Several things. I had a message from Wally on my cell saying I wasn't highlighted today because I didn't have a post. I thought that was strange because I did write last night. I just posted it a few minutes ago. At the bottom of the screen you type in are two buttons "PUBLISH POST" and "SAVE NOW." I must have hit the latter by mistake. I log on and pull up the site and, sure enough, there's no post. My first thought was, "I lost that entire post!" Then I logged in to Blogger/Blogspot and saw it was a "DRAFT" which means I hit the wrong button.
Sorry for anyone disappointed that I didn't write yesterday. I did. I just didn't publish. By mistake.
Second of all, the snapshot. Mike and I skipped the evening speaking engagement to get us checked into the hotel and to also fix something to eat. Ava and C.I.'s chowder last night was delicious. And normally we eat out on the road or get take out. It was so great to have a cooked meal last night. So Mike and I are cooking tonight. While he blogged, I sliced and diced and he's cooking now. (We're having chicken fajitas and vegetarian enchilads. I did the prep, so he's doing the rest.)
When we said we were going to get us all checked in and taken care of so we could get our blog posts out of the way (and I could get to work typing up my review!), C.I. asked if I'd note something on the snapshot.
C.I. dictates that in sections if it's a really busy day. C.I. started the snapshot today with the section on the Erik Prince's testimony. And noted, "When I call back, I'll edit that down." That didn't happen because when C.I. called back, C.I. was going over the violence and C.I.'s other cell rings and it's the new about Robin Long. C.I. just wanted to get Long in there and to get the snapshot up as quickly as possible.
I don't have a problem with the snapshot (none of us here did -- and I don't see any complaints on it in the members' e-mail accounts, most are writing in to express their outrage over Robin Long's arrest). I don't see it as a cheerlead Congress piece. (You won't either if you've read it.) Blackwater is a mercenary company and I think Prince's testifying was worthy of the attention C.I. gave it. But C.I. really intended for a great deal more to get covered. That flew out the window when the call came in on Robin being arrested.
Robin Long's arrest? This is "NDP calling for the release of US war resister Robin Long:"
TORONTO -- Following the arrest of US war resister Robin Long yesterday in Nelson, B.C., NDP immigration critic Olivia Chow (Trinity-Spadina) and NDP MP Alex Atamanenko (British Columbia Southern Interior) are calling on the Harper government to reexamine their decision to deport Long and allow him to stay in Canada.
"Canada has always been a country that stands up for basic human rights. Conscientious objectors who have fled George W. Bush’s illegal war in Iraq should be allowed to stay," said Chow.
"Two war resisters' cases are currently before the Supreme Court of Canada," pointed out Atamanenko. "No one should be arrested or deported before the Court has a chance to make a decision."
Robin Long, from Boise, Idaho, received his orders in March 2005 and left for Canada the following June, believing the war in Iraq was illegal. He lives in Canada with his Canadian partner Renee and their young son. The Immigration and Refugee Board did not find his claims to be untruthful but ruled against his case and his deportation is imminent.
"Canada has always been a place of refuge for war resisters who refuse to fight in illegal wars," noted Chow. "From Vietnam to now, Canada has a proud and distinguished history of putting justice first, and allowing people of conscience to seek refuge in our country. Canada has to release Mr. Long and allow him to stay in Canada."
Chow noted that a recent poll taken in Ontario showed that almost two thirds of Ontarians believe that Canada should allow war resisters to stay in Canada.
No one's been allowed to see him except his lawyer Jeffry House. They've got him under lock and key. They think they can get away with it too. They can't if we let them know we are watching.
Oh my God! Elaine's on fire tonight. Be sure to read her amazing post.
Okay, I need to go work on typing my third review so that's it. Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Tuesday, October 2, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, war resister Robin Long is arrested by the same creeps who pulled the stunt earlier with Kyle Snyder, Blackwater's Erik Prince testifies to Congress, the UK announces a drawdown, the US Congress (Democratically led) keeps buying into the illegal war, and more.
Starting with war resistance. Robin Long was arrested yesterday. War resister Long went to Canada in June 2005. He applied for refugee status. Like everyone who has applied thus far, Long was denied. The New Democratic Party of Canada issues a statement "calling on the [prime minister Stephen] Harper government to reexamine their decision to deport Long and allow him to stay in Canada." It's noted that Long "lives in Canada with his Canadian partner Renee and their young son." So the Canadian government has arrested Long, intending to deport him and thereby split up a family. Olivia Chow points to "a recent poll taken in Ontario [which] showed that almost two thirds of Ontarians believe that Canada should allow war resisters to stay in Canada." The War Resisters Support Campaign notes that the poll was "conducted by phone from June 5 to 11, 2007" and that "close to two thirds of Ontarians favour letting US Iraq War resisters settle in Canada" and that polling was "conducted by the national research firm Strategic Communications Inc". Shirley Douglas (who worked her butt of during Vietnam and is as dedicated today) is quoted declaring, "This poll shows that the Canadian tradition of welcoming Americans who dissent from the policies of war is still important to us. The Canadian government should move now to make it possible for the war resisters to settle in this country, as so many did during the Vietnam War." The Christian Radical notes that Nelson was "arrested by the Nelson B.C. Police who intend to take him to Vancouver and hand him over to the US authorities at the border nearby. He was seized as he walked along a street. He is now detained in the local jail. Robin was not allowed to receive visits from friends; however he was able to call his spouse. She says that he is calm and hopeful that he will soon be released." The is the same Nelson B.C. Police that arrested Kyle Snyder on the orders of the US military -- in direct violation of Canadian soveriegnty. In the US, Gregory Levey (Salon) becomes the first at a US news outlet to cover that and he is also the last because it's just too much work for independent media apparently. Now a similar thing has happened to Robin Long. Exactly when the hell does independent media in the United States intend to do its damn job? The Christian Radical notes: "The War Resisters Support Campaign is urging all our friends and supporters to CALL THE NELSON POLICE AT 250-354-3919 AND TELL THEM TO RELEASE ROBIN LONG. We urge you as well to contact your local Member of Parliament and ask her or him to help release Robin."
Along with Kyle Snyder being arrested in a similar stunt (on his wedding day), the US military itself crossed over into Canada and posed as Canadian police officers -- harassing Winnie Ng at her home and demanding to know where war resister Joshua Key was. As independent media in this country -- including the "Nobody owns The Nation" useless piece of crap -- has refused to cover this story, the US has grown ever more bold about issuing orders to lackeys in Canada who aren't concerned with upholding Canadian law, just with being suck ups to the United States.
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes James Stepp, Matthew Lowell, Derek Hess, Diedra Cobb, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Zamesha Dominique, Chrisopther Scott Magaoay, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Carla Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, Blake LeMoine, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko,Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Wilfredo Torres, Michael Sudbury, Ghanim Khalil, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty-one US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline [(877) 447-4487], Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters.
Blackwater USA. Today, Erik Prince -- CEO of the mercenary company -- popped into Congress for a hearing on the issue of private security in Iraq held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chaired by Rep Henry Waxman. Prince fidgeted throughout, used the phrase "I don't know" repeatedly, showed his disdain for Congress by frequently rolling his eyes, smirking and, when Rep Peter Welch was questinging him, combined the two with an extended head turn to the right and away from Welch. With his disain on full display, the obvious question was for committee members to ask him about his physical presentation. No one did. A lot of representatives wasted time. Rep Diane Watson was the best example of wasted time on the Democratic side and Prince's nonstop smirks during that exchange may have been warranted as Watson went on and on (about topics that had nothing to do with Blackwater such as the MoveOn ad and Rush Limbaugh) only to suddenly declare "And so my question to you" before going back to yammering on. Each time she would say "my question to you," Was there a point to her remarks? It was the embarrassment from the Democratic side as she seemd determined to deliver a free association monologue. Each time she would use the term "question," Prince would lead forward, open his mouth, then close it because Watson wasn't interested in an answer and wasn't interested in getting to a question. What was her point? Who knows with lines like "You are providing a service." At one point, around the fourth or fifth time Prince had leaned in to answer only to grasp she wasn't yielding, he looked around and as if he was about to laugh. Across America -- to the left, to the right, to the center -- many others may have been laughing as well.
On the Republican side? They win as ensemble, too many did far too much for just one to be signaled out. Top honors within the ensemble go to Lynn Westmoreland who wasted everyone's time by putting on his glasses and reading his remarks from prepared text. If you can write down everything ahead of time, don't even show up, just fax your prepared remarks to the media. And that was honestly a problem for most. Those who didn't so obviously read from their prepared remarks for their entire allotted time also didn't appear to listen too closely. That was true regardless of political party. Democrats John Sarbanes and Peter Welch deserve (positive) notice for questions and comments that demonstrated they were aware of what had been asked as well as what had been asked but not answered. Bruce Braley (Democrats) also deserves credit for not wasting his allotted time with a bunch of sop but instead tearing away at the issue of the laws that would or would not govern Blackwater in Iraq -- tearing away at the topic and refusing to let go. Noting the Blackwater employee -- allegedly drunk, who shot dead an Iraqi bodyguard on Christmas Eve 2006 (the committee agreed not to ask about the September 16th incident where Blackwater slaughtered at least 11 innocent Iraqis at the request of the Justice Department) and what passed for 'punishment' --Braley pointed out the message to take away was, "If I screw up . . . the worst that's going to happen is I have to give up a window seat for an aisle seat."
Braley was referring to the fact that Blackwater didn't discipline him. Prince repeatedly -- throughout the hearing -- would immediately go to flogging insisting (over and over) "We can't flog". The inablity to flog appears to be a big issue with Prince. Prince explained (at several points) that -- though they couldn't flog -- what Blackwater did with the employee was pull his plane ticket, withheld the employee's paycheck and the employee's bonus. Prince -- falling back on the flogging -- declared that Blackwater did all they could. Witholding earned wages is supposed to be against the law so it's a shame no one asked Prince what law Blackwater was operating under when they made that decision. A bonus can be given or taken away and any dispute over it can be handled by the courts but earned wages are earned wages and companies do not have the right to withold them.
What Price left out was that the employee didn't just leave. He was proud that the employee's security clearence was pulled. But he failed to show the public his pride over the fact that Blackwater hustled the employee out of Iraq before any serious questions could be asked. Price -- noting he watches crime shows on TV -- begged off ruling whether it was murder, homicide or manslaughter but didn't quibble that, in fact, it was a crime. That being the case, why an employee who had committed a serious crime was being whisked out of Iraq is a question he should have been asked repeatedly.
The point Braley was making was US service members -- in the same situation -- would be facing a court-martial but all the Blackwater employee basically lost was a window seat on the trip home. Throughout it at all, regardless of any question other than about his time in the US Navy Seals, Prince repeatedly fell back on "I don't know." On violence, on whether Chilean thugs who worked for Pinochet were now working for Blackwater (Jan Schakowsky brought that issue up and hit hard repeatedly on the human rights issue), what the make up of the Blackwater force in Iraq was, etc. It was left to Chris Murphy (after many had left the hearing -- press and committee members) to state the obvious, "Certainly as CEO you can tell us what your profit has been?" No, he couldn't.
But he could indicate that he believes Blackwater employees are destroying Blackwater equipment intentionally. That probably wasn't his intent but he declared, to Murphy, that "Our helicopters get fragged." "Frag" is internal not external. If the Blackwater helicopters are being "fragged" then the "fragging" would have to be done by a Blackwater worker. Listening to Prince go on and on about Blackwater's "costs" What costs? That's a serious question. Replacing a helicopter? Well talk to anyone in the trucking industry or the delivery industry and they'll tell you equipment's replaced all the time. But the point was driven home best when Jan Schakowsky was asking (repeatedly) how Blackwater checks out their employees. According to Prince, they basically just run Social Security numbers. So Glory, Glory Private Business . . . as it still depends upon all the tools of the federal government. As Henry Waxman noted in his opening statement, "Over the past 25 years, a sophisticated campaign has been waged to privatize government services. The theory is that corporations can deliver government services better and at a lower cost than government can. Over the last six years, this theory has been put into practice. The result is that privatization has exploded. For every taxpayer dollar spent on federal programs, over 40 cents now goes to private contractors. Our government now outsources even the oversight of the outsourcing. At home, core government functions -- like tax collection and emergency response -- have been contracted out. Abroad companies like Halliburton and Blackwater have made billions performing tasks that used to be done by our nation's military forces. What's been missing is a serious evaluation of whether the promises of privatizing are actually realized." Instead of addressing the reality, Prince elected to play like he didn't know, couldn't recall and invent fantasies. Such as when he wanted to tale the tale of his proudest moment of life. Picture it, if you could, because he couldn't. A man, an officer, unnamed, but this is the most vivid moment of Prince's life, right? So the officer tells him that all the troops serving under him know that if they get into trouble into Iraq, call Blackwater first. A lie and an obvious one. But if Prince wants to stick by it, then the US military might want to address policy with those serving because troops do NOT first call mercenaries when they are in need of help. In fact, to do so is a violation of the chain of command.
House Rep and 2008 presidential Democratic hopeful Dennis Kucinich attempted to seriously address the issue of the contracts Blackwater has been awarded by the federal government. He raised serious issues (including the huge increase Blackwater sees each year -- $48 million in 2004, $500 million last year). Prince told Kucinich these weren't "no bid" contracts, that Kucinich misunderstood. He fell back on that repeatedly allowing him to avoid Kucinich's questions. Then, after several other members had their turn at questioning, Prince wanted to clarify the record, turns out some of those contracts he was declaring weren't no-bid, were no-bid contracts.
It was very similar to his appalling response to US service members being scapegoated for the actions of Blackwater: "I don't believe that false story lasted in the media for more than a few hours." But when you're attempting to hustle someone out of the country, every hour counts. And what's a lie to Blackwater? Prince did the same thing with Kucinich's questions. He lied. Then, after he'd eated up the time on the clock, he would clarify his statements on the no-bid contracts. In fairness, if Prince is the idiot he pretended for the committee, then his lawyer assisted him because his attorney (seated to the left of him) was advising him throughout. But that is Blackwater for you. Lying doesn't matter if they correct it . . . after they've gotten what they wanted whether it's time to whisk an employee out of the country or to run down the clock on questions.
He smirked when the e-mail on the shooting was read, when "At least the ID of the shooter will take the heat off us" was read into the record. The heat was off Blackwater and it was placed on the US service members. But Prince thinks it's fine because it -- the lie -- was just out there for "a few hours." At another point, Prince would declare (of this same incident), "Look, I'm not going to make any apologies." No, he wasn't going to. And that he hasn't been forced to goes to how little accountability there is. Which is why he could also declare, "I believe we acted appropriately at all times."
If there was a more appalling moment than that -- to hear a CEO responsible for a company where an employee killed someone (they were focusing on the one death) declare he had no apologies to make -- it was when Mike Turner elected to whine about all the sympathy being shown. Why, he insisted, no one was even noting al-Qaeda. The issue wasn't al-Qaeda. The issue was a US company (of mercenaries) are harming Iraqi civlians (specific instances cited), not facing any punishment for it and it's the US service members that get blamed for it and have to deal with the further hostilities. But Turner -- who appeared genuinely stupid -- couldn't grasp that at and let his whine continue to declare that the focus on Iraqi civilians killed by Blackwater bothered him because "I think it crosses the line between our team and their team." Fortunately for Turner, there were other moments that people will probably zoom in on.Such as Lynn Westmoreland's crack-pot theories about a menace (Red?) in cahoots with trial attorneys across the nation. Thankfully, Westmoreland assured the country that this unnamed menace was not serving in the legislative branch ("There is a party not in Congress . . .").Less concerned with finger pointing within the halls of Congress, Darrell Issa attempted to paint the entire motive for the hearing as partisan, insisting that the hearing was being held because Blackwater has given so much money to Republicans. Erik Prince rejected that, noting, "Blackwater is not a partisan company." It flew over Issa's head. "I think you're exactly right!" Issa crowed, ignoring what Prince had just stated, and insisting this was an attempting to turn it into a partisan issue. Henry Waxman rightly pointed out, "The only one who's done that is you."Christopher Shays, before all but falling to his knees to praise the military, declared, "I was a conscientious objector. I was in the Peace Corp!"
As noted earlier, the September 16th slaughter was taken 'off the table'. Demetri Sevastopulo (Financial Times of London) reports that the FBI's plans to open an investigation into the incident ("last month shot and killed 11 Iraqi civilians") and "send a team to Iraq to assist a State department investigation." There are plenty of witnesses for them to talk to. Jomana Karadsheh and Alan Duke (CNN) report that the Iraqi police officer operating in the square asserts Blackwater "became terrorists" and that "they entered the square, throwing water bottles at the Iraqi police posted there and driving in the wrong direction." The police officer explains, "I saw parts of the woman's head flying in front of me, blow up and then her entire body was charred. What do you expect my reaction to be? Are they protecting the country? No. If I had a weapon I would have shot at them."
After Eric Prince completed his testimony, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform heard from US ambassadors David M. Satterfiled, Richard J. Griffin and William H. Moser. This aspect of the hearing was much shorter than Prince's and that may be due to the fact that even the most basic questions from US Representatives were met with obstruction from the three employees of the State Department. As Jan Schakowsky declared during her questionign, "I have heard all of that." One typical exchange went Q: "Are you refusing to answer" A: "I'm not able to confirm the details."
Bombings?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad roadside bombing claimed the life of 1 police officer (five more wounded), while 5 other Baghdad roadside bombing claimed 2 lives (twelve wounded). Reuters notes a Khalis bomber killed himself as well 4 civilians "outside a police station" (one woman and one child were among the four dead) and a Jalawla roadside bombing left eleven injured. KUNA reports 6 dead with ten more injured in an Al-Khalis car bombing.
Shootings?
Reuters notes "a businessman and his son" were shot dead in Wihda while "primary school teacher Alaa al-Zubaidi" was shot dead in Suwayra, one person was shot dead in Hilla, an armed struggle in Abbasi claimed 2 lives
Corpses?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 9 corpses were discovered in Baghdad. Reuters notes 2 corpses discovered outside Kirkuk.
Meanwhile, Mark Deen and Kitty Donaldson (Bloomberg News) report, "Prime Minister Gordon Brown, preparing for a possible election in the U.K., said he plans to pull 1,000 troops out of Iraq by the end of this year. The withdrawal would leave about 4,250 U.K. soldiers stationed near the city of Basra and put Iraqi forces in charge of day-to-day security across the south of the country." AFP notes, "In policy terms, Brown has so far shown little divergence from Blair on Iraq, although he has accepted the issue has been politically 'divisive' and that 'mistakes' were made in the post-war planning and reconstruction."
Meanwhile, Juan Gonzalez (Democracy Now!) notes, "The Democratic-led Senate has voted to authorize spending another $150 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Senate passed the spending measure by a 92 to 3 vote. Democrats Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma voted against the war spending. While the Senate bill authorizes the money to be spent, it does not guarantee it. President Bush will have to wait until Congress passes a separate appropriations bill before war funds are transferred to military coffers." On Bill Moyers Journal (last Friday in most markets and available online A/V and transcript) the issue of the financial costs of the illegal war were addressed:
BILL MOYERS: You said the other day to someone that we think we can fight the war in Iraq without paying for it. JOHN BOGLE: Well, we borrow the money to fight the Iraq War by some estimates and they're not absurd estimates is running now towards a $1 trillion. We could be doing what the British empire did. We could be bankrupting ourselves in the long run. And-- BILL MOYERS: You see us as an empire? JOHN BOGLE: Well, of course it's an empire. We reach all over the world. We thought of ourselves in many, many respects as the policemen of the world. God knows we know we're the policemen of the Middle East. And there are those say, even from Alan Greenspan on up or down, that oil is the root of that. I mean, these are great societal questions. Protecting oil, which is in turn polluting the atmosphere.We have problems as a society. And we don't have to surrender to them. But, we have to have a little introspection about where we are in America today. We've go to think through these things. We've got to develop a political system that is not driven by money. I mean, these are societal problems for us that don't have any easy answers.But you don't have to be an economist to know that a great deal of or a minimum in our economy is coming from borrowed money. People are spending at a higher rate than they're earning, and we're starting to pay a price for that now. Particularly in the mortgage side. But, eventually, that could easily spread and people won't be able to do that anymore. You can't keep spending money you don't have. It gets a lot of it, you know, and it wasn't that many years ago -- maybe a couple of generations ago -- that if you wanted something, you saved for it. And when you completed saving for it, you bought it. Imagine that. And that wasn't so bad. But, now, we know that we can have the instant gratification and pay for it with interest payments, of course, over time, which is not an unfair way to do it. We're going to pay a big price for the excessive debt we've accumulated in this society both in the public side and the private side.And it's no secret that this lack of savings in our economy -- just about zero -- is putting us at the mercy of foreign countries. China owns -- I don't know the exact number -- but, let me say about 25 percent of our federal debt. China does. What happens when they start to buy our corporations with all those extra dollars they've got there? I mean, I think that's very-- these problems are long term, are very much worrisome and very much intractable.
And, finally, tomorrow is an anniversary. As Dennis Kucinich's presidential campaign reminds: "Five years ago tomorrow (Wednesday, October 3), Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich stood on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives to deliver an impassioned, point-by-point refutation of the Bush Administration's arguments seeking passage of the Iraq War Resolution. For days leading up to that moment, Kucinich also widely circulated his own independently conducted analysis of the 'intelligence' that the Administration had presented to Congress in support of the resolution. Eight days later, despite the warnings of Kucinich and 132 other members of the House whom he had managed to persuade to oppose this prelude to war, the majority of the House and the majority of the Senate gave the President the war powers he sought. Among those supporting the 'Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002' were Senators Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, and Joe Biden, all of whom spoke forcefully in favor of the President's strategy -- all four of whom are now Democratic Presidential candidates. All four subsequently approved additional measures for supplemental appropriations to fund the war, as did Democratic Senator Barack Obama after he was elected to the Senate in 2004. Now, five years after they approved a war that should never have been authorized in the first place, those same Democrats are scrambling to explain, excuse, or defend their votes. At the same time, the foremost among them are refusing to pledge an end to the war, admitting that it may extend well beyond 2013. Kucinich, the only Democratic candidate for President who voted against the original war authorization and every war-appropriation since, has recently raised loud warnings, in the Congress and in public statements, that House-approved and Senate-approve measures targeted towards Iran are 'dangerously and frighteningly similar' to those anti-Iraq resolutions approved five years ago." PDF warning: here for the independent analysis, here for the floor speech.
iraq
joshua keykyle snyder
bloomberg news
mcclatchy newspapers
gregory levey
bill moyersbill moyers journal
pbs
democracy now
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Monday, October 01, 2007
CD Reviews, Elizabeth DiNovella
Oh, I'm tired. I have a third review for tomorrow. It is written. Do not expect it to go up to go up tomorrow morning. I have to type it.
I typed up "Kat's Korner: Shine, Joni Mitchell's artistry intact" this morning. I don't know how C.I. does it. I was typing this up while C.I. was doing the morning entries -- reading e-mails, reading the paper, on the phone to friends asking them about the news -- and it was all I could do (even fueled on non-stop coffee) to keep my eyes open. "Our" not "are." I read over it this evening and fixed that. That's how tired I was. I haven't had time to read the e-mails but Martha told me over the phone the reaction was "huge" in the public account (and favorable, but that doesn't really matter, it's just my opinion) so I'm glad people enjoyed it.
But my point is, do not expect tomorrow's to go up in the morning. I may grab some time in the afternoon. Or I may avoid and wait until evening or late night. I was and am tired. And my apologies to the student who came up after we'd talked about Iraq. She did pass on the Rolling Stone review and the article I mention and I lost both. I remember her very clearly and remember she -- in the group setting -- had pointed out that "Junk in is junk out." She felt very strongly that our entertainment choices need to be made wisely (I agree 100%). Afterwards, she came up to me to expand on that (probably because I said something like 'Damn right' when she was speaking).
Sunday, "Kat's Korner: Grab the lifeline" went up and that's my review of Ben Harper's Lifeline. My third one goes up tomorrow. If I had more energy, I'd go four. But ay-yi-yi, this speaking schedule.
I'm so tired tonight, all I want is a big bowl of ice cream. I'm not an ice cream eater. But I haven't eaten yet. (None of us have.) Or eaten dinner. We did eat lunch (or all but C.I. who was trying to return phone calls and had no time to touch anything).
Unlike the rest of us, Trina can cover the issue Mike asked us to be silent about (the perks of motherhood) so be sure to read her "Baked Pinapple Stuffing in the Kitchen." I'm just providing the link, no reason for Mike to get mad. I'll also strongly recommend "Ruth's Report" and note that Ruth really didn't think she had a report in her. She was saying that on Friday and I believed her. Then she sat down to write and damned if she didn't have a great deal to say and all of it in need of saying. And Betty's "The late night visitor" went up Saturday and she's trying to stick to the outline, add some elements and play catch up after having to set aside the needed tone last week. So be sure to read it.
Oh good, C.I. and Ava are back. It's really too late to eat out unless we want fast food. So they ran to a store (in search of one) and promised to make a Mexican chowder soup for us if they could find the ingredients and they just told Mike they did find them. We're at a Residence Inn so we've got the full kitchen set up. They're saying dinner will be ready in about a half hour but Mike's digging in the sacks for snacks. So that's it for me. I'm starving and Mike's found grapes.
Oh, that's not it for me. I'm logging into an e-mail account. Martha also told me that Tori had e-mailed a thing on spinach for me. (I love spinach.)
This is the opening of Elizabeth DiNovella's "Spinach Ripe for Outbreak" (The Progressive):
Yesterday I stopped by the downtown farmers' market to buy some locally grown produce. I picked up some purple eggplant (3 for a dollar!), a few crisp cortland apples, a pint of candy-sweet cherry tomatoes, and a big bag of spinach.
I've been thinking a lot about spinach these days. Spinach bookends the Wisconsin growing season for me. A sure sign of spring is fresh spinach. Autumn arrives with a sweet, late-September harvest of this leafy green. I will miss it when it's no longer locally available. Sure, I buy greens in the winter--trucked in from somewhere--but it just isn't the same. Given our long Wisconsin winters, we depend upon produce from other parts of the United States, especially California, to feed us.
So it was with dismay that I read about yet another recall of spinach grown in California. Remember it was just a year ago when three people died from eating spinach contaminated with E. coli.
More than 205 people in twenty-six states also became ill; of these, fifteen percent suffered kidney failure.
Within the last month, two companies have recalled tainted leafy greens. Metz Fresh, a grower and shipper based in Central California, recalled 8,000 cartons of fresh spinach sullied with salmonella. Last week, Dole Foods recalled packages of its “Hearts Delight” romaine lettuce brand sold in nine U.S. states and in Canada after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency found E. coli in a sample. (There have been no reports of anyone becoming sick from these products.)
There were calls for stepped-up inspections of leafy greens in light of last year’s E. coli outbreak. But government regulators failed to increase inspections, reports the AP.
Instead, a patchwork of largely unenforceable rules and the producers themselves regulate the $1.5 billion dollar industry.
I love spinach. I love fresh spinach. I use spinach the way other people use lettuce. I'll use it in salads in place of lettuce, in wraps and sandwiches, you name it. The big outbreak that seems forever ago (but isn't) reduced me to canned spinach. I'll eat that but I prefer fresh spinach. C.I. got that e-coli virus and it wasn't pretty. It was like having Epstein-Barr virus in terms of just being wiped out for days and days. People talk about the vomiting and whatever else, but it really saps you.
EDN is right in what she's talking about. It's just not worth the risk. The government could do their job and eliminate the risk but that's not happened. In fact, if you remember when I was blogging on that back during the outbreak, the government regularly lied by underestimating the reality of the dangers.
I am fortunate or am I? I was going to say that living in California, I'm fortunate because we have so much local spinach. But who knows. I will continue to eat the locally grown spinich. But weren't we told that possibly it was human feces in the fields that contaminated the spinach? I am not a fan of Subway but when we're on the road and in a rush, we have been known to hit one if that's all we see. It's fresh food (C.I. gets the veggie sandwich). But we've pretty much stopped even considering Subway because since the spinach e-coli outbreak, everyone we've stopped at doesn't carry it anymore. If some do, we missed them. You can't even get a spinach salad (which was my first choice, I'd have a veggie sandwich with spinach otherwise). By the way I'm not a vegetarian (nor is C.I.). Jess is. But when you're on the road, you really need to grab the fresh fruits and vegetables anywhere you can. Oh, the onions and celery. I smell them. Ava and C.I. are making the chowder. I'm starving. That's it for me. I need to stop before Mike eats all the grapes!
Along with links already provided, I also mentioned:
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
and The Third Estate Sunday Review's Ava and Jess
Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Monday, October 1, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, cholera rages, Palestinians are targeted by Shia militias in Iraq, Blackwater -- what do you say, and more.
Starting with war resistance. Saturday, Patrick Maloney (London Free Press) reported that twenty-year-old James Stepp became the latest US war resister to move to Canada's London -- driving from Ohio with wife Vicki and their two children Cheyenne and Tilford and joining war resisters Tim Richard, Linjamin Mull and Matt Lowell who are also putting down roots in the city. Maaloney quotes Stepp declaring, "We miss our friends and we miss our family very much. But it's just something that had to be done. . . . The culture in America is you're either with us or against us. Especially in the military. I just ask people to understand why I did it. I would rather be an outcast in my own country than commit war crimes and live in comfort knowing I had done that."
Another war resister in Canada should have been actively pursued by journalists last week. James Burmeister went to Canada in May of this year and went public on his reasons for self-checking out. Among those reasons were the "kill teams" of US snipers who left US property (any US Army property -- not, as the mainstream media narrative last week insisted, just weapons and materials to make weapons out of) lying around as traps for Iraqis who would then be shot for touching US property. While the US media -- All Things Media Big and Small -- played dumb, Mina Al-Oraibi (Asharq Alawsat) spoke with Burmeister: "Burmeister says he refuses to participate in the practices of what he described as 'small kill teams', which include 'four of five soldiers, with a couple of snipers, who would go out on the streets and put something out, like a camera. Then they'd put a sign out [that said] if anyone touched it, they would be killed. But a lot of these people do not read English, so they would touch it to see what it is, and then they would be shot. [This is justified by] saying the American army has the right to shoot anyone trying to steal its property'." Mina Al-Orabi also speaks with war resister Matthew Lowell who notes that, unlike Burmeister, he's not sure his family in the United States supports his decision: "I do talk to my family, although they haven't come to visit me at all. As far as them supporting my decision, I am not fully certain." He explains, "I tried to get out legitimately before deciding to go AWOL [Absent Without Official Leave]. Nothing I did worked through; I came to Candada first in September-October 2003. At that time, I didn't know about applying for refugee status or a work permit and just got a job that paid under the table." After which, Lowell went back to the United States, turned himself in, checked out from Fort Knox and eventually, November 2005, returned to Canada and states, "Call me what you want. I left my country, my friends, my family, all because of my conscience and morals. What kind of person would I be if I agreed to participate in the slaughtering of people who didn't agree with my way of life, who didn't threaten my family, my friends, and everything that I know? When I joined the military it was to defend all those that I hold dear. I volunteered for the military on those grounds, so why if we aren't defending, should I have to kill? At least I can still hold my head up high and carry myself with pride and respect."
In Friday's snapshot, we noted that three war resisters had published their stories in book form this year: Aidan Delgado with The Sutras Of Abu Ghraib: Notes From A Conscientious Objector In Iraq, Camilo Mejia shared his story in Road from Ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia and Joshua Key told his story in The Deserter's Tale. Today, a fourth war resister joins that list. As Elaine noted Friday, Letters from Fort Lewis Brig: A Matter of Conscience is Kevin Benderman (with wife Monica Benderman) telling his story. Kevin Benderman saw a kangaroo court in July 2005 -- his court-martial on trumped up charges -- and no applause from the military brass for any commendable actions such as refusing an order in Iraq to shoot at little kids who were throwing rocks. Prior to and during Kevin Benderman's imprisonment, Monica Benderman went to many book stores attempting to find books about COs (Kevin Benderman attempted to be granted CO status) and other forms of resistance. She found basically zilch at the time. Kevin Benderman's story is one that needs to be told. And they're getting it out.
Of course some will not know about it. For instance, The Nation has refused to review any of the three books already released. A weekly magazine, purportedly against the illegal war, that has pages and pages, and wasted pages, of really bad writing about really bad books but it can't be bothered -- thus far -- in reviewing books by war resisters. Amazingly, what a weekly -- with pages and pages of book reviews each issue -- can't do (really, what they won't do) ISR and The Progressive have been able to. This month, ISR proved they can continue to do so as they reviewed Mejia's Road from Ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia (not available online -- we noted it in last Monday's snapshot -- it runs on pages 73 and 74 of the print edition and is written by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field). That's the September/October edition of ISR. The October issue of The Progressive also reviews Mejia's book. JoAnn Wypijewski review ("Dilemmas of a War Resister") runs from pages 39-44 and uses the book as a starting off point to address multiple issue about the illegal war. Wypijewski notes, "Mejia seems to have found his voice, in life and in the book, in the course of saying no. At the end of his court-martial -- his description of which captures the sinking experience of witnessing justice reduce to procedure -- he tells the panel of jurors:
"Yes, you have the power to convict me, to sentence me, to discharge me with a bad conduct discharge. . . I have been a bad soldier according to you, and you have that much power, but [remember] I am part of the military. . . I am one of you, and this is my family too. We're all on trial. Not just me, sitting here, but everybody here in uniform, everybody in this country. . . . Now I feel free."
This review isn't available online. The October issue isn't up yet at the site. The Progressive makes selections available each month. There's a great deal in the October issue (and I wish I'd gone through it last night because it could have easily fit into "And the war drags on"). But we're going to leave it with that for this snapshot and hopefully pick up later in the week. We'll also note Wypijewski later in this snapshot on a different topic. For now, we'll note that both The Progressive and ISR have reviewed two of the now four books by war resisters. Aidan Delgado's only came out last month and Kevin Benderman's is out today. One is a monthly, the other a bi-monthly. Both were able to do what The Peace Resister Katrina vanden Heuvel's weekly Nation magazine won't. Just as the magazine refuses to cover war resisters.
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes James Stepp, Matthew Lowell, Derek Hess, Diedra Cobb, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Zamesha Dominique, Chrisopther Scott Magaoay, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Carla Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, Blake LeMoine, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko,Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Wilfredo Torres, Michael Sudbury, Ghanim Khalil, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty-one US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline [(877) 447-4487], Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters.
Turning to the issue of mercenaries. Over the weekend, Warren P. Strobel (McClatchy Newspapers) reported on the beliefs by those working under State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard that he was impeading "investigations into alleged arms smuggling by employees of the private security firm Blackwater and into faulty construction of the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad" and that he "threatened two investigators with retaliation this week if they cooperate with a congressional probe into Krongard's office". The US State Department has relied on Blackwater for protection. And the State Department can always rely on the New York Times for protection -- decade after decade. Which is the best explanation for James Risen (New York Times) proclaiming on Saturday that the State Dept had started not one, not two, but 3 investiagions -- those reading further into the article may have noted that the person over the investigations was still not in Iraq at the time Risen 'reported' (though he was expected to arrive at some point over the weekend). While the Times provided cover, Scotland's Sunday Herald provided coverage noting, "EVEN FOR Blackwater, it was an atrocity too far. If an Iraqi government report is to be believed, Blackwater, a US mercenary company which is unofficially the world's largest "for hire" private army, indiscriminately and without provocation opened fire earlier this month on civilians in a Baghdad street, killing at least 20 people." That's referencing the September 16th attack by Blackwater where they slaughtered innocent Iraqis in Baghdad. Note "mercenary" is used and not apologized for nor are quotation marks required. During the time since that slaughter, as more and more of the mercenary violence has made even the mainstream news, the Defense Department has been happy to point fingers at the State Department and note that it's that US department using Blackwater. Ali Gharib (Asia Times) reports today that the Defense Department's hands are far from clean and, inf act, despite homophobe Petey Pace -- joint chief of staffs -- declaring that Blackwater "could certanily be" a contractor "in the future" seeming to imply that the September 16th slaughter had resulted in some soul searching on the part of DoD, "The future arrived just two hours later when the Pentagon released a new list of contracts - Presidential Airways, the aviation unit of parent Blackwater, was awarded the contract to fly Department of Defense passengers and cargo around Central Asia." Keeping Blackwater in business since . . . well, all along.
Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted the contract is for $92 million and that "Newseek has obtained an extensive evidence file assembled by the Iraqi National Police after the Sept. 16 shooting. Iraqi officials concluded Blackwater forces opened fire unprovoked from the ground and the sky." And CNN reports that, "A Blackwater contractor wrote an initial U.S. government report about how his colleagues killed Iraqi civilians in a September shooting that strained U.S.-Iraqi relations, government and industry sources told CNN." This was the two-page State Department report and if you're unfamiliar with it, we noted it repeatedly via the 'reporting' of Sabrina Tavernise and James Glanz for the New York Times. So a correction is in order. I had no idea that the State Department had contracted out their long history of direct channels with the paper of no record or that they had contracted that relationship to Blackwater. Tavernise and Glanz must be so proud to be on the 'cutting edge' of a new chapter in the paper's history.
So, to be perfectly clear, the following appeared on Friday: "To no surprise James Glanz and Sabrina Tavernise are back to shovel the usual crap they've provided on Blackwater throughout. Based on a a two-page report (put out by the US), they write a self-serving account that makes you wonder if they're sleeping with Blackwater? Unliked the Iraqi government's report, the two never use 'self-serving' to describe the report. The report isn't worth noting here. It's nothing but distraction and you can tell that by the fact that the State Department is trying to publicly maintain distance from the report. But Tavernise and Glanz have no distance, they've been one-sided throughout on this story and today's nonsense further undermines their own standing as journalists." That is the two-page spot report CNN is reporting on. And we will stand by the report being "self-serving" -- it read such and Glanz and Tavernise -- so quick to apply the term to an Iraqi report -- should have applied to what was in fact that report the State Dept outsourced to Blackwater. This is the heavily pimped report that cast Blackwater in a much more positive light than reality provided. Proud moments for Tavernise and Glanz, proud moments.
Two Fridays ago, on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show, Rehm asked about the Iraqis slaughtered by Blackwater on September 16th and guests participating in the roundtable had no information on them. McClatchy Newspapers' Leila Fadel (at the paper's blog Baghdad Observer) does and wrote of it as she prepared to leave Iraq for a brief period, "But the things that will stay with me over my break are Afrah's tears. I sat in her home this past week to talk about her mother Ghania. Afrah was the woman's favorite among her eight children. Often her sisters would complain that she and Ghania were always together. Afrah talked about her kindness, Ghania would hide away her favorite foods for her or pick up clothes or trinkets from the market that reminded her of her daughter. Ghania is gone, killed at the back of a bus by what witnesses said were bullets from Blackwater security guards on Sept. 16 in Nisour square. While they protected Americans Iraqis died, witnesses said." Ghania is only one of the many slaughtered by the mercenaries of Blackwater.
Moving to some of today's reported violence . . .
Bombings?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports an east Baghdad bombing left three people injured while a northeast Baghdad bombing left two people injured. Reuters notes a Mosul car bombing claimed the life of 1 university professor (six more individuals were wounded) and a mortar attack in Yusufiya claimed the life of 1 adult and left a child wounded.
Shootings?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports that Abdul Jalil Khalaf ("police commander of Basra province") was targeted with an assassination today (he survived) and yesterday Lt. Col. Norri was attacked by three assailants who fired repeatedly at his car in Al Anbar Province.
Corpses?
Reuters notes 4 corpses discovered in Kirkuk and 2 in Mahaweel.
Last week, the US Senate voted 75 in favor of what's known as the Biden amendment. The non-binding legislation (do the Dems offer anything binding since being returned to power?) calls for the partitioning of Iraq into 3 areas. Ron Jacobs (CounterPunch) observed last week, "Partitioning Iraq is not a solution that is Washington's to make. The recent vote by the US Senate is misguided. In addition, it will do little to further the desire of the US public to bring the troops home. Instead, it will put US forces in the position of maintaining the newly created divisions along new lines in the sand. Senator Biden's bill is not a solution. It is another false approach that has as much chance at success as anything tried by the Bush administration. In other words, it is destined to fail." Ned Parker and and Raheem Salman (Los Angeles Times) reported yesterday, "Iraq's divided political leadership, in a rare show of unity, skewered a non-binding U.S. Senate resolution approved in Washington last week that endorsed the decentralization of Iraq into semiautonomous regions." Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) reports today, "Opposition to it has even found currency on the street, where Iraqis have volunteered their opinion to American reporters they encountered. Said one, 'So you are going to divide our country?'" Both Rubin and the team of Parker and Salman report on Sunday's press conference in which a statement was read declaring that the partition proposal "represents a dangerous precedent to establishing the nature of relationship between Iraq and the USA and shows the Congress as if it were planning for a long-term occupation by their country's troops and for their staying in Iraq." Also now opposing the plan is, AFP reports, Jordan's King Abdulla II has come out publicly against the measure. The Biden amendment is named after US Senator and 2008 presidential hopeful Joe Biden.
Staying with the US Congress. Michael Ratner and Heidi Boghosian addressed the US Congress on WBAI's Law and Disorder today (Ratner and Boghosian host the program along with Dalia Hashad and Michael Ratner) with Ratner noting that the measures to end the illegal war have not been pushed by Democrats and the excuse offered : "What they said they were afraid of was a filibuster. . . . If they'd been forced to go through with it then the Republicans would have been forced to filibuster and they [Republicans] would have been seen as obstructing it."
Heidi Boghosian: Why? Why didn't they push for this?
Michael Ratner: Other than the fact that Democrats play softball compared to the Republicans who play hardball, you know this was never an issue when the Republicans were there. When the Democrats said we'll filibuster -- when the Republicans ran the Congress -- you know what the Republicans' reaction was? We're going to change the law, we're going to change the way Congress runs, and we're going to make it so you can't filibuster anymore. And so that was the Republicans' reaction but the Democrats instead of saying "We're going to force you to filibuster on the Iraq War and it's your problem," they just basically caved. So we're here with the Iraq War for a very, very long time, I'm afraid.
Now in last week's Democratic presidential nominee 'debate' broadcast on MSNBC, 'front runners' Barack Obama, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton all refused to pledge the illegal war, if elected president, by the end of their first term. As we noted at The Third Estate Sunday Review yesterday, Joe Biden -- author of the now rejected amendment (which doesn't mean the Senate won't stick with it) -- attempted to say yes and no: "Candidate Joe Biden hedged the answer. He said yes and he said no. He declared, 'Just from Iraq. You're going to bring all troops home from Iraq. If in fact there is no political solution by the time I am president, then I would bring them out because all they are is fodder. But -- but -- if you go along with the Biden plan that got 75 votes today and you have a stable Iraq like we have in Bosnia -- we've had 20,000 Western troops in Bosnia for 10 years. Not one has been killed -- not one. The genocide has ended. So it would depend on the circumstances when I became president.' He would bring them all home . . . unless his plan to partition Iraq into three sections came to be and since it won the support of 75 idiots in the Senate, it's very likely that Iraq will be carved up into three areas if the US has the last say. In which case, Biden's answer is 'no'."
Michael Ratner: The war of course is more complicated. The most cynical of people say that the Democrats don't want to vote to actually do anything about the war in part because they want the Republicans to lose the election based on the war. Of course I don't see why a filibuster wouldn't have done that same thing by the Republicans. But I actually think in some ways that it's a cyncial, political maneuver that Nancy Pelosi and others, and Reid -- the Senate Majority Leader, Pelosi of course in the House -- have basically made a calculation: the Democrats can win and they can win the presidency if things remain approximately the same around the war.
HeidI Boghosian: Hmm-hmm. The status quo.
Michael Ratner: And meanwhile Iraqis are dying every day and American soldiers are dying every day.
And it's not just bullets and bombs killing Iraqis -- the cholera outbreak continues with AP reporting yesterday, "Three more people have died of cholera in Iraq, bringing the number of deaths to 14 across the country, the World Health Organization said." Today AFP reports that hospitals in the northern section of the country "are reporting up to 100 new cases of cholera a day as the bacterial disease continues to spread across the country". Prensa Latina observes that 12 have died in the outbreak and at lest 2,839 have een confirmed as infected "according to the Iraqi Health Ministry on Monday."
From cholera to the refugee crisis. Amnesty International reveals:
Scores of Palestinian refugees in Iraq have been killed since the US-led invasion in 2003. Most were abducted by armed groups and their bodies found a few days later in a morgue or dumped in a street, often mutilated or with clear marks of torture. Many Palestinians have fled their homes, most of which are in Baghdad, after receiving written threats warning them to leave the country or face death. Some are in hiding inside Iraq; others are stranded in makeshift camps near the Iraq/Syria border with no apparent solution to their plight. Some Palestinians have been arrested and detained by Iraqi security forces on suspicion of involvement in insurgency activities or links with Sunni insurgents. Most of those arrested have been released without charge, but many say they were tortured or otherwise ill-treated in detention. Palestinian refugees have been targeted by armed militia groups affiliated to Shi'a religious parties because of their ethnicity and because they are reputed to have received preferential treatment under the former Ba'ath government headed by Saddam Hussain. As Iraq plunged into chaos and the sectarian strife between Shi'a and Sunni intensified, Palestinians became more vulnerable.
That is from their press release. Click here for the full report -- and the link takes you to HTML, not PDF.
Lastly, this may be the only time this gets noted before the events take place (it's also the first time because I keep forgetting to mention it). October 13th and October 14th, the Kopkind holds two major events in Vermont -- Saturday, October 13th, Peter Davis will screen his amazing documentary -- amazing and Oscar winning -- Hearts and Minds at 4:00 pm in Brattleboro and the following day in Guilford, Vermont a forum entitled Left Alive? will be held with Alexander Cockburn (CounterPunch) participating along with JoAnn Wypijewski (whom we noted earlier in the snapshot and who is also on the Kopkind board of directors -- named after the tell-it-like-it-is reporter Andrew Kopkind. Please see The Kopkind Blog for more details (and possibly correct details -- verify what I've just dictated if you're interested in the events).
Closing with fables for the willfully dumb, it's the first month which means that not only is the Surpeme Court back in session (first Monday in October), it's also time for the paper's who bother to note the death toll (US) in Iraq to rush to print their features despite the fact that M-NF regularly and repeatedly makes announcements for the previous month after it has ended. Jim Michaels (USA Today) is jazzed on the 'news' that the death toll is 62 for September -- "the lowest levels in more than a year." But 'news' -- like bad reporting -- can shift quickly and ICCC reports it's 63 for the month of September. ICCC has updated their count since the start of the illegal war to 3804 which is also the count AP goes with. Of course, AFP reported yesterday, "US military losses in Iraq for September stood at 71 on Sunday, but the toll remained the lowest monthly figure since July last year, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures." and the count since the start of the illegal war was then 3892. But don't dwell on the numbers (or the way M-NF kept reporters confused all month as they frequently refused to make announcements leading people to wait for the DoD to announce the names of the dead whose deaths were never announced).
iraq
james stepppatrick maloneyjames burmeister
mina al-oraibikevin benderman
aidan delgadojoshua keycamilo mejia
elizabeth wrigley-field
law and disorder
michael ratner
michael smith
dalia hashad
heidi boghosian
democracy nowamy goodman
blackwater usa
the diane rehm showmcclatchy newspapersleila fadel
the new york timesalissa j. rubinsabrina tavernisethe los angeles timesned parker
like maria said paz
I typed up "Kat's Korner: Shine, Joni Mitchell's artistry intact" this morning. I don't know how C.I. does it. I was typing this up while C.I. was doing the morning entries -- reading e-mails, reading the paper, on the phone to friends asking them about the news -- and it was all I could do (even fueled on non-stop coffee) to keep my eyes open. "Our" not "are." I read over it this evening and fixed that. That's how tired I was. I haven't had time to read the e-mails but Martha told me over the phone the reaction was "huge" in the public account (and favorable, but that doesn't really matter, it's just my opinion) so I'm glad people enjoyed it.
But my point is, do not expect tomorrow's to go up in the morning. I may grab some time in the afternoon. Or I may avoid and wait until evening or late night. I was and am tired. And my apologies to the student who came up after we'd talked about Iraq. She did pass on the Rolling Stone review and the article I mention and I lost both. I remember her very clearly and remember she -- in the group setting -- had pointed out that "Junk in is junk out." She felt very strongly that our entertainment choices need to be made wisely (I agree 100%). Afterwards, she came up to me to expand on that (probably because I said something like 'Damn right' when she was speaking).
Sunday, "Kat's Korner: Grab the lifeline" went up and that's my review of Ben Harper's Lifeline. My third one goes up tomorrow. If I had more energy, I'd go four. But ay-yi-yi, this speaking schedule.
I'm so tired tonight, all I want is a big bowl of ice cream. I'm not an ice cream eater. But I haven't eaten yet. (None of us have.) Or eaten dinner. We did eat lunch (or all but C.I. who was trying to return phone calls and had no time to touch anything).
Unlike the rest of us, Trina can cover the issue Mike asked us to be silent about (the perks of motherhood) so be sure to read her "Baked Pinapple Stuffing in the Kitchen." I'm just providing the link, no reason for Mike to get mad. I'll also strongly recommend "Ruth's Report" and note that Ruth really didn't think she had a report in her. She was saying that on Friday and I believed her. Then she sat down to write and damned if she didn't have a great deal to say and all of it in need of saying. And Betty's "The late night visitor" went up Saturday and she's trying to stick to the outline, add some elements and play catch up after having to set aside the needed tone last week. So be sure to read it.
Oh good, C.I. and Ava are back. It's really too late to eat out unless we want fast food. So they ran to a store (in search of one) and promised to make a Mexican chowder soup for us if they could find the ingredients and they just told Mike they did find them. We're at a Residence Inn so we've got the full kitchen set up. They're saying dinner will be ready in about a half hour but Mike's digging in the sacks for snacks. So that's it for me. I'm starving and Mike's found grapes.
Oh, that's not it for me. I'm logging into an e-mail account. Martha also told me that Tori had e-mailed a thing on spinach for me. (I love spinach.)
This is the opening of Elizabeth DiNovella's "Spinach Ripe for Outbreak" (The Progressive):
Yesterday I stopped by the downtown farmers' market to buy some locally grown produce. I picked up some purple eggplant (3 for a dollar!), a few crisp cortland apples, a pint of candy-sweet cherry tomatoes, and a big bag of spinach.
I've been thinking a lot about spinach these days. Spinach bookends the Wisconsin growing season for me. A sure sign of spring is fresh spinach. Autumn arrives with a sweet, late-September harvest of this leafy green. I will miss it when it's no longer locally available. Sure, I buy greens in the winter--trucked in from somewhere--but it just isn't the same. Given our long Wisconsin winters, we depend upon produce from other parts of the United States, especially California, to feed us.
So it was with dismay that I read about yet another recall of spinach grown in California. Remember it was just a year ago when three people died from eating spinach contaminated with E. coli.
More than 205 people in twenty-six states also became ill; of these, fifteen percent suffered kidney failure.
Within the last month, two companies have recalled tainted leafy greens. Metz Fresh, a grower and shipper based in Central California, recalled 8,000 cartons of fresh spinach sullied with salmonella. Last week, Dole Foods recalled packages of its “Hearts Delight” romaine lettuce brand sold in nine U.S. states and in Canada after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency found E. coli in a sample. (There have been no reports of anyone becoming sick from these products.)
There were calls for stepped-up inspections of leafy greens in light of last year’s E. coli outbreak. But government regulators failed to increase inspections, reports the AP.
Instead, a patchwork of largely unenforceable rules and the producers themselves regulate the $1.5 billion dollar industry.
I love spinach. I love fresh spinach. I use spinach the way other people use lettuce. I'll use it in salads in place of lettuce, in wraps and sandwiches, you name it. The big outbreak that seems forever ago (but isn't) reduced me to canned spinach. I'll eat that but I prefer fresh spinach. C.I. got that e-coli virus and it wasn't pretty. It was like having Epstein-Barr virus in terms of just being wiped out for days and days. People talk about the vomiting and whatever else, but it really saps you.
EDN is right in what she's talking about. It's just not worth the risk. The government could do their job and eliminate the risk but that's not happened. In fact, if you remember when I was blogging on that back during the outbreak, the government regularly lied by underestimating the reality of the dangers.
I am fortunate or am I? I was going to say that living in California, I'm fortunate because we have so much local spinach. But who knows. I will continue to eat the locally grown spinich. But weren't we told that possibly it was human feces in the fields that contaminated the spinach? I am not a fan of Subway but when we're on the road and in a rush, we have been known to hit one if that's all we see. It's fresh food (C.I. gets the veggie sandwich). But we've pretty much stopped even considering Subway because since the spinach e-coli outbreak, everyone we've stopped at doesn't carry it anymore. If some do, we missed them. You can't even get a spinach salad (which was my first choice, I'd have a veggie sandwich with spinach otherwise). By the way I'm not a vegetarian (nor is C.I.). Jess is. But when you're on the road, you really need to grab the fresh fruits and vegetables anywhere you can. Oh, the onions and celery. I smell them. Ava and C.I. are making the chowder. I'm starving. That's it for me. I need to stop before Mike eats all the grapes!
Along with links already provided, I also mentioned:
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
and The Third Estate Sunday Review's Ava and Jess
Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Monday, October 1, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, cholera rages, Palestinians are targeted by Shia militias in Iraq, Blackwater -- what do you say, and more.
Starting with war resistance. Saturday, Patrick Maloney (London Free Press) reported that twenty-year-old James Stepp became the latest US war resister to move to Canada's London -- driving from Ohio with wife Vicki and their two children Cheyenne and Tilford and joining war resisters Tim Richard, Linjamin Mull and Matt Lowell who are also putting down roots in the city. Maaloney quotes Stepp declaring, "We miss our friends and we miss our family very much. But it's just something that had to be done. . . . The culture in America is you're either with us or against us. Especially in the military. I just ask people to understand why I did it. I would rather be an outcast in my own country than commit war crimes and live in comfort knowing I had done that."
Another war resister in Canada should have been actively pursued by journalists last week. James Burmeister went to Canada in May of this year and went public on his reasons for self-checking out. Among those reasons were the "kill teams" of US snipers who left US property (any US Army property -- not, as the mainstream media narrative last week insisted, just weapons and materials to make weapons out of) lying around as traps for Iraqis who would then be shot for touching US property. While the US media -- All Things Media Big and Small -- played dumb, Mina Al-Oraibi (Asharq Alawsat) spoke with Burmeister: "Burmeister says he refuses to participate in the practices of what he described as 'small kill teams', which include 'four of five soldiers, with a couple of snipers, who would go out on the streets and put something out, like a camera. Then they'd put a sign out [that said] if anyone touched it, they would be killed. But a lot of these people do not read English, so they would touch it to see what it is, and then they would be shot. [This is justified by] saying the American army has the right to shoot anyone trying to steal its property'." Mina Al-Orabi also speaks with war resister Matthew Lowell who notes that, unlike Burmeister, he's not sure his family in the United States supports his decision: "I do talk to my family, although they haven't come to visit me at all. As far as them supporting my decision, I am not fully certain." He explains, "I tried to get out legitimately before deciding to go AWOL [Absent Without Official Leave]. Nothing I did worked through; I came to Candada first in September-October 2003. At that time, I didn't know about applying for refugee status or a work permit and just got a job that paid under the table." After which, Lowell went back to the United States, turned himself in, checked out from Fort Knox and eventually, November 2005, returned to Canada and states, "Call me what you want. I left my country, my friends, my family, all because of my conscience and morals. What kind of person would I be if I agreed to participate in the slaughtering of people who didn't agree with my way of life, who didn't threaten my family, my friends, and everything that I know? When I joined the military it was to defend all those that I hold dear. I volunteered for the military on those grounds, so why if we aren't defending, should I have to kill? At least I can still hold my head up high and carry myself with pride and respect."
In Friday's snapshot, we noted that three war resisters had published their stories in book form this year: Aidan Delgado with The Sutras Of Abu Ghraib: Notes From A Conscientious Objector In Iraq, Camilo Mejia shared his story in Road from Ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia and Joshua Key told his story in The Deserter's Tale. Today, a fourth war resister joins that list. As Elaine noted Friday, Letters from Fort Lewis Brig: A Matter of Conscience is Kevin Benderman (with wife Monica Benderman) telling his story. Kevin Benderman saw a kangaroo court in July 2005 -- his court-martial on trumped up charges -- and no applause from the military brass for any commendable actions such as refusing an order in Iraq to shoot at little kids who were throwing rocks. Prior to and during Kevin Benderman's imprisonment, Monica Benderman went to many book stores attempting to find books about COs (Kevin Benderman attempted to be granted CO status) and other forms of resistance. She found basically zilch at the time. Kevin Benderman's story is one that needs to be told. And they're getting it out.
Of course some will not know about it. For instance, The Nation has refused to review any of the three books already released. A weekly magazine, purportedly against the illegal war, that has pages and pages, and wasted pages, of really bad writing about really bad books but it can't be bothered -- thus far -- in reviewing books by war resisters. Amazingly, what a weekly -- with pages and pages of book reviews each issue -- can't do (really, what they won't do) ISR and The Progressive have been able to. This month, ISR proved they can continue to do so as they reviewed Mejia's Road from Ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia (not available online -- we noted it in last Monday's snapshot -- it runs on pages 73 and 74 of the print edition and is written by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field). That's the September/October edition of ISR. The October issue of The Progressive also reviews Mejia's book. JoAnn Wypijewski review ("Dilemmas of a War Resister") runs from pages 39-44 and uses the book as a starting off point to address multiple issue about the illegal war. Wypijewski notes, "Mejia seems to have found his voice, in life and in the book, in the course of saying no. At the end of his court-martial -- his description of which captures the sinking experience of witnessing justice reduce to procedure -- he tells the panel of jurors:
"Yes, you have the power to convict me, to sentence me, to discharge me with a bad conduct discharge. . . I have been a bad soldier according to you, and you have that much power, but [remember] I am part of the military. . . I am one of you, and this is my family too. We're all on trial. Not just me, sitting here, but everybody here in uniform, everybody in this country. . . . Now I feel free."
This review isn't available online. The October issue isn't up yet at the site. The Progressive makes selections available each month. There's a great deal in the October issue (and I wish I'd gone through it last night because it could have easily fit into "And the war drags on"). But we're going to leave it with that for this snapshot and hopefully pick up later in the week. We'll also note Wypijewski later in this snapshot on a different topic. For now, we'll note that both The Progressive and ISR have reviewed two of the now four books by war resisters. Aidan Delgado's only came out last month and Kevin Benderman's is out today. One is a monthly, the other a bi-monthly. Both were able to do what The Peace Resister Katrina vanden Heuvel's weekly Nation magazine won't. Just as the magazine refuses to cover war resisters.
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes James Stepp, Matthew Lowell, Derek Hess, Diedra Cobb, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Zamesha Dominique, Chrisopther Scott Magaoay, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Carla Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, Blake LeMoine, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko,Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Wilfredo Torres, Michael Sudbury, Ghanim Khalil, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty-one US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline [(877) 447-4487], Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters.
Turning to the issue of mercenaries. Over the weekend, Warren P. Strobel (McClatchy Newspapers) reported on the beliefs by those working under State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard that he was impeading "investigations into alleged arms smuggling by employees of the private security firm Blackwater and into faulty construction of the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad" and that he "threatened two investigators with retaliation this week if they cooperate with a congressional probe into Krongard's office". The US State Department has relied on Blackwater for protection. And the State Department can always rely on the New York Times for protection -- decade after decade. Which is the best explanation for James Risen (New York Times) proclaiming on Saturday that the State Dept had started not one, not two, but 3 investiagions -- those reading further into the article may have noted that the person over the investigations was still not in Iraq at the time Risen 'reported' (though he was expected to arrive at some point over the weekend). While the Times provided cover, Scotland's Sunday Herald provided coverage noting, "EVEN FOR Blackwater, it was an atrocity too far. If an Iraqi government report is to be believed, Blackwater, a US mercenary company which is unofficially the world's largest "for hire" private army, indiscriminately and without provocation opened fire earlier this month on civilians in a Baghdad street, killing at least 20 people." That's referencing the September 16th attack by Blackwater where they slaughtered innocent Iraqis in Baghdad. Note "mercenary" is used and not apologized for nor are quotation marks required. During the time since that slaughter, as more and more of the mercenary violence has made even the mainstream news, the Defense Department has been happy to point fingers at the State Department and note that it's that US department using Blackwater. Ali Gharib (Asia Times) reports today that the Defense Department's hands are far from clean and, inf act, despite homophobe Petey Pace -- joint chief of staffs -- declaring that Blackwater "could certanily be" a contractor "in the future" seeming to imply that the September 16th slaughter had resulted in some soul searching on the part of DoD, "The future arrived just two hours later when the Pentagon released a new list of contracts - Presidential Airways, the aviation unit of parent Blackwater, was awarded the contract to fly Department of Defense passengers and cargo around Central Asia." Keeping Blackwater in business since . . . well, all along.
Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted the contract is for $92 million and that "Newseek has obtained an extensive evidence file assembled by the Iraqi National Police after the Sept. 16 shooting. Iraqi officials concluded Blackwater forces opened fire unprovoked from the ground and the sky." And CNN reports that, "A Blackwater contractor wrote an initial U.S. government report about how his colleagues killed Iraqi civilians in a September shooting that strained U.S.-Iraqi relations, government and industry sources told CNN." This was the two-page State Department report and if you're unfamiliar with it, we noted it repeatedly via the 'reporting' of Sabrina Tavernise and James Glanz for the New York Times. So a correction is in order. I had no idea that the State Department had contracted out their long history of direct channels with the paper of no record or that they had contracted that relationship to Blackwater. Tavernise and Glanz must be so proud to be on the 'cutting edge' of a new chapter in the paper's history.
So, to be perfectly clear, the following appeared on Friday: "To no surprise James Glanz and Sabrina Tavernise are back to shovel the usual crap they've provided on Blackwater throughout. Based on a a two-page report (put out by the US), they write a self-serving account that makes you wonder if they're sleeping with Blackwater? Unliked the Iraqi government's report, the two never use 'self-serving' to describe the report. The report isn't worth noting here. It's nothing but distraction and you can tell that by the fact that the State Department is trying to publicly maintain distance from the report. But Tavernise and Glanz have no distance, they've been one-sided throughout on this story and today's nonsense further undermines their own standing as journalists." That is the two-page spot report CNN is reporting on. And we will stand by the report being "self-serving" -- it read such and Glanz and Tavernise -- so quick to apply the term to an Iraqi report -- should have applied to what was in fact that report the State Dept outsourced to Blackwater. This is the heavily pimped report that cast Blackwater in a much more positive light than reality provided. Proud moments for Tavernise and Glanz, proud moments.
Two Fridays ago, on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show, Rehm asked about the Iraqis slaughtered by Blackwater on September 16th and guests participating in the roundtable had no information on them. McClatchy Newspapers' Leila Fadel (at the paper's blog Baghdad Observer) does and wrote of it as she prepared to leave Iraq for a brief period, "But the things that will stay with me over my break are Afrah's tears. I sat in her home this past week to talk about her mother Ghania. Afrah was the woman's favorite among her eight children. Often her sisters would complain that she and Ghania were always together. Afrah talked about her kindness, Ghania would hide away her favorite foods for her or pick up clothes or trinkets from the market that reminded her of her daughter. Ghania is gone, killed at the back of a bus by what witnesses said were bullets from Blackwater security guards on Sept. 16 in Nisour square. While they protected Americans Iraqis died, witnesses said." Ghania is only one of the many slaughtered by the mercenaries of Blackwater.
Moving to some of today's reported violence . . .
Bombings?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports an east Baghdad bombing left three people injured while a northeast Baghdad bombing left two people injured. Reuters notes a Mosul car bombing claimed the life of 1 university professor (six more individuals were wounded) and a mortar attack in Yusufiya claimed the life of 1 adult and left a child wounded.
Shootings?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports that Abdul Jalil Khalaf ("police commander of Basra province") was targeted with an assassination today (he survived) and yesterday Lt. Col. Norri was attacked by three assailants who fired repeatedly at his car in Al Anbar Province.
Corpses?
Reuters notes 4 corpses discovered in Kirkuk and 2 in Mahaweel.
Last week, the US Senate voted 75 in favor of what's known as the Biden amendment. The non-binding legislation (do the Dems offer anything binding since being returned to power?) calls for the partitioning of Iraq into 3 areas. Ron Jacobs (CounterPunch) observed last week, "Partitioning Iraq is not a solution that is Washington's to make. The recent vote by the US Senate is misguided. In addition, it will do little to further the desire of the US public to bring the troops home. Instead, it will put US forces in the position of maintaining the newly created divisions along new lines in the sand. Senator Biden's bill is not a solution. It is another false approach that has as much chance at success as anything tried by the Bush administration. In other words, it is destined to fail." Ned Parker and and Raheem Salman (Los Angeles Times) reported yesterday, "Iraq's divided political leadership, in a rare show of unity, skewered a non-binding U.S. Senate resolution approved in Washington last week that endorsed the decentralization of Iraq into semiautonomous regions." Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) reports today, "Opposition to it has even found currency on the street, where Iraqis have volunteered their opinion to American reporters they encountered. Said one, 'So you are going to divide our country?'" Both Rubin and the team of Parker and Salman report on Sunday's press conference in which a statement was read declaring that the partition proposal "represents a dangerous precedent to establishing the nature of relationship between Iraq and the USA and shows the Congress as if it were planning for a long-term occupation by their country's troops and for their staying in Iraq." Also now opposing the plan is, AFP reports, Jordan's King Abdulla II has come out publicly against the measure. The Biden amendment is named after US Senator and 2008 presidential hopeful Joe Biden.
Staying with the US Congress. Michael Ratner and Heidi Boghosian addressed the US Congress on WBAI's Law and Disorder today (Ratner and Boghosian host the program along with Dalia Hashad and Michael Ratner) with Ratner noting that the measures to end the illegal war have not been pushed by Democrats and the excuse offered : "What they said they were afraid of was a filibuster. . . . If they'd been forced to go through with it then the Republicans would have been forced to filibuster and they [Republicans] would have been seen as obstructing it."
Heidi Boghosian: Why? Why didn't they push for this?
Michael Ratner: Other than the fact that Democrats play softball compared to the Republicans who play hardball, you know this was never an issue when the Republicans were there. When the Democrats said we'll filibuster -- when the Republicans ran the Congress -- you know what the Republicans' reaction was? We're going to change the law, we're going to change the way Congress runs, and we're going to make it so you can't filibuster anymore. And so that was the Republicans' reaction but the Democrats instead of saying "We're going to force you to filibuster on the Iraq War and it's your problem," they just basically caved. So we're here with the Iraq War for a very, very long time, I'm afraid.
Now in last week's Democratic presidential nominee 'debate' broadcast on MSNBC, 'front runners' Barack Obama, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton all refused to pledge the illegal war, if elected president, by the end of their first term. As we noted at The Third Estate Sunday Review yesterday, Joe Biden -- author of the now rejected amendment (which doesn't mean the Senate won't stick with it) -- attempted to say yes and no: "Candidate Joe Biden hedged the answer. He said yes and he said no. He declared, 'Just from Iraq. You're going to bring all troops home from Iraq. If in fact there is no political solution by the time I am president, then I would bring them out because all they are is fodder. But -- but -- if you go along with the Biden plan that got 75 votes today and you have a stable Iraq like we have in Bosnia -- we've had 20,000 Western troops in Bosnia for 10 years. Not one has been killed -- not one. The genocide has ended. So it would depend on the circumstances when I became president.' He would bring them all home . . . unless his plan to partition Iraq into three sections came to be and since it won the support of 75 idiots in the Senate, it's very likely that Iraq will be carved up into three areas if the US has the last say. In which case, Biden's answer is 'no'."
Michael Ratner: The war of course is more complicated. The most cynical of people say that the Democrats don't want to vote to actually do anything about the war in part because they want the Republicans to lose the election based on the war. Of course I don't see why a filibuster wouldn't have done that same thing by the Republicans. But I actually think in some ways that it's a cyncial, political maneuver that Nancy Pelosi and others, and Reid -- the Senate Majority Leader, Pelosi of course in the House -- have basically made a calculation: the Democrats can win and they can win the presidency if things remain approximately the same around the war.
HeidI Boghosian: Hmm-hmm. The status quo.
Michael Ratner: And meanwhile Iraqis are dying every day and American soldiers are dying every day.
And it's not just bullets and bombs killing Iraqis -- the cholera outbreak continues with AP reporting yesterday, "Three more people have died of cholera in Iraq, bringing the number of deaths to 14 across the country, the World Health Organization said." Today AFP reports that hospitals in the northern section of the country "are reporting up to 100 new cases of cholera a day as the bacterial disease continues to spread across the country". Prensa Latina observes that 12 have died in the outbreak and at lest 2,839 have een confirmed as infected "according to the Iraqi Health Ministry on Monday."
From cholera to the refugee crisis. Amnesty International reveals:
Scores of Palestinian refugees in Iraq have been killed since the US-led invasion in 2003. Most were abducted by armed groups and their bodies found a few days later in a morgue or dumped in a street, often mutilated or with clear marks of torture. Many Palestinians have fled their homes, most of which are in Baghdad, after receiving written threats warning them to leave the country or face death. Some are in hiding inside Iraq; others are stranded in makeshift camps near the Iraq/Syria border with no apparent solution to their plight. Some Palestinians have been arrested and detained by Iraqi security forces on suspicion of involvement in insurgency activities or links with Sunni insurgents. Most of those arrested have been released without charge, but many say they were tortured or otherwise ill-treated in detention. Palestinian refugees have been targeted by armed militia groups affiliated to Shi'a religious parties because of their ethnicity and because they are reputed to have received preferential treatment under the former Ba'ath government headed by Saddam Hussain. As Iraq plunged into chaos and the sectarian strife between Shi'a and Sunni intensified, Palestinians became more vulnerable.
That is from their press release. Click here for the full report -- and the link takes you to HTML, not PDF.
Lastly, this may be the only time this gets noted before the events take place (it's also the first time because I keep forgetting to mention it). October 13th and October 14th, the Kopkind holds two major events in Vermont -- Saturday, October 13th, Peter Davis will screen his amazing documentary -- amazing and Oscar winning -- Hearts and Minds at 4:00 pm in Brattleboro and the following day in Guilford, Vermont a forum entitled Left Alive? will be held with Alexander Cockburn (CounterPunch) participating along with JoAnn Wypijewski (whom we noted earlier in the snapshot and who is also on the Kopkind board of directors -- named after the tell-it-like-it-is reporter Andrew Kopkind. Please see The Kopkind Blog for more details (and possibly correct details -- verify what I've just dictated if you're interested in the events).
Closing with fables for the willfully dumb, it's the first month which means that not only is the Surpeme Court back in session (first Monday in October), it's also time for the paper's who bother to note the death toll (US) in Iraq to rush to print their features despite the fact that M-NF regularly and repeatedly makes announcements for the previous month after it has ended. Jim Michaels (USA Today) is jazzed on the 'news' that the death toll is 62 for September -- "the lowest levels in more than a year." But 'news' -- like bad reporting -- can shift quickly and ICCC reports it's 63 for the month of September. ICCC has updated their count since the start of the illegal war to 3804 which is also the count AP goes with. Of course, AFP reported yesterday, "US military losses in Iraq for September stood at 71 on Sunday, but the toll remained the lowest monthly figure since July last year, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures." and the count since the start of the illegal war was then 3892. But don't dwell on the numbers (or the way M-NF kept reporters confused all month as they frequently refused to make announcements leading people to wait for the DoD to announce the names of the dead whose deaths were never announced).
iraq
james stepppatrick maloneyjames burmeister
mina al-oraibikevin benderman
aidan delgadojoshua keycamilo mejia
elizabeth wrigley-field
law and disorder
michael ratner
michael smith
dalia hashad
heidi boghosian
democracy nowamy goodman
blackwater usa
the diane rehm showmcclatchy newspapersleila fadel
the new york timesalissa j. rubinsabrina tavernisethe los angeles timesned parker
like maria said paz
Friday, September 28, 2007
Cindy Sheehan . . . and that troll Pollitt
According to Chris Rowthorn, in his brilliant article, When America Went Fascist, we went fascist on December 11, 2000 when the Supreme Court appointed George as our unelected, un-democratic and illegal President. Although it is easy and tempting to blame everything on BushCo, this is about the only assertion that I disagree with in his article.
What about during the Clinton regime? Does anyone remember Elian Gonzales or The Branch Davidians in Waco? Let's go back further. What about when Truman dropped to WMD on hundreds of thousands of innocent victims in Japan? What about Korea? Eisenhower and the Military Industrial Complex? What about the Gulf of Tonkin? What about Watergate? What about Panama? Kosovo? Nicaragua? Free trade agreements that hurt workers in all countries that are involved in them and what about the abuse of language in this country: Patriot Act; Homeland Security; Clear Water and Clean Skies—and the No Child Left Behind Act that leaves every child behind and is just a funnel to the recruiter’s office?
There are just a few measures that we can use to stop this slide and Rowthorn articulates what has become an important part of my platform. Only vote for candidates that promise the following things...for president, or any other federal elective offices:
* Repeal the Patriot Act
* Repeal No Child Left Behind
* Scale down the Department of Homeland Security and rename it so it loses its Nazi
tone and is brought under civilian control.
* Restore habeas corpus and close all torture camps by repealing the Military Commissions' Act.
* Repeal all contracts with paid mercenary killer companies.
* Restore the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.
* Repeal all BushCo-Presidential directives (especially Directive 51) and review all laws that contain signing statements.
* Restore the 4th Amendment by enforcing warrants for spying on Americans.
* Impeach Bush and Cheney-post presidency so they can’t receive federal benefits.
* Bring all troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and review military needs for other bases around the world.
* Repeal all free trade agreements.
* Kick AIPAC and other lobbyists out of the halls of Congress where they have no business.
One of the most profound ways we can stop this descent into fascism is by impeaching, removing from office and incarcerating George Bush and Dick Cheney, et al. I am very skeptical of a complicit Congress, Inc doing anything about them in this term. I am also very skeptical of a "professional" and fascist military leadership taking their oath of service seriously and above their corporate-military allegiance to the Executive Branch recently and so tellingly revealed by General Betray-Us, so a military coup is out of the question and has the tricky element of becoming a military dictatorship.
The above is from somone I will be voting for in the 2008 elections, Cindy Sheehan. The excerpt's from "Pro-Democracy Means Anti-Fascism" (Dissident Voice). See, I get to vote in that election, unlike Katha Pollitt who seems to think she can weigh in on all races with no knowledge.
And let me agree with Keesha's hilarious and to the point critique of Katha Pollitt in the roundtable that ran in today's gina & krista's round-robin, Katha Pollitt loses the right to call herself a feminist when she applauds a man who was busted (at least twice) for attempting to set up sexual encounters with underage girls online. Next up, Katha Pollitt sticks up for rapists!
How disgusting is that? She's applauding a sexual predator and she wants people to look at her and consider her a feminist?
I don't think the standards have fallen that low and I'm damn sick and tired of women who look the other way on the predator. Even worse are the Katha Pollitts who applaud the predator.
Let me explain something about feminism, about how it was before corporations started watering down our understanding of feminism. If Gloria Steinem or any leader had stood up to applaud a sexual predator in the early 70s, they would have been booed, their appearences would have been picketed and they would have drummed out of feminism. It's a measure of how watered down the movement is that Katha Pollitt can (a) self-present as a feminist and (b) applaud a sexual predator.
She shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. People should be booing her, they should be picketing her and she should DAMN WELL get the message that her behavior is unacceptable.
How many young girls are tricked into meeting psychos and end up raped or raped and murdered?
But Pollitt's not concerned about that. And she has blown her credibility to ever write about sexual assault having applauded a predator.
Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Friday, September 28, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the air-war continues and NPR goes ga-ga over it, the mercenaries at Blackwater continue to raise questions, and Dems fund the illegal war again. And, ADDED, PBS examines the Iraq War (tonight in most markets) via Bill Moyers Journal and NOW with David Branccacio.
Starting with war resistance. As Iraq Veterans Against the War notes, the government's 'do-over' (double-jeopardy) attempt at court-martialing Ehren Watada is scheduled for October 9th and "Lt. Watada is facing four charges that could land him in jail for up to six years." June 22, 2006, Ehren Watada became the first officer to publicly refuse to serve in the Iraq War (rightly) noting that the war is illegal. Daniel Ellsberg gave a speech (posted at ICH) last week where he noted Watada, "I've often said that Lt. Ehren Watada -- who still faces trial for refusing to obey orders to deploy to Iraq which he correctly perceives to be an unconstitutional and aggressive war -- is the single officer in the United States armed services who is taking seriously in upholding his oath." Watada's attorneys are appealing on a number of grounds including the fact that Judge Toilet (aka John Head) thinks he can be impartial and preside again as well as the fact that a second court-martial (after Head ruled the February court-martial a mistrial over defense objection) would be in violation of the US Constitution which forbids double-jeopardy.
At the start of the week, Audra D.S. Burch (Miami Herald) provided an overview of war resister Aidan Delgado's book The Sutras Of Abu Ghraib: Notes From A Conscientious Objector In Iraq, noting, "This is a story of one young man's transformation from reserve volunteer to soldier to conscientious objector, practicing Buddhist, author and always -- always -- relentless critic of the Iraq War, a peace advocate with a point of view based on real wartime experiences." Delgado is the third war resister to tell their story in book form this year. In May, Camilo Mejia shared his story in Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia while in February Joshua Key told his story in The Deserter's Tale.
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes Derek Hess, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Zamesha Dominique, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Carla Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko,Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty-one US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline [(877) 447-4487], Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters.
ADDED:In media news, the latest episode of Bill Moyers Journal airs on PBS in many markets tonight (check your local listings) and he will remember two US service members who died recently (two of the seven who wrote the New York Times column "The War as We Saw It") and this is also up at YouTube..In addition Bill Moyers Journal examines the Iraqi refugee crisis with NPR's Deborah Amos and War Hawk George Packer while also taking a look at the outrageous amount of monies being spent on the illegal war.
Also: This week (Fridays in most markets) PBS' NOW with David Brancaccio examines the issue of US service members wounded in the illegal war: "For many Iraq and Gulf War veterans, the transition from battlefield to home front is difficult. Bouts of fierce anger, depression and anxiety that previous generations of soldiers described as "shell shock" or "combat/battle fatigue" now earn a clinical diagnosis: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. But the relatively new medical label doesn't guarantee soldiers will get the care they need. On Friday, September 28 at 8:30 pm (check local listings), NOW looks at how America's newest crop of returning soldiers is coping with the emotional scars of war, and some new and innovative treatments for them."
On NPR's The Diane Rehm Show today (second hour), Al-Arabiya TV's Hisham Melhem explained the new meaning of Blackwater since the September 16th incident where they slaughtered at least 16 Iraqi civilians, "In the past, Susan [Page, USA Today], if you wanted to discredit the American war in Iraq or if you wanted to discredit the war on terror all you had to do is just invoke the names of places such as Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib or Haditha. Now you can add to that Blackwater USA. I mean this is a huge embarrassment and a problem for the United States in the future. These people are now seen by the Iraqis as the new face of the occupation. And the irony of all ironies now, because these people are in charge of providing protection to the American diplomats there -- I mean, you have a private army. This is the privatization of war. More than 30,000 men. And I'm not saying that many of them . . . are [not] honorable and former good soldiers, the problem is that given what they've done, as Robin [Wright, Washington Post] said, just imagine Ryan Crocker, one of the best American diplomats serving in the Middle East, probably the best one available for Iraq now, trying to visit a neighborhood in Baghdad, after the surge, whatever, he's going to be protected by whom? By elements of the Blackwater. That's the irony of ironies."
On the topic of Blackwater, today Leila Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) reported that among the deaths resulting from the US mercenary compnay are four Iraq journalists including Suhad Shakir who was shot dead February 2nd while driving to work inside the Green Zone while three guards of the Iraqi Media Network were shot dead, "picked off one by one by Blackwater snipers stationed on the roof of the 10-story Justice Ministry". The US Defense Department has maintained that they do not use Blackwater for their employees; however, the US State Dept does. James Risen (New York Times) reports that the State Department released a count that found Blaackwater "had been involved in 56 shootings while guarding American diplomats in Iraq so far this year." An Iraqi government investigation found Blackwater responsible for the September 16th deaths at a time when Nouri al-Maliki, puppet of the occupation, was issuing strong words that Blackwater would be gone. Instead, the puppet's strings were pulled and he agreed to go along with a US State Department led investigation. AFP reports today that US Gen David Petraues and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker have stated that this 'commission' has still not met and is still "preparing for its first meeting in Baghdad". Rather surprising when Steve Fainaru and Sudarsan Raghavan (Washington Post) are able to report on the US embassy's insta-study of the situation today which finds 'confusion' and 'good intentions' (at least one Blackwater employee all but yelled, "Stop the madness!"). Though James Glanz and Sabrina Tavernise are back to pimp this report, the New York Times' reporters fail to use the term "self-serving" though they were very happy to apply that to the report on Blackwater from the Iraqi government. Since the mercenaries do not protect Iraqis, since they protect US embassy employees, exactly which report would be more likely to be "self-serving"? Play dumb, Glanz and Tavernise, play dumb. As Reuters notes, the official US State Dept response is "We're not commenting on the substance of the investigation" which allows them to float this, to get it out there, and if it explodes in their faces, claim they never said those things happened. Meanwhile, Kristin Roberts and Sue Pleming (Reuters) report that US Brig Gen Joseph Anderson declared today of the mercenaries, "I can certainly say I've seen them do some tactics that I thought were over the top. Are they quicker with the trigger? Are they quicker to wave a weapon, brandish a weapon, other tactics, cutting people off? All of us have experience, have seen different things at different times. I have seen them, in my opinion, over-react but that does not mean it's consistently the case."
Blackwater is far from the only problem facing Iraqis. Today on WBAI's Wakeupcall Radio (first hour), host Mario Murillo spoke with CorpWatch's Pratap Chatterjee who explained his latest piece ("The Boys from Baghdad: Iraqi Commandos Trained by U.S. Contractor") noting that Blackwater shooting at civilians was "just the tip of the iceberg . . . because you do have US soldiers and US security guards that are in the country shooting at civilians, dropping bombs on them, etc. -- creating mayhem. But in fact the role the US has played in creating the civil war in fact is far more long lasting, could be far more insidious and dangerous than the occasional massacre of civilians. That's in no way to condone it at all -- but just say that there are far worse things happening today. There are probably at least, to the best of my knowledge, six training programs to support 'Iraqi security'. The first couple are the training of the Iraqi police and the Iraqi army which interestingly enough were given over to private contractors. DynCorp from Virginia trains the police and Vinnell from Los Angeles originally had the contract to train the Iraqi army. Both of these have been pretty much disasters. And in fact one of the things I explain in this article is that in April 2004 when there were like two major incidents in the country -- and I was in Iraq at the time -- one was the civil uprisings in the south with the siege of various cities and the attack on Blackwater personnel in Falluja -- the US tried to press this police and army into service and in both cases, in fact they shipped police down to Najaf the Iraqi police and soldiers just basically fled the scene and refused to fight and, in some case, turned against the US. So the US quickly realized they needed something way beyond the sort of regular security forces. . . . So they came up with this idea of third force. The third force was going to be special commandos that would be highly trained -- a little like Special Forces that could go into action." Chatterjee explains in his article that these are Emergency Response Unit or ERU and that they training "began under General David Petreaus as an effort to bolster security in Iraq, and soon evolved into a system for providing support to the deeply sectarian Ministry of the Interior." That ministry provides their paychecks as well as controls them today. "Sometimes the people that they train are people who come from backgrounds that are either sectarian or criminal," Chatterjee explained to Murillo. "It's one thing to bring in Blackwater and have them protect US diplomats and shoot at anybody who comes close -- that's horrendous -- but it's another thing to actually go in and train people in the art of warfare and hand this training over to sectarian groups that are now creating multiple civil wars in the country. And that, to me, is one of the most insidious and dangerous parts of the US occupation."
Another insidious part of the illegal war is the little noted air war. (Norman Solomon has long noted the air war and it's under-reporting by the media.) Guy Raz (NPR's Morning Edition) reported today that "about every 90 seconds something takes off or lands at Balad Air Base there's C130 Cargo planes, there are helicopters, there are fighter jets and those are just a fraction of the forty different kinds of aircraft that use this base. It's not just busy, it's really busy. Actually the busiest Pentagon airport in the world and the second busiest airport in the world overall." Though such activity might give many pause, Guy Raz is a rah-rah-rah-er and tickled pink to be one of the 'boys'. This as Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports, "Around 2 a.m. U.S. military used aerial fire targeting a building in Al Doura area south Baghdad, Iraqi police said. The aerial fire targeted building number 139 in Al Siha district. 10 people were killed and 7 others were injured according to the Iraqi police sources." Reuters notes eight dead. Meanwhile, the US military issues a press release regarding events Tuesday: "A U.S. Air Force F-16CJ Fighting Falcom dropped precision munitions near Al Nussayyib, Iraq Sept. 25, killing Abu Nasr al-Tunisi and two other Al Q'aeda in Iraq operatives. They were killed when the aircraft, assigned to U.S. Central Command Air Forces, dropped two laser guided 500 lb Joint Direct Attack Munition GBU-12 bombs, destroying the terrorist safe house when the three were meeting." If this is the announced 'investigation' into the Tuesday bombing in Mussyyib that claimed the lives of 5 women and 4 children (see yesterday's snapshot), consider it a white wash.
In news of other violence . . .
Bombings?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad mortar attack that wounded two people while a truck bombing in Mosull "destroyed a bridge". Reuters notes the Mosul truck bombing left twenty people wounded. KUNA reports that the British military base in Basra was attacked with mortars overnight.
Shootings?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports "David Shamoun, a 28 Christian Iraqi . . . worked with a Turkish company and a college students" was shot dead in Mosul
Corpses?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 5 corpses discovered in Baghdad.
Meanwhile Dominic Evans (Reuters) reports that if the 59 announced deaths holds, September will be the lowest month of announced US service members deaths for the year. September in 2005 and 2003 was lower than the announced 59. Also worth noting is that M-NF 'elected' to allow DoD to announce deaths this month.
On the subject of the US military's "kill teams," the press continues to avoid the fact that war resister James Burmeister was publicly speaking of them months before the press stumbled onto them this week. Paul von Zeilbauer (New York Times) reported this morning on the court-martial of Jorge G. Sandoval and noted that Anthony G. Murphy had testified in July that there was a sense of sense "of disappointment from field commanders seeking higher enemy body counts" and that "Soldiers also testified that battalion commanders authorized a classified new technique that used fake explosives and detonation wires as 'bait' to lure and kill suspected insurgents around Iskandariya, a hostile Sunni Arab region south of Baghdad." AP reports that Sandoval was acquitted today of some charges; however, "the panel decided he had placed a detonation wire on one of the bodies to make it look as if the man was an insurgent."
In Wednesday's snapshot, the Joe Biden led push in the Senate (Biden is a senator and also a candidate for the Democratic Party's potential presidential nomination) to divide Iraq into three section in a vote that found 75 US senators voting in favor of it and only 23 voting against it. Ron Jacobs (CounterPunch) observes, "Partitioning Iraq is not a solution that is Washington's to make. The recent vote by the US Senate is misguided. In addition, it will do little to further the desire of the US public to bring the troops home. Instead, it will put US forces in the position of maintaining the newly created divisions along new lines in the sand. Senator Biden's bill is not a solution. It is another false approach that has as much chance at success as anything tried by the Bush administration. In other words, it is destined to fail." Al Jazeera reports that Nouri Al-Maliki is denouncing the US resolution and declaring, "They should stand by Iraq to solidify its unity and its sovereignty. They shouldn't be proposing its division. That could be a disaster not just for Iraq but for the region." Strong words from the puppet. Words that, if pattern holds, will vanish with the mere pulling of a string.
Which is why the Iraqi government, 'officially' led by the puppet, is held in such low opinion by Iraqis. Yesterday on Free Speech Radio News, Hiba Dawood reported, "The slow crumbling of Iraq's government began when the Sadrists withdraw their ministers from cabinet, demanding real authority to provide local services and a timetable for an end to the US occupation. In the fourteen months since then, the Sadrists and the Fadheela Party have split from the United Iraqi Alliance Coalition the largest Shi'ite grouping in the Iraqi parliament. The latest to leave the government were the ministers from the Sunni Accord. They accuse the government of serving sectarian ends. Shi'ite prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's government is accused of sectarianism even by other Shias who accuse him of marginalizing them. But the United Iraqi Alliance, now reduced to just the Dawa Party, and the Iraq Islam Supreme Council insists the government is still performing. Jinan [Jasim] al-Ubaydi is a member of parliament and with the Iraqi Islamic Supreme Council. She says the withdrawal of so many parties from the governing alliance doesn't effect government policy or performance: 'There dreams are negotiable and though there are many withdrawals, the government is not collapsing. Ryan Crocker said the Iraqi government has enjoyed many vital successes.' Despite the US ambassador's optimism few ordinary Iraqis say the government is succeeding. There is a growing frustration with both the government and the parties that have pulled out."
Despite this, the US Congress continues to fund the illegal war. John Nichols (Common Dreams) reports that the Senate raised the debt limit for the federal government and gave the Bully Boy "at least $9 billion in new funding for its war in Iraq" in a 94 to 1 vote with Russ Feingold being the sole senator to vote no (and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John McCain and Sam Brownback all missing the vote due to campaiging for their parties' presidential nomination) while the House of Represenatives passed the measure by a 404 to 14 vote with Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Earl Blumenauer, Keith Ellison, Ron Paul, Bob Filner, Barney Frank, Maurice Hinchey, Dennis Kunich, Jim McDermott, Donald Payne, Lynn Woolsey and Diane Watson voting no (Kucinich and Paul are running for their parties' presidential nomination). Meanwhile, the national Green Party has noted Democratic party hopefuls for their party's presidential nomination Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama declared this week in a forum broadcast by MSNBC that they couldn't guarantee all US troops would be home, if they were elected to president, by the year 2013. The Green Party notes:
The Green Party of the United States has called for full and immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, the occupation of which is entering its sixth year; the party opposes a US military attack on Iran and warns Americans not to believe the new flood of deceptive war propaganda.
Greens stress that Congress could end the war quickly if Democrats refused to move on bills for war funding, including the latest request for nearly $190 billion the Pentagon says is necessary to keep combat troops in Iraq for another year. Greens urge Congress to divert federal funds from war spending to human needs and services in the US, including restoration and rebuilding in the Gulf Coast.
The Green Party has called for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney for numerous abuses of power, including misleading the American people about the reasons for invading Iraq. Greens have called the invasion a criminal breach of the US Constitution and international law, motivated by desire for political and corporate dominance in the region, control over Iraqi oil and other resources, and cooperation with Israel's aggressive strategic objectives.
In news of pacts, CBS and AP report: "Turkey and Iraq signed a counterterrorism pact Friday aimed at cracking down on separatist Kurdish rebels who have been attacking Turkey from bases in Iraq. The agreement, however, falls short of meeting Ankara's demand to send troops in pursuit of Kurdish rebels fleeing across the border into northern Iraq, Turkey's Interior Minister Besir Atalay said. 'It was not possible to reach a deal on chasing Kurdish rebels, however, we hope this issue will be solved in the future,' Atalay said. 'We are expecting this cooperation against terrorism to be broadened as much as possible'."
Last night, Houston's The Progressive Forum (KPFT -- here for KPFT archives) devoted the second hour of the program to a speech by Gloria Steinem delivered September 17th in Houston, Texas and entitled "The Progression of Feminism: Where Are We Going?". Steinem declared near the start, "I arrived here this morning and I said, 'Oh, this is Ann Richards Airport.' Don't you think we're going to live to see the day when they'll be glad to change the name?" She then began addressing the efforts to destroy tribes, women, LBGT and other members in an attempt to dominate and colonialize. As she observed, "No, we can't go back and it's not about romanticizing the past but it is about understanding that if a system of male dominance had a beginning, it can have an end." Steinem's Outrageous Acts & Everyday Rebellions was mentioned in yesterday's snapshot as was a documentary, Anthony Thomas' Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done which a typo turned into "They" (I put in links on a good day and then dictate later in the day -- I dictate very fast and would have my own typos if I typed the snapshots -- we're noting this one because the documentary's title was wrong due to the typo "They Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done.")
bill moyersbill moyers journal
now with david branccaciopbs
iraq
ehren watada
aidan delgadojoshua keycamilo mejia
iraq veterans against the war
ron jacobs
free speech radio news
wakeup callwbai
kpft
gloria steinem
the diane rehm show
the washington postsudarsan raghavan
the new york timessabrina tavernise
james glanz
blackwater usa
What about during the Clinton regime? Does anyone remember Elian Gonzales or The Branch Davidians in Waco? Let's go back further. What about when Truman dropped to WMD on hundreds of thousands of innocent victims in Japan? What about Korea? Eisenhower and the Military Industrial Complex? What about the Gulf of Tonkin? What about Watergate? What about Panama? Kosovo? Nicaragua? Free trade agreements that hurt workers in all countries that are involved in them and what about the abuse of language in this country: Patriot Act; Homeland Security; Clear Water and Clean Skies—and the No Child Left Behind Act that leaves every child behind and is just a funnel to the recruiter’s office?
There are just a few measures that we can use to stop this slide and Rowthorn articulates what has become an important part of my platform. Only vote for candidates that promise the following things...for president, or any other federal elective offices:
* Repeal the Patriot Act
* Repeal No Child Left Behind
* Scale down the Department of Homeland Security and rename it so it loses its Nazi
tone and is brought under civilian control.
* Restore habeas corpus and close all torture camps by repealing the Military Commissions' Act.
* Repeal all contracts with paid mercenary killer companies.
* Restore the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.
* Repeal all BushCo-Presidential directives (especially Directive 51) and review all laws that contain signing statements.
* Restore the 4th Amendment by enforcing warrants for spying on Americans.
* Impeach Bush and Cheney-post presidency so they can’t receive federal benefits.
* Bring all troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and review military needs for other bases around the world.
* Repeal all free trade agreements.
* Kick AIPAC and other lobbyists out of the halls of Congress where they have no business.
One of the most profound ways we can stop this descent into fascism is by impeaching, removing from office and incarcerating George Bush and Dick Cheney, et al. I am very skeptical of a complicit Congress, Inc doing anything about them in this term. I am also very skeptical of a "professional" and fascist military leadership taking their oath of service seriously and above their corporate-military allegiance to the Executive Branch recently and so tellingly revealed by General Betray-Us, so a military coup is out of the question and has the tricky element of becoming a military dictatorship.
The above is from somone I will be voting for in the 2008 elections, Cindy Sheehan. The excerpt's from "Pro-Democracy Means Anti-Fascism" (Dissident Voice). See, I get to vote in that election, unlike Katha Pollitt who seems to think she can weigh in on all races with no knowledge.
And let me agree with Keesha's hilarious and to the point critique of Katha Pollitt in the roundtable that ran in today's gina & krista's round-robin, Katha Pollitt loses the right to call herself a feminist when she applauds a man who was busted (at least twice) for attempting to set up sexual encounters with underage girls online. Next up, Katha Pollitt sticks up for rapists!
How disgusting is that? She's applauding a sexual predator and she wants people to look at her and consider her a feminist?
I don't think the standards have fallen that low and I'm damn sick and tired of women who look the other way on the predator. Even worse are the Katha Pollitts who applaud the predator.
Let me explain something about feminism, about how it was before corporations started watering down our understanding of feminism. If Gloria Steinem or any leader had stood up to applaud a sexual predator in the early 70s, they would have been booed, their appearences would have been picketed and they would have drummed out of feminism. It's a measure of how watered down the movement is that Katha Pollitt can (a) self-present as a feminist and (b) applaud a sexual predator.
She shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. People should be booing her, they should be picketing her and she should DAMN WELL get the message that her behavior is unacceptable.
How many young girls are tricked into meeting psychos and end up raped or raped and murdered?
But Pollitt's not concerned about that. And she has blown her credibility to ever write about sexual assault having applauded a predator.
Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Friday, September 28, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the air-war continues and NPR goes ga-ga over it, the mercenaries at Blackwater continue to raise questions, and Dems fund the illegal war again. And, ADDED, PBS examines the Iraq War (tonight in most markets) via Bill Moyers Journal and NOW with David Branccacio.
Starting with war resistance. As Iraq Veterans Against the War notes, the government's 'do-over' (double-jeopardy) attempt at court-martialing Ehren Watada is scheduled for October 9th and "Lt. Watada is facing four charges that could land him in jail for up to six years." June 22, 2006, Ehren Watada became the first officer to publicly refuse to serve in the Iraq War (rightly) noting that the war is illegal. Daniel Ellsberg gave a speech (posted at ICH) last week where he noted Watada, "I've often said that Lt. Ehren Watada -- who still faces trial for refusing to obey orders to deploy to Iraq which he correctly perceives to be an unconstitutional and aggressive war -- is the single officer in the United States armed services who is taking seriously in upholding his oath." Watada's attorneys are appealing on a number of grounds including the fact that Judge Toilet (aka John Head) thinks he can be impartial and preside again as well as the fact that a second court-martial (after Head ruled the February court-martial a mistrial over defense objection) would be in violation of the US Constitution which forbids double-jeopardy.
At the start of the week, Audra D.S. Burch (Miami Herald) provided an overview of war resister Aidan Delgado's book The Sutras Of Abu Ghraib: Notes From A Conscientious Objector In Iraq, noting, "This is a story of one young man's transformation from reserve volunteer to soldier to conscientious objector, practicing Buddhist, author and always -- always -- relentless critic of the Iraq War, a peace advocate with a point of view based on real wartime experiences." Delgado is the third war resister to tell their story in book form this year. In May, Camilo Mejia shared his story in Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia while in February Joshua Key told his story in The Deserter's Tale.
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes Derek Hess, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Zamesha Dominique, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Carla Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko,Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty-one US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline [(877) 447-4487], Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters.
ADDED:In media news, the latest episode of Bill Moyers Journal airs on PBS in many markets tonight (check your local listings) and he will remember two US service members who died recently (two of the seven who wrote the New York Times column "The War as We Saw It") and this is also up at YouTube..In addition Bill Moyers Journal examines the Iraqi refugee crisis with NPR's Deborah Amos and War Hawk George Packer while also taking a look at the outrageous amount of monies being spent on the illegal war.
Also: This week (Fridays in most markets) PBS' NOW with David Brancaccio examines the issue of US service members wounded in the illegal war: "For many Iraq and Gulf War veterans, the transition from battlefield to home front is difficult. Bouts of fierce anger, depression and anxiety that previous generations of soldiers described as "shell shock" or "combat/battle fatigue" now earn a clinical diagnosis: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. But the relatively new medical label doesn't guarantee soldiers will get the care they need. On Friday, September 28 at 8:30 pm (check local listings), NOW looks at how America's newest crop of returning soldiers is coping with the emotional scars of war, and some new and innovative treatments for them."
On NPR's The Diane Rehm Show today (second hour), Al-Arabiya TV's Hisham Melhem explained the new meaning of Blackwater since the September 16th incident where they slaughtered at least 16 Iraqi civilians, "In the past, Susan [Page, USA Today], if you wanted to discredit the American war in Iraq or if you wanted to discredit the war on terror all you had to do is just invoke the names of places such as Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib or Haditha. Now you can add to that Blackwater USA. I mean this is a huge embarrassment and a problem for the United States in the future. These people are now seen by the Iraqis as the new face of the occupation. And the irony of all ironies now, because these people are in charge of providing protection to the American diplomats there -- I mean, you have a private army. This is the privatization of war. More than 30,000 men. And I'm not saying that many of them . . . are [not] honorable and former good soldiers, the problem is that given what they've done, as Robin [Wright, Washington Post] said, just imagine Ryan Crocker, one of the best American diplomats serving in the Middle East, probably the best one available for Iraq now, trying to visit a neighborhood in Baghdad, after the surge, whatever, he's going to be protected by whom? By elements of the Blackwater. That's the irony of ironies."
On the topic of Blackwater, today Leila Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) reported that among the deaths resulting from the US mercenary compnay are four Iraq journalists including Suhad Shakir who was shot dead February 2nd while driving to work inside the Green Zone while three guards of the Iraqi Media Network were shot dead, "picked off one by one by Blackwater snipers stationed on the roof of the 10-story Justice Ministry". The US Defense Department has maintained that they do not use Blackwater for their employees; however, the US State Dept does. James Risen (New York Times) reports that the State Department released a count that found Blaackwater "had been involved in 56 shootings while guarding American diplomats in Iraq so far this year." An Iraqi government investigation found Blackwater responsible for the September 16th deaths at a time when Nouri al-Maliki, puppet of the occupation, was issuing strong words that Blackwater would be gone. Instead, the puppet's strings were pulled and he agreed to go along with a US State Department led investigation. AFP reports today that US Gen David Petraues and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker have stated that this 'commission' has still not met and is still "preparing for its first meeting in Baghdad". Rather surprising when Steve Fainaru and Sudarsan Raghavan (Washington Post) are able to report on the US embassy's insta-study of the situation today which finds 'confusion' and 'good intentions' (at least one Blackwater employee all but yelled, "Stop the madness!"). Though James Glanz and Sabrina Tavernise are back to pimp this report, the New York Times' reporters fail to use the term "self-serving" though they were very happy to apply that to the report on Blackwater from the Iraqi government. Since the mercenaries do not protect Iraqis, since they protect US embassy employees, exactly which report would be more likely to be "self-serving"? Play dumb, Glanz and Tavernise, play dumb. As Reuters notes, the official US State Dept response is "We're not commenting on the substance of the investigation" which allows them to float this, to get it out there, and if it explodes in their faces, claim they never said those things happened. Meanwhile, Kristin Roberts and Sue Pleming (Reuters) report that US Brig Gen Joseph Anderson declared today of the mercenaries, "I can certainly say I've seen them do some tactics that I thought were over the top. Are they quicker with the trigger? Are they quicker to wave a weapon, brandish a weapon, other tactics, cutting people off? All of us have experience, have seen different things at different times. I have seen them, in my opinion, over-react but that does not mean it's consistently the case."
Blackwater is far from the only problem facing Iraqis. Today on WBAI's Wakeupcall Radio (first hour), host Mario Murillo spoke with CorpWatch's Pratap Chatterjee who explained his latest piece ("The Boys from Baghdad: Iraqi Commandos Trained by U.S. Contractor") noting that Blackwater shooting at civilians was "just the tip of the iceberg . . . because you do have US soldiers and US security guards that are in the country shooting at civilians, dropping bombs on them, etc. -- creating mayhem. But in fact the role the US has played in creating the civil war in fact is far more long lasting, could be far more insidious and dangerous than the occasional massacre of civilians. That's in no way to condone it at all -- but just say that there are far worse things happening today. There are probably at least, to the best of my knowledge, six training programs to support 'Iraqi security'. The first couple are the training of the Iraqi police and the Iraqi army which interestingly enough were given over to private contractors. DynCorp from Virginia trains the police and Vinnell from Los Angeles originally had the contract to train the Iraqi army. Both of these have been pretty much disasters. And in fact one of the things I explain in this article is that in April 2004 when there were like two major incidents in the country -- and I was in Iraq at the time -- one was the civil uprisings in the south with the siege of various cities and the attack on Blackwater personnel in Falluja -- the US tried to press this police and army into service and in both cases, in fact they shipped police down to Najaf the Iraqi police and soldiers just basically fled the scene and refused to fight and, in some case, turned against the US. So the US quickly realized they needed something way beyond the sort of regular security forces. . . . So they came up with this idea of third force. The third force was going to be special commandos that would be highly trained -- a little like Special Forces that could go into action." Chatterjee explains in his article that these are Emergency Response Unit or ERU and that they training "began under General David Petreaus as an effort to bolster security in Iraq, and soon evolved into a system for providing support to the deeply sectarian Ministry of the Interior." That ministry provides their paychecks as well as controls them today. "Sometimes the people that they train are people who come from backgrounds that are either sectarian or criminal," Chatterjee explained to Murillo. "It's one thing to bring in Blackwater and have them protect US diplomats and shoot at anybody who comes close -- that's horrendous -- but it's another thing to actually go in and train people in the art of warfare and hand this training over to sectarian groups that are now creating multiple civil wars in the country. And that, to me, is one of the most insidious and dangerous parts of the US occupation."
Another insidious part of the illegal war is the little noted air war. (Norman Solomon has long noted the air war and it's under-reporting by the media.) Guy Raz (NPR's Morning Edition) reported today that "about every 90 seconds something takes off or lands at Balad Air Base there's C130 Cargo planes, there are helicopters, there are fighter jets and those are just a fraction of the forty different kinds of aircraft that use this base. It's not just busy, it's really busy. Actually the busiest Pentagon airport in the world and the second busiest airport in the world overall." Though such activity might give many pause, Guy Raz is a rah-rah-rah-er and tickled pink to be one of the 'boys'. This as Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports, "Around 2 a.m. U.S. military used aerial fire targeting a building in Al Doura area south Baghdad, Iraqi police said. The aerial fire targeted building number 139 in Al Siha district. 10 people were killed and 7 others were injured according to the Iraqi police sources." Reuters notes eight dead. Meanwhile, the US military issues a press release regarding events Tuesday: "A U.S. Air Force F-16CJ Fighting Falcom dropped precision munitions near Al Nussayyib, Iraq Sept. 25, killing Abu Nasr al-Tunisi and two other Al Q'aeda in Iraq operatives. They were killed when the aircraft, assigned to U.S. Central Command Air Forces, dropped two laser guided 500 lb Joint Direct Attack Munition GBU-12 bombs, destroying the terrorist safe house when the three were meeting." If this is the announced 'investigation' into the Tuesday bombing in Mussyyib that claimed the lives of 5 women and 4 children (see yesterday's snapshot), consider it a white wash.
In news of other violence . . .
Bombings?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad mortar attack that wounded two people while a truck bombing in Mosull "destroyed a bridge". Reuters notes the Mosul truck bombing left twenty people wounded. KUNA reports that the British military base in Basra was attacked with mortars overnight.
Shootings?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports "David Shamoun, a 28 Christian Iraqi . . . worked with a Turkish company and a college students" was shot dead in Mosul
Corpses?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 5 corpses discovered in Baghdad.
Meanwhile Dominic Evans (Reuters) reports that if the 59 announced deaths holds, September will be the lowest month of announced US service members deaths for the year. September in 2005 and 2003 was lower than the announced 59. Also worth noting is that M-NF 'elected' to allow DoD to announce deaths this month.
On the subject of the US military's "kill teams," the press continues to avoid the fact that war resister James Burmeister was publicly speaking of them months before the press stumbled onto them this week. Paul von Zeilbauer (New York Times) reported this morning on the court-martial of Jorge G. Sandoval and noted that Anthony G. Murphy had testified in July that there was a sense of sense "of disappointment from field commanders seeking higher enemy body counts" and that "Soldiers also testified that battalion commanders authorized a classified new technique that used fake explosives and detonation wires as 'bait' to lure and kill suspected insurgents around Iskandariya, a hostile Sunni Arab region south of Baghdad." AP reports that Sandoval was acquitted today of some charges; however, "the panel decided he had placed a detonation wire on one of the bodies to make it look as if the man was an insurgent."
In Wednesday's snapshot, the Joe Biden led push in the Senate (Biden is a senator and also a candidate for the Democratic Party's potential presidential nomination) to divide Iraq into three section in a vote that found 75 US senators voting in favor of it and only 23 voting against it. Ron Jacobs (CounterPunch) observes, "Partitioning Iraq is not a solution that is Washington's to make. The recent vote by the US Senate is misguided. In addition, it will do little to further the desire of the US public to bring the troops home. Instead, it will put US forces in the position of maintaining the newly created divisions along new lines in the sand. Senator Biden's bill is not a solution. It is another false approach that has as much chance at success as anything tried by the Bush administration. In other words, it is destined to fail." Al Jazeera reports that Nouri Al-Maliki is denouncing the US resolution and declaring, "They should stand by Iraq to solidify its unity and its sovereignty. They shouldn't be proposing its division. That could be a disaster not just for Iraq but for the region." Strong words from the puppet. Words that, if pattern holds, will vanish with the mere pulling of a string.
Which is why the Iraqi government, 'officially' led by the puppet, is held in such low opinion by Iraqis. Yesterday on Free Speech Radio News, Hiba Dawood reported, "The slow crumbling of Iraq's government began when the Sadrists withdraw their ministers from cabinet, demanding real authority to provide local services and a timetable for an end to the US occupation. In the fourteen months since then, the Sadrists and the Fadheela Party have split from the United Iraqi Alliance Coalition the largest Shi'ite grouping in the Iraqi parliament. The latest to leave the government were the ministers from the Sunni Accord. They accuse the government of serving sectarian ends. Shi'ite prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's government is accused of sectarianism even by other Shias who accuse him of marginalizing them. But the United Iraqi Alliance, now reduced to just the Dawa Party, and the Iraq Islam Supreme Council insists the government is still performing. Jinan [Jasim] al-Ubaydi is a member of parliament and with the Iraqi Islamic Supreme Council. She says the withdrawal of so many parties from the governing alliance doesn't effect government policy or performance: 'There dreams are negotiable and though there are many withdrawals, the government is not collapsing. Ryan Crocker said the Iraqi government has enjoyed many vital successes.' Despite the US ambassador's optimism few ordinary Iraqis say the government is succeeding. There is a growing frustration with both the government and the parties that have pulled out."
Despite this, the US Congress continues to fund the illegal war. John Nichols (Common Dreams) reports that the Senate raised the debt limit for the federal government and gave the Bully Boy "at least $9 billion in new funding for its war in Iraq" in a 94 to 1 vote with Russ Feingold being the sole senator to vote no (and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John McCain and Sam Brownback all missing the vote due to campaiging for their parties' presidential nomination) while the House of Represenatives passed the measure by a 404 to 14 vote with Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Earl Blumenauer, Keith Ellison, Ron Paul, Bob Filner, Barney Frank, Maurice Hinchey, Dennis Kunich, Jim McDermott, Donald Payne, Lynn Woolsey and Diane Watson voting no (Kucinich and Paul are running for their parties' presidential nomination). Meanwhile, the national Green Party has noted Democratic party hopefuls for their party's presidential nomination Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama declared this week in a forum broadcast by MSNBC that they couldn't guarantee all US troops would be home, if they were elected to president, by the year 2013. The Green Party notes:
The Green Party of the United States has called for full and immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, the occupation of which is entering its sixth year; the party opposes a US military attack on Iran and warns Americans not to believe the new flood of deceptive war propaganda.
Greens stress that Congress could end the war quickly if Democrats refused to move on bills for war funding, including the latest request for nearly $190 billion the Pentagon says is necessary to keep combat troops in Iraq for another year. Greens urge Congress to divert federal funds from war spending to human needs and services in the US, including restoration and rebuilding in the Gulf Coast.
The Green Party has called for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney for numerous abuses of power, including misleading the American people about the reasons for invading Iraq. Greens have called the invasion a criminal breach of the US Constitution and international law, motivated by desire for political and corporate dominance in the region, control over Iraqi oil and other resources, and cooperation with Israel's aggressive strategic objectives.
In news of pacts, CBS and AP report: "Turkey and Iraq signed a counterterrorism pact Friday aimed at cracking down on separatist Kurdish rebels who have been attacking Turkey from bases in Iraq. The agreement, however, falls short of meeting Ankara's demand to send troops in pursuit of Kurdish rebels fleeing across the border into northern Iraq, Turkey's Interior Minister Besir Atalay said. 'It was not possible to reach a deal on chasing Kurdish rebels, however, we hope this issue will be solved in the future,' Atalay said. 'We are expecting this cooperation against terrorism to be broadened as much as possible'."
Last night, Houston's The Progressive Forum (KPFT -- here for KPFT archives) devoted the second hour of the program to a speech by Gloria Steinem delivered September 17th in Houston, Texas and entitled "The Progression of Feminism: Where Are We Going?". Steinem declared near the start, "I arrived here this morning and I said, 'Oh, this is Ann Richards Airport.' Don't you think we're going to live to see the day when they'll be glad to change the name?" She then began addressing the efforts to destroy tribes, women, LBGT and other members in an attempt to dominate and colonialize. As she observed, "No, we can't go back and it's not about romanticizing the past but it is about understanding that if a system of male dominance had a beginning, it can have an end." Steinem's Outrageous Acts & Everyday Rebellions was mentioned in yesterday's snapshot as was a documentary, Anthony Thomas' Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done which a typo turned into "They" (I put in links on a good day and then dictate later in the day -- I dictate very fast and would have my own typos if I typed the snapshots -- we're noting this one because the documentary's title was wrong due to the typo "They Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done.")
bill moyersbill moyers journal
now with david branccaciopbs
iraq
ehren watada
aidan delgadojoshua keycamilo mejia
iraq veterans against the war
ron jacobs
free speech radio news
wakeup callwbai
kpft
gloria steinem
the diane rehm show
the washington postsudarsan raghavan
the new york timessabrina tavernise
james glanz
blackwater usa
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