Saturday, November 03, 2007

THIS JUST IN! DIANNE FEINSTEIN, GIRL SENATOR, COOS!

 
"I RATHER LIKED THAT HEADLINE," COOED AND GIGGLED U.S. SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN TO THESE REPORTERS IN A RARE INTERVIEW.
 
SENATOR FEINSTEIN WAS REFERRING TO A STORY SHE'D PRINTED UP FROM THE CBS NEWS WEBSITE THAT WAS HEADLINED "FEINSTEIN SAYS YES TO MUKASEY."
 
"I FEEL LIKE I JUST MADE THE COVER OF YOUNG BRIDE," SHE HALF-WHISPERED, POURING THE THREE OF US CUPS OF CAMOMILLE TEA.  "AND I ALWAYS TRY TO BE POSITIVE."
 
THESE REPORTERS POINTED OUT THE FIRST SENTENCE OF THE REPORT: "Sen. Dianne Feinstein has come through for Republicans again." 
 
SENATOR FEINSTEIN GIGGLED AND WONDERED IF IT MADE HER SOUND "EASY"? 
 
"I'VE ALWAYS BEEN A GOOD TIME GAL," SHE INSISTED.
 
"EASY" MIGHT EXPLAIN HOW A U.S. SENATOR COULD IGNORE WARNINGS FROM THE CENTER OF CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AND STATEMENTS AND TESTIMONY BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD MARJORIE COHN ABOUT THE DANGERS IN CONFIRMING MICHAEL MUKASEY FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL.
 
"WHO CARES?" ASKED DI-FI NIBBLING ON A TEA BISQUIT.  "HE'S NOT ALBERTO R. GONZALES."
 
SENATOR FEINSTEIN INFORMED US THAT SHE WAS TIRED OF THE TOPIC AND MUCH MORE INTERESTED IN DISCUSSING HER NEW NON-ACTION FIGURE TOY WHICH SHE EXCITEDLY INFORMED US WAS PAINTED IN CHINA.
 
 
THE NON-ACTION FIGURE MISS DIANNE.  SHE COMES NON-FULLY POSEABLE.  SHE'S IN A SEATED POSITION.  YOU CAN EXTEND HER LEGS OR BEND THEM DEPENDING UPON WHETHER YOU WANT HER TO SIT IN A CHAIR OR SIT ON THE FLOOR. 
SHE WEARS A LOVELY DRESS WITH SEVERAL LAYERS.  SHE COMES WITH WHITE GLOVES AND THE CUTEST LITTLE PURSE THAT MATCHES HER HAT, HER BELT AND HER SHOES.  THE NON-ACTION FIGURE HAS A SILLY GRIN PASTED ON ITS FACE AND IS CALLED "MISS DIANNE, GIRL SENATOR."
THE TEA SET IS PURCHASED SEPARATELY.
 
"IT'S SO PRECIOUS," SHE INSISTED, "JUST LIKE ME!"
 
 
 
Starting with war resistance. War resister Joshua Key told his story in The Deserter's Tale and  now Key's book is among those optioned to tell the story of the illegal war on the big screen.  Eric Jordan has optioned Key's story.  Jordan and partner Paul Stephens began their producing careers with documentaries made for television at The Film Works, their Toronto based production company.  Their latest release is Beowulf and Grendel in 2005 featuring Sarah Polley and many others.  Josh Getlin (Los Angeles Times) quotes Jordan, "I didn't set out to make a pro-Iraq war movie or an anti-Iraq war movie.  I wanted to make a movie about people under pressure, real people, and the fact that this is complex world.  Just imagine what this kid went through, never dreaming he'd desert the U.S. Army.  That's a great book -- and a great movie."  And a story that needs to be told.  Time and again, war resisters who go public cite the internet overwhelming.  Helga and Agustin Aguayo have also cited David Zeiger's documentary of resistance within the military during Vietnam, Sir! No Sir! If Jordan is able to bring Key's story to the screen, it will have an impact.
 
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes James Stepp, Michael Espinal, Matthew Lowell, Derek Hess, Diedra Cobb, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Peter Brown, Bethany "Skylar" James, 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, at least fifty 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.
 
 
The National Lawyers Guild's convention begins shortly: The Military Law Task Force and the Center on Conscience & War are sponsoring a Continuing Legal Education seminar -- Representing Conscientious Objectors in Habeas Corpus Proceedings -- as part of the National Lawyers Guild National Convention in Washington, D.C. The half-day seminar will be held on Thursday, November 1st, from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., at the convention site, the Holiday Inn on the Hill in D.C. This is a must-attend seminar, with excelent speakers and a wealth of information. The seminar will be moderated by the Military Law Task Force's co-chair Kathleen Gilberd and scheduled speakers are NYC Bar Association's Committee on Military Affairs and Justice's Deborah Karpatkin, the Center on Conscience & War's J.E. McNeil, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee's Peter Goldberger, Louis Font who has represented Camilo Mejia, Dr. Mary Hanna and others, and the Central Committee for Conscientious Objector's James Feldman. The fee is $60 for attorneys; $25 for non-profit attorneys, students and legal workers; and you can also enquire about scholarships or reduced fees. The convention itself will run from October 31st through November 4th and it's full circle on the 70th anniversary of NLG since they "began in Washington, D.C." where "the founding convention took place in the District at the height of the New Deal in 1937, Activist, progressive lawyers, tired of butting heads with the reactionary white male lawyers then comprising the American Bar Association, formed the nucleus of the Guild."
 
 
 
Turning to US politics.  Margaret Kimberley (Black Agenda Report) summarizes the state of Senator Barack Obama's Democratic presidential primary campaign, "For months Obama was the political flavor of the month, wooed by fawning celebrities, and promoted by the corporate media.  The stamp of approval from the right people had him sitting firmly atop an enormous pile of campaign cash.  Now his deep pocketed contributors are showing signs of buyers' remorse, miffed because he is only neck and neck with Hillary Clinton in Iowa and trailing behind her in New Hampshire.  Obama has been hoisted on his own petard.  He assured Democrats that he was 'safe.'  He openly scorned movement politics, and made the appeal of color blindness his calling card.  He chose neo-con Bush suck-up Joe Lieberman as his Senate mentor.  His criticisms of the evil occupation of Iraq focused not on murder and theft committed by Uncle Sam, but by the traumatized Iraqs' efforts to deal with an American-created hellish existence.  Leaving 'all options on the table' is part of the Obama stump speech on Iran."  On the subject of Iran, Barack Obama appears on the front page of this morning's New York Times.  War pornographer Michael Gordon and Jeff Zeleny who lied in print (click here, here and here -- the paper finally retracted Zeleny's falsehood that should have never appeared) present a view of Barack Obama that's hardly pleasing.  Among the many problems with the article is that Obama as portrayed in the article -- and his campaign has issued no statement clarifying.  The Times has the transcript online and from it, Barack Obama does mildly push the unproven claim that the Iranian government is supporting resistance in Iraq.  Gordo's pushed that unproven claim repeatedly for over a year now.  But Obama's remarks appear more of a reply and partial points in lengthy sentences -- not the sort of thing a functioning hard news reporter would lead with in an opening paragraph, touch on again in the third paragraph, in the fourth paragraph, in . . .  But though this isn't the main emphasis of Obama's statements (at any time -- to be clear, when it pops up, it is a fleeting statement in an overly long, multi-sentenced paragraphs), it does go to the fact that Obama is once again reinforcing unproven claims of the right wing.  In the transcript, he comes off as obsessed with Hillary Clinton.  After her, he attempts to get a few jabs in at John Edwards and one in at Bill Richardson.  Here is what real reporters should have made the lede of the front page: "Presidential candidate and US Senator Barack Obama who is perceived as an 'anti-war' candidate by some announced that he would not commit to a withdrawal, declared that he was comfortable sending US troops back into Iraq after a withdrawal started and lacked clarity on exactly what a withdrawal under a President Obama would mean."  That is what the transcript reveals.  Gordo really needs to let go of his blood lust for war with Iran. 
 
Writing up a report, Gordo and Zeleny are useless but, surprisingly, they do a strong job with some of their questions.  The paper should have printed up the transcript.  If they had, people might be wondering about the 'anti-war' candidate.  He maintains Bill Richardson is incorrect on how quickly US troops could be withdrawan from Iraq.  Obama states that it would take at least 16 months which makes one wonder how long, if elected, it would take him to move into the White House?  If you can grab a strainer or wade through Obama's Chicken Sop For The Soul, you grasp quickly why he refused to pledge (in September's MSNBC 'debate') that, if elected president, he would have all US troops out of Iraq by 2013: He's not talking all troops home.  He tries to fudge it, he tries to hide it but it's there in the transcript.  He doesn't want permanent military bases in Iraq -- he appears to want them outside of Iraq -- such as Kuwait.  But he doesn't see the US embassy in Iraq -- the largest US embassy in the world as a base.  However, he does feel that even after the illegal war was ended, US troops would need to remain behind in order guard the embassy and the staff.  In addition, it becomes clear that he will keep US troops in Iraq to train the Iraqi police.  Because? 
 
The reporters don't think to ask.  Here's a slice of reality, the US military is not trained to train police officers.  Here's another to drop on the plate, Jordan was training them.  Jordan got pushed aside around the half-way mark of 2006.  If Obama wanted to pull US troops out of Iraq, the most obvious solution is to turn over the duty of training police officers to a non-military force.  Along with needing those for trainers, he needs some to protect the trainers.  Gordo gets to the point asking, "So how will you protect the trainers without forces in Iraq?"  His answer is an embarrassment, he'd could keep the trainers out of potentially difficult situations.  And in Iraq, that would be where?  In addition, he would keep troops in Iraq for counter-terrorism (but not, he insists, counter-insurgency).  If this doesn't all sound familiar, you slept through this spring and summer when Congressional Dems tried repeatedly to convince the American people that "all troops out of Iraq" could also mean that US troops stay to train, as military police, to fight terrorism, etc.  While he's off talking al Qaeda in Iraq (a small number and one most observers state will be forced out by Iraqis when US troops leave) and working in more attacks on Senator Clinton, it's noted that he has "a more expansive approach to Iraq than she does in that you identify in your plan the possiblity of going back into Iraq to protect the populartion if there's an all-out civil war. . . . And providing monitors to help the population relocate and go after war criminals.  Those are three elements -- those are new missions for Americans after Iraq that she doesn't postulate."  What follows is a comical exchange:
 
Obama: But they aren't necessarily military missions.
 
NYT: But how do you go back into Iraq without military forces?
 
Obama: No, no, no, no, no.  You conflated three things.  The latter two that you are talked about are not military missions.  Let's just be clear about that.
 
NYT: An armed escort is not a military mission?
 
Though Obama says he wants "to be clear," he refuses to answer that yes or no question and the interview is over.
 
So let's be clear that the 'anti-war' Obama told the paper he would send troops back into Iraq.  Furthermore, when asked if he would be willing to do that unilaterally, he attempts to beg off with, "We're talking too speculatively right now for me to answer."  But this is his heavily pimped September (non)plan, dusted off again, with a shiny new binder.  The story is that Barack Obama will NOT bring all US troops home.  Even if the illegal war ended, Obama would still keep troops stationed in Iraq (although he'd really, really love it US forces could be stationed in Kuwait exclusively), he would still use them to train (the police0 and still use them to protect the US fortress/embassy and still use them to conduct counter-terrorism actions.  Margaret Kimberley (cited at the opening of this section on politics) called it correctly.  Meanwhile Ruth Conniff (The Progressive) weighs in on the alleged Democratic 'debate' this week, dubbing it "pile-on-Hillary night," and wondering what the point of it really was: "But hanging over all this is the specter of the $90 million Hillary had raised by the middle of October.  That huge amount of cash so outstrips the other candidates, it seems like a silly game of make-believe to pretend that a clever quip during a debate, or even the extremely important and legistimate points the candidates made last night, could change the dynamic of the race.  It doesn't matter how trenchant your comments are if you are drowned out by the amplified voice of a frontrunner who can buy all the airtime that's left in this extremely short primary season."  Also noting the heavy donations from big business is Bruce Dixon (Black Agenda Report), "For Democratic and Republican wings of America's permanent ruling party, the all-important selection which precedes the election isn't about poll numbers, votes or the citizens that cast them.  It's about winning the favor of military contractors, the banking and financial sectors and Big Oil.  It's about reassuring insurance and pharmaceutical companies, cozying up to agribusiness, the cable and telecom monopolies, allaying the fears of chambers of commerce, and wooing Hollywood."  Dixon goes on to note the industries pouring big money in Obama and Clinton's campaigns, notes PEJ's tracking of the first six months of mainstream press coverage of the candidates this year -- Obama received more positive coverage from the mainstream than any other candidate for president  -- almost 20% more than Hillary Clinton and  approximately 19% more than Rudy Giuliani -- and concludes that the Dem presidential ticket will be Clinton-Obama (Clinton for president). 
 
Meanwhile US House Rep and Democratic presidential nominee contender Dennis Kucinich announced that he is calling for House vote next week.  On?  Impeachment of Cheney.  Kucinich: "The momentum is building for impeachment.  Millions of citizens across the nation are demanding Congress rein in the Vice President's abuse of power.  Despite this groundswell of opposition to the unconstitutional conduct of office, Vice President Cheney continues to violate the U.S. Constitution by insisting the power of the executive branch is supreme.  Congress must hold the Vice President accountable.  The American people need to let Members of Congress know how they feel about this.  The Vice President continues to use his office to advocate for a continued occupation of Iraq and prod our nation into a belligerent stance against Iran.  If the Vice President is successful, his actions will ensure decades of disastrous consequences."  His office notes, "The privileged resolution has priority status for consideration on the House floor.  Once introduced, the resolution has to be brought to the floor within two legislative days, although the House could act on it immediately.  Kucinich is expected to bring it to the House floor on Tuesday, November 6."
 
 
 

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Thursday, November 01, 2007

THIS JUST IN! BAMBI PUTS DOWN THE JUICE BOX!

 
SENATOR BAMBI WANTS TO BE PRESIDENT SOME DAYS.  SAID ONE OF HIS CAMPAIGN SPOKESPEOPLE, "THIS IS ONE OF THOSE DAYS." 
 
SO IN HIS NON-STOP 'HOPE' CAMPAIGN -- "SEND HILLARY CLINTON BACK TO HOPE, AK" APPARENTLY -- HE CONTINUED HIS ATTACKS ON SENATOR CLINTON TODAY.
 
 
OBAMA SAYS THAT THE ANSWER INSTEAD IS A RESOLUTION TO COUNTER-ACT THE OTHER MEASURE.  BAMBI DOESN'T HAVE A CO-SPONSOR YET.
 
BUT HE INSISTS THIS IS "REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, LIKE IMPORTANT.  I EVEN PUT DOWN MY JUICE BOX TO TALK ABOUT THIS."
 
OF COURSE, HAD HE SHOWN UP TO VOTE FOR THE MEASURE DECLARING THE IRANIAN MILITARY A "TERRORIST GROUP" IN THE FIRST PLACE, NONE OF THIS WOULD BE NECESSARY. 
 
"I HAD TO STAND IN LINE FOR TICKETS TO THE MILEY CYRUS CONCERT!" BAMBI INSISTED.
 
 
 
Starting with war resistance.  "I am standing here today on behalf of the men, women and children of the Middle East, who have fallen victim to this Administration and it's complete lack of compassion and total disregard for both U.S. and International laws of war.  I stand with them so that the entire world can take notice, and so that they will know that they are not forgotten," announced war resister James Circello in New Orleands over the weekend at a rally to end the illegal war, restore the Constitution and rebuild the Gulf Coast.  Audio-visual can be found here and IVAW has the text of his speech posted as well.  From the speech:
 
A little about myself:
I enlisted directly after the attacks of September 11th, I thought I was going to be a part of something noble and would be defending my country and family.  Defending this, that and every other thing soldiers are told they defend.
All I ended up defending were corporate interests. 
I served in Iraq during the initial invasion as an Airborne Infantryman with the 173rd Airborne Brigade from March 2003 to March 2004.
And while there, something incredible happened, something so revolutionary no one would ever believe me. . .
But while I was in Iraq I actually made friends with the people of that country.  Muslims, Christians, Arabs, Kurds, Turks -- all of them.
It was unbelievable, all this time I was told that Arabs wanting to kill me for my freedom and because I was American. 
I quickly became disillusioned about our mission there.  We were being told that we were giving these people Democracy, unfortunately what I saw would best be described as martial law, or what we called "The Old West."  Soldiers joked that "anything goes", which was true and still is, for the most part, today. 
Time went by and I moved on to other places in my career, but I never forgot what I did while in Iraq and what I saw happening: Other kids turning into animals.
Some as young as 17, brutalizing, bullying and humiliating individuals sometimes old enough to be their grandparents, and sometimes young enough to be their children. 
And it wasn't just the men and women on the receiving end, suffering through illegal and tiresome searches of their homes and vehicles, simply for being brown skinned, but the same methods were applied to women and children as well. 
No one was innocent.
No one was innocent.  No one.
I was against the invasion before I was deployed but shortly after I came home from Iraq, I decided I was completely against the Occupations and would refuse to participate in them any longer -- though it would take me over 2 and a half years to finally do something about it. 
But then I did.
I left the Army on Easterm morning of this year, in protest of this Administration's War-Crimes and on that day I decided I would never again wear the Uniform of War.
 
 
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes James Stepp, Michael Espinal, Matthew Lowell, Derek Hess, Diedra Cobb, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Peter Brown, Bethany "Skylar" James, 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, at least fifty 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.
 
 
The National Lawyers Guild's convention begins shortly: The Military Law Task Force and the Center on Conscience & War are sponsoring a Continuing Legal Education seminar -- Representing Conscientious Objectors in Habeas Corpus Proceedings -- as part of the National Lawyers Guild National Convention in Washington, D.C. The half-day seminar will be held on Thursday, November 1st, from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., at the convention site, the Holiday Inn on the Hill in D.C. This is a must-attend seminar, with excelent speakers and a wealth of information. The seminar will be moderated by the Military Law Task Force's co-chair Kathleen Gilberd and scheduled speakers are NYC Bar Association's Committee on Military Affairs and Justice's Deborah Karpatkin, the Center on Conscience & War's J.E. McNeil, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee's Peter Goldberger, Louis Font who has represented Camilo Mejia, Dr. Mary Hanna and others, and the Central Committee for Conscientious Objector's James Feldman. The fee is $60 for attorneys; $25 for non-profit attorneys, students and legal workers; and you can also enquire about scholarships or reduced fees. The convention itself will run from October 31st through November 4th and it's full circle on the 70th anniversary of NLG since they "began in Washington, D.C." where "the founding convention took place in the District at the height of the New Deal in 1937, Activist, progressive lawyers, tired of butting heads with the reactionary white male lawyers then comprising the American Bar Association, formed the nucleus of the Guild."
 
NLG president Marjorie Cohn spoke with by Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) today:
 
AMY GOODMAN: You're celebrating the seventieth anniversary of the National Lawyers Guild. Can you talk about why it formed?
 
MARJORIE COHN: In 1937, seventy years ago, the American Bar Association would not admit people of color. So the National Lawyers Guild started as an alternative to the American Bar Association. And during the last seventy years, National Lawyers Guild legal people -- lawyers, law students, legal workers -- have been involved in the cutting edge struggles to support the rights of people. And our preamble says it all, and we're dedicated to the proposition that human rights are more sacred than property interests.
 
AMY GOODMAN: You have written a great deal about the Bush administration. What do you think is President Bush's greatest offense at this point?
 
MARJORIE COHN: The war in Iraq is clearly his greatest offense, and the torture is part and parcel of that. And in his co-called war on terror, he has really made us less safe. He has put many of our lives in danger. And more than 3,800 people have lost their lives in this country. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. Untold numbers of people have been wounded on both sides. And, in fact, he is rattling -- he and Cheney are rattling the sabers against Iran and promise to do even more horrible damage.
 
AMY GOODMAN: Have the Democrats coming to power in Congress made a difference?
 
MARJORIE COHN: They are holding hearings. So far, that's the only difference. They gave him the so-called Protect America Act, which legalizes his illegal spying program, which is not used just to spy on the terrorists, but also used to spy on dissidents, people who dissent against the administration policy. And I've seen a lot of timidity on the part of the Democrats. This vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee that's going to happen next week on the Mukasey nomination is going to be very telling, to see if the Democrats put their money where their mouth is. And it's not just waterboarding. If you look at his testimony, it supports the Bush administration in lockstep right down the line.
 
Returning to actions over the weekend,  Adam Kokesh writes about the action he took part in.  From "The Rally in Philly:" "The crowd was a bit disappointing, but still solid given the weather.  I got to meet up with some friends from Veterans For Peace and some student organizers I've worked with just before Kelley Dougherty, the IVAW Executive Director, got on stage to speak.  Despite having a very sweet demeanor and voice for an Iraq vet, she has a way of always getting people riled up and passionate about direct action, which she did.  I did a couple TV interviews when the caravan stopped in Baltimore to pick some people up at a church, and said that this day of protests was one for the movement, one for the people.  We're deliberately not doing something in DC because we are sick of asking for them to end this war.  We the people have to stand up and stop this war for ourselves."  On Friday, Kokesh spoke at his university (Georgetown).  Hadas Gold (The GW Hatchet) reports, "About 30 people, most community members and some students, listened to Kokesh speak about Iraq, the military and the inherent racism in both.  'There really is some shame associated with having been a part of (racism in the military),' said Kokesh, who served in the Marines.  Kokesh spoke of how the military dehumanizes Iraqis by using racial slurs and other names . . . to make the killings easier on the mind. . . . 'You cannot love what you do not understand,' Kokesh said.  'We would be na've to think America has been an exception to this historic trend.'  Kokesh said everyone has the capacity for racism and that it is too often recognized as acceptable in our culture."  Kokesh is co-chair of IVAW.
 
While Adam Kokesh works to get the word out, Nancy Youssef files another bad report for McClatchy Newspapers.  She writes, "Of October's [US military] deaths, 27 were caused by enemy action, Iraqi Coalition Casualty Count reported on its web site."  She tells you there were 36 for the month of October.  Now McClatchy knows damn well the US military announces deaths late.  The number is 39 because 3 October deaths were announced today.  McClatchy -- of all people -- shouldn't be caught with their pants down.  But what of the nine who died from something other than a non-combat classification?  Did McClatchy determine the cause of death.  Or did they just accept the military's "under investigation"?  As we noted in Tuesday's snapshot, Christopher Monroe (whose parents have filed a lawsuit against the mercenary company responsible for their son's death) died October 25, 2006.  The US military announced a death that sounded like a fender bender ("5-ton truck was involved in an automobile accident with a civilian vehicle") when the reality was that Monroe got run down by mercenaries in an armored Suburban (the mercenaries worked for Erinys -- Monroe's parents are suing them over the death of 19-year-old Christopher).  Here's the reality for McClatchy -- which has done this dopey report for at least three months now -- if you don't know about the other deaths, you really can't write about the ones classified as "combat."  That glaring error is not erased by erasing mentions -- even in passing -- of the others who died.  Furthermore, in what reads like a report of 'progress,' Youssef notes, "A report by the Government Accountability Office in Washington warned Tuesday that the U.S. and Iraqi governments haven't taken advantage of the drop in violence."  And?  That's it.  Youssef is done with it; however, yesterday James Glanz (New York Times) reported, ". . . Joseph A. Christoff, the director of international affairs and trade at the Government Accountability Office, said some measure of what some see as progress in Iraq were not as clear-cut as they might seem.  For example, Pentagon statistic indicated that a drop in violence in Iraq over the past several months 'was primarily due to a decrease in attacks against coalition forces,' Mr. Christoff said in written remarks to a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.  'Attacks against Iraqi security forces and civilians have declined less than attacks against coalition forces,' Mr. Christoff wrote."  None of that is in Youssef's article.  When the New York Times is doing a better job on Iraq than McClatchy, there is a problem.  Or, as a correspondent for another paper e-mailed the public account to assert, "You're going to pass Nancy again."  Ruth called it out the start of last month.  Youssef is one of the strongest print reporters on Iraq at any paper but this new monthly series is garbage.  There were other things to call out before but only McClatchy appears to have not grasped that the figures you run with for that first-of-the-month-report-on-the-first-of-the-month change.  The US military knows those reports are in the works -- it's why they now regularly feed the key talking points two weeks before the end of the month in press conference after press conference -- so they regularly have a few 'holdover' announcements on deaths.  Already today, the US military has announced 3 October deaths.  Anywhere in the report (which appears as confused as John McCain on the campaign trail -- though McCain is pretending confusion re: Iraq, in August 2006, he outlined all that has happened) about the key element of October?  Nope.  ". . . Bush's military strategy has employed its own indiscriminate firepower -- from loose 'rules of engagement' for U.S. troops, to helicopter gun ships firing on crowds, to jet air strikes, to missiles launched from Predator drones.  For instance the U.S. military acknowledged on Oct. 23 that an American helicopter killed 11 people, including women and children . . ."  Who wrote that?  Not Youssef.  Robert Parry (Consortium News) pointed that out this week. It's sad that a monthly-round-up piece by Youssef on violence in Iraq can't even note the most obvious trend for the month of October.  As we noted Sunday at The Third Estate Sunday Review: "If September's big story was Blackwater, the key story of October was US military air strikes that killed civilians -- with the US admitting to a few while using 'under investigation' to cover others.  That too is falling out of the early accounts so we're not hopeful to see it explored in the end of the month (published first day of the month) stories."  If fell right off the charts, onto the floor and slid under the rug before McClatchy could apparently notice because in a report on violence for the month of October, Youssef writes as if she's unaware of the vast number of reports on Iraqis killed by US 'air power'.  She's happy to type up, "Police blame the violence on al Qaida in Iraq . . ."  but apparently noting the killings that were the key development of the month (the key was them being reported on, the development itself is not all that new) was too much to ask for.  The report is useless.  It was useless before 3 more deaths being announced made the figures wrong.  If you're wondering, for the second month in a row McClatchy Newspapers plays vauge on the Iraqi death statistics.  Youssef zooms in on Baghdad but fails to note the figures throughout Iraq.  AFP reports, "The number of Iraqis killed in insurgent and sectarian attacks" note that leaves out the Iraqi civilians killed in US air strikes "rose in October, in a blow to a nine-month-old US troop surge policy.  At least 887 Iraqis were killed last month, compared to 840 in September, according to the data compiled by the Iraqi government."  AFP keeps their own figures -- these are not them.  These are figures released by the Iraqi government, the ministries of interior, defence and health.  Meanwhile the site that is known for undercounting the dead, IBC, has a total of 1,1817 Iraqi civilians killed for the month of October.  Neither goes with a Happy Talk "Troops coming home anyday now!" theme.  AFP also notes, "The United Nations, one of the reliable sources of information, also stopped providing the data since early this year."  Of course you could always pull a Ned Parker and compare this month's toll with January's (as he does in the Los Angeles Times) and trumpet "DECREASE!"  Apparently, the saying is never be a nosy parker nor a Ned Parker.  Call it a sign of the sorry state of journalism or a sign of hope but college student Emily Watson (UT's The Daily Texan) clearly grasps what so many refuse to:
 
 The Associated Press reported this week that the projected death toll for October - 36 - is the lowest in 19 months, almost half of last month's casualties. But who are we, as citizens and journalists, to say that the casualties of the Iraq war, at only 36, are the lowest they have been in 19 months? Only one casualty in a month is not a feat - it still means that one life has been lost. Let's stop speaking in numbers and death tolls and start looking at what really happens when a nation is at war. The federal government prohibits the publishing of any photographs of dead soldiers' coffins. Perhaps that's how they want to keep it: We can see the numbers of coffins, but not the coffins themselves. If death isn't real to the American public, then the war is just something that whispers its way into the nightly news or that creeps quietly into the RSS feeds of our blogs. We turn a blind eye to the soldiers walking the halls of America's Veterans Affairs hospitals. College-aged women and men return from war less their legs, arms, eyes or ears, hoping to one day be normal again.
 
 

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Wednesday, October 31, 2007

THIS JUST IN! BUT HE'S NOT GAY!

 
REPUBLICAN RICHARD CURTIS SERVES IN THE WASHINGTON STATE LEGISLATURE AND HE IS NOT GAY.
 
OR HE DID SERVE THERE.  AS HIS ONCE WEB PAGE ANNOUNCES: "
The Representative you are looking for is no longer a member of the Legislature and the page has been removed accordingly."  HIS RESIGNATION STATEMENT READS:
 
"Today I submitted my letter of resignation to Governor Gregoire effective immediately. While I believe we've done some good and helped a lot of people during the time I served in the Legislature, events that have recently come to light have hurt a lot of people. I sincerely apologize for any pain my actions may have caused.

"This has been damaging to my family, and I don't want to subject them to any additional pain that might result from carrying out this matter under the scrutiny that comes with holding public office."
 
"UNDER THE SCRUTINY THAT COMES WITH HOLDING PUBLIC OFFICE"?  IT WASN'T THE PRESS THAT RAN TO THE POLICE SAYING, "I AM BEING BLACKMAILED!" 
 
 
THE LITTLE LEAGUE SAFETY OFFICER, U.S. AIR FORCE VETERAN, MARRIED, FATHER OF TWO  CURTIS EXPRESSED HIS INTEREST AND THE TWO MEN SETTLED ON A PRICE FOR SERVICES TO BE RENDERED.  THEY THEN WENT TO THE DAVENPORT HOTEL.
 
 
 
AT THE START OF THE WEEK, CURTIS WAS INSISTING, "I AM NOT GAY.  I HAVE NOT HAD SEX WITH A GUY."  APPARENTLY REPUBLICAN MALES BELIEVE THERE IS NOTHING STRAIGHTER THAN HAVING SEX WITH A MAN AND PAYING FOR IT.  POSSIBLY THE PAYMENT WAS A MEASURE MEANT TO ASSIST THE ECONOMY?
 
 
NO WORD ON A VOTING RECORD REGARDING PROSTITUTION.
 
 
 
Starting with war resisters.  Over the weekend, Paul St. Armand's Parallels won the Canadian Reflections Award at the enRoute Student Film Festival in Toronto.  Among those serving as judges for the festival were film producer Denise Robert, actor-writer-director Patrick Huard, director-animator Torill Kove, director Atom Egoyan, producer Robert Lantos,  actor-producer Donald Sutherland and film critic (Toronto Star) Geoff Pevere.  Halifax' The Daily News explains, "Parallels is a double portrait of U.S. amry deserters from the Vietnam and Iraq wars.  The film won Best Documentary at the 2007 BC Student Film Festival, was a Golden Sheaf nominee at the Yorkton Short Film & Video Festival, and is a current nominee at Kevin Spacey's Triggerstreet Online Film Festival."  The documentary short explores the lives of James D. Jones and Joshua Key.  Originally, Paul St. Armand thought he was making a documentary that would look at Vietnam war resisters in Canada three decades later.  James D. Jones was one of the war resisters from that era he spoke with.  Then the War Resisters Support Campaign hooked him up with Iraq War resister Joshua Key and St. Armand noted similarities in the two resisters stories.  Key's story is also among those told in Michaelle Mason's documentary  Breaking Ranks (where he states, "As we got down the Euphrates River and we took a shartp right turn, all we seen was heads and bodies.  And American troops in the middle of them saying 'we lost it'.") and in the book he wrote with Lawrence Hill, The Deserter's Tale.  From Key's book, page 176:
 
By our sins of willful neglect, we were about to have a child's blood on our hands.  I knew it was wrong then, and now I know exactly what the Geneva Conventions say about the protection of women and children in war. 
"Women shall be the object of special respect and shall be protected in particular against rape, forced prostitution, and any other form of indecent assault." 
I knew how things were going to begin for that thirteen-year-old Iraqi girl, that day, but there was no telling how they would end.  We had every means at our disposal to protect that girl.  I say this because, in Iraq, sergeants and officers in my company generally behaved however they wanted in the presence of Iraqi civilians, employees, police officers, and border officials.  In my opinion, it wouldn't have mattered in the slightest to my superiors what Iraqis throught of our actions.  If one of our officers or sergeants had chosen to intervene and protect the girl, no Iraqi working at the border would have been in a position to stop him.  We were the ones with the ultimate authority at the border.  Indeed, one of our roles at al-Qa'im was to teach the Iraqi border officials and police officers how to inspect a car, and to tell them what we would allow Iraqis to take out of their country and what we prohibited as export items.  We were the occupiers and we controlled the border, but when it came to the fate of the thirteen-year-old girl who was about to be raped, we did nothing.
 
Meanwhile Steve Woodhead (The Brock Press) reports on war resister Michael Espinal recent speaking event at Brock University at St. Catharines, Ontario.  Espinal explains of one thing explains about his time in Iraq, "We were told to walk right past injured civilians, even children who were lying bleeding on the ground.  I've seen soldiers take up to $20,000 U.S. from homes during house raids . . . Soldiers would go around in civilian cars we picked up at border checkpoints."  Like many war resisters, Espinal had to go online to find information about war resistance.
 
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes James Stepp, Michael Espinal, Matthew Lowell, Derek Hess, Diedra Cobb, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Peter Brown, Bethany "Skylar" James, 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, at least fifty 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.
 
 
The National Lawyers Guild's convention begins shortly: The Military Law Task Force and the Center on Conscience & War are sponsoring a Continuing Legal Education seminar -- Representing Conscientious Objectors in Habeas Corpus Proceedings -- as part of the National Lawyers Guild National Convention in Washington, D.C. The half-day seminar will be held on Thursday, November 1st, from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., at the convention site, the Holiday Inn on the Hill in D.C. This is a must-attend seminar, with excelent speakers and a wealth of information. The seminar will be moderated by the Military Law Task Force's co-chair Kathleen Gilberd and scheduled speakers are NYC Bar Association's Committee on Military Affairs and Justice's Deborah Karpatkin, the Center on Conscience & War's J.E. McNeil, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee's Peter Goldberger, Louis Font who has represented Camilo Mejia, Dr. Mary Hanna and others, and the Central Committee for Conscientious Objector's James Feldman. The fee is $60 for attorneys; $25 for non-profit attorneys, students and legal workers; and you can also enquire about scholarships or reduced fees. The convention itself will run from October 31st through November 4th and it's full circle on the 70th anniversary of NLG since they "began in Washington, D.C." where "the founding convention took place in the District at the height of the New Deal in 1937, Activist, progressive lawyers, tired of butting heads with the reactionary white male lawyers then comprising the American Bar Association, formed the nucleus of the Guild."
 
Turning to the topic of the mercenary company Blackwater, an editorial from the Los Angeles Times notes today:  "Congress should also begin investigating growing evidence of an overly cozy relationship between the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and Blackwater.  It appears that the bureau hired the contractors, supervised their activities, allowed them to use deadly force, began to investigate the long-simmering allegations of excessive use of force only after the outcry over the September shootings, and then promised some contractors immunity without asking permission from the Justice Department.  This behavior is more disturbing given reports that Blackwater has hired former State Department officials at high salaries, raising questions about whether the 'revolving door' presented a conflict of interest for investigators.  Certainly Blackwater seems to have unwarranted influence in Washington, as evidenced by the letter it procured from the State Department ordering it not to disclose information to Waxman's committee.  Who's in charge here, the U.S. government or Blackwater?"  As questions continue to rise, John M. Broder and David Johnston (New York Times) inform that the Defense Department and not the State Department will now be in charge of oversight and quote US House Rep Jan Schakowsky stating, "It feels like they're [the State Department] protecting Blackwater."  However, Noah Schatman (Wired) reports that the Department of Defense will not provide oversight because "The US Regional Cooperation Offices -- also called 'Reconstruction Operations Centers' -- are themselves outsourced, through a recently renewed $475 million contract to the British firm Aegis.  And Aegis is run by the infamous old-school gun-for-hire, Tim Spicer." Which calls into question the noted by Peter Grier (Christian Science Monitor), made by Geoff Morrell -- Pentagon flack, that "the military, for its part, would now excercise some control over contractor training" -- a bit hard for the Pentagon to do if oversight has already been contracted out.  Karen DeYoung (Washington Post) notes the limited-immunity the State Department offered Blackwater over the September 16th slaughter of Iraqi civilians in Baghdad and observes, "New details about the 'protections' given Blackwater contractors allegedly involved in the shootings sparked outrage from congressional Democrats yesterday, along with a flood of letters to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from committee chairmen demanding more information."  Tim Harper (Toronto Star) observes of the immunity offered (with no input from anyone outside the State Department), "But legal experts said the state department move makes an already difficult prosecution even more difficult and keeps those who allegedly did the shooting in a legal zone which authorities may not be able to penetrate.  Democrats accused the Bush administration of shielding potential killers and the chair of the powerful oversight committee gave U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice until Friday at noon to answer questions about the decision of her investigators."  Of course, Rice isn't supposed to be in the US then.  She's supposed to be in Turkey for a scheduled conference. Facing reporters in yesterday's State Dept briefing, Sean McCormack repeatedly fell back on a claim that he couldn't speak, "First of all, we have to draw a box around the specific events of September 16th and anything involved with that particular case."  Other comments on the news emerging this week regarding the State Department and Blackwater included, "This is an area that I can't venture into."; "Again, I can't speak to the specifics of the September 16th case."; "In general, you have exhausted my legal knowledge concerning this case."; and "I'm just not going to have anything to say about the September 16th case."  Even on something as general as the process of the incident reports that are supposed to be required whenever a contractor under the State Department fires a weapon in Iraq, McCormack stonewalled with comments such as "Let me just see if there's a standard procedure that I can talk about" and "I'll talk to the lawyers and see what we can do."  Discussing the procedures on incident reports, on who sees them and the process itself does not require speaking to an attorney. Furthermore, in a democracy (open government), the process is not a secret.  When Helen Thomas pressed White House flack Dana Perino on the immunity issue yesterday, Perino refused to expand on more than "Helen, as I said, it's a matter that's under review" and refused to state whether the Bully Boy had been briefed on the immunity deal the State Department offered. 
 
As the tensions and fallout from the September 16th slaughter continues in Iraq, the puppet of the occupation Nouri al-Maliki feels pressure to do something (his earlier public statements regarding Blackwater having since been clamped down on) so he has proposed a measure that would overturn Paul Bremer's Order 17 which granted immunity (from the Iraqi government) to contractors operating in Iraq.  Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) reports the proposed bill "was written by" al-Maliki's legal adviser. Asked about that in the briefing yesterday, Sean McCormack was again evasive stating "Well, it's their law as I understand it -- unless I'm wrong here and that has been known to happen. . . . But as I understand it, they have the ability to changer their laws.  Now, let's take a look at exactly what has been proposed and has yet to be debated in their legislature.  But once we have a look at it and have a chance to analyze it, perhaps we'll have more to say about it."  Left unstated is exactly why the State Department or the US should have anything to say about the allegedly independent nation-state Iraq.  Meanwhile Christian Berthelsen and Raheem Salman (Los Angeles Times) report that Iraqi eye witnesses to the slaughter say the FBI agents  investigating "appear focused on whether anyone fired first on the American convoy and have been aggressively gathering ballistic evidence" and citing an unnamed "U.S. source" report that the team of investigators left Iraq Sunday.
 
Staying on the topic of crime, the US military has found a number of anthropologists who will betray their field.  Earlier this month, the BBC noted, "The Pentagon is pulling out all the stops in Iraq and Afghanistan" to recruit wayward academics to assist their Human Terrain System; however, "very frew anthropologists in the US are willing to wear a uniform and receive the mandatory weapons training."  The article also notes the Network of Concerned Anthropologists an organization created to preven the betryal of the social science and the unethical use of the field to harm or destroy a people.  One founding member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists is David Price.  In a well researched and documented article entitled "Pilfered Scholarship Devastates General Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual" (CounterPunch), Price walks readers through how even on something as basic as a monogram, those involved are applying no academic standards and he notes that Montgomery McFate appears to believe that merely stumbling across a passage written by another academic means she can claim it as her own -- word for word -- without credit or attribution.  That's theft, plagiarism and shoddy scholarship.  Monty is as she was -- forever and ever.  Price also examines the press-love for Monty and writes, "In a recent exchange with Dr. McFate, Col. John Agoglia and Lt. Col. Edward Villacres on the Diane Rehm Show, I pressed McFate for an explanation of how voluntary ethical informed consent was produced in environments dominated by weapons.  In response, McFate assured me that was not a problem because 'indigenous local people out in rural Afghanistan are smart, and they can draw a distinction between a lethal unit of the U.S. military and a non-lethal unit'."   The Diane Rehm Show referred to was broadcast October 10th.  In that broadcast, though Monty claimed the local population was able to discern, the New York Times' David Rohde was asked how clear the lines were by USA Today's Susan Page (filling in for Rehm) -- "does it seem transparent for them" when they meet with "Tracy":

 
David Rohde:  Um, she was transparent with them.  I don't think she gave her full name, I think she does identify herself as an anthropologist.  I saw her briefly, but I don't know what she does at all times. She personally, um, actually chose to carry a weapon for security that's not a requirement for members of the team, I've been told.  And she wore a military uniform which would make her appear to be a soldier, um, to Afghans that she wasn't actually speaking with.
 
Susan Page: And so you think Aghans knew that she wasn't a soldier even though she was wearing a military uniform and carrying a weapon?  Or do you think that they just assumed that she probably was?
 
David Rohde: I would think that they assumed that she was.
 
That's the reality and, strangely, when Rohde was done speaking, Monty had nothing to add even though every false claim she'd offered in the roundtable had just been demolished.  Price notes "a recent New York Times op-ed by Chicago anthropologist Richard Shweder indicates a stance of inaction from which the travesties of Human Terrain can be lightly critiqued while anthropologists are urged not to declare themselves as being 'counter-counterinsurgency'."  that nonsense ran on A31 of last Saturday's Times and mainly serves to update his November 2006 op-ed embarrassment where he gushed -- alleged anthropologist -- "The West is the best".  The non-thinking person's anthropologist -- to anthropology what recipes on the back of a bag of Frito Lays are to fine cooking -- justified the program.  While loose with the truth Monty and lost in stimulation Shweder attempt to put forth the lie that anthropologists are not being used for counter-insurgency measures (thereby assisting an occupying power by gathering information on a population -- information that will then be used against said population which is a clear betrayal of the field), Jacob Kipp, Lester Grau, Karl Prinslow and Don Smith, attempting to get the Happy Talk out on the program for the US military, wrote "The Human Terrain System: A CORDS for the 21st Century" for the September/October 2006 edition of Military Review and which not only makes clear that this is a counter-insurgency program but cites the CIvil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) as a model.  CORDS was created under LBJ to "pacify" (destroy) the people studied.  As Bryan Bender (Boston Globe) notes, CORDS "helped identify Vietnamese suspected as communists and Viet Cong collaborators; some were later assassinated by the United States."  [Elaine addressed Price's article last night.] 
 

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Tuesday, October 30, 2007

THIS JUST IN! POLITICAL PROSTITUE BARACK OBAMA!

 
BAD TIMES FOR BAMBI CONTINUE POSSIBLY INDICATING THAT WHEN YOU HAVE SERVED ONLY 2 YEARS OF YOUR 1ST EVER 6-YEAR-TERM IN THE SENATE, YOUR 1ST EVER NATIONAL OFFICE, YOU DON'T RUN FOR PRESIDENT.
 
BARACK OBAMA IS ATTEMPTING TO RE-INTEREST THE PRESS IN HIS FAILED RUN FOR PRESIDENT AND HAS DECIDED THE BEST WAY TO DO THAT IS LIE AND DECLARE THAT SOCIAL SECURITY NEEDS "FIXING." 
 
A NUMBER OF GRASSROOTS ACTIVISTS FEEL BETRAYED -- JOIN BARACK'S GAY AND LESBIAN SUPPORTERS WHO WERE THROWN UNDER A BUS EARLIER -- BY YET ANOTHER CRAVEN ATTEMPT FROM SENATOR EYE LASHES.
 
 
WHO ATTACKS SOCIAL SECURITY IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY TODAY?  THE D.L.C.  AND BARACK OBAMA, AS GLEN FORD REVEALED, IS D.L.C.
 
AS IF THAT'S NOT DISGUSTING ENOUGH, BAMBI IS CHARGING PEOPLE TO MEET HIM -- CALL IT POLITICAL PROSTITUTION.  EARLIER HE CHARGED $15.00 A HEAD TO THOSE HEARING HIM GIVE A SPEECH (SEE "The dregs" AND "THIS JUST IN! THINNING OF THE HERD!"), BUT THIS WEEK, HE RAISED THE RATE TO $29.00 A HEAD.  MAYBE HIS PIMP THREATENED TO BEAT HIM UP?  WHAT'S AMAZING IS THAT NO PROGRESSIVE VOICE WILL CALL THIS OUT.  NOT LAURA FLANDERS.  NOT MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD.  NOT PATRICIA J. WILLIAMS.  NOT JOHN NICHOLS. 
 
MANY OF THEM WILL CALL OUT THE NEED FOR ELECTION REFORM BUT THEY AREN'T AT ALL TROUBLED THAT SOMEONE CAMPAIGNING TO BE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES -- CAMPAIGNING TO BE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES -- THINKS IT IS PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE TO MEET ONLY WITH PEOPLE WHO CAN PAY.  THIS ISN'T BIG DONORS, THESE ARE THE STANDARD STOPS ON ANY CAMPAIGN TRAIL. 
 
MAYBE IT'S TIME ROTHSCHILD, FLANDERS, NICHOLS AND WILLIAMS WOKE UP TO THE FACT THAT A SINGLE PARENT WITH CHILDREN WANTING TO BE INVOLVED IN THE POLITICAL PROCESS MAY NOT HAVE $29 TO BLOW IN THAT WEEK'S BUDGET?  OR MAYBE THEY CAN GRASP THAT CANDIDATES FOR PUBLIC OFFICE SHOULD APPEAR FREELY BEFORE THE PUBLIC?
 
 
 
Starting with war resisters.  Steve Gardner (Kitsap Sun) writes of the just published "The Most Influential People of 2007" in Seattle Magazine. and notes "Iraq war resister U.S. Army Lt. Ehren Watada appears, as does Olympic Sculpture Park shepherd Chris Rogers (who the magazine selected as the 2007 Person of the Year).  Early learning advocate and the state's former first ladey Mona Locke is on the list, and so is former U.S. Attorney John McKay and Google's Narayanan 'Shiva' Shivakumar."  Watada is the first officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq. After months of working with the military (in good faith), Watada went public in June of 2006 after it became obvious that the military was stringing him along with false assurance. Watada (rightly) judges the Iraq War as illegal. In February of this year he was court-martialed in a kangaroo hearing presided over by Judge Toilet (aka John Head) who called a mistrial over defense objection and after the prosecution had presented their case which means double-jeopardy should prevent Watada from standing before a court-martial again. (Watada's service contract has already expired. He has been kept in the US military for months due to the issue of a potential court-martial.) US District Judge Benjamin Settle Friday is reviewing that and other issues and has extended the stay on Watada's case through November 9th.
 
 
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes James Stepp, Michael Espinal, Matthew Lowell, Derek Hess, Diedra Cobb, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Peter Brown, Bethany "Skylar" James, 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, at least fifty 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.
 
 
The National Lawyers Guild's convention begins shortly: The Military Law Task Force and the Center on Conscience & War are sponsoring a Continuing Legal Education seminar -- Representing Conscientious Objectors in Habeas Corpus Proceedings -- as part of the National Lawyers Guild National Convention in Washington, D.C. The half-day seminar will be held on Thursday, November 1st, from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., at the convention site, the Holiday Inn on the Hill in D.C. This is a must-attend seminar, with excelent speakers and a wealth of information. The seminar will be moderated by the Military Law Task Force's co-chair Kathleen Gilberd and scheduled speakers are NYC Bar Association's Committee on Military Affairs and Justice's Deborah Karpatkin, the Center on Conscience & War's J.E. McNeil, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee's Peter Goldberger, Louis Font who has represented Camilo Mejia, Dr. Mary Hanna and others, and the Central Committee for Conscientious Objector's James Feldman. The fee is $60 for attorneys; $25 for non-profit attorneys, students and legal workers; and you can also enquire about scholarships or reduced fees. The convention itself will run from October 31st through November 4th and it's full circle on the 70th anniversary of NLG since they "began in Washington, D.C." where "the founding convention took place in the District at the height of the New Deal in 1937, Activist, progressive lawyers, tired of butting heads with the reactionary white male lawyers then comprising the American Bar Association, formed the nucleus of the Guild."
 
On the above NLG event, Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) notes today, "Meanwhile the National Lawyers Guild is criticizing the Bush administration for refusing to allow a prominent Cuban attorney into the country. The guild had invited Guillermo Ferriol Molina to speak at the group's 70th anniversary convention this week but he was apparently denied a visa. Molina is the Vice-President of the Labor Law Society of the Cuban bar association and a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers."
 
How does that happen?  "There's this horrible phase in a closing democracy when leaders and citizens still think it's a democracy but the people who have already started to close it are just kind of drumming their fingers waiting for everyone to realize that that's not the dance anymore," explains Naomi Wolf on the October 26th episode of The Bat Segundo Show.  Her new book is The End of America: Letters of Warning to a Young Patriot where she argues that democracy needs to be reclaimed in the United States before it is lost.  Covering a large historical terrain, she outlines the "echoes" present in the US today that have been signals of a shift to a closed society in our historical past.   Addressing the inaction of Congress on so many topics (including impeachment and the refusal to listen to the citizens on the issue of the illegal war), Wolf declared, "Congress is like an abused woman that keeps thinking, 'Surely my boyfriend will be nice now.   What do you mean you're not turning over your e-mails?  We're Congress!  You can't just not listen to us.'  So you're right to notice the American people are getting it before Congress is.  The people in power right now are no longer engaged in the democratic social contract and so it does take us recognizing that we can't heal democracy only through conventional means of democracy.  So, Nancy Pelosi, is saying we're not going to impeach.  Guess what?  The founders didn't intend for Nancy Pelosi to decide what the people are going to do when there's this kind of criminal assault on the Constitution and checks and balances.  It's up to us.  And that's why we started the American Freedom Campaign which is a democracy movement which now has five million members in really, like two months, across the political spectrum and we're driving a grassroots movement to push, to confront Pelosi, and to confront the leaders in Congress and to let them know this is an emergency, it's not business as usual and they can't unilaterally take issues like that off the table.  We're now, impeachment is not yet an AFC position, this is just me speaking for myself, but from the historical blue print, seeing what is now in place -- it is not safe to leave those people in power anymore and I'm saying this to Republicans and Democrats alike.  It is not safe to entrust the next election with them.  So I don't think we just need to move forward with impeaching, this is me speaking personally -- not for the AFC, but from the historical blueprint, we need to do it now and also we need to prosecute for treason because it's not enough to get people like this out of power you have to get them behind bars."  Will impeachment be an issue for AFC?  Wolf explained that since it's a grassroots movement, the goals will be determined by the members.  The fifty minute broadcast touches on a large number of issues and we'll note Wolf on another topic:
 
Blackwater just got another billion dollar contract after massacring 17 innocent civilians in Iraq, okay?  They operate fully outside the law in Iraq.  Order 17, Paul Bremer, guaranteed that they were unaccountable.  So it's not just the Iraqis who have to worry about Blackwater.  The second step in the ten-point blue print [of moving a state from democracy to fascist, Wolf charts this in her book The End of America]  is to create a paramilitary force that's not answerable to the people.  This is how, in Italy, Mussolini closed democracy using the Black Shirts.  And this is how, in Germany, Hitler closed democracy using Brown Shirts. Paramilitary forces excerpt pressure on civilians.  So what Americans don't know is that Blackwater is already operating in the United States. Homeland Security already brought them in to patrol the streets of New Orleans after Katrina.  And Jeremy Scahill reported that they were firing, our contractors, were firing on civilians.  We don't know, most of us, that Blackwater's business model calls for increased deployment here in the United States in the event of say a natural catastrophe or quote 'a public emergency.'   And with Defense Authorization Act 2007, it is the president, who's hand in hand with Blackwater, who now has the unilateral power to determine what is a national emergency that calls for a quote 'restoration of public order.'  And I just want to tell you that the invoking of a national emergency and the call to restore public order is the is the tenth step in the blue print to close down an open society.
 
Staying on the topic of the mercenaries of Blackwater USA new developments can be classified under "What Condi forgot to tell Congress about Blackwater."  US Secretary of State and Anger Condi Rice most recently offered testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform last week on Thursday, October 25th.  Rice declared that ("thank God so far"  -- putting someone or Someone on notice?) Blackwater was needed and that she just wouldn't know how to run the department she heads without Blackwater (prior to the rise of Blackwater and other mercenaries, embassy security staff were responsible for guarding State Dept employees in foreign countries) and insisted, "But we do recognize that their must be sufficient oversight, sufficient rules and that is why I have accepted the recommendations of the panel on the private security contractors."  That would have been a good time to insert an item in today's news; however, she didn't.  When speaking of reports that puppet of the occupation Nouri al-Maliki had made a backdoor deal to grant immunity from prosecution to members of his cabinet, Rice did not want to talk about "rumor" or "unsubstantiated" claims "I'd like to state again, Mr. Chairman, because I'd rather state it in my own words than have it be stated for me.  It is the policy of this administration -- and I'm quite certain that the president would feel strongly about this: That there shouldn't be corrupt officials anywhere.  And that no official -- no matter how high -- should be immune from investigation, prosecution or, indeed, punishment should corruption be found."  So no immunity for officials in al-Maliki's cabinet.  Rice could have used that moment -- "in my own words" -- to address the issue of immunity that the State Department was granting.  Because the department she heads had granted immunity.  Noting that the Associated Press broke the story Monday, David Johnston (New York Times) reports today, "The State Department investigators from the agency's investigative arm, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, offered the immunity grants [to Blackwater] even though they did not have the authority to do so, the officials said.  Prosecutors at the Justice Department, who do have such authority, had no advance knowledge of the arranement, they added.  Most of the [Blackwater] guards who took part in the Sept. 16 shooting were offered what officials described as limited-use immunity, which means that they were promised they would not be prosecuted for anything they said in their interviews with the authorities as long as their statements were true."
 
This news came out Monday via AP.  On Thursday, Rice faced the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and Blackwater was a topic many touched on (Democrats and Republicans).  Rice was not forthcoming.  When the issue of immunity came up -- with regards to al-Maliki's cabinet -- Rice made no effort to inform Congress that the department she heads, the department which she is supposed to provide oversight to, had offered Blackwater guards involved in the incident immunity -- an immunity that her department did not have the power to offer.
 
CBS and AP report, "Law enforcement officials say the State Department granted them immunity from prosecution before taking their statements.  They can still be prosecuted, bur fromer prosecutor David Laufman said it will be harder to make a case, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reported. . . . The FBI can still interview the guards, but Laufman doubts they will cooperate."  Terry Frieden (CNN) notes Senator Patrick Leahy has "accused the Bush 'amnesty administration' of letting its allies, including security contractors in Iraq, shirk responsibility for their actions" and Quotes Leahy declaring, "In this administration, accountability goes by the boards.  That seems to be a central tenet in the Bush administration -- that no one from their team should be held accountable, if accountability can be avoided."  Karen DeYoung (Washington Post) offers this perspective: "Under State Department contractor rules, Diplomatic Security agents are charged with investigating and reporting on all 'use of force' incidents.  Although there have been previous Blackwater shootings over the past three years -- none of which resulted in prosecutions -- the Sept. 16 incident was by far the most serious." Johnston reports, "The immunity deals were an unwelcome surprise at the Justice Department, which was already grappling with the fundamental legal question of whether any prosecution could take place involving American civilians in Iraq. . . .  In addition, the Justice Department reassigned the investigation from prosecutors in the criminal division who had read the statements the State Department had taken under the offer of immunity to prosecutors in the national security division who had no knowledge of the statements."
 
Waxman writes Rice today about the immunity:
 
Multiple news reports are asserting that the State Department compromised the investigation into the shootings and the potential for prosecutions of Blackwater personnel by offering immunity to the Blackwater guards.  According to one report, agents of the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security promised Blackwater personnel 'immunity from prosecution' in order to elicit statements.  Another report stated that the State Department offered 'limited-use immunity' without authority to do so so and without consulting with the Justice Department.  According to these accounts, prosecution of Blackwater personnel has become, at minimum, "a lot more complicated and dfficult."   
This rash grant of immunity was an egregious misjudgement.  It raises serious questions about who conferred the immunity, who approved it at the State Department, and what their motives were.  To help the Committee investigate these matters, I request that the State Department provide written responses to the following questions no later than noon on Friday, November 2, 2007:       
1) What form of immunity was offered to the Blackwater personnel?   
2) What limitations does this form of immunity impose upon the investigation?     
3) Who authorized the offers of immunity?  
4) Who was aware of the offers of immunity at or before the time that they were delivered?  
5) When did you, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, former Assistant Secretary  of State Richard Griffin, Ambassador David Satterfield, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker learn of the grant of immunity?   
6) What consultation, if any, was conducted with the Justice Department prior to the offers of immunity?  
7) Has the State Department ever offered immunity to security contractor personnel as part of other investigations into contractor conduct?  Please describe each such occasion.  
I further request that knowledgeable officials appear at the previously scheduled briefing for Committee staff on November 2 to respond to questions about the State Department's written response to these questions.  
Finally, I request that the State Department produce the following documents no later than Friday, November 9, 2007: 
1) All communications relating to any offers of immunity to Blackwater personnel relating to the September 16, 2007, Nissor Square incident; and  
2) All communications relating to any offers of immunity to Blackwater personnel or other private military contractors relating to other incidents in Iraq. 
 
The letter is available online by [PDF format warning] clicking here.
 

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