Thursday, April 12, 2007

THIS JUST IN! CONDI KNOWS, SHE KNOWS!

 
 
PREPPING FOR A SOFT COVER, TRADE PAPERBACK ENTITLED THE WISDOM AND WIT OF CONDI, SECRETARY OF STATE AND ANGER CONDI RICE PHONED THESE REPORTERS TO TEST A LINE REGARDING THE BOMBINGS IN THE GREEN ZONE AND THE BOMBING OF A BRIDGE IN BAGHDAD.
 
"HOW DOES THIS SOUND?"  SHE ASKED.  "'WE KNOW THAT THERE IS A SECURITY PROBLEM IN BAGHDAD.'  SHOULD I DO A HEAVY SIGH?  DOES IT MAKE ME SOUND SMART?"
 
WE ADVISED HER THAT IT WAS PERFECTLY IN CHARACTER WITH OTHER PUBLIC REMARKS SHE HAD MADE.
 
 
Starting with war resisters, it must have been a full moon.  You had the overgrown "girl" going after war resisters and then you got Little Priss (at the most laughable student newspaper of any college in the US) doing the same.  It takes a special kind of voice to 'sing' so passionately about the tough life when Daddy's a big league coach but we're not supposed to talk about that, I'm guessing.  Just like we're all supposed to pretend Junior's slug line is in anyway authentic (Little Boys from Suburbia have nasty cases of Big City Envy that force them to lie -- something that was frowned upon in the private, religious school they attended to avoid mixing with other races).    Maybe Little Priss can join the overgrown "girl" and assist her in basket-weaving her home-made maxi-pads.   What has them up in arms?  A nasty case of toxic shock syndrome?
 
No, a hatred of war resisters such as Camilo Mejia whose new book, Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia, will be published by The New Press next month (May 1st).  Kirkus Reviews found it, "Timely, courageous and cautionary."  Mejia, as noted in Amy Goodman and David Goodman's Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders and the People Who Fight Back, served six months in Iraq and, after returning to the US, applied for c.o. status and self-checked out of the military.  Mejia was convicted of desertion and sentenced to a year at Fort Still.  Upon release, Mejia declared, "Peace does not come easily, so I tell all members of the military that whenever faced with an order, and everything in their mind and soul, and each and every cell in their bodies scream at them to refuse and resist, then by God do so.  Jail will mean nothing when brekaing the law became their duty to humanity."  Another quote Camilo Mejia is known for, noted by Eric Ruder (Socialist Worker), is "Behind these bars, I sit a free man because I listened to a higher power, the voice of my conscience."
 
Mejia's book follows Joshua Key's successful  The Deserter's Tale and joins other books exploring the resistance in the military today including Peter Laufer's  Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq.  Mejia is also featured in the documentary To Disobey.
As Monica Benderman, wife of Iraq war resister Kevin Benderman, has noted, there has been little on resistance in many bookstores.  Monica and Kevin Benderman intend to do their part to change that by writing their own book.
 
Mejia and Benderman are a part of a movement resistance within the military that also includes Ehren Watada, Dean Walcott, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson,  Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Joshua Key, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia,  Patrick Hart, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum. 
 
 
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
 
 

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