BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIX MIX -- KANSAS CITY, MO.
TOSSING OUT MORE CHICKEN SOP FOR THE SOUL BARACK OBAMA DECLARED TODAY, IN HIS SPEECH TO THE V.F.W., MANY PROMISES.
INSTEAD OF EXAMINING THEM OR ASKING WHERE HIS PLAN, FOR INSTANCE, TO IMPROVE THE WAIT TIME FOR VETERANS SEEKING HEALTH CARE, THE IDIOT AT THE NEW YORK TIMES, JEFF ZELENY DECIDES TO SLIME THE PEACE MOVEMENT.
ZELENY HEARS THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT BY OBAMA:
THE GRAVES OF OUR VETERANS ARE HALLOWED GROUND. WHEN MEN AND WOMEN WHO DIE IN SERVICE TO THIS COUNTRY ARE LAID TO REST, THERE MUST BE NO PROTESTS NEAR THE FUNERALS. IT'S WRONG AND IT NEEDS TO STOP.
AND WRITES UP: "HE ALSO SAID IT WAS WRONG FOR ANTI-WAR ACTIVISTS TO PROTEST AT MILITARY FUNERALS, DECLARING: 'IT NEEDS TO STOP'."
THE ONLY PROTESTS AT MILITARY FUNERALS HAS BEEN FROM FRED PHELPS' ANTI-GAY CROWD. THAT'S WHAT HAS UPSET CONGRESS.
JEFF ZELENY DOESN'T KNOW THE TRUTH FROM HIS IMPACTED COLON AND HE SMEARS THE PEACE MOVEMENT WITH A LIE WHICH WILL PROBABLY RESULT IN A RAISE AT THE PAPER THAT SOLD THE ILLEGAL WAR.
[BEFORE IT CHANGES, ZELENY: One of the biggest applause lines of his speech came when he pledged that during an Obama administration, veterans would not have to wait months — or years — for services at veterans hospitals. He also said it was wrong for anti-war activists to protest at military funerals, declaring: "It needs to stop."]
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Starting with war resisters. Camilo Mejia served in Iraq, served in Iraq well after his contract ran out and, as a non-US citizen, the military couldn't extend his contract but they chose to pretend like they could. They also denied him CO status. He tells his story Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia in which was released in May. One story not in the book, because it just happened, is that he's just been elected the chair of Iraq Veterans Against the War board of directors.
Aaron Glantz (One World) reports that IVAW held their elections during the St. Louis Veterans for Peace conference and elected Mejia with Garrett Reppenhagen explaining that IVAW "decided to make support of war resisters a major part of what we do." Glantz reports on IVAW's big success in Fort Drum where the local chapter is up and running and now claims 20 members and, of course, has the first GI coffeehouse in the nation (for this illegal war) with Different Drummer as well as that September 17th IVAW will kick off Truth in Recruiting.
Mejia will be at Different Drummer this Thursday for a reading (starts at 6:30 pm)
from Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia and the GI Coffee House is located in Watertown, NY (12 Paddock Arcade, 1 Public Square, 13601).
Mejia tells Glanz, "There's a sort of revolution taking place in the streets. It's not being reported by the mainstream media, but we in the antiwar movement know what's going on. There is a rebellion going on in the ranks of the military that is not being reported."
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes 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, Jeremy Hinzman, 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, 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.
John Stauber (CounterPunch) notes: "IVAW was founded in 2004 and today it is a rapidly growing grassroots, independent anti-war group with members active in 43 states and deployed on bases in Iraq. These rank and file soldiers are not partisans; they are Americans who have seen first hand the greatest political betrayal of our lifetime, the US attack on Iraq and the long occupation. Iraq Veterans Against the War are not the concoction of a liberal think tank or PR firm; they have very little funding; they are not avoiding criticism of Democrats; and they are not playing political games trying to bank-shot Democratic candidates into the White House and Congress in 2008. They are in open non-violent revolt against US foreign policy, criticizing politicians of all stripes who would exploit the war for political gain." If only the media -- big and small -- could do the same.
Yesterday, Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted the Project for Excellence in Journalism "study shows corporate news coverage of the Iraq war has dropped sharply in the last four months. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the Iraq war accounted for just fifteen percent of news coverage, down from twenty-two percent earlier this year. Network evening news coverage of the war went from forty-percent to nineteen percent. The Democratic and Republican presidential campaign emerged as the most-covered issue over the same period." The report, entitled "Campaign For President Takes Center Stage In Coverage," notes that during "the period from April through June of 2007 was that press coverage of the war in Iraq declined markedly. Together the three major storylines of the war -- the policy debate, events on the ground, and the impact on the U.S. homefront -- filled 15% of the total newshole in the quarter, a drop of roughly a third from the first three months of the year, when it filled 22%." And the report zooms in one period: "Attention to the Iraq war fell across all five media sectors in the second quarter. The bulk of the decline occurred after May 24, when Congress approved funding without including troop withdrawal timetables, a move widely viewed as a White House victory." So when the Democrats in Congress caved, the media followed the lead?
The report doesn't cover independent or public broadcast media (and focuses on TV) but to focus on that period (April through June), a few broadcasts deserve noting. Bill Moyers Journal (PBS) utilized the May 25th hour to examine Maxine Hong-Kingston and veterans efforts to explore war and peace (click here to watch/listen, here to read) and on May 11th, Moyers spent the third segment with Marilyn D. Young, editor with Lloyd C. Gardner of Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam (audio/video and transcript) with Young addressing the lies that the illegal war was built upon. May 28th, Free Speech Radio News presented a
a special Memorial Day look at the some of the costs of the war in US anchored by Aaron Glantz where he spoke with veterans and their families (and drew on the knowledge and experience he has as a result of devoting so much time to covering all aspects of the illegal war). June 11th WBAI's Law and Disorder (Dalia Hashad, Michael Ratner, Michael Smith and Heidi Boghosian -- though I don't believe Boghosian was part of that discussion) explored the topic of resistance within the US military with Tod Ensign. Democracy Now! featured many segments during that period but we'll note three: June 6th Goodman discussed the efforts to steal/privatize Iraqi oil, the 'benchmarks' and the Democratically controlled Congress with Antonia Juhasz; the May 14 discussion with Yanar Mohammed about the realities of life for women in the 'liberated' Iraq; and the June 12 interview of Iraq Veterans Against the War Adam Kokesh discussing how the US military had targeted him for speaking out against the illegal war.
A few of the print media stories during this time worth noting would include
Bay Fang's "The Talibanization of Iraq" (Ms. magazine, spring 2007 issue)
and certainly CounterPunch and Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive) have seriously and repeatedly covered the illegal war during this period. And The Nation? They spent the first six months of this year offering more feature articles on the election than on the illegal war. They also were first out of the gate with the non-stop horse race gas bagging on the 2008 elections. In fact, their first article on the 2008 election appeard online November 3rd ("The Off-Year Primary" -- ran in the November 20th print edition) -- four days before the 2006 elections had taken place. Do we want to talk about the American Idol column that got disappeared? No? Didn't think so. (Though officially 'disappeared,' you can see
Mike's "The Third Estate Sunday Review " and then Elaine's "Monday" and then Rebecca's "cynthia mckinney" -- each excerpted a section of the column after it had been 'disappeared' but before it was also gone from Google cache.)
At Truthdig (audio and transcript) James Harris and Josh Scheer speak with Matthew Rothschild about his new book You Have No Rights and Harris brings up the executive order the Bully Boy issued last month noting "it said, basically, that if you protest or threaten what he calls 'stabilization efforts in Iraq,' your property can be seized and you can be detained. Were you are aware of that?" Rothschild: "I have the order in my hand. I was just writing something on the computer to update our website with something on that. Yeah. If you are -- in the mind of the secretary of the Treasury -- posing a significant risk of committing an act of violence -- you don't have to have committed an act of violence. If he thinks you are at risk of committing an act of violence in order to protest the policies of the Iraqi government or the Bush administration's policies to promote what it calls 'economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq,' then the secretary of the Treasury can put a freeze on all your assets. This is unbelievable. What Bush is trying to achieve her, by executive order, are things that he can't achieve legislatively. Someone's got to put a stop to this. Congress has got to put a stop to it because he is seizing all sorts of authoritarian powers right now by executive decree."
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
"Camilo Meija elected chair of IVAW's board of directors"
"Bully Boy calls it 'progress'"
"al-sadr claims british forced out of iraq & more"
"Dave Lindorff, etc"
"Isaiah, Joseph Gerson, Ramzy Baroud"
"James Carroll, Third"
"He meant it, he really meant it!"
"THIS JUST IN! OBAMA WAS SERIOUS!"
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