late in blogging and blame c.i. and the care packages. another arrived today and it included a dvd of rough footage for a documentary a friend of c.i.'s is doing. i don't know that the documentary even has a title yet (i'm sure it at least has a working title) but flyboy and i popped that into the dvd player tonight. c.i. had noted in the letter that we'd probably enjoy it. we did.
even with just rough footage, it was very powerful. so powerful, we watched it again as soon as it went off. it didn't even have a real soundtrack at this point but this is going to be an amazing and powerful documentary. i asked c.i. on the phone tonight, 'is it okay to note it?' and c.i. asked me how much i was planning to write about it? i was thinking 3 or 4 paragraphs and c.i. suggested that if i want to write about it, i do so for maria, francisco and miguel's new newsletter. i hadn't even thought about that.
they are working so hard on that (and doing a great job). i called maria and told her about the documentary and how i wanted to write up a short thing on it and wondered if they were interested? she said absolutely and noted that they would translate it for me if i wasn't able to. i'm not but flyboy knows spanish and had already agreed to translate it.
but i want to note that because i really hadn't thought about contributing to that newsletter. not because it's not good but because i don't really speak spanish. (not very well.) maria, franciso and miguel are busting their rears on it and ava and c.i. are doing weekly tv commentaries that they really don't have time for just to help raise awareness on the newsletter. in addition diana does a wonderful column (flyboy reads it to me in english) and you've got isaiah doing 2 to 3 comics for it each week. people are really pitching in on that and i should have thought to do so.
in case there are any community members who haven't thought to do so, if language is the issue, maria, francisco or miguel will translate it for you. if you're just thinking no 1 would be interested, they would be. if you're not signed up for it, c.i.'s been doing an explosive column each week. maria said c.i. was hitting especially hard to try to raise interest in the newsletter.
the community supports it and it has a number of members signed up but since it is in in spanish (because that's what it's geared to, our spanish speaking members), it's not getting as much attention as it might otherwise. ava's aunt proposed that they run a spanish piece and an english translation side by side. (with isaiah's comics that he's doing in spanish, they'll just translate the words into english underneath it.) it's supposed to serve the spanish members but ava's aunt thinks providing english translations alongside the spanish pieces will allow non-spanish speaking members to follow the issues and topics that are important to other members.
every 1 is working so hard on that. i asked maria if she'd be interested in me writing about my pregnancy? that's the only thing i'm not really doing here. (despite complaints from the professional asshole that i am doing that.) she said she'd love that because she is interested in it and she knows other members are as well.
it may just be a paragraph or 2, but starting this sunday and every sunday after until the baby is born, i will be doing that. so if you're a community member who hasn't signed up for it and you're interested in that, you should sign up now. francisco, maria and miguel's e-mails are printed in polly's brew and gina & krista round-robin each week and you can also write c.i. (or me) and we'll forward it to francisco, maria or miguel.
they started up after i learned i was pregnant and i have just been focused on that. i should have been doing something to help them. after i got off the phone with maria, i was talking to flyboy and he is very well versed in spanish and said he'd let her know he would participate in a round-table for this issue they're working on now. so we called her back and she was very happy about that.
if you talk to gina, krista or polly, they will tell you those things are very hard until you get in your groove. maria told me i could pass on that west is taking spanish this year and starting sunday, he's doing a few lines of poetry. his father's going to help him with that, to make sure he has the right word and noun and verb agreement. but west is stepping up and if you've got the time to spare, please consider doing so. diana, billy, eddie and dallas all contributed their photos from the 3,000 rally outside the dallas city hall to the new newsletter to help them out so there are all sorts of ways you can contribute.
that's my plug for tonight and it's a deserved 1. i am sorry that i haven't done more. elaine wrote about their feelings that it was still jelling back in december. it still is.
i'll add 1 more thing because members know c.i.'s busy with speaking and the common ills and the third estate sunday review. despite that, despite doing a column already for polly's brew and 1 for the gina & krista round-robin, c.i.'s doing a column for this newsletter and c.i. and ava are doing tv commentaries. that's every week. if c.i. can make the time, you might consider doing so as well. if you've read it, you know that maria, francisco and miguel are doing a very strong job. you contributing will take some of the burden off them and allow them to work more as editors of the newsletter the way that gina, krista and polly are able to.
so please check your schedules and see if you have time or can make time. it doesn't have to be an every week thing. even contributing a piece of writing or a photo or drawing or whatever for 1 week will be 1 less thing that they end up having to come up with on their own. i know gina, krista and polly are trying to steer people to sharing their as well, so let me join their voices on that.
francisco's been answering questions and, for that feature, members have been participating. they have plenty of questions each week. they also have plenty of people signed up for it. both of those things demonstrate interest and support for the newsletter but if we could bump it up a notch, it would really help francisco, maria and miguel. (and isaiah who, maria fears, is about to burn out doing 2 to 3 comics for the newsletter each week to try to keep interest high in it.)
at krista's suggestion, sunday will also offer the 1st poll which they hope will let all members signed up for it understand that this is geared to service the spanish speaking members but it is a newsletter for all.
i'd called gina for a comment and she just got my message so i had to stop a second to talk to her. she says that spanish speaking members have always been supportive or her and krista and of polly. it's the same thing. this is a newsletter for all but it is geared towards spanish speaking the same way that the other 2 are geared towards english speaking member and the same way that gina & krista gear their's towards the united states and polly gears her newsletter towards the european members. 'all are welcome, is the point,' gina said.
i just read this post to flyboy and he responded, 'oh hell, i'll write a column until the baby's born.'
so think about what you can do, even if it is just a 1 time thing.
billie e-mailed me about a program that aired on her local pbs station. it's texas monthly, and i don't get it here. but she said it had an amazing interview with gore vidal. i wish i could have seen that and think billie's e-mail on it could (hint, hint) easily be translated to spanish. but what i can do is note saul landau's 'Gore Vidal in Havana' (counterpunch):
After 9/11, George Bush began firing fear-loaded spitballs at Congress and the media, which reacted by being frightened. Five years and three months later, Gore Vidal in Havana countered W’s discords of panic with chimes of truth.
On December 12, at the University of Havana, Vidal dismissed "our little President" ("presidentcito," said the interpreter) and mocked him into proper perspective -- the worst and most dangerous president in US history: "I'm a wartime president." The audience of students and professors laughed at Vidal's imitation.
Three days before, on the evening of December 9, Culture Vice Minister Ismael Gonzalez and Book Institute President Iroel Sanchez greeted met Vidal at the Jose Marti International Airport. His entourage included former South Dakota Senator James Abourezk (D) and former President of the California Senate, John Burton (D) as well as San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, myself and a small group of Gore’s friends and admirers. The Cuban press quickly grabbed him.
"What brings you to Cuba?" a Prensa Latina reporter inquired.
"I came to Cuba with my broken knee to help break 40 years of embargo." He had not accepted previous invitations because "I lost one of my knees the last time and I almost sent my knee to you, and it would have been more interesting than myself."
A few reporters giggled. "But I have an artificial one," Vidal became serious, "and could come here to see the beginning of the end of colonialism in the Western Hemisphere."
He told the media that he "worried about the collapse of the Republic. We have lost habeas corpus and the Constitution that we inherited from England 700 years ago. Suddenly, we were robbed of it. The current regime has done it, and the legal bases of our Republic have gone with it, and as I am one of the historians of that Republic, I am not happy."
How did he see Cuban reality as opposed to what the US government reported? "They never told us why we should hate the Cubans. I think Kennedy and his compatriots were motivated [in their aggressive anti-Castro policies] by vanity"” He said, "My friend John F. Kennedy was running for president," (1960) and he foolishly allowed the CIA’s Bay of Pigs invasion to take place. "Vanity has played a large role in the relationship," he added, referring to the terrorist war aged by the brothers Kennedy against Cuba after the April 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Vidal paused and jumped backward in time. "When we invaded Cuba [in 1898] it was only a pretext to start the war against Spain and end up taking the Philippines, as we did in the end." The Cuban reporters taped and wrote. "I hate to say it," Vidal continued with a smile, "but you were just a step for the United States to reach Asia, although we always had our eyes on the Caribbean."
gore vidal is always worth reading (and hearing) and i think there's a 2nd part to this interview (billie put the above into her e-mail). i'll look for it tomorrow.
mike and elaine both asked this weekend if they should start picking up robert parry to help me out. i didn't realize i hadn't noted him in so long. it's usually because i'm tired (like right now) and i'm thinking, 'i'm not in the mood to go through and change punctuation.' robert parry's punctuation isn't wrong. but i have to change it all because we use different fonts and if i don't change it, quotes, for instance, become squares. so usually, i'm so tired and don't have the strength to face going through and changing. but i should be noting him and i'll try to do a better job of that. scooter libby's trial will be starting soon. today, they were picking jurors - 2 were disqualified for being 'anti-bush.' on the scooter libby trial, here's robert parry's 'Scooter Libby's Time-Travel Trial' (consortium news):
The trial of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is being billed by the Big Media as a case study of a favorite Washington cliché -- "it's not the crime but the coverup" -- a smugly delivered line suggesting that Libby committed no real offense beyond trimming a few facts when questioned by overzealous investigators.
But the major U.S. news media is again missing the point. The real significance of the Libby trial is that it could demonstrate how far George W. Bush went in 2003 to shut down legitimate criticism of his Iraq War policies as well as questions about his personal honesty.
In that sense, the trial could be a kind of time machine for transporting America back to that earlier era of not so long ago when Bush and his team felt they controlled reality itself and were justified in tricking the American people into bloody adventures overseas.
It was a time when President Bush swaggered across the political landscape, a modern-day king fawned over by courtiers in the government and the press -- and protected by legions of followers who bullied citizens who dared to dissent.
Libby may be going on trial for five felony counts of lying and obstructing justice, but the essence of his criminal behavior was his work as a top enforcer responsible for intimidating Americans who wouldn’t stay in line behind the infallible Bush.
Though many Iraq War skeptics -- from the Dixie Chicks to longtime U.S. allies in Europe, such as France -- were punished for disagreeing with Bush, Libby’s most notable target was former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Wilson attracted the White House's wrath in mid-2003 because he was one of the first Washington insiders to question the official consensus about Bush’s wisdom, courage and integrity.
Just months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as Bush basked in stratospheric poll numbers, Wilson went public with first-hand evidence that Bush had "twisted" intelligence to frighten Americans about the prospects of Iraq developing a nuclear bomb.
The former ambassador's heresy was countered by administration officials who leaked the identity of Wilson's wife, covert CIA officer Valerie Plame. They also enlisted Bush's defenders in both the right-wing and mainstream media to wage an unstinting attack on Wilson's credibility.
now we get to c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot' and i want to note before it that agustin is right on the mark when he says 'when you know better, you do better' and that requires something more than what mike and wally were laughing at this weekend as 'e-activism' and 'online activism'. (they weren't laughing at agustin - just at people who think signing a petition makes them big, strong and brave and more so than war resisters who stand up and say 'no' publicly to an illegal war).
here's the snapshot:
Tuesday, January 16, 2007. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq, the United Nations issues a report that seems to go unread (or maybe the news industry has decided, yet again, to ignore Iraqi women?) , US war resister Agustin Aguayo has been charged by the US military, Bully Boy explains to 60 Minutes that the ten words last week were meaningless, the US military announces the death of four US soldiers, and the New York Times is going to have actually report on the chaos and violence in tomorrow's paper because with over 100 dead in Baghdad alone today even the desperate to sell the war Timid can't look the other way.
Starting with war resistance within the military, US war resister Agustin Aguayo, a medic with the US army, gave his reasons for refusing to redeploy to Iraq for a second tour in a statement to the US Court of Appeals in DC which was preparing to hear his appeal to be designated a conscientious objector:
With or without non-combatant status I will not deploy to Iraq. I have been to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom II, and I know what to expect. I know what will be expected of me. And because of this first-hand knowledge, I simply cannot take part in this deployment. Some people might think that a fear of death is the reason for refusing to deploy. But that is incorrect. I have to be true to myself and do what is right. Even though I deployed as a non-combatant in 2004-05 I still carry guilt from my participation. While there as a non-combatant, I was still required to do guard-duty, although I chose to carry only an unloaded gun. While there as a non-combatant, I was still required to patch-up, treat, and help countless soldiers for "sick-call" in order to facilitate their prompt return to combatant duties. While there as a non-combatant, I was asked to drive soldiers around on patrols, patrols which could have been deadly to Americans and Iraqis alike. I regret involvement in those activities, because ultimately I was contributing to the war mission and enabling others to do what I oppose. By doing guard duty, appearing to be armed, even without bullets, I gave the false impression that I would kill if need be. I am not willing to live a lie to satisfy any deployment operation. By helping countless soldiers for "sick-call" as well as driving soldiers around on patrols I helped them get physically better and be able to go out and do the very thing I am against -- kill. This is something my conscience will not allow me to do. Although I myself did not pull the trigger, I now realize that what I did as a non-combatant nonetheless supported and enabled these missions. I cannot carry that burden on my conscience. When you know better you do better.
Aguayo self-checked out of the US military on September 2nd and turned himself at Fort Irwin on September 26. Aguayo has argued that his Last Friday, Kevin Dougherty (Stars & Stripes) reported that the US military has charged Aguayo with desertion and missing movement and that conviction on both charges "could receive a maximum prison term of seven years". The charge of desertion is interesting in that (a) Aguayo turned himself in, (b) he was gone less than 30 days, and (c) the US Court of Appeals was set to hear his case. Also of interest is that, though no date's been set for the trial/court-martial, the military's decided to announce charges when his claim for c.o. status still awaits a ruling from the US Court of Appeals.
Turning to other war resistance news, Iraq Veterans Against the War started Camp Resistance to show their support for Ehren Watada who faces a court-martial February 5, 2007. damon reports that they intend to stay "outside the gates of Fort Lewis and on the streets across the nation" in order "to make an impression large enough to influence the outcome of the trial". What do they need? They need:
financial support for getting IVAW members here at Fort Lewis, particularly on the day of the trial. Also, we envision Camp Resistance FOBs (Forward Operating Base) starting all over the country; in front of recruiter's offices, military bases, etcetera. When we got kicked out of our campsite, we came to the realization that Camp Resistance is not a physical place, but a place within our hearts and minds. If your heart is filled with resistance to this illegal war and Love for LT, you can start a daily vigil in your local area or join us here at Fort Lewis.
They also need attention -- make sure your friends know and start demanding that media, big and small (also known as Useless & Useless) cover Camp Resistance.
Agustin Aguayo and Ehren Watada are part of a movement of resistance within the military that also includes Kyle Snyder, Ivan Brobeck, Darrell Anderson, 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 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.
Meanwhile Bully Boy does his War Dance In The Pants and claims, that as "The Destroyer," this dance is tyrant's choice. Appearing Sunday on CBS' 60 Minutes (pre-taped, Bully Boy doesn't do live well), Bully Boy again attempted to pump his ten word teeny, tiny, little culpa into a thing of significance. Scott Pelley asked Bully Boy about the ten words -- the 'mistakes were made' shrug that the press thought was just AMAZING all last week. ["Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me."] It wasn't. And for the fools who didn't grasp it in real time, Bully Boy demonstrated in Sunday night's broadcast.
PELLEY: You mention mistakes having been made in your speech. What mistakes are you talking about?
BUSH: You know, we've been through this before. Abu Ghraib was a mistake. Using bad language like, you know, "bring them on" was a mistake. I think history is gonna look back and see a lot of ways we could have done things better. No question about it.
PELLEY: The troop levels . . .
BUSH: Could have been a mistake.
PELLEY: Could have been a mistake?
BUSH: Yeah. [General] John Abizaid, one of the planners, said in front of Congress, you know, he thought we might have needed more troops. My focus is on how to succeed. And the reason I brought up the mistakes is, one, that's the job of the commander-in-chief, and, two, I don't want people blaming our military. We got a bunch of good military people out there doing what we've asked them to do. And the temptation is gonna find scapegoats. Well, if the people want a scapegoat, they got one right here in me 'cause it's my decisions.
A scapegoat is someone wrongly blamed. Before anyone points to the obvious (Bully Boy has had a highly abusive relationship with the English language), let's note that you don't go to the well on the Bible as often as the Bully Boy has publicly without being expected to know the story Aaron. Bully Boy knows full well what a scapegoat is and, Sunday on 60 Minutes, he was revealing the obvious, his ten words were sop tossed out and not heartfelt. But thank you, US press, for wasting nearly a week promoting it as ground-breaking news. It's not as though anything better couldn't have been covered in that time, is it?
In the same 60 Minutes interview, Bully Boy rejected the notion that he might "owe the Iraqi people an apology" for not doing "a better job in providing security after the invasion" with "Not at all. I am proud of the efforts we did. We liberated that country from a tyrant."
Shh, don't wake the tyrant. In the real world the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq has released a report and, yes, it declares that 34,452 Iraqis died in 2006 with 36,685 wounded. The report also states that: "Armed operations by MNF-I continued to restrict the enjoyment of human rights and to cause severe suffering to the local population" -- MNF being the US led 'coalition'.
The tyrant thinks he 'liberated' does he? The UN report also covers the realities for Iraqi women -- new realities, post-invasion realities, brought to them by Bully Boy Inc. That includes vanishing rights, women's rights are disappearing and they "are reportedly living with heightened levels of threats to their lives and physical integrity, and forced to conform to strict, abritrarily imposed morality codes" which allows them new 'role' -- unclaimed corpse. Women are kidnapped and abused, sexually and then murdered, their corpses don't get buried by the families because to note that is your daughter, your sister, etc. would be to risk family shame. Those women who have been 'liberated' to mass sexual assault and abuse but aren't murdered? Well they have the option of 'honour killings' which, the UN report tells us, led to, in the first months of 2006, 239 women attempting to kill themselves -- burning yourself to death may be among the most popular 'roles' for Iraqi women in the public sphere. Thanks, Tyrant Bush.
Turning to today's violence which claimed over 100 lives in the capital alone.
Bombings?
CNN reports a coordinated attack on the Mustansiriya University involving two bombs (bomb vest and car bomb) with one "at the back entrance of the school" and the other at the "main gate under a pedestrian bridge where students and employees get public transit." Claudia Parsons and Alastair Macdonald (Reuters) note that at least 65 are dead and "many of them young women students". CNN notes that the count rose to 70 dead and at least 169 were wounded.
Also in Baghdad, Reuters notes a roadside bomb and a motorcycle bomb claimed the lives of at least 15 and left at least 70 wounded in an attack "near a Sunni mosque"; another roadside bomb claimed four lives and left ten more wounded in an attack on a police patrol, while a "bomb inside a car" left six dead and at least 11 wounded in the Sadr City section of Baghdad.
Mohammed al Awsy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports five mortars left 10 people wounded in west Baghdad and notes that bomb that exploded inside a car in the Sadr City section of Baghdad "exploded inside a KIA minibus".
Shootings?
Reuters notes a person shot dead in Hawija and three were shot down in Mosul. CNN reports that "gunmen on motorcycles opend fire on a maketplace in the Mehdi Army-controlled Bunouk area of eastern Baghdad and killed 12 civilians. Seven others were wounded."
Corpses?
The BBC reports that 25 corpses were discovered in Baghdad. Reuters notes that two corpses were discovered in Diwaniya.
Not covered in the above is the fact that the slaughter of Haifa Street (a residential street -- or residential before the slaughter began) continues. Nancy A. Youssef and Zaineb Obeid (McClatchy Newspapers) report: "Eight days after a joint U.S.-Iraqi offensive began to take control of the Haifa Street area in central Baghdad, residents said they had no water and no electricity and that people seeking food had been shot at random. They said they could see American soldiers nearby, but that the Americans were making no effort to intervene."
In addition, Mohammed al Awsy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports: "according to a medical source from karbala health directorate, the directorate yesterday received 80 anonymous bodies from Baghdad morgue with the help of sadr office. those bodies were found 3 months ago in Baghdad and were not be able to be recognized by their families. usually after 3 month of the bodies being at Baghdad morgue if nobody claim them are sent to karbala grave yard to be buried but now the period have been lessen to one month only. this grave yard in karbala is called the anonymous grave yard. also today 85 anonymous bodies were received from Baghdad morgue to be buried at karbala anonymous grave yard."
Meanwhile the US military announces: "Four Task Force Lightning Soldiers assigned to the 4th Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division were killed Monday as a result of an improvised explosive device while conducting operations in Ninewa province, Iraq."
Addressing the escalation, Ron Jacobs (CounterPunch) observes that the escalation is Bully Boy's plan and the US, not Iraqis, are in charge:
Initial reports from the US powers running the war explain that the first neighborhoods to be attacked will be primarily Sunni in makeup. Once these neighborhoods are pacified--gunships attack, soldiers come in, the men rounded up and the areas locked down and fenced in, the remaining residents will be issued identification cards which will most likely include retina scans and will be limited in their travels outside of the region assigned to them by the US command. The plan then apparently calls for a similar effort in the Shia areas of Baghdad, including the area known as Sadr City. This is when the Green Zone regime of al-Maliki will be challenged. Will he give in to US demands and support the almost certainly bloody raids into this part of the city? Will he accept the US plan to turn the Shia regions of Baghdad into the equivalent of the Vietnam war's strategic hamlets? Since it is quite unlikely that Muqtada al-Sadr or his followers will, if al-Maliki were to do so, he would most certainly lose the support of this important bloc of Iraqis. If he opposes US attacks and lockdowns of Shia areas of the city, then he would most likely lose his job.
The scenarios outlined above do enough to prove that it is Washington that really runs the war in Iraq. The major difference between the situation before Mr. Bush's speech and now is that the post-speech plan strips away even the pretense that the Iraqi Green Zone government is in control. What this means on the ground is that the US command will no longer even pretend to ask the Green Zone government for permission to conduct its activities. This change was graphically illustrated almost immediately after Mr. Bush's speech when US troops raided the Iranian diplomatic mission in Irbil and hijacked six Iranian consular officials. No Iraqis even knew about this raid until after the fact. In fact, the Kurdish military units guarding the region almost killed some US troops trying to enter the region because they were unaware of their intentions. We will surely see more examples like this in the coming weeks and months.
Turning to financial news, Sunday, Stephen Foley (Independent of London) reported the GOP donor Bearing Point was having problems which included "falling more than a year behind in reporting its own financial results, prompting legal actions from its creditors and shareholders". Who is Bearing Point? A company that the US administration has been very happy to give contracts (and tax dollars) to for their work on Iraq ("on" being key). On Sunday's The KPFA Evening News, Antonia Juhasz (author of The BU$H Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time) noted that among the contracts Bearing Point currently has one for privatizing Iraq and one of their own employees sitting on Iraq's Oil Ministry. Juhasz explained:
Bearing Point has played the role on the ground in Iraq as the company tasked with the job of making sure that Iraqi's new oil law is passed. So essentially there's been a Bearing Point employee who's had no other job but to make sure that Iraq passes an oil law that supports the Bush administration's agenda for Iraq which is to get Iraq's oil as privatized as possible and into US corporate hands. And that has been Bearing Point's job and it seems that BP has done that job quite well. Bearing Point has essentially been the workhorse on the ground and also the constant threat the constant presence of the Bush administration on the ground in Iraq, doing nothing but focusing on getting this law completed and potentially passed in Iraq. [. . .] The Bechtels and the Halliburtons and the oil companises, Chevron, Exxon , Connoco, and Marathon. Those companies have all been beneficiaries of policies that Bearing Point helped develop and Bearing Point was developing policies that simply, again, serviced the Bush administration's interests. It's definitely just a tool of the administration whereas the other companises definitely had their own agendas that the administration in some ways was a tool servicing their interests like, in particular, the oil companies.
