Heuvel, now more than ever, The Peace Resister. (And before anyone writes in on those Ehren Watada articles -- the 2006 ones were all "online exclusives" and Editor's Cut, her blog, can't be bothered with war resistance -- though there was time for American Idol.) Speaking of Ehren Watada, he remains the first US officer to refuse to deploy to Iraq. In February he faced a kangaroo court in which Judge Toilet (John Head) declared a mistrial over the objections of the defense. Mike Barber (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) reports that Charles H. Jacoby Jr. (Lt. Gen.) is now in charge of Fort Lewis and this means, "He inherits the court-martial of 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused last year to go to Iraq with a Stryker Brigade, saying the war is illegal. Earlier this year, Watada's first trial ended in a mistrial. The start of the second trial July 23 was stayed by the Army Court of Appeals; pretrial motions are to be heard July 6."
The movement of resistance within the US military grows and includes Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Care, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty 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, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
Turning to Iraq. Leila Fadel (McClatchy Newspaper) noted of Monday's bombing over the Tigris River (Diyala province) that this was "at least the seventh attack on Iraqi bridges in the past two months," beginning "with the destruction of the Sarafiya bridge in Baghdad," that the May 11th bombing in Taji involved three car bombings focused on two bridges, that the June 2nd bombings "severely damaged a bridge that links a highway from Baghdad with the northern city of Kirkuk, forcing traffic headed to Baghdad to pass through Diyala province." To repeat, Diyala province is where yesterday's bombing took place. First, traffic is forced through Diyala and then the bridge in Diyala is attacked -- but the US military wants to pretend there's no pattern or planning going on here. CBS and AP note that, as a result of that bombing, "vehicles were being forced to detour to a road running through al Qaeda-controlled territory to reach important nearby cities." Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) observed, "The bridge linked towns on the eastern side of the bridge, which are Shiite, with those on the western side of to the bridge, which are Sunni Arab. . . . Bridges are crucial in central Iraq, where the broad Tigris and Euphrates rivers and their tributaries wind through the countryside. Each attack has hampered commerce and made daily life more difficult for Iraqis." But Lt. Col. Chris Garver declares, "Willie, my love, a new Gabor sister is in town."
Garver tells Rubin that "knocking down the bridge may or may not have significance, because we have other resources" blah blah blah. Translation, Zza Zza just joined big sister Ava to make for two Gabor sisters living it up in the Green Zone.
In the real world, CBS and AP report today: "Suspected Sunni insurgents bombed and badly damaged a span over the main north-south highway leading from Baghdad on Tuesday -- the third bridge attack in as many days in an apparent campaign against key transportation arteries. . . . About 60 percent of the bridge was damaged, and cars could still pass over it via one lane, police said."
As the infrastructure continues to crumble, the violence continues. Tina Susman (Los Angeles Times) reports on a typical April day in Baghdad when "a bomb ripped a jagged hole in the road near Abu Mohammed's small grocery store. Gunfire crackled along the street as U.S. soldiers responded to the attack. Someone pounded frantically on the grocer's locked door, pleading for help. Mohammed recognized the frightened voice as that of a local teenager and let him inside. The 17-year-old had been struck by a bullet in the chaos that followed the explosion and was bleeding heavily. Within two hours, the boy was dead. Witnesses charge he was killed by U.S. troops firing randomly." Yesterday, Norman Solomon (CounterPunch) noted that "the Iraqis killed by Americans don't become much of an issue in the realms of U.S. media and politics. News coverage provides the latest tallies of Iraqis who die from 'sectarian violence' and 'terrorist attacks,' but the reportage rarely discusses how the U.S. occupation has been an ascending catalyst for that carnage." (Solomon's writing of the uncovered/undercovered air war going on in Iraq and also suggesting that those attempting to end the war focus on all the fatalities because, historically, as elections approach, US presidents sometimes try for some sort of drop in on the ground figures in an effort to make it seem the war may ending when the air war is actually being increased. More on the topic of this technique used in the past, Vietnam, can be found in War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning us to Death -- a documentary adaptation of Solomon's book of the same title, narrated by Sean Penn, which will be shown in DC on the 20th of this month and which you can already order on DVD.)
In other news, IRIN reports that "thousands" of Iraqi children now live in the streets and 11% under the age of 14 are working due to the extreme poverty. IRIN takes a look at twelve-year-old Abdel-Salim who is the only male in his family after the illegal war counted his father as 'collatoral damage'. So the twelve-year-old boy works each day (12 hour days) "in the streets selling chocolates and pencils. I eat just one meal a day to save money, and when I return I just want to sleep." For the record, Baghdad's high today was 109 degrees fahrenheit with all week expected to be over 100 degrees.
IRIN's report comes as Colum Lynch and Joshua Partlow (Washington Post) note a new United Nations report issued yesterday which found that "the recent U.S. military buildup in Baghdad" has not ended the violence and, quoting from the UN report, "civilian casualties continue to mount".
In news of some of today's civilian casualties.
Bombings?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad bombing in the Al Waleed neighborhood that wounded 3 people, a Baghdad explosion in the downtown square that claimed the lives of 2 (2 more injured), a Baghdad mortar attack that killed 1 Iraqi (2 more injured), a Baghdad explosion that killed 1 Iraqi soldier (2 more wounded), a bombing outside of Baghdad that wounded two en route to the capital, a Baghdad bombing ("in Bab Al Muathim neighborhood downtown") that claimed 2 lives (6 more injured), two corpses in Baghdad exploded as police attempted to move them and 5 police officers injured in a Kirkuk bombing. Reuters notes a bombing near Ramadi that claimed the lives of 3 police officers (15 more wounded). CBS and AP report "gunmen stormed the house of the Sunni mayor of Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, forcing the family members outside, then blowing up the house, the police officials said."
Shootings?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports an Iraqi police officer wounded in a Baghdad shooting, "Gunmen exploded two houses of displaced families in Al Khalis town early morning today," a Khalis attack on a minu bus that left 2 Iraqis dead (2 more wounded), a Khalis shooting that left 2 Iraqis dead, a Bob Al Muathim attack where 3 police officers were shot dead and a Kirkuk attack in which a police officer was shot dead -- dropping back to yesterday, Laith Hammoudi also notes that an Iraqi civilian was killed by "British forces [who] opened fire targeting a taxi" in Baghdad. Reuters notes that today a police officer was shot dead in Hawija.
Corpses?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 26 corpses discovered in Baghdad. Reuters notes that a corpse was discovered in Tikrit.
In the US, Peter Speigel (Los Angeles Times) reports, the US army missed their target for recruitment last month "marking the first time in almost two years the service has fallen short and renewing questions about whether the war in Iraq is having a long-term effect on the well being of the Army." This announcement comes as the US Department of Defense "expressed hope today [Monday] that a provision in the stalled immigration bill that would have allowed some undocumented aliens to join the military won't fall off the radar screen."
In media news, as independent media continues to be under attack, News Dissector Danny Schechter's "Special Blog: Can Our Media Channel Survive?" announces the potential fate of
Mediachannel.org which may shut down: "If we can get 1500 of our readers (that means you) to give $25, we can keep going for another quarter. [PLEASE CLICK HERE TO MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION ONLINE]"
Finally, independent journalist John Pilger is on a speaking tour with his new book Freedom Next Time and his documentary Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror (which looks at DC, Afghanistan and Iraq). June 13th finds him in San Francisco showing his film and discussing his book at Yerba Beuna Center for Arts (beginning at 7:00 pm, doors open at 6:00 pm) and the price of admission is $15 general and $5 for students. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, and KPFA, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. For ticket information, call 415-978-2787 or order online at http://www.ybca.org/. In person tickets at YBCA Box office located inside the Galleries and Forum Building, 701 Mission Street at Third. (Hours: Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat & Sun: noon - 5 pm; Thu: noon - 8 pm.) For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, email pilgersf@gmail.com." From San Francisco, he moves on to Chicago for the 2007 Socialism conference. At 11:30 am Saturday June 16th, he and Anthony Arnove will participate in a conversation, audience dialogue and book signing (Arnove is the author most recently of IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal) and that evening (still June 16th) at 7:30 Pilger will be at Chicago Crowne Plaza O'Hare (5440 North River Road, Rosemont, IL 60018) as part of a panel of international activists. To attend the conference, the fee is $85. For Saturday and Sunday only, the price is $70. To attend only one session, the cost is ten dollars. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. Co-sponsors: Obrera Socialista, Socialist Worker, International Socialist Review, and Haymarket Books. For ticket information, call 773-583-8665 or e-mail info@socialismconference.org For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org. For more information, email info@socialismconference.org." The Socialism 2007 conference will take place in Chicago from June 14-17. Along with Pilger and Arnove, others participating will include Dahr Jamail, Laura Flanders, Kelly Dougherty, Joshua Frank, Amy Goodman, Sharon Smith, Dave Zirin, Camilo Mejia, Jeremy Scahill, Jeffrey St. Clair and many others.
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the daily jot
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mikey likes it
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iraq
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iraq veterans against the war
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the washington postjoshua partlow
tina susman
norman solomon
matthew rothschild
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
Danny Schechter, Third Estate Sunday Review
Bah-dah, bah-da-dah, Monday, Monday. :D Well, it's Monday, I'm tired. How about you? I'm also trying to plan this weekend and need to head over to my grandfather's to make sure we're set on the time. But I'm blogging first because I'll probably end up hanging around and talking with him about other things.
I could just do The Third Estate Sunday Review but I saw this Saturday and almost got online to do a post but didn't have any time. It's a pretty important article and I'm afraid if I don't note some of it tonight, I'll forget by tomorrow. This is from Danny Schechter's "Is There a 'Foxification' Underway at Al Jazeera Television?:"
Sources inside Al Jazeera who are in a position to know what is going on now confirm to MediaChannel.org that there is an internal struggle underway that may dilute Al Jazeera’s independence and steer it in a more pro-western, pro-US direction.
"There is already a change of tone and focus in the news," a veteran insider reveals. He blames the shift on a reorganization of the network's governing structure a month ago that has put a former Ambassador from Qatar to the USA in a commanding position.
Al Jazeera broadcasts from a state of the art facility in Doha, the capital of Qatar, a wealthy independent state run by an Emir who has, until this point, remained close friends with the US while allowing Al Jazeera its independence.
"Nobody is talking about it publicly and nothing is quite clear yet but it looks like there is new pressure from the government of Qatar [the oil and natural gas rich Gulf state that bankrolled Al Jazeera], as well as a political battle over how to manage the channel inside its government with the US and its supporters, including the editor of the Arabic edition of Newsweek, lobbying in the shadows."
The United States is a major trading partner with Qatar and maintains a vast military facility there. The high profile Coalition Media (ie.propaganda) Center was based in the country, and the Pentagon has used the base airfield to supply the war effort in Iraq. Lebanese sources report that US planes airlifted cluster bombs from that base to Israel for use in its recent war against Hezbollah. Israel's relations with Qatar are said to be close.
Washington and London were never happy with Al Jazeera's political independence. Its offices in Afghanistan and Iraq were bombed in the early days of the war, and more recently there have been reports that President Bush considered bombing Al Jazeera's headquarters in Doha, but was only stopped by a strong dissent by Britain's Tony Blair. Al Jazeera has been denied access by the British government to documents that would confirm this widely reported (and believed) story that has also been officially dismissed.
"You don't need to bomb Al Jazeera to change its direction," said my source. "There is a softer way to influence its direction by taking it over from within and it can happen quietly almost as if in slow motion. You 'broaden' some programs, announce new 'guidelines,' issue new edicts reinforcing top-down control, purge some professionals you don't like, and then give more positive unchallenged airtime to backers of US foreign policy. Washington would not be open about any behind the scenes role it is playing in all this for fear of triggering a very negative public reaction."
And that's how they do it, that's how they take control. All of our media gets dumbed down, all around the world, it's not specific to this country, it's all around the world. Again, I think that's a really important article and I hope you read it.
Now here's new content at The Third Estate Sunday Review:
Truest statement of the week -- this is about Our Modern Day Carrie Nations. It's a strong statement and we all loved it.
Truest statement of the week II -- a lot of people e-mailed in asking for this and my dad also wanted it. It wouldn't have happened if we weren't so short for time and some of the stuff we'd worked on hadn't made it online. But we were short on time and everyone was nodding off so Dona told C.I. (it's C.I.'s statement) that we either note it, or we all have to write another piece. C.I. said "Fine, go with it."
A Note to Our Readers -- Jim's note and I think it's really good. He'd told me that I'd win this week because he was tired and was just going to toss out a few sentences. He didn't do that. The note is Jim's forum and I think it's one of the most underrated features. Even before I was helping out, even before I was blogging!, when I didn't know any of them other than reading online, I would look forward to Ava and C.I.'s TV reviews and Jim's note.
Editorial: The Thrice Screwed Adam Kokesh -- This is one of my favorite editorials. I think we did a really good job on this.
TV: Creature Crap -- OMG. I hadn't seen the show. I have my TV on while I'm writing and this show is just awful (Creature Comforts). Ava and C.I. captured it perfectly. How did that crap ever make it to TV? It's so not funny. But Ava and C.I.'s review is so be sure to read it.
Liam Madden -- This is another thing I'm really proud of. And Wally, Ty, C.I. and me could write from eye witness accounts. We almost didn't make it there. And some guy was doing an introduction (finishing it) when we finally got near the conference. But I'm really proud of this and glad we did it. I think this was a strong edition. I'm reading over it as I write and I knew Ava and C.I. had another strong TV commentary but I wasn't sure what the rest was like. I know when we lost some pieces, we were all feeling the edition was going to be thin but it really does hold up and I think it's really strong. This article is one reason.
Get America Out Of Iraq -- This is another reason. I think we did a really good job here. This wasn't a planned feature but C.I. was back home and opening mail during the writing session. Everybody starts talking about the bumper sticker and we (Elaine, Rebecca, Cedric, Wally, Betty and me) are going "What?" (We're contributing by phone.) So they start describing it and someone, Dona I think, says we need to do a feature on this. So we're looking at the Democratic presidential candidates and what (if anything) they're offering on Iraq.
The Nation Stats -- Katrina vanden Heuvel: destroying women's rights one issue at a time.
Caged Tepid -- AlterPunky got busted. This is our humorous take on it. We were on the fence about whether or not to write the fiction edition this week or not. We went ahead and wrote this and then decided what to do? The fiction edition may be next week and, if not, it will be the week after.
Wait! Dahr's not Canadian! -- Another short piece and so great that it's already been ripped off. (I should say, "C.I.'s been ripped off" because it's mainly just C.I.'s snapshot from May 29th.)
Socialism 2007, Chicago, June 14-17th -- this is the thing we're taking my grandfather to this weekend.
Highlights -- Betty, Rebecca, Elaine, Cedric, Wally and me wrote this.
This is who worked on the edition above:
The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and Jim,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz,
and Wally of The Daily Jot
Be sure to read Kat's "Kat's Korner: Summertime Hammond" and "Ruth's Report" which are both amazing. Ari Hest was amazing and I'll write about that tomorrow.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Monday, June 11, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces the deaths of more US service members, bridge bombings continue (and only one reporter notes the strategic importance behind the bombings), The Poetic Ravings of Puppet al-Maliki, and more.
Starting with war resistance. "In the current environment have you seen a lot of resistance to this war among enlisted men, among officers, among young people?" Michael Ratner asked on WBAI's Law and Disorder today (the program streams online and also airs on other radio stations across the country). "It's interesting," Tod Ensign answered, "This is a good time to talk about it. Because until about a year ago, the Pentagon was claiming that there was not an uptake, there was not an increase in desertions, for example. If you accept their figures as, you know, somewhat accurate, that seemed to be the case -- that the three years before . . . we invaded Iraq had higher desertion rates than the three years after. However, this last year, there's been a pretty substantial increase in the number of desertions and I would say it's increased by at least fifty percent. So that would suggest that, you know, soldiers, to some extent, are voting with their feet. Now, of course, the military always says, 'You know a lot of deserters are driven by family problems or financial issues or they just can't stomach the military" which of course is true, in some cases. But I do think there is an increase in the attitude among soldiers, especially guys that have already served over there that this is an endless war and there's nothing to be gained by them going back again."
And demonstrating how right Ensign is, Nancy Montgomery filed two stories on this subject yesterday for Star and Stripes. In her first article, Montgomery noted that the US army states 3,300 is the desertion figure for the last year and that "a news report in April citing Army statistics said more deserters were facing courts-martial than in previous years. But [Maj. Anne] Edgecomb said that of deserters outprocessed at Fort Knox, Ky., where many U.S. Army Europse soldiers who desert end up, 70 percent are administratively discharged."
In both articles, Montgomery notes the Military Counseling Network in Germany which notes the following conditions usually prevent criminal charges: "they must not be on a deployment list; they must not have pending actions against them under the Uniform Code of Military Justice; they have to make it back to the U.S. before 30 days, when an arrest warrant is issued; and they should turn themselves in after 30 days when they've been dropped from their unit's rolls to one of two personnel control centers, Fort Knox or Fort Sill, Okla." In both article, Montgomery reports on 23-year-old Chris Capps who made the decision to self-checkout, "flew to the States and stayed in New York City until he knew he had been dropped from his unit's rolls. After that, Capps said, his commander had no authority over him. Capps turned himself in at Fort Sill. In fewer than four days, he was out of the Army, with an other-than-honorable discharge." Capps explains to Montgomery that he didn't try for Conscientious Objector status because he isn't opposed to all wars and because he "knew a soldier in his battalion who sought and won CO status and didn't want to go through the process. 'The chain of command treated him like [crap],' Capps said." Montogmery's second article focuses more on CO status and includes Vincent La Volpa who was awarded CO status and discharged honorably "in 2005 with a Purple Heart earned during his Iraq tour" whose statements on his CO decision include: "I contemplated the cause and its value. Feeling that the means was not worth the sacrifice for the uncertain end. I felt that I had to make a decision. Am I for this or am I against it? I decided I am against it." In the second article, Montgomery notes MCN's Michael Sharp whoe explains that in 2006, they were dealing with "eight to 10 nes cases monthly" of enlisted needing advice about discharges and that has gone up to "15 to 20" a month.
Also covering the topic yesterday was Heather Wokusch (OpEdNews) who covers the cases of Kyle D. Huwer, Clifton F. Hicks and "John" (a psuedonym). John self-checked out and is back in the US avoiding his family ("avid Bush-supporters; his uncle works for a weapons manufacturer and his stepfather, for an oil company") but has some contact with his girlfriend "Sarah" who notes the difference between media in Germany and in the US, "Watching the news here [US] really makes me angry, people are so detached from reality. They increse the troop deployments from 12 to 15 months, and no one besides the military families recognizes it. They are sending back national guard people for multiple deployments, no one recognizes it. You hardly hear anything about what that puts on the families, emotionally and financially. I'm deeply mad and sad about that at the same time."
John explains to Wokusch the transformation he had while serving in Iraq and notes, "It was not what I was expecting at all. There are people in Iraq making HUGE sums of money profiting over poorly supervised and ill-run government contracts. When you hear about the cost of the war in Iraq, it's this kind of thing that's doing it, not the body armor, having to pay the soliders a couple of meager extra bucks, or armoring the humvees. It's paying KBP $90 for every time I turn in my laundry while paying poor Pakistani and Filipino workers who work long hours with no days off for years at a time (and handling thousands of bags of laundry) $15 a day." [Note: Heather Wokusch's article also contains an audio-visual stream option.]
Clifton Hicks is now discharged and some may remember his story from Peter Laufer's
Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq. In the book Laufer recounts how Hicks father posted one his son's letters home (from Iraq) online and the military's response was "a Field Grade Article 15" (p. 185) which Hicks learned after his woke him up one morning kicking his cot and, pay attention easily shocked Heather Hollingsworth-types, cursing at him. "They were going to throw me in jail for treason." After he was demoted to private and fined $800, Hicks applied for CO status. Hicks told Laufer, "If I don't get it? I have other avenues of approach to get home. I've told them I am not going back to Iraq" and would rather go to prison but "[i]t won't come to that, though, because I think I'm too smart for that to happen to me. Civil disobedience is an option -- just refuse to put the uniform on. Maybe a hunger strike. There's all kinds of things you can do. It's looking like they'll approve it. But if they don't, I have Plan B, Plan C, all the way up to desertion" (p. 187). Laufer's chapter on Hicks ends with Hicks being told he will receive CO status and a discharge. [Reminder, Laufer now hosts a two hour program each Sunday morning on KPFA from 9:00 to 11:00 am PST. The program is not yet named -- though it is airing -- and Laufer's program airs in Larry Bensky's old time slot.]
The movement of resistance within the US military grows and includes Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Care, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty 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, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
On today's Law and Disorder, Todd Ensign noted that Iraq Veterans Against the War has "a chapter up at Fort Drum which is where we have our coffee house [Different Drumer Cafe] and that's the first on base chapter of IVAW that I'm aware of." Dalia Hashad asked him where Fort Drum was and Ensign responded "about sixty miles straight north of Syracuse, almost to the Canadian border and most New Yorkers know it as a reserve base; however, under Reagan it was turned into an active infantry base. Now it's the most heavily deployed division in the US army. It's a very active combat infantry base."
Dalia Hashad: Can you explain for people who don't know what the coffee house is? Or how it came about?
Todd Ensign: Good question. During the Vietnam war, those of us who are older -- in the older generation recall there were over 20 coffee houses that were formed mostly by civilians initially at or near US military bases -- army and marine bases and navy and airforce too. And these were very important in building the GI movement and building the opposition to the war within the ranks. They had an enormous impact. There's a very fine documentary called Sir! No Sir! that some of your listeners have probably seen that tells that story and it's really pretty amazing to realize that those coffeehouses were often largely run and staffed by soldiers, active duty soldiers".
[Mike notes Law and Disorder each week at his site and, here, we'll also probably pick up more from the interview later in the week. Attorneys (and activists) Dalia Hashad, Michael Ratner, Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith host the one hour radio program.]
The attempts to silence Iraq Veterans Against the War's Adam Kokesh, Cloy Richards and Liam Madden (as well as others) from speaking out continues. War resister Stephen Funk (who announced his refusal to deploy to Iraq in April 2003) writes (The Huffington Post) about Kokesh and observes, "If Sgt. Kokesh wanted to play it safe, he would have waited to protest until after June 18th, when he was scheduled to be discharged from the Individual Ready Reserve. At that point he would no longer be held accountable to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. But the anniversary of the war happened to fall earlier in the year, and true patriots do not wait until it is convenient or safe to act upon their beliefs. That the military would charge someone so close to discharge with misconduct for such a minor indiscretion shows how desperate they are to contain the emerging antiwar voices among their ranks as discontent with the war continues to rise." Kokesh is specifically targeted for engaging in street theater, Operation First Casualty. [Language warning] Jeff Mullins (The Brooklyn Rail) takes a look at Operation First Casualty and notes that it "is modeled after the Vietnam-era protest action Operation Rapid American Withdrawal that took place in Pennsylvania during the summer of 1970. This variation came out of a brainstorming session among the Washington D.C. chapter of IVAW earlier this year. The vets felt 'tired of just being part of other people's protest,' explained Adam Kokesh, a member of the D.C. chapter. IVAW, a national veterans organization founded in July of 2004, performed the first Operation First Casualty in D.C. this past March." Michael Borkson (Boston IMC) has posted video and photos from Liam Madden's press conference last Thursday (covered in Friday's snapshot, text can also be found in this write up we did at The Third Estate Sunday Review).
While some try to end the illegal war, others are eager for it to continue and the US military is yet again attempting to sell a technique as a "plan." John F. Burns and Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) reported this morning on what the US military wants to call the "Anbar model." The thinking is that al-Anbar Province has been a success and the 'plan' that has worked so well there can be exported to other areas. The technique involves attempting to bring Sunni fighters into the process. The reality is this is nonsense for several reasons. al-Anbar is not at peace (even with all the greased palms of tribal leaders by the US military), it was where 10% of last month's US service member fatalities took place, it is where chlorine bombs explode and it only looks like a 'success' because putting all the US military into Baghdad for the lastest version of the year-long-and-ongoing 'crackdown' didn't do a damn bit of good. By comparison to Baghdad, al-Anbar suddenly looks like a 'winner.' In other news from the land of crazy, John F. Burns (New York Times) reported Saturday on puppet of the occupation, Nouri al-Maliki, who either fancies himself a reborn beat poet or needs to check his meds -- al-Maliki knows his enemies are all over (including Ayad Alawi) and describes them -- Woody Allen couldn't have written a bigger laugh getting line in Bananas -- as "a black ant on a black rock on a dark night."
While someone checks the puppet's dosage, violence continued across Iraq today. As noted many times, the bombings of the bridges is not accidental and it's rarely covered. There were two bridge bombings in the last 24 hours. The one near Mahmudiya resulted in the US military releasing this statement: "Three Coalition Force Soldiers were killed and six were wounded when the checkpoint they were manning was struck by a suicide car bomb south of Baghdad near Mahmoudiya June 10. An interpreter was also wounded in the attack, which destroyed part of a highway overpass. All the wounded were evacuated to Coalition medical facilities for treatment." ICCC's current total for US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war is 3512. Al Jazeera notes US military spokesperson Christopher Garver who says, "The checkpoint was damaged by the explosion, as was the bridge. The force of the explosion dropped part of the span but it did not fall on anybody." Oh really? CBS and AP note private contractor Donald Campbell stating that he and others "worked with a U.S. army quick reaction force for some 45 minutes to pull trapped men from the rubble, scrambling over the fallen concrete" and CBS and AP note: "At one point, a Bradley armored vehicle with a tow chain pulled a slab off a pinned victime to free him. Then a shot went up, 'Morphine! Morphine!' and a black T-shirt-clad Briton administered painkillers to the freed man" while one person was reportedly crushed by the falling 'span.'
That bombing took place late Sunday. Reuters notes one today in the Diyala province where "a major bridge" was blown up. Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) is the only one currently noting, "The bombing of this bridge will make the residents of the North eastern parts of the province take one route through the violent city of Baqouba to go to Baghdad, residents said." That is, after all the point, and has been. The bridge bombings have a point and a strategy.
In other violence today . . .
Bombings?
Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports the heavily fortified Green Zone was again mortar attacked, while two other Baghdad mortar attacks left 7 Iraqis injured, a Baghdad explosion at Al Wathiq square left 3 wounded and a Diyala explosion claimed the life of 1 Iraqi soldier (2 more wounded). Reuters reports a Samarra roadside bombing that claimed the lives of 2 police officers (three more wounded),
Shootings?
Reuters reports a home invasion in Mosul where 4 women and 1 man were shot dead, a Hawija drive-by shooting that killed 1 Iraq (2 wounded) and the central bank of Mosul's general director, Khaireddine Ahmed, was shot dead along with two bodyguards.
Corpses?
Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 17 corpses discovered in Baghdad.
In other media news, as independent media continues to be under attack, News Dissector Danny Schechter's "Special Blog: Can Our Media Channel Survive?" announces the potential fate of Mediachannel.org which may shut down: "If we can get 1500 of our readers (that means you) to give $25, we can keep going for another quarter. [PLEASE CLICK HERE TO MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION ONLINE]"
Finally, independent journalist John Pilger is on a speaking tour with his new book Freedom Next Time and his documentary Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror (which looks at DC, Afghanistan and Iraq). June 11th, Pilger will be in Los Angeles at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center (244 S. San Pedro St.) and will discuss his book and show his documentary beginning at 7:00 pm (doors open at 6:00 pm). The price of admission to the even is five dollars. "Directions, maps, and parking info at: http://www.jaccc.org/directions.htmPresented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, and The Nation Institute, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. For ticket information, call or visit the JACCC. Box office: 213-680-3700 (Box Office Hours: Monday - Saturday: Noon - 5 pm)For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, email pilger.la@gmail.com."June 13th finds him in San Francisco showing his film and discussing his book at Yerba Beuna Center for Arts (beginning at 7:00 pm, doors open at 6:00 pm) and the price of admission is $15 general and $5 for students. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, and KPFA, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. For ticket information, call 415-978-2787 or order online at http://www.ybca.org/. In person tickets at YBCA Box office located inside the Galleries and Forum Building, 701 Mission Street at Third. (Hours: Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat & Sun: noon - 5 pm; Thu: noon - 8 pm.) For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, email pilgersf@gmail.com."From San Francisco, he moves on to Chicago for the 2007 Socialism conference. At 11:30 am Saturday June 16th, he and Anthony Arnove will participate in a conversation, audience dialogue and book signing (Arnove is the author most recently of IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal) and that evening (still June 16th) at 7:30 Pilger will be at Chicago Crowne Plaza O'Hare (5440 North River Road, Rosemont, IL 60018) as part of a panel of international activists. To attend the conference, the fee is $85. For Saturday and Sunday only, the price is $70. To attend only one session, the cost is ten dollars. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. Co-sponsors: Obrera Socialista, Socialist Worker, International Socialist Review, and Haymarket Books. For ticket information, call 773-583-8665 or e-mail info@socialismconference.org For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org. For more information, email info@socialismconference.org."The Socialism 2007 conference will take place in Chicago from June 14-17. Along with Pilger and Arnove, others participating will include Dahr Jamail, Laura Flanders, Kelly Dougherty, Joshua Frank, Amy Goodman, Sharon Smith, Dave Zirin, Camilo Mejia, Jeremy Scahill, Jeffrey St. Clair and many others.
danny schechter
the common ills
like maria said paz
kats korner
sex and politics and screeds and attitude
the daily jot
cedrics big mix
mikey likes it
thomas friedman is a great man
the third estate sunday review
iraq
liam madden
adam kokeshiraq veterans against the war
wbailaw and disordertod ensign
michael ratnermichael smithdalia hashad
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mikey likes it
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the new york timesjohn f. burnsalissa j. rubin
I could just do The Third Estate Sunday Review but I saw this Saturday and almost got online to do a post but didn't have any time. It's a pretty important article and I'm afraid if I don't note some of it tonight, I'll forget by tomorrow. This is from Danny Schechter's "Is There a 'Foxification' Underway at Al Jazeera Television?:"
Sources inside Al Jazeera who are in a position to know what is going on now confirm to MediaChannel.org that there is an internal struggle underway that may dilute Al Jazeera’s independence and steer it in a more pro-western, pro-US direction.
"There is already a change of tone and focus in the news," a veteran insider reveals. He blames the shift on a reorganization of the network's governing structure a month ago that has put a former Ambassador from Qatar to the USA in a commanding position.
Al Jazeera broadcasts from a state of the art facility in Doha, the capital of Qatar, a wealthy independent state run by an Emir who has, until this point, remained close friends with the US while allowing Al Jazeera its independence.
"Nobody is talking about it publicly and nothing is quite clear yet but it looks like there is new pressure from the government of Qatar [the oil and natural gas rich Gulf state that bankrolled Al Jazeera], as well as a political battle over how to manage the channel inside its government with the US and its supporters, including the editor of the Arabic edition of Newsweek, lobbying in the shadows."
The United States is a major trading partner with Qatar and maintains a vast military facility there. The high profile Coalition Media (ie.propaganda) Center was based in the country, and the Pentagon has used the base airfield to supply the war effort in Iraq. Lebanese sources report that US planes airlifted cluster bombs from that base to Israel for use in its recent war against Hezbollah. Israel's relations with Qatar are said to be close.
Washington and London were never happy with Al Jazeera's political independence. Its offices in Afghanistan and Iraq were bombed in the early days of the war, and more recently there have been reports that President Bush considered bombing Al Jazeera's headquarters in Doha, but was only stopped by a strong dissent by Britain's Tony Blair. Al Jazeera has been denied access by the British government to documents that would confirm this widely reported (and believed) story that has also been officially dismissed.
"You don't need to bomb Al Jazeera to change its direction," said my source. "There is a softer way to influence its direction by taking it over from within and it can happen quietly almost as if in slow motion. You 'broaden' some programs, announce new 'guidelines,' issue new edicts reinforcing top-down control, purge some professionals you don't like, and then give more positive unchallenged airtime to backers of US foreign policy. Washington would not be open about any behind the scenes role it is playing in all this for fear of triggering a very negative public reaction."
And that's how they do it, that's how they take control. All of our media gets dumbed down, all around the world, it's not specific to this country, it's all around the world. Again, I think that's a really important article and I hope you read it.
Now here's new content at The Third Estate Sunday Review:
Truest statement of the week -- this is about Our Modern Day Carrie Nations. It's a strong statement and we all loved it.
Truest statement of the week II -- a lot of people e-mailed in asking for this and my dad also wanted it. It wouldn't have happened if we weren't so short for time and some of the stuff we'd worked on hadn't made it online. But we were short on time and everyone was nodding off so Dona told C.I. (it's C.I.'s statement) that we either note it, or we all have to write another piece. C.I. said "Fine, go with it."
A Note to Our Readers -- Jim's note and I think it's really good. He'd told me that I'd win this week because he was tired and was just going to toss out a few sentences. He didn't do that. The note is Jim's forum and I think it's one of the most underrated features. Even before I was helping out, even before I was blogging!, when I didn't know any of them other than reading online, I would look forward to Ava and C.I.'s TV reviews and Jim's note.
Editorial: The Thrice Screwed Adam Kokesh -- This is one of my favorite editorials. I think we did a really good job on this.
TV: Creature Crap -- OMG. I hadn't seen the show. I have my TV on while I'm writing and this show is just awful (Creature Comforts). Ava and C.I. captured it perfectly. How did that crap ever make it to TV? It's so not funny. But Ava and C.I.'s review is so be sure to read it.
Liam Madden -- This is another thing I'm really proud of. And Wally, Ty, C.I. and me could write from eye witness accounts. We almost didn't make it there. And some guy was doing an introduction (finishing it) when we finally got near the conference. But I'm really proud of this and glad we did it. I think this was a strong edition. I'm reading over it as I write and I knew Ava and C.I. had another strong TV commentary but I wasn't sure what the rest was like. I know when we lost some pieces, we were all feeling the edition was going to be thin but it really does hold up and I think it's really strong. This article is one reason.
Get America Out Of Iraq -- This is another reason. I think we did a really good job here. This wasn't a planned feature but C.I. was back home and opening mail during the writing session. Everybody starts talking about the bumper sticker and we (Elaine, Rebecca, Cedric, Wally, Betty and me) are going "What?" (We're contributing by phone.) So they start describing it and someone, Dona I think, says we need to do a feature on this. So we're looking at the Democratic presidential candidates and what (if anything) they're offering on Iraq.
The Nation Stats -- Katrina vanden Heuvel: destroying women's rights one issue at a time.
Caged Tepid -- AlterPunky got busted. This is our humorous take on it. We were on the fence about whether or not to write the fiction edition this week or not. We went ahead and wrote this and then decided what to do? The fiction edition may be next week and, if not, it will be the week after.
Wait! Dahr's not Canadian! -- Another short piece and so great that it's already been ripped off. (I should say, "C.I.'s been ripped off" because it's mainly just C.I.'s snapshot from May 29th.)
Socialism 2007, Chicago, June 14-17th -- this is the thing we're taking my grandfather to this weekend.
Highlights -- Betty, Rebecca, Elaine, Cedric, Wally and me wrote this.
This is who worked on the edition above:
The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and Jim,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz,
and Wally of The Daily Jot
Be sure to read Kat's "Kat's Korner: Summertime Hammond" and "Ruth's Report" which are both amazing. Ari Hest was amazing and I'll write about that tomorrow.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Monday, June 11, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces the deaths of more US service members, bridge bombings continue (and only one reporter notes the strategic importance behind the bombings), The Poetic Ravings of Puppet al-Maliki, and more.
Starting with war resistance. "In the current environment have you seen a lot of resistance to this war among enlisted men, among officers, among young people?" Michael Ratner asked on WBAI's Law and Disorder today (the program streams online and also airs on other radio stations across the country). "It's interesting," Tod Ensign answered, "This is a good time to talk about it. Because until about a year ago, the Pentagon was claiming that there was not an uptake, there was not an increase in desertions, for example. If you accept their figures as, you know, somewhat accurate, that seemed to be the case -- that the three years before . . . we invaded Iraq had higher desertion rates than the three years after. However, this last year, there's been a pretty substantial increase in the number of desertions and I would say it's increased by at least fifty percent. So that would suggest that, you know, soldiers, to some extent, are voting with their feet. Now, of course, the military always says, 'You know a lot of deserters are driven by family problems or financial issues or they just can't stomach the military" which of course is true, in some cases. But I do think there is an increase in the attitude among soldiers, especially guys that have already served over there that this is an endless war and there's nothing to be gained by them going back again."
And demonstrating how right Ensign is, Nancy Montgomery filed two stories on this subject yesterday for Star and Stripes. In her first article, Montgomery noted that the US army states 3,300 is the desertion figure for the last year and that "a news report in April citing Army statistics said more deserters were facing courts-martial than in previous years. But [Maj. Anne] Edgecomb said that of deserters outprocessed at Fort Knox, Ky., where many U.S. Army Europse soldiers who desert end up, 70 percent are administratively discharged."
In both articles, Montgomery notes the Military Counseling Network in Germany which notes the following conditions usually prevent criminal charges: "they must not be on a deployment list; they must not have pending actions against them under the Uniform Code of Military Justice; they have to make it back to the U.S. before 30 days, when an arrest warrant is issued; and they should turn themselves in after 30 days when they've been dropped from their unit's rolls to one of two personnel control centers, Fort Knox or Fort Sill, Okla." In both article, Montgomery reports on 23-year-old Chris Capps who made the decision to self-checkout, "flew to the States and stayed in New York City until he knew he had been dropped from his unit's rolls. After that, Capps said, his commander had no authority over him. Capps turned himself in at Fort Sill. In fewer than four days, he was out of the Army, with an other-than-honorable discharge." Capps explains to Montgomery that he didn't try for Conscientious Objector status because he isn't opposed to all wars and because he "knew a soldier in his battalion who sought and won CO status and didn't want to go through the process. 'The chain of command treated him like [crap],' Capps said." Montogmery's second article focuses more on CO status and includes Vincent La Volpa who was awarded CO status and discharged honorably "in 2005 with a Purple Heart earned during his Iraq tour" whose statements on his CO decision include: "I contemplated the cause and its value. Feeling that the means was not worth the sacrifice for the uncertain end. I felt that I had to make a decision. Am I for this or am I against it? I decided I am against it." In the second article, Montgomery notes MCN's Michael Sharp whoe explains that in 2006, they were dealing with "eight to 10 nes cases monthly" of enlisted needing advice about discharges and that has gone up to "15 to 20" a month.
Also covering the topic yesterday was Heather Wokusch (OpEdNews) who covers the cases of Kyle D. Huwer, Clifton F. Hicks and "John" (a psuedonym). John self-checked out and is back in the US avoiding his family ("avid Bush-supporters; his uncle works for a weapons manufacturer and his stepfather, for an oil company") but has some contact with his girlfriend "Sarah" who notes the difference between media in Germany and in the US, "Watching the news here [US] really makes me angry, people are so detached from reality. They increse the troop deployments from 12 to 15 months, and no one besides the military families recognizes it. They are sending back national guard people for multiple deployments, no one recognizes it. You hardly hear anything about what that puts on the families, emotionally and financially. I'm deeply mad and sad about that at the same time."
John explains to Wokusch the transformation he had while serving in Iraq and notes, "It was not what I was expecting at all. There are people in Iraq making HUGE sums of money profiting over poorly supervised and ill-run government contracts. When you hear about the cost of the war in Iraq, it's this kind of thing that's doing it, not the body armor, having to pay the soliders a couple of meager extra bucks, or armoring the humvees. It's paying KBP $90 for every time I turn in my laundry while paying poor Pakistani and Filipino workers who work long hours with no days off for years at a time (and handling thousands of bags of laundry) $15 a day." [Note: Heather Wokusch's article also contains an audio-visual stream option.]
Clifton Hicks is now discharged and some may remember his story from Peter Laufer's
Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq. In the book Laufer recounts how Hicks father posted one his son's letters home (from Iraq) online and the military's response was "a Field Grade Article 15" (p. 185) which Hicks learned after his woke him up one morning kicking his cot and, pay attention easily shocked Heather Hollingsworth-types, cursing at him. "They were going to throw me in jail for treason." After he was demoted to private and fined $800, Hicks applied for CO status. Hicks told Laufer, "If I don't get it? I have other avenues of approach to get home. I've told them I am not going back to Iraq" and would rather go to prison but "[i]t won't come to that, though, because I think I'm too smart for that to happen to me. Civil disobedience is an option -- just refuse to put the uniform on. Maybe a hunger strike. There's all kinds of things you can do. It's looking like they'll approve it. But if they don't, I have Plan B, Plan C, all the way up to desertion" (p. 187). Laufer's chapter on Hicks ends with Hicks being told he will receive CO status and a discharge. [Reminder, Laufer now hosts a two hour program each Sunday morning on KPFA from 9:00 to 11:00 am PST. The program is not yet named -- though it is airing -- and Laufer's program airs in Larry Bensky's old time slot.]
The movement of resistance within the US military grows and includes Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Care, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty 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, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
On today's Law and Disorder, Todd Ensign noted that Iraq Veterans Against the War has "a chapter up at Fort Drum which is where we have our coffee house [Different Drumer Cafe] and that's the first on base chapter of IVAW that I'm aware of." Dalia Hashad asked him where Fort Drum was and Ensign responded "about sixty miles straight north of Syracuse, almost to the Canadian border and most New Yorkers know it as a reserve base; however, under Reagan it was turned into an active infantry base. Now it's the most heavily deployed division in the US army. It's a very active combat infantry base."
Dalia Hashad: Can you explain for people who don't know what the coffee house is? Or how it came about?
Todd Ensign: Good question. During the Vietnam war, those of us who are older -- in the older generation recall there were over 20 coffee houses that were formed mostly by civilians initially at or near US military bases -- army and marine bases and navy and airforce too. And these were very important in building the GI movement and building the opposition to the war within the ranks. They had an enormous impact. There's a very fine documentary called Sir! No Sir! that some of your listeners have probably seen that tells that story and it's really pretty amazing to realize that those coffeehouses were often largely run and staffed by soldiers, active duty soldiers".
[Mike notes Law and Disorder each week at his site and, here, we'll also probably pick up more from the interview later in the week. Attorneys (and activists) Dalia Hashad, Michael Ratner, Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith host the one hour radio program.]
The attempts to silence Iraq Veterans Against the War's Adam Kokesh, Cloy Richards and Liam Madden (as well as others) from speaking out continues. War resister Stephen Funk (who announced his refusal to deploy to Iraq in April 2003) writes (The Huffington Post) about Kokesh and observes, "If Sgt. Kokesh wanted to play it safe, he would have waited to protest until after June 18th, when he was scheduled to be discharged from the Individual Ready Reserve. At that point he would no longer be held accountable to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. But the anniversary of the war happened to fall earlier in the year, and true patriots do not wait until it is convenient or safe to act upon their beliefs. That the military would charge someone so close to discharge with misconduct for such a minor indiscretion shows how desperate they are to contain the emerging antiwar voices among their ranks as discontent with the war continues to rise." Kokesh is specifically targeted for engaging in street theater, Operation First Casualty. [Language warning] Jeff Mullins (The Brooklyn Rail) takes a look at Operation First Casualty and notes that it "is modeled after the Vietnam-era protest action Operation Rapid American Withdrawal that took place in Pennsylvania during the summer of 1970. This variation came out of a brainstorming session among the Washington D.C. chapter of IVAW earlier this year. The vets felt 'tired of just being part of other people's protest,' explained Adam Kokesh, a member of the D.C. chapter. IVAW, a national veterans organization founded in July of 2004, performed the first Operation First Casualty in D.C. this past March." Michael Borkson (Boston IMC) has posted video and photos from Liam Madden's press conference last Thursday (covered in Friday's snapshot, text can also be found in this write up we did at The Third Estate Sunday Review).
While some try to end the illegal war, others are eager for it to continue and the US military is yet again attempting to sell a technique as a "plan." John F. Burns and Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) reported this morning on what the US military wants to call the "Anbar model." The thinking is that al-Anbar Province has been a success and the 'plan' that has worked so well there can be exported to other areas. The technique involves attempting to bring Sunni fighters into the process. The reality is this is nonsense for several reasons. al-Anbar is not at peace (even with all the greased palms of tribal leaders by the US military), it was where 10% of last month's US service member fatalities took place, it is where chlorine bombs explode and it only looks like a 'success' because putting all the US military into Baghdad for the lastest version of the year-long-and-ongoing 'crackdown' didn't do a damn bit of good. By comparison to Baghdad, al-Anbar suddenly looks like a 'winner.' In other news from the land of crazy, John F. Burns (New York Times) reported Saturday on puppet of the occupation, Nouri al-Maliki, who either fancies himself a reborn beat poet or needs to check his meds -- al-Maliki knows his enemies are all over (including Ayad Alawi) and describes them -- Woody Allen couldn't have written a bigger laugh getting line in Bananas -- as "a black ant on a black rock on a dark night."
While someone checks the puppet's dosage, violence continued across Iraq today. As noted many times, the bombings of the bridges is not accidental and it's rarely covered. There were two bridge bombings in the last 24 hours. The one near Mahmudiya resulted in the US military releasing this statement: "Three Coalition Force Soldiers were killed and six were wounded when the checkpoint they were manning was struck by a suicide car bomb south of Baghdad near Mahmoudiya June 10. An interpreter was also wounded in the attack, which destroyed part of a highway overpass. All the wounded were evacuated to Coalition medical facilities for treatment." ICCC's current total for US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war is 3512. Al Jazeera notes US military spokesperson Christopher Garver who says, "The checkpoint was damaged by the explosion, as was the bridge. The force of the explosion dropped part of the span but it did not fall on anybody." Oh really? CBS and AP note private contractor Donald Campbell stating that he and others "worked with a U.S. army quick reaction force for some 45 minutes to pull trapped men from the rubble, scrambling over the fallen concrete" and CBS and AP note: "At one point, a Bradley armored vehicle with a tow chain pulled a slab off a pinned victime to free him. Then a shot went up, 'Morphine! Morphine!' and a black T-shirt-clad Briton administered painkillers to the freed man" while one person was reportedly crushed by the falling 'span.'
That bombing took place late Sunday. Reuters notes one today in the Diyala province where "a major bridge" was blown up. Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) is the only one currently noting, "The bombing of this bridge will make the residents of the North eastern parts of the province take one route through the violent city of Baqouba to go to Baghdad, residents said." That is, after all the point, and has been. The bridge bombings have a point and a strategy.
In other violence today . . .
Bombings?
Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports the heavily fortified Green Zone was again mortar attacked, while two other Baghdad mortar attacks left 7 Iraqis injured, a Baghdad explosion at Al Wathiq square left 3 wounded and a Diyala explosion claimed the life of 1 Iraqi soldier (2 more wounded). Reuters reports a Samarra roadside bombing that claimed the lives of 2 police officers (three more wounded),
Shootings?
Reuters reports a home invasion in Mosul where 4 women and 1 man were shot dead, a Hawija drive-by shooting that killed 1 Iraq (2 wounded) and the central bank of Mosul's general director, Khaireddine Ahmed, was shot dead along with two bodyguards.
Corpses?
Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 17 corpses discovered in Baghdad.
In other media news, as independent media continues to be under attack, News Dissector Danny Schechter's "Special Blog: Can Our Media Channel Survive?" announces the potential fate of Mediachannel.org which may shut down: "If we can get 1500 of our readers (that means you) to give $25, we can keep going for another quarter. [PLEASE CLICK HERE TO MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION ONLINE]"
Finally, independent journalist John Pilger is on a speaking tour with his new book Freedom Next Time and his documentary Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror (which looks at DC, Afghanistan and Iraq). June 11th, Pilger will be in Los Angeles at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center (244 S. San Pedro St.) and will discuss his book and show his documentary beginning at 7:00 pm (doors open at 6:00 pm). The price of admission to the even is five dollars. "Directions, maps, and parking info at: http://www.jaccc.org/directions.htmPresented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, and The Nation Institute, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. For ticket information, call or visit the JACCC. Box office: 213-680-3700 (Box Office Hours: Monday - Saturday: Noon - 5 pm)For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, email pilger.la@gmail.com."June 13th finds him in San Francisco showing his film and discussing his book at Yerba Beuna Center for Arts (beginning at 7:00 pm, doors open at 6:00 pm) and the price of admission is $15 general and $5 for students. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, and KPFA, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. For ticket information, call 415-978-2787 or order online at http://www.ybca.org/. In person tickets at YBCA Box office located inside the Galleries and Forum Building, 701 Mission Street at Third. (Hours: Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat & Sun: noon - 5 pm; Thu: noon - 8 pm.) For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, email pilgersf@gmail.com."From San Francisco, he moves on to Chicago for the 2007 Socialism conference. At 11:30 am Saturday June 16th, he and Anthony Arnove will participate in a conversation, audience dialogue and book signing (Arnove is the author most recently of IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal) and that evening (still June 16th) at 7:30 Pilger will be at Chicago Crowne Plaza O'Hare (5440 North River Road, Rosemont, IL 60018) as part of a panel of international activists. To attend the conference, the fee is $85. For Saturday and Sunday only, the price is $70. To attend only one session, the cost is ten dollars. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. Co-sponsors: Obrera Socialista, Socialist Worker, International Socialist Review, and Haymarket Books. For ticket information, call 773-583-8665 or e-mail info@socialismconference.org For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org. For more information, email info@socialismconference.org."The Socialism 2007 conference will take place in Chicago from June 14-17. Along with Pilger and Arnove, others participating will include Dahr Jamail, Laura Flanders, Kelly Dougherty, Joshua Frank, Amy Goodman, Sharon Smith, Dave Zirin, Camilo Mejia, Jeremy Scahill, Jeffrey St. Clair and many others.
danny schechter
the common ills
like maria said paz
kats korner
sex and politics and screeds and attitude
the daily jot
cedrics big mix
mikey likes it
thomas friedman is a great man
the third estate sunday review
iraq
liam madden
adam kokeshiraq veterans against the war
wbailaw and disordertod ensign
michael ratnermichael smithdalia hashad
heidi boghosian
mikey likes it
heather wokuschnancy montgomerystars and stripes
peter laufer
b. colby hamilton
the new york timesjohn f. burnsalissa j. rubin
Friday, June 08, 2007
John Pilger, Dave Lindorff
Friday! At last! The study group's going on but Elaine and I both wanted to break away and post before midnight for a change on Fridays. So what a week, huh?
The 3500 mark got passed. I think it was a sentence or two when it was noted at all. Of course that will be shoved on off on the public -- "WHY DON'T THEY CARE!!!!!" Well, let's see, I got day two of Israel on Democracy Now! today. Wednesday, a discussion on Iraq was a third less than Murray Waas showing his ass on Democracy Now! as he went on and on about Scoots Libby. So you got a line or two during headlines and that was it. The vet walking around California's state house? Not a story. The vet on the federal building in Washington? Not a story. Adam Kokesh, Cloy Richards and Liam Madden? Not a story.
Who's not caring? And Democracy Now!'s probably the best national program there is. So don't say it's about the people not caring. It's about the press not caring. Iraq can "wait," it can always "wait." Day after day, week after week. Hey, it's just an illegal war, right? No need to be concerned. Maybe when 2 million Iraqis are dead or when it's 6,000 US troops killed, someone in the press will give a damn. Maybe not.
John Pilger is on a speaking tour (details in the snapshot) and I thought I'd note some of his
"The British Army Rebels Against PropagandaBy John Pilger:"
"ICH" - --- - -An experienced British officer serving in Iraq has written to the BBC describing the invasion as "illegal, immoral and unwinnable" which, he says, is "the overwhelming feeling of many of my peers". In a letter to the BBC's Newsnight and Medialens.org he accuses the media's "embedded coverage with the US Army" of failing to question "the intentions and continuing effects of the US-led invasion and occupation".
He says most British soldiers regard their tours as "loathsome", during which they "reluctantly [provide] target practice for insurgents, senselessly haemorrhaging casualties and squandering soldiers' lives, as part of Bush's vain attempt to delay the inevitable Anglo-US rout until after the next US election." He appeals to journalists not to swallow "the official line/ White House propaganda".
In 1970, I made a film in Vietnam called The Quiet Mutiny in which GIs spoke out about their hatred of that war and its "official line/White House propaganda". The experiences in Iraq and Vietnam are both very different and strikingly similar. There was much less "embedded coverage" in Vietnam, although there was censorship by omission, which is standard practice today.
What is different about Iraq is the willingness of usually obedient British soldiers to speak their minds, from General Richard Dannatt, Britain's current military chief, who said that the presence of his troops in Iraq "exacerbates the security problem", to General Michael Rose who has called for Tony Blair to be impeached for taking Britain to war "on false grounds" – remarks that are mild compared with the blogs of squaddies.
What is also different is the growing awareness in the British forces and the public of how "the official line" is played through the media. This can be quite crude: for example when a BBC defence correspondent in Iraq described the aim of the Anglo-American invasion as "bring[ing] democracy and human rights" to Iraq. The Director of BBC Television, Helen Boaden, backed him up with a sheaf of quotations from Blair that this was indeed the aim, implying that Blair's notorious word was enough.
More often than not, censorship by omission is employed: for example, by omitting the fact that almost 80 per cent of attacks are directed against the occupation forces (source: the Pentagon) so as to give the impression that the occupiers are doing their best to separate "warring tribes" and are crisis managers rather than the cause of the crisis.
That's the BBC and we know how bad things are here (US). Where's the outrage? Clamped down by the nonsense media. Bully Boy is a war criminal and he and Dick Cheney should be impeached. If you agree, you'll enjoy this from Dave Lindorff's "A Criminal Conspiracy in the White House:"
Down the shore yesterday, as we say in Philly, I was body surfing in the Atlantic and it got me to thinking.
On the East Coast, where the prevailing winds are offshore, the surf tends to be pretty tame, and Thursday was no exception, with the biggest waves cresting at perhaps three feet. Nonetheless, these little combers were able to send my prone body racing 100 feet toward the beach at a good clip.
There's a lot of energy packed in even a small wave.
Just so with impeachment, where a wave is slowly building for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney.
Since Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) filed his impeachment bill against Cheney back April 24, five other members of the House have signed on as co-sponsors, most recently Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. She joins Reps. Yvette Clarke (D-NY), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL and chief deputy whip of the House), William Lacy Clay (D-IL) and Albert Wynn (D-MD) as co-sponsors of H. Res. 333.
Flash Update! Just to make the point about how this wave is building, shortly after I filed this piece, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), another co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus, signed on as a co-sponsor of H.Res. 333. Cheney has to be starting to sweat...
Kucinich's bill is narrowly focused on Cheney's criminal role in lying the nation into an illegal invasion of Iraq, and on his illegal threat to launch an unprovoked attack on Iran.
The wave that is building in the House for impeachment of this criminal administration may seem small, but it is definitely building. As each new representative signs on to H. Res. 333 as a co-sponsor, others gain courage and find it easier to buck the "leadership" of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi et al.
It seems likely that as the magnitude of that wave grows, some members will add to the list of Cheney's crimes with their own additional impeachment bills. After all, Cheney was clearly behind the illegal outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, was involved in the politicization of the Justice Department, and is now known to have been involved in the illegal, warrantless wiretapping and internet monitoring of American citizens by the National Security Agency.
At some point, there will surely be a second wave, which will begin with a member impeachment bill against President Bush.
Evidence that Pelosi is losing her footing is coming in many forms.
I don't think David Lindorff's a liar. But I can't believe the above. It just seems to good to be true. I hope he's right. But I can't get my high hopes this time. I've done that before. Assumed that Congress would have to impeach. I assumed that with the Downing Street Memos, with the outing of Valerie Plame and then when the Dems took control of both houses of Congress. Again, I am not calling David Lindorff a liar. And I hope he's right, but I've gotten my hopes up high before only to find out otherwise and that's a nasty fall.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" and C.I.'s discussing the Liam Madden press conference we got to attend yesterday:
Friday, June 8, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, Baghdad Christians get a warning, Mitt Romney cares about "faulty intelligence" except when he doesn't, and the US military continues to use prosecution as an attempt to silence dissent.
Yesterday, in Boston, Liam Madden spoke on the steps in front of the Massachusetts State House wearing a black Iraq Veterans Against the War t-shirt and jeans about the efforts of the US miltary to, as with Adam Kokesh and Cloy Richards, silence him. Madden sees the "hearing and this investigation to be a vindicative waste of tax payer dollars to silence free speech and to assault the First Amendment rights of our veterans." Madden was honorably discharged from active duty status (with the rank of Sgt.) in January only to be notified May 14 that he "was being recommnded for an other than honorable discharge from the IRR [Inactive Ready Reserves]." He is being investigated for two things. First, for "wearing a partial uniform at a protest" which he translated as "a camaflage utility top, unbuttoned with jeans and t-shirt" and noted that Vietnam veterans, during that illegal war, participated in demonstrations, rallies, etc. in their uniforms with no such punishment. He is also accused of making "disloyal" statements while speaking last February. Before taking questions, he concluded with, "I stand by what I said." If you stand with Liam Madden, you can demonstrate that by signing a petition in support of Madden.
In the question and answers that followed, he was asked of Adam Kokesh and responded,
"Adam's case is different than mine he was charged with wearing a uniform during a political street theater and also with making disrespectful comments to a superior commissioned officer. So his charges are different and the board will be different. And that is just one grounds that Adam has to appeal his case." Notice how well, and briefly, Madden can sum up the issues at stake in Kokesh's case. Much better than you can find it done in the media. Take Marilou Johanek (Toledo Blade) whose column should be entitled "Call Me a Dumb Ass" when she makes fact-free statements such as this: "As long as a reservist is still obligated to the Marine Corps and can be reactivated at any time, he must play by the rules." The rules everyone must "play by" are the rules governing our nation so, pay attention Johanek, when the Supreme Court rules in Schacht v. United States (1970) that the US military has no right to dictate theater productions -- when Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black specifically notes that street theater is theater -- that's it, it's over. Prior to Schacht v. United States, the US military thought they had the right to allow some productions (pro-military) and disallow others (anti-military). They thought they had the right to determine whether their uniforms could be worn or not based on what they thought of the performance. Daniel Jay Schecht participated (with two others) in street theater (not at all different from Operation First Casualty that Kokesh did) in front of a recruiting center in 1967. The case made it to the Supreme Court and the Court found that the US military had no say in theaterical productions. Let's quote Justice Hugo Black one more time since it's so difficult for some to grasp:
The Government's argument in this case seems to imply that somehow what these amateur actors did in Houston should not be treated as a "theatrical production" within the meaning of 772 (f). We are unable to follow such a suggestion. Certainly theatrical productions need not always be performed in buildings or even on a defined area such as a conventional stage. Nor need they be performed by professional actors or be heavily financed or elaborately produced. Since time immemorial, outdoor theatrical performances, often performed by amateurs, have played an important part in the entertainment and the education of the people of the world. Here, the record shows without dispute the preparation and repeated presentation by amateur actors of a short play designed to create in the audience an understanding of and opposition to our participation in the Vietnam war. Supra, at 60 and this page. It may be that the performances were crude and [398 U.S. 58, 62] amateurish and perhaps unappealing, but the same thing can be said about many theatrical performances. We cannot believe that when Congress wrote out a special exception for theatrical productions it intended to protect only a narrow and limited category of professionally produced plays. 3 Of course, we need not decide here all the questions concerning what is and what is not within the scope of 772 (f). We need only find, as we emphatically do, that the street skit in which Schacht participated was a "theatrical production" within the meaning of that section.
This brings us to petitioner's complaint that giving force and effect to the last clause of 772 (f) would impose an unconstitutional restraint on his right of free speech. We agree. This clause on its face simply restricts 772 (f)'s authorization to those dramatic portrayals that do not "tend to discredit" the military, but, when this restriction is read together with 18 U.S.C. 702, it becomes clear that Congress has in effect made it a crime for an actor wearing a military uniform to say things during his performance critical of the conduct or [398 U.S. 58,63] policies of the Armed Forces. An actor, like everyone else in our country, enjoys a constitutional right to freedom of speech, including the right openly to criticize the Government during a dramatic performance. The last clause of 772 (f) denies this constitutional right to an actor who is wearing a military uniform by making it a crime for him to say things that tend to bring the military into discredit and disrepute. In the present case Schacht was free to participate in any skit at the demonstration that praised the Army, but under the final clause of 772 (f) he could be convicted of a federal offense if his portrayal attacked the Army instead of praising it. In light of our earlier finding that the skit in which Schacht participated was a "theatrical production" within the meaning of 772 (f), it follows that his conviction can be sustained only if he can be punished for speaking out against the role of our Army and our country in Vietnam. Clearly punishment for this reason would be an unconstitutional abridgment of freedom of speech. The final clause of 772 (f), which leaves Americans free to praise the war in Vietnam but can send persons like Schacht to prison for opposing it, cannot survive in a country which has the First Amendment. To preserve the constitutionality of 772 (f) that final clause must be stricken from the section.
To repeat: the US military has no say regarding theater (street or otherwise). To repeat, and you have to go to Iraq Veterans Against the War to find this out because idiots like Heather Hollingsworth left it out of the reports, "the Marine Corps panel, as well as the prosecution's key witness, Major Whyte, agreed that the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) does not apply to members of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR)." UCMJ does not apply to IRR? That only leaves the Supreme Court verdict.
Mark Rainer (World Socialist Web Site) notes that Kokesh's military appeal was denied Wednesday and the panel's finding "must now be approved by Brig. Gen. Darrell Moore, commander of the Marine Corps Mobilization Command in Kansas City, Missouri. A decision is expected within a week. According to Kokesh's attorney Mike Lebowitz, who is also an Iraq veteran, Moore cannot increase Kokesh's punishment by issuing an other-than-honorable discharge, but can only accept the board's general discharge recommendation, or reinstate the honorable discharge." If the other-than-honorable discharge stands, Tom A. Peter (Christian Science Monitor) reports, it "probably won't affect his veterans' benefits. But two other marines in the IRR [Liam Madden and Cloy Richards] face similar charges and risk losing their veterans' benefits, such as healthcare and money for education."
Turning to other news of war resistance, earlier this week Geoff Ziezuleicz (Stars and Stripes) reported that US war resister Aguayo will recieve an award from AnStifter, "According to an interpreted release put out last week by Connection e.V., another German anti-war group, the prize will be awarded to Aguayo on Dec. 1 during a ceremony in Stuttgart."
The movement of resistance within the US military grows and includes Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Care and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty 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, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
In Iraq, oil workers went on strike and the puppet government's response? As Great Britain's Socialist Worker noted Wednesday, the response was to order "the arrest of four leaders of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, including Hassan Jumaa Awad, for 'sabotaging the Iraqi economy' by ordering a strike." The puppet government believes the most important 'freedom' is the 'freedom to arrest' whomever they want for whatever they want. Ben Lando (UPI via AfterDowningStreet) reports US House Rep Lynn Woolsey has stated, "If they're working for a true democracy, working rights have to be front and center". Ben Lando (UPI) reports today: "With an arrest warrant looming, an Iraqi union leader warned during a U.S. visit failed negotiations will escalate a standoff in Basra's oil sector. Faleh Abood Umara, general secretary of the Iraq Federation of Oil Unions, said a five-day colling off/negotiation period, which began Wednesday, is crucial to keep Iraq's oil sector pumping and 1.6 million barrels per day flowing to the global oil market." Also under attack are Christians in Baghdad. Hannah Allam and Lelia Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) report that a group suspected ties of al-Qaeda have issued an edict to Christians living in Baghdad: "Convert to Islam, marry your daughters to our fighters, pay an Islamic tax or leave with only the clothes on your back." That would be the city of the fabled 'crackdown,' ongoing for over a year now, repeatedly beefed up, with no results to show for it. Unless you see 'success' in CNN's report that the first week of June saw 199 corpses discovered in Baghdad alone. "Actually alarming" is the phrase China's Xinhua reports Iraq's Sunni vice-president Tareq al-Hsahimi used to describe his country while visiting Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak Wednesday.
Bombings?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports that the "Fatah Basha mosque, Sunni mosque, in Al Bayaa neighborhood" of Baghdad was bombed, an Al Sakran bombing that killed 2 police officers (one more wounded), that a bombing involving a person in a "vest bomb" and a parked car in Kirkuk resulted in 19 dead (20 wounded), and two car bombings in Al Qurna led to 10 dead (25 wounded). Reuters notes a mini-bus explosion outside Basra that left 12 dead (33 injured) and 19 dead from a Dakok car bombing (20 wounded).
Shootings?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports Colonel Ali Dilaiyan Al Journai's Diyala province home was invaded and his "wife, his son and 10 policemen" were shot dead in a home invasion in which three police officers were also kidnapped while in Basra Lt. Ali Adai was shot dead. Reuters raises the death toll on the home invasion from 12 to 14. BBC reports that the 14 includes the police Col.'s wife but that three of their children are kidnapped. CBS and AP note that the children (undetermined age) are thought to include two males and one female and note: "Unknown gunmen speeding by in the northern city of Kirkuk shot and killed a soldier, Adnan Mahmoud, as he drove with his 2-year-old daughter Friday morning. The child also was killed, said police Capt. Jassim Abdullah." On the home invasion, Kim Gamel (AP) reports that the three children kidnapped are "grown children" and that Col. al-Jorani is Sunni.
Corpses?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 7 corpses discovered in Baghdad. Reuters notes 4 corpses discovered in Falluja.
In the United States, Petey Pace has given the full Rumsfeld. AFP reports that US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates declared today that General Pace will not remain "as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to avoid a divisive showdown in Congress focusing on the Iraq war" and quotes Pace declaring he is "disappointed." Admiral Edmund Giambastiani has been picked to replace Pace. He will require Senate confirmation. CBS and AP state: "The decision has been in the works for more than a couple of weeks, CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller reports."
In US political news, Noam N. Levey (Los Angeles Times) informs that Sam Brownback and Gordon Smith, Republican US senators, "got behind new legislation designed to encourage the Bush administration to reduce U.S. military involvement in Iraq" and that this "comes a day after five GOP senators signed on to separate legislation that would enact the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which envisioned most U.S. combat troops coming home by early 2008." Brownback is also hoping to become the GOP nominee for the 2008 US presidential race. In news of other GOP candidates for president,
CounterSpin offered this today:
Janine Jackson: In the June 5th Republican presidential candidates debate former governor Mitt Romney made a straight up factual error claiming that Saddam Hussein had not allowed inspectors into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction in advance of the 2003 invasion. That's simply wrong. Inspectors were in Iraq -- looking for, but not finding, WMDs up until they were ordered out before the war began, Perhaps Romney was misled by reading the paper or numerous papers over the years? The story about Saddam Hussein not allowing inspections is one of those mainstream media seem to find too useful to let go of despite its utter falsehood. When George W. Bush himself made the same claim in July of 2003 most outlets didn't even report it while the Washington Post boldly declared that Bush's claim "appeared to contradict the events leading up to war." Even though the story is completely bogus, media have gotten it wrong so often that for them it seems to carry a cloud of ambiguity thus Democratic strategist Paul Begala found himself having to debate a basic fact of history on CNN's Anderson Cooper show. Begala said Romney's error was "like saying the Mexicans bombed Pearl Harbor." But he was outnumbered by Republican strategist Mike Murphy and by conservative pundit Amy Holmes making the historical record seem like a minority opinion. Even worse, Begala himself screwed up by asserting that Saddam Hussein had thrown out inspectors in 1998 before a round of US bombing directed by Bill Clinton. That too was false but it's also a perinneal media myth. In the end, Anderson Cooper was left to declare, "We're not going to get this resolved tonight." To which viewers might respond, "No, so long as falsehoods are given the same weight as facts, it seems unlikely such matters will be resolved."
Of the lack of serious attention to Romney's error/lie, Robert Parry (Consortium News) explains, "The answer to the media question of why the U.S. press corps didn't object to Romney's bogus account is that Washington journalists have accepted this revisionist history since Bush began lying about the facts in July 2003. . . . Facing no contradiction from the White House press corps, Bush continued repeating this lie in varied forms over the next four years as part of his public litany for defending the invasion."
Romney's offered other reasons in the past for why he believes the US started the Iraq war. In 2005, when he met with military families, he cited a different reason for the illegal war. Scott Helman (Boston Globe via Military Families Speak Out) reported October 18, 2005: "After meeting with six families whose loved ones have served in Iraq, Governor Mitt Romney said yesterday that the United States had invaded the country based on 'faulty intelligence.' But he refused to press President Bush to bring home the state's National Guard." In a Februrary 2006 report by Glen Johnson (AP), Romney was continuing to cite "faulty intelligence" and Johnson observed, "Romney's kaleidoscopic views have allowed him to express support for the war when it benefits him and his potential candidacy, but maintain distance from the president when necessary." "Faulty intelligence," so oft cited by Romney, is something you might expect his campaign to run from. That really hasn't been the case.
Romney was pleased as punch to discuss all the 'flip-flops' of his rivals in an interview with Liz Sidoti (AP) last April and revealed he had a "senior adviser" joining his campaign one with a "faulty intelligence" connection of his own:
Cofer Black served as the director of the CIA Counterterrorism Center during the attacks and was singled out for especially harsh criticism by the agency's inspector general in a 2005 report on faulty intelligence efforts before the attacks. Black has worked for the past two years as vice chairman of Blackwater USA, a North Carolina-based security firm which specializes in private security and private military services.
Turning to Democratic presidential candidates, Matthew Rothschild interviewed David Swanson for this week's Progressive Radio about a number of issues including US House Rep Dennis Kucinich who is running to be the Democratic 2008 presidential nominee:
David Swanson: It's a real uphill fight and it's a fight largely against the media. . . . In that [2004] campaign, before I even got involved, when there was no separation among the candidates in the polling or the financing, he was blacked out. There were other candidates
getting hundreds, literally hundreds of times the coverage.
Matthew Rothschild: The thing that stuck in my mind from the media coverage of the Kucinich campaign was the one Ted Koppel debate where Kucinich really took it to Ted Koppel and actually won the debate and you could search high and low in the media stories
to find reference to Kucinich at all, much less the fact that he clearly won the thing, hands down.
David Swanson: Yeah, it became a verb to get Koppel-ed and Kucinich really let him have it because he [Koppel] opened this debate in New Hampshire with a question about polls a question about money and so on, and Kucinch said "Wait a minute, look at what you've just done. Here are the topics you've addressed. We've wasted half the debate." And the crowd went nuts because the crowd gets it, you know, and they understand that the media is determining who is quote-unquote "viable" and who is not and what that power means and how the media trivializes the debate. And so that applause was just thunderous.
Matthew Rothschild: And they're doing it again this time.
David Swanson: Oh absolutely. . . . But it's going to depend on people overcoming that prejudice and saying "Wait a minute. It's two years until this thing happens, don't tell me who is viable or not and even if I want to influence who you tell me is viable the best way for me to do it is to back who's with me and if he ends up winning, we'll prove you wrong and you'll have to cover it because he'll be president."
KPFA will broadcast a special tomorrow (Saturday, June 9th) beginning at 11:00 am.
Sunday, June 10th marks four decades of Israel's illegal military occupation of Palestine, against a backdrop of nearly sixty years of ethnic transfer and displacement.
On this national Pacifica special, producers from around the country investigate the cause and effect of Israel's continuous military occupation policies toward the Palestinians, which permeates every aspect of life - from the suffocating checkpoints and land theft inside the West Bank to the violence and chaos inside a hermetically-sealed Gaza strip; to the issues of identity and culture in a widening diaspora.
As international witnesses to an ongoing crisis in occupied Palestine, this special will also address America's role of responsibility toward the intractable Palestinian-Israeli crisis and offer avenues of involvement in peace, justice and solidarity movements.
Hear Palestinian voices from the older generation and today's youth movements, from refugee camps and the Palestinian diaspora.
This is a Pacifica Radio special so it will likely be broadcast on other stations as well. Houston's KPFT will broadcast it Sunday, June 10th at 6:00 pm. Flashpoints Radio's Nora Barrows-Friedman will be the host or one of the hosts.
In other media news, as independent media continues to be under attack, News Dissector Danny Schechter's "Special Blog: Can Our Media Channel Survive?" announces the potential fate of Mediachannel.org which may shut down: "If we can get 1500 of our readers (that means you) to give $25, we can keep going for another quarter. [PLEASE CLICK HERE TO MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION ONLINE]"
Finally, independent journalist John Pilger is on a speaking tour with his new book Freedom Next Time and his documentary Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror (which looks at DC, Afghanistan and Iraq). June 11th, Pilger will be in Los Angeles at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center (244 S. San Pedro St.) and will discuss his book and show his documentary beginning at 7:00 pm (doors open at 6:00 pm). The price of admission to the even is five dollars. "Directions, maps, and parking info at: http://www.jaccc.org/directions.htmPresented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, and The Nation Institute, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. For ticket information, call or visit the JACCC. Box office: 213-680-3700 (Box Office Hours: Monday - Saturday: Noon - 5 pm)For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, email pilger.la@gmail.com."June 13th finds him in San Francisco showing his film and discussing his book at Yerba Beuna Center for Arts (beginning at 7:00 pm, doors open at 6:00 pm) and the price of admission is $15 general and $5 for students. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, and KPFA, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. For ticket information, call 415-978-2787 or order online at http://www.ybca.org/. In person tickets at YBCA Box office located inside the Galleries and Forum Building, 701 Mission Street at Third. (Hours: Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat & Sun: noon - 5 pm; Thu: noon - 8 pm.) For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, email pilgersf@gmail.com."From San Francisco, he moves on to Chicago for the 2007 Socialism conference. At 11:30 am Saturday June 16th, he and Anthony Arnove will participate in a conversation, audience dialogue and book signing (Arnove is the author most recently of IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal) and that evening (still June 16th) at 7:30 Pilger will be at Chicago Crowne Plaza O'Hare (5440 North River Road, Rosemont, IL 60018) as part of a panel of international activists. To attend the conference, the fee is $85. For Saturday and Sunday only, the price is $70. To attend only one session, the cost is ten dollars. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. Co-sponsors: Obrera Socialista, Socialist Worker, International Socialist Review, and Haymarket Books. For ticket information, call 773-583-8665 or e-mail info@socialismconference.org For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org. For more information, email info@socialismconference.org."The Socialism 2007 conference will take place in Chicago from June 14-17. Along with Pilger and Arnove, others participating will include Dahr Jamail, Laura Flanders, Kelly Dougherty, Joshua Frank, Amy Goodman, Sharon Smith, Dave Zirin, Camilo Mejia, Jeremy Scahill, Jeffrey St. Clair and many others.
like maria said paz
the common ills
mikey likes it
iraq
liam madden
adam kokeshiraq veterans against the war
marilou johanekmark rainer
counterspin
janine jackson
tom a. peter
geoff ziezulewiczagustin aguayo
the socialist worker
matthew rothschildrobert parry
flashpointsnora barrows friedman
The 3500 mark got passed. I think it was a sentence or two when it was noted at all. Of course that will be shoved on off on the public -- "WHY DON'T THEY CARE!!!!!" Well, let's see, I got day two of Israel on Democracy Now! today. Wednesday, a discussion on Iraq was a third less than Murray Waas showing his ass on Democracy Now! as he went on and on about Scoots Libby. So you got a line or two during headlines and that was it. The vet walking around California's state house? Not a story. The vet on the federal building in Washington? Not a story. Adam Kokesh, Cloy Richards and Liam Madden? Not a story.
Who's not caring? And Democracy Now!'s probably the best national program there is. So don't say it's about the people not caring. It's about the press not caring. Iraq can "wait," it can always "wait." Day after day, week after week. Hey, it's just an illegal war, right? No need to be concerned. Maybe when 2 million Iraqis are dead or when it's 6,000 US troops killed, someone in the press will give a damn. Maybe not.
John Pilger is on a speaking tour (details in the snapshot) and I thought I'd note some of his
"The British Army Rebels Against PropagandaBy John Pilger:"
"ICH" - --- - -An experienced British officer serving in Iraq has written to the BBC describing the invasion as "illegal, immoral and unwinnable" which, he says, is "the overwhelming feeling of many of my peers". In a letter to the BBC's Newsnight and Medialens.org he accuses the media's "embedded coverage with the US Army" of failing to question "the intentions and continuing effects of the US-led invasion and occupation".
He says most British soldiers regard their tours as "loathsome", during which they "reluctantly [provide] target practice for insurgents, senselessly haemorrhaging casualties and squandering soldiers' lives, as part of Bush's vain attempt to delay the inevitable Anglo-US rout until after the next US election." He appeals to journalists not to swallow "the official line/ White House propaganda".
In 1970, I made a film in Vietnam called The Quiet Mutiny in which GIs spoke out about their hatred of that war and its "official line/White House propaganda". The experiences in Iraq and Vietnam are both very different and strikingly similar. There was much less "embedded coverage" in Vietnam, although there was censorship by omission, which is standard practice today.
What is different about Iraq is the willingness of usually obedient British soldiers to speak their minds, from General Richard Dannatt, Britain's current military chief, who said that the presence of his troops in Iraq "exacerbates the security problem", to General Michael Rose who has called for Tony Blair to be impeached for taking Britain to war "on false grounds" – remarks that are mild compared with the blogs of squaddies.
What is also different is the growing awareness in the British forces and the public of how "the official line" is played through the media. This can be quite crude: for example when a BBC defence correspondent in Iraq described the aim of the Anglo-American invasion as "bring[ing] democracy and human rights" to Iraq. The Director of BBC Television, Helen Boaden, backed him up with a sheaf of quotations from Blair that this was indeed the aim, implying that Blair's notorious word was enough.
More often than not, censorship by omission is employed: for example, by omitting the fact that almost 80 per cent of attacks are directed against the occupation forces (source: the Pentagon) so as to give the impression that the occupiers are doing their best to separate "warring tribes" and are crisis managers rather than the cause of the crisis.
That's the BBC and we know how bad things are here (US). Where's the outrage? Clamped down by the nonsense media. Bully Boy is a war criminal and he and Dick Cheney should be impeached. If you agree, you'll enjoy this from Dave Lindorff's "A Criminal Conspiracy in the White House:"
Down the shore yesterday, as we say in Philly, I was body surfing in the Atlantic and it got me to thinking.
On the East Coast, where the prevailing winds are offshore, the surf tends to be pretty tame, and Thursday was no exception, with the biggest waves cresting at perhaps three feet. Nonetheless, these little combers were able to send my prone body racing 100 feet toward the beach at a good clip.
There's a lot of energy packed in even a small wave.
Just so with impeachment, where a wave is slowly building for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney.
Since Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) filed his impeachment bill against Cheney back April 24, five other members of the House have signed on as co-sponsors, most recently Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. She joins Reps. Yvette Clarke (D-NY), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL and chief deputy whip of the House), William Lacy Clay (D-IL) and Albert Wynn (D-MD) as co-sponsors of H. Res. 333.
Flash Update! Just to make the point about how this wave is building, shortly after I filed this piece, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), another co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus, signed on as a co-sponsor of H.Res. 333. Cheney has to be starting to sweat...
Kucinich's bill is narrowly focused on Cheney's criminal role in lying the nation into an illegal invasion of Iraq, and on his illegal threat to launch an unprovoked attack on Iran.
The wave that is building in the House for impeachment of this criminal administration may seem small, but it is definitely building. As each new representative signs on to H. Res. 333 as a co-sponsor, others gain courage and find it easier to buck the "leadership" of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi et al.
It seems likely that as the magnitude of that wave grows, some members will add to the list of Cheney's crimes with their own additional impeachment bills. After all, Cheney was clearly behind the illegal outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, was involved in the politicization of the Justice Department, and is now known to have been involved in the illegal, warrantless wiretapping and internet monitoring of American citizens by the National Security Agency.
At some point, there will surely be a second wave, which will begin with a member impeachment bill against President Bush.
Evidence that Pelosi is losing her footing is coming in many forms.
I don't think David Lindorff's a liar. But I can't believe the above. It just seems to good to be true. I hope he's right. But I can't get my high hopes this time. I've done that before. Assumed that Congress would have to impeach. I assumed that with the Downing Street Memos, with the outing of Valerie Plame and then when the Dems took control of both houses of Congress. Again, I am not calling David Lindorff a liar. And I hope he's right, but I've gotten my hopes up high before only to find out otherwise and that's a nasty fall.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" and C.I.'s discussing the Liam Madden press conference we got to attend yesterday:
Friday, June 8, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, Baghdad Christians get a warning, Mitt Romney cares about "faulty intelligence" except when he doesn't, and the US military continues to use prosecution as an attempt to silence dissent.
Yesterday, in Boston, Liam Madden spoke on the steps in front of the Massachusetts State House wearing a black Iraq Veterans Against the War t-shirt and jeans about the efforts of the US miltary to, as with Adam Kokesh and Cloy Richards, silence him. Madden sees the "hearing and this investigation to be a vindicative waste of tax payer dollars to silence free speech and to assault the First Amendment rights of our veterans." Madden was honorably discharged from active duty status (with the rank of Sgt.) in January only to be notified May 14 that he "was being recommnded for an other than honorable discharge from the IRR [Inactive Ready Reserves]." He is being investigated for two things. First, for "wearing a partial uniform at a protest" which he translated as "a camaflage utility top, unbuttoned with jeans and t-shirt" and noted that Vietnam veterans, during that illegal war, participated in demonstrations, rallies, etc. in their uniforms with no such punishment. He is also accused of making "disloyal" statements while speaking last February. Before taking questions, he concluded with, "I stand by what I said." If you stand with Liam Madden, you can demonstrate that by signing a petition in support of Madden.
In the question and answers that followed, he was asked of Adam Kokesh and responded,
"Adam's case is different than mine he was charged with wearing a uniform during a political street theater and also with making disrespectful comments to a superior commissioned officer. So his charges are different and the board will be different. And that is just one grounds that Adam has to appeal his case." Notice how well, and briefly, Madden can sum up the issues at stake in Kokesh's case. Much better than you can find it done in the media. Take Marilou Johanek (Toledo Blade) whose column should be entitled "Call Me a Dumb Ass" when she makes fact-free statements such as this: "As long as a reservist is still obligated to the Marine Corps and can be reactivated at any time, he must play by the rules." The rules everyone must "play by" are the rules governing our nation so, pay attention Johanek, when the Supreme Court rules in Schacht v. United States (1970) that the US military has no right to dictate theater productions -- when Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black specifically notes that street theater is theater -- that's it, it's over. Prior to Schacht v. United States, the US military thought they had the right to allow some productions (pro-military) and disallow others (anti-military). They thought they had the right to determine whether their uniforms could be worn or not based on what they thought of the performance. Daniel Jay Schecht participated (with two others) in street theater (not at all different from Operation First Casualty that Kokesh did) in front of a recruiting center in 1967. The case made it to the Supreme Court and the Court found that the US military had no say in theaterical productions. Let's quote Justice Hugo Black one more time since it's so difficult for some to grasp:
The Government's argument in this case seems to imply that somehow what these amateur actors did in Houston should not be treated as a "theatrical production" within the meaning of 772 (f). We are unable to follow such a suggestion. Certainly theatrical productions need not always be performed in buildings or even on a defined area such as a conventional stage. Nor need they be performed by professional actors or be heavily financed or elaborately produced. Since time immemorial, outdoor theatrical performances, often performed by amateurs, have played an important part in the entertainment and the education of the people of the world. Here, the record shows without dispute the preparation and repeated presentation by amateur actors of a short play designed to create in the audience an understanding of and opposition to our participation in the Vietnam war. Supra, at 60 and this page. It may be that the performances were crude and [398 U.S. 58, 62] amateurish and perhaps unappealing, but the same thing can be said about many theatrical performances. We cannot believe that when Congress wrote out a special exception for theatrical productions it intended to protect only a narrow and limited category of professionally produced plays. 3 Of course, we need not decide here all the questions concerning what is and what is not within the scope of 772 (f). We need only find, as we emphatically do, that the street skit in which Schacht participated was a "theatrical production" within the meaning of that section.
This brings us to petitioner's complaint that giving force and effect to the last clause of 772 (f) would impose an unconstitutional restraint on his right of free speech. We agree. This clause on its face simply restricts 772 (f)'s authorization to those dramatic portrayals that do not "tend to discredit" the military, but, when this restriction is read together with 18 U.S.C. 702, it becomes clear that Congress has in effect made it a crime for an actor wearing a military uniform to say things during his performance critical of the conduct or [398 U.S. 58,63] policies of the Armed Forces. An actor, like everyone else in our country, enjoys a constitutional right to freedom of speech, including the right openly to criticize the Government during a dramatic performance. The last clause of 772 (f) denies this constitutional right to an actor who is wearing a military uniform by making it a crime for him to say things that tend to bring the military into discredit and disrepute. In the present case Schacht was free to participate in any skit at the demonstration that praised the Army, but under the final clause of 772 (f) he could be convicted of a federal offense if his portrayal attacked the Army instead of praising it. In light of our earlier finding that the skit in which Schacht participated was a "theatrical production" within the meaning of 772 (f), it follows that his conviction can be sustained only if he can be punished for speaking out against the role of our Army and our country in Vietnam. Clearly punishment for this reason would be an unconstitutional abridgment of freedom of speech. The final clause of 772 (f), which leaves Americans free to praise the war in Vietnam but can send persons like Schacht to prison for opposing it, cannot survive in a country which has the First Amendment. To preserve the constitutionality of 772 (f) that final clause must be stricken from the section.
To repeat: the US military has no say regarding theater (street or otherwise). To repeat, and you have to go to Iraq Veterans Against the War to find this out because idiots like Heather Hollingsworth left it out of the reports, "the Marine Corps panel, as well as the prosecution's key witness, Major Whyte, agreed that the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) does not apply to members of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR)." UCMJ does not apply to IRR? That only leaves the Supreme Court verdict.
Mark Rainer (World Socialist Web Site) notes that Kokesh's military appeal was denied Wednesday and the panel's finding "must now be approved by Brig. Gen. Darrell Moore, commander of the Marine Corps Mobilization Command in Kansas City, Missouri. A decision is expected within a week. According to Kokesh's attorney Mike Lebowitz, who is also an Iraq veteran, Moore cannot increase Kokesh's punishment by issuing an other-than-honorable discharge, but can only accept the board's general discharge recommendation, or reinstate the honorable discharge." If the other-than-honorable discharge stands, Tom A. Peter (Christian Science Monitor) reports, it "probably won't affect his veterans' benefits. But two other marines in the IRR [Liam Madden and Cloy Richards] face similar charges and risk losing their veterans' benefits, such as healthcare and money for education."
Turning to other news of war resistance, earlier this week Geoff Ziezuleicz (Stars and Stripes) reported that US war resister Aguayo will recieve an award from AnStifter, "According to an interpreted release put out last week by Connection e.V., another German anti-war group, the prize will be awarded to Aguayo on Dec. 1 during a ceremony in Stuttgart."
The movement of resistance within the US military grows and includes Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Care and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty 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, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
In Iraq, oil workers went on strike and the puppet government's response? As Great Britain's Socialist Worker noted Wednesday, the response was to order "the arrest of four leaders of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, including Hassan Jumaa Awad, for 'sabotaging the Iraqi economy' by ordering a strike." The puppet government believes the most important 'freedom' is the 'freedom to arrest' whomever they want for whatever they want. Ben Lando (UPI via AfterDowningStreet) reports US House Rep Lynn Woolsey has stated, "If they're working for a true democracy, working rights have to be front and center". Ben Lando (UPI) reports today: "With an arrest warrant looming, an Iraqi union leader warned during a U.S. visit failed negotiations will escalate a standoff in Basra's oil sector. Faleh Abood Umara, general secretary of the Iraq Federation of Oil Unions, said a five-day colling off/negotiation period, which began Wednesday, is crucial to keep Iraq's oil sector pumping and 1.6 million barrels per day flowing to the global oil market." Also under attack are Christians in Baghdad. Hannah Allam and Lelia Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) report that a group suspected ties of al-Qaeda have issued an edict to Christians living in Baghdad: "Convert to Islam, marry your daughters to our fighters, pay an Islamic tax or leave with only the clothes on your back." That would be the city of the fabled 'crackdown,' ongoing for over a year now, repeatedly beefed up, with no results to show for it. Unless you see 'success' in CNN's report that the first week of June saw 199 corpses discovered in Baghdad alone. "Actually alarming" is the phrase China's Xinhua reports Iraq's Sunni vice-president Tareq al-Hsahimi used to describe his country while visiting Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak Wednesday.
Bombings?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports that the "Fatah Basha mosque, Sunni mosque, in Al Bayaa neighborhood" of Baghdad was bombed, an Al Sakran bombing that killed 2 police officers (one more wounded), that a bombing involving a person in a "vest bomb" and a parked car in Kirkuk resulted in 19 dead (20 wounded), and two car bombings in Al Qurna led to 10 dead (25 wounded). Reuters notes a mini-bus explosion outside Basra that left 12 dead (33 injured) and 19 dead from a Dakok car bombing (20 wounded).
Shootings?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports Colonel Ali Dilaiyan Al Journai's Diyala province home was invaded and his "wife, his son and 10 policemen" were shot dead in a home invasion in which three police officers were also kidnapped while in Basra Lt. Ali Adai was shot dead. Reuters raises the death toll on the home invasion from 12 to 14. BBC reports that the 14 includes the police Col.'s wife but that three of their children are kidnapped. CBS and AP note that the children (undetermined age) are thought to include two males and one female and note: "Unknown gunmen speeding by in the northern city of Kirkuk shot and killed a soldier, Adnan Mahmoud, as he drove with his 2-year-old daughter Friday morning. The child also was killed, said police Capt. Jassim Abdullah." On the home invasion, Kim Gamel (AP) reports that the three children kidnapped are "grown children" and that Col. al-Jorani is Sunni.
Corpses?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 7 corpses discovered in Baghdad. Reuters notes 4 corpses discovered in Falluja.
In the United States, Petey Pace has given the full Rumsfeld. AFP reports that US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates declared today that General Pace will not remain "as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to avoid a divisive showdown in Congress focusing on the Iraq war" and quotes Pace declaring he is "disappointed." Admiral Edmund Giambastiani has been picked to replace Pace. He will require Senate confirmation. CBS and AP state: "The decision has been in the works for more than a couple of weeks, CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller reports."
In US political news, Noam N. Levey (Los Angeles Times) informs that Sam Brownback and Gordon Smith, Republican US senators, "got behind new legislation designed to encourage the Bush administration to reduce U.S. military involvement in Iraq" and that this "comes a day after five GOP senators signed on to separate legislation that would enact the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which envisioned most U.S. combat troops coming home by early 2008." Brownback is also hoping to become the GOP nominee for the 2008 US presidential race. In news of other GOP candidates for president,
CounterSpin offered this today:
Janine Jackson: In the June 5th Republican presidential candidates debate former governor Mitt Romney made a straight up factual error claiming that Saddam Hussein had not allowed inspectors into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction in advance of the 2003 invasion. That's simply wrong. Inspectors were in Iraq -- looking for, but not finding, WMDs up until they were ordered out before the war began, Perhaps Romney was misled by reading the paper or numerous papers over the years? The story about Saddam Hussein not allowing inspections is one of those mainstream media seem to find too useful to let go of despite its utter falsehood. When George W. Bush himself made the same claim in July of 2003 most outlets didn't even report it while the Washington Post boldly declared that Bush's claim "appeared to contradict the events leading up to war." Even though the story is completely bogus, media have gotten it wrong so often that for them it seems to carry a cloud of ambiguity thus Democratic strategist Paul Begala found himself having to debate a basic fact of history on CNN's Anderson Cooper show. Begala said Romney's error was "like saying the Mexicans bombed Pearl Harbor." But he was outnumbered by Republican strategist Mike Murphy and by conservative pundit Amy Holmes making the historical record seem like a minority opinion. Even worse, Begala himself screwed up by asserting that Saddam Hussein had thrown out inspectors in 1998 before a round of US bombing directed by Bill Clinton. That too was false but it's also a perinneal media myth. In the end, Anderson Cooper was left to declare, "We're not going to get this resolved tonight." To which viewers might respond, "No, so long as falsehoods are given the same weight as facts, it seems unlikely such matters will be resolved."
Of the lack of serious attention to Romney's error/lie, Robert Parry (Consortium News) explains, "The answer to the media question of why the U.S. press corps didn't object to Romney's bogus account is that Washington journalists have accepted this revisionist history since Bush began lying about the facts in July 2003. . . . Facing no contradiction from the White House press corps, Bush continued repeating this lie in varied forms over the next four years as part of his public litany for defending the invasion."
Romney's offered other reasons in the past for why he believes the US started the Iraq war. In 2005, when he met with military families, he cited a different reason for the illegal war. Scott Helman (Boston Globe via Military Families Speak Out) reported October 18, 2005: "After meeting with six families whose loved ones have served in Iraq, Governor Mitt Romney said yesterday that the United States had invaded the country based on 'faulty intelligence.' But he refused to press President Bush to bring home the state's National Guard." In a Februrary 2006 report by Glen Johnson (AP), Romney was continuing to cite "faulty intelligence" and Johnson observed, "Romney's kaleidoscopic views have allowed him to express support for the war when it benefits him and his potential candidacy, but maintain distance from the president when necessary." "Faulty intelligence," so oft cited by Romney, is something you might expect his campaign to run from. That really hasn't been the case.
Romney was pleased as punch to discuss all the 'flip-flops' of his rivals in an interview with Liz Sidoti (AP) last April and revealed he had a "senior adviser" joining his campaign one with a "faulty intelligence" connection of his own:
Cofer Black served as the director of the CIA Counterterrorism Center during the attacks and was singled out for especially harsh criticism by the agency's inspector general in a 2005 report on faulty intelligence efforts before the attacks. Black has worked for the past two years as vice chairman of Blackwater USA, a North Carolina-based security firm which specializes in private security and private military services.
Turning to Democratic presidential candidates, Matthew Rothschild interviewed David Swanson for this week's Progressive Radio about a number of issues including US House Rep Dennis Kucinich who is running to be the Democratic 2008 presidential nominee:
David Swanson: It's a real uphill fight and it's a fight largely against the media. . . . In that [2004] campaign, before I even got involved, when there was no separation among the candidates in the polling or the financing, he was blacked out. There were other candidates
getting hundreds, literally hundreds of times the coverage.
Matthew Rothschild: The thing that stuck in my mind from the media coverage of the Kucinich campaign was the one Ted Koppel debate where Kucinich really took it to Ted Koppel and actually won the debate and you could search high and low in the media stories
to find reference to Kucinich at all, much less the fact that he clearly won the thing, hands down.
David Swanson: Yeah, it became a verb to get Koppel-ed and Kucinich really let him have it because he [Koppel] opened this debate in New Hampshire with a question about polls a question about money and so on, and Kucinch said "Wait a minute, look at what you've just done. Here are the topics you've addressed. We've wasted half the debate." And the crowd went nuts because the crowd gets it, you know, and they understand that the media is determining who is quote-unquote "viable" and who is not and what that power means and how the media trivializes the debate. And so that applause was just thunderous.
Matthew Rothschild: And they're doing it again this time.
David Swanson: Oh absolutely. . . . But it's going to depend on people overcoming that prejudice and saying "Wait a minute. It's two years until this thing happens, don't tell me who is viable or not and even if I want to influence who you tell me is viable the best way for me to do it is to back who's with me and if he ends up winning, we'll prove you wrong and you'll have to cover it because he'll be president."
KPFA will broadcast a special tomorrow (Saturday, June 9th) beginning at 11:00 am.
Sunday, June 10th marks four decades of Israel's illegal military occupation of Palestine, against a backdrop of nearly sixty years of ethnic transfer and displacement.
On this national Pacifica special, producers from around the country investigate the cause and effect of Israel's continuous military occupation policies toward the Palestinians, which permeates every aspect of life - from the suffocating checkpoints and land theft inside the West Bank to the violence and chaos inside a hermetically-sealed Gaza strip; to the issues of identity and culture in a widening diaspora.
As international witnesses to an ongoing crisis in occupied Palestine, this special will also address America's role of responsibility toward the intractable Palestinian-Israeli crisis and offer avenues of involvement in peace, justice and solidarity movements.
Hear Palestinian voices from the older generation and today's youth movements, from refugee camps and the Palestinian diaspora.
This is a Pacifica Radio special so it will likely be broadcast on other stations as well. Houston's KPFT will broadcast it Sunday, June 10th at 6:00 pm. Flashpoints Radio's Nora Barrows-Friedman will be the host or one of the hosts.
In other media news, as independent media continues to be under attack, News Dissector Danny Schechter's "Special Blog: Can Our Media Channel Survive?" announces the potential fate of Mediachannel.org which may shut down: "If we can get 1500 of our readers (that means you) to give $25, we can keep going for another quarter. [PLEASE CLICK HERE TO MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION ONLINE]"
Finally, independent journalist John Pilger is on a speaking tour with his new book Freedom Next Time and his documentary Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror (which looks at DC, Afghanistan and Iraq). June 11th, Pilger will be in Los Angeles at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center (244 S. San Pedro St.) and will discuss his book and show his documentary beginning at 7:00 pm (doors open at 6:00 pm). The price of admission to the even is five dollars. "Directions, maps, and parking info at: http://www.jaccc.org/directions.htmPresented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, and The Nation Institute, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. For ticket information, call or visit the JACCC. Box office: 213-680-3700 (Box Office Hours: Monday - Saturday: Noon - 5 pm)For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, email pilger.la@gmail.com."June 13th finds him in San Francisco showing his film and discussing his book at Yerba Beuna Center for Arts (beginning at 7:00 pm, doors open at 6:00 pm) and the price of admission is $15 general and $5 for students. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, and KPFA, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. For ticket information, call 415-978-2787 or order online at http://www.ybca.org/. In person tickets at YBCA Box office located inside the Galleries and Forum Building, 701 Mission Street at Third. (Hours: Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat & Sun: noon - 5 pm; Thu: noon - 8 pm.) For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, email pilgersf@gmail.com."From San Francisco, he moves on to Chicago for the 2007 Socialism conference. At 11:30 am Saturday June 16th, he and Anthony Arnove will participate in a conversation, audience dialogue and book signing (Arnove is the author most recently of IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal) and that evening (still June 16th) at 7:30 Pilger will be at Chicago Crowne Plaza O'Hare (5440 North River Road, Rosemont, IL 60018) as part of a panel of international activists. To attend the conference, the fee is $85. For Saturday and Sunday only, the price is $70. To attend only one session, the cost is ten dollars. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. Co-sponsors: Obrera Socialista, Socialist Worker, International Socialist Review, and Haymarket Books. For ticket information, call 773-583-8665 or e-mail info@socialismconference.org For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org. For more information, email info@socialismconference.org."The Socialism 2007 conference will take place in Chicago from June 14-17. Along with Pilger and Arnove, others participating will include Dahr Jamail, Laura Flanders, Kelly Dougherty, Joshua Frank, Amy Goodman, Sharon Smith, Dave Zirin, Camilo Mejia, Jeremy Scahill, Jeffrey St. Clair and many others.
like maria said paz
the common ills
mikey likes it
iraq
liam madden
adam kokeshiraq veterans against the war
marilou johanekmark rainer
counterspin
janine jackson
tom a. peter
geoff ziezulewiczagustin aguayo
the socialist worker
matthew rothschildrobert parry
flashpointsnora barrows friedman
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