BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE
HEY REMEMBER A MONTH AGO WHEN POLITICAL CLOSET CASE AMY GOODMAN DECLARED IN HER AUGUST 17TH HEADLINES:
"MANY BRITONS WERE SURPRISED TO READ A RECENT EDITORIAL IN THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY. THE EDITORIAL STATED, "PEOPLE SUCH AS SCIENTIST STEPHEN HAWKING WOULDN'T HAVE A CHANCE IN THE UK, WHERE THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE WOULD SAY THE LIFE OF THIS BRILLIANT MAN, BECAUSE OF HIS PHYSICAL HANDICAPS, IS ESSENTIALLY WORTHLESS." HAWKING WAS IN FACT BORN IN THE UK AND HAS LIVED THERE HIS WHOLE LIFE. THE PAPER WAS FORCED TO RUN A CORRECTION."
TODAY, SEPTEMEBER 17TH, AMY GOODMAN WAS STRANGELY QUIET REGARDING A DEVELOPMENT FROM BARACK'S ADDRESS TO CONGRESS LAST WEEK.
IF LAUGHING AT FOOLS DOES IT FOR YOU, GET THIS. BARACK DECLARED THAT A PATIENT (OTTO RADDATZ) HAD DIED WHEN HIS INSURANCE COMPANY CANCELLED HIS POLICY WHILE HE WAS HAVING CHEMO TREATMENTS.
"THEY DELAYED HIS TREATMENT," DECLARED THE CELEBRITY IN CHIEF, "AND HE DIED BECAUSE OF IT."
WOOPS! THAT TOOK PLACE IN 2005.
ACTIONS RESULTED IN THE POLICY BEING REINSTATED.
HE DIDN'T DIE THEN (2005), HE DIED IN 2008.
WOOPS!
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan hosts a weekly radio and online broadcast, Cindy's Soapbox. This week's first guest is independent journalist Dahr Jamail whose latest book is The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. We noted a section of the broadcast yesterday and we'll note another section today where Cindy and Dahr discuss his new book.
Cindy Sheehan: Dahr tell my listeners about your book The Will to Resist. I just I support soldiers who refuse to go to these illegal and immoral wars. I support them financially, I support them morally. My son didn't want to go but he thought it was his duty so he went and he was killed hours after he actually got to post. But the thing I support about these-these men and women is that they realize they're being used as tools of the US empire and they don't want to die and they don't want to kill anybody as tools. So tell my listeners about your book.
Dahr Jamail: And that is really the spirit of the book. It's about people in the military, most of which are Iraq and/or Afghanistan veterans, some of them are active duty folks. And it's about people that basically joined the military for various reasons whether it's for economic reasons or out of patriotism or wanting to serve their country and then realizing that being in Iraq or Afghanistan, it literally pushes them up against a moral crisis where they realized they're being asked to follow unlawful orders and so many of them understand that, for example, not only the situation in Iraq but the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan violates the Geneva Conventions as well which by definition given that the US is a signatory of the Geneva Conventions, violates the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution which then by definition puts a soldier in a moral crisis where they have to decide "Do I follow these orders which are actually illegal by both domestic and international law or do I stand up and refuse?" And to do the moral thing as well as the lawful thing, these people realize, well I'm going to have to take a stand and basically go up against against the US military and be court martialed and probably have to do some jail time and so I-I started running into people who were actually taking public stands against both occupations as well as other kinds of resistance against of which there's myriad types of resistance -- whether it's from doing fake patrols in Iraq and Afghanistan or coming back home and becoming very outspoken against it and having things like Winter Soldier events like Iraq Veterans Against the War sponsored. So really I started running into all these different types of resistance that veterans and active duty folks were involved in and realized "Wow, there's more than enough material here to write a book."
Cindy Sheehan: And so, um, most of my listeners know what Winter Soldier is, my listeners are very smart and they're very well informed. But for maybe a few that wouldn't know what Winter Soldier is, could you explain to my listeners what that was?
Dahr Jamail: Winter Soldier was a phenomena that began during Vietnam when similarly soldiers were coming back from Vietnam and realizing that most of the people in this country were not getting any real clear information about how bad it was over there and what was actually happening. So similarly a bunch of Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans associated with Iraq Veterans Against the War came back and held a big conference in Silver Spring, Maryland -- it was spring a year ago. And about fifty-six or so of them testified on different panels about what they did in Iraq, what they saw over there and showed photos and showed videos and really gave us a clear picture about what it was and the atrocities they were carrying out and how horrible the situation really was. It was a really shocking conference to be a part of and be there and was a very, very difficult weekend but a very necessary one and so it was all over the alternative media of course -- Pacifica outlets, some satellite stations, Democracy Now!, etc., Laura Flanders, but of course no big shocker corporate media in large part basically censored it.
We're stopping there. KPFA carried the first IVAW Winter Soldier starting Friday morning, continuing Saturday and Sunday. Aaron Glantz and Aimee Allison anchored the coverage. Pacifica Radio's webpage offered all of that coverage in a live stream and once offered it in full. Then it was decided that KPFA The War Comes Home was archiving, so it could be removed from the Pacifica site. It's a little over a year later. The War Comes Home? It's been history for months now. Click here for March 14th live coverage, here for March 15th live coverage, here for March 16h live coverage at KPFA. Now in real time, WBAI elected not to break away from their very pressing weekend schedule of repeats of dead Al Lewis programs and moldy-oldy records. Translation, they didn't broadcast Winter Soldier on Saturday or on Sunday. Democracy Now!? Click here and here for their broadcast (which is more of a mix). Iraq Veterans Against the War's Winter Soldier page provides a link to video of this Winter Soldier (other Winter Soldiers have been staged regionally since -- at least two in California). Click here for Sprouts coverage of it (one hour, audio, also a mix). Chris Hayes wrote about it for The Nation (which was tremendously appreciated and that's not sarcasm). Despite a promise from a publisher of an indy rag -- shall I start telling tales off the school yard? -- that he would write about it . . . he 'forgot.' Let's drop the pretense that anyone did a damn thing in Panhandle Media. The ones who did -- whether I like them or not -- are mentioned: Aimee Allison, Aaron Glantz, Christopher Hayes, Amy Goodman, Laura Flanders. The ones who didn't? Oh, I could make a list. Including the author whose book was cited at Winter Soldier, who swore he'd cover it and then . . . like ____ . . . forgot.
And all those promises
That you made me from the start
Were filled with emptiness
From the desert of your heart
Every sweet caress
Was just your second best
Broken promises
-- "All Those Promises," written by Janis Ian, from her album Folk Is The New Black
Sidebar, Janis is touring (always) and one show is in Dallas, Texas. A record producer friend asked that we get the word out on it. Tickets are priced from $25 to $75 for the October 22nd concert presented by the North Texas GLBT Chamber of Commerce in cooperation with StraightOut Media & Marketing, SRO Artists and Revenge Touring, Inc. Click here for details and to purchase tickets. Back to the topic at hand . . .
No offense, but I'm not in the mood for this bulls**t. This bulls**t not being called out loudly in real time resulted in where we are today.
Little useless Jeff Cohen shows up a week after Winter Soldier presenting a pat-on-the-back column for Panhandle Media where he LIED that people could hear it on the radio and get it here and there and everywhere. LIES. WBAI did one damn day. That's NYC. That's a huge population center and it's the media center, THE, in the US. One damn day. More important to air repeats of Al Lewis' program -- in March 2008, more important to air repeats of Al Lewis' radio program, Al Lewis who died in February 2006.
We covered it in this community. This isn't empty finger-pointing. Community-wide, refer to "I Hate The War," "Iraq snapshot," "Jason Hurd (IVAW's Winter Soldiers Investigation),"
"IVAW's Clifton Hicks," "Kelly Dougherty at Winter Soldiers Investigation," "Corporal Eric Estenzo testifies at Winter Soldiers...," "Steve Mortillo at Winter Soldiers Investigation,"
"adrienne kinne reveals the v.a. system," "Nachos in the Kitchen (and Adam Kokesh),"
"Tantrum in the Oval Office" & " THIS JUST IN! INTERVIEW IN THE OVAL OFFICE!" (joint-post), "Katrina vanden Heuvel avoids Winter Soldier," "Saturday's Winter Soldier Investigation," "Truest Statement of the Week," "Editorial: Are you ready to listen," "TV: Nothing-ness," "Veterans Healthcare," "Roundtable," "Negative Critisicm of Winter Soldiers Investigation," "And the war drags on . . .," "Iraq snapshot," "Dahlai Wasfi: Rock Star," "Garret Reppenhagen at Winter Soldier," "Jesse Hamilton Winter Soldier," "IVAW, silence, Hillary," "CounterPunch never heard of IVAW?," "Common Dreams doesn't include Winter Soldier," "Iraq snapshot," "Jesse Hamilton Winter Soldier Investigation," "Iraq snapshot," "The Peter Pans of Panhandle Media refused to cover Winter Soldiers," "Jesse Hamilton, Hillary, Barack," "Video, Hillary's Iraq speech," "Jesse Hamilton Winter Soldier," "Iraq snapshot" and "Ron Cantu at Winter Soldier." I may have missed something but that's the coverage beginning the Thursday Winter Soldier started and continuing through the week after it ended.
There were tons of stories to be told, tons of thing to comment on or share. But people took a pass. And then after, people took a pass on calling out the silence. Whores like Jeff Cohen showed up to attack Real Media for not covering but he had nothing to say about the many, many in Panhandle Media who ignored it. (And Real Media did do some coverage by the way. We covered that in real time. I'm not in the mood to go through all that now.) (John Stauber critiqued the silence on Winter Soldier. To be clear, John Stauber did not and is not a whore. He and Cohen were both guests for a KPFA segment and I don't want anyone to wrongly think that he's being lumped in with Cohen.) FAIR, Coehn's brothel, showed up the Friday after Winter Soldier ended with CounterSpin where they found time to cluck over the lack of coverage . . . but forgot to include themselves because FAIR has a website and forgot to do a damn thing on Winter Soldier before it started or while it was going on. That's empty finger-pointing. Repeating, in this community, we covered it in real time.
This topic will come back up at Third this weekend. But for now, this nonsense of acting like Panhandle Media did something? It didn't do a damn thing. It's as pathetic as Green Party members being thrilled that Amy Goodman gives their national convention, where they nominate a presidential candidate, a mention in headlines. The Green Party gets a headline. The DNC convention gets ten hours of coverage from Amy Goodman. The RNC convention gets tens hours of coverage from Amy Goodman. But Greens want to pretend that getting tossed scraps is something wonderful. I'm not in the mood for scraps. Winter Soldier was a HUGE story and should have been the biggest story for anyone slightly-left-of-center all the way to the extreme end. Now The Progressive missed Winter Soldier. Completely. While it was happening, they took a pass. But the week after Winter Soldier, they're live blogging a multi-day DNC event. Don't forget that. Don't forget where their priorities were.
Good luck to Dahr with his book The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan but I'm not in the mood for pretending what happened didn't happen nor am I dependent upon Foreign Policy in Focus, The Progressive or anyone else for good reviews or a paycheck. So I can and will call them out for their gross negligence and silence. And Ava and I went round and round with FPIF in real time. The refusal of others to do so, the refusal to hold them accountable? It's part of the reason why Iraq has fallen off the radar despite the fact that the illegal war continues.
In related news, which is also good news for Random House, George W. Bush is more popular than anyone could have guessed (Crown Publishing will be publishing Bully Boy Bush's memoir I Came, I Killed, I Giggled aka Decision Points). So says a new poll by Gallup which finds US President Barack Obama's highest job approval coming on the Iraq War with 56% under "approve." Since Barack's 'plan' is nothing but Bush's plan, 56% of the American people -- those polled by Gallup -- have just given George W. a big sloppy kiss.
Don't know just what I wanted
But I know I wanted more
Someone smooth, presentable
To blend with my decor
And now at night I think of how
You grinned when you undressed
And I find I miss you
More than I'd ever guessed
-- "The Carter Family," written by Jacob Brackman and Carly Simon, from her No Secrets album (Carly's new album, Never Been Gone, is released October 27th)
And apparently a large number of Americans just wanted someone "smooth, presentable" to continue the policies of George W. Bush because that's what Barack's done and, with regards to Iraq, that's all he's done. The Status Of Forces Agreement (a treaty masquerading as a SOFA) was pushed through by the Bush White House -- and prior to it being pushed through, Barack joined the chorus of US Congress members calling out the SOFA (Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Russ Feingold, etc.). And Barack promised that, ten months after being sworn in, US forces would be out of Iraq! (Houston, Texas, speech given February, 2008. Check Tom Hayden's dresser for mash notes and fan fiction on the speech.) Sworn in and, golly, he decides the 'plan' for Iraq is . . . exactly what Bush mapped out. And 56% of Americans surveyed are fine and dandy with it. Barack Obama has not ended the Iraq War. Iraqis have not stopped dying, US forces have not stopped dying. Greenville Daily News reports that the 1073rd Maintenance Company of the Michigan Army National Guard "earlier served more than a year in Iraq is going back for 12 more months." They quote Sgt Amanda Cole stating, "We're not as comfortable with our mission. We've never done this before. A lot of the weapons we'll be using have never been used before by members of our unit." At The Hill, two comments on the polling results are worth noting. Jim: "Isn't it interesting that his highest approval rating is simply for the continuation of the Bush doctrine in Iraq . . . hmmm . . ." and Bob: "Exactly the point! He is doing best in the one thing he has not tried to change!!! America? Do you get it yet?" Do not think the right-wing hasn't noticed the hypocrisy of so many on the left. Paul Gottfried (Right Side News) went to town yesterday, "These days, as I walk among my formerly pacifist colleagues and read their preferred news sources, I don't hear a murmur of complaint about 'the president's strategy' for extricating our troops from military danger. It is as if we were living in messianic times, when the wolf is lying down with the lamb. This is all because we now have Obama in the White House and overwhelming Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. Once I was naive enough to wonder why the critics of our war in Iraq on the right and on the left did not join hands in a common enterprise. The answer is that the Democratic Left, with few exceptions, was never opposed in principle to military entanglements overseas. While rightwing opponents of Bush's foreign policy were marginalized and vilified for their dissent by GOP commentators and the mainstream conservative movement, the Democratic Left engaged in griping as a means of taking power." The only 'change' has been the 'antiwar' movement packing it in after they whored to elect a Democratic president. Jeremy Scahill (The Nation via CBS News) asks, "Why Is Obama Still Using Blackwater?" and notes:
Two years to the day after the Nisour Square massacre, Blackwater remains in Iraq, armed and dangerous. As The Nation has reported, the Obama administration recently extended the company's contract there indefinitely. Blackwater has big-money contracts in Afghanistan as well, working for the State Department, the Defense Department and the CIA. As in Iraq, Blackwater forces are alleged to have shot and killed innocent civilians there. We now know that Blackwater was hired as part of the secret CIA assassination program that former Vice President Dick Cheney ordered concealed from Congress and that the company continues to work for the CIA as part of its drone bombing campaign in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile Kristin M. Hall (AP) reports on military widow Hotaru Ferschke whose husband, Sgt. Michael Ferschke, died serving in Iraq August 10, 2008. He was shot dead during a house search. He and Hoatru had married a month before and she gave birth to their son, Michael "Mikey" Ferschke III, eight months ago. They married by proxy which means a ceremony "on seperate continents" and with his dying a month later, immigration officials are insisting the marriage isn't valid because, get this, it was not consummated.A child would argue the relationship was. More importantly, immigration isn't supposed to be concerned with consummation. They're required to make sure that marriages are valid but as to whether or not a couple actually has sex? That's really none of the government's business. There are couples -- if you caught that bad 20/20 'medical' show, you know this -- who do not have sex. The article notes talk that the law needs to be updated but it actually needs to be tossed out and any judge worth his or her salt would move to do so quickly. It's creating a barrier that's not present in other legally recognized marriages in the US.Hall reports that Hotaru and Michael spent "13 months" together "before he left for Iraq in April 2008. He had proposed and they were trying to conceive a baby before he deployed, Hotaur Ferschke said." Approximately two weeks after he deployed, Hotaru discovered she was pregnant and the couple then moved quickly to have the proxy marriage. This was to be sure Michael's military benefits covered the pregnancy expenses and, you can be sure, this was also to be sure -- for both Michael and Hotaur -- that their relationship was legally recognized.Now immigration is threatening deportation. Her mother-in-law, Robin Ferschke states, "She's like my daughter. I know my child chose the perfect wife and mother of his child." US House Rep John Duncan has a bill that needs a sponsor in the Senate. Apparently Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander are too busy to sign on. (Tennessee is the family's state.)
We'll close with this from the last of the independents, the true independents, Chris Hedges (via Information Clearing House):
The right-wing accusations against Barack Obama are true. He is a socialist, although he practices socialism for corporations. He is squandering the country's future with deficits that can never be repaid. He has retained and even bolstered our surveillance state to spy on Americans. He is forcing us to buy into a health care system that will enrich corporations and expand the abuse of our for-profit medical care. He will not stanch unemployment. He will not end our wars. He will not rebuild the nation. He is a tool of the corporate state.The right wing is not wrong. It is not the problem. We are the problem. If we do not tap into the justifiable anger sweeping across the nation, if we do not militantly push back against corporate fraud and imperial wars that we cannot win or afford, the political vacuum we have created will be filled with right-wing lunatics and proto-fascists. The goons will inherit power not because they are astute, but because we are weak and inept.Violence is a dark undercurrent of American history. It is exacerbated by war and economic decline. Violence is spreading outward from the killing fields in Iraq and Afghanistan to slowly tear apart individuals, families and communities. There is no immunity. The longer the wars continue, the longer the members of our working class are transformed by corporate overlords into serfs, the more violence will dominate the landscape. The slide into chaos and a police state will become inevitable.The soldiers and Marines who return from Iraq and Afghanistan are often traumatized and then shipped back a few months later to be traumatized again. This was less frequent in Vietnam. Veterans, when they get out, search for the usual escape routes of alienation, addictions and medication. But there is also the escape route of violence. We risk creating a homegrown Freikorps, the demobilized German soldiers from World War I who violently tore down the edifice of the Weimar Republic and helped open the way to Nazism.
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
"Biden in Iraq, US immigration tries to kick a widow and young mother out of the country"
"Camp Bucca closes, Mary Travers passes away"
"Alex Insenstadt, Bob Somerby"
"Kucinich on health care, me on Hillary"
"Cass Elliot"
"the czars"
"Dennis Kucinich, Charles Lane"
"Carly Simon, David Saw"
"Crazy Ass Carter and others who hurt Barack"
"Somerby & Peanut Head"
"It's not forgotten by me"
"Brian Montopoli, Debra Sweet"
"Jimmy, Jimmy Hack, stay away and don't come back"
"THIS JUST IN! THE WRECKING CREW!"
