friendship is the theme, whiners are the subtext

how to start? how about thank you to Betty for the wonderful post she did here last night.

and?

did you see i know what you did last summer? jennifer love hewitt's character's name was something like julie james. and at 1 point, she runs out in this yard or street and throws her arms out to the side while screaming something like, 'what do you want?'

flyboy and i have both checked the e-mails repeatedly today (and responded to regular readers) but i'm not seeing any e-mail to me about the post that originally ran here monday. where's that e-mail?

your reasons for running to c.i. on me, for acting like a little snitch saying, 'teacher! teacher! i'm telling on somebody!' was that you didn't know my e-mail. well, jess wrote the reply to you yesterday and included my e-mail. and i've checked off the new feature so my e-mail address is on my profile again.

and, of course, as mike noted in 'Pissed,' all you had to was google me to find it. you didn't even have to click on a link, it shows up right in the search. (the only change since mike wrote about that is i've moved up from number 8 to number 1 on the google search.)

so where's my e-mail?

do you really think it's your place to dump a disagreement you have with me over something i wrote onto c.i.? i don't think it is.

so come on, big boy, send that e-mail already.

or is that it's easier to tattle and go whining to c.i. about how mean i am than it is to e-mail me directly?

this isn't the 1st time this has happened as long time readers know. it first happened with the idiot centrist whose right leaning centrist group wants to privatize social security. i called out that b.s. think tank and him as well. i even noted his hideous hair cut and said it was embarrassing for a grown man and looked as though mommy had placed a bowl on it and cut his hair.

to which, this 40 plus year old man writes - not to me, he goes whining to c.i. - my mommy is dead!

well golly gee are you accusing me of killing her?

i really don't see what that has to do anything. you're a 40 plus year old man posing for a professional photograph. get a grown up hair cut.

that was probably a 60-plus line post and in 1 line, i mention that ridiculous hair cut and, rightly, note that it looks like a little boy's hair cut, a chili bowl haircut and he wants to whine how unfair that is because his mommy died several years ago.

guess what. that happens as we get older. it's a tragedy when it happens to some 1 young, as it did for elaine who lost both of her parents at an early age, but the rest of us, the 1s who are supposed to be grown ups, we're all going to lose our parents unless we die 1st.

and then there are the people who will never know their parents because of death while they were still tiny children or babies or because they were given up for adoption.

you had a mother for 45 years? you're 1 of the lucky 1s. and as we get older, our parents die off. i'm not making light of that fact. i'm not saying you don't have the right to cry. i am saying, outside your friends and family, no 1 really needs to hear about it.

but he wrote about how mean i was for that 1 comment, wrote about that for nine paragraphs in an e-mail not sent to me but sent to c.i. when my e-mail address was posted on my profile. this was the 2nd or 3rd month of posting. probably march of 2005.

and it's probably 60 other people that have gone whining to c.i. since. centrist was the 1st but i'm getting damn sick of it.

i write this blog, no 1 else. i write what i want the way i want.

if you have a problem you take it up with me or you deal with it on your own. you do not go running to my best friend with an e-mail about how mean i am.

that's chicken shit and it's nothing but tattling.

c.i.'s busy enough and shouldn't have to deal with your chicken shit e-mails.

that's like madonna writing something that makes me mad and me e-mailing gweneth and saying, 'this is so unfair.'

if you've got a problem with something up here, you e-mail me. don't you drag my friends into it. i have no respect for that shit.

i don't 'approve' my posts with c.i. c.i. doesn't sign off on them. betty will read her chapters to c.i. and kat and wally will read his posts to c.i. but that's to make sure they're funny (betty and wally both do comedy writing - so does cedric, he does joint-posts with wally but wally started reading those to c.i. the minute wally's site became a humorous 1). now with mike and i especially, we sometimes have very different opinions than c.i. on some topics. and we certainly word things very differently than c.i. would.

so it is bullshit for you to try to put c.i. into the middle by whining to c.i. when you've got a problem with something i wrote.

what chicken shit babies so many grown men are. and, excuse me, but i thought we all learned that no 1 like a snitch in grade school. apparently, some never learned that lesson.

c.i. was martha stewart today. 'i'm cutting my salad' or whatever she said on the cbs morning show when she was asked - pre-prison - about the charges. c.i. just kept the head down and went about the common ills business.

and that's all c.i. should have to do on any given day. c.i. did not cross post my post, did not link to it, did not say 'i applaud this' or anything else. so the notion that you're going go whining about me to c.i. is just bullshit.

when i was pregnant and headed to texas on the long road trip c.i. did e-mail me many, many articles to make it easier for me to post. but even there, i was writing my own comments.

i think you negate your hurt feelings and any opinion you may have when you are willing to run and tattle to my friend but you don't have the guts to e-mail me directly - even after you are provided with my e-mail address.

goldie and marlene both weighed in that i shouldn't have rewritten my monday post (i rewrote it tuesday). goldie & marlene, you are the coolest and i love you both. i want to be clear that c.i. didn't ask that. if i had run it by c.i. (i didn't - i felt the little whining baby had already bothered c.i. enough with my site), i would've been told not to. that's standard. we're all told don't change something that's up. if you feel differently, do another post and say so.

but the thing is c.i.'s tired and c.i. doesn't have time to deal with this sort of crap so the easiest thing for my friend was to rewrite the post. if i'd asked, i would have been told, 'don't you do that, becky.' and c.i. would've meant that. but i know how much pressure c.i. already has.

what's really funny, what these men never get, is that they cannot now or ever come between c.i., elaine and me. our friendship was forged years ago in college. they had my back then, i had their backs. we have been through everything together, divorces, the death of spouses, you name it. and certainly, until the last pregnancy, they were there everytime to help me pick up the pieces after each miscarriage. we have never gone after the same type. c.i.'s not obsessed with looks. sadly, i am. elaine likes tall men. that's why the mike hook up made so much sense and i still cannot believe i didn't not see that those 2 were falling in love. c.i. saw and when we talked, it all made sense. they are the perfect couple, elaine and mike. but i mean, we have been through everything. we have seen each other at our bests and at our worsts.

no man has ever come between our friendship and no man ever will.

so these little tattle tale boys who go running to c.i. aren't just stupid, they are pathetic.

now the man e-mailing got what he wanted so you'd think at the very least i would get a 'thank you' e-mail. i don't even get that.

some men are apparently intended to be little boys all their lives.

my 1st marriage cured me of the need to play mommy to a little boy. (my 1st husband will read that and laugh. he'll also agree.)

and i mean, look at it this way. i've got a child and i've got a man i love. elaine's got a wonderful relationship with mike. what does c.i. have?

c.i. ended a relationship because the world was getting serious and what needed to be done couldn't be done with a relationship. i mean, i can list a hundred, no a million things, that c.i. has sacrificed to do everything possible to end this illegal war and some little whiney ass wants to go running and e-mail 'rebecca's mean'?

i mean grow the hell up. seriously, grow the hell up.

if we all did 1 thing to end the war each day, the world would be a better place but c.i.'s doing more than 1 thing a day and never rests, is run ragged. and it really pisses me off that some 1 who has a problem with me, instead of addressing it with me, wants to run to c.i. whose plate is more than full presently.

i think that pisses me off more than anything else. knowing what all c.i.'s doing, how limited c.i.'s time is and that some little boy wants to go whining.

now i was ticked off about this yesterday. but was willing to give the benefit of the doubt and say, 'okay, the guy wasn't able to find my e-mail address.' seems pretty lazy, but, hey. however, since no e-mail has arrived, since no e-mail has still to arrive, i think the guy is a tiny little boy who can't deal with a woman directly so he runs to her friend.

if there's shit between you and me, don't shove it over to c.i. be a grown up and take it up with me.

and if that pisses you off:

what's the matter with the truth
did i offend your ears?

that's from aimee mann's 'that's just what you are.' and what i think you just are is a little boy who needs to grow up.

in the monday post, i stated my conclusions and noted i could be wrong and it could all be a coincidence. but he didn't want to make that case to me. he didn't want to deal with me directly then or now.

that's a little boy whose got some issues with women, if you ask me.

and there's no need to dash off an e-mail to c.i. saying 'rebecca called me a wittle boy!'

i wrote that. i wrote it all by myself. if you don't like it, you know how to reach me.

and really, what is it with you? does every 1 in the world need to love you?

i mean come on, i'm surely not the 1st person whose ever had a complaint about you.

did you run to every 1 else's best friend too?

yesterday saw some amazing posts in the community and i would strongly recommend that you read elaine's 'Indymedia, bad hair and bad manners' which is hilarious. you really have to piss elaine off to get her writing or talking like that. she has the longest fuse. (i have the shortest.)
it's hysterical. and betty's 'I've lost my faith in independent media (Betty)' which i found both beautiful and heart breaking. (betty's only comment is she has 'rewrotes' - she was dealing with her oldest who thinks summer means a much later bedtime than she did and also writing that post at the same time. i said, 'betty, it's brilliant, let it go.' she's such a perfectionist.) i already noted mike's so let me move on to kat's 'Wow' which i love and think kat has a natural ability to open and grab you with the opening. i don't. kat does. and i was so glad she shared that story. we wanted to write a thing on that at the third estate sunday review but c.i. nixed it. kat's right that only she or elaine could get away with telling that story. i would get a heavy sigh from c.i. and of course there is wally & cedric's 's joint post of 'THIS JUST IN! YOU DON'T MEAN SH*T TO A TREE, INDYMEDIA!' and 'The ungrateful' which is amazing for what's written as well as for being written. as betty noted here yesterday, wally has a really strong sense of right & wrong and a slow fuse but when some 1 does wrong, wally gets mad, if they do really wrong, wally gets very quiet and just shuts down. i wasn't expecting to hear from those 2. not on this topic or a joke. i know how wally is. (and by the way centrist whiner, if you still lurk around here, wally has talked about losing his father at a very early age. and how hard that was. so go whine elsewhere about the fact that as a middle aged adult you lost your parent.) i also suspected (and cedric confirmed it) that this was a post that didn't go by c.i. that was because it was so late and because they didn't want to put c.i. in the middle. something that little whiners might try emulating.

c.i. writes wonderfully all the time of course so i'll just link to the common ills.

that's it for me tonight. if you missed the point, this post is about valuing your friends and not letting any 1 try to destroy that. even if they don't stand a chance of doing so. they will try. and you'll be surprised because you'll think all this crap ended in high school but some grown ups never even make it to the high school mentally, they're stuck in grade school.

here's c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'

Wednesday, June 13, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the US military annouonces the deaths of more service members, the US military and government play The Al-Maliki Squeeze while the puppet babbles incoherently, the mosque bombed in Samarra in February of 2006 is bombed again, and more.

Starting with news of war resistance, Kim Johnson, Duluth's WDIO, reports on Luke Kamunen who, like his two twin brothers Leo and Leif, self-checked out of the US military on the Christmas break and notes, "The brothers' story is not an isolated one. In fact, the Department of Defense reports desertions have risen 35 percent in the past two years -- from more than 2,400 in 2004 to about 3,300 in 2006" and notes that Luke Kamunen "was surprised" to encounter many others who had done the same "when he was detained by the military". (As noted here before, Luke is now discharged, his brothers state they will turn themselves into the US military at some point.)


The movement of resistance within the US military grows and includes Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Care, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.


Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.

Resistance to the illegal war isn't limited to one segment of the population. Amy Goodman (writing at Truthdig) reports on the off broadway production Voices in Conflict -- a high school production that Wilton High School (in Connecticut) decided wasn't fit for the school's theater. As disturbing as the attempted censorship of the play was, Goodman reports on equally alarming detail -- in the high schol clases, these students are not allowed to discuss Iraq even in US history whether they each have "to bring in a current-event news item" -- Jimmy Presson explains, "We are not allowed to talk about the war while discussing current events." Who teaches that class? And do they also work at The Nation? (Democracy Now!, by the way, spends the hour today with Vanessa Redgrave discussing art, politics and more.)

Turning to Iraq . . .

This morning Damien Cave (New York Times) reported on the latest ravings of the madman installed by the US as puppet of the occupation -- al-Maliki declaring that, "We have eliminated the danger of sectarian war." Sounds like someone needs to check their Desoxyn dosage. But reality can sometimes break through even the thickest drug induced fog even if it can be processed correctely. Look at Nouri al-Maliki's statements today. AP reports he's now likening events into Iraq to the American Civil War which would seem indicate that Iraq has not "elimated the danger of sectarian war" as al-Maliki claimed yesterday.

What semi-snapped out of his drugged stupor? A bombing in Samara. BBC calls the site "one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, the al-Askari shrine in Samarra." The Scotsman notes that bombing "was a repeat of last year's bombing that shattered the Askariya shrine's dome" while Steve Negus (Financial Times of London) explains that bombing "destroyed the minarets of the Askariya shrine." Minarets? Those are the two towers or columns that previously stod on either side of the mosque. Qassim Abdul-Zahra (AP) reports, "It wasn't clear how the attackers evaded the shrine's guards to mount the stunning operation, detonating the blasts aound 9 a.m., and bringing down the two slender golden minarets that flanked the dome's ruins at the century-old mosque." Sam Knight (Times of London) notes two reactions -- the puppet "declared a curfew in Baghdad and asked for American reinforcements to be sent to the mainly Sunni town, which has been under a military blockade in recent weeks, to contain any violence" and Moqtadr al-Sadr "called for restraint, declaring three days of mourning and peacful demonstrations." Deborah Haynes (Times of London) notes the reaction of some Iraqis in Baghdad -- shop keeper Shiras Assem decalres, "We are preparing for any attack by the Mahdi Army. We closed the street and we expect to be attacked. Maybe they will hit the local Sunni mosque. We have set up a night watch until this morning. We will not sleep tonight."; and broker Marwan Faled who declares, "We have gather together the young me[n] in our street, each one has a weapon. We told them to be ready if anyone attacks us we will all open fire. We expect an attack during the curfew because we don't trust the checkpoint at end of our road. I plan to stay at home over the next few days because I believe more people will be killed." Leila Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) notes that the Iraqi police have stated the columns were brought down by "mortar rounds fired by unknown fighters" while "witnesses said the explosions seems to have come from inside the church" and that despite appeals "for calm" already "five Sunni mosques in the southern port city of Basra were attacked, apparently in reprisal, and Sunni mosques were also struck in Zaiyuna and south of Baghdad." AFP reports that yesterday "there had been a row between the security forces" with two different groups (one from Baghdad, the other from Tikrit) present and saying they were in charge of security as well "some exchange of [gun] fire too" before the Baghdad contingent assumed security responsibilities and they quote an eye witness who states, "I was near the shrine when I heard big explosions that sent a thick cloud of dust in the sky covering the entire area. I quickly ran to the street from where I could see the shrine clearly. I saw one of the minarets was down. Seven minutes later as I was watching the shrine, another explosion occured and the second minaret came crumbling down." Al Jazeera notes that al-Maliki announced that the security team guarding the mosque (that would be the forces sent from Baghdad) would be arrested. Along with the curfew, ban on public demonstrations and driving in Samarra that has been imposed, Alexandra Zavis (Los Angeles Times and the link also contains an AP Television clip) adds that Moqtada al-Sadr's 30 member parliament bloc has walked out in protest and this "could present a major challenge to Maliki, who is under intense pressure to deliver political and economic reforms aimed at appeasing the Sunni Arab minority". In addition to the Samarra curfew and bans, Mariam Karouny (Reuters) details the "three-day curfew in Baghdad" that has resulted from the Samarra attack though how a capital under crackdown for over a year can be further 'cracked down' may be open to question. Since Moqtada al-Sadr is calling for public, peaceful demonstrations, al-Maliki's "three-day curfew" may be an attempt to circumvent al-Sadr.

Zavis noted the "intense pressure" al-Maliki was facing from non-Iraqis. War Pornographer Michael Gordon (New York Times) noted yesterday that he accompanied US ambassador Ryan Crocker and Admiral William J. Fallon to a face-to-face with puppet Nouri al-Maliki and the point of the meeting was to pressure on the 'benchmark' of getting the oil legislation privatized (turning over as much as 70% of the profits to foreign corporations) passed in July.
Today, Damien Cave (New York Times) reported that the deputy US Secretary of State John D. Negroponte showed up out of the blue in Baghdad yesterday to pressure al-Maliki who released a statement following the meeting attesting that he would use all of his limited power "to persuade Parliament to approve several proposals that the Americans had identified as benchmarks, including an oil law". The law, like 'liberation' has always been just around the corner and you can drop back a year ago when al-Maliki was first 'rolling up the sleeves' to push through the US written oil law that would then be imposed upon the allegedly soveign nation of Iraq. Andy Rowell (Oil Change) observes that the privatization "seems to be in real trouble" and notes Tariq Shaif telling "a news conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank" some unpleasant realities while Rowell notes that al-Maliki's cabinet's Happy Talk of 'give us one month' is vaguely familiar: "If my memory serves me right, that's what he said about three months ago." Which is true and, again, al-Maliki was installed claiming the theft of Iraqi oil was top of his list but he's still 'trying', all this time later.



Bombings?

Reuters reports a Baghdad mortar attack that claimed 4 lives (10 more wounded), a Taji bombing that killed an Iraqi soldier (4 more wounded), a Mandili bombing that killed three (five more wounded), and a Ramadi car bombing that killed 4 Iraqi police officers (11 more wounded).

Shootings?

Reuters reports one college student shot dead

Meanwhile, on the heels of yesterday's news from IRIN that Iraqi children are having to work to support families comes Tina Susman and Zeena Kareem (Los Angeles Times) report on the rise of cholera in Iraqi children with five reported case "in the last three weeks, a worrying sign as summer sets in and the war leaves sewage and sanitation systems a shambles. All of the cases were among children younger than 12 in the southern city of Najaf and were reported by medical officials on alert for signs of the potentially lethal ailment, Claire Hajaj of the United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF, said Tuesday."


In addition, the US military announced today: "One Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldier was killed when a roadside bomb detonated during combat operations in an eastern section of Baghdad June 11." And they announced: "One Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldier was killed when a roadside bomb detonated during combat operations in an easter section of Baghdad June 11." And they announced: "A Marine assigned to Multi National Force-West was killed June 12 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar Province." ICCC's current count for the total number of US service members who have died in Iraq since the start of the illegal war is 3513.


In media news, as independent media continues to be under attack, News Dissector Danny Schechter's "Special Blog: Can Our Media Channel Survive?" announces the potential fate of
Mediachannel.org which may shut down: "If we can get 1500 of our readers (that means you) to give $25, we can keep going for another quarter. [PLEASE CLICK HERE TO MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION ONLINE]"

Finally, independent journalist John Pilger is on a speaking tour with his new book Freedom Next Time and his documentary Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror (which looks at DC, Afghanistan and Iraq). June 13th finds him in San Francisco showing his film and discussing his book at Yerba Beuna Center for Arts (beginning at 7:00 pm, doors open at 6:00 pm) and the price of admission is $15 general and $5 for students. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, and KPFA, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. For ticket information, call 415-978-2787 or order online at http://www.ybca.org/. In person tickets at YBCA Box office located inside the Galleries and Forum Building, 701 Mission Street at Third. (Hours: Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat & Sun: noon - 5 pm; Thu: noon - 8 pm.) For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, email pilgersf@gmail.com." From San Francisco, he moves on to Chicago for the 2007 Socialism conference. At 11:30 am Saturday June 16th, he and Anthony Arnove will participate in a conversation, audience dialogue and book signing (Arnove is the author most recently of IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal) and that evening (still June 16th) at 7:30 Pilger will be at Chicago Crowne Plaza O'Hare (5440 North River Road, Rosemont, IL 60018) as part of a panel of international activists. To attend the conference, the fee is $85. For Saturday and Sunday only, the price is $70. To attend only one session, the cost is ten dollars. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. Co-sponsors: Obrera Socialista, Socialist Worker, International Socialist Review, and Haymarket Books. For ticket information, call 773-583-8665 or e-mail info@socialismconference.org For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org. For more information, email info@socialismconference.org." The Socialism 2007 conference will take place in Chicago from June 14-17. Along with Pilger and Arnove, others participating will include Laura Flanders, Kelly Dougherty, Joshua Frank, Amy Goodman, Sharon Smith, Dave Zirin, Camilo Mejia, Jeremy Scahill, Jeffrey St. Clair and many others.

I've lost my faith in independent media (Betty)

Betty posting tonight in place of Rebecca. Rebecca is pissed. We were all on the phone (except Jim and C.I.) and thought we'd come to a point of understanding.

I'm putting this in here to avoid having to do links throughout the post. I'm in the links and everyone I'm talking about in the community is as well.

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and Jim,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen
and Ruth of "Ruth's Report"

Rebecca, on her own, stated she would remove the post on FAIR. (She's rewrote it, scroll down to read it.) We were willing to go on to other things. As she had stated originally, it could have just been a coincidence. (She deleted that statement and pretty much everything she wrote on Monday when she rewrote it tonight.) C.I. likes FAIR and none of us want to cause a hassle for C.I. If FAIR didn't crib, then fine. We can all focus on something else.

Then, we hear Darh Jamail on Flashpoints, over the phone lines because the gang's at C.I.'s and KPFA is always playing there, and . . .

I don't know what to say.

I spent an hour, after I got off the phone with everyone, talking to my father, on the phone, and asking him about this because I really don't understand it. I don't understand how those who want attention from this community, who have requested it, are happy to give credit to everyone under the sun while ignoring The Common Ills.

My father's opinion was that those people should not get attention (meaning links) anymore. I agree with that.

I called Rebecca and said I wanted to post tonight if that was okay? She said it would be a huge relief because she was not in the mood.

What I wanted to talk about was what I spoke of with my father tonight.

The Common Ills started up and had comments, as older members will remember. I'm a Black woman and I know my way around the net. "Translation," as C.I. would say, I know that we're all welcome as long as we stick to the Democratic Party line. For the record, I've never voted for anyone who wasn't a Democrat. But as a Black woman, don't you dare tell me that I don't have a right to complain about the way the party has so often treated members of my race.

But, and talk to many Black people and you'll find out this isn't uncommon, you try to do that at a supposed liberal site and they go wild. The comments start piling up on the thread about how you're really a Republican or you're stupid or whatever.

So I was enjoying the website, The Common Ills, and figuring I'd stick around for a few weeks before it would be obvious that "all" didn't include Blacks by some comment on a thread or, worse, by something C.I. wrote because, as everyone knows, women and minorities can be ridiculed by some running supposed left sites and often are. (Or are we all supposed to forget the ridicule feminists got as "women's studies majors" and worse at a blog I used to visit?)

Keesha was in the thick of things on the threads. She was taking on those Blue Dogs like crazy. I didn't know her then, but I did admire her for calling them out. I wasn't aware that she was leading the fight to close off comments.

She really only had to make her case once but then, after she had, C.I. had to figure out how you closed off comments. That took a bit. When Keesha got slammed by a Blue Dog with a racist remark, C.I. stopped everything and figured out how to close comments right then and there.

And if you're an older community member who was there for that, you may have been confused or you may have known that racism is all over the net even at the supposed left sites.

So I stuck around and liked what I saw. Then Rebecca started a site, then The Third Estate Sunday Review started up, then Folding Star did A Winding Road.

I am a single parent with three small children. My time is limited except on the weekends. In fact, having made the decision not to date until my children are older, I have a lot of free time on the weekends.

So I started thinking, "Maybe I could do something online?"

I e-mailed C.I. and got an encouraging e-mail back with the promise that I would be linked and noted if I did start up a site.

I then probably bored C.I. with about 100 questions. Technical ones, time ones, tons of them. The reply was brief. "This is my phone number. If you'd like to call, please do and you can call collect."

At that point, what did any of us know about C.I.? I mean there was a huge curiosity factor so I called right after I saw the e-mail. (I didn't call collect. That was very sweet to offer, but I wouldn't do that to someone.)

So I asked most of my questions and got a direct response. I shared my fears that I would start and then just drop it within a few weeks. I explained what I had experienced online (in terms of race and sexism in threads at other sites) and that I felt like I should do a site of some sort if only because I didn't want to look back in thirty years, see an all White, all male web and realize I complained a lot but never did anything to change it.

C.I. told me that you start it and if it's not right, you stop. It's not the end of the world. Then C.I. asked what else was behind it?

I explained that I didn't want to put myself out there. I explained that I loved (and I did love and still do) what C.I. does but I'd been burned just from threads and wasn't looking forward to hate mail based on blogging. (That's the other thing, not only would they slam your race on a thread, they'd usually e-mail you as well.)

I'd mentioned, much earlier, that I like to joke and read and something (in passing) about a thing I'd written in my junior year of high school. (I'm overly proud of that. Largely because enough time has passed and I've grown enough that it's no longer embarrassing to read over.) C.I. brought that up and said I should think about doing something creative.

So it was a go. Sort of. I wasn't sure what my site () would be yet. I wasn't sure what I'd write about or how. I did test posts over and over while I tried to figure out what I wanted to do.

I also was curious about the process itself and C.I. checked with The Third Estate Sunday Review and they were happy to have me. So I was helping out there for several weeks before I went "live."

When I did, C.I., Rebecca, The Third Estate Sunday Review and A Winding Road were all generous with their praise and links. I really wish Folding Star would have kept on blogging because A Winding Road was a really great site. I miss, especially, reading the weekend book discussions.

Later on, when I got my first e-mail that scared the heck out of me (they come in very often), the first person I called was C.I. I have family that lives close by. But I called C.I. and wasn't even thinking about the time. (Even with a two hour time difference, it was still late on C.I.'s end.) C.I. stayed on the phone with me forever. Including at the start of the call when I really couldn't say anything other than "Hi."

It was my first hate mail and I really overreacted to it but it was late at night, my children were in bed and I'm the only adult in the house. It was the most hateful thing I had ever read. Probably the sort of thing I would have heard if I'd been born before the Civil Rights movement but no one has ever talked like that around me or even in a movie I've seen.

C.I. finally figured out that it was an e-mail from what little I did say and said to forward it. I did and C.I. was reading over it and making fun of the person and I ended up laughing too. After I was in a place where I could talk about it, the first thing C.I. said was that I could quit anytime I wanted to. Just hearing that took a huge load off.

I kept C.I. on the phone till the sun was coming up at my place because even though I was laughing now the e-mail still had me spooked. (When someone writes now that they know where I live, I delete it right then and don't read further.)

I'm high maintenance as a writer. C.I. and Kat have to hear my latest before it goes up at my site. I'm afraid it won't have even one funny line, that the larger point I'm going for won't be there and that, most of all, it's not worth reading.

Now keep in mind that C.I. and I hadn't even met face to face at that point.

I know very few people that would do all that (and more than I've noted above) for someone who really was a stranger. But C.I. always did and always has.

If something bothers me, it's not going to be dismissed by C.I. Not at the website or one on one.

Dominick took part in a roundtable recently and I just checked my e-mail and he said I could note what he shared. He noted how we all, whether we have our own sites or don't (he doesn't) expect C.I. to speak for the community. We expect C.I. to take on every issue that matters to us. With the focus being narrowed down to only Iraq at The Common Ills, you might think that pressure would be off. But Dominick was sharing how he pointed out this or that and "begged" C.I. to cover it in e-mails. And C.I. did. So when C.I.'s disrespected, we're all disrespected.

And that really is true so I'm offended that something I'm a part of got disrespected tonight. I have no further use for Flashpoints or Dahr Jamail.

But I'm even more offended for the disrespect towards C.I. because I know how much C.I. pushes and keeps going even when there's nothing left. I have seen C.I. at the end of a day, so tired from speaking, that just standing is a chore. And know that the next morning, no matter what, C.I.'s got to be up and posting two entries. We all say, "Take time off. You've earned it." Maybe if we'd all get together on a date or a series of dates and say, "Take ___ off," C.I. would believe us?

Maybe it really doesn't hurt C.I. when credit is stripped away and given to others? It would hurt me. I'd be mad, I'd be pissed and I'd be really sad. But maybe, just the fact that at the end of the day C.I. is still C.I. and others are still hustling for bucks makes a difference?

I'm going to share a C.I. story that is very un-C.I. like. And I'll apologize now for sharing it. This was awhile back and may have been near the end of 2005. C.I. was exhausted. C.I. had gotten caught in the rain. We went into a bookstore to get out of the rain. (C.I. had insisted my kids use C.I.'s umbrella.) It was 8:30 p.m. or maybe later and we go in and my kids are so hyper, they love bookstores and books, and I know how kids can get noisy and loud when you're tired so I took them over to the children's section thinking C.I. would sit down in a chair (C.I. needed to sit down). We came back about a half-hour later because the store was about to close and C.I. was in the nonfiction, seated on the floor, reading a memoir or autobiography. C.I. was fully recharged and for the longest wouldn't explain why. Then, after much prodding, showed me a page of the book being read and C.I. was mentioned on it, very favorably. I always tease that was a Soapdish moment. (That's a film with Sally Field. When she's low, she needs Whoopi Goldberg to rustle up a crowd for her.) But I remember that and the book by someone who didn't know C.I. that well (that's what C.I. said) and how much that meant, what was written. So I have a really hard time believing that the constant theft and constant refusal to credit while asking for (and receiving favors) doesn't take their toll.

I think, my own opinion, the secret with C.I. is that C.I. never expects anything. I think that for reasons I won't share. So anything that does come along that's nice is out of the blue and a wonderful surprise.

I'd never shared that story until tonight. Not even with Elaine, or Rebecca, or Kat, or Ava or Dona, Jim, let me do the whole list, Mike, Wally, Cedric, Ty, Jess or Trina. I shared it for the first time tonight with my father and he agreed that this sort of nonsense may not hurt C.I. (my father thinks C.I.'s the strongest person in the world -- I've cleaned that up a little) but agrees that those who ask for things should have the courtesy to give credit where it's due. (C.I. can say, "I don't know what Betty is talking about!" If so, I won't ever repeat this story. And I'm sorry that I did now but it really does capture C.I. for me. If you'd seen the exhuastion and then the happy surprise, the elation, over that page . . . )

So it really does make me mad. The reality, as my father pointed out, was that while everyone stayed silent, C.I. was calling out the lies on the play "Fallujah" (including Dahr Jamail's nationality) and that "happens over and over and you know that." I do too. So this nonsense of we're not even going to give credit is just disgusting.

I really like what Elaine wrote tonight. All of it, but especially this part: "But when you're discussing something C.I.'s covered from the beginning and you're not giving credit, you really aren't hurting C.I. You're just demonstrating that, like most of the great unwashed indymedia crowd, you were raised in a barn where manners meant you snorted before nudging your way to the trough." My father actually made a similar point on the phone tonight. I'd quote him, but I'd have to clean it up.

When Cindy Sheehan announced she was going away and coming back on her own, I was really shocked for about an hour. Then I thought about it and felt like C.I., "I'm surprised she lasted this long." In the summer of 2006, while everyone was focusing on Lebanon (including Dahr Jamail), Cindy Sheehan was fasting for peace, was campaigning for Cynthia McKinney (a true hero), was doing Camp Casey, was in the hospital, was in Jordan meeting with Iraqis to discuss peace and who knows what else.

And where, ask yourself, was independent media? She gave everything she had and her thanks for that was no thanks at all from independent media.

I agree with everything Elaine wrote. I'm not old enough to have seen this cycle (I wasn't born then) during Vietnam but I'm not surprised at all. Independent media is a very closed circuit that whines about the mainstream media not giving them credit but the reality is that they all just only give shout outs to each other. There is no support outside of their small circle of friends.

Take the whole "war on The Nation" nonsense. For two years, this community gave and gave to The Nation with links and praise and not a word. Then the supposed "war" starts up and all the whiners from the magazine are e-mailing like crazy. No link to one site. No e-mail of thanks (with one exception) but call them out for their cowardly coverage of the illegal war and their silence on war resisters and the e-mails start pouring in at such a rate that you wonder how they have time to put out a magazine.

Take poor Ehren Watada. Fighting for all of us. And yet so much silence. Then Sarah Olson is threatened with a few months in jail if she doesn't cooperate and suddenly independent media roars to life. They cover that. Ehren? The young man standing up. Not saying, "I can't say what I'll do or not. I can't discuss my legal strategy." Actually standing up. And he gets nothing. But Sarah Olson's threatened with three months in jail and independent media goes into overdrive pumping out coverage, pumping out columns and broadcasts.

As I've seen the war treated as something that can be "tabled" repeatedly, it's become very clear that independent media doesn't really care about it with few exceptions. It doesn't really care about ending it or about saving any war resister. It just cares about itself and having what I understand to be a "circle jerk" (I never knew that term until I started working with The Third Estate Sunday Review) where they fawn over one another and then go silent when one of them does something really appalling.

With few exceptions, it's not independent. It's the mainstream media played out in a smaller pond. And that's reality.

I really liked Flashpoints. I really liked Dahr Jamail. Even when he dropped Iraq for the summer of 2006, I didn't hold it against him and told myself he had to make a living and Lebanon was what was selling. But I'm tired of it.

I'm tired of a supposed independent media that cares about race but will go on to promote racists and their sites, that cares about sexism but will go on to promote sexists and their sites. I'm tired of being someone who has used the links (I know a lot of members don't, they just go by what C.I. excerpts) at The Common Ills, someone who has given of my small amount of money to help independent media only to see that they are not at all interested in covering Iraq, in covering the truth, or even in giving credit.

I'll add that I don't hate Sarah Olson. I know some in the community do and C.I. always gets a flood of e-mails whenever Sarah Olson is linked to or mentioned. Sarah Olson, my opinion, should have said "I'm not going to testify." If she wanted people to stand up for her, she should have told them what she was going to do.

But, to be fair to her, she wasn't writing all those columns and nothing prevented all those men from writing about Ehren either before they wrote about Sarah or after.

Phil Donahue, to name one, didn't even know what Ehren was being court-martialed for (as C.I. pointed out). He wrote that column all about Olson and mentioned Ehren in passing. It's months later. Has Phil Donahue felt the need to write about Ehren? No. That's not Sarah Olson's fault. It's not her fault that this was also the case with John Nichols, Norman Solomon, Sheldon Rampton, John Stauber and a host of others.

But it does demonstrate what I was talking about. At one point, Ehren was facing six years behind bars for saying "no" to the illegal war. And all these voices come rushing out . . . to defend Sarah Olson. They can't do the same for Ehren Watada.

That goes to the problems with independent media and goes to why I have slowly lost faith in it.

I listen to The Morning Show and enjoy Andrea Lewis (thank you to Kat for taping those for me) and I won't be listening when she's gone shortly. I don't need bad news breaks that bungle things and that just cover the same thing that made the front page of my daily paper. (To be fair, Ruth told me yesterday that Alfandary was actually doing a better job on Monday.)

But when I started reading The Common Ills, I discovered this whole new world. Let's not pretend that most of what C.I. notes gets noted or that most of it was getting noted before C.I. started noting it. I didn't know about Pacifica Radio, I didn't know about a lot of outlets. And I learned about them via The Common Ills. And I really thought, "Okay now, this is going to end the war." But for that to happen, they'd have to be serious about the illegal war and they aren't.

Most are serious about electing Democrats. Most are willing to lie about symoblic measures (Norman Solomon, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton didn't, to give credit since I called them out on Olson). There not serious about ending the war.

They keep citing the polls where the country's turned against the illegal war and the thing I notice most was that when I started reading The Common Ills, independent media was spending more time focusing on it. Now, they just don't care.

I'll even speak out of school and note that we've had a piece on Amy Goodman/Democracy Now! for The Third Estate Sunday Review that we've worked and worked on. It almost went up Sunday. It was finally finished. And C.I. pointed out that it wasn't the time. Why not? Because Adam Kokesh, Liam Maddon and Cloy Richards hadn't been on. (Liam was on. Jonathan Hutto was speaking but Liam Madden's name was onscreen. It was from the Januray rally. I know because C.I. tried to get a screen capture of that from the disc forever on Sunday.) Today, Adam Kokesh was on. All this time later.

I think Amy Goodman cares more than anyone else in independent media about ending the war and is willing to back that up with action. But even there, Adam Kokesh had a hearing last Monday. The story had to wait until there was time for it and, if you ask me, there was time for it a lot sooner than after the hearing.

After Andrea Lewis leaves, I'll probably just continue to catch Democracy Now! in my car and that will be it for me an independent media other than Black Agenda Report (which, let's note, C.I. was able to shame a few into linking to -- finally linking to -- a few weeks back). I really have lost my faith in independent media. I've gone from a full on buzz to constant disappointment. I don't feel I'm alone on that.

Take Flashpoints tonight. Dahr says the New York Times is the paper of . . . Judith Miller. Were you expecting him to take on Dexter Filkins? For someone who's covered Falluja, that would make sense. But he didn't. He went to Judith Miller. She's an easy target. She's safe. But Dexter Filkins is the one who reported on Falluja and won an award for it.

C.I. repeatedly calls Filkins out. Who else does? Danny Schechter. That's really it. It's C.I. and Danny. And now Danny's site may go under and that depresses the heck out of me. My oldest had a growing spurt and buying new clothes for him was required. Buying new clothes for him and not the other two was not something they'd understand. So I tapped out before that plea went up and I whined so much my uncle donated. He said, "It's from both of us." But there are something like 18 days left and MediaChannel's not even at the half-way mark. (It's linked to in the snapshot and on the side on Rebecca's links. I'm too tired to do links tonight. I'm going up to the top and stealing the credits from The Third Estate Sunday Review and adding Trina and Ruth to it. That's all I'm doing tonight. My arms ache and it was a long day before Flashpoints decided to show its ass tonight.) Wait, I'll copy from the snapshot:


In media news, as independent media continues to be under attack, News Dissector Danny Schechter's "Special Blog: Can Our Media Channel Survive?" announces the potential fate of Mediachannel.org which may shut down: "If we can get 1500 of our readers (that means you) to give $25, we can keep going for another quarter. [PLEASE CLICK HERE TO MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION ONLINE]"

I don't read Rory so I don't know about him. That's not an insult to him. I'm not usually online that much. (I've been on for about an hour and a half writing this.) I know Danny from the links to him at The Common Ills and he really registered when the New York Times trashed his film WMD (Rebecca has the logo on her links) and C.I. took that review apart. (It was full of errors. Did the guy even see the film?) So I got to know his site and recommended it to friends and to everyone in my family. (And we've all watched WMD repeatedly. Great documentary.)

Danny's probably a Democrat. That would be my guess. But he's not afraid to call them out. He's going by the truth first and foremost. That's why he's an important voice and MediaChannel going under would be a loss. But where is independent media?

I meant to call Ruth today and Rebecca will probably show this to her tomorrow. So let me explain, I got the e-mail but with what happened tonight (the conference call, etc.), I didn't have time and Ruth's an hour ahead of my time. But a certain DC reporter will be mentioned in Ruth's upcoming report and let's note that Danny Schechter would never carry water for a convicted felon or speak of how "harsh" a sentence was. But a DC reporter, for independent media, would. For so-called independent media. Ruth titled her e-mail, "Can you believe this?"
Sometimes she sends funny photos, and since I got the new computer, funny videos. So I opened it expecting a laugh. Instead, I heard about a supposed reporter -- for the left -- fretting over the plight of poor Scooter Libby.

If that doesn't tell you how bad things are in independent media, I don't think anything will convince you. Ruth's report will go up Saturday at The Common Ills. The man obstructed a federal investigation and leaked Valerie Plame's name to the press thereby ensuring she would be outed as CIA. And an "independent" reporter wants to tell us how "harsh" Scooter's being treated? I think someone's spent too much time in the beltway and fancies herself a 'player' as opposed to a reporter.

Danny's a trained journalist and that comes across when I read him. I never lose sight of that, of his refusal to go along. He never forgets that a reporter's supposed to skeptical.

I'll shut up. I've gone on long enough and then some for one night.

Kat just called as I was about to copy the snapshot. I told her I'm stealing credits from The Third Estate Sunday Review to avoid links. She said good idea and also said Dona says to stress, "If you have an opinion, write any of us except C.I." The e-mails are already piled up in the members accounts, according to Ava and Jess, and C.I.'s on the road with Jim speaking on campuses. (And will be here tomorrow! So, write me -- thomasfriedmanisagreat@yahoo.com and I can pass it on directly tomorrow.) I asked Kat about Wally and Cedric? I know Wally gets really bummed sometimes. He's not a depressed person and not prone to moods but when he feels something is really wrong, he gets very quiet and just shuts down. If he or Cedric read this tonight, call me, I will pick up the phone. I'll also help out with your joint post if you need it.

Here's C.I.'s soon to be ripped off "Iraq snapshot:"

Tuesday, June 12, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, a new Gabor sprouts in the Green Zone, Iraqi children seek employment, and more.


Starting with Iraq Veterans Against the War Adam Kokesh who was interviewed by Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) today and explained some issues that the press has misreported:

That is a very good question because a lot of the coverage has grossly simplified the issue and said that I wore my uniform to a protest, which isn't really accurate at all. What we were doing was conducting something called Operation First Casualty. And it's called that because it has long been said that the first casualty of war is the truth. So what we did was conduct a mock combat patrol through the streets of Washington, DC, in order to bring a small part of the truth of the occupation home to the American people and give them a small sense of what it's like to have squads of men in uniform, with rifles, although we were simulating them of course, running around the streets of their city. And we also had civilians playing affected peoples. They weren't playing Iraqis or pretending to speak Arabic or anything like that, but we treated them as we would treat Iraqi civilians on a daily basis. So it was more street theater than general protest, and I do not need to show up to a protest in a uniform to represent myself as a veteran. But for this particular demonstration we were simulating a combat patrol, and so that is what we did, that's why it was appropriate in that setting. Now, normally, as I did -- or as I am doing today, I should say, I wear this Marine Corps boonie cover, and that is how I choose to represent myself as a veteran.

Kokesh, along with Liam Madden and Cloy Richards, is being targeted by the US military for speaking out. Last week, a (kangaroo) hearing was held regarding his discharge from the Interactive Ready Reserves. Kokesh addressed the status there noting "you may recieve multiple discharges throughout your military career. But it's your last one that is revelant in terms of your benefits" which is why the US military is now attempting to override the honorable discharge he received from the marine corps in November with an other-than-honorable discharge. He also addressed how this issue effects more than just himself, Richards and Madden and the reception he's receiving:

Adam Kokesh: Well, actually it's been quite surprising to see a lot of people from my old unit contacting me and supporting me in my efforts in trying to get, to ensure that the Uniform Code of Military Justice is not applied beyond it's jurisdiction into the inactive reserve. They appreciate that, and I think a lot of people in the military appreciate what I am doing and why am trying to fight this case so hard. Even though the board recommended me for a general discharge last week, which wouldn't affect my benefits if it's approved, it does not do anything to establish a precedent and the next guy facing the same charges might receive an OTH or something worse potentially. And everyone in active duty is going to be in the IRR at some point, if they're not past their eight-year contract when they get out of the military, most are on four-year contracts, and they spend -- they stand to spend about four years in the inactive reserve. And, if it's not safe for these combat vets coming home to speak their minds, then it's not safe for anyone.

Evan Knappenberger also appeared on today's Democracy Now! and discussed his actions last Thursday in Washington state, "I decided a couple of weeks ago that I needed to do something to affect a positive change in all these kind of negative things going on. I figured the best way to do that would be to draw some attention to these policies that the military is using to fight this war without actually -- you know, a war without conscription, basically. So in the middle of the night I had this great idea, just as a symbol of something kind of similar to what Operation First Casualty is, you know, to bring the war to the American people, because there is a big disconnect between the civilian population and those of us who were in Iraq. We can see -- as veterans of Iraq -- we understand kind of the way that these policies get perpetrated, and the American people need to be made aware of that. So I had this great idea to bring that home and ended up on a tower for eight days."

Amy Goodman: Ended up what?

Evan Knappenberger: I ended up sitting up on this tower for eight days, wearing my uniform, kind of like I did in Iraq, when I was guarding these fields in Iraq.

Knappenberger also spoke of the study he did while serving in Iraq which "concluded that there were close to 3/4 of a million civilian deaths over the course of the Iraq war. Now I would guess it is probably upwards of a million."

Amy Goodman: Well that actually coincides with the two studies done most recent, a million, and before that The Lancet, the British medical journal published that study from Johns Hopkins University, saying around 655,000 soldiers -- rather, civilians, had died in Iraq.

Evan Knappenberger also spoke of suicide and noted he questions the official US military figure of 122 suicides by service members while serving in Iraq noting that his unit "had 45 combat casualties and 15 suicides" and explaining that these are suicides taking place in Iraq and that suicides of vets taking place in the US "are not counted . . . The army does not want to admit to taking any more losses than they possibly can." Yesterday, CNN reported on a study for the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health led by Dr. Mark S. Kaplan which found "The risk of suicide among male U.S. veterans is double that of the general population." This study did not include any veterans who have served in Afghanistan or the current illegal war in Iraq and, presumably, no women. Meanwhile, the Kavkaz Center noted a recent US army survey which "showed that 20% of soldiers and 15% of marines suffered from acute depression, anxiety or stress."



Meanwhile, Joel Bleifuss (In These Times) writes about the topic of war resistance, noting the brothers Kamunen -- Leo, Leif and Luke -- who self-checked out January 2nd of this year. Bliefuss is the editor of In These Times. For those needing a scorecard, two of the big three independent print magazines are weighing in -- The Progressive and now In These Times -- which leaves Katrina vanden Heuvel (editor and publisher of The Nation) as the only 'voice' of a magazine that elects to be silent on the issue of war resistance. Katrina vanden Heuvel, now more than ever, The Peace Resister. (And before anyone writes in on those Ehren Watada articles -- the 2006 ones were all "online exclusives" and Editor's Cut, her blog, can't be bothered with war resistance -- though there was time for American Idol.) Speaking of Ehren Watada, he remains the first US officer to refuse to deploy to Iraq. In February he faced a kangaroo court in which Judge Toilet (John Head) declared a mistrial over the objections of the defense. Mike Barber (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) reports that Charles H. Jacoby Jr. (Lt. Gen.) is now in charge of Fort Lewis and this means, "He inherits the court-martial of 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused last year to go to Iraq with a Stryker Brigade, saying the war is illegal. Earlier this year, Watada's first trial ended in a mistrial. The start of the second trial July 23 was stayed by the Army Court of Appeals; pretrial motions are to be heard July 6."


The movement of resistance within the US military grows and includes Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Care, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.


Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.

Turning to Iraq. Leila Fadel (McClatchy Newspaper) noted of Monday's bombing over the Tigris River (Diyala province) that this was "at least the seventh attack on Iraqi bridges in the past two months," beginning "with the destruction of the Sarafiya bridge in Baghdad," that the May 11th bombing in Taji involved three car bombings focused on two bridges, that the June 2nd bombings "severely damaged a bridge that links a highway from Baghdad with the northern city of Kirkuk, forcing traffic headed to Baghdad to pass through Diyala province." To repeat, Diyala province is where yesterday's bombing took place. First, traffic is forced through Diyala and then the bridge in Diyala is attacked -- but the US military wants to pretend there's no pattern or planning going on here. CBS and AP note that, as a result of that bombing, "vehicles were being forced to detour to a road running through al Qaeda-controlled territory to reach important nearby cities." Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) observed, "The bridge linked towns on the eastern side of the bridge, which are Shiite, with those on the western side of to the bridge, which are Sunni Arab. . . . Bridges are crucial in central Iraq, where the broad Tigris and Euphrates rivers and their tributaries wind through the countryside. Each attack has hampered commerce and made daily life more difficult for Iraqis." But Lt. Col. Chris Garver declares, "Willie, my love, a new Gabor sister is in town."
Garver tells Rubin that "knocking down the bridge may or may not have significance, because we have other resources" blah blah blah. Translation, Zza Zza just joined big sister Ava to make for two Gabor sisters living it up in the Green Zone.

In the real world, CBS and AP report today: "Suspected Sunni insurgents bombed and badly damaged a span over the main north-south highway leading from Baghdad on Tuesday -- the third bridge attack in as many days in an apparent campaign against key transportation arteries. . . . About 60 percent of the bridge was damaged, and cars could still pass over it via one lane, police said."

As the infrastructure continues to crumble, the violence continues. Tina Susman (Los Angeles Times) reports on a typical April day in Baghdad when "a bomb ripped a jagged hole in the road near Abu Mohammed's small grocery store. Gunfire crackled along the street as U.S. soldiers responded to the attack. Someone pounded frantically on the grocer's locked door, pleading for help. Mohammed recognized the frightened voice as that of a local teenager and let him inside. The 17-year-old had been struck by a bullet in the chaos that followed the explosion and was bleeding heavily. Within two hours, the boy was dead. Witnesses charge he was killed by U.S. troops firing randomly." Yesterday, Norman Solomon (CounterPunch) noted that "the Iraqis killed by Americans don't become much of an issue in the realms of U.S. media and politics. News coverage provides the latest tallies of Iraqis who die from 'sectarian violence' and 'terrorist attacks,' but the reportage rarely discusses how the U.S. occupation has been an ascending catalyst for that carnage." (Solomon's writing of the uncovered/undercovered air war going on in Iraq and also suggesting that those attempting to end the war focus on all the fatalities because, historically, as elections approach, US presidents sometimes try for some sort of drop in on the ground figures in an effort to make it seem the war may ending when the air war is actually being increased. More on the topic of this technique used in the past, Vietnam, can be found in War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning us to Death -- a documentary adaptation of Solomon's book of the same title, narrated by Sean Penn, which will be shown in DC on the 20th of this month and which you can already order on DVD.)

In other news, IRIN reports that "thousands" of Iraqi children now live in the streets and 11% under the age of 14 are working due to the extreme poverty. IRIN takes a look at twelve-year-old Abdel-Salim who is the only male in his family after the illegal war counted his father as 'collatoral damage'. So the twelve-year-old boy works each day (12 hour days) "in the streets selling chocolates and pencils. I eat just one meal a day to save money, and when I return I just want to sleep." For the record, Baghdad's high today was 109 degrees fahrenheit with all week expected to be over 100 degrees.

IRIN's report comes as Colum Lynch and Joshua Partlow (Washington Post) note a new United Nations report issued yesterday which found that "the recent U.S. military buildup in Baghdad" has not ended the violence and, quoting from the UN report, "civilian casualties continue to mount".

In news of some of today's civilian casualties.

Bombings?

Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad bombing in the Al Waleed neighborhood that wounded 3 people, a Baghdad explosion in the downtown square that claimed the lives of 2 (2 more injured), a Baghdad mortar attack that killed 1 Iraqi (2 more injured), a Baghdad explosion that killed 1 Iraqi soldier (2 more wounded), a bombing outside of Baghdad that wounded two en route to the capital, a Baghdad bombing ("in Bab Al Muathim neighborhood downtown") that claimed 2 lives (6 more injured), two corpses in Baghdad exploded as police attempted to move them and 5 police officers injured in a Kirkuk bombing. Reuters notes a bombing near Ramadi that claimed the lives of 3 police officers (15 more wounded). CBS and AP report "gunmen stormed the house of the Sunni mayor of Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, forcing the family members outside, then blowing up the house, the police officials said."

Shootings?

Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports an Iraqi police officer wounded in a Baghdad shooting, "Gunmen exploded two houses of displaced families in Al Khalis town early morning today," a Khalis attack on a minu bus that left 2 Iraqis dead (2 more wounded), a Khalis shooting that left 2 Iraqis dead, a Bob Al Muathim attack where 3 police officers were shot dead and a Kirkuk attack in which a police officer was shot dead -- dropping back to yesterday, Laith Hammoudi also notes that an Iraqi civilian was killed by "British forces [who] opened fire targeting a taxi" in Baghdad. Reuters notes that today a police officer was shot dead in Hawija.

Corpses?


Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 26 corpses discovered in Baghdad. Reuters notes that a corpse was discovered in Tikrit.


In the US, Peter Speigel (Los Angeles Times) reports, the US army missed their target for recruitment last month "marking the first time in almost two years the service has fallen short and renewing questions about whether the war in Iraq is having a long-term effect on the well being of the Army." This announcement comes as the US Department of Defense "expressed hope today [Monday] that a provision in the stalled immigration bill that would have allowed some undocumented aliens to join the military won't fall off the radar screen."


In media news, as independent media continues to be under attack, News Dissector Danny Schechter's "Special Blog: Can Our Media Channel Survive?" announces the potential fate of
Mediachannel.org which may shut down: "If we can get 1500 of our readers (that means you) to give $25, we can keep going for another quarter. [PLEASE CLICK HERE TO MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION ONLINE]"

Finally, independent journalist John Pilger is on a speaking tour with his new book Freedom Next Time and his documentary Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror (which looks at DC, Afghanistan and Iraq). June 13th finds him in San Francisco showing his film and discussing his book at Yerba Beuna Center for Arts (beginning at 7:00 pm, doors open at 6:00 pm) and the price of admission is $15 general and $5 for students. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, and KPFA, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. For ticket information, call 415-978-2787 or order online at http://www.ybca.org/. In person tickets at YBCA Box office located inside the Galleries and Forum Building, 701 Mission Street at Third. (Hours: Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat & Sun: noon - 5 pm; Thu: noon - 8 pm.) For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, email pilgersf@gmail.com." From San Francisco, he moves on to Chicago for the 2007 Socialism conference. At 11:30 am Saturday June 16th, he and Anthony Arnove will participate in a conversation, audience dialogue and book signing (Arnove is the author most recently of IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal) and that evening (still June 16th) at 7:30 Pilger will be at Chicago Crowne Plaza O'Hare (5440 North River Road, Rosemont, IL 60018) as part of a panel of international activists. To attend the conference, the fee is $85. For Saturday and Sunday only, the price is $70. To attend only one session, the cost is ten dollars. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. Co-sponsors: Obrera Socialista, Socialist Worker, International Socialist Review, and Haymarket Books. For ticket information, call 773-583-8665 or e-mail info@socialismconference.org For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org. For more information, email info@socialismconference.org." The Socialism 2007 conference will take place in Chicago from June 14-17. Along with Pilger and Arnove, others participating will include Dahr Jamail, Laura Flanders, Kelly Dougherty, Joshua Frank, Amy Goodman, Sharon Smith, Dave Zirin, Camilo Mejia, Jeremy Scahill, Jeffrey St. Clair and many others.

iraq
adam kokeshdemocracy now
iraq veterans against the war
joel bleifuss
the new york timesmichael gordon
alissa j. rubin
the washington postjoshua partlow
tina susman
norman solomon
matthew rothschild

how fair is fair?

remember when a certain party hack was trashing those who called the pelosi-reid measure chicken shit? it was chicken shit. but there he was vouching for david obey, swearing obey was progressive. so 'progressive' obey is on board to fund the nonsense of 'just say no until marriage' that does not work, has not worked and will not work. in other news (no link, it's all over), alberto gonzales' no confidence vote in the senate today? the dems couldn't pull it off. no surprise.

**added*** june 12th ** i have just finished a conference call with every 1 in the community who has a site with the exception of c.i. and jim (who are in the south speaking on college campuses this week).

an e-mail was sent to the common ills about the post that was here previously. jess and ava read it and then mentioned it to c.i. who noted in a lengthy reply that i would never be called out by c.i. and that i have the right to write whatever i want here. i appreciate that (and the sentiment is the same on my part for c.i.). but this is causing a headache at a time when other things should be focused on.

no 1 participating in the call suggested i pull my post. no 1 said 'rebecca, you shouldn't have!' every 1 was very supportive but i'm really getting tired c.i. being called out for things that i or other members write.

when we switched to beta, community wide, all of our e-mails on our profiles were no longer visible. jess learned that when reading the e-mail which stated i had no contact info posted.
i did have contact info posted in my profile. the switch to beta knocked it out. my e-mail address is up here in many posts. (and is now, yet again, visible on my profile.)

i am not issuing a retraction or a correction. c.i. was there 1st...

and i am hearing --
on __________ right now and willing to bet c.i. will not get credit. in fact, c.i. is not getting credit. that's rather strange when this community has publicized ____ as requested by ____.

i will be pulling ________ from my links after this posts. i do know the common ills is known by that program. in fact, i will be tidying up my links period.

on may 29th, c.i. covered this. on sunday, c.i. - at dona's request for a short piece - came up with the new york times correction that ran sunday morning. on monday, fair issued their report.

i think i can speak for elaine when i say that we are both damn sick of c.i. bending over to promote any 1 and every 1 in independent media and never getting shit back.

people are sure glad to get a mention at the common ills - many write in requesting 1 - but they don't give a damn thing back.

i could list 50 right now that i know of from elaine (who read the e-mails 1 day to help out) and ava and jess.

i have never expected links. i use foul language and don't do any thing that special. but let's not pretend that c.i. hasn't done something amazing for 3 years. coming out strong right after the 2004 elections when every 1 else wanted to drop iraq. and let's not pretend that a day's gone by that iraq wasn't covered.

nor did c.i. call the site 'iraq' something and then ask for money to write about lebanon.

i'm sick of it. i will be suggesting and strongly advocating that since independent media can't give the common ills any damn credit, they shouldn't get easy coverage.

if there's something negative to say, by all means but this applaud-applaud is bullshit.

i understand why cindy sheehan had enough.

i look at c.i. and wonder 'what is your breaking point?'

how many favors can you do, how much independent media can you promote, with nothing ever given back, before you say 'fuck this shit'?

i don't think most of us could.

and c.i. doesn't fall silent. when big-bad dave sirota tries to swing his puny dick around and silence every 1, a lot of people played dumb and silent. c.i. didn't.

there are a lot of cowards in independent media and there are a lot of pathetic 1s who will write and ask to be noted but feel no guilt about not ever doing a damn thing. they want to ride the community c.i. created (with no help from them) and they don't want to give a damn thing back.

c.i. was raised to believe you do for others and has the guilt from being raised with money. that and the fact that c.i. is a good person has allowed indy media to ride the common ills on a free ride. i'm sick of it.

'who has time to follow up and' something 'follow up'? __________ just asked.

fuck you _______, fuck you ____ ____. you're both off my lists and short of the snapshot, you will never be mentioned at my site again.

who follows up? the common ills.

i am sick of it. i am sick of this bullshit.

especially when it comes from a program that has actively sought c.i.'s help in promoting themselves.

with mainstream media - with cnn and cbs, with the washington post - that's fine. there you are talking about long term friends of c.i.'s and they do favors for 1 another all the time. if some 1 from cbs calls, c.i. is happy to note something if it fits with the snapshot. but i'm not talking about people who are friends of c.i.'s, i'm talking about strangers showing up at the public account asking for this, that and everything else.

i am fucking sick of it. screw independent media and all their nearly 3 years of begging for this and begging for that.

i'll leave in the links from yesterday's post.

on may 29th, the day the new york times ran their story about the play fallujah, c.i. called it out in the 'Iraq snapshot;'

Tuesday, May 29, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces 10 deaths, the peace movement gets mainstream media coverage (so you know something bad has happened) and we love our Canadian Dahr Jamail . . . Wait. Dahr Jamail's not Canadian! He is to Jane Perlez. All this and more.
[. . .]
Staying with the New York Times, Jane Perlez who did some fine work on the tsunami (end of 2004, start of 2005) apparently decided today to illustrate Laura Nyro's "Money" ("I found the system and I lost the pearl"). That's the best logical explanation for "An Assault in Iraq, a Stage Hit in London" which mangles every known fact in the supposed search of a play review. Fallujah is playing London and that may be one of the few things Perlez gets 100% correct. She describes Dahr Jamail as "a freelance Canadian journalist." Is that for comic effect? Jamail grew up in Houston, Texas is a Lebanese-American who was born in the US. Jamail's reporting from Iraq is used for one of the character's lines. We don't have time to go over all of Perlez' errors. We will ask did Perlez measure US v. British sentiment with a dipstick when determining "deeper" and when was she last in the US? And we will note that she's surprised "The Guardian, a liberal daily" did not care for the play while even the Telegraph of London (conservative) did. The Guardian is the bible of Tony Blair and New Labour, buy a clue Perlez. Blair is a war monger and the Guardian of London works overtime to avoid pointing that out (just like it ignored the Downing Street Memos). She notes allegations of napalm use in Falluja "never substantiated." Napalm was used in Iraq. The US State Department and the Pentagon both admitted to it being used early on in the illegal war. The charge of napalm, remember Perlez is assigned to London, came, in England, from the Sunday Mirror, not "left-wing critics" as Perlez wants US readers to believe. Sunday Mirror political editor Paul Gilfeather wrote, on November 28, 2004, "US troops are secretly using outlawed napalm gas to wipe out remaining insurgents in and around Fallujah. News that President George W. Bush has sanctioned the use of napalm, a deadly cocktail of polystyrene and jet fuel banned by the United Nations in 1980, will stun governments around the world. And last night Tony Blair was dragged into the row as furious Labour MPs demanded he face the Commons over it. Reports claim that innocent civilians have died in napalm attacks, which turn victims into human fireballs as the gel bonds flames to flesh." Now maybe Perlez would prefer to argue that was all from the white phosphorus which, for the record, her paper didn't report in real time, denied when Democracy Now! reported it and then sent Scott Shane out with the big mop to yet again clean up. If Perlez was starting out at the paper, this article and all of its errors (big and small) would probably mean she'd be cleaning her desk right about now.

Dahr Jamail, independent journalist and Canadian! For nine days until The New York Times finally got around to correcting their mistake. Jane Perlez, the reporter who couldn't do the basic work required before assigning a nationality to Dahr Jamail.

on sunday, c.i. basically wrote 'Wait! Dahr's not Canadian!' for the third estate sunday review.

read jim notes in the note.

on monday, fair ran an alert. click here for the fair alert. (added, i was in the middle of noting - as i did in this original post before i rewrote it tuesday, that it could just be a coincidence. i will give fair the benefit of the doubt. and i was in a generous mood to all. until ___ came on the radio.)



so now here's c.i.'s 'iraq snapshot' and who knows what from it will pop up where as some 1's observation that just came to them:

Monday, June 11, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces the deaths of more US service members, bridge bombings continue (and only one reporter notes the strategic importance behind the bombings), The Poetic Ravings of Puppet al-Maliki, and more.

Starting with war resistance. "In the current environment have you seen a lot of resistance to this war among enlisted men, among officers, among young people?" Michael Ratner asked on WBAI's Law and Disorder today (the program streams online and also airs on other radio stations across the country). "It's interesting," Tod Ensign answered, "This is a good time to talk about it. Because until about a year ago, the Pentagon was claiming that there was not an uptake, there was not an increase in desertions, for example. If you accept their figures as, you know, somewhat accurate, that seemed to be the case -- that the three years before . . . we invaded Iraq had higher desertion rates than the three years after. However, this last year, there's been a pretty substantial increase in the number of desertions and I would say it's increased by at least fifty percent. So that would suggest that, you know, soldiers, to some extent, are voting with their feet. Now, of course, the military always says, 'You know a lot of deserters are driven by family problems or financial issues or they just can't stomach the military" which of course is true, in some cases. But I do think there is an increase in the attitude among soldiers, especially guys that have already served over there that this is an endless war and there's nothing to be gained by them going back again."

And demonstrating how right Ensign is, Nancy Montgomery filed two stories on this subject yesterday for Star and Stripes. In her first article, Montgomery noted that the US army states 3,300 is the desertion figure for the last year and that "a news report in April citing Army statistics said more deserters were facing courts-martial than in previous years. But [Maj. Anne] Edgecomb said that of deserters outprocessed at Fort Knox, Ky., where many U.S. Army Europse soldiers who desert end up, 70 percent are administratively discharged."
In both articles, Montgomery notes the Military Counseling Network in Germany which notes the following conditions usually prevent criminal charges: "they must not be on a deployment list; they must not have pending actions against them under the Uniform Code of Military Justice; they have to make it back to the U.S. before 30 days, when an arrest warrant is issued; and they should turn themselves in after 30 days when they've been dropped from their unit's rolls to one of two personnel control centers, Fort Knox or Fort Sill, Okla." In both article, Montgomery reports on 23-year-old Chris Capps who made the decision to self-checkout, "flew to the States and stayed in New York City until he knew he had been dropped from his unit's rolls. After that, Capps said, his commander had no authority over him. Capps turned himself in at Fort Sill. In fewer than four days, he was out of the Army, with an other-than-honorable discharge." Capps explains to Montgomery that he didn't try for Conscientious Objector status because he isn't opposed to all wars and because he "knew a soldier in his battalion who sought and won CO status and didn't want to go through the process. 'The chain of command treated him like [crap],' Capps said." Montogmery's second article focuses more on CO status and includes Vincent La Volpa who was awarded CO status and discharged honorably "in 2005 with a Purple Heart earned during his Iraq tour" whose statements on his CO decision include: "I contemplated the cause and its value. Feeling that the means was not worth the sacrifice for the uncertain end. I felt that I had to make a decision. Am I for this or am I against it? I decided I am against it." In the second article, Montgomery notes MCN's Michael Sharp whoe explains that in 2006, they were dealing with "eight to 10 nes cases monthly" of enlisted needing advice about discharges and that has gone up to "15 to 20" a month.

Also covering the topic yesterday was Heather Wokusch (OpEdNews) who covers the cases of Kyle D. Huwer, Clifton F. Hicks and "John" (a psuedonym). John self-checked out and is back in the US avoiding his family ("avid Bush-supporters; his uncle works for a weapons manufacturer and his stepfather, for an oil company") but has some contact with his girlfriend "Sarah" who notes the difference between media in Germany and in the US, "Watching the news here [US] really makes me angry, people are so detached from reality. They increse the troop deployments from 12 to 15 months, and no one besides the military families recognizes it. They are sending back national guard people for multiple deployments, no one recognizes it. You hardly hear anything about what that puts on the families, emotionally and financially. I'm deeply mad and sad about that at the same time."
John explains to Wokusch the transformation he had while serving in Iraq and notes, "It was not what I was expecting at all. There are people in Iraq making HUGE sums of money profiting over poorly supervised and ill-run government contracts. When you hear about the cost of the war in Iraq, it's this kind of thing that's doing it, not the body armor, having to pay the soliders a couple of meager extra bucks, or armoring the humvees. It's paying KBP $90 for every time I turn in my laundry while paying poor Pakistani and Filipino workers who work long hours with no days off for years at a time (and handling thousands of bags of laundry) $15 a day." [Note: Heather Wokusch's article also contains an audio-visual stream option.]

Clifton Hicks is now discharged and some may remember his story from Peter Laufer's
Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq. In the book Laufer recounts how Hicks father posted one his son's letters home (from Iraq) online and the military's response was "a Field Grade Article 15" (p. 185) which Hicks learned after his woke him up one morning kicking his cot and, pay attention easily shocked Heather Hollingsworth-types, cursing at him. "They were going to throw me in jail for treason." After he was demoted to private and fined $800, Hicks applied for CO status. Hicks told Laufer, "If I don't get it? I have other avenues of approach to get home. I've told them I am not going back to Iraq" and would rather go to prison but "[i]t won't come to that, though, because I think I'm too smart for that to happen to me. Civil disobedience is an option -- just refuse to put the uniform on. Maybe a hunger strike. There's all kinds of things you can do. It's looking like they'll approve it. But if they don't, I have Plan B, Plan C, all the way up to desertion" (p. 187). Laufer's chapter on Hicks ends with Hicks being told he will receive CO status and a discharge. [Reminder, Laufer now hosts a two hour program each Sunday morning on KPFA from 9:00 to 11:00 am PST. The program is not yet named -- though it is airing -- and Laufer's program airs in Larry Bensky's old time slot.]

The movement of resistance within the US military grows and includes Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Care, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.


Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.

On today's Law and Disorder, Todd Ensign noted that Iraq Veterans Against the War has "a chapter up at Fort Drum which is where we have our coffee house [Different Drumer Cafe] and that's the first on base chapter of IVAW that I'm aware of." Dalia Hashad asked him where Fort Drum was and Ensign responded "about sixty miles straight north of Syracuse, almost to the Canadian border and most New Yorkers know it as a reserve base; however, under Reagan it was turned into an active infantry base. Now it's the most heavily deployed division in the US army. It's a very active combat infantry base."

Dalia Hashad: Can you explain for people who don't know what the coffee house is? Or how it came about?

Todd Ensign: Good question. During the Vietnam war, those of us who are older -- in the older generation recall there were over 20 coffee houses that were formed mostly by civilians initially at or near US military bases -- army and marine bases and navy and airforce too. And these were very important in building the GI movement and building the opposition to the war within the ranks. They had an enormous impact. There's a very fine documentary called Sir! No Sir! that some of your listeners have probably seen that tells that story and it's really pretty amazing to realize that those coffeehouses were often largely run and staffed by soldiers, active duty soldiers".

[Mike notes Law and Disorder each week at his site and, here, we'll also probably pick up more from the interview later in the week. Attorneys (and activists) Dalia Hashad, Michael Ratner, Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith host the one hour radio program.]

The attempts to silence Iraq Veterans Against the War's Adam Kokesh, Cloy Richards and Liam Madden (as well as others) from speaking out continues. War resister Stephen Funk (who announced his refusal to deploy to Iraq in April 2003) writes (The Huffington Post) about Kokesh and observes, "If Sgt. Kokesh wanted to play it safe, he would have waited to protest until after June 18th, when he was scheduled to be discharged from the Individual Ready Reserve. At that point he would no longer be held accountable to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. But the anniversary of the war happened to fall earlier in the year, and true patriots do not wait until it is convenient or safe to act upon their beliefs. That the military would charge someone so close to discharge with misconduct for such a minor indiscretion shows how desperate they are to contain the emerging antiwar voices among their ranks as discontent with the war continues to rise." Kokesh is specifically targeted for engaging in street theater, Operation First Casualty. [Language warning] Jeff Mullins (The Brooklyn Rail) takes a look at Operation First Casualty and notes that it "is modeled after the Vietnam-era protest action Operation Rapid American Withdrawal that took place in Pennsylvania during the summer of 1970. This variation came out of a brainstorming session among the Washington D.C. chapter of IVAW earlier this year. The vets felt 'tired of just being part of other people's protest,' explained Adam Kokesh, a member of the D.C. chapter. IVAW, a national veterans organization founded in July of 2004, performed the first Operation First Casualty in D.C. this past March." Michael Borkson (Boston IMC) has posted video and photos from Liam Madden's press conference last Thursday (covered in Friday's snapshot, text can also be found in this write up we did at The Third Estate Sunday Review).

While some try to end the illegal war, others are eager for it to continue and the US military is yet again attempting to sell a technique as a "plan." John F. Burns and Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) reported this morning on what the US military wants to call the "Anbar model." The thinking is that al-Anbar Province has been a success and the 'plan' that has worked so well there can be exported to other areas. The technique involves attempting to bring Sunni fighters into the process. The reality is this is nonsense for several reasons. al-Anbar is not at peace (even with all the greased palms of tribal leaders by the US military), it was where 10% of last month's US service member fatalities took place, it is where chlorine bombs explode and it only looks like a 'success' because putting all the US military into Baghdad for the lastest version of the year-long-and-ongoing 'crackdown' didn't do a damn bit of good. By comparison to Baghdad, al-Anbar suddenly looks like a 'winner.' In other news from the land of crazy, John F. Burns (New York Times) reported Saturday on puppet of the occupation, Nouri al-Maliki, who either fancies himself a reborn beat poet or needs to check his meds -- al-Maliki knows his enemies are all over (including Ayad Alawi) and describes them -- Woody Allen couldn't have written a bigger laugh getting line in Bananas -- as "a black ant on a black rock on a dark night."

While someone checks the puppet's dosage, violence continued across Iraq today. As noted many times, the bombings of the bridges is not accidental and it's rarely covered. There were two bridge bombings in the last 24 hours. The one near Mahmudiya resulted in the US military releasing this statement: "Three Coalition Force Soldiers were killed and six were wounded when the checkpoint they were manning was struck by a suicide car bomb south of Baghdad near Mahmoudiya June 10. An interpreter was also wounded in the attack, which destroyed part of a highway overpass. All the wounded were evacuated to Coalition medical facilities for treatment." ICCC's current total for US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war is 3512. Al Jazeera notes US military spokesperson Christopher Garver who says, "The checkpoint was damaged by the explosion, as was the bridge. The force of the explosion dropped part of the span but it did not fall on anybody." Oh really? CBS and AP note private contractor Donald Campbell stating that he and others "worked with a U.S. army quick reaction force for some 45 minutes to pull trapped men from the rubble, scrambling over the fallen concrete" and CBS and AP note: "At one point, a Bradley armored vehicle with a tow chain pulled a slab off a pinned victime to free him. Then a shot went up, 'Morphine! Morphine!' and a black T-shirt-clad Briton administered painkillers to the freed man" while one person was reportedly crushed by the falling 'span.'

That bombing took place late Sunday. Reuters notes one today in the Diyala province where "a major bridge" was blown up. Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) is the only one currently noting, "The bombing of this bridge will make the residents of the North eastern parts of the province take one route through the violent city of Baqouba to go to Baghdad, residents said." That is, after all the point, and has been. The bridge bombings have a point and a strategy.

In other violence today . . .


Bombings?

Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports the heavily fortified Green Zone was again mortar attacked, while two other Baghdad mortar attacks left 7 Iraqis injured, a Baghdad explosion at Al Wathiq square left 3 wounded and a Diyala explosion claimed the life of 1 Iraqi soldier (2 more wounded). Reuters reports a Samarra roadside bombing that claimed the lives of 2 police officers (three more wounded),

Shootings?

Reuters reports a home invasion in Mosul where 4 women and 1 man were shot dead, a Hawija drive-by shooting that killed 1 Iraq (2 wounded) and the central bank of Mosul's general director, Khaireddine Ahmed, was shot dead along with two bodyguards.

Corpses?

Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 17 corpses discovered in Baghdad.

In other media news, as independent media continues to be under attack, News Dissector Danny Schechter's "Special Blog: Can Our Media Channel Survive?" announces the potential fate of Mediachannel.org which may shut down: "If we can get 1500 of our readers (that means you) to give $25, we can keep going for another quarter. [PLEASE CLICK HERE TO MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION ONLINE]"


Finally, independent journalist John Pilger is on a speaking tour with his new book Freedom Next Time and his documentary Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror (which looks at DC, Afghanistan and Iraq). June 11th, Pilger will be in Los Angeles at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center (244 S. San Pedro St.) and will discuss his book and show his documentary beginning at 7:00 pm (doors open at 6:00 pm). The price of admission to the even is five dollars. "Directions, maps, and parking info at: http://www.jaccc.org/directions.htmPresented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, and The Nation Institute, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. For ticket information, call or visit the JACCC. Box office: 213-680-3700 (Box Office Hours: Monday - Saturday: Noon - 5 pm)For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, email pilger.la@gmail.com."June 13th finds him in San Francisco showing his film and discussing his book at Yerba Beuna Center for Arts (beginning at 7:00 pm, doors open at 6:00 pm) and the price of admission is $15 general and $5 for students. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, and KPFA, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. For ticket information, call 415-978-2787 or order online at http://www.ybca.org/. In person tickets at YBCA Box office located inside the Galleries and Forum Building, 701 Mission Street at Third. (Hours: Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat & Sun: noon - 5 pm; Thu: noon - 8 pm.) For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, email pilgersf@gmail.com."From San Francisco, he moves on to Chicago for the 2007 Socialism conference. At 11:30 am Saturday June 16th, he and Anthony Arnove will participate in a conversation, audience dialogue and book signing (Arnove is the author most recently of IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal) and that evening (still June 16th) at 7:30 Pilger will be at Chicago Crowne Plaza O'Hare (5440 North River Road, Rosemont, IL 60018) as part of a panel of international activists. To attend the conference, the fee is $85. For Saturday and Sunday only, the price is $70. To attend only one session, the cost is ten dollars. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. Co-sponsors: Obrera Socialista, Socialist Worker, International Socialist Review, and Haymarket Books. For ticket information, call 773-583-8665 or e-mail info@socialismconference.org For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org. For more information, email info@socialismconference.org."The Socialism 2007 conference will take place in Chicago from June 14-17. Along with Pilger and Arnove, others participating will include Dahr Jamail, Laura Flanders, Kelly Dougherty, Joshua Frank, Amy Goodman, Sharon Smith, Dave Zirin, Camilo Mejia, Jeremy Scahill, Jeffrey St. Clair and many others.