C.I. and I just got done listening to Betty's draft of her latest chapter. It's the __ draft and she's not done. She pointed to a story in the New York Times and said she'd prefer not to link to the Times. It's not Iraq but I can write about it -- and, boy, do I want to!
Page A5 of today's New York Times contains Stephanie Strom and Lydia Polgreen's "Advocacy Group's Publicity Campaign on Darfur Angers Relief Organizations." The Modern Day Carrie Nations are in turmoil! Is that why Democracy Now! Friday didn't feature the guest they announced at the beginning of the show who was just back from Darfur?
"Save Darfur" -- a monumnetal waste of time and front group -- got caught with hands in the cookie jar and pants down. This is the group that the so-called left can't stop fronting, the Modern Day Carrie Nations. They carried signs to a NYC rally against the illegal war that read "Bring The Troops Home and Send Them To Darfur." It's the group that has all the right wing Christian zealots, faux left, War Hawks (like the current World Bank nominee) and government backed 'academics' screaming for a new war.
Well, the reporters tell us, aid agencies actually in Darfur, actually trying to help, are pissed off at Save Darfur. They think the group is a bunch of a liars. No surprise or argument there.
Among other things, they take issue with the group spending $15 million in 2006 and not one penny of it going to aid in Darfur. That's a pretty big chunk of change, don't you think?
This is Sam Worthington, president of InterAction: "I am deeply concerned by the inability of Save Darfur to be informed by the realities on the ground and to understand the consequences of your proposed actions." He also states (again, no argument) that Save Darfur is guilty of "misstating facts." He objects to their calls for a non-flight zone. He talks of how that will hurt the aid people in Darfur will receive. Action Against Hunger object to "a forced intervention by United Nations troops without the approval of the Sudanese government" which Save Darfur has been pushing and says it could "risk triggering a further escalation of violence".
This is from the article:
So some relief agencies said they were horrified when Save Darfur's ads in February reported that "international relief organizations," among others, had agreed that the time for negotiating with the Sudanese government had ended.
People need to get to wise to Save Darfur which is not about helping the people in Darfur. You don't spend $15 million (and not a penny on aid) if you're trying to help. This is a publicity campaign for a war. The group thinks firing David Rubenstein from their board will change things but it won't. They are Our Modern Day Carrie Nations and cosmetic changes aren't going to trick people. It's also interesting that they don't reveal where their money came from, citing "a sudden influx of money from a few anonymous donors".
I wonder if anyone will wake up to the realities of these Modern Day Carrie Nations? Save Darfur spent $15 million dollars in 2006 alone and not a penny went to aid the victims in Darfur.
They have lied in their advertisements, claiming that international relief organizations were on board with armed conflict. They were early on fronted by 'academics' who front for the government and when people started catching on, they tried to turn it into a student movement which it wasn't.
What? You think students took the $15 million for the ultimate keg party blow out?
Grow up. Grow up and stop giving this organization money or support. They are nothing but War Hawks advocating another war. They lie repeatedly (including their 'figures') and who is going to call them out?
I'm sick of it and sick of them. I laughed so hard when the reporters spoke of "thousands" turning out for their rallies. The DC rally had less than a thousands (about 800 C.I.'s said -- C.I. was as that as a personal favor -- the first and last rally C.I. attended). And this was the group that got to meet with the Bully Boy in the White House. Does that not give you a clue of how tight with the government and how non-grassroots it is?
But if you spend $15 million advertising war and, important, yourself, you can give the impression that you are a movement. It's not a movement. It's some hard working students (who don't know any better) giving their all while the front group throws away millions and pushes for an illegal war.
What a joke they are. And think about that the next time you see some lefty or 'lefty' pushing Save Darfur.
My "Kat's Korner: Those Jones girls" just went up. It's a review of Rickie Lee Jones and Norah Jones' new CDs.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Friday, June 1, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, two US soldiers remain missing (someone tell the national press), the US military announces more deaths, May becomes the third worst month of the illegal war thus far in terms of US military fatalities, Nancy Youssef looks at payouts to Iraqis, and Veterans of Foreign Wars stands with Iraq Veterans Against the War's Adam Kokesh -- which begs the question of where the psuedo 'left' and 'centrist' groups are -- you know all the useless groups who take up time endorsing candidates while maintaing "we're non-partisan." Guess they must all be off to the (election) races. Someone tell the Marx Brothers.
Starting with apparently breaking news: Alex R. Jimenez and Byron W. Fouty are missing. The two US soldiers have been missing since May 12th. The military has not announced that the two have been found, it's just the press that's lost interest in the story -- the big press. Possibly, if they worked for a corporation with lots of money to toss around (isn't that how they got the contract to begin with?), the New York Times, et al, would take a moment to remember that two US soldiers have been missing since May 12th. Jennifer Manley (Queens Chronicle) spoke with Maria del Rosario Duran and Ramon Jimenez who are the parents of Alex Jimenez, "Each night in Corona, Jimenez's parents keep the faith that their son is luckier. Despite the grim evidence to the contrary, Duran believes in her heart that he is alive. 'That's what I hope. That's what I have put in my mind,' she said." Manley notes that vigils for Alex Jimenez were originally packed but "[b]y Tuesday, the numbers had dwindled and the news coverage had as well. About a dozen people remained, mostly the family's friend and neighbors." Adam Pincus (Times Ledger) reports Maria del Rosario Duran is unable to sleep or eat while she awaits some word on her son and quotes what she would to say to her son ("Alex, I miss you. Alex, please come to my house.") and what she would say to the Bully Boy ("This is a desperate mother. Stop this thing and bring them home. Every day this is happening. George Bus, please bring them home.") Rosario Duran last saw her son in December when he got a pass to attend the funeral of his grandmother. She tells Christina Santucci (Queens Courier), "I cannot do anything but think about where is my son. What's he doing? Who has my son?" and Ramon Jimenez states, "I pray every night for the three missing people. And I say, 'God give me my son back!'"
The three soldiers refers to Joseph Anzack whose body was found. On May 12th, 4 US soldiers and 1 Iraqi translator were found dead from an attack and three US soldiers were classified missing and assumed captured. Jimenez and Byron Fouty remain missing -- not at all unlike big media's coverage. CBS and AP break from the pack to note that, while the search for the 5 British contractors (one is considered a consultant) continues, "the hunt for two U.S. soldiers missing since an ambush on May 12 has slowed down."
KXAN (NBC, Texas) reports that Byron Fouty's family released a statement yesterday: "Son, we are so proud of you and for who you are, what you stand for. We know in our hearts, you were doing what you needed to do in Iraq, and we would have never expected any less from you. You are our Hero, our son. We will miss you and love you forever. Love, Mom and Dad." Today is day 20 that Jimenez and Fouty have been missing. Day 20. Big media moved on to the story of contractors -- from England -- because that's cleary the biggest domestic story coming out of Iraq. (That was sarcasm.)
Turning to news of Adam Kokesh who faces a hearing Monday, June 4th in Kansas City, MO that will determine the status of his discharge (previously "honorable") and would determine the status of his benefits. The Manny Named Brian (Public Eye, CBS) offers that Kokesh may be the new Cindy Sheehan, that he's "photogenic" and "sure seems like the kind of thing that could gather momentum as the summer heats up." (I swear, I did not make that up, use the link.) From the world of Candy Perfume Boy, to the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) which has a press release from which we'll note this "Executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the War, [Kelly] Dougherty was in Iraq from March 2003 to February 2004 with the Colorado National Guard. She said today: 'This is not so much about Adam as it is an attempt by the military brass to silence opposition to the war among veterans. The military is supposed to fight to preserve free speech, not quashing it. Not only are veterans, who can attest to the realities of this war, increasingly speaking out against the war -- but its grim realities are moving them to increasingly take nonviolent direct action to stop it." AP reports that "The Veterans of Foreign Wars is urging the military to show 'a little common sense' and call off its investigation of a group of Iraq war veterans who wore their uniforms during war protests." Sam Hananel (AP) quotes the national commander of Veterans of Foreign Wars, Gary Kurpius, stating, "We all know that people give up some individual rights when they joint the military. But these Marines went to war, did their duty, and were honorably discharged from the active roles. I may disagree with their message, but I will always defend their right to say it."
Eric Ruder (Socialist Worker) observes that the goal in going after Kokesh and Liam Madden is "silencing criticism from veterans -- discharge them again, but this time less than honorably" and quotes Tod Ensign (Citizen Soldier and Different Drummer Cafe) stating, "These are important issues, and they go to the question of military-civilian balance, and when you cease being bound by military rules. Are Liam and Adam bound by those rules? I'd say hell no. This is just a trial balloon, and it's harassment. But if they get away with it, you can be sure that they will then start becoming more draconian and their sweep of other people will be expanded. This could have a very chilling effect on the IVAW, to say the least." Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive) provides a strong overview of the issues at stake and noted that Monday's hearing/administrative meeting is not expected to result in a quick 'verdict' but a recommendationg that Master Sgt. Ronald Spencer says "can take up to two weeks."
Adam Kokesh wore fatigues during DC actions in March, Liam Madden, as David Montgomery (Washington Post) noted, "is accused of wearing his camouflage shirt at an antiwar march in Washington in January." For all the drama the military's created, you'd think the two (and a third who has been unidentified) had shown up in their dress uniform. David Morgan (Reuters) identifies the third: Cloy Richards. Cloy Richards is an Iraq veteran who suffers from PTSD. Both he and his mother Tina Richards have discussed this publicly. Apparently the US military believes the way to 'help' Cloy Richards is to threaten the veteran with loss of benefits. If that doesn't digust you, what does? Last week, Tina Richards discussed her son's suicide attempt with Kris Welch on KPFA's Living Room. Getting help for his PTSD has been a battle for Cloy Richards to begin with, the US military's lack of "common sense" just became even more visible.
As the lack of "common sense" becomes more apparent to the public, war resistance continues to grow within the US military. Pepe Lozano (People's Weekly World) reports on the June 19th event by the Rosenberg Fund for Children which "will commemorate the 54th anniversary of the Rosenbergs' execution with 'Celebrate the Children of Resistance." The fund was created by Robert Meeropol, the son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and guests will include Angela Davis, Eve Ensler, Howard Zinn, David Strathairn as well as US war resister Camilo Mejia who notes, "When you prosecute an activist, it brings hard times to the family, especially for children like [his daughter] Samantha. People have to realize there is a family behind activists, and there should be more groups like RFC." Mejia's book Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia (The New Press) came out at the beginning of May and Iraq Veterans Against the War's Martin Smith (Socialist Worker) reviewed it noting: "Mejia's work -- written from the vantage of a soldier who served and saw firsthand the consequences of U.S. imperialism -- cuts through the deceptions and lies used to justify the war. . . . Beyond Mejia's exposure of the lies of occupation, the strength of his book is the humility with which Mejia explains the change within himself that led to his decision to follow the conscience and oppose war." John Catalinotto (Workers World) provided a wide ranging look at war resistance within the US military this week and noted of Iraq war resister Ehren Watada that his "court-martial is still pending after the military uniltaterally decided to declare his first trial a mistrial last February, has now had the court-martial postponed once more. At first scheduled for June 23 at Ft. Lewis, the trial is now on hold until it is determined if re-starting the trial would mean that Watada faced 'double jeopardy.' It is still possible that the Army will be forced to drop charges on Lt. Watada, the first officer to refuse duty in Iraq."
The growing movement of war resistance within the US military includes Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake 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 Memorial Day, Michael Kamber (New York Times) reported from Iraq on the rising disillusion of some serving in Iraq noting Staff Sgt. David Safstrom's comments about how he felt when first deployed -- "In Mosul, in 2003, it felt like we were making the city a better place. There was no sectarian violence, Saddam was gone, we were tracking down the bad guys. It felt awesome" -- compared to now -- "I thought:'What are we doing here? Why are we still here?' We're helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us." On a semi-related note, Peter Laufer -- journalist, author of many books including Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq and former NBC correspondent, debuts Sunday with his new (still unnamed) program on KPFA, taking over the slot Larry Bensky has occupied until recently (9:00 am to 11:00 am PST).
The announcement was made today during the KPFA Management Report to the Listeners.
More information can be found on Laufer here.
Meanwhile, Nancy A. Youssef (McClatchy Newspapers) reports: "The Department of Defense spent nearly $31 million in three years in condolence payments to civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it didn't rack how it doled out the money, a Government Accountability Officer report found" -- which, she notes, didn't include what monies were paid for property damage, loss of life or for injuries. Youssef notes that the report states that June of 2003 was when the US military began offering compensation. In his book The Deserter's Tale, Joshua Key shares (p. 97) the story of how the process had no rhyme or reason but, at one point, $50 was given to one Iraqi male whose home had been damaged and bed burned when US illumination rounds "crashed into his home".
The violence continued today.
Bombings?
Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad bombing this morning that claimed 1 life (2 wounded), an afternoon Baghdad bombing that wounded four police officers, a third Baghdad bombing that left 3 dead, three Baghdad mortar attacks that left
11 dead (32 wounded), a Salaheddin truck bombing that killed 12 civilians ("and two houses were destroyed"), a Basra mortar attack that left four police officers wounded, and 3 Kirkuk bombings that left 2 dead (6 wounded). Reuters notes a Kirkuk roadside bombing which injured five police officers and a Mahmudiya mortar attack that claimed 2 lives (four wounded).
Shootings?
Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Kirkuk attack in which an Iraqi soldier was shot dead. The US military announced today that they killed three children while firing on what they hope were insurgents (one of whom they killed, two of whom escaped).
Corpses?
Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 15 corpses were discovered in Baghdad. Reuters notes six corpses discovered in Baquba.
Today, the US military announced: "Baghdad Soldier was killed when a patrol was attacked with small arms fire in the eastern section of the Iraqi capital May 31." This brought count of the total US forces killed in Iraq for the month of May to 125 (caution, there may be more announcements pending) making May the third worst month for US fatalities since the start of the illegal war in March of 2003. And the US military announced: "One MNC-I Soldier was killed by small arms fire at approximately noon June 1 in the vincinty of Zawiyah." This brings the total number of US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war to 3477.
Late yesterday, Reuters reported that 26 year-old AP camera person Saif M. Fakhry was shot dead in Baghdad on Thursday. Reporters Without Borders has issued a call. Noting that four journalists had been killed in five days (their call was written before news of Saif M. Fakhry's death was broadcast), they declare: "The Iraqi authorities must fulfil their duty to protect journalists. We call for the creation of a special force within the national police to identify the perpetrators and instigators of killings of journalists and to organise awareness campaigns about the protection of journalists for all the Iraqi security forces and for the public. To help the investigators, a witness protection programme should also be set up with the help of countries in the region." Organize awareness campaigns among Iraqi forces? Drop back to the January 25th snapshot: "This 'fine' Iraqi military that al-Maliki intends to turn loose on homes and schools includes some real thugs as evidenced by incident reported this morning by Damien Cave and James Glanz (New York Times): 'One Iraqi soldier in the alley pointed his rifle at an American reporter and pulled the trigger. There was only a click, the weapon had no ammunition. The soldier laughed at his joke'."
Meanwhile, in news that is sure to soften ultimate War Pornographer Michael Gordon's war on, CBS and AP report: "U.S. military officers tell CBS News the troop surge, which has not reached full strength, stands no chance of succeeding by September." Which is why, yesterday, the military sent out flacks attempting to reset the clocks and take the pressure off the upcoming September progress report.
PBS' NOW with David Brancaccio has interviewed Cindy Sheehan about her decision to pull back currently ("We're going to pull back and regroup and figure out a better way to come at this," Sheehan tells Brancacio) and the interview can be streamed here or you can catch it via YouTube. In addition, they offer Shron Clemons sharing his poetry (written while in the Sheridan Correctional Center of Illinois) at YouTube here.
Also on Cindy Sheehan, Laura Flanders (writing at Common Dreams) notes:
Two years later, Sheehan's pushed another question into the public glare. Quitting the Democratic Party and resigning from the front ranks of the US anti-war movement, Sheehan said out loud what hundreds of Democratic voters have been muttering: Democrats in Congress -who do you think you're working for?
In a letter to Democratic leaders shortly after they permitted a vote in Congress that approved $120 billion more for war, Sheehan wrote: "There is absolutely no sane or defensible reason for you to hand Bloody King George more money to condemn more of our brave, tired, and damaged soldiers and the people of Iraq to more death and carnage."
The president's never been more unpopular, nor has his Iraq war. Yet a majority of Democrats in both houses voted "aye" to keep the funding flowing.
Speaking with me on Air America Radio soon afterwards, Sheehan called it a betrayal. "Before they came into power they told me it was because they were in the minority. Now it's because they're the majority? What stakes do they have in keeping this occupation going?" Given the choice of funding an unpopular war or being accused by the right wing vitriol machine of "abandoning the troops," 86 Democrats in the House and all but 14 in the Senate voted to sacrifice more troops. Sheehan called that playing "party politics with human lives."
Laura Flanders is the host of RadioNation with Laura Flanders which now airs at one p.m. Sundays on Air America Radio, XM satellite radio and streams online.
In other news, Saturday from 10:00 am until noon (PST), KPFA will broadcast a Pacifica Radio and Free Speech Radio News special hosted by Sonali Kolhatkar (host of KPFK's
Uprising) and Dalia Hashad (attorney, the USA program director for Amnesty International and one of the co-hosts of WBAI's Law and Disorder). The special will address the new Senate bill on immigration which is due to be voted on shortly and "present challenging interviews with lawmakers, and look at global dynamics that lead to migration and Europe's own crackdown on immigration."
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 7th, he will discuss his book with Amy Goodman at The New School, Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, beginning at 7:00 pm (doors open at 6:15). Admission is $5 per person and students (with ID) can attend for free. Pilger will sign copies of his book afterwards and Amy Goodman will sign copies of her latest book (written with her brother David Goodman) Static. "For ticket information, contact (212) 229-5488 or boxoffice@newschool.edu. For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, click here or e-mail pilgerny@gmail.com." 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.
iraq
iraq veterans against the war
kpfakris welch
living room
camilo mejia
matthew rothschild
the washington postann scott tyson
john catalinotto
the new york timesmichael kamber
sonali kolhatkardalia hashad
law and disorderwbai
danny schechter
laura flandersradionation with laura flanders
pbs nowfree speech radio news
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Marjorie Cohn, Trish Schuh
I was all set to right about a guest on Flashpoints and then she lost me. She said Pelosi needs to come out strong on the rights of Palestinians -- so far, no problem -- "not just on Iraq." Forget it. You're on your own now, woman. Nancy Pelosi hasn't come out strong on Iraq. If you don't know that, we'll pay some attention. If your wording was poor, too damn bad. You turned me off and I logged on just to write about your org and the actions. Not now.
To steal from Mike, "Kiss my Irish-American ass." I do care about the issue but if I don't know your group or your action, you don't need to shine a light of ignorance on yourself. (And I'm being very kind by calling it ignorance.)
I'm serious, I logged on early because I wanted to blog about it and was even going to say, "I'll see you there." But not now.
Iraq's too important to me to recommend people who don't know what they're talking about (or else how to convey it).
Trish Schuh's "World Press Freedom in the Eyes & Ears of the Beholder" (NYC Indymedia):
UNITED NATIONS- On the 14th Anniversary of World Press Freedom Day celebrated in May 3, UNESCO hosted an event for journalists called "Press Freedom, Safety of Journalists and Impunity." Under Article 1 of its Constitution, UNESCO is the only United Nations agency with a mandate to defend freedom of expression and press freedom.
United Nations Correspondent Association President Tuyet J. Nguyen spoke about the life-threatening danger faced by journalists covering such war zones as Rwanda and Iraq where the media is controlled by special interests or armed political parties.
Mr. Georges Malbrunot of France's neocon Le Figaro spoke of newsgathering under various "vicious surveillance" states- all Arab- and starting with Syria. In contrast, Malbrunot's embedding with American forces in Iraq was "not a bad solution", but opened embeddees to paranoid Arab charges of being "a spy...Its one of the major blames addressed to the foreign press today... Of course this blame is 99.9% wrong, but in the minds of these people who suffer from "conspiracy theory" this accusation is serious" and can cost a journalist his life. "There is alot of work to do to convince these groups that the journalist is not a spy." Malbrunot added that it is the work of Muslim Imams, scholars, leaders etc to persuade their Muslim flock of this fact... "Only then will the fate of the global war against terror be dramatically changed."
This writer asked the panel if journalists themselves could ever be partly responsible for such suspicions? Citing CNN's Anderson Cooper, who admitted spending his earlier summers working for the CIA: "Doesn't this kind of moonlighting put other journalists at risk?"
No response from the panel.
Representing half a million media professionals around the world on behalf of the International Federation of Journalists was Judith Matloff, a Professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and a member of the International News Safety Institute. Professor Matloff implored the international community to uphold UN Security Council Resolution 1738 which prohibits the killing and targeting of media, and protects free speech and freedom of the press globally.
In a followup conversation by telephone on May 25, I asked Prof Matloff for her opinion on how UNSCR 1738 applies to Lebanon's Al Manar TV and the LMG communications network- Lebanese media outlets bombed by Israel during the 2006 war, and officially censored as a "terrorist organization" by the US Congress.
Regarding this unprecedented, landmark free speech/censorship law, Ivy League academic Matloff said she was "unfamiliar with these situations" and refused to comment on Middle East issues. "I am an Africa specialist".
But wasn't free speech protected equally around the world under Res 1738? In the Middle East, as well as in Africa? Being a media expert, could she comment on what a law equating the media with "terrorism" could mean for freedom of the press? Concurrent with Bush's admitted deliberate bombing of Al Jazeera in Afghanistan and Iraq?
"I never heard of that," Matloff said.
With her credentials, shouldn't such Katrina-scale censorship have caught her eye?
Or perhaps she could assess how the mainstream media's advocacy of falsehoods promoted an illegal war in Iraq? "The New York Times has apologized," she said, referring to a full page 'mea culpa ad'. But isn't the NYT repeating the same misleading tactics to promote a next war in Iran?
With this and similar questions, Matloff responded like a true press "pro": avoiding ethical implications, defending her product- the status quo, and referring most answers to "other supervisors" or experts. Her refrain of "I don't know", "don't remember", "can't comment" captured the essence of a White House Press Briefing.
As a trainer of America's next generation of government "privatized propaganda contractors," (tomorrow's 'Mercenary Press') Matloff diverted the subject, passed the buck, and expertly earned her tenure...
On Press Freedom Day I spoke briefly to New York Times correspondent Warren Hoge about the media, Iraq and World Press Freedom Day.
Q: Its World Press Freedom Day and I just wanted to ask if you have any comments about The New York Times and their reporting in the runup to the Iraq War, and if you feel any kind of responsibility?
A: I can't talk about that- we've already said everything about that to be said in the paper, and I really don't want to add to it. I mean, The New York Times- more than most newspapers- has absolutely admitted what we thought was faulty and what was not. There's just nothing I can add to that at all. And I certainly don't want to talk about that on
Press Freedom Day when our thoughts are with Alan Johnston and other journalists that are being killed.
Q: Well my thoughts are also with the Iraqis. There are half a million dead- thanks in part to
your newspaper-
A: Oh come on.
Q: Your newspaper was one of the primary advocates for the war-
A: Oh come on, I can't talk to you-
Q: Your newspaper was primary- yes it was- Judith Miller got a security clearance from Donald Rumsfeld, sir-
A: The New York Times is not responsible for any dead Iraqis. I won't listen to that-
Q: None of the other American journalists but Judith Miller from your paper got a security
clearance from the US Defense Secretary himself. How is this different from working for the government?
A: You are are defiling Press Freedom Day- Shut up! This is about Press Freedom, this is not about defiling the Press. We've just come back from a demonstration for Alan Johnston for journalists being killed and that's what this day is about- Press Freedom.
Perhaps BBC World News Editor Jon Williams best summarized the outcome of shutting up the press: "We must not stand by and allow the intimidation of journalists- wherever it happens. If we do, we will pay a heavy price... There will be no eyes or ears telling us what's going on. We won't have the insight from those able to make sense of it."
But then, that may be just how the Powers That Be really want it.
(c) Trish Schuh
Okay, if you're sick of the Bully Boy shredding the Constitution, you aren't alone. And one of the finest writers on that topic is Marjorie Cohn (president of the National Lawyers Guild). This is from her "The Unitary King George" (CounterPunch):
As the nation focused on whether Congress would exercise its constitutional duty to cut funding for the war, Bush quietly issued an unconstitutional bombshell that went virtually unnoticed by the corporate media.
The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, signed on May 9, 2007, would place all governmental power in the hands of the President and effectively abolish the checks and balances in the Constitution.
If a "catastrophic emergency"--which could include a terrorist attack or a natural disaster--occurs, Bush's new directive says: "The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government."
What about the other two co-equal branches of government? The directive throws them a bone by speaking of a "cooperative effort" among the three branches, "coordinated by the President, as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches and with proper respect for the constitutional separation of powers." The Vice-President would help to implement the plans.
"Comity," however, means courtesy, and the President would decide what kind of respect for the other two branches of government would be "proper." This Presidential Directive is a blatant power grab by Bush to institutionalize "the unitary executive."
A seemingly innocuous phrase, the unitary executive theory actually represents a radical, ultra rightwing interpretation of the powers of the presidency. Championed by the conservative Federalist Society, the unitary executive doctrine gathers all power in the hands of the President and insulates him from any oversight by the congressional or judicial branches.
In a November 2000 speech to the Federalist Society, then Judge Samuel Alito said the Constitution "makes the president the head of the executive branch, but it does more than that. The president has not just some executive powers, but the executive power -- the whole thing."
These "unitarians" claim that all federal agencies, even those constitutionally created by Congress, are beholden to the Chief Executive, that is, the President. This means that Bush could disband agencies like the Federal Communications Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Reserve Board, etc., if they weren't to his liking.
Indeed, Bush signed an executive order stating that each federal agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee. Consumer advocates were concerned that this directive was aimed at weakening the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The unitary executive dogma represents audacious presidential overreaching into the constitutional province of the other two branches of government.
This doctrine took shape within the Bush administration shortly after 9/11. On September 25, 2001, former deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo used the words "unitary executive" in a memo he wrote for the White House: "The centralization of authority in the president alone is particularly crucial in matters of national defense, war, and foreign policy, where a unitary executive can evaluate threats, consider policy choices, and mobilize national resources with a speed and energy that is far superior to any other branch." Six weeks later, Bush began using that phrase in his signing statements.
As of December 22, 2006, Bush had used the words "unitary executive" 145 times in his signing statements and executive orders. Yoo, one of the chief architects of Bush's doctrine of unfettered executive power, wrote memoranda advising Bush that because he was commander in chief, he could make war any time he thought there was a threat, and he didn't have to comply with the Geneva Conventions.
In a 2005 debate with Notre Dame professor Doug Cassel, Yoo argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering that a young child of a suspect in custody be tortured, even by crushing the child's testicles.
And if that alarms as it should, you need to read the thing in full, to the conclusion. John Yoo, if I remember right, is in my area now. He's been given a position at a supposed institution of higher learning. He should be behind bars. Impeachment's the only real answer. If you missed it the Pig doesn't believe in impeachment, he thinks the Bully Boy needs to be repudiated. Didn't C.I. say not long ago we should repudiate the Pig? (Yes.) Tell you what, GOP voter and twice busted for online trolling of young girls (not women), when your legal expertise is needed, we'll call you. Like when Michael Jackson's in another kiddie porn case. Then we'll all want to hear your legal advice. I think Katrina vanden Heuvel has so stroke Pig's ego that he thinks the rest of us are spellbound lackeys as well. We're not. Go away Pig, go far, far away.
Like a true Pig, he refers to people who ask (not even advocate) but ask about the need to impeach as "emotional." He's a cool customer, that Pig. Probably barely breaks a sweat when he's i.m.ing and typing, "Do you have hairs down there yet?" Exactly who left the sty door open and allowed the Pig to cozy up the left? Could someone answer that question?
The Nation is so pathetic -- offering his 'books' and columns -- and you sort of get the feeling they'd been outside Jacko's last trial with a sign reading, "You're Still Our Thriller!"
When Pig's writing about impeachment (to diss it, but still), it's obvious that, even to him, his non-stop Iran theories have gotten old. The left should have cut that non-lefty loose a long time ago. It's amazing that some feel the need to draw a line between themselves and ANSWER, for instance, but they'll hold hands with the Pig. (Don't they even wonder about whether he washed them? Or where they've been?)
Be sure to read Rebecca's "5 men on the court think they know best ... about women." Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
May 31, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the US military attempts to bully a soldier on his way out (14 days before he leaves, they set up a kangaroo court), the US military announces the death of more US soldiers, Joe Lieberman takes his sour charm to Baghdad and avoids the truth (again), and more.
Starting with Adam Kokesh who is currently in the Individual Ready Reserve through June 18th and had the status of honorably discharged. What concerns us today (we noted this on May 23rd), and we better go slowly because AP gets lost on the details, is what's happening today. In March, Iraq Veterans Against the War took part in DC actions to bring the war home. Adam Kokesh participated in that action wearing fatigues. Following that, the military contacted him and we have to say "the military" because the coward who e-mailed him is too chicken sh*t to be known publicly. This is the point at which AP, in a throwback to their THEY-ALL-WALKED-OUT! Pearl Jam coverage, misses the point.
They leap to "Kokesh, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, responded with an obscenity." Major Chicken Sh*t wrote an e-mail brimming with sarcasm "I know this matter pales in comparsion with recent geopolitical events of which you have shown an interest" being only one example. And "I have a desire to let a fellow Marine know about his obligations and duty" may be folksy but it's not military standard (which is why Kokesh and Tina Richards both wondered if the e-mail was genuine). On line 43 of Kokesh's 44 lined e-mail, the f-word is used. AP reporting that Kokesh was sent "a letter" and that he "responded with an obscenity" is bad reporting. No "letter" was exchanged by either side. (Though an official letter, registered, should have been sent through the United States postal service by the military if they are investigating anyone in IRR.) And Kokesh did not respond to "a letter" with "an obscenity." He responded at length (44 lines). And let's just repeat that point outside of parentheticals: If the US military is investigating someone, the US military's means of contact needs to be official, written in an official manner -- not folksy, sarcastic e-mail. (Again, Kokesh showed the e-mail to Cloy Richards mother Tina and they both wondered about its authenticity.)
Kevin Zeese (Democracy Rising) observes, "The implications of this hearing may be far reaching, as the prosecution of a member of the inactive reserves under these circumstances is unprecedented. At stake is the right of freedom of speech for the hundreds of thousands of members of the Inactive Ready Reserve, as well as the nation's right to get the unbiased truth out of Iraq. Last week, the prosecuting attorney, Captain Sibert, offered Kokesh a general discharge. To accept this would be to allow the Marines to say that members of the IRR do not have freedom of speech, so naturally he declined." The AP notes one of Kokesh's attorneys, Mike "Lebowitz [,] said Kokesh technically is a civilian unless recalled to active duty and had the right to be disrespectful in his response to the officer. He called the proceedings against Kokesh highly unusual and said the military usually seeks to change a veteran's discharge status only if a crime has been committed."
Kevin Zeese reports, "The hearing will be held on June 4, at the Marine Corps Mobilization Command in Kansas City, MO. Kokesh requested the hearing be held closer to Washington, DC, his current residence and a much more convenient location for the witnesses to the event in question, which happened in Washington, but was denied. He has the right to call witnesses, but has to provide for their transportation." Dave Helling (The Kansas City Star) notes, "If the tribunal answers yes, Kokesh will face the punishment a Marine Corps deputy commander has recommended in his case -- immediate discharge from the individual ready reserves, and the reduction of his original honorable active duty discharge to an other-than-honorable characterization of service. Kokesh is fighting both sanctions, he says, because he wants to protect the rights of others in the military to argue against the war." David Montgomery (Washington Post) notes that there are two others the military is going after -- one can't be determined, the other is "Liam Madden, 22, who spent seven months on the ground in Iraq, last fall helped launch the Appeal for Redress, a Web site where military personnel can directly appeal to Congress to support withdrawal of troops. Madden, of Boston, is accused of wearing his caouflage shirt at an antiwar march in Washington in January. He also is accused of making disloyal statement during a speech in February in New York, when he says he wasn't wearing his uniform." June 1st (tomorrow), there will be a press conference and Send off Rally at Union Station (in DC) for Adam Kokesh and then the Yellow Rose of Texas Peace Bus will head for Kansas City, MO.
As the military continues to crack down the war resistance movement within the US military continues to grow and that includes people such as Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake 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 where the military wants you to forget that 2 US soldiers remain missing since May 12 and the press is happy to distract you from that reality by heavy panting over the missing 5 British contractors. Reuters reports that "an Iraqi husband and wife employed by the US embassy in Baghdad" were kidnapped last week and the Islamic State in Iraq is claiming credit for the kidnapping and stating that they killed the couple Monday. They were Iraqis so there was apparently no need to send 9,000 US service members to look for them. But there is plenty of time for US service members to be used searching for 5 British citizens who elected to go to Iraq to profit from the illegal war. For the record, when the search for the then-3 missing US soldiers was going on it was billed as a US and Iraq joint-operation -- no British soldiers were brought up from, for instance, Basra to help in that search. But this is about Big Business so everyone has to drop what they were doing and go searching. Not unlike when the death of mercenaries led to the attacks on Falluja.
As if that wasn't bad enough, US service members also had to endure a visit with Senator I Will Say Anything And Sell At Anyone Just To Keep My Senate Seat. Though this century's Zell Miller has yet to embrace the GOP designation, he's all Repube. Joe Lieberman (who destroyed the 2000 recounts in his vanity appearance on NBC's Meet the Press) went to Iraq where he did and will do more damage. Lelia Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) reports the water mark piece on Lieberman's visit. After a "lunch of roast beef and turkey sandwiches" No-Mentum, Joe-Mentum had the need to ride this photo op for all it was worth and used it sell the illegal war (violence apparently only bothers on movie screens and in rap lyrics) by saying "To pull out would be a disaster." That might have worked on his two wives (and explain the three children) but none of the rest of us are willing to let Jo-Jo get limp and drippy on top of us for one minutes and six seconds. Jo-Jo then used the soldiers to hide from reality, "They're not Pollyannaish about his. They know it's not going to be solved in a day or a month." Too bad for Jo-Jo's photo op, Fadel showed up before the senator and heard the soldiers. David Williams had "two note cards" with questions from "30 other soldiers" and the biggest one: "When are we going to get out of here." Williams told Fadel that returning for his tour in Iraq mean that he missed the birth of his child and "I didn't want to come back. . . . We're waiting to get blown up." Will Hedin tells Fadel, "We're not making any progress. It just seems like we drive around and wait to get shot at."
Then Jo-Jo crawled in with an announcement of "To pull out would be a disaster" and other assorted ass wipings. Is it any wonder the soldiers didn't speak frankly? No, and it's no surprise that Joe Lieberman can't see reality even when it sits down next to him.
Meanwhile Donald C. Hudson Jr. pens an op-ed from Iraq (Clarksville Online): ". . . I have been serving our country's military actively for the last three years. I am currently deployed to Baghdad on Forward Operating Base Loyalty, where I have been for the last four and a half months. I came here as part of the first wave of this so called 'troop surge', but so far it has effectively done nothing to quell insurgent violence. I have seen the rise in violence between the Sunni and Shiite. This country is in the middle of a civil war that has been on going since the seventh century. Why are we here when this country still to date does not want us here? Why does our president's personal agenda consume him so much, that he can not pay attention wo what is really going on here? Let me tell you a story. On May 10, I was out on a convoy mission to move barriers from a market to a joint security station. It was no different from any other night, except the improvised explosive device that hit our convoy this time, actually pierced through the armor of one of our trucks. The truck was immediately engulfed in flames, the driver lost control and wrecked the truck into one of the buildings lining the street. I was the driver of the lead truck in our convoy; the fifth out of six was the one that got hit. All I could hear over the radio was a friend from the sixth truck screaming that the fifth truck was burning up real bad, and that they needed fire extinguishers real bad. So I turned my truck around and drove through concrete barriers to get to the burning truck as quickly as I could. I stopped 30 meters short of the burning truck, got out and ripped my fire extinguisher out of its holder, and ran to the truck. I ran past another friend of mine on the way to the burning truck, he was screaming something but I could not make it out. I opened the driver's door to the truck and was immediately overcome by the flames. I sprayed the extinguisher into the door, and then I saw my roommate's leg. He was the gunner of that truck. His leg was across the driver's seat that was on fire and the rest of his body was further in the truck. My fire extinguisher died and I climbed into the truck to attempt to save him. I got to where his head was, in the back passenger-side seat. I grabbed his shoulders and attempted to pull him from the truck out the driver's door. I finally got him out of the truck head first. His face had been badly burned. His leg was horribly wounded. We placed him on a spine board and did our best to attempt 'Buddy Aid'. We heard him trying to gasp for air. He had a pulse and was breathing, but was not responsive. He was placed into a truck and rushed to the 'Green Zone', where he died within the hour. His name was Michael K. Frank. He was 36 years old. He was a great friend of mine and a mentor to most of us younger soldiers here. Now I am still here in this country wondering why, and having to pick up the pieces of what is left of my friend in our room. I would just like to know what is the true reason we are here? This country poses no threat to our own. So why must we waste the lives of good men on a country that does not give a damn about itself? Most of my friends here share my views, but do not have the courage to say anything." Nobody tell Joe Lieberman about that -- he still thinks because he went on a heavily guarded tour he knows, really knows, reality in Iraq.
Editor & Publisher notes actual reality: a new Gallup poll asked participants what they would tell Bully Boy about Iraq if they had 15 minutes? 565: "focus on getting out of Iraq," 6% own your mistakes and admit them, 7% work with the UN and study groups. And representing the mentally unbalanced, the Joe Liebermans and gag writers everywhere, 4% would tell the Bully to stay in Iraq. (I'm sure a large number would voice support for sending Bully Boy to serve in Iraq, but that wasn't asked.)
In Iraq today . . .
Bombings?
Sinan Salaheddin (AP) reports that a bombing in Falluja killed "as many as 25 people" and noted a funeral procession ("some of the women wailing and beating their chests, marched through Sadr City") in response to a "U.S. helicopter strike before dawn" that killed two people and which the US military denies but Iraqi police confirm. Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports three people wounded in a roadside Baghdad bombing, a Ramadi truck bombing that killed one person (wounded 13), and a Kirkuk roadside bombing that wounded four. Reuters notes that the Ramadi bombing's death toll has risen to 5, a Baghdad car bombing wounded 2 Iraqi adults, 1 child and 8 US soldiers, 2 roadside bombs in Tal Afar resulted in the death of 1 Iraqi soldier and five people wounded (four police officers, 1 Iraqi soldier), and a Tal Afar rocket attack killed one person.
Shootings?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a police officer was shot dead in Baghdad, one police officer was wounded by "a sniper" in Tikrit and "Dr. Muhammad Aziz, who works as a lecturer at Fine Arts Academy in Basra" was shot dead. Reuters reports a home invasion in Iskandariya left tribal leader Ubaid al-Masoudi and his wife injured.
Corpses?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 29 corpses were discovered in Baghdad, 1 in Zubair, and 3 corpses discovered in Baquba. Reuters reports five corpses were discovered in Mosul.
Today the US military announced: "While conducting combat operations northwest of the Iraqi capital, a Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldier was seriously wounded when an improvised explosive device detonated May 28. The Soldier was taken to the Combat Support Hospital but died of wounds May 29." And they announced: "While conducting combat operations in the southwest section of the Iraqi capital, two Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldiers were killed when an improvised explosive device detonated May 30." The three deaths bring the number of US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war to 3474 thus far and May's toll to 123 thus far. Only April and November of 2004 have had higher monthly tolls (135 and 137). The four year mark was passed in March and, along with boots on the ground, the only things escalating are death tolls, chaos and violence.
Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan's decision to take time to recharge and refocus continues to be noted. Amy Branham (Amy's Head) writes, "I don't know of anyone who could stand up under the pressure that Cindy has been in, who could stand up to the nastiness, the lies, the ignorance, the threats, the mind and body numbing travel schedule. All I do know is that I'm glad to see my friend take a break a while. And I do agree with her when she says that if the American people don't step up to end this war, we deserve what we get." Danny Schechter (writing at Common Dreams) observes:
Personally, I know how she feels. When I made the film, WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception) challenging the media role in the war, many anti-war groups paid lip service to its message and then did little or nothing to promote it. Perhaps that's why some activists call MoveOn.org "Walkon.org" when it comes to the issues of media deception or for that matter any issues that also holds Democrats and corporate media institutions accountable.It is so much easier and emotionally self-righteous to attack easier targets like the Republicans and Bush White House.Lets face it, the media has not really changed and nor have many Democrats. They believe in convenient truths and don't recognize the importance of demanding media integrity. Don't forget that most of the media coverage was hostile to Democrats setting a timeline and many pundits pressured them to relent in the name of "pragmatism," patriotism, or getting the pork they wanted for their own districts.I don't think Cindy has really resigned from politics. But she is upset and has a right to be. She has lost so much and is also apparently in debt--something this director of the film In Debt We Trust can relate toSometimes I wish I could resign from the media reform movement that I helped organize because it has been so hard for us to get support for Mediachannel.org, our fabulous media and democracy online network now in its 7th year. We will have to close our doors in a month unless we can find the funding to keep our modest operation alive.
And remember 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 7th, he will discuss his book with Amy Goodman at The New School, Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, beginning at 7:00 pm (doors open at 6:15). Admission is $5 per person and students (with ID) can attend for free. Pilger will sign copies of his book afterwards and Amy Goodman will sign copies of her latest book (written with her brother David Goodman) Static. "For ticket information, contact (212) 229-5488 or boxoffice@newschool.edu. For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, click here or e-mail pilgerny@gmail.com."
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.htm
Presented 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.
iraq
iraq veterans against the war
danny schechter
the washington postmcclatchy newspapers
To steal from Mike, "Kiss my Irish-American ass." I do care about the issue but if I don't know your group or your action, you don't need to shine a light of ignorance on yourself. (And I'm being very kind by calling it ignorance.)
I'm serious, I logged on early because I wanted to blog about it and was even going to say, "I'll see you there." But not now.
Iraq's too important to me to recommend people who don't know what they're talking about (or else how to convey it).
Trish Schuh's "World Press Freedom in the Eyes & Ears of the Beholder" (NYC Indymedia):
UNITED NATIONS- On the 14th Anniversary of World Press Freedom Day celebrated in May 3, UNESCO hosted an event for journalists called "Press Freedom, Safety of Journalists and Impunity." Under Article 1 of its Constitution, UNESCO is the only United Nations agency with a mandate to defend freedom of expression and press freedom.
United Nations Correspondent Association President Tuyet J. Nguyen spoke about the life-threatening danger faced by journalists covering such war zones as Rwanda and Iraq where the media is controlled by special interests or armed political parties.
Mr. Georges Malbrunot of France's neocon Le Figaro spoke of newsgathering under various "vicious surveillance" states- all Arab- and starting with Syria. In contrast, Malbrunot's embedding with American forces in Iraq was "not a bad solution", but opened embeddees to paranoid Arab charges of being "a spy...Its one of the major blames addressed to the foreign press today... Of course this blame is 99.9% wrong, but in the minds of these people who suffer from "conspiracy theory" this accusation is serious" and can cost a journalist his life. "There is alot of work to do to convince these groups that the journalist is not a spy." Malbrunot added that it is the work of Muslim Imams, scholars, leaders etc to persuade their Muslim flock of this fact... "Only then will the fate of the global war against terror be dramatically changed."
This writer asked the panel if journalists themselves could ever be partly responsible for such suspicions? Citing CNN's Anderson Cooper, who admitted spending his earlier summers working for the CIA: "Doesn't this kind of moonlighting put other journalists at risk?"
No response from the panel.
Representing half a million media professionals around the world on behalf of the International Federation of Journalists was Judith Matloff, a Professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and a member of the International News Safety Institute. Professor Matloff implored the international community to uphold UN Security Council Resolution 1738 which prohibits the killing and targeting of media, and protects free speech and freedom of the press globally.
In a followup conversation by telephone on May 25, I asked Prof Matloff for her opinion on how UNSCR 1738 applies to Lebanon's Al Manar TV and the LMG communications network- Lebanese media outlets bombed by Israel during the 2006 war, and officially censored as a "terrorist organization" by the US Congress.
Regarding this unprecedented, landmark free speech/censorship law, Ivy League academic Matloff said she was "unfamiliar with these situations" and refused to comment on Middle East issues. "I am an Africa specialist".
But wasn't free speech protected equally around the world under Res 1738? In the Middle East, as well as in Africa? Being a media expert, could she comment on what a law equating the media with "terrorism" could mean for freedom of the press? Concurrent with Bush's admitted deliberate bombing of Al Jazeera in Afghanistan and Iraq?
"I never heard of that," Matloff said.
With her credentials, shouldn't such Katrina-scale censorship have caught her eye?
Or perhaps she could assess how the mainstream media's advocacy of falsehoods promoted an illegal war in Iraq? "The New York Times has apologized," she said, referring to a full page 'mea culpa ad'. But isn't the NYT repeating the same misleading tactics to promote a next war in Iran?
With this and similar questions, Matloff responded like a true press "pro": avoiding ethical implications, defending her product- the status quo, and referring most answers to "other supervisors" or experts. Her refrain of "I don't know", "don't remember", "can't comment" captured the essence of a White House Press Briefing.
As a trainer of America's next generation of government "privatized propaganda contractors," (tomorrow's 'Mercenary Press') Matloff diverted the subject, passed the buck, and expertly earned her tenure...
On Press Freedom Day I spoke briefly to New York Times correspondent Warren Hoge about the media, Iraq and World Press Freedom Day.
Q: Its World Press Freedom Day and I just wanted to ask if you have any comments about The New York Times and their reporting in the runup to the Iraq War, and if you feel any kind of responsibility?
A: I can't talk about that- we've already said everything about that to be said in the paper, and I really don't want to add to it. I mean, The New York Times- more than most newspapers- has absolutely admitted what we thought was faulty and what was not. There's just nothing I can add to that at all. And I certainly don't want to talk about that on
Press Freedom Day when our thoughts are with Alan Johnston and other journalists that are being killed.
Q: Well my thoughts are also with the Iraqis. There are half a million dead- thanks in part to
your newspaper-
A: Oh come on.
Q: Your newspaper was one of the primary advocates for the war-
A: Oh come on, I can't talk to you-
Q: Your newspaper was primary- yes it was- Judith Miller got a security clearance from Donald Rumsfeld, sir-
A: The New York Times is not responsible for any dead Iraqis. I won't listen to that-
Q: None of the other American journalists but Judith Miller from your paper got a security
clearance from the US Defense Secretary himself. How is this different from working for the government?
A: You are are defiling Press Freedom Day- Shut up! This is about Press Freedom, this is not about defiling the Press. We've just come back from a demonstration for Alan Johnston for journalists being killed and that's what this day is about- Press Freedom.
Perhaps BBC World News Editor Jon Williams best summarized the outcome of shutting up the press: "We must not stand by and allow the intimidation of journalists- wherever it happens. If we do, we will pay a heavy price... There will be no eyes or ears telling us what's going on. We won't have the insight from those able to make sense of it."
But then, that may be just how the Powers That Be really want it.
(c) Trish Schuh
Okay, if you're sick of the Bully Boy shredding the Constitution, you aren't alone. And one of the finest writers on that topic is Marjorie Cohn (president of the National Lawyers Guild). This is from her "The Unitary King George" (CounterPunch):
As the nation focused on whether Congress would exercise its constitutional duty to cut funding for the war, Bush quietly issued an unconstitutional bombshell that went virtually unnoticed by the corporate media.
The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, signed on May 9, 2007, would place all governmental power in the hands of the President and effectively abolish the checks and balances in the Constitution.
If a "catastrophic emergency"--which could include a terrorist attack or a natural disaster--occurs, Bush's new directive says: "The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government."
What about the other two co-equal branches of government? The directive throws them a bone by speaking of a "cooperative effort" among the three branches, "coordinated by the President, as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches and with proper respect for the constitutional separation of powers." The Vice-President would help to implement the plans.
"Comity," however, means courtesy, and the President would decide what kind of respect for the other two branches of government would be "proper." This Presidential Directive is a blatant power grab by Bush to institutionalize "the unitary executive."
A seemingly innocuous phrase, the unitary executive theory actually represents a radical, ultra rightwing interpretation of the powers of the presidency. Championed by the conservative Federalist Society, the unitary executive doctrine gathers all power in the hands of the President and insulates him from any oversight by the congressional or judicial branches.
In a November 2000 speech to the Federalist Society, then Judge Samuel Alito said the Constitution "makes the president the head of the executive branch, but it does more than that. The president has not just some executive powers, but the executive power -- the whole thing."
These "unitarians" claim that all federal agencies, even those constitutionally created by Congress, are beholden to the Chief Executive, that is, the President. This means that Bush could disband agencies like the Federal Communications Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Reserve Board, etc., if they weren't to his liking.
Indeed, Bush signed an executive order stating that each federal agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee. Consumer advocates were concerned that this directive was aimed at weakening the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The unitary executive dogma represents audacious presidential overreaching into the constitutional province of the other two branches of government.
This doctrine took shape within the Bush administration shortly after 9/11. On September 25, 2001, former deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo used the words "unitary executive" in a memo he wrote for the White House: "The centralization of authority in the president alone is particularly crucial in matters of national defense, war, and foreign policy, where a unitary executive can evaluate threats, consider policy choices, and mobilize national resources with a speed and energy that is far superior to any other branch." Six weeks later, Bush began using that phrase in his signing statements.
As of December 22, 2006, Bush had used the words "unitary executive" 145 times in his signing statements and executive orders. Yoo, one of the chief architects of Bush's doctrine of unfettered executive power, wrote memoranda advising Bush that because he was commander in chief, he could make war any time he thought there was a threat, and he didn't have to comply with the Geneva Conventions.
In a 2005 debate with Notre Dame professor Doug Cassel, Yoo argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering that a young child of a suspect in custody be tortured, even by crushing the child's testicles.
And if that alarms as it should, you need to read the thing in full, to the conclusion. John Yoo, if I remember right, is in my area now. He's been given a position at a supposed institution of higher learning. He should be behind bars. Impeachment's the only real answer. If you missed it the Pig doesn't believe in impeachment, he thinks the Bully Boy needs to be repudiated. Didn't C.I. say not long ago we should repudiate the Pig? (Yes.) Tell you what, GOP voter and twice busted for online trolling of young girls (not women), when your legal expertise is needed, we'll call you. Like when Michael Jackson's in another kiddie porn case. Then we'll all want to hear your legal advice. I think Katrina vanden Heuvel has so stroke Pig's ego that he thinks the rest of us are spellbound lackeys as well. We're not. Go away Pig, go far, far away.
Like a true Pig, he refers to people who ask (not even advocate) but ask about the need to impeach as "emotional." He's a cool customer, that Pig. Probably barely breaks a sweat when he's i.m.ing and typing, "Do you have hairs down there yet?" Exactly who left the sty door open and allowed the Pig to cozy up the left? Could someone answer that question?
The Nation is so pathetic -- offering his 'books' and columns -- and you sort of get the feeling they'd been outside Jacko's last trial with a sign reading, "You're Still Our Thriller!"
When Pig's writing about impeachment (to diss it, but still), it's obvious that, even to him, his non-stop Iran theories have gotten old. The left should have cut that non-lefty loose a long time ago. It's amazing that some feel the need to draw a line between themselves and ANSWER, for instance, but they'll hold hands with the Pig. (Don't they even wonder about whether he washed them? Or where they've been?)
Be sure to read Rebecca's "5 men on the court think they know best ... about women." Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
May 31, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the US military attempts to bully a soldier on his way out (14 days before he leaves, they set up a kangaroo court), the US military announces the death of more US soldiers, Joe Lieberman takes his sour charm to Baghdad and avoids the truth (again), and more.
Starting with Adam Kokesh who is currently in the Individual Ready Reserve through June 18th and had the status of honorably discharged. What concerns us today (we noted this on May 23rd), and we better go slowly because AP gets lost on the details, is what's happening today. In March, Iraq Veterans Against the War took part in DC actions to bring the war home. Adam Kokesh participated in that action wearing fatigues. Following that, the military contacted him and we have to say "the military" because the coward who e-mailed him is too chicken sh*t to be known publicly. This is the point at which AP, in a throwback to their THEY-ALL-WALKED-OUT! Pearl Jam coverage, misses the point.
They leap to "Kokesh, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, responded with an obscenity." Major Chicken Sh*t wrote an e-mail brimming with sarcasm "I know this matter pales in comparsion with recent geopolitical events of which you have shown an interest" being only one example. And "I have a desire to let a fellow Marine know about his obligations and duty" may be folksy but it's not military standard (which is why Kokesh and Tina Richards both wondered if the e-mail was genuine). On line 43 of Kokesh's 44 lined e-mail, the f-word is used. AP reporting that Kokesh was sent "a letter" and that he "responded with an obscenity" is bad reporting. No "letter" was exchanged by either side. (Though an official letter, registered, should have been sent through the United States postal service by the military if they are investigating anyone in IRR.) And Kokesh did not respond to "a letter" with "an obscenity." He responded at length (44 lines). And let's just repeat that point outside of parentheticals: If the US military is investigating someone, the US military's means of contact needs to be official, written in an official manner -- not folksy, sarcastic e-mail. (Again, Kokesh showed the e-mail to Cloy Richards mother Tina and they both wondered about its authenticity.)
Kevin Zeese (Democracy Rising) observes, "The implications of this hearing may be far reaching, as the prosecution of a member of the inactive reserves under these circumstances is unprecedented. At stake is the right of freedom of speech for the hundreds of thousands of members of the Inactive Ready Reserve, as well as the nation's right to get the unbiased truth out of Iraq. Last week, the prosecuting attorney, Captain Sibert, offered Kokesh a general discharge. To accept this would be to allow the Marines to say that members of the IRR do not have freedom of speech, so naturally he declined." The AP notes one of Kokesh's attorneys, Mike "Lebowitz [,] said Kokesh technically is a civilian unless recalled to active duty and had the right to be disrespectful in his response to the officer. He called the proceedings against Kokesh highly unusual and said the military usually seeks to change a veteran's discharge status only if a crime has been committed."
Kevin Zeese reports, "The hearing will be held on June 4, at the Marine Corps Mobilization Command in Kansas City, MO. Kokesh requested the hearing be held closer to Washington, DC, his current residence and a much more convenient location for the witnesses to the event in question, which happened in Washington, but was denied. He has the right to call witnesses, but has to provide for their transportation." Dave Helling (The Kansas City Star) notes, "If the tribunal answers yes, Kokesh will face the punishment a Marine Corps deputy commander has recommended in his case -- immediate discharge from the individual ready reserves, and the reduction of his original honorable active duty discharge to an other-than-honorable characterization of service. Kokesh is fighting both sanctions, he says, because he wants to protect the rights of others in the military to argue against the war." David Montgomery (Washington Post) notes that there are two others the military is going after -- one can't be determined, the other is "Liam Madden, 22, who spent seven months on the ground in Iraq, last fall helped launch the Appeal for Redress, a Web site where military personnel can directly appeal to Congress to support withdrawal of troops. Madden, of Boston, is accused of wearing his caouflage shirt at an antiwar march in Washington in January. He also is accused of making disloyal statement during a speech in February in New York, when he says he wasn't wearing his uniform." June 1st (tomorrow), there will be a press conference and Send off Rally at Union Station (in DC) for Adam Kokesh and then the Yellow Rose of Texas Peace Bus will head for Kansas City, MO.
As the military continues to crack down the war resistance movement within the US military continues to grow and that includes people such as Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake 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 where the military wants you to forget that 2 US soldiers remain missing since May 12 and the press is happy to distract you from that reality by heavy panting over the missing 5 British contractors. Reuters reports that "an Iraqi husband and wife employed by the US embassy in Baghdad" were kidnapped last week and the Islamic State in Iraq is claiming credit for the kidnapping and stating that they killed the couple Monday. They were Iraqis so there was apparently no need to send 9,000 US service members to look for them. But there is plenty of time for US service members to be used searching for 5 British citizens who elected to go to Iraq to profit from the illegal war. For the record, when the search for the then-3 missing US soldiers was going on it was billed as a US and Iraq joint-operation -- no British soldiers were brought up from, for instance, Basra to help in that search. But this is about Big Business so everyone has to drop what they were doing and go searching. Not unlike when the death of mercenaries led to the attacks on Falluja.
As if that wasn't bad enough, US service members also had to endure a visit with Senator I Will Say Anything And Sell At Anyone Just To Keep My Senate Seat. Though this century's Zell Miller has yet to embrace the GOP designation, he's all Repube. Joe Lieberman (who destroyed the 2000 recounts in his vanity appearance on NBC's Meet the Press) went to Iraq where he did and will do more damage. Lelia Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) reports the water mark piece on Lieberman's visit. After a "lunch of roast beef and turkey sandwiches" No-Mentum, Joe-Mentum had the need to ride this photo op for all it was worth and used it sell the illegal war (violence apparently only bothers on movie screens and in rap lyrics) by saying "To pull out would be a disaster." That might have worked on his two wives (and explain the three children) but none of the rest of us are willing to let Jo-Jo get limp and drippy on top of us for one minutes and six seconds. Jo-Jo then used the soldiers to hide from reality, "They're not Pollyannaish about his. They know it's not going to be solved in a day or a month." Too bad for Jo-Jo's photo op, Fadel showed up before the senator and heard the soldiers. David Williams had "two note cards" with questions from "30 other soldiers" and the biggest one: "When are we going to get out of here." Williams told Fadel that returning for his tour in Iraq mean that he missed the birth of his child and "I didn't want to come back. . . . We're waiting to get blown up." Will Hedin tells Fadel, "We're not making any progress. It just seems like we drive around and wait to get shot at."
Then Jo-Jo crawled in with an announcement of "To pull out would be a disaster" and other assorted ass wipings. Is it any wonder the soldiers didn't speak frankly? No, and it's no surprise that Joe Lieberman can't see reality even when it sits down next to him.
Meanwhile Donald C. Hudson Jr. pens an op-ed from Iraq (Clarksville Online): ". . . I have been serving our country's military actively for the last three years. I am currently deployed to Baghdad on Forward Operating Base Loyalty, where I have been for the last four and a half months. I came here as part of the first wave of this so called 'troop surge', but so far it has effectively done nothing to quell insurgent violence. I have seen the rise in violence between the Sunni and Shiite. This country is in the middle of a civil war that has been on going since the seventh century. Why are we here when this country still to date does not want us here? Why does our president's personal agenda consume him so much, that he can not pay attention wo what is really going on here? Let me tell you a story. On May 10, I was out on a convoy mission to move barriers from a market to a joint security station. It was no different from any other night, except the improvised explosive device that hit our convoy this time, actually pierced through the armor of one of our trucks. The truck was immediately engulfed in flames, the driver lost control and wrecked the truck into one of the buildings lining the street. I was the driver of the lead truck in our convoy; the fifth out of six was the one that got hit. All I could hear over the radio was a friend from the sixth truck screaming that the fifth truck was burning up real bad, and that they needed fire extinguishers real bad. So I turned my truck around and drove through concrete barriers to get to the burning truck as quickly as I could. I stopped 30 meters short of the burning truck, got out and ripped my fire extinguisher out of its holder, and ran to the truck. I ran past another friend of mine on the way to the burning truck, he was screaming something but I could not make it out. I opened the driver's door to the truck and was immediately overcome by the flames. I sprayed the extinguisher into the door, and then I saw my roommate's leg. He was the gunner of that truck. His leg was across the driver's seat that was on fire and the rest of his body was further in the truck. My fire extinguisher died and I climbed into the truck to attempt to save him. I got to where his head was, in the back passenger-side seat. I grabbed his shoulders and attempted to pull him from the truck out the driver's door. I finally got him out of the truck head first. His face had been badly burned. His leg was horribly wounded. We placed him on a spine board and did our best to attempt 'Buddy Aid'. We heard him trying to gasp for air. He had a pulse and was breathing, but was not responsive. He was placed into a truck and rushed to the 'Green Zone', where he died within the hour. His name was Michael K. Frank. He was 36 years old. He was a great friend of mine and a mentor to most of us younger soldiers here. Now I am still here in this country wondering why, and having to pick up the pieces of what is left of my friend in our room. I would just like to know what is the true reason we are here? This country poses no threat to our own. So why must we waste the lives of good men on a country that does not give a damn about itself? Most of my friends here share my views, but do not have the courage to say anything." Nobody tell Joe Lieberman about that -- he still thinks because he went on a heavily guarded tour he knows, really knows, reality in Iraq.
Editor & Publisher notes actual reality: a new Gallup poll asked participants what they would tell Bully Boy about Iraq if they had 15 minutes? 565: "focus on getting out of Iraq," 6% own your mistakes and admit them, 7% work with the UN and study groups. And representing the mentally unbalanced, the Joe Liebermans and gag writers everywhere, 4% would tell the Bully to stay in Iraq. (I'm sure a large number would voice support for sending Bully Boy to serve in Iraq, but that wasn't asked.)
In Iraq today . . .
Bombings?
Sinan Salaheddin (AP) reports that a bombing in Falluja killed "as many as 25 people" and noted a funeral procession ("some of the women wailing and beating their chests, marched through Sadr City") in response to a "U.S. helicopter strike before dawn" that killed two people and which the US military denies but Iraqi police confirm. Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports three people wounded in a roadside Baghdad bombing, a Ramadi truck bombing that killed one person (wounded 13), and a Kirkuk roadside bombing that wounded four. Reuters notes that the Ramadi bombing's death toll has risen to 5, a Baghdad car bombing wounded 2 Iraqi adults, 1 child and 8 US soldiers, 2 roadside bombs in Tal Afar resulted in the death of 1 Iraqi soldier and five people wounded (four police officers, 1 Iraqi soldier), and a Tal Afar rocket attack killed one person.
Shootings?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a police officer was shot dead in Baghdad, one police officer was wounded by "a sniper" in Tikrit and "Dr. Muhammad Aziz, who works as a lecturer at Fine Arts Academy in Basra" was shot dead. Reuters reports a home invasion in Iskandariya left tribal leader Ubaid al-Masoudi and his wife injured.
Corpses?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 29 corpses were discovered in Baghdad, 1 in Zubair, and 3 corpses discovered in Baquba. Reuters reports five corpses were discovered in Mosul.
Today the US military announced: "While conducting combat operations northwest of the Iraqi capital, a Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldier was seriously wounded when an improvised explosive device detonated May 28. The Soldier was taken to the Combat Support Hospital but died of wounds May 29." And they announced: "While conducting combat operations in the southwest section of the Iraqi capital, two Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldiers were killed when an improvised explosive device detonated May 30." The three deaths bring the number of US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war to 3474 thus far and May's toll to 123 thus far. Only April and November of 2004 have had higher monthly tolls (135 and 137). The four year mark was passed in March and, along with boots on the ground, the only things escalating are death tolls, chaos and violence.
Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan's decision to take time to recharge and refocus continues to be noted. Amy Branham (Amy's Head) writes, "I don't know of anyone who could stand up under the pressure that Cindy has been in, who could stand up to the nastiness, the lies, the ignorance, the threats, the mind and body numbing travel schedule. All I do know is that I'm glad to see my friend take a break a while. And I do agree with her when she says that if the American people don't step up to end this war, we deserve what we get." Danny Schechter (writing at Common Dreams) observes:
Personally, I know how she feels. When I made the film, WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception) challenging the media role in the war, many anti-war groups paid lip service to its message and then did little or nothing to promote it. Perhaps that's why some activists call MoveOn.org "Walkon.org" when it comes to the issues of media deception or for that matter any issues that also holds Democrats and corporate media institutions accountable.It is so much easier and emotionally self-righteous to attack easier targets like the Republicans and Bush White House.Lets face it, the media has not really changed and nor have many Democrats. They believe in convenient truths and don't recognize the importance of demanding media integrity. Don't forget that most of the media coverage was hostile to Democrats setting a timeline and many pundits pressured them to relent in the name of "pragmatism," patriotism, or getting the pork they wanted for their own districts.I don't think Cindy has really resigned from politics. But she is upset and has a right to be. She has lost so much and is also apparently in debt--something this director of the film In Debt We Trust can relate toSometimes I wish I could resign from the media reform movement that I helped organize because it has been so hard for us to get support for Mediachannel.org, our fabulous media and democracy online network now in its 7th year. We will have to close our doors in a month unless we can find the funding to keep our modest operation alive.
And remember 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 7th, he will discuss his book with Amy Goodman at The New School, Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, beginning at 7:00 pm (doors open at 6:15). Admission is $5 per person and students (with ID) can attend for free. Pilger will sign copies of his book afterwards and Amy Goodman will sign copies of her latest book (written with her brother David Goodman) Static. "For ticket information, contact (212) 229-5488 or boxoffice@newschool.edu. For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, click here or e-mail pilgerny@gmail.com."
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.htm
Presented 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.
iraq
iraq veterans against the war
danny schechter
the washington postmcclatchy newspapers
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Short
Hopefully, you don't ruin your day by reading the New York Times. Ty and I were discussing one piece this evening.
Did you know that when one person says something on TV, it's necessary to do an article disputing them?
Now that doesn't happen with the Bully Boy. You may have noted that.
That does happen with Rosie O'Donnell. Jim Dwyer has an article on A22 entitled "On Her Way Out the Door, O'Donnell Revives the Debate Over 7 World Trade Center."
World Trade Center 7 is the building that was "pulled" as was stated on PBS. "Pulled" usually means brought down. But apparently there are alternate meanings which must be why Jim Dwyer feels no need to note that.
But Rosie O'Donnell said on ABC that she has questions about that building's collapse and the paper has to rush out and find someone to dispute her. Now a lot of people have said it came down for natural reasons and Jim Dwyer didn't feel the need for equal time then. He does now.
I find that very interesting.
You can read Rosie by clicking here. Rosie's a funny lady and a talented actress. That's really all I want to say tonight. The article really pissed me off.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Wednesday, May 30, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces 2 more deaths, Free Speech Radio News provides a first rate special, and more.
Steve Negus and Demetri Sevastopulo (Financial Times of London) report, "A series of fatalities announced on Tuesday in Iraq saw the US military's death toll rise to its highest monthly level in more than two years." Curiously (or maybe not so), the New York Times isn't interested. The story noting the 10 deaths (covered in yesterday's snapshot) isn't even worthy of a solo story. Instead it gets teamed up with the kidnapping of five people who chose to go to Iraq to make money. Five contractors (one prefers consultant) who are British and not even working for a British corporation so let's not pretend the "They wanted to serve their country!" crap is going to fly. Four were armed security guards. Currently the US army -- composed of service members who make peanuts unlike the high paid contractors -- are searching throughout Baghdad to save the five who came to Iraq hoping to line their pockets with some blood money. So it's all the more insulting that the New York Times thinks the 'perfect' thing to do is to pair the disappearance of 5 with the death of 10 who were ordered into Iraq and saw no chance of getting rich off the illegal war. After a 'shout out' paragraph two, Damien Cave forgets the US soldiers until paragraph nineteen. By contrast, the Washington Post front pages John Ward Anderson's report on how May is "the deadliest month for U.S. troops in 2 1/2 years".
Currently, the ICCC count for the total number of US service members killed in the illegal war is 3470 and the number killed in May (thus far) is 119. On Monday, Free Speech Radio News used their half-hour broadcast for a special Memorial Day look at the some of the costs of the war in US with reporter Aaron Glantz in the role of reporter and anchor. Glantz spoke with Muriel Dean whose husband was killed last Christmas. James E. Dean wasn't shot dead in Iraq, he was shot dead in Maryland. Having served 18 months in Afghanistan, suffering from PTSD and with an Iraq redployment coming up (January 14, 2007), James E. Dean went to his father's farm and holed up there, alone, with the possible intent to kill himself. Muriel Dean strongly believes that, at some point, her husband would have gotten tired, gone to sleep and, when he woke up, and left the farm. Instead, the police decided the thing to do in a situation where the farm was empty, where no neighbors were close by and where the only person James E. Dean could have hurt was himself, the thing to do was to use tear gas to force him out and then shoot him dead. The report from the review conducted by Maryland's State Attorney office deemed the police behavior "assualtive and militaristic."
Aaron Glantz: Pentagon doctors estimate that 12 percent of the 1.5 million veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Other studies put that number higher at closer to 30 percent. As the war drags on the military is increasingly sending soldiers back to Iraq for second and third tours even if they suffer from the same type of mental illness as Patrick Resta.
Glantz also spoke with Melissa and Patrick Resta who served in Al Anbar Province in Iraq and spoke of Iraqis approaching US service members with ill children but, Resta explains, that they were threatened with court-martial if they used medical supplies on anyone other than US service members. [This point is echoed in Camilo Mejia's Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia.] When he returned from Iraq at the end of 2004, he was angry, unable to sleep, drinking, avoiding everyone. At Christmas, Melissa Resta asked her husband "if he wanted to split up and he told me he didn't care" which was her clue that there was something seriously wrong.
Patrick Resta has now been diagnosed with PTSD and is receiving treatment and attending college. He states: "I'm definitely not the person I was before. I was always laid back, you know relaxed, always cracking jokes and now I'm anxious and tense and have bouts of anger, have some pretty severe insomnia, have some bad nightmares and I think it's pretty standard for the men and women that have been over there. All of the people that I've talked to, it's pretty much the same -- the same set of symptons and the same problems."
Melissa Resta: There are so many of these things that I never would have thought would be a problem and now I have to think them through. The grocery store's too crowded. We also live in a city with a very high Muslim population and there are a lot of women in traditional Muslim dress and sometimes I notice that that can be unsettling for him to see that just because I think it brings back these feelings. I mean there are a lot of things that you have to take into consideration and at 27 it's not really where I had pictured myself.
Glantz also interviewed Kristy Kruger whose brother, Eric Kruger, was killed in Baghdad by a roadside bomb November 2, 2006. [Kristy Kruger, a singer-songwriter, often performs concerts to benefit her brother's four children. Donations can be sent to: The Memorial Fund for Children of LTC Eric Kruger, 6460 Crystal Mountain Rd., Colorado Springs, CO 80923.]
And Glantz interviewed doctors who treat PTSD including Dr. Col. Vito Imbascini who was stationed in Germany for four months last year where he treated US service members wounded in the war and discussed how body armor meant service members who might have lost a limb in Vietnam and suffered wounds to their chest and abdmonen that led to their deaths are now likely to survive "but be severely disabled for life" allowing "an extremely high number of wounded American soldiers are coming home with their arms or legs amputated" and, during his four months in Germany, he "amputated the genitals of one or two men every day."
Again, that is the Memorial Day special of Free Speech Radio News. Today the Daily Mail reported on Martin Packer, a British soldier who had self-checked out, and killed himself (Monday) in front of Joanne Hepple (his girlfriend) and her two songs as a result of being "tormented by what he had witnessed in" Iraq. War resisters Darrell Anderson and Joshua Key are among those who have disclosed their own PTSD. From Key's book, The Deserter's Tale (pp. 209-210):
A Canadian psychiatrist told me that you never truly emerge from post-traumatic stress disorder, that you simply learn to live with it.
There are certain things that I avoid these days, such as alcohol and crowds, because I fear they will trigger more of my own blackouts. I know that thousands of American soldiers have abused drugs or committed suicide after returning home from war. It would be easy to follow in the steps of many in my own family and drown my shame and my sorrows in alcohol. Alcohol, however, could lead to the very problem of suicidal depression that have plagued vets for generations.
Joshua Key is part of a growing movement of war resistance within the US military that includes Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake 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.
Today, in Iraq, the violence continues as does the breeding of hostilities. Alexandra Zavis (Los Angeles Times) reports that the raids to find the 5 British contractors is even more violent than the search to find the 3 missing US soldiers (and remember, only the corpse of one of the 3 US soldiers is confirmed found) by crashing into one Iraqi police officer's "home about 2 a.m. using an armored vehicle, cuffed and blindfolded those inside, and pointed lasers at their chests. 'They were hitting us, asking, "Where are the kidnapped British?" said the man who asked that his name not be published for fear of retribution by Western forces. 'I told them that we are five brothers in the police force. How could we do that? They said OK, then tell us where are they?" Also today, the US military has confirmed what CNN reported yesterday -- remember the days when reporting was reporting and official government statements were official government states? Rest easy outlets, you can now report what CNN did yesterday: A US helicopter was shot down Monday in Iraq (which led to the death of 2 US soldiers and 6 died while attempting to rush to the scene of the crash). Repeating, the US military has confirmed what CNN reported. Read AP here and wonder why news outlets not only wouldn't report the helicopter was shot down but they also wouldn't even report it by couching it with "CNN is reporting that . . ." In other air news, Turkey, which shares a border with Iraq, has issued a request. Turkish Daily News reports the government of Turkey "formally asked the United States not to repeat any airspace violation, following an incident last week where two US F-16 fighters infringed the Turkish air corridor." And that comes as tensions continue to mount between Turkey and the Kurdish northern Iraq. CBS and AP report, "Turkey has sent large contigents of soldiers, tanks and armored personnel carriers to reinforce its border with Iraq amid a heated debate over whether to stage a cross-border offensive to hit Kurdish rebel bases. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday urged the United States and Iraq to destroy bases of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, in northern Iraq as the Turkish military depoloyed more tanks and soldiers on the border."
Bombings?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a parked car Baghdad bombing that claimed 1 life (5 wounded), 2 Baghdad mortar attacks that killed 1 person and left 6 wounded, a Baghdad bombing that killed an Iraqi soldier and three police officers were wounded from a bombing near the Basheer village. Reuters reports a Mhmudiya mortar attack that killed 3 people and left 21 wounded and a Falluja mortar attack that left 5 dead (15 wounded).
Shootings?
Alexandra Zavis (Los Angeles Times) notes the Amarah shooting death of "a journalist working with the Aswat Al-Iraq news agency". AFP notes that "three journalists had been killed in the previous three days." Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports Ala'a Abdul Razzaq Qasim (interior ministry intelligence) was shot dead in Baghdad along with two of his bodyguards, Mohammed Shakir (ministry of interior affairs) was shot dead in Baghdad, a bodyguard was shot dead in Hawija in an attack on "the head of the judicial committee of Hawija," and 3 police officers wer shot dead in Diyala province. Reuters notes a woman killed in an Mosul attack.
Corpses?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 23 corpses discovered in Baghdad.
Today the US military announced: "Two Multi-National Division-Center Soldiers were killed while on dismounted patrol when a roadside bomb exploded today."
On this week's Law and Disorder (WBAI on Monday and others throughout the ) featured Anthony Arnove's remarks from the Left Forum panel Iraq: What's At Stake (which also featured A.K. Gupta, Christian Parenti, Gilbert Achcar and Nir Rosen) that was held March 11th.
Anthony Arnove: The fundamental political reality is that the US occupation -- not al Qaeda, not Iran, not Syria -- is the reason for the insurgency in Iraq which is why no amount of 'surges' of additional troops, programs for police training, rhetoric about cutting off supply routes to Iran and Syria, or plans for victory is going to end the resistance to US occupation.Iraq today is an unqualified disaster even from the standpoint of the US ruling class. One can now regularly read on the pages of the Finanical Times and the Wall St. Journal establishment observers who proclaim Iraq the greatest foreign policy mistake in the history of the United States -- greater even than Vietnam.
[. . . ]
The Democrats came into a majority in the House, the Senate and the state governorships last Novemember as a result of a vote against the war in Iraq yet what have they done since taking office?
For all the laughable rhetoric about exporting democracy in Iraq and the Middle East -- which is the opposite of US intentions -- we now see again how little democracy we have at home as well. So far, the boldest measure the Democrats have been able to muster was to pass a non-binding House resolution criticizing the additional 21,500 troops Bush has sent to Iraq -- not the underlying occupation, not the military bases, not the economic occupation, not the presence of a 100,000 private mercenaries operating without any accountablility. The deaths, though, of Iraqis are binding. The deaths of US soldiers are binding. And let's remember that the Democrats, certainly the party's key leadership voted overwhelmingly to support Bush's invasion, that they have repeatedly voted to appropriate more funding for the occupation, and now many leading Democrats are pushing to add more than seventeen billion dollars to Bush's one hundred billion supplemental funding request for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Only now that the occupation is widely recognized as a complete disaster do you have Democrats voicing muted criticism of the war but much if it is utterly superficial.
[. . .]
There will be growing pressure on all of us as the 2008 presidentional election cycle continues to pick up to restrict the debate in this country to ever more narrow circles but we cannot afford to fall into that trap. If we become a lobbying wing of the Democratic Party we will become not more relevant as some insist but we will become irrelevant. The anti-war movement must maintain its independence and must continue to mobolize to fight for its own independent demands which I think first and foremost should be for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
Arnove is the author of, most recently, IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal. Last week on Law and Disorder (as Mike noted Friday) co-hosts Dalia Hashad and Michael Ratner discussed Brigadier General Douglas Lute who was the one who finally consented to be Bully Boy's war czar. Hashad noted that "czar" was a title the administration had moved away from and had settled on "war coordinator. Makes it sound like an after school job." Hashad also noted that Lute had told the Financial Times of London, some time ago, that he didn't support the concept of escalation. In August 2005, Peter Spiegel and Demetri Sevastopulo (Financial Times) reported that Lute felt the numbers of US troops on the ground in Iraq needed to be reduced for several reasons including, Lute speaking, "You have to undercut the perception of occupation in Iraq. It's very difficult to do that when you have 150,000-plus, largely western, foreign troops occupying the country." That was Lute in 2005, when US troops on the ground were far less than they are now and before he became the war czar or war coordinator.
Last week, Andishen Nouaree (Columbia's Free Times), observing that Laura Bush's laughable claim that no one suffers this illegal war more than the Bully Boy who started it, asked, "How much is the president suffering? Last week he quit his job. Not the whole job. He's still gonna give speeches, sign legislation, live in the White House, fly around on Air Force One and park his pickup truck in front of the 'Parking for Presidents Only' sign that Jenna bought him for the driveway in Crawford. Bush quit the 'lead the nation's war effort' part of his job. He announced . . . that he's handing that responbility over to U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute."
Finally, today on Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman spoke at length with Cindy Sheehan. From the end of the interview:
AMY GOODMAN: Cindy Sheehan, we have fifteen seconds. I have the sense, as you talk, that you're not actually leaving, even as a public face of the movement, but stepping back perhaps for a few months, a few weeks, to regroup. Is that accurate?
CINDY SHEEHAN: Well, what I like to think about is like, we're closing down the factory, we're going to retool, and we're going to open up, and it will be a new and improved version of it. But we are definitely going to come at it from a totally different direction.
And remember 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 7th, he will discuss his book with Amy Goodman at The New School, Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, beginning at 7:00 pm (doors open at 6:15). Admission is $5 per person and students (with ID) can attend for free. Pilger will sign copies of his book afterwards and Amy Goodman will sign copies of her latest book (written with her brother David Goodman) Static. "For ticket information, contact (212) 229-5488 or boxoffice@newschool.edu. For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, click here or e-mail pilgerny@gmail.com."
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.htm
Presented 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.
iraq
anthony arnove
law and disorderwbaidalia hashadmichael ratner
the new york timesdamien cave
camilo mejiamartin smithiraq veterans against the warjohn ward andersonthe washington postmcclatchy newspapers
amy goodmandemocracy now
cindy sheehan
Did you know that when one person says something on TV, it's necessary to do an article disputing them?
Now that doesn't happen with the Bully Boy. You may have noted that.
That does happen with Rosie O'Donnell. Jim Dwyer has an article on A22 entitled "On Her Way Out the Door, O'Donnell Revives the Debate Over 7 World Trade Center."
World Trade Center 7 is the building that was "pulled" as was stated on PBS. "Pulled" usually means brought down. But apparently there are alternate meanings which must be why Jim Dwyer feels no need to note that.
But Rosie O'Donnell said on ABC that she has questions about that building's collapse and the paper has to rush out and find someone to dispute her. Now a lot of people have said it came down for natural reasons and Jim Dwyer didn't feel the need for equal time then. He does now.
I find that very interesting.
You can read Rosie by clicking here. Rosie's a funny lady and a talented actress. That's really all I want to say tonight. The article really pissed me off.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Wednesday, May 30, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces 2 more deaths, Free Speech Radio News provides a first rate special, and more.
Steve Negus and Demetri Sevastopulo (Financial Times of London) report, "A series of fatalities announced on Tuesday in Iraq saw the US military's death toll rise to its highest monthly level in more than two years." Curiously (or maybe not so), the New York Times isn't interested. The story noting the 10 deaths (covered in yesterday's snapshot) isn't even worthy of a solo story. Instead it gets teamed up with the kidnapping of five people who chose to go to Iraq to make money. Five contractors (one prefers consultant) who are British and not even working for a British corporation so let's not pretend the "They wanted to serve their country!" crap is going to fly. Four were armed security guards. Currently the US army -- composed of service members who make peanuts unlike the high paid contractors -- are searching throughout Baghdad to save the five who came to Iraq hoping to line their pockets with some blood money. So it's all the more insulting that the New York Times thinks the 'perfect' thing to do is to pair the disappearance of 5 with the death of 10 who were ordered into Iraq and saw no chance of getting rich off the illegal war. After a 'shout out' paragraph two, Damien Cave forgets the US soldiers until paragraph nineteen. By contrast, the Washington Post front pages John Ward Anderson's report on how May is "the deadliest month for U.S. troops in 2 1/2 years".
Currently, the ICCC count for the total number of US service members killed in the illegal war is 3470 and the number killed in May (thus far) is 119. On Monday, Free Speech Radio News used their half-hour broadcast for a special Memorial Day look at the some of the costs of the war in US with reporter Aaron Glantz in the role of reporter and anchor. Glantz spoke with Muriel Dean whose husband was killed last Christmas. James E. Dean wasn't shot dead in Iraq, he was shot dead in Maryland. Having served 18 months in Afghanistan, suffering from PTSD and with an Iraq redployment coming up (January 14, 2007), James E. Dean went to his father's farm and holed up there, alone, with the possible intent to kill himself. Muriel Dean strongly believes that, at some point, her husband would have gotten tired, gone to sleep and, when he woke up, and left the farm. Instead, the police decided the thing to do in a situation where the farm was empty, where no neighbors were close by and where the only person James E. Dean could have hurt was himself, the thing to do was to use tear gas to force him out and then shoot him dead. The report from the review conducted by Maryland's State Attorney office deemed the police behavior "assualtive and militaristic."
Aaron Glantz: Pentagon doctors estimate that 12 percent of the 1.5 million veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Other studies put that number higher at closer to 30 percent. As the war drags on the military is increasingly sending soldiers back to Iraq for second and third tours even if they suffer from the same type of mental illness as Patrick Resta.
Glantz also spoke with Melissa and Patrick Resta who served in Al Anbar Province in Iraq and spoke of Iraqis approaching US service members with ill children but, Resta explains, that they were threatened with court-martial if they used medical supplies on anyone other than US service members. [This point is echoed in Camilo Mejia's Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia.] When he returned from Iraq at the end of 2004, he was angry, unable to sleep, drinking, avoiding everyone. At Christmas, Melissa Resta asked her husband "if he wanted to split up and he told me he didn't care" which was her clue that there was something seriously wrong.
Patrick Resta has now been diagnosed with PTSD and is receiving treatment and attending college. He states: "I'm definitely not the person I was before. I was always laid back, you know relaxed, always cracking jokes and now I'm anxious and tense and have bouts of anger, have some pretty severe insomnia, have some bad nightmares and I think it's pretty standard for the men and women that have been over there. All of the people that I've talked to, it's pretty much the same -- the same set of symptons and the same problems."
Melissa Resta: There are so many of these things that I never would have thought would be a problem and now I have to think them through. The grocery store's too crowded. We also live in a city with a very high Muslim population and there are a lot of women in traditional Muslim dress and sometimes I notice that that can be unsettling for him to see that just because I think it brings back these feelings. I mean there are a lot of things that you have to take into consideration and at 27 it's not really where I had pictured myself.
Glantz also interviewed Kristy Kruger whose brother, Eric Kruger, was killed in Baghdad by a roadside bomb November 2, 2006. [Kristy Kruger, a singer-songwriter, often performs concerts to benefit her brother's four children. Donations can be sent to: The Memorial Fund for Children of LTC Eric Kruger, 6460 Crystal Mountain Rd., Colorado Springs, CO 80923.]
And Glantz interviewed doctors who treat PTSD including Dr. Col. Vito Imbascini who was stationed in Germany for four months last year where he treated US service members wounded in the war and discussed how body armor meant service members who might have lost a limb in Vietnam and suffered wounds to their chest and abdmonen that led to their deaths are now likely to survive "but be severely disabled for life" allowing "an extremely high number of wounded American soldiers are coming home with their arms or legs amputated" and, during his four months in Germany, he "amputated the genitals of one or two men every day."
Again, that is the Memorial Day special of Free Speech Radio News. Today the Daily Mail reported on Martin Packer, a British soldier who had self-checked out, and killed himself (Monday) in front of Joanne Hepple (his girlfriend) and her two songs as a result of being "tormented by what he had witnessed in" Iraq. War resisters Darrell Anderson and Joshua Key are among those who have disclosed their own PTSD. From Key's book, The Deserter's Tale (pp. 209-210):
A Canadian psychiatrist told me that you never truly emerge from post-traumatic stress disorder, that you simply learn to live with it.
There are certain things that I avoid these days, such as alcohol and crowds, because I fear they will trigger more of my own blackouts. I know that thousands of American soldiers have abused drugs or committed suicide after returning home from war. It would be easy to follow in the steps of many in my own family and drown my shame and my sorrows in alcohol. Alcohol, however, could lead to the very problem of suicidal depression that have plagued vets for generations.
Joshua Key is part of a growing movement of war resistance within the US military that includes Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake 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.
Today, in Iraq, the violence continues as does the breeding of hostilities. Alexandra Zavis (Los Angeles Times) reports that the raids to find the 5 British contractors is even more violent than the search to find the 3 missing US soldiers (and remember, only the corpse of one of the 3 US soldiers is confirmed found) by crashing into one Iraqi police officer's "home about 2 a.m. using an armored vehicle, cuffed and blindfolded those inside, and pointed lasers at their chests. 'They were hitting us, asking, "Where are the kidnapped British?" said the man who asked that his name not be published for fear of retribution by Western forces. 'I told them that we are five brothers in the police force. How could we do that? They said OK, then tell us where are they?" Also today, the US military has confirmed what CNN reported yesterday -- remember the days when reporting was reporting and official government statements were official government states? Rest easy outlets, you can now report what CNN did yesterday: A US helicopter was shot down Monday in Iraq (which led to the death of 2 US soldiers and 6 died while attempting to rush to the scene of the crash). Repeating, the US military has confirmed what CNN reported. Read AP here and wonder why news outlets not only wouldn't report the helicopter was shot down but they also wouldn't even report it by couching it with "CNN is reporting that . . ." In other air news, Turkey, which shares a border with Iraq, has issued a request. Turkish Daily News reports the government of Turkey "formally asked the United States not to repeat any airspace violation, following an incident last week where two US F-16 fighters infringed the Turkish air corridor." And that comes as tensions continue to mount between Turkey and the Kurdish northern Iraq. CBS and AP report, "Turkey has sent large contigents of soldiers, tanks and armored personnel carriers to reinforce its border with Iraq amid a heated debate over whether to stage a cross-border offensive to hit Kurdish rebel bases. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday urged the United States and Iraq to destroy bases of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, in northern Iraq as the Turkish military depoloyed more tanks and soldiers on the border."
Bombings?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a parked car Baghdad bombing that claimed 1 life (5 wounded), 2 Baghdad mortar attacks that killed 1 person and left 6 wounded, a Baghdad bombing that killed an Iraqi soldier and three police officers were wounded from a bombing near the Basheer village. Reuters reports a Mhmudiya mortar attack that killed 3 people and left 21 wounded and a Falluja mortar attack that left 5 dead (15 wounded).
Shootings?
Alexandra Zavis (Los Angeles Times) notes the Amarah shooting death of "a journalist working with the Aswat Al-Iraq news agency". AFP notes that "three journalists had been killed in the previous three days." Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports Ala'a Abdul Razzaq Qasim (interior ministry intelligence) was shot dead in Baghdad along with two of his bodyguards, Mohammed Shakir (ministry of interior affairs) was shot dead in Baghdad, a bodyguard was shot dead in Hawija in an attack on "the head of the judicial committee of Hawija," and 3 police officers wer shot dead in Diyala province. Reuters notes a woman killed in an Mosul attack.
Corpses?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 23 corpses discovered in Baghdad.
Today the US military announced: "Two Multi-National Division-Center Soldiers were killed while on dismounted patrol when a roadside bomb exploded today."
On this week's Law and Disorder (WBAI on Monday and others throughout the ) featured Anthony Arnove's remarks from the Left Forum panel Iraq: What's At Stake (which also featured A.K. Gupta, Christian Parenti, Gilbert Achcar and Nir Rosen) that was held March 11th.
Anthony Arnove: The fundamental political reality is that the US occupation -- not al Qaeda, not Iran, not Syria -- is the reason for the insurgency in Iraq which is why no amount of 'surges' of additional troops, programs for police training, rhetoric about cutting off supply routes to Iran and Syria, or plans for victory is going to end the resistance to US occupation.Iraq today is an unqualified disaster even from the standpoint of the US ruling class. One can now regularly read on the pages of the Finanical Times and the Wall St. Journal establishment observers who proclaim Iraq the greatest foreign policy mistake in the history of the United States -- greater even than Vietnam.
[. . . ]
The Democrats came into a majority in the House, the Senate and the state governorships last Novemember as a result of a vote against the war in Iraq yet what have they done since taking office?
For all the laughable rhetoric about exporting democracy in Iraq and the Middle East -- which is the opposite of US intentions -- we now see again how little democracy we have at home as well. So far, the boldest measure the Democrats have been able to muster was to pass a non-binding House resolution criticizing the additional 21,500 troops Bush has sent to Iraq -- not the underlying occupation, not the military bases, not the economic occupation, not the presence of a 100,000 private mercenaries operating without any accountablility. The deaths, though, of Iraqis are binding. The deaths of US soldiers are binding. And let's remember that the Democrats, certainly the party's key leadership voted overwhelmingly to support Bush's invasion, that they have repeatedly voted to appropriate more funding for the occupation, and now many leading Democrats are pushing to add more than seventeen billion dollars to Bush's one hundred billion supplemental funding request for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Only now that the occupation is widely recognized as a complete disaster do you have Democrats voicing muted criticism of the war but much if it is utterly superficial.
[. . .]
There will be growing pressure on all of us as the 2008 presidentional election cycle continues to pick up to restrict the debate in this country to ever more narrow circles but we cannot afford to fall into that trap. If we become a lobbying wing of the Democratic Party we will become not more relevant as some insist but we will become irrelevant. The anti-war movement must maintain its independence and must continue to mobolize to fight for its own independent demands which I think first and foremost should be for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
Arnove is the author of, most recently, IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal. Last week on Law and Disorder (as Mike noted Friday) co-hosts Dalia Hashad and Michael Ratner discussed Brigadier General Douglas Lute who was the one who finally consented to be Bully Boy's war czar. Hashad noted that "czar" was a title the administration had moved away from and had settled on "war coordinator. Makes it sound like an after school job." Hashad also noted that Lute had told the Financial Times of London, some time ago, that he didn't support the concept of escalation. In August 2005, Peter Spiegel and Demetri Sevastopulo (Financial Times) reported that Lute felt the numbers of US troops on the ground in Iraq needed to be reduced for several reasons including, Lute speaking, "You have to undercut the perception of occupation in Iraq. It's very difficult to do that when you have 150,000-plus, largely western, foreign troops occupying the country." That was Lute in 2005, when US troops on the ground were far less than they are now and before he became the war czar or war coordinator.
Last week, Andishen Nouaree (Columbia's Free Times), observing that Laura Bush's laughable claim that no one suffers this illegal war more than the Bully Boy who started it, asked, "How much is the president suffering? Last week he quit his job. Not the whole job. He's still gonna give speeches, sign legislation, live in the White House, fly around on Air Force One and park his pickup truck in front of the 'Parking for Presidents Only' sign that Jenna bought him for the driveway in Crawford. Bush quit the 'lead the nation's war effort' part of his job. He announced . . . that he's handing that responbility over to U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute."
Finally, today on Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman spoke at length with Cindy Sheehan. From the end of the interview:
AMY GOODMAN: Cindy Sheehan, we have fifteen seconds. I have the sense, as you talk, that you're not actually leaving, even as a public face of the movement, but stepping back perhaps for a few months, a few weeks, to regroup. Is that accurate?
CINDY SHEEHAN: Well, what I like to think about is like, we're closing down the factory, we're going to retool, and we're going to open up, and it will be a new and improved version of it. But we are definitely going to come at it from a totally different direction.
And remember 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 7th, he will discuss his book with Amy Goodman at The New School, Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, beginning at 7:00 pm (doors open at 6:15). Admission is $5 per person and students (with ID) can attend for free. Pilger will sign copies of his book afterwards and Amy Goodman will sign copies of her latest book (written with her brother David Goodman) Static. "For ticket information, contact (212) 229-5488 or boxoffice@newschool.edu. For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, click here or e-mail pilgerny@gmail.com."
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.htm
Presented 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.
iraq
anthony arnove
law and disorderwbaidalia hashadmichael ratner
the new york timesdamien cave
camilo mejiamartin smithiraq veterans against the warjohn ward andersonthe washington postmcclatchy newspapers
amy goodmandemocracy now
cindy sheehan
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