Wednesday and I'm dragging so consider yourself warned. I'm sick of the cold and then it seems like things warm up and then it's cold again. This week, it's really cold and I'm sneezing and stuff and that just makes me want to get under the blankets and sheets and hole up until I feel better. But the way I feel tonight, I might go into hibernation until spring!
Seriously, I am just freezing. I've got socks, sweats and a sweater on. The heat's on in the house and Dad ended up getting a space heater and putting it in here because he goes I look like like Casper I'm so white. I've been cold all day. Inside, outside, I've been cold. I've actually felt warmer outside so that's how I knew I had a cold. And I've got this thing in my throat where it's like a scratchy thing down deep that's going to become a cold and the only thing I can think about is hopping into bed and going to sleep.
So I tell you all that right off the top so you know there's not going to be anything special here tonight.
I ended up logging on and then sitting on the bed (knew if I laid down, I'd go to sleep) trying to think of what to say tonight and figured I'd just talk about the cold to start off with which seems kind of obvious but it took me about forty minutes to realize that.
So let's talk about the crackdown that keeps going and going and going to hell. This is from
Michael Schwartz' "Baghdad Surges into Hell: First Results from the President's Offensive:"
In his Iraq policy address on January 10, President Bush promised three new initiatives: a "surge" of American troops accompanied by a new "clear, hold, and build" strategy in Sunni insurgent strongholds; an offensive against Shia militias, particularly the Sadrist Mahdi Army which "U.S. military officials now identify as the greatest security threat in Iraq"; and forceful action to prevent Iran from further increasing its influence in Iraq and the Middle East.
Events in the last few weeks make it clear that all three prongs of this strategy are being enacted, even while the Congress is engaged in a prolonged debate over its (non-binding) opposition to the "surge" part of the new regional plan. The "surge" strategy was actually initiated one day before the speech was even given -- in an offensive on Baghdad's Haifa Street that briefly dominated the headlines. The new initiative aimed at Shia militias appears to have begun with a battle outside of Najaf in which about 200 members of the Al-Hawatim and al-Khazali tribes were killed by American and Iraqi forces -- apparently because the tribal militias had been involved in a growing (if under-reported) "anti-U.S. and anti-Baghdad" guerrilla war that "has been spreading like wildfire" in the Shia south. And the new aggressiveness towards Iran is now being played out not only in Iraq, but in the increasingly credible threats of an American or Israeli, or combined American and Israeli, air assault on Iran itself.
We may have to wait weeks, or even months, to evaluate the consequences of American actions against those Shia militias and Iran. But the Haifa Street offensive, now almost a month old, already offers us a vivid portrait of the horrific consequences that are the likely result of the Sunni insurgent part of the President's "surge" strategy.
Michael Schwartz was a guest on WBAI's Law & Disorder not long ago, they had speeches by him and Anthony Arnove on January 22, 2006. And speaking of WBAI's Law and Disorder, Monday's show had a lot of topics. They talked to Michael Deutsch about the victory of Muhammad Salah who was accused of things like "racketeering conspiracy" for donations in the 90s and called terrorists. They ended up having to drop terrorism charges against him.
Then there was the issue, and this is the thing that interested me most, about the Black Panthers. A while back, they had a great speech by Michael Smith (one of the hosts) from a panel where he was talking about the destruction of civil liberties in this and on that same show, they had some Black Panthers talking about torture and imprisonment. I was confused and must have missed a program or something because I had to call C.I. and ask, "This is something recent, right?" It was. If you were confused like me, they address it again this week. (They probably covered this before but I'd missed it until the episode with the panel.) So here's the basic story. In 1971, a police officer was killed in San Francisco. They ended up trying to charge eight Black Panthers with the crime. Two of them ended up being held in a New York prison for decades (Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim) but the 'evidence' that was being used came from torture.
There's another segment but I haven't had time yet to listen to all the tape. I'll write about it tomorrow and may write some more about the above. That's going to depend on me feeling better. I saw the next thing, by one of my favorite writers, and thought, I'll put some of it up and I'll also talk some about it. Now I don't know if I'll have anything to say about it but here's some of Dave Lindorff's "The Press Bites, Again:"
A word of caution on US "evidence" that Iran is providing armor-piercing weapons to Iraqis.
If reporters could all stop the heavy breathing for a moment, they might ask the folks at the White House and in the Pentagon to explain why those bombs that they displayed as "evidence" of Iranian perfidy had English words and numbers on them, instead of Persian.
I understand that Iranian manufacturers use English to identify products produced for export, but these devices--if they are Iranian--aren't really part of their general export product list.
That's not to say that Iran is not involved in any of the fighting in Iraq. It would be astounding if they were not, being as they are right next door and have an intense interest in the future of Iraq, a country that fought an eight-year US-supported war against them not long ago. But I think it raises questions about the quality of the US evidence purporting to prove that Iran is providing bombs that can pierce American armored vehicles.
Of course there are other reasons to doubt the administration too, besides the simple fact that it has shown itself to be seriously truth-challenged. A major problem is that most of the Americans who have died in Iraq, and who are continuing to die in Iraq, are being killed by Sunni fighters, and Iran has been backing the Shia side there, not the Sunnis.
At least until Bush came up with his bright idea of escalating the Iraq War by attacking Moktada al Sadr's forces in Baghdad last month, the Shia forces were leaving American troops alone, and were focused on killing Sunnis and the occasional Brit.
I like Dave Lindorff's writing because he's always got something to say and he just says it. He's not trying to hide what he thinks or play it off. That's true of the book he and Barbara Olshansky wrote together too and if I had the energy to get out of this chair, I'd tell you the title. I think I have the energy to get out but I think if I did, I would get up and go plop down on the bed. I don't even have any music playing. For most of the time I've been trying to write tonight, I've been telling myself if I put on David Rovics or White Stripes, that would give me energy to write but it really hasn't.
It's Valentine's Day and I did wish Elaine a happy V-Day and send her some flowers. (She got me CDs and that's how sick I am, I haven't even opened 'em. I'm sure they're great but I just don't have the energy.)
I'll tell you the big news on campus in my crowd. There's this guy who's kind of, I guess, weird. Like he voted for Bully Boy in 2004 and that probably tells you everything, right? He's also a bit older than most of us on campus and always hitting on every female. In the fall semester he was getting some dates and stuff but then word got out that he was married and had three kids. He's just this weird guy. He's probably close to 30 if he's not 30 and he tries to act like he's the King of Hip-Hop or something. (He's White.) While I was in Tacoma last week, he was no where to be found. He wasn't in Tacoma! He's a Republican. But he was in jail. He told some people it was because he was a witness the police needed. But it turns out he was probably involved in a drive-by.
Now that's pretty bad, drive-bys. But it's worse when you start thinking, this guy is like around 30. What's he doing trying to act like he's a gangsta? You hear about teenagers making mistakes and stuff but here's this guy who's oldest kid is 8 years old and and he's got three kids and he's going to college and he's around 30 and he's riding around with high school kids doing drive-bys. If it's true, he's a real loser as well as a criminal.
Back in January, someone busted in Tony's car and stole his stereo and people were telling Tony, "Dude it's got to be" this guy. And at the time, Tony thought, "No way." But now with the drive-by and other stuff I haven't written about, Tony's thinking maybe it was that guy. He was going around and around the parking lot, according to some people, that day and he doesn't have a car.
So that was the big news on campus today. Everybody was talking about because his "I'm was a witness" excuse ended up not being true and he told one guy and one guy told another. I should put in here that none of it may be true. Not just because the way campus gossip works but also because the guy is a real liar. Yeah, he lied about not being married and all of that but he also gets caught in all these other lies all the time. We know he's married and has three kids only because when he was seeing this one female, his wife showed up on campus, went to one of his classes, with their three kids, and confronted him because he hadn't been coming home that whole time.
You know I'm tired (and sick) if I'm boring you with campus gossip. Okay, C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" which makes more sense than anything I've written tonight:
Wednesday, February 14, 2007. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq; Baghad's under more 'extreme' crackdown and nothing's changed; Bully Boy says "Who needs proofs?"; the US military announces more deaths; and who is getting into the US military?
Starting with news of war resistance and staring with Ehren Watada. Watada became the first officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq in June. Last week, he became the first officer to be court-martialed for refusing to deploy in the illegal war. The court-martial ended in a mistrial. Many rush to weigh in and while we disagree with the right, we can respect their passion. It's the useless we have no respect for. Meet Kati Irons.
Apparently upset that she can't bore everyone with her thoughts on Battlestar Galatica one more time, Irons hems and haws and throws some stones. For instance, she doesn't care for Sean Penn's speech in Tacoma. Now in a very small setting, she's quite happy to stay silent even while she is disturbed by a conversation - dumb ass and a coward. Congratulations, Kati! And congratulations on being offensive to everyone: "Under present circumstances, to have one child in the military may be considered a source of pride, but four seems like carelessness," Irons offers. Insulting everyone doesn't mean you're "telling it like it is" -- it just means you're an idiot. (Irons scractched down a few thoughts for Blogcritics -- we don't link to trash.)
Fortunately, not all are useless idiots. As Paul Guggenheimer (Sioux City Journal) notes,
"If there is one story that strikes at the heart of the immorality and unethical nature of the war in Iraq, it is the story of U.S. Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada'." As Mike Davis (Great Britain's Socialist Worker) reminds: "He has refused to serve on the ground that the war is 'immoral and unlawful . . . and would compel complicity in war crimes'." Jason Farbman and Sam Bernstein (Socialist Worker) report on the double jeopardy issue that Judge Toilet's (aka Lt. Col. John Head) decision to call a mistrial (over the objection of the defense) is only one issue that may prevent a retrial: "If the court-martial does resume March 19, Watada's lawyers will object and appeal, possibly pushing the trial back to May. But in the meantime, Watada will have served out his remaining time in the Army. His lawyers are now saying they think he could walk away a free man."
Dan Carptener (The Indianapolis Star) reports on Carolyn Ho ( Ehren Watada''s mother) whose "voice was cracking from overuse and a lingering cold as the soldier's mother recounted the story, having spent the past six months traveling the country on his behalf" who spoke of the change she'd seen since her son went public in June: "In the early days one individual wrote me that I was a terrible mother and he was going to send me a one-way ticket to France. Since that time we've had an overwhelmingly positive response. It's a telling commentary on how people feel about this war."
Talking about the war and the mistrial, David Mitchell spoke yesterday at the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Upper Nyack. Akiko Matsuda's (The Journal News) reports: "Mitchell gave his own analysis, saying the judge manipulated the trial because as it proceeded, Watada's good standing as a soldier became apparent. Mitchell also thought the judge was afraid of the impact on the other soldiers should Watada be acquitted. Mitchell said that at one point in the trial, a female officer told the judge she was impressed by Watada's action because he stood by what he believed in."
Watada is a part of a movement of resistance with the military that includes others such as Agustin Aguayo (whose court-martial is currently set to begin on March 6th), Kyle Snyder, Darrell Anderson, Ivan Brobeck, Mark Wilkerson, Ricky Clousing, Aidan Delgado, Joshua Key, Camilo Meija, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Jeremy Hinzman, Corey Glass, Patrick Hart, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
Patrick Hart, noted above, is a war resister who went to Canadal. The Buffalo News reports that "Hart was a dealt a setback when the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board denied his claim of refugee status" and that his next step is to "appeal the decision to the Canadian Federal Court." In July, Patrick, Jill and Rian Hart appeared before Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board to make their appeal. Peter Koch (Art Voice) noted in July that "everyonw who has received a decision has been denied." The denial was a denial to Patrick Hart and it was also a denial to Jill Hart and to their son Rian. These are people who are attempting to start a life in a Canada. The Harts, like Joshua and Brandi Key, have uprooted their families and moved to Canada not as a stop-over, but as a final destination. During Vietnam, Canada was welcoming of war resisters. Today, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada makes laughable their claim to be the "largest independent administrative tribunal" as they show no independence and make the same 'finding' repeatedly, over and over with no indication of indepence, no indication of thought, but strong indications that they are afraid to take a stand. Since none of the war resisters can be called a "security risk" or seen as having violated human or internatioinal rights, committed a serious crime or been involved in organized crime, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada has made a loud, repeated joke of itself and done so while the world was watching.
Meanwhile, England is in violation of UN protocol, Robert Stansfield and Maggie Barry (The Daily Mirror) report, since they've been sending service members under the age of 18 to fight in Iraq and, while Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram can claim that was a mistake, it was also illegal. Stansfield and Barry speak with one who was under 18, "Chris," and he explained why he decided to self-check out and joined over 1,000 British soldiers who have done just that since the start of the illegal war as well as sharing his opinions of the illegal war: "I think they should just take everyone out of Iraq. If the Americans want to stay then just let them but they should take our troops out. It's not worth being in there. It's not worth getting killed for."
From Original Zinn: Conversations on History and Politics by Howard Zinn and David Barsamian, pp. 118-119:
David Barsamian: You're 1967 book Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal was reissued by South End Press. I was reading some of the exchanges in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that you reproduce there. And although there are no such hearings going on now, it almost replicates a lot of the media commentary about how we cannot just quit and run from Iraq, that our prestige would suffer, we would lose credibility. What do these things mean? What is prestige? What is credibility?
Howard Zinn: That's an interesting point because those statements are made again and again, from war to war to war, that we must continue doing this because if we don't continue doing this, we will lose standing, lose prestige, that other countries in this, we will lose standing, lose prestige, that other countries in the world will lose respect for us. I think what they really mean is that other countries will stop fearing us. The truth is that the United States in general does not get the respect of other countries in the world, but it instills fear in other countries, fear that they will lose economic benefits given to them by the United States. As a result, some of them go along. But, of course, those words prestige and fear need to be examined to see what they mean because if you looked at them in moral terms, you would ask, What presitge adheres to a government that conducts an immoral war? What respect does the United States get from the rest of the world when it engages in such a war? What's interesting in this case, and I think this is really unprecedented in the case of Iraq, is that on the eve of the war the world as a whole rose up everywhere and protested agains the U.S. entrance into the war, making it claer that by going into the war the United States was losing the respect, losing whatever prestige it had in the world.
Something to remember as the US House of Represenatives debates the nonbinding resolution. The vote is expected Friday, it is expected to pass in the House, it is nonbinding. KPFA has posted online various statements during the House Debate for those who can listen online. AFP notes: "Democrats won control of Congress in November elections marked by voter anger at the war." Now Vermont's legislature passed a symoblic measure calling for withdrawal, as Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted, but that's what is within their power. The US Congress has the power to do more (as Bully Boy knows, read on). As Vermont state rep Michael Fisher explained to Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) the resolution passed both state houses (House and Senate) -- Michael Fisher: "Sometimes states have to step up and lead, when Congress is not doing enough and this was a time when Vermonters were able to speak up and say clearly that it was time to take some real leadership and to end this war. . . . The resolution . . . calls for the immediate and orderly . . . withdrawal of American military forces from Iraq."
In the capital of Iraq, the never ending crackdown goes on and the latest additions include, the BBC reports, the suspension of permitted weapons "to all but Iraqi and US forces and registered security firms" (registered security firms would be mercenaries), the ongoing curfew was "extended by an hour," and "[i]ncreased stop and search powers in the capital." Reuters notes that Samawa is also under curfew (9:00 pm to 6:00 pm).
Bombings?
Reuters reports a car bombing in Baghdad ('near a hospital") which killed four and left ten more wounded, a roadside Baghdad bomb that killed one person and left three more wounded, another car bombing in Baghdad ("in a market in the southern Bayaa district") claimed two lives and left seven wounded, a mortar attack in Baghdad killed one and wounded at least 16 more, another roadside bombing in Baghdad ("in the western Yarmouk district") killed one person, and a Mosul car bombing killed three and left 20 wounded. Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports* an IED explosion in Baghdad that wounded two civilians and a mortar attack on a Shi'ite mosque in eastern Baghdad that wounded two people.
Shootings?
Reuters reports a man ("former police captain") was shot dead in front of his home in Diwaniya and three Iraqi soldiers were shot (wounded not dead) in Baghdad. Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports* "three passengers in" a vehicle in west Baghdad were injured when their car was attacked with gunfire and: "Around 10:00 a.m. an Iraqi university student was killed said Haider Hamid, a student of a technical college in Basra, today. A British military convoy randomly opened fire after an IED exploded targeting the convoy near the college (10 miles west of Basra) on the road leading to Zubair town. The random shooting killed the student Ahmed Fahmi, a second year student of the electricity department, Hamid said."
Corpses?
Ryan Lenz (AP) reports that five corpses were discovered in Baghdad ("bullet riddeled").
[*Note Mohammed al Dulaimy's report is of today's violence -- the date in the headline is incorrect -- check the posted date and you can click here for the actual roundup of February 6, 2007 to see that the date in the headline is incorrect. Ali Faddam covered the roundup on February 6th.]
Also today, the US military announced: "A Task Force Lightning Soldier died Tuesday in a non-combated related incident which is currently under investigation." And they announced: "A Multi-National Division - Baghdad Soldier died when insurgents targeted a combat patrol north of the Iraqi capital Feb. 13."
Question of the day, per CBS News: "Where Is Muqtada Al-Sadr?" Answer -- no one knows despite US officials claiming otherwise.
Claims were all Bully Boy had to offer when he held yet another dog & pony show (if dogs and ponies are this ugly). CBS and AP report that he's okay with the US Congress wasting time on non-binding resolutions but it's another story if they use their Congressional power to cut the funds for the illegal war. Bully Boy also continued to insist that Iran is supplying Iraq (sometimes it's Sunnis, sometimes it's Shias, it always changes -- that's what happens with lies) with weapons but he had nothing to offer but his word. His word is worth even less than Michael R. Gordon's -- if that's possible. As Lebanon's Daily Star reports, Bully Boy "does not know whethere the weapons were 'ordered from the top echelons of government'" which did not stop him from adding, "But my point is what's worse? Them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and it happening?"
Finally, who is the US military signing up these days? Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted that waivers for recruits with criminal records were up 65%." Lizette Alvarez (New York Times) reports this increase has come in the last three years, that "[t]he number of waivers for felony convictions also increased, to 11 percent of the 8,129 moral waivers granted in 2006, from 8 percent," and that "[t]he Defense Department has also expanded its applicant pool by accepting soldiers with criminal backgrounds and medical problems like asthma, high blood pressure and attention deficit disorder". These facts, by the way, were the ones John Kerry could have made on October 31, 2006. Instead, he backed down, buckled and took himself out of the presidential race on November 1, 2006.
like maria said paz
mikey likes it
the common ills
ehren watada
howard zinn
the new york timesmichael gordon
democracy now
joshua keyamy goodman
patrick hartpat hart
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Marjoie Cohn, Ralph Nader, Derrick Z. Jackson
Tuesday! And Monday's an off day! I just learned that. I had agreed to grab two hours last week for a guy at work and he goes, "I'll work for you" on this coming Monday. I was all, "It's just two hours." He had a thing he had to do and I understood and didn't mind covering. But he insisted and I was all, "Cool." I didn't realize I had the whole day off until today. I was talking to my grandfather on the phone and he mentioned it. So now I'm really happy! (Watch, we will have classes Monday -- too bad, so sad if we do, I'm cutting.) The other thing my grandfather brought up was if I was adding ISR-International Socialist Review to my blog roll?
Yep, I told him it was on the things to do that Elaine and I were both doing doing it and we already have. He was really glad C.I. had added it last week. I go, "Did you e-mail C.I.?" He goes no. I told him it would have been added and that if was some hang up about e-mailing, if there was something he wanted added some time to just pass it on through me if he didn't want to e-mail.
My grandfather's really cool and, like I said before, he's a socialist from way back. I wish I'd thought to add the link before. But C.I. was going through a stack of magazines (C.I. always packs magazines and books) while we were in Tacoma and we both ended up reading from ISR while we were in Tacoma. And I just realized that Pru had asked for England's socialist magazine to be linked to a long time ago. It's up at The Common Ills but I'll add it to my site too. I probably won't go back in the template until the end of the week but I will add it this week. Pru's really cool and you know that from the stuff she highlights but, if you're lucky, you also read her column in the gina & krista round-robin and you get how really cool she is.
Okay, C.I. passed something on to me (C.I. was speaking today and didn't think there would even be a snapshot -- there was, don't panic) and it's by Marjorie Cohn who is president of the National Lawyers Guild (not the National Lawyer's Guild -- :D I had a typo last week). This is a sample of her "From Iraq to Iran:"
It's deja vu. This time the Bush gang wants war with Iran. Following a carefully orchestrated strategy, they have ratcheted up the "threat" from Iran, designed to mislead us into a new war four years after they misled us into Iraq.
Like its insistence that Iraq had WMD, the Bush administration has been hyping claims that Iran seeks nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), however, has found no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei says there is plenty of time for negotiation with Iran.
Bush has sent two battle carrier groups, replete with nukes, to the Persian Gulf and a third is reportedly preparing to follow. In support of Bush's case that Iran poses a danger to the U.S., three unnamed American officials ceremoniously trotted out metal parts found in Iraq and claimed Iran supplied them to kill our soldiers in Iraq.
This "evidence" - or "packaging," as the Associated Press calls it - doesn't pass the straight face test with most reputable observers. "The officials offered no evidence to substantiate allegations that the 'highest levels' of the Iranian government had sanctioned support for attacks against U.S. troops," according to Monday's Washington Post.
Saturday's New York Times cited information gleaned from "interrogation reports" from Iranians and Iraqis captured in the recent U.S. raid on the Iranian embassy in northern Iraq. They allegedly indicated money and weapons components are brought into Iraq over the Iranian border at night. If those people indeed provided such information, query what kind of pressure, i.e. torture, might have been applied to encourage their cooperation. Recall the centerpiece of Colin Powell's 2003 lies to the Security Council about ties between Iraq and al Qaeda came from false information tortured out of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi.
Any Iranian weapons in Iraq may belong to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a Shiite resistance group the U.S. used to support. There could be old Iranian munitions lying around which are left over from the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s. A former high level U.S. military officer told me it was not uncommon to find large caches of weapons around Iraq. He cited the 2004 discovery of 37,000 American Colt 45 handguns in a warehouse near the Iranian border on the Iraq side, likely procured "when Saddam was our friend." The United States armed both sides in the Iran-Iraq conflict.
If you missed the Saturday article that she's talking about, you can read C.I.'s thing on it from Saturday, "Gordo's war-on, still dripping" -- Michael R. Gordon's still lying for the administration. He didn't start back up, he never stopped. Elaine's going to be addressing that tonight but I'll add to that this: C.I. has called Gordo on his shit. While everyone else was acting like, "Judy's gone! Things are great!" C.I. has followed the war pornographer and there are tons of entries up about what he's done at the paper since Miller left. He's been selling the illegal war since before it started and he's kept selling it.
Now this is from Ralph Nader's "When Wall Street Whines (You Know They're Making a Killing):"
Wall Street leaders have established a series of self-empowered commissions -- among them the Commission on Capital Markets Regulation (the "Paulson Commission"), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Commission on the Regulation of the U.S. Capital Markets -- to peddle a fantasy story to the public and policymakers. This is their fantasy: U.S. competitiveness in financial services is now in grave doubt. Regulation, litigation and prosecution are driving companies to float their IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) on foreign markets. If something isn't done soon, U.S. economic performance is in jeopardy. Give me a break.
In the real world, things look quite different.
First, a disinterested observer might comment that securities regulations exist to protect investors, not to enhance the interests of Wall Street. Wall Street is supposed to serve business and investors, not the other way around.
Second, the much-touted decline in U.S. IPOs is deeply misleading. The regulatory and litigation climate is a small and insignificant factor in the rising percentage of IPOs undertaken outside the United States. The real issue is that other countries' stock markets are strengthening, and most recent IPOs were done by companies outside theUnited States.
I like highlighting Nader because it pisses people off. :D It does piss people off but I really think they need to stop blaming him for 2000. He didn't 'steal' any votes. Like I pointed out before, there was a time when I thought he did. Of course, I was a high school kid! What's the excuse for all the grown ups? I laughed my ass off when AlterPunk was doing all his "thank you"s to Nader. If AlterPunk had worked hard himself, instead of sobbing "We are the New York Times!" (C.I. said AlterPunk sounded like "a starlet desperate to be cast." :D) then maybe some of the things on AlterPunk's list wouldn't have happened. Nader's not a scapegoat. He was a candidate. He had every right to run and any vote he got, he won. That's reality. People vote for who they want to (unless a voting machine switches their vote) and Nader's votes were votes he earned.
Now this is something that C.I. passed over from Cindy. She was e-mailing C.I. with some highlights and had several for Sunday so she offered that some of them might fit better for others. I saw this Sunday when I got home. Dad had clipped it out of the paper for me. So Cindy was right that I'd be interested in it. This is from Derrick Z. Jackson's "This is When the War Hits Home:"
A new pentagon investigation found that the use of prewar Iraq intelligence by former undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith was "inappropriate," "dubious," and "inconsistent." Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said this news was "devastating."
The worst devastation continues to visit family upon family across the United States. This week Massachusetts lost its first female soldier in Iraq, Marine helicopter pilot Captain Jennifer Harris, 28, of Swampscott. She died in a crash two weeks before the end of her third and final tour of duty in Iraq.
The tributes to her have been classically tragic: She was the best this country had to offer. She was proud to serve her country.
This is no different from March 2003, when the Pentagon announced the first fatalities in the invasion of Iraq.
"Excellent role model," someone said of the late Therrel Childress 30, of Harrison County, Miss.
"This is when the war hits home," someone said about the late Ryan Beaupre, 30, of Bloomington, Ill., "when an all-American family loses someone like Ryan."
A relative said of the late Jay Aubin, 36, of Waterville, Maine, "He believed in what he was doing. He believed that Saddam had to be taken out."
All-American men and women believed in a government that was inappropriately using intelligence. The Defense Department inspector general said in an executive summary released yesterday to the public that Feith, the top policy official under former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, "developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and Al Qaeda relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the intelligence community, to senior decision-makers."
So is the war hitting home with you yet? If you're a regular reader, I bet it hit home long ago. So I hope your doing your part (and bet you are) and making sure that you talk about it. That's the only reason that we can today, because people said, "I won't be bullied into silence." That's another difference between Vietnam and Iraq. And I credit a student in Tacoma for pointing that out to me last week. When we were all taking turns speaking, his point was that the peace movment has come along way because the better comparison is WWII. He says that the attack on Pearl Harbor probably silenced a lot of people the same way that the attacks on 9-11 did. It took time to get a sizeable opposition going against Vietnam and I think we've seen the peace movement move more quickly. But even though there is no link between 9-11 and Iraq, they used that to bully people into silence. (They still try to.) So it is true that we had that to go up against. The space has been carved out now and everyone should be using it to discuss Iraq.
And here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
February 13, 2007. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq; will it expand into Iran?; a new poll finds most Americans aren't please with Bully Boy but Congress shouldn't breathe easy, and a war resister prepares for a court-martial next week.
Starting with news of war resistance, on August 31st of last year, at Camp Casey III, Mark Wilkerson turned himself in. Wilkerson had served in Iraq, applied for conscientious objector status, had the status denied and told that he could not appeal the decision until after he had served his second deployment in Iraq. While on leave before his second deployment, Wilkerson decided to self-check out of the military. He was gone for approximately a year and a half and then, on August 31st, held a press conference with Cindy Sheehan and others standing with him to announce he was turning himself in. Ryan (Indybay IMC) reports that Wilkerson will be court-martialed at Fort Hood (Texas) on February 22nd. Dick Foster (Rocky Mountain News) reports: "As part of his plea agreement with the Army, Wilkerson will serve not more than 10 months in prison. But he also faces a possible dishonorable or bad conduct discharge and a felony conviction on his record." Reflecting on his time serving in Iraq, Wilkerson wrote (last October): "Before I deployed to Iraq during OIF1, I was full of optimism for what we could do to help the people of Iraq. One of our missions, after all, was to 'win the hearts and the minds of the Iraqi people.' And in this reagard, we have failed miserably. In the year I was in Iraq, I saw kids waving American flags in the first month. Then they threw rocks. Then they planeted IEDs. Then they blew themselves and others up in city squares full of people. The only conclusion I can come up with as to why this has happened is the way the American troops have treated the Iraqi people as a whole. From random raids of whole city blocks, to checkpoints that interrupted the daily lives of the Iraqis, to incidents of torture and even massacres, a majority of Iraqis now feel as that the American soliders, once hailed as heroes and saviors, are now seen as conquerors. Civil was has erupted in the streets, and Americans are caught in the crossfire."
Turning to the topic of Ehren Watada whose court-martial at Fort Lewis last week ended with a mistrial, Ann Wright (retired col., retired State Dept., writing at Truthout) notes: "The US Army prosecution called only three witnesses to meet its burden of providing evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that Lieutenant Watada had failed to deploy to Iraq and had committed conduct 'unbecoming an officer' for public statements about the war on Iraq he made in June and August 2006. Ironically, in my opinion, the testimony of the prosecution witnesses underscored Lieutenant Watada's professionalism, dedication to duty and respect for the chain of command as he attempted to resolve his ethical and moral concerns about the war. In effect, prosecution witnesses undercut the prosecution's own case against Watada before the jury panel of seven US Army officers." The prosecution bungled their case. Instead of allowing it to continue and risk the military losing, Judge Toilet (Lt. Col. John Head) declared a mistrial. Wright concludes: "As an old soldier with nearly three decades of service, I suggest that the 'good order and discipline' of the Army has not been negatively affected by Lieutenant Watada's actions. Until his unit deployed to Iraq on June 22, Watada had not disobeyed an order from his command. He did not go AWOL. After he was charged, he worked professionally and diligently everyday while awaiting his court-martial. I urge the Army to let the lieutenant, who has acted in good faith, with courtesy and respect for the military and responsibility for his oath to the military and to the country, resign." The Journal News reports that Vietnam war resister David Mitchell (Rockland Coalition for Peace and Justice) will speak Tuesday night at 7:00 pm about what he observed while attending Watada's court-martial last week. The location for the speech is the Fellowship of Reconciliation at 521 North Broadway in Upper Nyack.
Watada and Wilkerson are a part of a movement of resistance with the military that includes others such as Agustin Aguayo (whose court-martial is currently set to begin on March 6th), Kyle Snyder, Darrell Anderson, Ivan Brobeck, Ricky Clousing, Aidan Delgado, Joshua Key, Camilo Meija, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Jeremy Hinzman, Corey Glass, Patrick Hart, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
Bombings?
CBS and AP report: "A suicide truck bomber blew himself up near a college and a ration office in a mainly Shiite area of the capital Tuesday, killing at least 15 people, officials said, a day after car bombs devastated a Baghdad marketplace." Reuters reports the count of those dead rose to 18 and that 40 are wounded. CNN reports a car bombinb ("outside a bakery in southereatern Baghdad") that left four dead.
Corpses?
Qassim Abdul-Zahra (AP) reports that 28 corpses were discovered in Baghdad. Reuters notes that three corpses were found in Mahmudiya.
And today, the US military announced: "A soldier assigned to Multi-National Force-West was killed Sunday while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar Province."
Meanwhile the crackdown gets a curfew -- another curfew. David Chazan, reporting for BBC News, noted the latest curfew announcement from Iraqi Lt. Gen Abboud Gambar: "A curfew on people and vehicles will be imposed at a day to be announced soon around Baghdad security zone. This curfew will be effective from 20:00 to 06:00 local time." Chazan: "The curfews have been tried before and they haven't freed the capital from sectarian violence. This time the borders with Iran and Syria will be closed for at least three days."
Turning to the subject of Iran, Karen DeYoung (Washington Post) reported that "Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday that he has no information indicating Iran's government is directly the supply of lethat weapons to Shiite insurgent groups in Iraq" -- Pace: "We know that the explosively formed projecticles are manufactured in Iran. What I would not say is that the Iranian government, per se, knows abou this. It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it's clear that materials from Iran are involved but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."
Various people in the administration and war pornographer Michael R. Gordon of the New York Times are pushing a link that has not been established as existing. Dennis Bernstein discussed this with Robert Parry and Larry Everest on KPFA's Flashpoints yesterday. Parry: "One has to remember some of the ludicrous stories that Judy Miller of the New York Times published -- including some on the front page of the New York Times which were, in retrospect, laughable. But they're not laughable because they led to the death of so many people." Parry also noted some of the phoney claims used to market the illegal war on Iraq such as: "remember he was going to spray us, he was supposed to have these model planes that were going to fly over the United States spraying us with poisonous gasses." Everest and Parry discussed the likelihood that Bully Boy will attempt to strike Iran, possibly in April, possibly by forcing them to make the first move or possibly after Israel initiates an attack.
John R. MacArthur (Harper's magazine) spoke with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! today noting the 'repoting' on Iran: "And the most damning ommission in the story, if you want to talk about overall perspective, is complete lack of perspective on who's fighting whom, who's shooting at whom in Iraq? Does the Iranian government really have an interest in destabilizing what's now a Shi'ite dominated government? Doesn't make any sense -- if it does make sense to the administration, that the Iranians want to destabilize a Shi'ite-dominated government, when they're a Shi'ite rule nation, then they should explain it. But there's no logic to it, and there's just this massive ommission."
Finally, Susan Page (USA Today) reports on the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll which found "six in 10 oppose President Bush's plan to use more troops" in Iraq and that "Seven of 10 say their representative's vote on the war will affect their vote in the next congressional election; more than four in 10 call it a major factor." Where is the New York Times poll on this topic? While other outlets have been providing their polling results for over two months now, the paper of record has been strangely silent.
like maria said paz
mikey likes it
derrick z. jackson
marjorie cohn
the common ills
ehren watada
mark wilkerson
ann wright
karen deyoungthe washington post
democracy now
flashpointskpfa
Yep, I told him it was on the things to do that Elaine and I were both doing doing it and we already have. He was really glad C.I. had added it last week. I go, "Did you e-mail C.I.?" He goes no. I told him it would have been added and that if was some hang up about e-mailing, if there was something he wanted added some time to just pass it on through me if he didn't want to e-mail.
My grandfather's really cool and, like I said before, he's a socialist from way back. I wish I'd thought to add the link before. But C.I. was going through a stack of magazines (C.I. always packs magazines and books) while we were in Tacoma and we both ended up reading from ISR while we were in Tacoma. And I just realized that Pru had asked for England's socialist magazine to be linked to a long time ago. It's up at The Common Ills but I'll add it to my site too. I probably won't go back in the template until the end of the week but I will add it this week. Pru's really cool and you know that from the stuff she highlights but, if you're lucky, you also read her column in the gina & krista round-robin and you get how really cool she is.
Okay, C.I. passed something on to me (C.I. was speaking today and didn't think there would even be a snapshot -- there was, don't panic) and it's by Marjorie Cohn who is president of the National Lawyers Guild (not the National Lawyer's Guild -- :D I had a typo last week). This is a sample of her "From Iraq to Iran:"
It's deja vu. This time the Bush gang wants war with Iran. Following a carefully orchestrated strategy, they have ratcheted up the "threat" from Iran, designed to mislead us into a new war four years after they misled us into Iraq.
Like its insistence that Iraq had WMD, the Bush administration has been hyping claims that Iran seeks nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), however, has found no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei says there is plenty of time for negotiation with Iran.
Bush has sent two battle carrier groups, replete with nukes, to the Persian Gulf and a third is reportedly preparing to follow. In support of Bush's case that Iran poses a danger to the U.S., three unnamed American officials ceremoniously trotted out metal parts found in Iraq and claimed Iran supplied them to kill our soldiers in Iraq.
This "evidence" - or "packaging," as the Associated Press calls it - doesn't pass the straight face test with most reputable observers. "The officials offered no evidence to substantiate allegations that the 'highest levels' of the Iranian government had sanctioned support for attacks against U.S. troops," according to Monday's Washington Post.
Saturday's New York Times cited information gleaned from "interrogation reports" from Iranians and Iraqis captured in the recent U.S. raid on the Iranian embassy in northern Iraq. They allegedly indicated money and weapons components are brought into Iraq over the Iranian border at night. If those people indeed provided such information, query what kind of pressure, i.e. torture, might have been applied to encourage their cooperation. Recall the centerpiece of Colin Powell's 2003 lies to the Security Council about ties between Iraq and al Qaeda came from false information tortured out of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi.
Any Iranian weapons in Iraq may belong to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a Shiite resistance group the U.S. used to support. There could be old Iranian munitions lying around which are left over from the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s. A former high level U.S. military officer told me it was not uncommon to find large caches of weapons around Iraq. He cited the 2004 discovery of 37,000 American Colt 45 handguns in a warehouse near the Iranian border on the Iraq side, likely procured "when Saddam was our friend." The United States armed both sides in the Iran-Iraq conflict.
If you missed the Saturday article that she's talking about, you can read C.I.'s thing on it from Saturday, "Gordo's war-on, still dripping" -- Michael R. Gordon's still lying for the administration. He didn't start back up, he never stopped. Elaine's going to be addressing that tonight but I'll add to that this: C.I. has called Gordo on his shit. While everyone else was acting like, "Judy's gone! Things are great!" C.I. has followed the war pornographer and there are tons of entries up about what he's done at the paper since Miller left. He's been selling the illegal war since before it started and he's kept selling it.
Now this is from Ralph Nader's "When Wall Street Whines (You Know They're Making a Killing):"
Wall Street leaders have established a series of self-empowered commissions -- among them the Commission on Capital Markets Regulation (the "Paulson Commission"), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Commission on the Regulation of the U.S. Capital Markets -- to peddle a fantasy story to the public and policymakers. This is their fantasy: U.S. competitiveness in financial services is now in grave doubt. Regulation, litigation and prosecution are driving companies to float their IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) on foreign markets. If something isn't done soon, U.S. economic performance is in jeopardy. Give me a break.
In the real world, things look quite different.
First, a disinterested observer might comment that securities regulations exist to protect investors, not to enhance the interests of Wall Street. Wall Street is supposed to serve business and investors, not the other way around.
Second, the much-touted decline in U.S. IPOs is deeply misleading. The regulatory and litigation climate is a small and insignificant factor in the rising percentage of IPOs undertaken outside the United States. The real issue is that other countries' stock markets are strengthening, and most recent IPOs were done by companies outside theUnited States.
I like highlighting Nader because it pisses people off. :D It does piss people off but I really think they need to stop blaming him for 2000. He didn't 'steal' any votes. Like I pointed out before, there was a time when I thought he did. Of course, I was a high school kid! What's the excuse for all the grown ups? I laughed my ass off when AlterPunk was doing all his "thank you"s to Nader. If AlterPunk had worked hard himself, instead of sobbing "We are the New York Times!" (C.I. said AlterPunk sounded like "a starlet desperate to be cast." :D) then maybe some of the things on AlterPunk's list wouldn't have happened. Nader's not a scapegoat. He was a candidate. He had every right to run and any vote he got, he won. That's reality. People vote for who they want to (unless a voting machine switches their vote) and Nader's votes were votes he earned.
Now this is something that C.I. passed over from Cindy. She was e-mailing C.I. with some highlights and had several for Sunday so she offered that some of them might fit better for others. I saw this Sunday when I got home. Dad had clipped it out of the paper for me. So Cindy was right that I'd be interested in it. This is from Derrick Z. Jackson's "This is When the War Hits Home:"
A new pentagon investigation found that the use of prewar Iraq intelligence by former undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith was "inappropriate," "dubious," and "inconsistent." Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said this news was "devastating."
The worst devastation continues to visit family upon family across the United States. This week Massachusetts lost its first female soldier in Iraq, Marine helicopter pilot Captain Jennifer Harris, 28, of Swampscott. She died in a crash two weeks before the end of her third and final tour of duty in Iraq.
The tributes to her have been classically tragic: She was the best this country had to offer. She was proud to serve her country.
This is no different from March 2003, when the Pentagon announced the first fatalities in the invasion of Iraq.
"Excellent role model," someone said of the late Therrel Childress 30, of Harrison County, Miss.
"This is when the war hits home," someone said about the late Ryan Beaupre, 30, of Bloomington, Ill., "when an all-American family loses someone like Ryan."
A relative said of the late Jay Aubin, 36, of Waterville, Maine, "He believed in what he was doing. He believed that Saddam had to be taken out."
All-American men and women believed in a government that was inappropriately using intelligence. The Defense Department inspector general said in an executive summary released yesterday to the public that Feith, the top policy official under former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, "developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and Al Qaeda relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the intelligence community, to senior decision-makers."
So is the war hitting home with you yet? If you're a regular reader, I bet it hit home long ago. So I hope your doing your part (and bet you are) and making sure that you talk about it. That's the only reason that we can today, because people said, "I won't be bullied into silence." That's another difference between Vietnam and Iraq. And I credit a student in Tacoma for pointing that out to me last week. When we were all taking turns speaking, his point was that the peace movment has come along way because the better comparison is WWII. He says that the attack on Pearl Harbor probably silenced a lot of people the same way that the attacks on 9-11 did. It took time to get a sizeable opposition going against Vietnam and I think we've seen the peace movement move more quickly. But even though there is no link between 9-11 and Iraq, they used that to bully people into silence. (They still try to.) So it is true that we had that to go up against. The space has been carved out now and everyone should be using it to discuss Iraq.
And here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
February 13, 2007. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq; will it expand into Iran?; a new poll finds most Americans aren't please with Bully Boy but Congress shouldn't breathe easy, and a war resister prepares for a court-martial next week.
Starting with news of war resistance, on August 31st of last year, at Camp Casey III, Mark Wilkerson turned himself in. Wilkerson had served in Iraq, applied for conscientious objector status, had the status denied and told that he could not appeal the decision until after he had served his second deployment in Iraq. While on leave before his second deployment, Wilkerson decided to self-check out of the military. He was gone for approximately a year and a half and then, on August 31st, held a press conference with Cindy Sheehan and others standing with him to announce he was turning himself in. Ryan (Indybay IMC) reports that Wilkerson will be court-martialed at Fort Hood (Texas) on February 22nd. Dick Foster (Rocky Mountain News) reports: "As part of his plea agreement with the Army, Wilkerson will serve not more than 10 months in prison. But he also faces a possible dishonorable or bad conduct discharge and a felony conviction on his record." Reflecting on his time serving in Iraq, Wilkerson wrote (last October): "Before I deployed to Iraq during OIF1, I was full of optimism for what we could do to help the people of Iraq. One of our missions, after all, was to 'win the hearts and the minds of the Iraqi people.' And in this reagard, we have failed miserably. In the year I was in Iraq, I saw kids waving American flags in the first month. Then they threw rocks. Then they planeted IEDs. Then they blew themselves and others up in city squares full of people. The only conclusion I can come up with as to why this has happened is the way the American troops have treated the Iraqi people as a whole. From random raids of whole city blocks, to checkpoints that interrupted the daily lives of the Iraqis, to incidents of torture and even massacres, a majority of Iraqis now feel as that the American soliders, once hailed as heroes and saviors, are now seen as conquerors. Civil was has erupted in the streets, and Americans are caught in the crossfire."
Turning to the topic of Ehren Watada whose court-martial at Fort Lewis last week ended with a mistrial, Ann Wright (retired col., retired State Dept., writing at Truthout) notes: "The US Army prosecution called only three witnesses to meet its burden of providing evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that Lieutenant Watada had failed to deploy to Iraq and had committed conduct 'unbecoming an officer' for public statements about the war on Iraq he made in June and August 2006. Ironically, in my opinion, the testimony of the prosecution witnesses underscored Lieutenant Watada's professionalism, dedication to duty and respect for the chain of command as he attempted to resolve his ethical and moral concerns about the war. In effect, prosecution witnesses undercut the prosecution's own case against Watada before the jury panel of seven US Army officers." The prosecution bungled their case. Instead of allowing it to continue and risk the military losing, Judge Toilet (Lt. Col. John Head) declared a mistrial. Wright concludes: "As an old soldier with nearly three decades of service, I suggest that the 'good order and discipline' of the Army has not been negatively affected by Lieutenant Watada's actions. Until his unit deployed to Iraq on June 22, Watada had not disobeyed an order from his command. He did not go AWOL. After he was charged, he worked professionally and diligently everyday while awaiting his court-martial. I urge the Army to let the lieutenant, who has acted in good faith, with courtesy and respect for the military and responsibility for his oath to the military and to the country, resign." The Journal News reports that Vietnam war resister David Mitchell (Rockland Coalition for Peace and Justice) will speak Tuesday night at 7:00 pm about what he observed while attending Watada's court-martial last week. The location for the speech is the Fellowship of Reconciliation at 521 North Broadway in Upper Nyack.
Watada and Wilkerson are a part of a movement of resistance with the military that includes others such as Agustin Aguayo (whose court-martial is currently set to begin on March 6th), Kyle Snyder, Darrell Anderson, Ivan Brobeck, Ricky Clousing, Aidan Delgado, Joshua Key, Camilo Meija, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Jeremy Hinzman, Corey Glass, Patrick Hart, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
Bombings?
CBS and AP report: "A suicide truck bomber blew himself up near a college and a ration office in a mainly Shiite area of the capital Tuesday, killing at least 15 people, officials said, a day after car bombs devastated a Baghdad marketplace." Reuters reports the count of those dead rose to 18 and that 40 are wounded. CNN reports a car bombinb ("outside a bakery in southereatern Baghdad") that left four dead.
Corpses?
Qassim Abdul-Zahra (AP) reports that 28 corpses were discovered in Baghdad. Reuters notes that three corpses were found in Mahmudiya.
And today, the US military announced: "A soldier assigned to Multi-National Force-West was killed Sunday while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar Province."
Meanwhile the crackdown gets a curfew -- another curfew. David Chazan, reporting for BBC News, noted the latest curfew announcement from Iraqi Lt. Gen Abboud Gambar: "A curfew on people and vehicles will be imposed at a day to be announced soon around Baghdad security zone. This curfew will be effective from 20:00 to 06:00 local time." Chazan: "The curfews have been tried before and they haven't freed the capital from sectarian violence. This time the borders with Iran and Syria will be closed for at least three days."
Turning to the subject of Iran, Karen DeYoung (Washington Post) reported that "Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday that he has no information indicating Iran's government is directly the supply of lethat weapons to Shiite insurgent groups in Iraq" -- Pace: "We know that the explosively formed projecticles are manufactured in Iran. What I would not say is that the Iranian government, per se, knows abou this. It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it's clear that materials from Iran are involved but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."
Various people in the administration and war pornographer Michael R. Gordon of the New York Times are pushing a link that has not been established as existing. Dennis Bernstein discussed this with Robert Parry and Larry Everest on KPFA's Flashpoints yesterday. Parry: "One has to remember some of the ludicrous stories that Judy Miller of the New York Times published -- including some on the front page of the New York Times which were, in retrospect, laughable. But they're not laughable because they led to the death of so many people." Parry also noted some of the phoney claims used to market the illegal war on Iraq such as: "remember he was going to spray us, he was supposed to have these model planes that were going to fly over the United States spraying us with poisonous gasses." Everest and Parry discussed the likelihood that Bully Boy will attempt to strike Iran, possibly in April, possibly by forcing them to make the first move or possibly after Israel initiates an attack.
John R. MacArthur (Harper's magazine) spoke with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! today noting the 'repoting' on Iran: "And the most damning ommission in the story, if you want to talk about overall perspective, is complete lack of perspective on who's fighting whom, who's shooting at whom in Iraq? Does the Iranian government really have an interest in destabilizing what's now a Shi'ite dominated government? Doesn't make any sense -- if it does make sense to the administration, that the Iranians want to destabilize a Shi'ite-dominated government, when they're a Shi'ite rule nation, then they should explain it. But there's no logic to it, and there's just this massive ommission."
Finally, Susan Page (USA Today) reports on the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll which found "six in 10 oppose President Bush's plan to use more troops" in Iraq and that "Seven of 10 say their representative's vote on the war will affect their vote in the next congressional election; more than four in 10 call it a major factor." Where is the New York Times poll on this topic? While other outlets have been providing their polling results for over two months now, the paper of record has been strangely silent.
like maria said paz
mikey likes it
derrick z. jackson
marjorie cohn
the common ills
ehren watada
mark wilkerson
ann wright
karen deyoungthe washington post
democracy now
flashpointskpfa
Monday, February 12, 2007
John Walsh, DC protest, and more
Monday! I had a lot to talk about and thought I would talk about music.
This is from John Walsh's "A Splintered Antiwar Movement" and I'm going to talk about it after:
The roster of speakers for the UFPJ demonstration in Washington D.C. on January 27 speaks volumes. The key was not so much who was included but who was not. The list of speakers certainly had a lot of wonderful activists in the peace movement, but to a considerable degree it was a line-up of Democrats and movie stars.
Ralph Nader, who was in Washington that weekend, was pointedly not invited to speak. On Saturday night Nader was reportedly inquiring of other independents just who had been invited to speak among their growing number. Imagine that; the only antiwar candidate in the 2004 elections was not an invited speaker, even though he and Cindy Sheehan drew tremendous applause at the last mass rally in 2005 (Notice how these rallies occur now only in only non-election years, nicely tailored to get activists to work for Dems, but not to pressure the Dems to take a strong anti-war stand.) The non-invitation removed Nader from the movement every bit as effectively as the censors armed with air brushes removed dissidents in the "socialist" Czech republic chronicled by Milan Kundera. Nor was there anyone who spoke as a representative of the Green Party, even though at least one speaker was in fact a Green and even though an informal survey showed an enormous number of people in the crowd were Greens or Green sympathizers. Yes, the Greens were "permitted" a feeder march but their only organized presence on the Mall that this writer could find was a small card table with three women staffing it.
Okay, I agree with him more than I disagree but I disagree on one point. "Movie stars." I don't think there were a lot "movie stars." Sean Penn was there and spoke, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins spoke. Am I forgetting someone? Eve Ensler is a playwright, she's not a "movie star." Who does that leave? Jane Fonda.
I like Jane Fonda and she's quite a bit more than a "movie star." She was active during Vietnam, she was active in the No Nukes movement and many other areas. She's written best selling books, started the home video market, and done a lot more than I could list.
When I got back from DC, the thing everyone said they saw on TV was Jane Fonda. Jane Fonda didn't take time away from another speaker, if she hadn't been there, the rally and march wouldn't have gotten the attention it did get.
As someone who was there, I know that Jane Fonda's speech was the second most popular speech (Bob Watada's was the most popular). We wrote about this in a two-parter for the gina & krista round-robin and at The Third Estate Sunday Review's "Show Me What Democracy Looks Like (1-27-07)." From the credit line of that article:
The credit goes to: 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 (Rebecca couldn't come to DC due to her pregnancy and Betty decided to participate in a house party Rebecca threw which involved screening and discussing The Ground Truth and handing out information on HR 508), 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, Ruth of Ruth's Report and her grandchildren Tracey and Jayson, Wally of The Daily Jot, Trina of Trina's Kitchen (also Mike's mother, or Mike is the son of Trina), Gina and Krista of the gina & krista round-robin, and Francisco, Miguel and Maria of El Espiritu. And Dallas, we always forget to include Dallas! He was a sounding board and much more.]
Betty and Rebecca helped with the writing but they were not there (due to Rebecca not being able to travel because of her pregnancy). But you've got Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava, Jim, C.I., Kat, Cedric, Elaine, Ruth, Tracey, Jayson, Wally, Ma, Gina, Krista, Francisco, Miguel, Maria, Dallas and me. We were all there. We were interviewing people throughout the rally and after. Saturday evening, we were pulling our 20 quotes. That's how we've always done it in the past. You pick the 20 favorites from people you interviewed and then you fight to get as many included as you can. (That's been done with two other rally pieces at The Third Estate Sunday Review.) Wally, C.I. and Tracey were a team. They could have each picked 20 with no overlap. They were smart and went with the same 20. (Teams who didn't were arguing against everyone -- most of us were doing that -- while Wally, C.I. and Tracey were three voices saying, "This is strong. It's got to go in.") But we had so many and no way to agree to only 100 (the number used for the last one), that C.I. and Gina came up with the idea of the planned piece running as a two-parter in the roundrobin (which was doing daily editions leading up to the protest through the Monday after). That allowed us to do the feature for The Third Estate Sunday Review a little differently than normal. But we did note the most popular speakers.
Jane Fonda was second only to Bob Watada and if you spoke to a woman of any age (this is in the article), chances were she'd bring up Jane Fonda. She's quite a bit more than a "movie star."
So I just want to be clear on that. And I want to be clear that she got on the news and if she hadn't been there, the protest wouldn't have gotten the coverage it did.
Tim Robbins was also very popular and I'm sure in the top 20. Some people cited Sarandon and some people cited Sean Penn. Those three, and Fonda, gave really strong speeches. If I'm forgetting someone, I was doing interviews. But unless I've forgotten at least five other actresses or actors, I don't think there were too many of them there.
So that's where I disagree. Where I agree? With pretty much everything else he said -- including that Libertarians (whom I really don't care for) and Greens (whom I do like) should have been up there. Was Medea Benjamin there? I remember a big debate about a quote we used and some people we interviewed were saying it was from her and some were saying it was from Kim Gandy. C.I. kept saying, "It's Kim Gandy." All the rest of us (except maybe Elaine and maybe Ava) were disagreeing. We wrote it up with a note and were going to post it that way -- we think this was Medea Benjamin and so do some of the people citing the speech but C.I. swears it was Kim Gandy. About 30 minutes before it posted that morning, C.I. made a call, put it on speaker phone and we were all informed it was Kim Gandy. So we quickly changed it to make sure she got credit. But if Medea Benjamin was there speaking, she is a Green. Is she enough? Not in terms of numbers. (Maybe in terms of commitment -- I like Medea Benjamin.)
There should have been more Greens on stage than just Medea. There may have been a few more that I don't know what party they belong to but there should have been spokespeople from the Green Party.
Ralph Nader? I support him speaking. I also know, from when I defended him here last week or the week before, a lot of idiots think he 'stole' the election. (I got hate mail. I thought I'd gotten hate mail before but I didn't know from hate mail until I defended Ralph Nader.) I would hope that he would have been well received but I will allow that if people knew how strong this reaction was, they may not have invited him out of fear that he'd be booed and that would be the clip TV would run with. "Ha-ha, they boo their own speakers!" If I'd been in charge of getting people to speak, I would've been on the phone trying to get ahold of him because he not only has a right to be there, people need to hear him.
So I agree with Walsh on that too. I also agree with him about A.N.S.W.E.R. I don't know what the problem or supposed problem is anymore than Walsh. I do know from when I was out in California last year, A.N.S.W.E.R. works it's ass off. It worked on the immigration issue really hard, it works on that still, it works to end the war. If there's some 'personality conflict' that grown adults can't get passed, oh well. That doesn't mean A.N.S.W.E.R. still can't be invited to speak. They can be and they should have been.
My only real problem with Walsh was the "movie stars" remark. When Jane Fonda spoke at the media reform thing, there were some people posting things that I thought were really rude and really stupid. If you can get Jane Fonda to speak at anything, book her. She will get press because she is admired by a lot of people (she'll get press because she's hated by a small, vocal group too). She can bring attention and she can bring some people into the tent that might not be there otherwise. She's been making movies forever and has people who know her that way. She has people who know her for her feminism. She has people who know her for activism. She has people who know her as Ted's ex-wife or Tom's ex-wife. She has people who know from the Workout. She brings in a wide cross-section. As someone who's produced films and TV movies, she knows about media that way, as part of GreenStone Media, she knows about it that way, as someone who's given more interviews than most famous people ever will, she knows about what gets into print and what a writer sits on. When some people were griping online, I thought it was a case of sour grapes. I'm sorry that her name drawfs so many (I'm sorry for them) but that's the way life works out. If I was asked to speak next week and at the last minute got bumped because they could get her, I wouldn't whine or feel sorry for myself, I would ask to be front row so I could hear the speech because, and this is the really important thing, she gives great speeches. There was a stillness in DC when she started speaking. Everyone was just hanging and waiting. She gives a great speech.
I don't know that Walsh is referring to her but after the nonsense that went online after the media reform, if he is, he's wrong. I was there, I know what I saw. I was interviewing people, I know what speakers they responded to. I heard about the interviews. I helped write the two-part series in the round-robin in which we each chose 30 people to quote who had come to the rally. About a third of what's in the round-robin is people citing Jane Fonda. Sometimes just her, sometimes her and one or two other people. She was very popular. She was intensely popular with people my age, with women of any age, with African-Americans and with men over 40.
I don't think four was too many. If I missed somebody, I don't think that was too many. I do think that if you weren't there (I don't know if Walsh was or not), what you got on your TV was Fonda. If you saw Democracy Now! you still didn't get all the speakers. There were a lot of speakers, I didn't know all of them. But there were a lot.
A "lot" doesn't defend the fact that Greens (or Libertarians) weren't up there (or up there in more numbers -- I really think Medea Benjamin did speak). I wonder what the actions elsewhere were like? Cindy Sheehan spoke in Los Angeles. Carolyn Ho (she is Ehren Watada's mother, Bob Watada is his father) spoke in San Francisco. But you had a cross-section of occupation, if not parties.
John Conyers, Maxine Waters and Lynn Woolsey were popular speakers at the rally. We actually heard several people tell us that they were bothered that no Senator was present. Where was Bernie Sanders was a popular question? The second most named was Russ Feingold. But Greens should have been there and I know of Ron Paul (who is a Republican from Texas) and he has been outspoken so he should have been there too.
I agree with Walsh very strongly on everything but the "movie stars" and that's because a) I didn't think there were that many and b) Jane Fonda was hugely popular (second most popular speaker) and I don't want to see her slammed. I actually thought the Raging Grannies demonstrated another booking issue -- where were the singers? The Raging Grannies sang (and they were in the top ten of most popular speakers) but why not have Bright Eyes or David Rovics or any number of people come up on stage to sing something. That thing lasted about two or three hours. (I think it was two but I'm trying to finish this and post tonight so I'm not going to call to check.) It wasn't dull. But if we're talking about adding more people, regardless of political parties, they need to provide some more singing. People my age loved The Raging Grannies' songs and I bet they would have loved anyone who came to share a song about the illegal war.
Now new content from The Third Estate Sunday Review:
A Note to Our Readers -- Jim's note to the readers explaining what's what. I'll add that Elaine, Wally, Cedric, Betty, Rebecca and me always get off the phone at midnight, if not sooner, and rejoin them around six our time (four their time). That's something Dona implemented a) because of Rebecca's pregnancy and b) because she didn't want people to get burnt out. While we're sleeping, they're still working. They is Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava, C.I. and usually Kat. But this week, they all fell asleep while Ava and C.I. were doing the TV commentary (they do that themselves) and Ava and C.I. didn't wake them, just worked on firming up the edition by doing research and other things. That's why Jim's thanking them in the note. Ava and C.I. really did not want to do an edition because they were wiped out from Tacoma, Texas the week before and DC the week before. They were also going to the Grammys (and took Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Kat with them -- lucky!) Sunday night and did not want to "look like crap." (I'm told they looked "wonderful" by Jess and I'm sure they did.) But they didn't want to do an edition, they were already exhausted. If the Ehren editorial had been written, they would have posted the TV commentary, the Fascist House thing, the roundtable and the editorial (and maybe one other thing I'm forgetting) and done a note saying, "That's the edition -- Ava & C.I. P.S. We're getting some rest."
Editorial: The court-martial is over -- I like this editorial a lot. And I love the illustration the gang did. It's charcoal. It's really cool. Check it out.
TV: All just a bit of (CBS) history repeating -- Another instant classic from Ava & C.I. My kid sister reads them all the time but she told me Sunday evening, after talking about this one, "You know what, Michael, I'm a feminist." She calls me "Michael" when she's in a serious mood. I go, "I figured you were." She goes, "No, I just figured that out today." She credits Ava and C.I.'s TV commentaries with that. And I'm sure that's true. They write strong feminist critiques and, like my sister said, "They're so damn funny!" I think she had this idea before that feminsim didn't allow for funny. (Ma's a feminist. I'm a feminist! We're funny! :D)
Roundtable -- I love this roundtable. But Betty pulled a remark she had at the last minute. She said she felt she "piped in too much." So Ty pulled it for her and it ended up creating a mini-error. It's fixed now but Ty said there were 51 e-mails asking, "WTF?" :D Ty thinks it's funny and has replied to everyone to assure them that the mistake was his and no one was making fun of anyone involved in the roundtable. That's all I'll say because he thinks they might have to address that next week. But the roundtable's really cool. Nina came up to me on campus today and asked me to note this: "Elaine is a wonderful person and she and I do not have a problem. Mike and I were a fun couple but that's really all. We both thought it was more but it wasn't." She read the roundtable and she figured out why Jim asked the question and I made the joke in it. There are some who really seem to think Elaine and me means I'm going to end up hurt or something. They're really concerned and like following every word Elaine writes and every word I do looking for clues. Nina's really great but she and I broke up. Because of us. Elaine didn't have anything to do with that. I'm a grown up and I appreciate the concern but things are great. Jim and I made it into a joke to try to lighten the situation but Nina read the roundtable and felt the joke might have just made the worried worry more so she wanted me to put her thing up here so people would get that we broke up for us. It had nothing to do with Elaine.
The Nation Stats -- Last minute panic when we realized this hadn't been done. We all thought we were done but we weren't!
Women and the military -- There is a lot of info in this but there was so much more that Ava and C.I. dug up that we didn't use. We could have done a three-part series on just their research. This is a really important article, so read this.
Cracked Up Crackdown -- Love the illustration. We were tired here and Jess said, "We need music." So we worked some music into this and it helped us focus. (Ava and C.I. are the ones who stumbled across the fact that, in January, Bully Boy finally dropped his "God bless you" and/or "God bless America" in his speech. Tony asked me about that, how we'd found that. That was part of the research Ava and C.I. did.)
Update on Gallaudet University -- After the TV commentary, this was the thing I got stopped on campus the most about today. Everyone loves this and I was getting a lot of "Keep covering this, it's important." It is important.
MyTV's Fascist House -- The collage. I got to work on this some because we started in Tacoma. We were clipping and not really sure what it would end up being but we really wanted it to include Ehren. The court-martial ended in a mistrial and we were thinking, "How can we include Ehren?" Then C.I. goes, "Well say the program was delayed a week by Nouri al-Maliki, the way he delays live broadcasts of the Iraqi parliament." That worked out perfect.
Highlights -- Since everyone was behind, this was a group thing done very quickly. Next weekend, it'll probably be done by Wally, Betty, Rebecca, Elaine and me.
In honor of the Grammys last night, check out Kat's "Kat's Korner: Joan Baez Bringing It All Back Home on Bowery Songs" and Kat's "Kat's Korner: Dixie Chicks Taking The Long Way home while NYT gets lost along the way."
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Monday, February 12, 2007. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq; the US military has a show & tell; Kelly Dougherty shares what she saw during the court-martial of Ehren Watada last week; in Baghdad, nearly 100 are reported dead and nearly 200 are reported wounded in an attack utilizing multiple bombs;
Starting with Ehren Watada. In June 2006, Watada became the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq. Last week, Watada faced a court-martial that lasted from Monday through Friday. Kelly Dougherty (Iraq Veteranst Against the War) reports what she observed noting that the prosecutions witnesses' testimony backed up Watada:
What actually happened, though, was that Lt. Watada's two commanders each testified that Lt. Watada's unit was not negatively impacted by his public statements and that Lt Watada's unit was not negatively impacted by his public statements and that Lt Watada was never ordered not to go public with his opposition to the war. Furthermore, all three men testified that if an officer is given an order he believes to be illegal, in this case participating in the occupation of Iraq, he is obligated to refuse it. Even if the order is found to be legal, all men agreed that they would not expect an officer to act in a manner that violates his conscience.
On Judge Toilet (aka Lt. Col. John Head) and his "Winken, Blinken, and Nod" to the prosecution as Toilet began floating the idea of a mistrail, Dougherty recalls:
It appeared to me, though, that Judge Head really wanted the prosecution to agree with him that the stipulation Lt. Watada signed was indeed a guilty confession and therefore he did not need to testify at all. When the prosecution agreed with the defense, the judge gave them a 15 minute recess to think things over. Afterwards, when the prosecution still agreed that Lt Watada had not made a confession and should take the stand, the judge gave them another recess. He said he'd give them 40 minutes, but if they needed more time to just let him know. Judge Head also made it clear that if the prosecution did not return with the answer he wanted, he would declare a mistrial. From a layperson's point of view, it seemed like the judge waas to prosecute the government's case himself. After the repeated recesses, the judge did declare a mistrial, Lt Watada never testified, and the case was rescheduled for March 19, or the fourth anniversary of the war. That was a surprise ending that none of us attending the court martial expected.
Yesterday, Ruth's Report and The Third Estate Sunday Review's "Editorial: The court-martial is over" addressed the mistrial and what it means for Ehren Watada.
Watada is a part of a movement of resistance with the military that includes others such as Agustin Aguayo (whose court-martial is currently set to begin on March 6th), Kyle Snyder, Darrell Anderson, Ivan Brobeck, Ricky Clousing, Aidan Delgado, Mark Wilkerson, Joshua Key, Camilo Meija, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Jeremy Hinzman, Corey Glass, Patrick Hart, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
Currently facing a court-martial (March 6th) is Agustin Aguayo who self-checked out of the military in September of last year and returned less than thirty days later (September 2nd through September 26th) but is being charged with desertion. Stars and Stripes reported last week that Aguayo's is prepared "to plead guilty to being absent without leave, but not to a more serious charge of desertion" and notes that "Desertion charges are typically not filed unless a servicemember has been AWOL for more than 30 days, though there are provisions for the more serious charge during times of war, officials have said." As the military moves to court-martial him (in Germany) a civilian court still hasn't weighed in. On November 21, 2006, the US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC heard Aguayo's appeal and they have yet to issue a ruling on the validity of his being denied c.o. status. Aaron Glantz noted (November 20, 2006 broadcast of The KPFA Evening News) that Aguayo's case is the first of it's kind hear in "a federal court since 1971". If the prosecution sticks with the desertion charge and if Aguayo is found guilty, he could face as many as seven years behind bars.
Helga Aguayo, Agustin's wife, has not only spoken out for her husband but for other war resisters as well. Most recently, Jason Farbman and Sam Bernstein (Socialist Worker) reported on Helga Aguayo addressing Watada supporters in Tacoma the day before Watada's court-martial began: "All war resisters should be supported. They will ultimately bring an end to the war." Jeff Paterson reported that she was there with their two children and her mother-in-law. Someone who knows something about marriage to a war resister was honored at the Grammys yesterday with a lifetime achievement award, Joan Baez. From 1968 to 1973, Baez was married to David Harris who was convicted of draft refusal and impisoned from 1969 to 1971. During that time, along with speaking out and activism, Baez wrote "A Song for David" (One Day at a Time):
And the stars in your sky
Are the stars in mine
And both prisoners
Of this life are we.
Through the same troubled waters
We carry our time,
You and the convicts and me.
That's a good thing to know
On the outside or in,
To answer not where
But just who I am.
Because the stars in your sky
Are the stars in mine
And both prisoners
Of this life are we.
Another woman who knows about marriage to a war resister is Brandi Key, the wife of Joshua Key. Joshua Key's book The Deserter's Tale documents his time serving in Iraq, what he witnessed and why he decided to self-check out. Nathan Whitlock (Toronto Star) reviews the book: "In 2003, Key spent seven months in Iraq, raiding the houses of Iraqi families, driving in heavily armed motorcades through hostile neighbourhoods, fighting an enemy that could attack and disappear at will, and watching with growing despair as his fellow soldiers, his army and, by extension, his country, abandoned all moral legitimacy. At the end of that seven months, Key walked away, going AWOL and going underground with his young family before eventually crossing the border into Canada in search of a new life. . . . The turning point for Key comes when he arrives at the scene of a supposed firefight, only to discover a group of U.S. soldiers kicking around the heads of Iraqi men like soccer balls. [Joshua Key:] 'We had become a force for evil, and I could not escape the fact that I was part of the machine'."
And the machine grinds on.
In Iraq? Well just Sunday the US military flacks and leadership were yet again bragging -- they'd begun their sweep, this version of the crackdown was going to do the trick. They spun and they spun and Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Damien Cave (New York Times) showed up in print with talk of "large-scale sweeps expected in eastern Baghdad". Someone forgot to tell central Baghdad. Devika Bhat (Times of London) reports that "two busy market areas in central Baghdad" wre the target of a bombing attack today. Ibon Villelabeitia (Reuters) reports mulitple explosions. Al Jazeera notes: "A column of smoke hundreds of feet wide billowed into the air above the market near the east bank of the Tigris river and near the central bank building." AFP reports: "The blasts were timed to mark the end of a national 15-minute silence called by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on the first anniversary of the demolition of a Shiite shrine by Sunni bombers that unleased a wave of sectarian attacks."
CNN says it was "[f]ive explosions". Bushra Juih (AP) notes three car bombs and a bombing detonaed by a man wearing it ("explosives-filled vest) which, combined, resulted in massive destruction, "[s]hops and stalls were obliterated," "debris and clothing mannequins were scattered in pools of blood on the floor of the warehouse-type building while men piled up plastic chairs". CBS and AP note Lara Logan, CBS News, "reports the parking structure was still ablaze nearly three hours after the initial explosion, and she says the death toll is likely to continue rising." CBS and AP also note "conflicting accounts about whether one or two car bombs were involved" and "a bomb hidden in a bag". BBC puts the number at three (two car bombs and a parcel bomb). Ibon Villelabeitia (Reuters) quotes eye witness Wathiq Ibrahim: "I saw three bodies shredded apart. Paramedics were picking up body pieces and human flesh from the pools of blood on the ground and placing them in small plastic bags. The smoke turned the place dark." CNN puts the toll thus far at 90 dead and 190 wounded.
Other bombings?
Reuters notes a bombing in nothern Baghdad that left two dead and five wounded. CNN notes four dead as a result of a car bomb in Mandali.
Shootings?
Reuters reports that the body guard of "an Interior Ministry employee" was shot dead in Baghdad and another was wounded and that "a primary school guard in Central Kut" was shot dead. CNN notes a person shot dead and two more wounded when their car was attacked in Muqdadiya.
Corpses?
Reuters reports 32 discovered in "scattered" in Baghdad, the corpse of a police officer ("bearing signs of torture") discovered in Falahiya, three corpses discovered in Mosul.
The above comes as the Red Cross Federation has issued an appeal: "In order to bring emergency relief goods to 50,00 socially vunlerable families (some 300,000 people), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has launched an appeal for 10.3 million Swiss francs (USD 8.3 million/6.4 million pounds). These funds are also meant to cover the health needs of 150,000 people for 12 months. 'This appeal is also meant to help the Iraqi Red Crescent continue to provide vital assistance in emergency relief and health care to the most vulnerable groups of the population throughout the country,' underlines Ahmed Gizo, Head of the Middle East/ North African Department at the Federation Secretariat in Genevea. 'They are the only ones who can still do this and it is essential they pursue this mission.' Electricity shortages, insufficient clean water, a deteriorating health service and soaring inflation (more than 76% in August 2006) have worsened already difficult living conditions. According to the UN, more than 630,000 people have been displaced since February 2006. In this context of violence and insecurity, the need for non-food items has become almost as important as food. This appeal will finance the delivery of items including clothing and cloth, blankets, kitchen utensils, stoves, jerricans, mattresses and tends to families considered socially vulnerable, because they do not have an income provider, or shelter or have very little income. Appeal funds will also be used to train more than 2,000 IRCS staff and volunteers as well as 46,000 school children in first aid, and will support four rounds of national polio immunization campaigns for 100,00 children under five years old."
As Anthony Arnove (author of IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal) noted to Kevin Zeese (CounterPunch), "Iraqis are far more likely to die violently in Iraq today than they were under the dictatorship" and, keep in the mind the appeal of the Red Cross Federation and what that money would be going for (money the US government should be providing), "In terms of how things will be once the U.S. withdraws, each day longer the United States stays, the possibilities of a livable outcome diminish. Which is why, in addition to pushing for immediate withdrawal, we also need to call on the United States and its allies to pay reparations to the Iraqi people (not just for the destruction caused by the most recent illegal invasion and occupation but before that the devastating sanctions, the toxic legacy and destruction of the 1991 Gulf War, and all the years that the U.S. armed and supported Saddam Huessein as he carried out his worst crimes). They can do a far better job rebuilding their country than the corporate looters and thugs of Halliburton, Bechtel, and Blackwater can." The Red Cross and Red Crescent are attempting to provide aid, the question is why the United States isn't?
Zeese noted Antonia Juhasz's work on the economic war on Iraq and Arnove replied: "The economic take-over of Iraq absolutely should be reversed. Antonia Juhasz is right, as Naomi Klein, who has also written very powerfully on this topic. Klein writes: 'The United States, having broken Iraq, is not in the process of fixing it. It is merely continuing to break the country and its people by other means, using not only F-16s and Bradleys, but now the less flashy weaponry' of economic strangulation. We need to call for an end to military and ecnomic occupation, as well as the removal of U.S. military bases."
Meanwhile, today, the US military announced: "A Soldier assigned to Multi-National Corps-Iraq, died February 11, 2007 in a non-combat related incident" and they announced: "A Multi-National Division - Baghdad Soldier died when insurgentstargeted a security patrol in a western segment of the Iraqi capital Feb. 11. While conducting a cordon and search operation, the patrol came under enemysmall arms fire. One Soldier was killed and another was wounded in the attack."
The question of the day: Have you enlisted in the whisper campaign? Serial war whisperer and pathetic war pornographer Michael Gordon is back -- and apparently he's stolen his former co-writer Judith Miller's wardrobe. As noted Saturday: "Looking at today's New York Times, Michael R. Gordon shows up in drag. It's a wig with pixie bangs and you keep waiting for him to (falsely) snarl, 'I was proved f**king right.' The propaganda is entitled "Deadliest Bomb In Iraq Is Made By Iran, U.S. Says." He's jetted over to DC, the byline tells you. And he barely stumbled across the runway in high heels before anonymice descended upon him with breathy whispers. They offer him "details" and we're all supposed to buy in.That requires forgetting previous 'scoops' like September 8, 2002's 'U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts.' He co-wrote that planted story with the help of Judith Miller. How freeing it must be (like ditching a girdle?) to get the byline all to himself. The war pornography of Michael Gordon tells us one thing today -- the blood letting in Iraq is no longer enough to get his war-on up (what ever is?) and now he's signed on to sell the American people a war with Iran."
Where stenography and pornography mix, there is Michael Gordon -- and where there is Michael Gordon there is a (false) story the administration wants told. Saturday, on RadioNation with Laura Flanders jokingly wondered if Michael R. Gordon and Judith Miller could be the same person?
As the disbelief and ridicule piled on and realizing that Gordo's leaky war-on might not be the best way to frighten the public (can you be frightened while laughing?), the US military held a super-secret, fudge brownie meeting with reporters on Sunday. The reporters were not allowed to identify anyone -- though all the unnamed are on the government payroll and supposedly working for the US tax payer. They skipped the coldcuts and instead made the spread all about E.F.P.s (explosively formed penetrators") and insisted that the devices were from Iran.
Tina Susman and Borzou Daragahi (Los Angeles Times) note there were "two tables laden with what they said were uniquely Iranian military hardware and weapons fragments." James Glanz (New York Times) reports: "The officials were repeatedly pressed on why they insisted on anonymity in such an important matter affecting the security of American and Iraqi troops." Best non-answer? One of those participating couldn't have if it was required that reporters identify government employees making claims that could lead to a war. Glanz noted the "evidence" was known of "as early as 2004" Susman and Daragahi report: "The officials said each piece of the displayed hardware could be traced to Iran, though to the untrained eye, there were no obvious Iranian markings other than that on dynamite. Some of the munitions bore Western lettering." Joshua Partlow (Washington Post) notes the response from the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad: "We deny such charges. We ask those who are claiming such evidence: Show the documents in public. We cannot compensate for the American failure and fiasco in Iraq. It is not our policy to be involved in any hostile operations against coalition forces here" and that Labeed M. Abbawi (deputy foreign minister in Iraq) echoed that: "If they have anything really conclusive, then they should come out and say it openly, then we will pick it up from there and use diplomatic channels".
In the US Congress, the House of Representatives have begun a non-binding resolution. The first half is the generic statement. The gums (no teeth) is in the second part: "Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on January 10, 2007 to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq." Of the resolution, Susan Cornwell (Reuters) reports that "the House is expected to vote on [it] Friday".
Finally, at yesterday's Grammys, the Dixie Chicks received five awards. Next month would be the four year anniversary of the attack on the Chicks that began when Natalie Maines spoke a little truth Bully Boy and his bully posse couldn't handle. Radio programmers pulled the group's songs, hate mail and death threats in, the right-wing phone banked to create an impression that the Dixie Chicks stood alone. As Geoff Boucher (Los Angeles Times) notes, their performance of "Not Ready To Make Nice" was introduced by Joan Baez who hailed them as "three brave women." They won for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Country Album, Album of the Year and Country Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocal. Natalie Maines, Emily Robison and Martie Maguire were supposed to be "dead" career wise after the bullies came running. Just one more plan the right-wing couldn't pull off.
like maria said paz
kats korner
sex and politics and screeds and attitude
trinas kitchen
the daily jot
cedrics big mix
mikey likes it
thomas friedman is a great man
ruths report
the third estate sunday review
the common ills
ehren watada
agustin aguayoaaron glantz
kpfathe kpfa evening news
the third estate sunday reviewsex and politics and screeds and attituderuths report
the new york timesjames glanztina susmanborzou daragahithe los angeles timesthe washington postjoshua partlow
iraq veterans against the war
kevin zeese
antonia juhasz
anthony arnove
radionation with laura flanderslaura flanders
naomi klein
dixie chicks
joan baez
This is from John Walsh's "A Splintered Antiwar Movement" and I'm going to talk about it after:
The roster of speakers for the UFPJ demonstration in Washington D.C. on January 27 speaks volumes. The key was not so much who was included but who was not. The list of speakers certainly had a lot of wonderful activists in the peace movement, but to a considerable degree it was a line-up of Democrats and movie stars.
Ralph Nader, who was in Washington that weekend, was pointedly not invited to speak. On Saturday night Nader was reportedly inquiring of other independents just who had been invited to speak among their growing number. Imagine that; the only antiwar candidate in the 2004 elections was not an invited speaker, even though he and Cindy Sheehan drew tremendous applause at the last mass rally in 2005 (Notice how these rallies occur now only in only non-election years, nicely tailored to get activists to work for Dems, but not to pressure the Dems to take a strong anti-war stand.) The non-invitation removed Nader from the movement every bit as effectively as the censors armed with air brushes removed dissidents in the "socialist" Czech republic chronicled by Milan Kundera. Nor was there anyone who spoke as a representative of the Green Party, even though at least one speaker was in fact a Green and even though an informal survey showed an enormous number of people in the crowd were Greens or Green sympathizers. Yes, the Greens were "permitted" a feeder march but their only organized presence on the Mall that this writer could find was a small card table with three women staffing it.
Okay, I agree with him more than I disagree but I disagree on one point. "Movie stars." I don't think there were a lot "movie stars." Sean Penn was there and spoke, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins spoke. Am I forgetting someone? Eve Ensler is a playwright, she's not a "movie star." Who does that leave? Jane Fonda.
I like Jane Fonda and she's quite a bit more than a "movie star." She was active during Vietnam, she was active in the No Nukes movement and many other areas. She's written best selling books, started the home video market, and done a lot more than I could list.
When I got back from DC, the thing everyone said they saw on TV was Jane Fonda. Jane Fonda didn't take time away from another speaker, if she hadn't been there, the rally and march wouldn't have gotten the attention it did get.
As someone who was there, I know that Jane Fonda's speech was the second most popular speech (Bob Watada's was the most popular). We wrote about this in a two-parter for the gina & krista round-robin and at The Third Estate Sunday Review's "Show Me What Democracy Looks Like (1-27-07)." From the credit line of that article:
The credit goes to: 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 (Rebecca couldn't come to DC due to her pregnancy and Betty decided to participate in a house party Rebecca threw which involved screening and discussing The Ground Truth and handing out information on HR 508), 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, Ruth of Ruth's Report and her grandchildren Tracey and Jayson, Wally of The Daily Jot, Trina of Trina's Kitchen (also Mike's mother, or Mike is the son of Trina), Gina and Krista of the gina & krista round-robin, and Francisco, Miguel and Maria of El Espiritu. And Dallas, we always forget to include Dallas! He was a sounding board and much more.]
Betty and Rebecca helped with the writing but they were not there (due to Rebecca not being able to travel because of her pregnancy). But you've got Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava, Jim, C.I., Kat, Cedric, Elaine, Ruth, Tracey, Jayson, Wally, Ma, Gina, Krista, Francisco, Miguel, Maria, Dallas and me. We were all there. We were interviewing people throughout the rally and after. Saturday evening, we were pulling our 20 quotes. That's how we've always done it in the past. You pick the 20 favorites from people you interviewed and then you fight to get as many included as you can. (That's been done with two other rally pieces at The Third Estate Sunday Review.) Wally, C.I. and Tracey were a team. They could have each picked 20 with no overlap. They were smart and went with the same 20. (Teams who didn't were arguing against everyone -- most of us were doing that -- while Wally, C.I. and Tracey were three voices saying, "This is strong. It's got to go in.") But we had so many and no way to agree to only 100 (the number used for the last one), that C.I. and Gina came up with the idea of the planned piece running as a two-parter in the roundrobin (which was doing daily editions leading up to the protest through the Monday after). That allowed us to do the feature for The Third Estate Sunday Review a little differently than normal. But we did note the most popular speakers.
Jane Fonda was second only to Bob Watada and if you spoke to a woman of any age (this is in the article), chances were she'd bring up Jane Fonda. She's quite a bit more than a "movie star."
So I just want to be clear on that. And I want to be clear that she got on the news and if she hadn't been there, the protest wouldn't have gotten the coverage it did.
Tim Robbins was also very popular and I'm sure in the top 20. Some people cited Sarandon and some people cited Sean Penn. Those three, and Fonda, gave really strong speeches. If I'm forgetting someone, I was doing interviews. But unless I've forgotten at least five other actresses or actors, I don't think there were too many of them there.
So that's where I disagree. Where I agree? With pretty much everything else he said -- including that Libertarians (whom I really don't care for) and Greens (whom I do like) should have been up there. Was Medea Benjamin there? I remember a big debate about a quote we used and some people we interviewed were saying it was from her and some were saying it was from Kim Gandy. C.I. kept saying, "It's Kim Gandy." All the rest of us (except maybe Elaine and maybe Ava) were disagreeing. We wrote it up with a note and were going to post it that way -- we think this was Medea Benjamin and so do some of the people citing the speech but C.I. swears it was Kim Gandy. About 30 minutes before it posted that morning, C.I. made a call, put it on speaker phone and we were all informed it was Kim Gandy. So we quickly changed it to make sure she got credit. But if Medea Benjamin was there speaking, she is a Green. Is she enough? Not in terms of numbers. (Maybe in terms of commitment -- I like Medea Benjamin.)
There should have been more Greens on stage than just Medea. There may have been a few more that I don't know what party they belong to but there should have been spokespeople from the Green Party.
Ralph Nader? I support him speaking. I also know, from when I defended him here last week or the week before, a lot of idiots think he 'stole' the election. (I got hate mail. I thought I'd gotten hate mail before but I didn't know from hate mail until I defended Ralph Nader.) I would hope that he would have been well received but I will allow that if people knew how strong this reaction was, they may not have invited him out of fear that he'd be booed and that would be the clip TV would run with. "Ha-ha, they boo their own speakers!" If I'd been in charge of getting people to speak, I would've been on the phone trying to get ahold of him because he not only has a right to be there, people need to hear him.
So I agree with Walsh on that too. I also agree with him about A.N.S.W.E.R. I don't know what the problem or supposed problem is anymore than Walsh. I do know from when I was out in California last year, A.N.S.W.E.R. works it's ass off. It worked on the immigration issue really hard, it works on that still, it works to end the war. If there's some 'personality conflict' that grown adults can't get passed, oh well. That doesn't mean A.N.S.W.E.R. still can't be invited to speak. They can be and they should have been.
My only real problem with Walsh was the "movie stars" remark. When Jane Fonda spoke at the media reform thing, there were some people posting things that I thought were really rude and really stupid. If you can get Jane Fonda to speak at anything, book her. She will get press because she is admired by a lot of people (she'll get press because she's hated by a small, vocal group too). She can bring attention and she can bring some people into the tent that might not be there otherwise. She's been making movies forever and has people who know her that way. She has people who know her for her feminism. She has people who know her for activism. She has people who know her as Ted's ex-wife or Tom's ex-wife. She has people who know from the Workout. She brings in a wide cross-section. As someone who's produced films and TV movies, she knows about media that way, as part of GreenStone Media, she knows about it that way, as someone who's given more interviews than most famous people ever will, she knows about what gets into print and what a writer sits on. When some people were griping online, I thought it was a case of sour grapes. I'm sorry that her name drawfs so many (I'm sorry for them) but that's the way life works out. If I was asked to speak next week and at the last minute got bumped because they could get her, I wouldn't whine or feel sorry for myself, I would ask to be front row so I could hear the speech because, and this is the really important thing, she gives great speeches. There was a stillness in DC when she started speaking. Everyone was just hanging and waiting. She gives a great speech.
I don't know that Walsh is referring to her but after the nonsense that went online after the media reform, if he is, he's wrong. I was there, I know what I saw. I was interviewing people, I know what speakers they responded to. I heard about the interviews. I helped write the two-part series in the round-robin in which we each chose 30 people to quote who had come to the rally. About a third of what's in the round-robin is people citing Jane Fonda. Sometimes just her, sometimes her and one or two other people. She was very popular. She was intensely popular with people my age, with women of any age, with African-Americans and with men over 40.
I don't think four was too many. If I missed somebody, I don't think that was too many. I do think that if you weren't there (I don't know if Walsh was or not), what you got on your TV was Fonda. If you saw Democracy Now! you still didn't get all the speakers. There were a lot of speakers, I didn't know all of them. But there were a lot.
A "lot" doesn't defend the fact that Greens (or Libertarians) weren't up there (or up there in more numbers -- I really think Medea Benjamin did speak). I wonder what the actions elsewhere were like? Cindy Sheehan spoke in Los Angeles. Carolyn Ho (she is Ehren Watada's mother, Bob Watada is his father) spoke in San Francisco. But you had a cross-section of occupation, if not parties.
John Conyers, Maxine Waters and Lynn Woolsey were popular speakers at the rally. We actually heard several people tell us that they were bothered that no Senator was present. Where was Bernie Sanders was a popular question? The second most named was Russ Feingold. But Greens should have been there and I know of Ron Paul (who is a Republican from Texas) and he has been outspoken so he should have been there too.
I agree with Walsh very strongly on everything but the "movie stars" and that's because a) I didn't think there were that many and b) Jane Fonda was hugely popular (second most popular speaker) and I don't want to see her slammed. I actually thought the Raging Grannies demonstrated another booking issue -- where were the singers? The Raging Grannies sang (and they were in the top ten of most popular speakers) but why not have Bright Eyes or David Rovics or any number of people come up on stage to sing something. That thing lasted about two or three hours. (I think it was two but I'm trying to finish this and post tonight so I'm not going to call to check.) It wasn't dull. But if we're talking about adding more people, regardless of political parties, they need to provide some more singing. People my age loved The Raging Grannies' songs and I bet they would have loved anyone who came to share a song about the illegal war.
Now new content from The Third Estate Sunday Review:
A Note to Our Readers -- Jim's note to the readers explaining what's what. I'll add that Elaine, Wally, Cedric, Betty, Rebecca and me always get off the phone at midnight, if not sooner, and rejoin them around six our time (four their time). That's something Dona implemented a) because of Rebecca's pregnancy and b) because she didn't want people to get burnt out. While we're sleeping, they're still working. They is Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava, C.I. and usually Kat. But this week, they all fell asleep while Ava and C.I. were doing the TV commentary (they do that themselves) and Ava and C.I. didn't wake them, just worked on firming up the edition by doing research and other things. That's why Jim's thanking them in the note. Ava and C.I. really did not want to do an edition because they were wiped out from Tacoma, Texas the week before and DC the week before. They were also going to the Grammys (and took Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Kat with them -- lucky!) Sunday night and did not want to "look like crap." (I'm told they looked "wonderful" by Jess and I'm sure they did.) But they didn't want to do an edition, they were already exhausted. If the Ehren editorial had been written, they would have posted the TV commentary, the Fascist House thing, the roundtable and the editorial (and maybe one other thing I'm forgetting) and done a note saying, "That's the edition -- Ava & C.I. P.S. We're getting some rest."
Editorial: The court-martial is over -- I like this editorial a lot. And I love the illustration the gang did. It's charcoal. It's really cool. Check it out.
TV: All just a bit of (CBS) history repeating -- Another instant classic from Ava & C.I. My kid sister reads them all the time but she told me Sunday evening, after talking about this one, "You know what, Michael, I'm a feminist." She calls me "Michael" when she's in a serious mood. I go, "I figured you were." She goes, "No, I just figured that out today." She credits Ava and C.I.'s TV commentaries with that. And I'm sure that's true. They write strong feminist critiques and, like my sister said, "They're so damn funny!" I think she had this idea before that feminsim didn't allow for funny. (Ma's a feminist. I'm a feminist! We're funny! :D)
Roundtable -- I love this roundtable. But Betty pulled a remark she had at the last minute. She said she felt she "piped in too much." So Ty pulled it for her and it ended up creating a mini-error. It's fixed now but Ty said there were 51 e-mails asking, "WTF?" :D Ty thinks it's funny and has replied to everyone to assure them that the mistake was his and no one was making fun of anyone involved in the roundtable. That's all I'll say because he thinks they might have to address that next week. But the roundtable's really cool. Nina came up to me on campus today and asked me to note this: "Elaine is a wonderful person and she and I do not have a problem. Mike and I were a fun couple but that's really all. We both thought it was more but it wasn't." She read the roundtable and she figured out why Jim asked the question and I made the joke in it. There are some who really seem to think Elaine and me means I'm going to end up hurt or something. They're really concerned and like following every word Elaine writes and every word I do looking for clues. Nina's really great but she and I broke up. Because of us. Elaine didn't have anything to do with that. I'm a grown up and I appreciate the concern but things are great. Jim and I made it into a joke to try to lighten the situation but Nina read the roundtable and felt the joke might have just made the worried worry more so she wanted me to put her thing up here so people would get that we broke up for us. It had nothing to do with Elaine.
The Nation Stats -- Last minute panic when we realized this hadn't been done. We all thought we were done but we weren't!
Women and the military -- There is a lot of info in this but there was so much more that Ava and C.I. dug up that we didn't use. We could have done a three-part series on just their research. This is a really important article, so read this.
Cracked Up Crackdown -- Love the illustration. We were tired here and Jess said, "We need music." So we worked some music into this and it helped us focus. (Ava and C.I. are the ones who stumbled across the fact that, in January, Bully Boy finally dropped his "God bless you" and/or "God bless America" in his speech. Tony asked me about that, how we'd found that. That was part of the research Ava and C.I. did.)
Update on Gallaudet University -- After the TV commentary, this was the thing I got stopped on campus the most about today. Everyone loves this and I was getting a lot of "Keep covering this, it's important." It is important.
MyTV's Fascist House -- The collage. I got to work on this some because we started in Tacoma. We were clipping and not really sure what it would end up being but we really wanted it to include Ehren. The court-martial ended in a mistrial and we were thinking, "How can we include Ehren?" Then C.I. goes, "Well say the program was delayed a week by Nouri al-Maliki, the way he delays live broadcasts of the Iraqi parliament." That worked out perfect.
Highlights -- Since everyone was behind, this was a group thing done very quickly. Next weekend, it'll probably be done by Wally, Betty, Rebecca, Elaine and me.
In honor of the Grammys last night, check out Kat's "Kat's Korner: Joan Baez Bringing It All Back Home on Bowery Songs" and Kat's "Kat's Korner: Dixie Chicks Taking The Long Way home while NYT gets lost along the way."
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Monday, February 12, 2007. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq; the US military has a show & tell; Kelly Dougherty shares what she saw during the court-martial of Ehren Watada last week; in Baghdad, nearly 100 are reported dead and nearly 200 are reported wounded in an attack utilizing multiple bombs;
Starting with Ehren Watada. In June 2006, Watada became the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq. Last week, Watada faced a court-martial that lasted from Monday through Friday. Kelly Dougherty (Iraq Veteranst Against the War) reports what she observed noting that the prosecutions witnesses' testimony backed up Watada:
What actually happened, though, was that Lt. Watada's two commanders each testified that Lt. Watada's unit was not negatively impacted by his public statements and that Lt Watada's unit was not negatively impacted by his public statements and that Lt Watada was never ordered not to go public with his opposition to the war. Furthermore, all three men testified that if an officer is given an order he believes to be illegal, in this case participating in the occupation of Iraq, he is obligated to refuse it. Even if the order is found to be legal, all men agreed that they would not expect an officer to act in a manner that violates his conscience.
On Judge Toilet (aka Lt. Col. John Head) and his "Winken, Blinken, and Nod" to the prosecution as Toilet began floating the idea of a mistrail, Dougherty recalls:
It appeared to me, though, that Judge Head really wanted the prosecution to agree with him that the stipulation Lt. Watada signed was indeed a guilty confession and therefore he did not need to testify at all. When the prosecution agreed with the defense, the judge gave them a 15 minute recess to think things over. Afterwards, when the prosecution still agreed that Lt Watada had not made a confession and should take the stand, the judge gave them another recess. He said he'd give them 40 minutes, but if they needed more time to just let him know. Judge Head also made it clear that if the prosecution did not return with the answer he wanted, he would declare a mistrial. From a layperson's point of view, it seemed like the judge waas to prosecute the government's case himself. After the repeated recesses, the judge did declare a mistrial, Lt Watada never testified, and the case was rescheduled for March 19, or the fourth anniversary of the war. That was a surprise ending that none of us attending the court martial expected.
Yesterday, Ruth's Report and The Third Estate Sunday Review's "Editorial: The court-martial is over" addressed the mistrial and what it means for Ehren Watada.
Watada is a part of a movement of resistance with the military that includes others such as Agustin Aguayo (whose court-martial is currently set to begin on March 6th), Kyle Snyder, Darrell Anderson, Ivan Brobeck, Ricky Clousing, Aidan Delgado, Mark Wilkerson, Joshua Key, Camilo Meija, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Jeremy Hinzman, Corey Glass, Patrick Hart, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
Currently facing a court-martial (March 6th) is Agustin Aguayo who self-checked out of the military in September of last year and returned less than thirty days later (September 2nd through September 26th) but is being charged with desertion. Stars and Stripes reported last week that Aguayo's is prepared "to plead guilty to being absent without leave, but not to a more serious charge of desertion" and notes that "Desertion charges are typically not filed unless a servicemember has been AWOL for more than 30 days, though there are provisions for the more serious charge during times of war, officials have said." As the military moves to court-martial him (in Germany) a civilian court still hasn't weighed in. On November 21, 2006, the US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC heard Aguayo's appeal and they have yet to issue a ruling on the validity of his being denied c.o. status. Aaron Glantz noted (November 20, 2006 broadcast of The KPFA Evening News) that Aguayo's case is the first of it's kind hear in "a federal court since 1971". If the prosecution sticks with the desertion charge and if Aguayo is found guilty, he could face as many as seven years behind bars.
Helga Aguayo, Agustin's wife, has not only spoken out for her husband but for other war resisters as well. Most recently, Jason Farbman and Sam Bernstein (Socialist Worker) reported on Helga Aguayo addressing Watada supporters in Tacoma the day before Watada's court-martial began: "All war resisters should be supported. They will ultimately bring an end to the war." Jeff Paterson reported that she was there with their two children and her mother-in-law. Someone who knows something about marriage to a war resister was honored at the Grammys yesterday with a lifetime achievement award, Joan Baez. From 1968 to 1973, Baez was married to David Harris who was convicted of draft refusal and impisoned from 1969 to 1971. During that time, along with speaking out and activism, Baez wrote "A Song for David" (One Day at a Time):
And the stars in your sky
Are the stars in mine
And both prisoners
Of this life are we.
Through the same troubled waters
We carry our time,
You and the convicts and me.
That's a good thing to know
On the outside or in,
To answer not where
But just who I am.
Because the stars in your sky
Are the stars in mine
And both prisoners
Of this life are we.
Another woman who knows about marriage to a war resister is Brandi Key, the wife of Joshua Key. Joshua Key's book The Deserter's Tale documents his time serving in Iraq, what he witnessed and why he decided to self-check out. Nathan Whitlock (Toronto Star) reviews the book: "In 2003, Key spent seven months in Iraq, raiding the houses of Iraqi families, driving in heavily armed motorcades through hostile neighbourhoods, fighting an enemy that could attack and disappear at will, and watching with growing despair as his fellow soldiers, his army and, by extension, his country, abandoned all moral legitimacy. At the end of that seven months, Key walked away, going AWOL and going underground with his young family before eventually crossing the border into Canada in search of a new life. . . . The turning point for Key comes when he arrives at the scene of a supposed firefight, only to discover a group of U.S. soldiers kicking around the heads of Iraqi men like soccer balls. [Joshua Key:] 'We had become a force for evil, and I could not escape the fact that I was part of the machine'."
And the machine grinds on.
In Iraq? Well just Sunday the US military flacks and leadership were yet again bragging -- they'd begun their sweep, this version of the crackdown was going to do the trick. They spun and they spun and Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Damien Cave (New York Times) showed up in print with talk of "large-scale sweeps expected in eastern Baghdad". Someone forgot to tell central Baghdad. Devika Bhat (Times of London) reports that "two busy market areas in central Baghdad" wre the target of a bombing attack today. Ibon Villelabeitia (Reuters) reports mulitple explosions. Al Jazeera notes: "A column of smoke hundreds of feet wide billowed into the air above the market near the east bank of the Tigris river and near the central bank building." AFP reports: "The blasts were timed to mark the end of a national 15-minute silence called by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on the first anniversary of the demolition of a Shiite shrine by Sunni bombers that unleased a wave of sectarian attacks."
CNN says it was "[f]ive explosions". Bushra Juih (AP) notes three car bombs and a bombing detonaed by a man wearing it ("explosives-filled vest) which, combined, resulted in massive destruction, "[s]hops and stalls were obliterated," "debris and clothing mannequins were scattered in pools of blood on the floor of the warehouse-type building while men piled up plastic chairs". CBS and AP note Lara Logan, CBS News, "reports the parking structure was still ablaze nearly three hours after the initial explosion, and she says the death toll is likely to continue rising." CBS and AP also note "conflicting accounts about whether one or two car bombs were involved" and "a bomb hidden in a bag". BBC puts the number at three (two car bombs and a parcel bomb). Ibon Villelabeitia (Reuters) quotes eye witness Wathiq Ibrahim: "I saw three bodies shredded apart. Paramedics were picking up body pieces and human flesh from the pools of blood on the ground and placing them in small plastic bags. The smoke turned the place dark." CNN puts the toll thus far at 90 dead and 190 wounded.
Other bombings?
Reuters notes a bombing in nothern Baghdad that left two dead and five wounded. CNN notes four dead as a result of a car bomb in Mandali.
Shootings?
Reuters reports that the body guard of "an Interior Ministry employee" was shot dead in Baghdad and another was wounded and that "a primary school guard in Central Kut" was shot dead. CNN notes a person shot dead and two more wounded when their car was attacked in Muqdadiya.
Corpses?
Reuters reports 32 discovered in "scattered" in Baghdad, the corpse of a police officer ("bearing signs of torture") discovered in Falahiya, three corpses discovered in Mosul.
The above comes as the Red Cross Federation has issued an appeal: "In order to bring emergency relief goods to 50,00 socially vunlerable families (some 300,000 people), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has launched an appeal for 10.3 million Swiss francs (USD 8.3 million/6.4 million pounds). These funds are also meant to cover the health needs of 150,000 people for 12 months. 'This appeal is also meant to help the Iraqi Red Crescent continue to provide vital assistance in emergency relief and health care to the most vulnerable groups of the population throughout the country,' underlines Ahmed Gizo, Head of the Middle East/ North African Department at the Federation Secretariat in Genevea. 'They are the only ones who can still do this and it is essential they pursue this mission.' Electricity shortages, insufficient clean water, a deteriorating health service and soaring inflation (more than 76% in August 2006) have worsened already difficult living conditions. According to the UN, more than 630,000 people have been displaced since February 2006. In this context of violence and insecurity, the need for non-food items has become almost as important as food. This appeal will finance the delivery of items including clothing and cloth, blankets, kitchen utensils, stoves, jerricans, mattresses and tends to families considered socially vulnerable, because they do not have an income provider, or shelter or have very little income. Appeal funds will also be used to train more than 2,000 IRCS staff and volunteers as well as 46,000 school children in first aid, and will support four rounds of national polio immunization campaigns for 100,00 children under five years old."
As Anthony Arnove (author of IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal) noted to Kevin Zeese (CounterPunch), "Iraqis are far more likely to die violently in Iraq today than they were under the dictatorship" and, keep in the mind the appeal of the Red Cross Federation and what that money would be going for (money the US government should be providing), "In terms of how things will be once the U.S. withdraws, each day longer the United States stays, the possibilities of a livable outcome diminish. Which is why, in addition to pushing for immediate withdrawal, we also need to call on the United States and its allies to pay reparations to the Iraqi people (not just for the destruction caused by the most recent illegal invasion and occupation but before that the devastating sanctions, the toxic legacy and destruction of the 1991 Gulf War, and all the years that the U.S. armed and supported Saddam Huessein as he carried out his worst crimes). They can do a far better job rebuilding their country than the corporate looters and thugs of Halliburton, Bechtel, and Blackwater can." The Red Cross and Red Crescent are attempting to provide aid, the question is why the United States isn't?
Zeese noted Antonia Juhasz's work on the economic war on Iraq and Arnove replied: "The economic take-over of Iraq absolutely should be reversed. Antonia Juhasz is right, as Naomi Klein, who has also written very powerfully on this topic. Klein writes: 'The United States, having broken Iraq, is not in the process of fixing it. It is merely continuing to break the country and its people by other means, using not only F-16s and Bradleys, but now the less flashy weaponry' of economic strangulation. We need to call for an end to military and ecnomic occupation, as well as the removal of U.S. military bases."
Meanwhile, today, the US military announced: "A Soldier assigned to Multi-National Corps-Iraq, died February 11, 2007 in a non-combat related incident" and they announced: "A Multi-National Division - Baghdad Soldier died when insurgentstargeted a security patrol in a western segment of the Iraqi capital Feb. 11. While conducting a cordon and search operation, the patrol came under enemysmall arms fire. One Soldier was killed and another was wounded in the attack."
The question of the day: Have you enlisted in the whisper campaign? Serial war whisperer and pathetic war pornographer Michael Gordon is back -- and apparently he's stolen his former co-writer Judith Miller's wardrobe. As noted Saturday: "Looking at today's New York Times, Michael R. Gordon shows up in drag. It's a wig with pixie bangs and you keep waiting for him to (falsely) snarl, 'I was proved f**king right.' The propaganda is entitled "Deadliest Bomb In Iraq Is Made By Iran, U.S. Says." He's jetted over to DC, the byline tells you. And he barely stumbled across the runway in high heels before anonymice descended upon him with breathy whispers. They offer him "details" and we're all supposed to buy in.That requires forgetting previous 'scoops' like September 8, 2002's 'U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts.' He co-wrote that planted story with the help of Judith Miller. How freeing it must be (like ditching a girdle?) to get the byline all to himself. The war pornography of Michael Gordon tells us one thing today -- the blood letting in Iraq is no longer enough to get his war-on up (what ever is?) and now he's signed on to sell the American people a war with Iran."
Where stenography and pornography mix, there is Michael Gordon -- and where there is Michael Gordon there is a (false) story the administration wants told. Saturday, on RadioNation with Laura Flanders jokingly wondered if Michael R. Gordon and Judith Miller could be the same person?
As the disbelief and ridicule piled on and realizing that Gordo's leaky war-on might not be the best way to frighten the public (can you be frightened while laughing?), the US military held a super-secret, fudge brownie meeting with reporters on Sunday. The reporters were not allowed to identify anyone -- though all the unnamed are on the government payroll and supposedly working for the US tax payer. They skipped the coldcuts and instead made the spread all about E.F.P.s (explosively formed penetrators") and insisted that the devices were from Iran.
Tina Susman and Borzou Daragahi (Los Angeles Times) note there were "two tables laden with what they said were uniquely Iranian military hardware and weapons fragments." James Glanz (New York Times) reports: "The officials were repeatedly pressed on why they insisted on anonymity in such an important matter affecting the security of American and Iraqi troops." Best non-answer? One of those participating couldn't have if it was required that reporters identify government employees making claims that could lead to a war. Glanz noted the "evidence" was known of "as early as 2004" Susman and Daragahi report: "The officials said each piece of the displayed hardware could be traced to Iran, though to the untrained eye, there were no obvious Iranian markings other than that on dynamite. Some of the munitions bore Western lettering." Joshua Partlow (Washington Post) notes the response from the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad: "We deny such charges. We ask those who are claiming such evidence: Show the documents in public. We cannot compensate for the American failure and fiasco in Iraq. It is not our policy to be involved in any hostile operations against coalition forces here" and that Labeed M. Abbawi (deputy foreign minister in Iraq) echoed that: "If they have anything really conclusive, then they should come out and say it openly, then we will pick it up from there and use diplomatic channels".
In the US Congress, the House of Representatives have begun a non-binding resolution. The first half is the generic statement. The gums (no teeth) is in the second part: "Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on January 10, 2007 to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq." Of the resolution, Susan Cornwell (Reuters) reports that "the House is expected to vote on [it] Friday".
Finally, at yesterday's Grammys, the Dixie Chicks received five awards. Next month would be the four year anniversary of the attack on the Chicks that began when Natalie Maines spoke a little truth Bully Boy and his bully posse couldn't handle. Radio programmers pulled the group's songs, hate mail and death threats in, the right-wing phone banked to create an impression that the Dixie Chicks stood alone. As Geoff Boucher (Los Angeles Times) notes, their performance of "Not Ready To Make Nice" was introduced by Joan Baez who hailed them as "three brave women." They won for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Country Album, Album of the Year and Country Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocal. Natalie Maines, Emily Robison and Martie Maguire were supposed to be "dead" career wise after the bullies came running. Just one more plan the right-wing couldn't pull off.
like maria said paz
kats korner
sex and politics and screeds and attitude
trinas kitchen
the daily jot
cedrics big mix
mikey likes it
thomas friedman is a great man
ruths report
the third estate sunday review
the common ills
ehren watada
agustin aguayoaaron glantz
kpfathe kpfa evening news
the third estate sunday reviewsex and politics and screeds and attituderuths report
the new york timesjames glanztina susmanborzou daragahithe los angeles timesthe washington postjoshua partlow
iraq veterans against the war
kevin zeese
antonia juhasz
anthony arnove
radionation with laura flanderslaura flanders
naomi klein
dixie chicks
joan baez
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)