Wednesday, May 09, 2007

THIS JUST IN! CBS' EARLY SHOW GOES NUTS!

 
ETERNAL BOTTOM DWELLER IN THE RATINGS, "THE CBS EARLY SHOW" HAS NOW REACHED THE POINT WHERE IT WILL DO ANYTHING FOR ATTENTION. 
 
TODAY IT REPORTED THAT ON HIS SHOW VISIT TO IRAQ, SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM SPENT EIGHT ADDITIONAL DAYS IN IRAQ AFTER SENATOR CRAZY MCCAIN LEFT DURING WHICH TIME "GRAHAM BROUGHT HIS LEGAL EXPERTISE TO A PLACE WHERE SADDAM HUSSEIN AND HIS HENCHMEN PLAYED JUDGE, JURY AND EXECUTIONER.  GRAHAM COUNSELED THE IRAQIS ON HOW DIFFERENT THEIR COURTS MUST BE NOW."
 
THAT'S HYSTERICAL COMING FROM A MAN WHO ENDORSES TORTURE AS THE BLANCHE DU BOIS OF THE SENATE DOES.
 
BUT CBS HAD ONE MORE LAUGH GETTER: "NEVER BEFORE HAS A U.S. SENATOR SERVED ACTIVE DUTY IN IRAQ"! THEY GUSH.  HE DID NOT SERVE ACTIVE DUTY.  HE WASN'T DOING SEARCHES, HE WASN'T DOING PATROLS.  TAKE THE TONGUE OFF LINDSEY CROTCH, CBS, BEFORE SOMEONE WASHES YOUR MOUTH OUT WITH SOAP.
 
 
Starting with war resistance.  Last week Camilo Meija's Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia was published and, as Courage to Resist reports, tonight, he begins a speaking tour with Pablo Paredes, and Robert Zabala.  Announced dates include:
 
Wednesday May 9 - Marin           
7pm at College of Marin, Student Services Center, 835 College Ave, Kentfield. Featuring Agustin Aguayo, Pablo Paredes and David Solnit. Sponsored by Courage to Resist and Students for Social Responsibility.


 
Thursday May 10 - Sacramento        
Details TBA

Friday May 11 - Stockton    
6pm at the Mexican Community Center, 609 S Lincoln St, Stockton. Featuring Agustin Aguayo.

Saturday May 12 - Monterey      
7pm at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 490 Aguajito Rd, Carmel. Featuring Agustin Aguayo and Camilo Mejia. Sponsored by Veterans for Peace Chp. 69, Hartnell Students for Peace, Salinas Action League, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and Courage to Resist. More info: Kurt Brux 831-424-6447

Sunday May 13 - San Francisco 
7pm at the Veterans War Memorial Bldg. (Room 223) , 401 Van Ness St, San Francisco. Featuring Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia and Pablo Paredes. Sponsored by Courage to Resist, Veteran's for Peace Chp. 69 and SF Codepink.


Monday May 14 - Watsonville           
7pm at the United Presbyterian Church, 112 E. Beach, Watsonville. Featuring Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia, Pablo Paredes and Robert Zabala. Sponsored by the GI Rights Hotline & Draft Alternatives program of the Resource Center for Nonviolence (RCNV), Santa Cruz Peace Coalition, Watsonville Women's International League for Peace & Freedom (WILPF), Watsonville Brown Berets, Courage to Resist and Santa Cruz Veterans for Peace Chp. 11. More info: Bob Fitch 831-722-3311

Tuesday May 15 - Palo Alto          
7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church (Fellowship Hall), 1140 Cowper, Palo Alto. Featuring Camilo Mejia. Sponsored by Pennisula Peace and Justice Center. More info: Paul George 650-326-8837

Wednesday May 16 - Eureka  
7pm at the Eureka Labor Temple, 840 E St. (@9th), Eureka. Featuring Camilo Mejia. More info: Becky Luening 707-826-9197


Thursday May 17 - Oakland    
4pm youth event and 7pm program at the Humanist Hall, 411 28th St, Oakland. Featuring Camilo Mejia, Pablo Paredes and the Alternatives to War through Education (A.W.E.) Youth Action Team. Sponsored by Veteran's for Peace Chp. 69, Courage to Resist, Central Committee for Conscientious Objector's (CCCO) and AWE Youth Action Team.
 
All are part of a growing movement of war resistance within the military: Camilo Mejia, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Joshua Key, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, 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. 
 
Turning to politics, US and Iraq.  Yesterday on KPFA's Flashpoints Radio, Robert Knight's "The Knight Report" summed up developments as follows:
 
The US backed Shia led puppet regime in Baghdad faced further setbacks today after the absentee parliament's biggest  Sunni block threatened to collapse Nouri al-Maliki's Shia supremacist leadership by removing 44 Sunni legislatures from the current governing coalition.  Iraqi vice president Tariq al-Hashimi, of the fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front, has given Maliki a one week deadline until May 15th to amend Iraq's US designed Constitution of Military Occupation to restore authentic national sovereignty and territorial integrity otherwise Hashimi  threatened quoted "I will tell my constituency frankly that I made the mistake of my life when I put my endorsement to that National Accord."  Hashimi added that he was frustrated by Sunni exclusion from government under the de-Baathification commission headed by CIA and Pentagon asset Ahmed Chalabi. Hashimi concluded his demands with the hope that "I would like to see the identity of my country, in fact, restored back."  He also refused an invitation to meet in Washington with President George W. Bush until those issues were addressed. 
A collapse of the Maliki regime would scuttle bi-partisan hopes in Washington that Iraq's puppet parliament would ratify the US written petroleum law that would eradicate national sovereignty over oil resources and clear the way for lucrative extraction contracts for American and other multi-national oil conglomerates.  A fig leaf ratification of the oil law is a mutual goal  of both Republicans and Democrats in Congress who call the potential give away and segmentation of Iraq into secular regions to be an essential so-called benchmark for further military funding for the US occupation.
And on that front there are alarming revelations from Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich who reveled over the weekend that Congressional Democrats have sold out any hopes for reform in Iraq with a secret agreement with the White House over the so-called funding bill for the Iraq war. In a remarkably revelatory speech to the West Los Angeles Democratic Club, Kucinich said that the Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have made the following secret concessions.  One, that House debate would not challenge the multi-national friendly Iraqi oil law that President Bush and vice president Cheney and the Democrats are desperate to have enacted so that Iraqi resources would be privatized. Number two, that bush could invade Iran without the approval of Congress because the Democrats have removed a clause that would require him to get approval from Congress.  And of course that any and all timetables would be removed from subsequent enactments of the bill.
 
[. . .]
 
Dennis Bernstein: Robert Knight, stay with us.  Thank you for the excellent report.  And obviously we have been watching closely in particular the willingness of the Democrats to play ball so that the war and the significant aspects, the real reasons, the oil war can go forward.  Would you just in a nutshell again recap the Kucinich highlights of the revelations of the sell out?
 
Robert Knight: Well this oil law is something that was a promise made by Cheney and Bush at the beginning of the war -- saying that the invasion would be funded by resources, the increased oil extraction and of course the profits to be made by the American companies.  They have changed the language of the so-called PSA -- Production Sharing Agreements --  so that now the Iraqi national oil council would no longer have sovereignty over its own resources.  There is a division in the bill that the Democrats are propagandistically propping up that is to say that this would share revenues among the different provinces.
But what it does it sets it up not to the province per se but to the regional coalition which is part of the United States and Israeli backed plan to divide Iraq into competing sectarian fragments -- the Kurds, the Shias in the south and of course the Sunnis in the more impoverished oil regions, the western part of Iraq.  So the oil law would not only be something for profit but also something for segregation in Iraq.
 
Oil and Congress.  Starting with oil.  Dickey Cheney ("President of Vice" as Wally and Cedric have dubbed him) high tailed it to the Green Zone and you know it wasn't to rally the troops.  BBC reports that Nouri al-Maliki was gushing and that "US officials said Mr Cheney wanted faster progress on the fair division of oil revenues" -- well of course he does, look at his portfolio.  Garrett Therolf (Los Angeles Times) reports Vice was greeted with the usual warm response he's learned to expect the world over: over a thousand protesters holding sings such as the one that read: "Kick out the leaders of evil."  Cheney must be so proud.
 
 

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