okay, mike's post is up. i called him and said, 'with all the e-mails i've got asking me what the deal is, you don't need to be going for perfection!' it's "Dave Zirin aka 'Hero Takes a Fall'". he didn't have a title. he was finishing typing and trying to think of a title. so i sang 'the hero is exposed when, his crimes are brought to the light of day, won't be feeling sorry, sorry, sorry at the judgement day.' that's a bangles song. he recognized it from a mix cd jim burned for him.
thank you to denise who e-mailed me a great highlight. she said she thought about c.i. and knew c.i. would try to work it in somehow but it's not iraq. 'it predates iraq,' she wrote. it does. this is from an article by ronnie gilbert at the progressive that she wrote a few years back. she was a member of the weavers and she's also a solo artist. i have a wonderful album that's her and holly near. i'm forgetting the title and can't get up. (the baby's on my shoulder asleep.) i'll note the title of the album tomorrow. but this is from her 'The FBI Knocks Again' (the progressive):
For the second time in my life--at least-- group that I belong to is being investigated by the FBI. The first was the Weavers. In 1950, we recorded a couple of songs from our American/World folk music repertoire, Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene" and the Israeli "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena," and sold millions of records. Folk music entered the mainstream, and the Weavers were stars.
By 1952, it was over. The record company dropped us, and television producers stopped knocking on our door. The Weavers were on a private yet well-publicized roster of suspected entertainment industry Reds. The FBI came a-calling.
This week, I just found out that Women in Black, another group of peace activists I belong to, is the subject of an FBI investigation. Women in Black is a loosely knit international network of women who vigil against, violence, often silently, each group autonomous, each group focused on the particular problems of personal and state violence in its part of the worid.
Because my group is composed mostly of Jewish women, we focus on the Middle East, protesting the cycle of violence and revenge in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The FBI is threatening my group with a grand jury investigation. Of what? That we publicly call Israel's military occupation of Palestine illegal? So does the World Court and the United Nations. That the Israeli policy of destroying hundreds of thousands of the Palestinians' olive and fruit trees, blocking roads, and demolishing homes promotes hatred and terrorism in the Middle East? Even President Bush and Colin Powell have gotten around to saying that. So what is to investigate? That some of us are in contact with activist Palestinian peace groups? This is bad?
The Jewish Women in Black of Jerusalem have stood vigil every Friday for thirteen years in protest against the occupation. Muslim women from Palestinian peace groups stand with them at every opportunity. We praise and honor them, these Jewish and Arab women who endure hatred and frequent abuse from extremists on both sides.
We are not alone in our admiration. Jerusalem Women in Black is a nominee for the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize, along with Bosnia Women in Black, now ten years old. If the FBI cannot or will not distinguish between groups who collude in terrorism and peace activists who struggle in the full light of day against all forms of terrorism, we are in serious trouble.
I have seen such trouble before in my lifetime. It was called McCarthyism. In the hysterical atmosphere of the early Cold War, anyone who had signed a peace petition, joined an organization opposing violence or racism, or raised money for the refugee children of the Spanish Civil War-in other words, who had openly advocated what was not popular at the time-was fair game.
funniest e-mail i got today was a man screaming that c.i. supports hillary clinton for president 'and i knew that ___ was going to endorse hillary.' (the missing word rhymes with witch.) he read c.i.'s 'And the war drags on . . .' but apparently not too closely. c.i. didn't endorse hillary and said that repeatedly. c.i. noted a positive aspect of hillary's. c.i.'s done that before. c.i.'s noted a positive aspect of joe biden when it had some iraq-related area. and bill richardson. and dennis kucinich, and john edwards, and mike gravel.
we actually had a print feature for the third estate sunday review a few weeks back that didn't go online because c.i. felt 'it's all me.' we were talking the positives and the negatives of every candidate. c.i. said, 'i'll do every 1 but obama.' but we had no positives for obama so c.i. ended up doing that as well.
that's not an edorsement. i 1st heard john edwards name in 2002 from c.i. i later thought, 'oh, that's who c.i.'s for.' it wasn't. i didn't find out who c.i. was for (despite asking repeatedly) until i made up my own mind. elaine's noted that she was for howard dean and when she found out c.i. was for john kerry (you never know until you make up your own mind - c.i.'s not into telling people how to vote), elaine decided to give to both primary campaigns and c.i. hit the roof. c.i. said, 'you support howard dean. if you give to both, you're undercutting who you support."
in may 2003, i was attempting to decide who i was for. i knew c.i. had already decided a long time ago. i kept begging, 'just tell me who you're voting for.' (i do that every election cycle, i've done it for decades now, i never get an answer. but i keep trying and will again this election cycle.)
i was complaining about not knowing enough about the candidates.
i end up with a package of campaign material on all the candidates.
c.i. calls and we're on the phone for an hour and 1/2 as c.i. goes over the pluses and the minuses of each.
i ended up supporting carol mosely braun. i was also tempted by al shartpon, howard dean and some 1 i forget now. but i went with carol. it was never a problem.
c.i. was supporting john kerry. i only found that out after i had firmly made up my mind. there was no shading to favor john kerry in our phone call. c.i. noted kerry's positives and kerry's negatives. it was straight down the line. (the biggest shock to me was that c.i. did that with joe lieberman. c.i. loathes joe lieberman and has for years. i kept interrupting and saying, 'skip him, skip him.' c.i. said, 'no, he's a candidate. you should know about him and then decide.')
i made the decision to support carol on my own; however, i honestly did think that was who c.i. would be supporting. so it was a shock, after i called to say i made my donation, to learn that kerry was c.i.'s pick. it was never a problem. it was never an issue.
a child of 1 of c.i.'s friends voted for president for the 1st time in 2004. his parents asked c.i. to talk to him. they are democrats. c.i. said sure and was laying out the dems when it became obvious there was a problem. c.i. asked what the problem was. the guy supported some 1 else. c.i. guess it was bully boy. c.i. said, 'okay, let's talk about why you're supporting him.' the guy had reasons. c.i. loathes bully boy. c.i. listened, talked about bully boy's positives and negatives (and i would love to have heard the positives - i'm sure c.i. gave them - but i'm picturing c.i. doing so through gritted teeth). at the end the guy was for bully boy firmly. c.i. said, 'then that's who you should vote for.' the kid says his parents will be mad. c.i. said the vote isn't a public vote and no 1 has a right to know how any 1 votes.
c.i.'s not trying to brainwash people. be informed, know the pluses and minuses, and then make up your own mind. it's your vote, it doesn't belong to any 1 else.
it's so funny because the hillary supporters are the 1s who e-mail to scream at c.i. the most. and c.i.'s noted a positive about hillary before. they never remember that, they never note that. they just scream and hiss.
c.i. has campaigned for people before. but the illegal war is what c.i.'s focused on.
if a community member wrote c.i. tomorrow, 'i've decided to support rudy g' or some 1 like that, c.i. wouldn't e-mail back, 'you're out of the community! you're stupid!' c.i. would be 'i hope you did your research. if you're happy with your choice, that's all that matters.'
so to the man in an uproar, quit trying to read the tea leaves. you'll never know who c.i. is supporting. every primary has been a suprise for me as long as i've known c.i. (though liberal in the classical sense always tends to trump everything else if there's a wide range of choices.)
okay, there's an ap story about a college newspaper out of colorado state university whose editor will find out wednesday night whether he can remain or is fired:
J. David McSwane says he won't quit because of an editorial in Friday's edition of the Rocky Mountain Collegian that said, "Taser this...(expletive) Bush." The editor says the staff supported the editorial and it would be an insult to them if he stepped down.
while they've cracked down on high school papers (wrongly), the 1st amendment is still supposed to be in effect for college newspapers. there's nothing i'm seeing that will result in a law suit. but aren't they attempting to make a big deal. they should mind their own business. he's the editor. if the staff doesn't like it, they can decide. if students are unhappy, that's when you write a letter to the editor. but in today's climate, it's very likely that his job is at risk.
be sure to check out elaine's 'Not in the mood tonight.' let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Monday, September 24, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, is anyone paying attention to the attacking of province officials, the US military announces another death, the 3800 mark looms, the US military is ordered to escort families out of a neighborhood thereby assisting armed thugs, and more.
Starting with war resistance. The new chair of IVAW Camilo Mejia told his story in Road from Ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia, tracing his awakening to the illegal war as he served in it. Elizabeth Wrigley-Field reviews it in the September-October issue of ISR (the review is not currently available online, pages 73-74) noting, "Most of the book recounts Mejia's five months as a staff sergeant and leader of a nine-person squad in Iraq. This account is invaluable not only because it presents a picture of the reality of the occupation -- infused, from the very beginning, with racism, brutality, and incompetence -- but also because it helps us understand the process through which soldiers can become resisters." In Road from Ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia, Mejia concludes his story with the kangaroo court-martial and notes what he told the court:
We're all on trial. Not just me, sitting here, but everybody here in uniform, everybody in this country. . . . War crimes? Abuse of prisoners? The U.S. Army? No. A few privates, perhaps, one sergeant; they did that. They did that because they didn't have the courage to do what I did, because they were lost in a situation where it's hard to tell the difference between right and wrong. Perhaps they were afraid not to do what they were told by people who are higher ranking. Perhaps they decided that it was easier to do what everybody else was doing. So now it's easier to judge these people and put them on trial and blame it on them. . . . I'm not saying they're not responsible. They have some responsibility, just like I have some responsibility for the things I did in Iraq. Of course I do. But if we really want to look at ourselves as military and we really want to keep our pride and honor as a military, then we have to start from the top.
At which point the 'judge' interrupts. The same 'judge' that refused to let arguments of the legalities of the illegal war be raised and felt that -- pay attention -- the judiciary had no oversight over the military -- that was something to be left to the Executive and Legislative branches. That's real cute and I'm sure there are other matters that the two branches wish the judiciary would sit out. Wrigley-Field concludes of the book, "Mejia was the first. But he wasn't the last and there are many more to come. We have much to learn from his story."
A Matter Of Conscience is a new documentary about the illegal war and Kevin and Monica Benderman's strength when Kevin realized he was a conscientious objector. Like Mejia, Kevin Benderman is among the early war resisters. A preview of the documentary is available at YouTube. More information on the film can be found at Kevin Benderman's website. A Matter of Conscience: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War is a project by William Short and Willa Seidenberg (an incredible project) and, to be clear, that's not this documentary. (There are other items with that title, I believe Kevin Benderman also wrote a column with that title.) If you're interested in purchasing a copy of the documentary, e-mail Earl Brackett (Minehead Productions) at minehead@triad.rr.com
War resister and Iraq veteran James Burmeister, his wife Angelique and their son Cornell went to Canada. Burmeister has repeatedly spoken about his job in Iraq, the US military assigned him the duty of setting "traps" -- equipment left laying out so that any Iraqi who touched it could be shot for touching US property. Burmeister is far from the only veteran of the illegal worker to speak of this. Today the topic makes the mainstream. Josh White and Joshua Partlow (Washington Post) report that "military court documents" reveal this was being done to provide Iraq targets for "U.S. military snipers" and they note: "'Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy,' Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. 'Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces.' In documents obtained by The Washington Post from family members of the accused soldiers, Didier said members of the U.S. military's Asymmetric Warfare Group visited his unit in January and later passed along ammunition boxes filled with the 'drop items' to be used 'to disrupt the AIF [Anti-Iraq Forces] attempts at harming Coalition Forces and give us the upper hand in a fight'."
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes Derek Hess, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Zamesha Dominique, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Carla Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko,Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty-one US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline [(877) 447-4487], Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters.
Catching up from the weekend. The mercenaries of Blackwater went back to work in Iraq. Andrew E. Kramer (New York Times) wrote about that and the headline writer billed it with that but Kramer's real news was buried deep in the article. Background. Friday, Leila Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) blogged at Baghdad Observer about the death of Hammoundi Naji "his cousin and another man" shot dead while enroute home in the Washash section of Baghdad. Fadel calls Naji "a top Mahdi Army leader" and the deaths resulted in a home invasion -- conducted by the Mahdia Army (think thugs) -- in which four women were slaughtered. Now we're up to Kramer's report in Saturday's New York Times where he reports that as retaliation against the killing of Naji, the Mahdi Army began clearing out the Washash section of Baghdad forcing "[b]etween 50 and 100 Sunni families" (families -- not individuals) to abandon their homes and flee as the thugs went through the neighborhoods with "loudspeakers, telling people to leave" and not just in full view of the US military, with the assistance of the US military. One of the newly created refugees, Sheik Abu Hasan, declares, "What shocked us a lot was that as soon as we reached the main streets, we saw Iraqi and American forces who were showing and directing us to the highway." The US military was used to assist with forced evictions (non-legal ones) and not to protect the people. The myth that the US is preserving anything should have long ago shattered. The US armed and trained the Shi'ites while banishing the Sunnis, they created the division that exists by making their first question to Iraqis: "Are you Sunni or Shia?", and the continued presence breeds the hostility and violence. Ned Parker (Los Angeles Times) reported that "small gangs from the Mahdi Army hunted down Sunnis across the district. Anywhere from five to 20 people were killed, and byFriday afternoon, at least 30 Sunni families had fled Washash. Violence continued Saturday as a Sunni man was pulled out of a car and shot to death. Naji, a man viewed by many as a criminal, had ignited another chapter in Iraq's civil war."
Turning to the topic of Blackwater. Sabrina Tavernise and James Glanz (New York Times) continued their writing in service of the US State Dept on Sunday declaring that the real tragedy of Blackwater's slaughtering Iraqis the Sunday before last was that US embassy staff couldn't travel freely outside the Green Zone. Oooh. That was the really tragedy. Not at least 11 innocent Iraqis (including an infant) killed by US mercenaries. It's the US embassy being on Green Zone confinement. Now the US State Dept employees are not normally doing the congo through Ramadi. So what's really going on? US service members are interviewing eye witnesses about the slaughter Blackwater conducted, US service members who have no love for mercenaries and aren't prone to lie for them the way the US State Dept would. A real problem after the US government managed to push around the puppet government on the Blackwater issue (we'll get to it). Tavernise and Glanz's punch line is "American officials have privately cautioned against drawing early conclusions." Many conclusions can already be drawn. Tony Allen-Mills (Times of London) quotes Jeremy Scahill making one clear conclusion: "There have been 64 US soldiers court martialled on murder-related charges in Iraq. There hasn't been a single prosecution of an armed contractor under civilians or military law." Al Jazeera reported yesterday that despite puppet Nouri al-Maliki's strong words last week, the strings have been pulled, the puppet directed back in line: "The Iraqi government has made a U-turn on threats to kick out US security firm Blackwater. Instead, the US and Iraqi governments have started a joint investigation of security contractors following Blackwater's alleged involvement in the killing of 11 Iraqi civilians and the wounding of 12." Despite the strings being visible (and then some), al-Maliki's trying to put up a front. Alissa J. Rubin and Andrew E. Kramer (New York Times) report that al-Maliki is calling the slaughter (still) "a challenge to the nation's sovereignty".
Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, appeared on Democracy Now! this morning. Amy Goodman summarized the latest events by noting that today "the Iraqi government said it will await the outcome of an investigation into last Sunday's killing of at least eleven people by Blackwater USA before taking any action against the company." Jeremy Scahill observed, "I mean, I think that the fact that Blackwater mercenaries are heavily armed and on the streets of Iraq is perhaps the greatest indicator of how the Bush administration defines Iraqi sovereignty. And it was initially left up to Iraqi spokespeople to explain that Blackwater would be back on the street. And the reason that they gave -- and it clearly had come from Condoleezza Rice -- is that it would create a security vacuum. I have never heard a more ridiculous statement. It's Blackwater that's created the security vacuum for Iraqi civilians, as many as twenty-eight of whom were gunned down last Sunday in Al-Nisoor Square in the Mansour section of Baghdad. And what we're seeing is that, at the highest levels of government, Maliki has now stuck his neck out. And how it plays in Washington is one thing, but how it plays in Iraq is a very different one . You have the entire Iraqi cabinet and Muqtada al-Sadr demanding that Blackwater be expelled from the country. In fact, many Iraqi politicians are calling for all of these mercenary forces to be expelled from Iraq. This is perhaps one of the greatest crises of the occupation to date. And right now, Condoleezza Rice is clearly acting as though she's the president of Iraq. The idea that you can have twenty-eight people gunned down including -- and we understand the shooting began when Blackwater operatives fired on an Iraqi vehicle, killing the driver. Then they launched, according to witnesses, some kind of a flamed grenade at the car and engulfed it in flames. And inside was a mother with her infant child. And that's when the shooting began. And Iraqi witnesses, survivors, say that it was a melee, where Blackwater guys were just indiscriminately firing in the streets."
Blackwater's big business. They are hardly the only one raking in the big bucks in Iraq. Ginger Thompson and Eric Schmitt (New York Times) report, "Pentagon officials are investigating some $6 billion in military contracts, most covering supplies as varied as bottled water, tents and latrines for troops in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. The inquiries have resulted in charges against at least 29 civilians and soldiers, more than 75 other criminal investigations and the suicides of at least two officers. They have prompted the Pentagon, the largest purchasing agency in the world, to overhaul its war-zone procurement system." Big business? Alan Greenspan -- providing excuses since the beginning of creation. Today Greenspan appeared on Democracy Now! along with Naomi Klein whose The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism was released in the US last Tuesday.
From the forum conducted by DN! anchor Amy Goodman:
AMY GOODMAN: We're also joined in studio by Naomi Klein, author of the book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Your response to that, Naomi Klein?
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, I'm just wondering if it troubles Mr. Greenspan at all that wars over resources in other countries are actually illegal. Mr. Greenspan has praised the rule of law, the importance of the rule of law, in his book. But in his statements about the reasons why this has not been publicly discussed, he has said that it's not politically expedient at this moment. But it's not just that it's not politically expedient, Mr. Greenspan. Are you aware that, according to the Hague Regulations and the Geneva Conventions, it is illegal for one country to invade another over its natural resources?
ALAN GREENSPAN: No. What I was saying is that the issue which, as you know, most people who were pressing for the war were concerned with were weapons of mass destruction. I personally believed that Saddam was behaving in a way that he probably very well had, almost certainly had, weapons of mass destruction. I was surprised, as most, that he didn't. But what I was saying is that my reason for being pleased to see Saddam out of office had nothing to do with the weapons of mass destruction. It had to do with the potential threat that he could create to the rest of the world.
NAOMI KLEIN: Yes, I realize that, but he was not simply deposed. The US invaded Iraq, occupied it and took control over its resources. And under international law, that it is illegal to wage wars to gain access to other countries', sovereign countries', natural resources.
In news of other attacks, Reuters reports a the targeting of various officials such as Sunday's Kut attack aimed at the police chief of the Wasit province (two bodyguards were injured) that continue today with a bombing targeting the police chief of Kirkuk (two bodyguards wounded) and an attack on the mayor of Kirkuk (1 bodyguard killed, seven wounded). Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reveals there were more officials targeted "General Secretary of the National Accordance Group, Najaf Branch, Adel Waheed Abood was targeted by gunmen and sustained two bullets this morning; one in the neck and another in the shoulder. The Health Department in Najaf says his condition is critical. He was a nominee for the position of Governor in Najaf governorate."
In news of other violence . . .
Bombings?
Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports Baghdad mortar attacks with one claiming the lives of 2 children while wounding their parents and a Kirkuk car bombing that left two people wounded. AFP reports a Baquba bombing in "a mosque during a reconciliation meeting between two feared militias . . . killing at least 18 people." And -- remember the targeting of officials? -- BBC reports that among the dead in Baquba was the police chief Brig. Gen. Ali Dalyan.
Shootings?
Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a woman on a bus returning home with other employees of the Rafidain Bank was shot dead.
Corpses?
Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 12 corpses were discovered in Baghdad.
Today the US military announced (PDF format warning): "A Task Force Lightning Soldier died of wounds sustained from enemy gunfire in Salah ad Din Province, Monday." The press release brought to 3799 announced deaths in the illegal war since it began in March 2003. One away from the 3800 mark.
Today on WBAI's Law and Disorder, co-hosts Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith spoke with Matthew Rothschild about his new book You Have No Rights: Stories of America In An Age of Repression. (Co-hosts Michael Ratner and Dalia Hashad were not part of the interview.)
Michael Smith: Matthew Rothschild, what kind of stuff are the Bushies doing to students who are students like you and me and Heidi [were] on campus these days?
Matthew Rothschild: Well that's the other thing. We're going back to the days of COINTELPRO. We're going back to where the police and the feds have undercover people at our rallies. I mean, this shouldn't be happening but it is. I mean at Drake University, for instance, in Des Moines, Iowa -- and I was out in Des Moines recently -- there was, as far back as 2003, November of 2003, which gives you a sense as to how long we've been doing this peace activism -- there was a peace conference there on campus sponsored by the National Lawyers Guild local chapter and they were saying "Bring Our Troops Home! Bring Our National Guard Home!" Well that rally was infilitrated by sherrif's deputies who were there undercover and at that rally evidently the prosecutors weren't happy that peace activists were doing their thing including people from Catholic Peaceministries and Quakers. So the local DA started to issue subpoenas to everybody under the sun including the National Lawyers Guild, including to Drake with gag orders attached to the subpeonas and fortunately the protestors there were able to make enough noise about this prosecutorial excess that the prosecutor withdrew subpeonas.
Heidi Boghosian: And then, Matthew, they wanted to, they asked for our membership lists, they wanted our membership lists.
That's a portion of the interview. Many other topics are covered. Boghosian is the executive director of the National Lawyers Guild (Michael Smith is a member of that and many other attorney organizations fighting for the rights of people) and she is also the author of Punishing Protest (available online in PDF format for free and avaible in book format for $3 at the National Lawyers Guild website) which came out a few weeks ago. Smith, Boghosian and Dalia Hashad are members of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Michael Ratner is the president. CCR is receiving an award this Friday from the War Resisters League, a peace award. Boghosian noted today that Michael Ratner will be accepting the award. The event will be held at the New York Society for Ethical Culture at 2 West 64th, NYC and will
begin at 7:30 with a panel -- tickets are ten dollars [there are events scheduled before and after the panel, for more information call (212) 228-0450)]. Dan Berrigan, Sister Diana Ortiz, Deepa Fernades (Wakeupcall Radio; Fernandez will host the event) and many others will be present.
Quickly, politics. As Trina noted this weekend, "Monday night, Dennis Kucinich will be a guest on The Tonight Show on NBC. (If you're a Diana Krall or fan of 'The Rock,' they are also schedule to appear.)" WalkOn ran an ad that wasn't objectional, 'immoral' or anything shocking. They are under attack which is an attack on free speech and a further step along the way towards complete militarization of the United States. Donna Saggia (CounterPunch) gets it exactly right noting that, "Alarm bells should be ringing louder than ever in progressive circles as Congress, not content with forgeiting its powers to the unitary executive, has now decided to let the military plan foreign policy. . . . In some ways the Petraeus hearings were just another scene in the pro-war theater of the absurd". Saggia demolishes the phony slogan we don't use here and writes probably one of the strongest (if not the strongest -- and it has my vote for the strongest) pieces on the entire matter.
Please check out Mike's site tonight. I'd love to weigh in (Mike told me about it Sunday night) but I'll wait until he does. I will note I'm an adult and was always smart enough NOT to read my own press in my offline life. Possibly a big baby need to realize that it's past time they grow up and the fact that Mike praises you repeatedly but won't lie that you pee rainbows doesn't require you to send hysterical e-mails. I support Mike today, tomorrow and always.
9/24/2007
9/21/2007
carly, laura, joni, jackson & stevie
for her column in polly's brew sunday, goldie's making a list of her top 10 favorite songwriters who write about the world around them. she asked me if i'd mind mentioning it and noting 'i don't know all the music in the world!' she made me laugh when she said that. i'm really looking foward to reading it. i told her i'd note 5 of my favorite songwriters tonight as prep for her's column. i'll go back further than she does so that i don't overlap with her. (she's focusing on people who've written about the illegal war.)
1) carly simon.
i love carly's writing. she's got an amazing voice, but i have always responded 1st and foremost to her writing. even an album that's not a favorite still contains a gem or 2. i also love spoiled girl which carly seems to hate. the only thing i dislike about spoiled girl is that 'tired of being blonde' is an extended mix. that mix goes on too long. it's a nice enough song (she didn't write it) but i don't need the 'blonde ... blonde ...' repetition. i love 'my new boyfriend.' that may be the only song she included from the album on her boxed set clouds in my coffee. 'tonight & forever' is really beautiful and 'anyone but me' is a song i love. (i love the low tones on the verses.) 'straight from the hall of fame/ one of the world's great lovers/ darling you're not to blame, i'm just sorry you've been discovered ... i wish that you had never known anyone but me ...' 'come back home' is another 1 i love to sing along with on that album: 'summer time/ kids on the street/ we were up on the roof/ laughing at the heat/ that was the last/ i ever saw of you ...' but as much as i love all the 1s i've listed, they're not even my favorite on the cd. spy isn't 1 of my favorites but 'we're so close' and 'never been gone' are so damn amazing. 'jesse' is so incredible that it doesn't matter what else was on come upstairs but i also love the title track and 'in pain'. right now, at this moment in time, my 2 favorites of all the songs she's written, let me make it 3, are 'let the river run,' 'we just got here' and 'scar.' i think she's an amazing writer.
2) laura nyro.
she wrote epics in the early days. let me do some back story here. she recorded 4 albums of her own songs, then she recorded (with labelle) an album of sixties covers and then she withdrew. i really don't care for smile, her return album. it didn't reach me and that may be due to the fact that her 1st 4 albums were so intense and this 1 was so laid back. but she stayed with that sound and managed to create some major art. 'women of the one world' and 'to a child' are my 2 favorite songs written by her. the fact that they aren't the classics every 1 recorded and had hits with or even songs from those 1st 4 albums speaks to how amazing she was until the end. i also have to toss in a 3rd here as well. 'the japanese restaraunt'.
3) joni mitchell.
'night ride home' is 1 of her amazing songs from her later period. i love the early stuff. i can listen to the first album, for the roses, clouds, ladies of the canyon, court & spark, etc. and of course blue is a standard that few will ever reach. but she's done amazing work since and i don't just mean hejira. dog eat dog was slaughtered by critics but that is an amazing album. my favorites on that are 'three great stimulants,' 'impossible dreamer' and 'tax free.' night ride home is another amazing album. i'm forgetting the last 1 of her new songs. the title to it. turbulent indigo wasn't a good time for me so i have no idea about the album. i have a bad association with it. but the 1 that followed i loved. 'love puts on a new face' is 1 of my all time favorite joni songs. taming the tiger. that's the name of the cd. mike's dad just walked through (i'm in trina's kitchen) and i asked him. i love 'no apologies' and think that's amazing. and 'man from mars' is 1 i'd love for her to do live if she does a tour behind the new cd (which comes out tuesday). or, even if she just does a live show for hbo or showtime, i'd love for her to do that amazing song again. 3 all time favorites? 'a case of you,' 'love puts on a new face' and 'hejira.'
4) jackson browne.
mike's dad looked at who i'd picked so far and said, 'you've got to put in jackson!' trina said, 'honey, it's her list.' but he's right, can't forget jackson browne.
jackson actually pisses me off on 1 thing. 'ready or not' is a wonderful song. he insults that song and he shouldn't. it's the perfect portrait of a man trying not to freak out over a pregnancy. i think it's amazing. the narrator is playing off the pregnancy but there's so much tension in the song that it's obvious just how hard he's working to play it off. my second favorite song is 'in the shape of a heart' which i think was 1 of his best ballads. the 3rd? i can't pick. there's 'here come those tears again,' 'that girl could sing,' 'lives in the balance,' 'i'm alive,' 'these days,' 'rosie,' 'anything can happen,' 'the pretender,' 'sky blue and black' ... get the idea? my favorite album is either the pretender or i'm alive.
5) stevie nicks.
1 thing that all of the 5 have in common is that they manage to speak in a way that's unique to them. stevie nicks? i don't know if we could have made it through the 70s without her? seriously. give credit to the wilson sisters (ann & nancy of heart, often writing with their friend sue ennis). stevie rocked and she never made women feel like they should be embarrassed. stevie always included women. i don't think some 1 goldie's age will get that because they do have pro-women singers today. but for the rockers, women were either invisible or playing sex toy (pat benetar may have sung with her all but she also paraded around in t&a outfits). stevie was and is an amazing writer. i'll do 3 of her fleetwood mac songs and 3 of her solo songs.
fleetwood mac: 'sara'. i really could stop with that 1. it is so amazing. i love it live. i love it recorded. 'drowning in the sea of love/ where everyone would love to drown/ but now it's gone ...' after 'sara'? that's difficult. there are so many amazing 1s. 'say you will' was amazing (from the last cd) and i guess i would choose 'rhianon.'
solo: 'beauty & the beast' is probably the hands down winner for me. i love that song. i love all of wild heart but that song is probably my favorite. after that? 'love is' and 'alice.'
so those are 5. remember to check out goldie's list on sunday.
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Friday, September 21, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces more deaths, 'progress' is no where to be found in Iraq, the US loses weapons and the Iraqi resistance reportedly now has them, and more.
Starting with war resistance. Alaam News reports that a US family of five (three children) is seeking asylum in Finland "with local media speculating that it is opposition to the Iraq war" that has led the family to leave the United States and start over in Helenski this week. If true, it would be only the second time this decade that an "American citizen . . . [has] filed an asylum application in Finland during the current decade." Meanwhile IVAW's Michael Prysner (PSL) reports, "The number of deserters is also steadily climbing, with official numbers now reaching over 10,000 since the war began. Many believe these numbers may actually be much higher. The G.I. Rights Hotline reports an average of 3,000 calls a month by new recruits and active duty soldiers who have decided they want to abandon the military. . . . Soldiers against the war have begun organizing within the military. Active duty soldiers started the Appeal for Redress, a petition calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. It was formulated less than a year ago, and has collected over 2,000 signatures of soldiers currently serving in the military. Membership in Iraq Veterans Against the War is nearing 600. . . . Soldiers like Lt. Ehren Watada and Camilo Mejia have set the example, publicly refusing deployment and condemning the war for its illegal and immoral nature."
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes Derek Hess, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Zamesha Dominique, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Carla Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko,Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty-one US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline [(877) 447-4487], Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters.
Peter Hart spoke with Anthony Arnove (IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal) on this week's CounterSpin (airing on most radio stations today) about the issue of contractors.
Anthony Arnove: There is effectively a doubling of the US occupation in Iraq right now through the employment of private contractors of whom as many as 50,000 are armed -- effectively private mercenaries working in the employee of the US occupation. Blackwater is operating under the employment of the State Department. What's interesting is that very early on in the US occupation, Paul Bremer -- who was acting as the colonial viceroy -- in his capacity of head of the Coalition Provision Authority deliberately exempted these mercenaries and other US contractors from Iraqi law. And they've created basically a legal black hole in which these mercenaries can operate without any accountability. And the few times there have been incidents in which Iraqis tried to pursue contractors for violations they've been skirted out of the country so as not to have to face any prosecution. They do technically fall under rules of engagement set down for US contractors -- whether that's Pentagon rules or State Department rules. But like we've seen with active duty troops who've engaged in abuses of human rights in Iraq, there's really been no accountability certainly not up the chain of command.
No accountability. And Bremer and the CPA were nothing but a shell game. Bremer stripped Iraqis of oversight and, in fact, the US may not have any legal right to oversight as well. As Naomi Klein explains in her new book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism:
Bremer's CPA would not try to stop the various scams, side deals and shell games because the CPA was itself a shell game. Though it was billed as the U.S. occupation authority, it's unclear that it held that distinction in anything other than name. This point was forcefully made by a judge in the infamous Custer Battles corruption case.
Two former employees of the security firm launched a whistle-blower lawsuit against the company, accusing it of cheating on reconstruction-related contracts with the CPA and defrauding the U.S. governments produced by the company that clearly showed it was keeping two sets of numbers -- one for itself, one for invoicing the CPA Retired Brigadier-General Hugh Tant testified that the fraud was "probably the worst I've ever seen in my 30 years in the army." (Among Custer Battles' many alleged violations, it is said to have appropriated Iraqi-owned forklifts from the airport, repainted them and billed the CPA for the cost of leasing the machines.)
In March 2006, a federal jury in Virginia ruled against the company, finding it guilty of fraud, and forced it to pay $10 million in damages. The company then asked the judge to overturn the verdict, with a revealing defense. It claimed that the CPA was not part of the U.S. government, and therefore not subject to its laws, including the False Claims Act. The implications of this defense were enormous: the Bush administration had indemnified U.S. corporations working in Iraq from any liability under Iraqi laws; if the CPA wasn't subject to U.S. law either, it meant that the contractors weren't subjected to any law at all -- U.S. or Iraqi. This time, the judge ruled in the company's favor: he said there was plenty of evidence that Custer Battles had submitted to the CPA "false and fraudulently inflated invoices," but he ruled that the plaintiffs had "failed to prove that the claims were presented to the United States." In other words, the U.S. government presence in Iraq during the first year of its economic experiment had been a mirage -- there had been no government, just a funnel to get U.S. taxpayer and Iraqi oil dollars to foreign corporations, completely outside the law. In this way, Iraq represented the most extreme expression of the anti-state counter-revolution -- a hollow state, where, as the courts finally established, there was no there, there.
Contractors in Iraq -- with the permission of the US government and sometimes on the orders of the US government -- have been allowed to act with impunity. Daniel Howden and Leonard Doyle (Independent of London) provide a look at the rise of outsourcing governmental tasks and note, "A high-ranking US military commander in Iraq said: 'These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There's no authority over them, so you can't come down on them hard when they escalate force. They shoot people.' In Abu Ghraib, all of the translators and up to half of the interrogators were reportedly private contractors."
Rosa Brooks (Los Angeles Times) also addresses the reality of governmental tasks being sold off to the private section, "What's been happening in Iraq -- and in Afghanistan, Columbia, Somalia and the Pentagon and the State Department -- goes far beyond the 'outsourcing of key military and security jobs.' For years, the administration has been quietly auctioning off U.S. foreign policy to the highest corporate bidder -- and it may be too late for us to buy it back. Think I'm exaggerating? Look at Blackwater. Its $750-million contract with the U.S. State Department employees in Iraq is just one of many lucrative U.S. (and foreign) government contracts it has enjoyed (and it's a safe bet that Sunday's episode will be only a minor PR setback for Blackwater). As for Blackwater's most recent slaughter, Kim Sengupta (Independent of London) reconstructs the events on Sunday via eye witness testimony: " We have found no Iraqi present at the scene who saw or heard sniper fire. Witnesses say the first victims of the shootings were a couple with their child, the mother and infant meeting horrific deaths, their bodies fused together by heat after their car caught fire. The contractors, according to this account, also shot Iraqi soldiers and police and Blackwater then called in an attack helicopter from its private air force which inflicted further casualties." Apparently unable to speak to Iraqis, Sabrina Tavernise and James Glanz (New York Times) rely on a leaked report from the Ministry of the Interior which "has concluded that employees of a private American security firm fired an unprovoked barrage in the shooting last Sunday," "that the dozens of foreign security companies here should be replaced by Iraqi companies, and that a law that has given the companies immunity for years be scrapped" -- and the reporters offer: "The Iraqi version of events may be self-serving in some points." And the US version may be what? Tavernise and Glanz ignore that prospect. Blackwater's apparently ignoring some things as well. Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) notes, "In Iraq, the private security firm Blackwater USA is reportedly back on the streets of Baghdad despite an announced ban on its activities. The Iraqi government said it had revoked Blackwater's license this week after its guards killed up to twenty-eight Iraqis in an unprovoked mass shooting. But a Pentagon spokesperson said today Blackwater is guarding diplomatic convoys following talks with the Iraqi government." So, as Ian Thompson (PSL) judged it, "Even the Iraqi puppet government leadership spoke up -- but its words were hot air. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki wants to gain credibility and appear to be independent of his U.S. colonial masters." The events appear to answer Thursday's question ("For the US government, it's a quandry: Do they use this moment to provide al-Maliki with a chance to alter his image or do they continue to let greed rule?"): Greed again won out.
Self-serving? Sabrina Tavernise and James Glanz apply that to the report from Iraq's Interior Ministry and it's doubtful they'd ever use the term for the upcoming US report. Along with the issue of equality, there's also the fact that the term is flat out wrong. The Interior Ministry is not self-serving, it's US-serving. Dropping back to the September 6th snapshot:
Turning to retired generals, Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) reported today, "A panel of retired US generals is urging the United States to disband and reorganize the Iraqi police force because of infiltration by sectarian militias. The generals also report Iraq's security forces will be unable to fulfill their essential security responsibilities independently for at least another twelve to 18 months." Karen DeYoung (Washington Post) explains that the national police force as well as the Iraq Interior Ministry are "riddled with sectarianism and corruption" by the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq headed by James Jones (Marine general) in there 150-plus page report which also finds the Iraqi army at least a year to 18 months away from being able to handle "internal security". Tim Reid (Times of London) reports, "The 20 member-panel also said today that the Iraqi Army was incpable of acting independently from US forces for at least another 18 months, and 'cannot yet meaningfully contribute to denying terrorists safe haven'."
The militias of the Interior Ministry are thugs who terrorize. Who trained them? Who introduced the "Salvador option"? The US. Who has refused to disband them? The US. Self-serving? The Interior Ministry wishes it were self-serving. Then it could really go to town slaughtering 'enemies.' It wouldn't have to worry that one of the many torture chambers they are running might result in a US military 'rescue' of their torture victims. If they were independent and self-serving, all of their torture chambers would be signed off on and not just some.
Today on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show, Rehm spoke with the Washington Post's Karen DeYoung, the Wall St. Journal's Neil King Jr. and Newsweek's Michael Hirsh about a number of topics. On the topic of Blackwater, Hirsh declared, "Often all that happens is that the employee is spirited out of the country. That happened last Christmas Eve when a Blackwater employee shot and killed a guard to a senior Iraqi official inside the Green Zone which was obviously a little politically toxic. And he left, the company has since refused to disclose his name and he has not been prosecuted."
Neil King, Jr. (Wall Street Journal): The thing that is extraordinary about it is that we had the Petraeus hearings last weekend or last week, and all the discussion "we want Iraq to be a country, we want it to step up, we want it to meet all these benchmarks" etc. And yet we don't really actually treat it as a country to the extent that we've got thousands of our own nationals driving around with machine guns and opening fire on people and then being totally immune from the law and as is the case of this shooting last week -- sorry, last December -- where a person shot a security guard who was the personal security guard of the vice-president of Iraq and the person's spirited out of the country. Nobody ever knows what his name was and he's gone. There'll never be -- I mean if you reverse the scenario and imagine any remote corrolary to that in the United States which is literally unimaginable.
A point the paper of record misses. Self-serving also wasn't applied by the New York Times to any of Gen. David Petraeus' many laughable reports to Congress. Rather strange considering Patrick Cockburn (Independent of London via CounterPunch) was reporting in the midst of the dog & pony show on how Petraues was explaining how he wanted to be President as early as 2004 but thought 2008 would be too soon to run. As Ann Scott Tyson (Washington Post) reported earlier this week, safety "is deteriorating in southern Iraq as rival Shiite militia vying for power have stepped up their attacks after moving out of Baghdad to avoid U.S.-led military operations, according to the latest quarterly Pentagon report on Iraq". If it all sounds familiar it's because it's the same story that's been playing out over and over across Iraq. But this was hailed last week as 'progress.' Let's stick with 'progress' for a bit. Remember how the meaningless soccer victories didn't change anything but were hailed with waves of Operation Happy Talk? Strangely, that's not been the case for a title Iraq actually won. The title? Kim Sengupta (Independent of London) reported mid-week that "Iraq holds the world record for both the first and second highest amounts taken in the history of bank robberies." Number one! Number one! In fact, the chart accompanies the article reveals that four of the top five Iraq bank robberies have taken place this year for a total of $282 million (US equivalent). And how about the 'progress' in the spreading of cholera? What had been a crisis for nothern Iraq is now reaching into Baghdad with Andrew E. Kramer (New York Times) reporting that there are now two confirmed cases of cholera in Baghdad. And it's not stopping at Baghdad. Katrina Kratovac (AP) reports that "a baby in Basra" is "the farthest south the outbreak has been detected." "Progress"? Robert Burns (AP) reports that Iraqis control approximately 8 percent of Baghdad -- only 8 percent -- which Burns points out is not a large growth even though Maj Gen Joseph Fil claims it is, "Despite the slow pace of progress towards having Iraqi forces maintain control of Baghdad neighborhoods with minimal U.S. troop presence, Fil said he was hopeful that it would accelerate in coming months." He's hopeful -- that's supposed to have us all glowing.
Well maybe there's 'progress' to be found in oil news? Tuesday Press TV reported on the bombing outside Beiji of an oil pipeline "causing huge quanties of crude oil to spill into the Tigris River" which has "caused oil to seep into the Tigris River damaging water stations and triggering their temporary closure in Tikrit". And the Tigris flows. Last night AP reported, "City officials urged Baghdad residents Thursday to conserve water and fill up their tanks in case water treatment stations have to be shut down because of an oil spill in the Tigris River." Progress? Just more violence.
In some of today's reported violence . . .
Bombings?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Hawija bombing of the home "of the former chief of Hawija police". Reuters reports 1 Romanian soldier dead from a Tallil bombing that left five more injured, a Kirkuk roadside bombing that claimed the life of 1 Iraqi soldier and 1 Iraqi police officer, an Iskandariya mortar attack that claimed 1 life (three more injured)
Corpses?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 8 corpses were discovered in Baghdad and three female corpses in Basra. Reuters notes that three corpses were discovered in Yusufiya and 1 in Bajwan.
Today the US military announced: "A soldier assigned to Task Force Lightning died in a non-combat related incident in Kirkuk province Sept. 20." And they announced: "A Task Force Lightning Soldier was killed in Diyala Province Thursday when an explosion occurred near his vehicle." The deaths bring the total number of US service members killed in the illegal war since it began in March of 2003 to 3794 (ICCC). That's six announced deaths away from the 3800 mark.
Finally, the CBS Evening News' Armen Keteyian looks into the missing weapons "the U.S. military could not account for" (190,000 of them) and discovers a large number of the Glock pistols have ended up in the hands of the Iraqi resistance: "According to an intelligence source, the U.S. contractor in charge of the Glocks somehow lost track of an entire shipment. That mysterious disappeance is now part of a massive military bribery investigation centered around a contracting office run out of a small trailer at a military base in Kuwait. Eighteen federal investigators are digging into the actions of dozens of high-ranking U.S officers and military contractors."
1) carly simon.
i love carly's writing. she's got an amazing voice, but i have always responded 1st and foremost to her writing. even an album that's not a favorite still contains a gem or 2. i also love spoiled girl which carly seems to hate. the only thing i dislike about spoiled girl is that 'tired of being blonde' is an extended mix. that mix goes on too long. it's a nice enough song (she didn't write it) but i don't need the 'blonde ... blonde ...' repetition. i love 'my new boyfriend.' that may be the only song she included from the album on her boxed set clouds in my coffee. 'tonight & forever' is really beautiful and 'anyone but me' is a song i love. (i love the low tones on the verses.) 'straight from the hall of fame/ one of the world's great lovers/ darling you're not to blame, i'm just sorry you've been discovered ... i wish that you had never known anyone but me ...' 'come back home' is another 1 i love to sing along with on that album: 'summer time/ kids on the street/ we were up on the roof/ laughing at the heat/ that was the last/ i ever saw of you ...' but as much as i love all the 1s i've listed, they're not even my favorite on the cd. spy isn't 1 of my favorites but 'we're so close' and 'never been gone' are so damn amazing. 'jesse' is so incredible that it doesn't matter what else was on come upstairs but i also love the title track and 'in pain'. right now, at this moment in time, my 2 favorites of all the songs she's written, let me make it 3, are 'let the river run,' 'we just got here' and 'scar.' i think she's an amazing writer.
2) laura nyro.
she wrote epics in the early days. let me do some back story here. she recorded 4 albums of her own songs, then she recorded (with labelle) an album of sixties covers and then she withdrew. i really don't care for smile, her return album. it didn't reach me and that may be due to the fact that her 1st 4 albums were so intense and this 1 was so laid back. but she stayed with that sound and managed to create some major art. 'women of the one world' and 'to a child' are my 2 favorite songs written by her. the fact that they aren't the classics every 1 recorded and had hits with or even songs from those 1st 4 albums speaks to how amazing she was until the end. i also have to toss in a 3rd here as well. 'the japanese restaraunt'.
3) joni mitchell.
'night ride home' is 1 of her amazing songs from her later period. i love the early stuff. i can listen to the first album, for the roses, clouds, ladies of the canyon, court & spark, etc. and of course blue is a standard that few will ever reach. but she's done amazing work since and i don't just mean hejira. dog eat dog was slaughtered by critics but that is an amazing album. my favorites on that are 'three great stimulants,' 'impossible dreamer' and 'tax free.' night ride home is another amazing album. i'm forgetting the last 1 of her new songs. the title to it. turbulent indigo wasn't a good time for me so i have no idea about the album. i have a bad association with it. but the 1 that followed i loved. 'love puts on a new face' is 1 of my all time favorite joni songs. taming the tiger. that's the name of the cd. mike's dad just walked through (i'm in trina's kitchen) and i asked him. i love 'no apologies' and think that's amazing. and 'man from mars' is 1 i'd love for her to do live if she does a tour behind the new cd (which comes out tuesday). or, even if she just does a live show for hbo or showtime, i'd love for her to do that amazing song again. 3 all time favorites? 'a case of you,' 'love puts on a new face' and 'hejira.'
4) jackson browne.
mike's dad looked at who i'd picked so far and said, 'you've got to put in jackson!' trina said, 'honey, it's her list.' but he's right, can't forget jackson browne.
jackson actually pisses me off on 1 thing. 'ready or not' is a wonderful song. he insults that song and he shouldn't. it's the perfect portrait of a man trying not to freak out over a pregnancy. i think it's amazing. the narrator is playing off the pregnancy but there's so much tension in the song that it's obvious just how hard he's working to play it off. my second favorite song is 'in the shape of a heart' which i think was 1 of his best ballads. the 3rd? i can't pick. there's 'here come those tears again,' 'that girl could sing,' 'lives in the balance,' 'i'm alive,' 'these days,' 'rosie,' 'anything can happen,' 'the pretender,' 'sky blue and black' ... get the idea? my favorite album is either the pretender or i'm alive.
5) stevie nicks.
1 thing that all of the 5 have in common is that they manage to speak in a way that's unique to them. stevie nicks? i don't know if we could have made it through the 70s without her? seriously. give credit to the wilson sisters (ann & nancy of heart, often writing with their friend sue ennis). stevie rocked and she never made women feel like they should be embarrassed. stevie always included women. i don't think some 1 goldie's age will get that because they do have pro-women singers today. but for the rockers, women were either invisible or playing sex toy (pat benetar may have sung with her all but she also paraded around in t&a outfits). stevie was and is an amazing writer. i'll do 3 of her fleetwood mac songs and 3 of her solo songs.
fleetwood mac: 'sara'. i really could stop with that 1. it is so amazing. i love it live. i love it recorded. 'drowning in the sea of love/ where everyone would love to drown/ but now it's gone ...' after 'sara'? that's difficult. there are so many amazing 1s. 'say you will' was amazing (from the last cd) and i guess i would choose 'rhianon.'
solo: 'beauty & the beast' is probably the hands down winner for me. i love that song. i love all of wild heart but that song is probably my favorite. after that? 'love is' and 'alice.'
so those are 5. remember to check out goldie's list on sunday.
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Friday, September 21, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces more deaths, 'progress' is no where to be found in Iraq, the US loses weapons and the Iraqi resistance reportedly now has them, and more.
Starting with war resistance. Alaam News reports that a US family of five (three children) is seeking asylum in Finland "with local media speculating that it is opposition to the Iraq war" that has led the family to leave the United States and start over in Helenski this week. If true, it would be only the second time this decade that an "American citizen . . . [has] filed an asylum application in Finland during the current decade." Meanwhile IVAW's Michael Prysner (PSL) reports, "The number of deserters is also steadily climbing, with official numbers now reaching over 10,000 since the war began. Many believe these numbers may actually be much higher. The G.I. Rights Hotline reports an average of 3,000 calls a month by new recruits and active duty soldiers who have decided they want to abandon the military. . . . Soldiers against the war have begun organizing within the military. Active duty soldiers started the Appeal for Redress, a petition calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. It was formulated less than a year ago, and has collected over 2,000 signatures of soldiers currently serving in the military. Membership in Iraq Veterans Against the War is nearing 600. . . . Soldiers like Lt. Ehren Watada and Camilo Mejia have set the example, publicly refusing deployment and condemning the war for its illegal and immoral nature."
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes Derek Hess, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Zamesha Dominique, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Carla Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko,Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty-one US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline [(877) 447-4487], Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters.
Peter Hart spoke with Anthony Arnove (IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal) on this week's CounterSpin (airing on most radio stations today) about the issue of contractors.
Anthony Arnove: There is effectively a doubling of the US occupation in Iraq right now through the employment of private contractors of whom as many as 50,000 are armed -- effectively private mercenaries working in the employee of the US occupation. Blackwater is operating under the employment of the State Department. What's interesting is that very early on in the US occupation, Paul Bremer -- who was acting as the colonial viceroy -- in his capacity of head of the Coalition Provision Authority deliberately exempted these mercenaries and other US contractors from Iraqi law. And they've created basically a legal black hole in which these mercenaries can operate without any accountability. And the few times there have been incidents in which Iraqis tried to pursue contractors for violations they've been skirted out of the country so as not to have to face any prosecution. They do technically fall under rules of engagement set down for US contractors -- whether that's Pentagon rules or State Department rules. But like we've seen with active duty troops who've engaged in abuses of human rights in Iraq, there's really been no accountability certainly not up the chain of command.
No accountability. And Bremer and the CPA were nothing but a shell game. Bremer stripped Iraqis of oversight and, in fact, the US may not have any legal right to oversight as well. As Naomi Klein explains in her new book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism:
Bremer's CPA would not try to stop the various scams, side deals and shell games because the CPA was itself a shell game. Though it was billed as the U.S. occupation authority, it's unclear that it held that distinction in anything other than name. This point was forcefully made by a judge in the infamous Custer Battles corruption case.
Two former employees of the security firm launched a whistle-blower lawsuit against the company, accusing it of cheating on reconstruction-related contracts with the CPA and defrauding the U.S. governments produced by the company that clearly showed it was keeping two sets of numbers -- one for itself, one for invoicing the CPA Retired Brigadier-General Hugh Tant testified that the fraud was "probably the worst I've ever seen in my 30 years in the army." (Among Custer Battles' many alleged violations, it is said to have appropriated Iraqi-owned forklifts from the airport, repainted them and billed the CPA for the cost of leasing the machines.)
In March 2006, a federal jury in Virginia ruled against the company, finding it guilty of fraud, and forced it to pay $10 million in damages. The company then asked the judge to overturn the verdict, with a revealing defense. It claimed that the CPA was not part of the U.S. government, and therefore not subject to its laws, including the False Claims Act. The implications of this defense were enormous: the Bush administration had indemnified U.S. corporations working in Iraq from any liability under Iraqi laws; if the CPA wasn't subject to U.S. law either, it meant that the contractors weren't subjected to any law at all -- U.S. or Iraqi. This time, the judge ruled in the company's favor: he said there was plenty of evidence that Custer Battles had submitted to the CPA "false and fraudulently inflated invoices," but he ruled that the plaintiffs had "failed to prove that the claims were presented to the United States." In other words, the U.S. government presence in Iraq during the first year of its economic experiment had been a mirage -- there had been no government, just a funnel to get U.S. taxpayer and Iraqi oil dollars to foreign corporations, completely outside the law. In this way, Iraq represented the most extreme expression of the anti-state counter-revolution -- a hollow state, where, as the courts finally established, there was no there, there.
Contractors in Iraq -- with the permission of the US government and sometimes on the orders of the US government -- have been allowed to act with impunity. Daniel Howden and Leonard Doyle (Independent of London) provide a look at the rise of outsourcing governmental tasks and note, "A high-ranking US military commander in Iraq said: 'These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There's no authority over them, so you can't come down on them hard when they escalate force. They shoot people.' In Abu Ghraib, all of the translators and up to half of the interrogators were reportedly private contractors."
Rosa Brooks (Los Angeles Times) also addresses the reality of governmental tasks being sold off to the private section, "What's been happening in Iraq -- and in Afghanistan, Columbia, Somalia and the Pentagon and the State Department -- goes far beyond the 'outsourcing of key military and security jobs.' For years, the administration has been quietly auctioning off U.S. foreign policy to the highest corporate bidder -- and it may be too late for us to buy it back. Think I'm exaggerating? Look at Blackwater. Its $750-million contract with the U.S. State Department employees in Iraq is just one of many lucrative U.S. (and foreign) government contracts it has enjoyed (and it's a safe bet that Sunday's episode will be only a minor PR setback for Blackwater). As for Blackwater's most recent slaughter, Kim Sengupta (Independent of London) reconstructs the events on Sunday via eye witness testimony: " We have found no Iraqi present at the scene who saw or heard sniper fire. Witnesses say the first victims of the shootings were a couple with their child, the mother and infant meeting horrific deaths, their bodies fused together by heat after their car caught fire. The contractors, according to this account, also shot Iraqi soldiers and police and Blackwater then called in an attack helicopter from its private air force which inflicted further casualties." Apparently unable to speak to Iraqis, Sabrina Tavernise and James Glanz (New York Times) rely on a leaked report from the Ministry of the Interior which "has concluded that employees of a private American security firm fired an unprovoked barrage in the shooting last Sunday," "that the dozens of foreign security companies here should be replaced by Iraqi companies, and that a law that has given the companies immunity for years be scrapped" -- and the reporters offer: "The Iraqi version of events may be self-serving in some points." And the US version may be what? Tavernise and Glanz ignore that prospect. Blackwater's apparently ignoring some things as well. Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) notes, "In Iraq, the private security firm Blackwater USA is reportedly back on the streets of Baghdad despite an announced ban on its activities. The Iraqi government said it had revoked Blackwater's license this week after its guards killed up to twenty-eight Iraqis in an unprovoked mass shooting. But a Pentagon spokesperson said today Blackwater is guarding diplomatic convoys following talks with the Iraqi government." So, as Ian Thompson (PSL) judged it, "Even the Iraqi puppet government leadership spoke up -- but its words were hot air. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki wants to gain credibility and appear to be independent of his U.S. colonial masters." The events appear to answer Thursday's question ("For the US government, it's a quandry: Do they use this moment to provide al-Maliki with a chance to alter his image or do they continue to let greed rule?"): Greed again won out.
Self-serving? Sabrina Tavernise and James Glanz apply that to the report from Iraq's Interior Ministry and it's doubtful they'd ever use the term for the upcoming US report. Along with the issue of equality, there's also the fact that the term is flat out wrong. The Interior Ministry is not self-serving, it's US-serving. Dropping back to the September 6th snapshot:
Turning to retired generals, Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) reported today, "A panel of retired US generals is urging the United States to disband and reorganize the Iraqi police force because of infiltration by sectarian militias. The generals also report Iraq's security forces will be unable to fulfill their essential security responsibilities independently for at least another twelve to 18 months." Karen DeYoung (Washington Post) explains that the national police force as well as the Iraq Interior Ministry are "riddled with sectarianism and corruption" by the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq headed by James Jones (Marine general) in there 150-plus page report which also finds the Iraqi army at least a year to 18 months away from being able to handle "internal security". Tim Reid (Times of London) reports, "The 20 member-panel also said today that the Iraqi Army was incpable of acting independently from US forces for at least another 18 months, and 'cannot yet meaningfully contribute to denying terrorists safe haven'."
The militias of the Interior Ministry are thugs who terrorize. Who trained them? Who introduced the "Salvador option"? The US. Who has refused to disband them? The US. Self-serving? The Interior Ministry wishes it were self-serving. Then it could really go to town slaughtering 'enemies.' It wouldn't have to worry that one of the many torture chambers they are running might result in a US military 'rescue' of their torture victims. If they were independent and self-serving, all of their torture chambers would be signed off on and not just some.
Today on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show, Rehm spoke with the Washington Post's Karen DeYoung, the Wall St. Journal's Neil King Jr. and Newsweek's Michael Hirsh about a number of topics. On the topic of Blackwater, Hirsh declared, "Often all that happens is that the employee is spirited out of the country. That happened last Christmas Eve when a Blackwater employee shot and killed a guard to a senior Iraqi official inside the Green Zone which was obviously a little politically toxic. And he left, the company has since refused to disclose his name and he has not been prosecuted."
Neil King, Jr. (Wall Street Journal): The thing that is extraordinary about it is that we had the Petraeus hearings last weekend or last week, and all the discussion "we want Iraq to be a country, we want it to step up, we want it to meet all these benchmarks" etc. And yet we don't really actually treat it as a country to the extent that we've got thousands of our own nationals driving around with machine guns and opening fire on people and then being totally immune from the law and as is the case of this shooting last week -- sorry, last December -- where a person shot a security guard who was the personal security guard of the vice-president of Iraq and the person's spirited out of the country. Nobody ever knows what his name was and he's gone. There'll never be -- I mean if you reverse the scenario and imagine any remote corrolary to that in the United States which is literally unimaginable.
A point the paper of record misses. Self-serving also wasn't applied by the New York Times to any of Gen. David Petraeus' many laughable reports to Congress. Rather strange considering Patrick Cockburn (Independent of London via CounterPunch) was reporting in the midst of the dog & pony show on how Petraues was explaining how he wanted to be President as early as 2004 but thought 2008 would be too soon to run. As Ann Scott Tyson (Washington Post) reported earlier this week, safety "is deteriorating in southern Iraq as rival Shiite militia vying for power have stepped up their attacks after moving out of Baghdad to avoid U.S.-led military operations, according to the latest quarterly Pentagon report on Iraq". If it all sounds familiar it's because it's the same story that's been playing out over and over across Iraq. But this was hailed last week as 'progress.' Let's stick with 'progress' for a bit. Remember how the meaningless soccer victories didn't change anything but were hailed with waves of Operation Happy Talk? Strangely, that's not been the case for a title Iraq actually won. The title? Kim Sengupta (Independent of London) reported mid-week that "Iraq holds the world record for both the first and second highest amounts taken in the history of bank robberies." Number one! Number one! In fact, the chart accompanies the article reveals that four of the top five Iraq bank robberies have taken place this year for a total of $282 million (US equivalent). And how about the 'progress' in the spreading of cholera? What had been a crisis for nothern Iraq is now reaching into Baghdad with Andrew E. Kramer (New York Times) reporting that there are now two confirmed cases of cholera in Baghdad. And it's not stopping at Baghdad. Katrina Kratovac (AP) reports that "a baby in Basra" is "the farthest south the outbreak has been detected." "Progress"? Robert Burns (AP) reports that Iraqis control approximately 8 percent of Baghdad -- only 8 percent -- which Burns points out is not a large growth even though Maj Gen Joseph Fil claims it is, "Despite the slow pace of progress towards having Iraqi forces maintain control of Baghdad neighborhoods with minimal U.S. troop presence, Fil said he was hopeful that it would accelerate in coming months." He's hopeful -- that's supposed to have us all glowing.
Well maybe there's 'progress' to be found in oil news? Tuesday Press TV reported on the bombing outside Beiji of an oil pipeline "causing huge quanties of crude oil to spill into the Tigris River" which has "caused oil to seep into the Tigris River damaging water stations and triggering their temporary closure in Tikrit". And the Tigris flows. Last night AP reported, "City officials urged Baghdad residents Thursday to conserve water and fill up their tanks in case water treatment stations have to be shut down because of an oil spill in the Tigris River." Progress? Just more violence.
In some of today's reported violence . . .
Bombings?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Hawija bombing of the home "of the former chief of Hawija police". Reuters reports 1 Romanian soldier dead from a Tallil bombing that left five more injured, a Kirkuk roadside bombing that claimed the life of 1 Iraqi soldier and 1 Iraqi police officer, an Iskandariya mortar attack that claimed 1 life (three more injured)
Corpses?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 8 corpses were discovered in Baghdad and three female corpses in Basra. Reuters notes that three corpses were discovered in Yusufiya and 1 in Bajwan.
Today the US military announced: "A soldier assigned to Task Force Lightning died in a non-combat related incident in Kirkuk province Sept. 20." And they announced: "A Task Force Lightning Soldier was killed in Diyala Province Thursday when an explosion occurred near his vehicle." The deaths bring the total number of US service members killed in the illegal war since it began in March of 2003 to 3794 (ICCC). That's six announced deaths away from the 3800 mark.
Finally, the CBS Evening News' Armen Keteyian looks into the missing weapons "the U.S. military could not account for" (190,000 of them) and discovers a large number of the Glock pistols have ended up in the hands of the Iraqi resistance: "According to an intelligence source, the U.S. contractor in charge of the Glocks somehow lost track of an entire shipment. That mysterious disappeance is now part of a massive military bribery investigation centered around a contracting office run out of a small trailer at a military base in Kuwait. Eighteen federal investigators are digging into the actions of dozens of high-ranking U.S officers and military contractors."
9/20/2007
dems have no spine
first, read kat's 'Pistol slapping of WalkOn.org & Boxer takes a dive,' cedric's "Boxer wants to play useless like the other Dems!" and wally's "THIS JUST IN! BOXER A WEASEL LIKE THE OTHERS DEMS!...". if you missed it, the democrats have caved again. actually, 'caved' isn't the word. you really need to read ava and c.i.'s 'TV: What does it take to cancel this show?' from sunday. the 2 of them bashed their writing but i loved it (and laughed) in real time. but take another look at it, especially this section:
But it's what the parody offered and elected Democrats have no one to blame for the cheap shots but themselves. For over four years now, they've not only hidden behind the US military, they've glorified it as if the point of a democracy was to worship the US Army. We started wondering if churches will shortly begin replacing crosses with shrapnel?
The parody was so spot-on because it perfectly captured last week when the Congress heard from General David Petraeus. Petraues is an employee of the United States. Members of Congress are representatives of the people. But nothing in the proceedings indicated that these basic facts were grasped. We can't imagine, for instance, the Head of Health and Human Services being repeatedly thanked and praised for their service. We can't imagine the agency head being told repeatedly how much respect there is for the agency.
Like that agency, the military is in the employment of the United States. Elected Democrats refuse to make that point. Instead they glorify and build up repeatedly only to be defeated in the spin wars and then whine, "How did this happen?" It happened because they forgot they were not elected to the posts of Groupies to the US Military. They were elected to represent the people. Representation means heeding the will of the people. When they instead prostate themselves before a section of a branch of government that they are supposed to practice oversight over, they've stripped themselves of their own power. It's really sad that it was John McLaughlin (on PBS' The McLaughlin Group) who semi-jokingly raised the issue of whether what took place last week (with the will of the people being ignored) was a silent coup? But such is the state of TV today.
that perfectly describes what dems in the senate again did today. they wasted america's time to again spit polish the military with their tongues. somehow, according to dems in the senate (boxer's motion included this), the military is above criticism. screw you, barbara boxer and your spineless dems too.
i noticed c.i. ignored the whole thing and continued writing strong without a care throughout the day. that's because we have free speech in this country and you use it or you lose it.
the democrats in the senate are cowards. i was glad to see hillary had the spine to vote 'no' against the condemnation of walkon.org. i'm no hillary fan. but i will give her credit for that.
but where was the leadership on the prisoners in guantanamo? no where. 1 more thing the dems can't do because they won't do it. they sell out the whole world, day after damn day.
i was e-mailed a thing by a visitor. an article that talked about the palestinians and i was going to note it but i read through it all and screw it. if you're praising that hideous documentary by the war monger, you're not getting noted here. then i started thinking about it and wondering whether or not i should even note c.i.a. people to begin with? did they leave and call for that hideous agency to be abolished? no? then why should i note them?
1 thing i can note is that carolyn baker has a really strong review up. this is from her 'The Police State Is Right Here, Right Now' (information clearing house):
In April, 2007 I was pleasantly surprised to find Naomi Wolf's article, "Fascist America, In 10 Easy Steps" posted in several places online. I have been a fan of Wolf for many years, greatly appreciating her works and especially her 1991 book, The Beauty Myth. I had been looking for a list-or more specifically, an encyclopedia of the losses of civil liberties in the United States that might clarify for my history students the extent to which America has become a fascist empire. Wolf's "10 Easy Steps" was perfect, but her just-published book, The End Of America: Letter Of Warning To A Young Patriot, from which the 10 easy steps was compiled, offers an even fuller picture-a succinct and engaging explanation of how our civil liberties have been hijacked in the past decade. It is the most poignant, powerful, genuinely patriotic piece of literature I have encountered since Thomas Paine's Common Sense. No wonder then, that the book's cover greatly resembles that 46-page tract by Paine written in 1775-as well it should.
One of the most frightening realities of teaching college history is that most students rarely have a clue what fascism is. They know about Hitler and the extermination of Jews, but they see little connection with Nazi rule in the 1930s and 40s and the current political milieu in the United States. Overwhelmingly, they cannot define fascism, nor can they define socialism or democracy. After all, they were pre-occupied during grammar school with becoming standardized human beings by way of taking standardized "No Child's Behind Left" tests, five hours a day, four days a week. So why would they know the definitions of fascism, socialism or democracy?
Refreshingly, Wolf is not shy about using the term fascism and lets the reader know why. "I have made a deliberate choice in using the terms fascist tactics and fascist shift when I describe some events in America now. I stand by my choice. I am not being heated or even rhetorical; I am being technical." (20) She explains that where Americans tend to see the various political "isms" as all-or-nothing, that perception is often inaccurate because of what she calls a "range of authoritarian regimes, dictatorships, and varieties of Fascist states...there are many shades of gray on the spectrum from an open to a closed society." (20)
Wolf also emphasizes that America has flirted with fascism openly in the 1930s when numerous corporations and robber barons helped finance Hitler and when as Edwin Black notes in IBM And The Holocaust, some American corporations assisted the Nazi regime in carrying out its "final solution" to the "Jewish problem." In fact, several of these corporate tycoons attempted to stage a coup d' etat to overthrow Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 and restructure the American government under fascist control. A thorough investigation of American politics and society from the end of the Civil War until the present moment reveals, as I have carefully traced in my book U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You, that much of recent American history is replete with a preference on the part of corporations and the politicians they own for an economic and political system on the far right end of the spectrum. In fact, resistance to fascism in the United States has been an arduous and daunting struggle for those who have been able to understand and oppose the appeal that fascism has to the corporatocracy, and in fact, take seriously Mussolini's fundamental definition of fascism: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."
i enjoyed the book as well. like baker, i've been less on board with some of wolf's suggestions/recommendations but i strongly recommend the book. let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Thursday, September 20, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces another death, Blackwater is still hot water, cholera comes to Baghdad, the Iraq Moratorium starts Friday, and more.
Starting with war resistance. Last week, Carol Mulligan (The Sudbury Star) reported on the Sudbury chapter of War Resisters Support Campaign to find lodging for an expected arrival -- a family of four. The Canadian community pulled together and went to work. Today Carol Mulligan (The Sudbury Star) reports that, "The soldier planning to come to Canada with his family to avoid deployment to combat in Iraq has been transferred to a non-combat role" after being granted CO status and will not moving to Canada and that Lee Zaslofsky (national co-ordinator of War Resisters Support Campaign) congratulated the community on their strong work and to "assure you that, with the current volume of inquiries from potential war resisters in the U.S., there will likely be war resisters in Sudbury very soon" with 2 war resisters having "arrived unexpectedly in Ottawa" as well as the London chapter having a family arrive "last weekend and another settled in the Niagara region."
Last week, Anthony Lane (Colorado Springs Indy) reported on Brad McCall, 20 years old, army private, who made the decision to self-checkout of the US military. Lane explained, "Soldiers tell him details of fighting in Iraq meant to make his pacifist blood boil. Soldiers who've been and returned say he'll see the bodies of dead little girls, if and when his unit is deployed. They goad him with stories of a soldier they say peeled charred flesh from an Iraqi civilian's corpse and ate it." McCall considered applying for CO status but didn't think the chances were likely of his being granted that status. So, while Lane was working on the report, McCall self-checked out and, "He'll join hundreds of other U.S. soldiers in Canada. He'll go to college, in the States, if he can get discharged. If not, maybe in Canada. . . . Army officials notified McCall's family on Tuesday that he had disappeared. Charlotte McCall, his mother, says she's saddened and worried." While she expects that he will change his mind, Lane reports "McCall contends that staying in the Army could only lead to bad things, particularly if he is deployed. The fighting in Iraq has put soldiers in nerve-wracking situations where some have fired their weapons only to realize they killed civilians, he says. 'How would I live [with] myself,' he asks, 'knowing I killed an innocent person fighting in a war I didn't believe in?'"
Already in Canada, war resister Patrick Hart is attempting to be granted refugee status. His band will be playing in Winnipeg Sunday. David Schmeichel (Winnipeg Sun) notes, "Yes, the Refuse & Resist tour lineup is jam-packed with punks who oppose the war in Iraq. But before you dismiss 'em as snotty agitators, know that Skull Device guitarist Pat Hart is something of an expert on the topic. Hart served 9 years with the U.S. military before going AWOL and fleeing to Canada, and now faces up to 30 years in prison if our government denies his bid for refugee status. He's got the support of tourmates Nikki's Trick and My Shaky Jane, (plus local recruits C-Punisher and Saxton)." Patrick Hart went to Canada at the end of August 2005 and was followed a few weeks later by Jill Hart and their son Rian.
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes Derek Hess, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Zamesha Dominique, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Carla Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko,Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty-one US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline [(877) 447-4487], Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters.
McCall tells Lane that he doubts the US military will even look for him. If that has to do with his own record in the military, he may be right. But the reality is that the US military does attempt to track down members who check out. In news on some recent AWOLs . . . Brad Zinn (Virginia's The News Leader) reports Denise A. Jones checked out, turned herself in and was arrested (she's 42-years-old and now at the Fort Knox Deserter Control Point). Russ Rizzo (The Salt Lake Tribune) reports Austin Lee Sommers developed pink, bronchitis, pneumonia and cellulitis while in basic training (marines) and checked out and stay with an aunt when the Orem police -- tipped off by the military and, his aunt believes, Austin's brother -- showed up to arrest him. Meanwhile in Maryland another AWOL soldier has been shot. Rocco Vertuccio (R News) reports Aberdeen was the location where 22-year-old Evan Parker of Rochester, NY was shot after he was picked up at a motel in the Aberdeen area and then returned to base (Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland) on Sunday only to go AWOL again and return to the same motel: "As an officer approached Parker, they say Parker displayed a gun. Police told Parker to drop the gun. They say instead, he waved it at the officer. The officer then fired several shots, hitting Parker in the abdomen, the leg, and upper chest. . . . Parker is now in stable condition at the University of Maryland Shock and Trauma Center. Aberdeen Police say, while Parker was being taken to the hospital, he told them and the medical personnel, he wanted police to shoot him."
This week on The Progressive Radio Show, Matthew Rothschild interviews Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan about the illegal war, the Democrats and the Republicans and why she is running for Congress from the eighth district in California.
Matthew Rothschild: Cindy, what does it mean when two-thirds of the public is against the war and yet the war and surge goes on?
Cindy Sheehan: I think it means that what our country was founded on, which was being a representative republic, has transformed into a country or government by -- instead of by and for the people -- by and for the corporations, the special interests. I think that both parties -- the people in both parties are very similar in their ideologies, they're very similar in the people who pull their strings, the people who fund their campaigns and so I think that our government and, you know, with most of the people's consent by their silence, we're sliding into a form of fascism and I think that that is, it's corporate, you know Benito Mussolini famously said, it's when corporations and government -- it's the merger of those two interests and I think that's what we have right now.
Matthew Rothschild: How do we stop that slide? How do we reverse that slide?
Cindy Sheehan: I think we have to take back our government. I think we have to take back our representative republic. On July 23rd, I went with Ray McGovern and Rev. Lennox Yearwood to meet with John Conyers about impeachment. We took a petition with over a million signatures. We had three hundred people lining the halls by his office on Capitol Hill and, while we were there, there was a call every thirty seconds demanding impeachment and John Conyers said, "I can't do it." And I said, "So what you're telling me is that we the people have no voice in our government, we have no recourse." He said, "Yes, you do in the ballot boxes." But the candidates we vote for are the ones that the elite, the corporate elite pick for us and the media picks for us and they don't do what the people want them to do what kind of representative republic . . . do we have. So I think that we have to challenge this two-party system which really is just one party basically. People have to challenge their congress people like I'm challenging Nancy Pelosi. And I think that challenging her as an independent, unaffiliated with any party, that you can truly look at the human and not the politics -- you know, what would be right for me politically or what would make me more money -- but look at a human being and say, "What would be best for humanity? What would be best for our country?" And not what's best for myself and my own interests or the people who owns me interest. So I think that by challenging her I'm not just challenging Pelosi, I'm challenging the system and I'm challenging the military industrial complex that I think controls our system.
Matthew Rothschild: Cindy Sheehan, why do you think John Conyers told you that he couldn't do it? Because the time before in Congress, when the Democrats weren't in control, he did introduce a bill to explore grounds of impeachment.
Cindy Sheehan: This is just so puzzling to so many people -- especially people who have been impeachment-anti-war activists. A lot of people in the movement don't link impeachment with peace but there's many of us who do because first of all there's the thing of accountability. Second of all, George Bush has said the troops aren't coming home while he's president. And you know if Nixon had been held accountable for the, you know, for the prosecuting of Vietnam and for the illegal bombings of Laos and Cambodia I think it would reign in future presidents. But John Conyers wrote a book called The Constitution in Crisis and he laid out, he and his staff laid out, the crimes and the charges against George Bush. And in my many meetings with him since they've become in the majority, I've said, "You know, Congressman, what happened, all the sudden are they like innocent of these crimes? You know you have to put them to trial, you have to give them a hearing." And there's been a lot of speculation that Nancy Pelosi, and we know she did because before they were even elected she said election was off the table. And we think that Nancy Pelosi is reigning-reigning his hand in. And you know he keeps saying 'I don't have the votes, I don't have the votes". Well you're not going to have the votes if you don't put the resolution for impeachment out there and we think it's a Constitutional duty, we thank it's mandatory and he thinks he has discretion. And one thing he told me that broke my heart because I really have admired him -- even before I knew him, you know, even before my son was killed -- I admired him. And he told us that it's more important for him to have a Democratic president than to end the war. So what the democratic leadership are doing are playing politics with our flesh and blood and the people of Iraq and our soldiers are being put in the middle of this political struggle. And I think it's inherently immoral.
Matthew Rothschild: I mean that -- when I'm most cynical I think the Democrats want the war to go on because it will help them.
Staying on the topic of peace and truth telling, Amanda Grosgebauer, Karin Scott and Kathleen Kreuger at Texas A&M refused to let a War Hawk columnist go unchallenged as he spewed hate and attacks and called him out as the pig he was. Good for them. Maybe he'll think twice before he tries to distor the work of Iraq Veterans Against the War? And a time when so many women paid to pen their opinions elect to be silent on the topic of the illegal war, the three college students show far more strength and passion that most 'professionals'. The "women of tomorrow" are already here and Kathleen Kreuger, Karin Scott and Amanda Grosgebauer make that very clear. Another strong woman is IVAW's Kelly Dougherty. Paul Pryse and Chris Chable (The Badger Herald) explain how Dougherty's story intersects with corporate profits: "When Kelly Dougherty was deployed to Iraq in 2003, her unit was assigned to escort truck convoys, usually from Kellogg Brown and Root Inc., then a subsidary of the Halliburton Company. Dougherty remembers one incident when her unit was guarding a broken-down truck containing produce and a crowd of destitute Iraqis assembled and begged for food. After Hallibruton told them to destroy the truck, Dougherty and other soldiers asked if they could distribute the food first, but were refused because it would be 'too hectic.' 'We sat there and burned produce in front of people struggling to get by, living not only under an occupation, but without jobs, without healthcare,' Dougherty said. To most people, this is wanton cruelty. However, under Halliburton's 'cost-plus' contract, they made a profit by charging the costs of that truck, the produce, plus an extra percentage to taxpayers." Which is why students at University of Wisconsin-Madison were protesting today as Halliburton showed up on campus for a job fair. Ryan J. Foley (AP) reports Chris Dols leading the hundreds of students in singing "From high to low, Halliburton got to go" and Foley observes, "The event is drawing parallels to a 1967 protest against recruiters for Dow Chemical Co., which made napalm used in Vietnam. A peaceful sit-in that ended in a bloody confrontation between students and club-wielding police officers galvanized the anti-war movement." Anita Weier (The Capital Times) notes the ingenuity of the students in the following: "They were allowed to enter the career fair but were told not to chant, so they sang. They were told to use conversational tones, but they did so with a bullhorn."
They aren't the only ones standing up. Alive in Baghdad offers their latest video report and this one is on the Al Hurriya section of Baghdad which was once a mixed neighborhood but has become pure Shi'ite and was the scene for Nabeel Kamal's report of a protest following the murder of Jawad Kadhim Al Sultani which called for all US forces to "leave our safe district and be replaced with Iraqi Forces". Who led the protest? Women. Carrying banners and accompanied by small children, they changed We defend our country and we're call terrorists, No, no to America! No, no to America! Maliki government, how long will you be silent?"
Turning to the topic of Blackwater. Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) notes today, "Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is promising to hold the private military firm Blackwater USA accountable for its deadly attack on Iraqis last weekend in Baghdad. Maliki's pledge comes as the estimated death toll from the shooting continues to rise. Iraqi officials now say as many twenty-eight Iraqis were killed when Blackwater guards opened fire. The initial estimate was of nine dead. On Wednesday, Maliki said Iraq would not allow the killing of Iraqis 'in cold blood.' He also called on the Bush administration to cut ties with Blackwater. The shooting has put new scrutiny on the free reign companies like Blackwater enjoy in Iraq. The State Department says its formed a joint committee with Iraqi officials to suggest ways to improve regulation of private military firms." Leila Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) reports that Nouri al-Maliki declared yesterday that the mercenaries of Blackwater "have been involved in at least seven serious incidents" already and Mohammed al Askari (spokesperson for the Defense Ministry) declares "one of the incidents was former Iraqi Electricity Minister Ahyam al Samarrai's escape from a Green Zone jail in December. Samarrai had been awaiting sentencing on charges that he had embezzled $2.5 billion that was intended to rebuild Iraq's decrepit electricity grid. Another incident, Askari said, was the shooting death last month of a Baghdad taxi driver when Blackwater guards led a convoy the wrong way down a street." Steve Fainaru (Washington Post) informs that "the State Department's oversight of Blackwater became a central issue as Iraqi authorities repeatedly clashed with the company over its aggressive street tactics. Many U.S. and Iraqi officials and industry representatives said they came to see Blackwater as untouchable, protected by State Department officials who defended the company at every turn. Blackwater employees protect the U.S. ambassador and other diplomats in Iraq. Blackwater 'has a client who will support them no matter what they do,' said H.C. Lawrence Smith, deputy director of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, an advocacy organization in Baghdad that is funded by security firms, including Blackwater." Ned Parker (Los Angeles Times) reports, "Two American diplomats speaking on condition of anonymity have told The Times that the State Department had failed to take Blackwater to task in past cases in which Iraqi civilians were shot. The diplomats complained that the State Department's security office in Baghdad had often failed to scrutinize Blackwater's actions."
Let's get the alleged 'progress' out of the way before we go further. This morning Paul Tait (Reuters) reported that serial liar Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno is again claiming violence is a-dropping. He's got nothing to back it up, just his oft disproven claims. But it sure does eat a lot of press time (which is always the point of a wave of Operation Happy Talk). Meanwhile, no one knows anything about an arrest of an alleged Iraian for alleged smuggling but that eats up even more time. Maybe they'll distract from the looming 3800 mark for the number of US service members killed in the illegal Iraq War? Or maybe from AP's report on the 'handover': "In another sign of U.S. struggles in Iraq, the target date for putting Iraqi authorities in charge of security in all 18 provinces has slipped yet again, to at least July. The delay, noted in a Pentagon report to Congress on progress and problems in Iraq, highlights the difficulties in developing Iraqi police forces and the slow pace of economic and political progress in some areas. It is the second time this year the target date for completing what is known as 'Provincial Iraqi Control' has been pushed back. The Pentagon report submitted to Congress on Monday hinted at the possibility of further delays." Or maybe it will distract from the cholera outbreak in northern Iraq that, bad sign, has now moved to Baghdad according to the World Health Organization.
In other violence . . .
Bombings?
Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad bombing claimed 1 life (police officer) and left three more people wounded, another Baghdad bombing claimed the life of 1 Iraqi soldier and left a second injured, a Baghdad car bombing claimed 3 lives and left eleven others injured and 2 Falluja roadside bombings claimed 2 lives (police officers) and left four more wounded. Reuters reports a mortar attack in Madaen claimed 2 lives (ten more were injured).
Shootings?
Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports Sheikh Khalid Salim Faris al-Bayati was shot dead in Tuz Khurmato today while Lt. Col. Mejeed Shnan "was shot in the shoulder and is being treated in hospital" after surviving an attack. Reuters notes that "radio presenter" Muhannad Ghanim was shot dead in Mosul that Judge Mustafa Kadhim was shot dead in Baghdad, and a person was shot dead in Hawija
Corpses?
Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 7 corpses were discovered in Baghdad. Reuters notes that 3 corpses ("including a woman and her daughter") were discovered in Mosul.
Today the US military announced: "A Soldier assigned to Multi-National Force-West died Sept. 19 in a non-combat-related incident in Al Anbar Province."
corporate media picks for us and the elite and they don't do what the people
In yet another sign of how the US Veterans Affairs Dept continues to fails service members, Reuters reports Fort Riley's cemetary "has run out of space" and that US Senators Pat Robers and Sam Brownback are "urging . . . full funding for a new cementary for Fort Riley" -- that two US Senators (they are Republicans) have to urge the Veterans Affairs Dept to do their job is only one example of how mismanaged the department has been under the Bully Boy.
On WBAI today, The Largest Minority Radio Show devoted a segment to remembering Dave Cline. In addition, yesterday's note on David Zeiger's piece didn't include the link to the website. First, language warning before clicking to get the essay, second, the site is Sir! No Sir! -- site of the amazing documentary. You can also Zeiger's piece and others (including one by Cindy Sheehan) at Veterans for Peace's memorial online.
Finally remember this: United for Peace & Justice (along with others) will begin Iraq Moratorium on September 21st and follow it every third Friday of the month as people across the country are encouraged to wear and distribute black ribbons and armbands, purchase no gas on those Fridays, conduct vigils, pickets, teach-ins and rallies, etc. The Moratorium starts tomorrow.
But it's what the parody offered and elected Democrats have no one to blame for the cheap shots but themselves. For over four years now, they've not only hidden behind the US military, they've glorified it as if the point of a democracy was to worship the US Army. We started wondering if churches will shortly begin replacing crosses with shrapnel?
The parody was so spot-on because it perfectly captured last week when the Congress heard from General David Petraeus. Petraues is an employee of the United States. Members of Congress are representatives of the people. But nothing in the proceedings indicated that these basic facts were grasped. We can't imagine, for instance, the Head of Health and Human Services being repeatedly thanked and praised for their service. We can't imagine the agency head being told repeatedly how much respect there is for the agency.
Like that agency, the military is in the employment of the United States. Elected Democrats refuse to make that point. Instead they glorify and build up repeatedly only to be defeated in the spin wars and then whine, "How did this happen?" It happened because they forgot they were not elected to the posts of Groupies to the US Military. They were elected to represent the people. Representation means heeding the will of the people. When they instead prostate themselves before a section of a branch of government that they are supposed to practice oversight over, they've stripped themselves of their own power. It's really sad that it was John McLaughlin (on PBS' The McLaughlin Group) who semi-jokingly raised the issue of whether what took place last week (with the will of the people being ignored) was a silent coup? But such is the state of TV today.
that perfectly describes what dems in the senate again did today. they wasted america's time to again spit polish the military with their tongues. somehow, according to dems in the senate (boxer's motion included this), the military is above criticism. screw you, barbara boxer and your spineless dems too.
i noticed c.i. ignored the whole thing and continued writing strong without a care throughout the day. that's because we have free speech in this country and you use it or you lose it.
the democrats in the senate are cowards. i was glad to see hillary had the spine to vote 'no' against the condemnation of walkon.org. i'm no hillary fan. but i will give her credit for that.
but where was the leadership on the prisoners in guantanamo? no where. 1 more thing the dems can't do because they won't do it. they sell out the whole world, day after damn day.
i was e-mailed a thing by a visitor. an article that talked about the palestinians and i was going to note it but i read through it all and screw it. if you're praising that hideous documentary by the war monger, you're not getting noted here. then i started thinking about it and wondering whether or not i should even note c.i.a. people to begin with? did they leave and call for that hideous agency to be abolished? no? then why should i note them?
1 thing i can note is that carolyn baker has a really strong review up. this is from her 'The Police State Is Right Here, Right Now' (information clearing house):
In April, 2007 I was pleasantly surprised to find Naomi Wolf's article, "Fascist America, In 10 Easy Steps" posted in several places online. I have been a fan of Wolf for many years, greatly appreciating her works and especially her 1991 book, The Beauty Myth. I had been looking for a list-or more specifically, an encyclopedia of the losses of civil liberties in the United States that might clarify for my history students the extent to which America has become a fascist empire. Wolf's "10 Easy Steps" was perfect, but her just-published book, The End Of America: Letter Of Warning To A Young Patriot, from which the 10 easy steps was compiled, offers an even fuller picture-a succinct and engaging explanation of how our civil liberties have been hijacked in the past decade. It is the most poignant, powerful, genuinely patriotic piece of literature I have encountered since Thomas Paine's Common Sense. No wonder then, that the book's cover greatly resembles that 46-page tract by Paine written in 1775-as well it should.
One of the most frightening realities of teaching college history is that most students rarely have a clue what fascism is. They know about Hitler and the extermination of Jews, but they see little connection with Nazi rule in the 1930s and 40s and the current political milieu in the United States. Overwhelmingly, they cannot define fascism, nor can they define socialism or democracy. After all, they were pre-occupied during grammar school with becoming standardized human beings by way of taking standardized "No Child's Behind Left" tests, five hours a day, four days a week. So why would they know the definitions of fascism, socialism or democracy?
Refreshingly, Wolf is not shy about using the term fascism and lets the reader know why. "I have made a deliberate choice in using the terms fascist tactics and fascist shift when I describe some events in America now. I stand by my choice. I am not being heated or even rhetorical; I am being technical." (20) She explains that where Americans tend to see the various political "isms" as all-or-nothing, that perception is often inaccurate because of what she calls a "range of authoritarian regimes, dictatorships, and varieties of Fascist states...there are many shades of gray on the spectrum from an open to a closed society." (20)
Wolf also emphasizes that America has flirted with fascism openly in the 1930s when numerous corporations and robber barons helped finance Hitler and when as Edwin Black notes in IBM And The Holocaust, some American corporations assisted the Nazi regime in carrying out its "final solution" to the "Jewish problem." In fact, several of these corporate tycoons attempted to stage a coup d' etat to overthrow Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 and restructure the American government under fascist control. A thorough investigation of American politics and society from the end of the Civil War until the present moment reveals, as I have carefully traced in my book U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You, that much of recent American history is replete with a preference on the part of corporations and the politicians they own for an economic and political system on the far right end of the spectrum. In fact, resistance to fascism in the United States has been an arduous and daunting struggle for those who have been able to understand and oppose the appeal that fascism has to the corporatocracy, and in fact, take seriously Mussolini's fundamental definition of fascism: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."
i enjoyed the book as well. like baker, i've been less on board with some of wolf's suggestions/recommendations but i strongly recommend the book. let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Thursday, September 20, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces another death, Blackwater is still hot water, cholera comes to Baghdad, the Iraq Moratorium starts Friday, and more.
Starting with war resistance. Last week, Carol Mulligan (The Sudbury Star) reported on the Sudbury chapter of War Resisters Support Campaign to find lodging for an expected arrival -- a family of four. The Canadian community pulled together and went to work. Today Carol Mulligan (The Sudbury Star) reports that, "The soldier planning to come to Canada with his family to avoid deployment to combat in Iraq has been transferred to a non-combat role" after being granted CO status and will not moving to Canada and that Lee Zaslofsky (national co-ordinator of War Resisters Support Campaign) congratulated the community on their strong work and to "assure you that, with the current volume of inquiries from potential war resisters in the U.S., there will likely be war resisters in Sudbury very soon" with 2 war resisters having "arrived unexpectedly in Ottawa" as well as the London chapter having a family arrive "last weekend and another settled in the Niagara region."
Last week, Anthony Lane (Colorado Springs Indy) reported on Brad McCall, 20 years old, army private, who made the decision to self-checkout of the US military. Lane explained, "Soldiers tell him details of fighting in Iraq meant to make his pacifist blood boil. Soldiers who've been and returned say he'll see the bodies of dead little girls, if and when his unit is deployed. They goad him with stories of a soldier they say peeled charred flesh from an Iraqi civilian's corpse and ate it." McCall considered applying for CO status but didn't think the chances were likely of his being granted that status. So, while Lane was working on the report, McCall self-checked out and, "He'll join hundreds of other U.S. soldiers in Canada. He'll go to college, in the States, if he can get discharged. If not, maybe in Canada. . . . Army officials notified McCall's family on Tuesday that he had disappeared. Charlotte McCall, his mother, says she's saddened and worried." While she expects that he will change his mind, Lane reports "McCall contends that staying in the Army could only lead to bad things, particularly if he is deployed. The fighting in Iraq has put soldiers in nerve-wracking situations where some have fired their weapons only to realize they killed civilians, he says. 'How would I live [with] myself,' he asks, 'knowing I killed an innocent person fighting in a war I didn't believe in?'"
Already in Canada, war resister Patrick Hart is attempting to be granted refugee status. His band will be playing in Winnipeg Sunday. David Schmeichel (Winnipeg Sun) notes, "Yes, the Refuse & Resist tour lineup is jam-packed with punks who oppose the war in Iraq. But before you dismiss 'em as snotty agitators, know that Skull Device guitarist Pat Hart is something of an expert on the topic. Hart served 9 years with the U.S. military before going AWOL and fleeing to Canada, and now faces up to 30 years in prison if our government denies his bid for refugee status. He's got the support of tourmates Nikki's Trick and My Shaky Jane, (plus local recruits C-Punisher and Saxton)." Patrick Hart went to Canada at the end of August 2005 and was followed a few weeks later by Jill Hart and their son Rian.
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes Derek Hess, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Zamesha Dominique, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Carla Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko,Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty-one US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline [(877) 447-4487], Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters.
McCall tells Lane that he doubts the US military will even look for him. If that has to do with his own record in the military, he may be right. But the reality is that the US military does attempt to track down members who check out. In news on some recent AWOLs . . . Brad Zinn (Virginia's The News Leader) reports Denise A. Jones checked out, turned herself in and was arrested (she's 42-years-old and now at the Fort Knox Deserter Control Point). Russ Rizzo (The Salt Lake Tribune) reports Austin Lee Sommers developed pink, bronchitis, pneumonia and cellulitis while in basic training (marines) and checked out and stay with an aunt when the Orem police -- tipped off by the military and, his aunt believes, Austin's brother -- showed up to arrest him. Meanwhile in Maryland another AWOL soldier has been shot. Rocco Vertuccio (R News) reports Aberdeen was the location where 22-year-old Evan Parker of Rochester, NY was shot after he was picked up at a motel in the Aberdeen area and then returned to base (Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland) on Sunday only to go AWOL again and return to the same motel: "As an officer approached Parker, they say Parker displayed a gun. Police told Parker to drop the gun. They say instead, he waved it at the officer. The officer then fired several shots, hitting Parker in the abdomen, the leg, and upper chest. . . . Parker is now in stable condition at the University of Maryland Shock and Trauma Center. Aberdeen Police say, while Parker was being taken to the hospital, he told them and the medical personnel, he wanted police to shoot him."
This week on The Progressive Radio Show, Matthew Rothschild interviews Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan about the illegal war, the Democrats and the Republicans and why she is running for Congress from the eighth district in California.
Matthew Rothschild: Cindy, what does it mean when two-thirds of the public is against the war and yet the war and surge goes on?
Cindy Sheehan: I think it means that what our country was founded on, which was being a representative republic, has transformed into a country or government by -- instead of by and for the people -- by and for the corporations, the special interests. I think that both parties -- the people in both parties are very similar in their ideologies, they're very similar in the people who pull their strings, the people who fund their campaigns and so I think that our government and, you know, with most of the people's consent by their silence, we're sliding into a form of fascism and I think that that is, it's corporate, you know Benito Mussolini famously said, it's when corporations and government -- it's the merger of those two interests and I think that's what we have right now.
Matthew Rothschild: How do we stop that slide? How do we reverse that slide?
Cindy Sheehan: I think we have to take back our government. I think we have to take back our representative republic. On July 23rd, I went with Ray McGovern and Rev. Lennox Yearwood to meet with John Conyers about impeachment. We took a petition with over a million signatures. We had three hundred people lining the halls by his office on Capitol Hill and, while we were there, there was a call every thirty seconds demanding impeachment and John Conyers said, "I can't do it." And I said, "So what you're telling me is that we the people have no voice in our government, we have no recourse." He said, "Yes, you do in the ballot boxes." But the candidates we vote for are the ones that the elite, the corporate elite pick for us and the media picks for us and they don't do what the people want them to do what kind of representative republic . . . do we have. So I think that we have to challenge this two-party system which really is just one party basically. People have to challenge their congress people like I'm challenging Nancy Pelosi. And I think that challenging her as an independent, unaffiliated with any party, that you can truly look at the human and not the politics -- you know, what would be right for me politically or what would make me more money -- but look at a human being and say, "What would be best for humanity? What would be best for our country?" And not what's best for myself and my own interests or the people who owns me interest. So I think that by challenging her I'm not just challenging Pelosi, I'm challenging the system and I'm challenging the military industrial complex that I think controls our system.
Matthew Rothschild: Cindy Sheehan, why do you think John Conyers told you that he couldn't do it? Because the time before in Congress, when the Democrats weren't in control, he did introduce a bill to explore grounds of impeachment.
Cindy Sheehan: This is just so puzzling to so many people -- especially people who have been impeachment-anti-war activists. A lot of people in the movement don't link impeachment with peace but there's many of us who do because first of all there's the thing of accountability. Second of all, George Bush has said the troops aren't coming home while he's president. And you know if Nixon had been held accountable for the, you know, for the prosecuting of Vietnam and for the illegal bombings of Laos and Cambodia I think it would reign in future presidents. But John Conyers wrote a book called The Constitution in Crisis and he laid out, he and his staff laid out, the crimes and the charges against George Bush. And in my many meetings with him since they've become in the majority, I've said, "You know, Congressman, what happened, all the sudden are they like innocent of these crimes? You know you have to put them to trial, you have to give them a hearing." And there's been a lot of speculation that Nancy Pelosi, and we know she did because before they were even elected she said election was off the table. And we think that Nancy Pelosi is reigning-reigning his hand in. And you know he keeps saying 'I don't have the votes, I don't have the votes". Well you're not going to have the votes if you don't put the resolution for impeachment out there and we think it's a Constitutional duty, we thank it's mandatory and he thinks he has discretion. And one thing he told me that broke my heart because I really have admired him -- even before I knew him, you know, even before my son was killed -- I admired him. And he told us that it's more important for him to have a Democratic president than to end the war. So what the democratic leadership are doing are playing politics with our flesh and blood and the people of Iraq and our soldiers are being put in the middle of this political struggle. And I think it's inherently immoral.
Matthew Rothschild: I mean that -- when I'm most cynical I think the Democrats want the war to go on because it will help them.
Staying on the topic of peace and truth telling, Amanda Grosgebauer, Karin Scott and Kathleen Kreuger at Texas A&M refused to let a War Hawk columnist go unchallenged as he spewed hate and attacks and called him out as the pig he was. Good for them. Maybe he'll think twice before he tries to distor the work of Iraq Veterans Against the War? And a time when so many women paid to pen their opinions elect to be silent on the topic of the illegal war, the three college students show far more strength and passion that most 'professionals'. The "women of tomorrow" are already here and Kathleen Kreuger, Karin Scott and Amanda Grosgebauer make that very clear. Another strong woman is IVAW's Kelly Dougherty. Paul Pryse and Chris Chable (The Badger Herald) explain how Dougherty's story intersects with corporate profits: "When Kelly Dougherty was deployed to Iraq in 2003, her unit was assigned to escort truck convoys, usually from Kellogg Brown and Root Inc., then a subsidary of the Halliburton Company. Dougherty remembers one incident when her unit was guarding a broken-down truck containing produce and a crowd of destitute Iraqis assembled and begged for food. After Hallibruton told them to destroy the truck, Dougherty and other soldiers asked if they could distribute the food first, but were refused because it would be 'too hectic.' 'We sat there and burned produce in front of people struggling to get by, living not only under an occupation, but without jobs, without healthcare,' Dougherty said. To most people, this is wanton cruelty. However, under Halliburton's 'cost-plus' contract, they made a profit by charging the costs of that truck, the produce, plus an extra percentage to taxpayers." Which is why students at University of Wisconsin-Madison were protesting today as Halliburton showed up on campus for a job fair. Ryan J. Foley (AP) reports Chris Dols leading the hundreds of students in singing "From high to low, Halliburton got to go" and Foley observes, "The event is drawing parallels to a 1967 protest against recruiters for Dow Chemical Co., which made napalm used in Vietnam. A peaceful sit-in that ended in a bloody confrontation between students and club-wielding police officers galvanized the anti-war movement." Anita Weier (The Capital Times) notes the ingenuity of the students in the following: "They were allowed to enter the career fair but were told not to chant, so they sang. They were told to use conversational tones, but they did so with a bullhorn."
They aren't the only ones standing up. Alive in Baghdad offers their latest video report and this one is on the Al Hurriya section of Baghdad which was once a mixed neighborhood but has become pure Shi'ite and was the scene for Nabeel Kamal's report of a protest following the murder of Jawad Kadhim Al Sultani which called for all US forces to "leave our safe district and be replaced with Iraqi Forces". Who led the protest? Women. Carrying banners and accompanied by small children, they changed We defend our country and we're call terrorists, No, no to America! No, no to America! Maliki government, how long will you be silent?"
Turning to the topic of Blackwater. Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) notes today, "Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is promising to hold the private military firm Blackwater USA accountable for its deadly attack on Iraqis last weekend in Baghdad. Maliki's pledge comes as the estimated death toll from the shooting continues to rise. Iraqi officials now say as many twenty-eight Iraqis were killed when Blackwater guards opened fire. The initial estimate was of nine dead. On Wednesday, Maliki said Iraq would not allow the killing of Iraqis 'in cold blood.' He also called on the Bush administration to cut ties with Blackwater. The shooting has put new scrutiny on the free reign companies like Blackwater enjoy in Iraq. The State Department says its formed a joint committee with Iraqi officials to suggest ways to improve regulation of private military firms." Leila Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) reports that Nouri al-Maliki declared yesterday that the mercenaries of Blackwater "have been involved in at least seven serious incidents" already and Mohammed al Askari (spokesperson for the Defense Ministry) declares "one of the incidents was former Iraqi Electricity Minister Ahyam al Samarrai's escape from a Green Zone jail in December. Samarrai had been awaiting sentencing on charges that he had embezzled $2.5 billion that was intended to rebuild Iraq's decrepit electricity grid. Another incident, Askari said, was the shooting death last month of a Baghdad taxi driver when Blackwater guards led a convoy the wrong way down a street." Steve Fainaru (Washington Post) informs that "the State Department's oversight of Blackwater became a central issue as Iraqi authorities repeatedly clashed with the company over its aggressive street tactics. Many U.S. and Iraqi officials and industry representatives said they came to see Blackwater as untouchable, protected by State Department officials who defended the company at every turn. Blackwater employees protect the U.S. ambassador and other diplomats in Iraq. Blackwater 'has a client who will support them no matter what they do,' said H.C. Lawrence Smith, deputy director of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, an advocacy organization in Baghdad that is funded by security firms, including Blackwater." Ned Parker (Los Angeles Times) reports, "Two American diplomats speaking on condition of anonymity have told The Times that the State Department had failed to take Blackwater to task in past cases in which Iraqi civilians were shot. The diplomats complained that the State Department's security office in Baghdad had often failed to scrutinize Blackwater's actions."
Let's get the alleged 'progress' out of the way before we go further. This morning Paul Tait (Reuters) reported that serial liar Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno is again claiming violence is a-dropping. He's got nothing to back it up, just his oft disproven claims. But it sure does eat a lot of press time (which is always the point of a wave of Operation Happy Talk). Meanwhile, no one knows anything about an arrest of an alleged Iraian for alleged smuggling but that eats up even more time. Maybe they'll distract from the looming 3800 mark for the number of US service members killed in the illegal Iraq War? Or maybe from AP's report on the 'handover': "In another sign of U.S. struggles in Iraq, the target date for putting Iraqi authorities in charge of security in all 18 provinces has slipped yet again, to at least July. The delay, noted in a Pentagon report to Congress on progress and problems in Iraq, highlights the difficulties in developing Iraqi police forces and the slow pace of economic and political progress in some areas. It is the second time this year the target date for completing what is known as 'Provincial Iraqi Control' has been pushed back. The Pentagon report submitted to Congress on Monday hinted at the possibility of further delays." Or maybe it will distract from the cholera outbreak in northern Iraq that, bad sign, has now moved to Baghdad according to the World Health Organization.
In other violence . . .
Bombings?
Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad bombing claimed 1 life (police officer) and left three more people wounded, another Baghdad bombing claimed the life of 1 Iraqi soldier and left a second injured, a Baghdad car bombing claimed 3 lives and left eleven others injured and 2 Falluja roadside bombings claimed 2 lives (police officers) and left four more wounded. Reuters reports a mortar attack in Madaen claimed 2 lives (ten more were injured).
Shootings?
Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports Sheikh Khalid Salim Faris al-Bayati was shot dead in Tuz Khurmato today while Lt. Col. Mejeed Shnan "was shot in the shoulder and is being treated in hospital" after surviving an attack. Reuters notes that "radio presenter" Muhannad Ghanim was shot dead in Mosul that Judge Mustafa Kadhim was shot dead in Baghdad, and a person was shot dead in Hawija
Corpses?
Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 7 corpses were discovered in Baghdad. Reuters notes that 3 corpses ("including a woman and her daughter") were discovered in Mosul.
Today the US military announced: "A Soldier assigned to Multi-National Force-West died Sept. 19 in a non-combat-related incident in Al Anbar Province."
corporate media picks for us and the elite and they don't do what the people
In yet another sign of how the US Veterans Affairs Dept continues to fails service members, Reuters reports Fort Riley's cemetary "has run out of space" and that US Senators Pat Robers and Sam Brownback are "urging . . . full funding for a new cementary for Fort Riley" -- that two US Senators (they are Republicans) have to urge the Veterans Affairs Dept to do their job is only one example of how mismanaged the department has been under the Bully Boy.
On WBAI today, The Largest Minority Radio Show devoted a segment to remembering Dave Cline. In addition, yesterday's note on David Zeiger's piece didn't include the link to the website. First, language warning before clicking to get the essay, second, the site is Sir! No Sir! -- site of the amazing documentary. You can also Zeiger's piece and others (including one by Cindy Sheehan) at Veterans for Peace's memorial online.
Finally remember this: United for Peace & Justice (along with others) will begin Iraq Moratorium on September 21st and follow it every third Friday of the month as people across the country are encouraged to wear and distribute black ribbons and armbands, purchase no gas on those Fridays, conduct vigils, pickets, teach-ins and rallies, etc. The Moratorium starts tomorrow.
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