Listen to the Winter Soldiers – Stop the Wars

Posted on March 23, 2008 by RagBlog

Pete Seeger to Winter Soldiers

Winter Soldier Marches Again
By Amy Goodman / truthdig / March 23, 2008

Last weekend, in the lead-up to the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, a remarkable gathering occurred just outside Washington, D.C., called Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations. Hundreds of veterans of these two wars, along with active-duty soldiers, came together to offer testimony about the horrors of war, including atrocities they witnessed or committed themselves.

The name, Winter Soldier, comes from a similar event in 1971, when hundreds of Vietnam veterans gathered in Detroit, and is derived from the opening line of Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, “The Crisis,” published in 1776:

“These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

This Winter Soldier was organized by the group Iraq Veterans Against the War. Kelly Dougherty, an Iraq veteran from the Colorado Army National Guard and IVAW’s executive director, opened the proceedings, saying: “The voices of veterans and service members, as well as civilians on the ground, need to be heard by the American people, and by the people of the world, and also by other people in the military and other veterans so they can find their voice to tell their story, because each of our individual stories is crucially important and needs to be heard if people are to understand the reality and the true human cost of war and occupation.”

What followed were four days of gripping testimony, ranging from firsthand accounts of the murder of Iraqi civilians, the dehumanization of Iraqis and Afghanis that undergirds the violence of the occupations, to the toll that violence takes on the soldiers themselves and the inadequate care they receive upon returning home.

Jon Michael Turner, who fought with the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines, tore his medals off his chest. He said: “On April 18, 2006, I had my first confirmed kill. This man was innocent. I don’t know his name. I called him ‘the fat man.’ He was walking back to his house, and I shot him in front of his friend and his father. The first round didn’t kill him, after I had hit him up here in his neck area. And afterward he started screaming and looked right into my eyes. So I looked at my friend, who I was on post with, and I said, ‘Well, I can’t let that happen.’ So I took another shot and took him out. He was then carried away by the rest of his family. It took seven people to carry his body away.

“We were all congratulated after we had our first kills, and that happened to have been mine. My company commander personally congratulated me, as he did everyone else in our company. This is the same individual who had stated that whoever gets their first kill by stabbing them to death will get a four-day pass when we return from Iraq.”

Hart Viges was with the 82nd Airborne, part of the invasion in March 2003. He described a house raid where they arrested the wrong men: “We never went on a raid where we got the right house, much less the right person. Not once. I looked at my sergeant, and I was like, ‘Sergeant, these aren’t the men that we’re looking for.’ And he told me, ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure they would have done something anyways.’ And this mother, all the while, is crying in my face, trying to kiss my feet. And, you know, I can’t speak Arabic. I can speak human. She was saying, ‘Please, why are you taking my sons? They have done nothing wrong.’ And that made me feel very powerless. You know, 82nd Airborne Division, Infantry, with Apache helicopters, Bradley fighting vehicles and armor and my M4—I was powerless. I was powerless to help her.”

Former Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia also spoke. After serving in Iraq, he refused to return there. He was court-martialed and spent almost a year in prison. Mejia is now the chairman of IVAW. After he finished the testimony of his experience in Iraq, he laid out the group’s demands:

“We have over a million Iraqi dead. We have over 5 million Iraqis displaced. We have close to 4,000 dead [Americans]. We have close to 60,000 injured. That’s not even counting the post-traumatic stress disorder and all the other psychological and emotional scars that our generation is bringing home with them. War is dehumanizing a whole new generation of this country and destroying the people in the country of Iraq. In order for us to reclaim our humanity as a military and as a country, we demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all troops from Iraq, care and benefits for all veterans, and reparations for the Iraqi people so they can rebuild their country on their terms.”

As we enter the sixth year of the war in Iraq, more time than the U.S. was involved in World War II, we should honor the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, by listening to them.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 650 stations in North America.

Source

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Obama’s Latin American Policy

Posted on March 23, 2008 by RagBlog

Change? Not In America’s Backyard! Barack Obama’s Reactionary Stance Towards Latin America
By Chris Carlson / March 23, 2008

As progressives in the United States are riding a wave of excitement about Democratic hopeful Barack Obama and his promise of change, the people of Latin America have much less to be excited about. In fact, given some of his recent comments, Latin America might expect an even more aggressive policy from Barack Obama than what they saw under the Bush administration.

Latin America has long been regarded as America’s “backyard” by both US policymakers, and critics of US imperialism. Nationalist and revolutionary movements in Latin America have long expressed their desire to break away from being the “backyard” of the United States, and achieve their own independent economic development.

But US policymakers, from the Monroe Doctrine to the Truman Doctrine, have long seen Latin America as a strategic region with vast natural resources and lucrative markets which must remain inside the US sphere of influence, regardless of the desires of its people.

Barack Obama apparently feels the same. A few weeks ago he said as much, even using the infamous “backyard” label.

“We’ve been so obsessed with Iraq and so obsessed with the Middle East, we’ve been neglecting Latin America even in our own back yard,” he said at a campaign speech in Alexandria, Virginia. [1]

And he’s right. The Bush administration’s focus on the Middle East has given Latin America some breathing room from the usual US subversion and intervention so common throughout Latin America’s history. In the meantime, leftist leaders have come to power across the region like never before in a series of democratic revolutions dubbed the “Pink Tide.”

Many on the left have seen these developments as an enormous flowering of popular democracy and mass participation, and a clear break from the elitist democracies of the past. The masses have been relatively free to choose leftist and nationalist leaders in democratic elections, without them being toppled by US intervention, with some exceptions. [2]

But Barack Obama does not see it that way. In fact, he apparently views these developments as a problem that has been neglected by the Bush administration, as he warned recently:

“China has been sending diplomats and economic development specialists and building roads all throughout Latin America. They are securing trade agreements and contracts. And we ignore Latin America at our own peril.” [3]

In other words, US neglect of its “backyard” has allowed Latin America to have more freedom to trade with other countries, such as China; a certain threat to the interests of US corporations. Indeed, Latin America’s leftward sweep could prove threatening to US economic interests as the nations of the region seek to take control of their natural resources, diversify their economies, and break away from their dependence on US imports.

It is, of course, the right of any sovereign nation to do these things if it so desires, and Latin American leaders such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa would argue that they are absolutely essential for the region’s development.

But Barack Obama views this as a problem; a result of US neglect of the region, and apparently hopes to roll back these democratic changes in Latin America. During a recent debate appearance in Austin, Texas he implied that US neglect of the region has allowed leaders like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez to have too much freedom.

“We’ve been diverted from focusing on Latin America… Is it any surprise, then, that you’ve seen people like Hugo Chavez and countries like China move into the void, because we’ve been neglectful of that,” he said. [4]

And Venezuela’s Chavez appears to be a particular problem for Obama; one that has led him to include Venezuela on a list of “rogue states,” along with Cuba, Iran and Syria, and to express his opposition to the Venezuelan president in a recent speech:

“I don’t actually agree with Chavez’s polices and how he’s dealing with his people,” he said. [5]

It apparently doesn’t matter that the Venezuelan people do agree with Chavez’s policies, and have repeatedly shown their widespread support of him in open democratic elections. And Obama evidently sees Venezuela as a “rogue state” not because it is a security threat, but because “[Chavez] has been using oil revenue to stir up trouble against the United States,” as he said recently. [6]

Indeed, many Latin American nations have recently gotten the “crazy” idea that they can use their own natural resources the way they want, and do not need to respect the interests of the United States. Venezuela’s Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales are among those who have nationalized their natural resources, and have begun to use the revenue the way they see fit.

Chavez especially has used Venezuela’s oil revenue to finance joint projects with other countries and to increase regional trade among Latin American nations. The policies have the goal of diversifying Venezuela’s economy, and severing the region’s dependence on the United States. [7]

If this is what Obama refers to as “stirring up trouble,” he is correct that these policies are not in the interests of US corporations that seek to maintain control of the markets and resources of Latin American countries. But shouldn’t the people of Latin America get to decide how the revenues from their resources are used? Or is this a decision that should come from Washington?

Read all of it (including missing references) here.

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Hot Shots and Classic Takes

Posted on March 23, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona shows a tattoo of Latin-American rebel Che Guevara during a press conference in Maracaibo, March 28, 2005 (Christian Veron/Reuters).

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Signs of a Sick Society

Posted on March 23, 2008 by RagBlog

This is also a well-known characteristic of fascist governments.

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

Quaker teacher fired for changing loyalty oath
Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, February 29, 2008

California State University East Bay has fired a math teacher after six weeks on the job because she inserted the word “nonviolently” in her state-required Oath of Allegiance form.

Marianne Kearney-Brown, a Quaker and graduate student who began teaching remedial math to undergrads Jan. 7, lost her $700-a-month part-time job after refusing to sign an 87-word Oath of Allegiance to the Constitution that the state requires of elected officials and public employees.

“I don’t think it was fair at all,” said Kearney-Brown. “All they care about is my name on an unaltered loyalty oath. They don’t care if I meant it, and it didn’t seem connected to the spirit of the oath. Nothing else mattered. My teaching didn’t matter. Nothing.”

A veteran public school math teacher who specializes in helping struggling students, Kearney-Brown, 50, had signed the oath before – but had modified it each time.

She signed the oath 15 years ago, when she taught eighth-grade math in Sonoma. And she signed it again when she began a 12-year stint in Vallejo high schools.

Each time, when asked to “swear (or affirm)” that she would “support and defend” the U.S. and state Constitutions “against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” Kearney-Brown inserted revisions: She wrote “nonviolently” in front of the word “support,” crossed out “swear,” and circled “affirm.” All were to conform with her Quaker beliefs, she said.

The school districts always accepted her modifications, Kearney-Brown said.

But Cal State East Bay wouldn’t, and she was fired on Thursday.

Modifying the oath “is very clearly not permissible,” the university’s attorney, Eunice Chan, said, citing various laws. “It’s an unfortunate situation. If she’d just signed the oath, the campus would have been more than willing to continue her employment.”

Modifying oaths is open to different legal interpretations. Without commenting on the specific situation, a spokesman for state Attorney General Jerry Brown said that “as a general matter, oaths may be modified to conform with individual values.” For example, court oaths may be modified so that atheists don’t have to refer to a deity, said spokesman Gareth Lacy.

Kearney-Brown said she could not sign an oath that, to her, suggested she was agreeing to take up arms in defense of the country.

“I honor the Constitution, and I support the Constitution,” she said. “But I want it on record that I defend it nonviolently.”

The trouble began Jan. 17, a little more than a week after she started teaching at the Hayward campus. Filling out her paperwork, she drew an asterisk on the oath next to the word “defend.” She wrote: “As long as it doesn’t require violence.”

The secretary showed the amended oath to a supervisor, who said it was unacceptable, Kearney-Brown recalled.

Shortly after receiving her first paycheck, Kearney-Brown was told to come back and sign the oath.

This time, Kearney-Brown inserted “nonviolently,” crossed out “swear,” and circled “affirm.”

That’s when the university sought legal advice.

Read the rest here.

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Peace, Justice AND Sustainability

Posted on March 23, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Jensen: Look beyond war and peace to global justice
By Robert Jensen / March 23, 2008

Now that we have passed the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it’s a good time to step back for a look not at how we went wrong but what we need to do to get on the right path.
It has long been a staple of the anti-war movement that there can be no meaningful peace without justice on a global scale. Those of us living in the First World, especially in the United States, cannot pretend to be working for peace unless we also are working for a more just and equitable distribution of the world’s resources.

The anti-war/peace movement, therefore, must also be a movement focused on the grotesque inequalities in a predatory corporate capitalist system. In a world where half the population lives on less than $2 a day, it’s clear that the global economy is itself a form of war on billions of people. In such a profoundly unjust world, armed conflict is inevitable because there always will be resistance to inequality. Powerful states will respond militarily to any threat, real or perceived, to their dominance.

In other words: No justice, no peace.

Now it’s time for us to take the next step: We must recognize that there can be no justice over the long term without sustainability, and creating a sustainable world will require not only radical change in systems and structures of power but also a radical change in the way we in affluent societies live.

It’s time to recognize that if we are serious about the values of equality that we claim are the core of our politics, we must scale back the level at which we live.

No reduction in First World consumption, no justice; and no justice, no peace.

One cannot be a serious peace activist without putting peace in the context of justice and sustainability, and the high-energy/high-tech lifestyle of the First World is not sustainable and not compatible with the demands of justice. Meaningful peace requires real justice, which means we must learn to live with less.

We could start by applying a “Golden Rule” of consumption. Working from the common moral principle that we should follow a path based on rules that we would be willing to apply to all, we could begin with this: Consume at a level that, if applied throughout the world, would allow all people a decent life consistent with long-term sustainability. That doesn’t prescribe a destination but suggests a direction; instead of anyone sanctimoniously dictating a specific lifestyle, we can collectively recognize that we must move toward living lower on the food chain, using far less energy, consuming far fewer of the planet’s limited resources, generating far less toxic waste.

Though some might see this as a sacrifice — and in some sense, of course, we will have to give up material things that we have come to rely on and enjoy — this moment in history also provides us with a chance to redefine what it means to live a good life. Rather than accept the mad scramble to accumulate goods and insulate ourselves from the natural world — the good life as defined in a consumer capitalist society awash in high-tech toys and mass-mediated entertainment — we can reorient ourselves toward the traditional definition of a good life in terms of community and connection with others, service and sacrifice for others, and a deeper sense of meaning for ourselves.

Eloquent calls for peace are easy to make from the material comfort of the First World. Moving beyond that to a demand for meaningful justice gets us closer to the goal. A commitment to a sustainable level of consumption should be at the core of this work.

It will be a struggle, of course, often confusing and sometimes painful. But we can remember that there is joy in the struggle for a better world, which is always at the same time a struggle to become more fully human.

Jensen (rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu) is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. This article appeared in the March 23, 2008 Austin American-Statesman as an op-ed piece.

Source.
From Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog

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The Left and Barack Obama — T. Dreyer and D. Hamilton

Posted on March 23, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

There is much to like in Barack Obama

Most of the activists I work with in Austin, those of us in MDS/Austin (Movement for a Democratic Society) and other progressive groups, have chosen to support and, in many cases to actively participate in the campaign of Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama, for a number of reasons. For this writer at least, those reasons include the following:

We find Barack Obama to be sincerely left-leaning and personally inspiring, and believe him worthy of trust, with the requisite reservations. We see the massive and enthusiatic and largely radical-leaning movement that his campaign has engendered to be a surprisingly positive sign in a largely lethargic times, and at the very least a fertile ground for future activism.

We consider the election of a progressive black man to the highest elective office in our country to be a quantum step forward in a nation with such a legacy of racism. (We will also consider the eventual election of a woman as president to be such a step.)

We believe the election of a progressive Democrat at this time in history would result in a quick end to the tragic War in Irag, the introduction of such progressive measures as universal (or virtually universal) health care, and would produce judicial and other governmental appointments that would make a very real difference in people’s lives.
This would result in real, tangible changes in the lives of struggling lower income citizens, of racial minorities, of those rotting in jail because of race or victimless crimes, and, significantly, of oppressed peoples in other parts of the world.

And, taking into account that both major parties, in the long haul, represent similar if not identical vested interests, we believe that the Republicans, with their corporate masters, with their oppressive and mean-spirited politics at times verging on the neo-fascist, must be stopped.

It is of critical importance that we never latch on to a political candidate in this electoral system and herald him or her as some kind of a savior. Bottom line, the problems in this country are not based in who runs the system. The system itself is the problem. The shameful disparity in distribution of wealth between the obscenely rich and those left to struggle for their daily needs.

The greatly disproportionate power of the corporate few. The grievous neglect of basic human needs, civil rights, civil liberties and privacy; the acceptance of torture and other sanctioned forms of inhumane treatment; doing virtually nothing to fight and a whole lot to accelerate the quickening environmental disaster. And the United States’ imperialist international policies fueled by greed.

All that taken into account, we believe that there is much to like about Barack Obama, and that there are substantial and valid reasons to work for his election.

Thorne Dreyer / March 23, 2008 / The Rag Blog


Purists who reject him offer no alternative

The Rag Blog’s David Hamilton wrote the following in response to those on the left who see supporting the candidacy of Barack Obama as being a “trick bag” for radicals. It was inspired in part by “US Presidential Candidates: Warmongers All,” posted to The Rag Blog on March 21, 2008. Participation in mainstream party politics always raises issues in the left community, and they are legitimate. Here’s David’s answer.

In 1936, the French Communist Party ended years of conflict with the French Socialist Party and established a united front that elected Leon Blum as the first socialist prime minister of France. That united front passed reforms that have characterized the socialist aspect of French society ever since.

I am not a Democrat. I have not voted for the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party since 1972 and have not participated in their primary process since the Jackson campaign of 1988.

I support Barack Obama enthusiastically. I do not do so because I don’t find things to criticize in what he says. I do so because, to a much greater degree than any other major party politician, I trust him. I trust him to do what he promises and talk to our supposed “enemies” instead of threaten them. In that, there is the kernel of the rejection of the militarism that is intrinsic to US imperialism.

Why do I trust him? There are many answers, many subjective and intangible. But what impressed me most was that he went from being president of the Harvard Law Review to being a community organizer working out of a store front on the south side of Chicago. He could have joined any prestigious law firm or clerked for any Supreme Court justice, but he instead chose to work with poor people, helping them meet their most basic needs.

I expect to be disappointed. I expect to have to criticize him and exert pressure on him from the left. I also expect him to make statements in order to get elected that I disagree with. But this time, I see a chance for a transformational figure who might just change the course of US history and I’m taking that chance.

In the process, we are supporting a “Plan for the Complete Withdrawal of all US Military Forces from Iraq in 2009” in the Democratic Party local convention as a way to push the eventual nominee toward that position. As Tom Hayden advised, either the antiwar movement can get involved in the process or it can stand sanctimoniously to the side.

Purists who reject him have no alternative other that “build an anti-imperialist movement.” That is a false dichotomy. In November, hopefully you will have the opportunity to vote for Barack Obama for president. The ideal anti-imperialist won’t be on the ballot. Relate to that reality. He may disappoint somewhere along the way, but he is by far the best major party candidate I’ve ever seen.

David Hamilton / March 23, 2008 / The Rag Blog

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White Folks Have a Hard Time Hearing the Truth

Posted on March 23, 2008 by RagBlog

Of National Lies and Racial Amnesia: Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and the Audacity of Truth
By Tim Wise, March 18, 2008

For most white folks, indignation just doesn’t wear well. Once affected or conjured up, it reminds one of a pudgy man, wearing a tie that may well have fit him when he was fifty pounds lighter, but which now cuts off somewhere above his navel and makes him look like an idiot.

Indignation doesn’t work for most whites, because having remained sanguine about, silent during, indeed often supportive of so much injustice over the years in this country–the theft of native land and genocide of indigenous persons, and the enslavement of Africans being only two of the best examples–we are just a bit late to get into the game of moral rectitude. And once we enter it, our efforts at righteousness tend to fail the test of sincerity.

But here we are, in 2008, fuming at the words of Pastor Jeremiah Wright, of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago–occasionally Barack Obama’s pastor, and the man whom Obama credits with having brought him to Christianity–for merely reminding us of those evils about which we have remained so quiet, so dismissive, so unconcerned. It is not the crime that bothers us, but the remembrance of it, the unwillingness to let it go–these last words being the first ones uttered by most whites it seems whenever anyone, least of all an “angry black man” like Jeremiah Wright, foists upon us the bill of particulars for several centuries of white supremacy.

But our collective indignation, no matter how loudly we announce it, cannot drown out the truth. And as much as white America may not be able to hear it (and as much as politics may require Obama to condemn it) let us be clear, Jeremiah Wright fundamentally told the truth.

Oh I know that for some such a comment will seem shocking. After all, didn’t he say that America “got what it deserved” on 9/11? And didn’t he say that black people should be singing “God Damn America” because of its treatment of the African American community throughout the years?

Well actually, no he didn’t.

Wright said not that the attacks of September 11th were justified, but that they were, in effect, predictable. Deploying the imagery of chickens coming home to roost is not to give thanks for the return of the poultry or to endorse such feathered homecoming as a positive good; rather, it is merely to note two things: first, that what goes around, indeed, comes around–a notion with longstanding theological grounding–and secondly, that the U.S. has indeed engaged in more than enough violence against innocent people to make it just a tad bit hypocritical for us to then evince shock and outrage about an attack on ourselves, as if the latter were unprecedented.

He noted that we killed far more people, far more innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than were killed on 9/11 and “never batted an eye.” That this statement is true is inarguable, at least amongst sane people. He is correct on the math, he is correct on the innocence of the dead (neither city was a military target), and he is most definitely correct on the lack of remorse or even self-doubt about the act: sixty-plus years later most Americans still believe those attacks were justified, that they were needed to end the war and “save American lives.”

But not only does such a calculus suggest that American lives are inherently worth more than the lives of Japanese civilians (or, one supposes, Vietnamese, Iraqi or Afghan civilians too), but it also ignores the long-declassified documents, and President Truman’s own war diaries, all of which indicate clearly that Japan had already signaled its desire to end the war, and that we knew they were going to surrender, even without the dropping of atomic weapons. The conclusion to which these truths then attest is simple, both in its basic veracity and it monstrousness: namely, that in those places we committed premeditated and deliberate mass murder, with no justification whatsoever; and yet for saying that I will receive more hate mail, more hostility, more dismissive and contemptuous responses than will those who suggest that no body count is too high when we’re the ones doing the killing. Jeremiah Wright becomes a pariah, because, you see, we much prefer the logic of George Bush the First, who once said that as President he would “never apologize for the United States of America. I don’t care what the facts are.”

And Wright didn’t say blacks should be singing “God Damn America.” He was suggesting that blacks owe little moral allegiance to a nation that has treated so many of them for so long as animals, as persons undeserving of dignity and respect, and which even now locks up hundreds of thousands of non-violent offenders (especially for drug possession), even while whites who do the same crimes (and according to the data, when it comes to drugs, more often in fact), are walking around free. His reference to God in that sermon was more about what God will do to such a nation, than it was about what should or shouldn’t happen. It was a comment derived from, and fully in keeping with, the black prophetic tradition, and although one can surely disagree with the theology (I do, actually, and don’t believe that any God either blesses or condemns nation states for their actions), the statement itself was no call for blacks to turn on America. If anything, it was a demand that America earn the respect of black people, something the evidence and history suggests it has yet to do.

Finally, although one can certainly disagree with Wright about his suggestion that the government created AIDS to get rid of black folks–and I do, for instance–it is worth pointing out that Wright isn’t the only one who has said this. In fact, none other than Bill Cosby (oh yes, that Bill Cosby, the one white folks love because of his recent moral crusade against the black poor) proffered his belief in the very same thing back in the early ’90s in an interview on CNN, when he said that AIDS may well have been created to get rid of people whom the government deemed “undesirable” including gays and racial minorities.

So that’s the truth of the matter: Wright made one comment that is highly arguable, but which has also been voiced by white America’s favorite black man, another that was horribly misinterpreted and stripped of all context, and then another that was demonstrably accurate. And for this, he is pilloried and made into a virtual enemy of the state; for this, Barack Obama may lose the support of just enough white folks to cost him the Democratic nomination, and/or the Presidency; all of it, because Jeremiah Wright, unlike most preachers opted for truth. If he had been one of those “prosperity ministers” who says Jesus wants nothing so much as for you to be rich, like Joel Osteen, that would have been fine. Had he been a retread bigot like Falwell was, or Pat Robertson is, he might have been criticized, but he would have remained in good standing and surely not have damaged a Presidential candidate in this way. But unlike Osteen, and Falwell, and Robertson, Jeremiah Wright refused to feed his parishioners lies.

Read the rest here.

From Jeff Jones / The Rag Blog

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Nice Threads, Sean

Posted on March 23, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Sean Hannity of Fox News, as seen by the righteous.

Thanks to Telebob / The Rag Blog

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Fox News Goes Too Far For It’s Own Chris Wallace…

Posted on March 23, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Fox’s Chris Wallace takes Fox and Friends ‘to task’ for ‘two hours of Obama Bashing’

On Fox and Friends Friday morning, March 21, hosts Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade, and Gretchen Carlson spent multiple segments sensationalizing a comment Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) made the day before, in which he referred to his grandmother as “a typical white person” in some of her racial reactions. Obama made the comment while discussing his recent speech on race relations in America on a Philadelphia radio show.

When the trio welcomed Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace onto the show, instead of previewing his show this weekend, Wallace announced that he was going to take his fellow Fox hosts “to task” for their “excessive” and “somewhat distorting” coverage of what Obama said:

Hey listen, I love you guys but I want to take you to task if I may, respectfully, for a moment. I have been watching the show since 6:00 this morning when I got up, and it seems to me that two hours of Obama bashing on this typical white person remark is somewhat excessive and frankly I think you’re somewhat distorting what Obama had to say.

Wallace — who said that the issue “was a little more complicated than we’ve been portraying” — went on to chastise his very uncomfortable-looking colleagues for the next five minutes. Watch it:

Chris Wallace confronts hosts of Fox and Friends.

Trying to defend their coverage, Carlson said they played up Obama’s comment because she “felt that maybe the attention was being taken away from what people really wanted to hear Barack Obama speak about, which was his association and what he thought about the comments by his minister Jeremiah Wright.”

Noting Obama’s speeches this week on the economy and the war in Iraq, Wallace replied that “maybe it’s the media doing” the deflecting:

Far be it for me to be a spokesman for the Obama campaign, and I will tell you that they would laugh at that characterization, but you know, the fact is that after giving a speech on race earlier this week, on Tuesday, he gave a major speech on Iraq on Wednesday and a major speech on the economy yesterday.

And so, I think they would say that in terms of deflecting attention away from the issues people really want to hear about, maybe it’s the media doing it, not Barack Obama.

“I appreciate you respecting us enough to say it on camera as opposed to writing an email,” said Kilmeade sarcastically after hearing Wallace’s criticism.

Update:
Kilmeade storms off Fox and Friends set over co-hosts’ Obama-bashing.

Earlier today, ThinkProgress noted how Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace chastised his colleagues on the Fox and Friends morning show for their “excessive” and “somewhat distorting” coverage of Sen. Barack Obama’s comments about his grandmother. Earlier in the show, according to the Huffington Post, Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade “argued that the remark needed to be taken in context and eventually got so fed up with his co-hosts that he walked off set.” Watch it:

Fox News: Brian Kilmeade leaves set over Obama coverage

From Think Progress / The Rag Blog
Media Matters has a transcript from the show.

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Don’t Let the Bedbugs Bite

Posted on March 23, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Kelly, The Onion / March 17, 2008

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BushCo Lies and Dirty Tricks That Took Us to War

Posted on March 23, 2008 by RagBlog

Katherine Gun

The woman who nearly stopped the war
By Martin Bright

21/03/08 “The Nation” — – Of all the stories told on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, there is one important episode that took place during the build-up to the conflict that has gone largely unreported. It concerns a young woman who was a witness to something so outrageous, something so contrary to the principles of diplomacy and international law, that in revealing it she believed war could be averted. That woman was Katharine Gun, a 29-year-old Mandarin translator at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham.

On Friday 31 January 2003 she and many of her colleagues were forwarded a request from the US government for an intelligence “surge” at the United Nations (with hindsight, an interesting choice of words). In essence, the US was ordering the intensification of espionage at the UN headquarters in New York to help persuade the Security Council to authorise war in Iraq. The aim, according to the email, was to give the United States “the edge” in negotiations for a crucial resolution to give international authorisation for the war. Many believed that, without it, the war would be illegal.

The email was sent by a man with a name straight out of a Hollywood thriller, Frank Koza, who headed up the “regional targets” section of the National Security Agency, the US equivalent of GCHQ. It named six nations to be targeted in the operation: Chile, Pakistan, Guinea, Angola, Cameroon and Bulgaria. These six so-called “swing nations” were non-permanent members of the Security Council whose votes were crucial to getting the resolution through. It later emerged that Mexico was also targeted because of its influence with Chile and other countries in Latin America, though it was not mentioned in the memo. But the operation went far wider – in fact, only Britain was specifically named as a country to be exempt from the “surge”.

Koza insisted that he was looking for “insights” into how individual countries were reacting to the ongoing debate, “plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/ dependencies etc”. In summary, he added: “The whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers the edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals or to head off surprises.” The scope of the operation was vast: “Make sure they pay attention to existing non-UNSC member UN-related and domestic comms for anything useful related to the UNSC deliberations/debates/votes,” wrote Koza.

Gun was appalled by the email in two ways. First by the seediness of the operation: she believed the clear message was that GCHQ was being asked to find personal information that would allow Britain and America to blackmail diplomats in New York. But second and more importantly, she believed GCHQ was being asked to undermine the democratic pro cesses of the United Nations.

Secret email

Over the weekend after receiving the email, Gun decided to act. On returning to work on 3 February she printed out the document and took it home with her. She knew people involved with the anti-war movement and passed the email to a friend who was in contact with the media. This individual in turn passed it to the former Fleet Street journalist Yvonne Ridley, who had become famous as the reporter captured by the Taliban in 2001. By this time Ridley was a prominent opponent of the war. After first approaching the Mirror, which failed to verify the email, Ridley called me at the Observer, where I was working at the time, to ask if I would look at it.

The Koza memo presented me and my colleagues at the newspaper with a number of problems. For a start, the Observer supported the war in Iraq. Then there was the problem of verification. The Koza memo consisted of simply the body of the text, with all identifying information from the email header ripped from the top. In theory, anyone could have typed it. Koza’s name was written on the back along with other clues to its veracity, but it could easily have been a hoax. We were also hamstrung by the fact that Gun had not come directly to the newspaper, so there was no way of going back to the source of the leak to check the information.

Peter Beaumont, the Observer’s defence correspondent at the time, got his sources to confirm that the language used in the memo was consistent with the NSA and GCHQ.

But still there were doubts. One intelligence contact suggested it could be a sophisticated Russian forgery and another raised the possibility that British spy chiefs had written it to flush out anti-war elements at GCHQ. In the end, the paper’s then US correspondent, Ed Vulliamy, struck lucky. After a string of “no comment” responses from the NSA, a phone call to the organisation’s headquarters in Maryland was by chance put through to the office of Koza himself. This proved that he existed and we now felt confident that the email was genuine. Despite the paper’s pro-war stance, the then editor, Roger Alton, would not have rejected a good story and on 2 March 2003 the Observer splashed on the tale of US dirty tricks at the United Nations.

The story was followed up around the world and caused fury in Chile, which had known its fair share of US dirty tricks during the 1970s. Mexico was equally unhappy and both countries distanced themselves from a second resolution as a result of the revelations. Other countries were less bold in the face of cajoling and bullying from the US, but it became clear in the weeks that followed the leak that a fresh UN resolution was never going to happen.

This was precisely what Katharine Gun had hoped for when she walked out of GCHQ with the document a month earlier. What she could not have known, however, was that George W Bush was determined to go to war, with or without the support of the UN.

Within days of the Observer article, Gun was arrested under the Official Secrets Act and almost a year later she finally appeared at the Old Bailey to stand trial for leaking the NSA document. But, in a dramatic retreat, the then attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, dropped the case at the last minute and despite her prima facie breach of the secrecy laws, Gun walked free.

What did she gain? She failed to stop a war that has now cost thousands of lives. She gave up a secure career as an expert translator. But she was one of the first to reveal the truth about the lies and dirty tricks that took us to war in 2003.

Britain’s role

Questions still remain about Britain’s involvement in the spying operation, which was the ultimate responsibility of the then prime minister, Tony Blair. A full inquiry into the Iraq War has now been promised by the present Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and, among other things, this should force the government to disclose the full extent of its knowledge of the 2003 intelligence “surge”.

Those who doubt whether Gun’s actions had lasting his torical significance should refer to the statement issued by the Crown Prosecution Service when the case was dropped on 26 February 2004. There was speculation that Lord Goldsmith backed down because Gun’s defence requested disclosure of his legal opinion on the legitimacy of the war. As was later revealed, his legal opinion shifted as the prospects of a second UN resolution faded.

On this the CPS statement is clear: “This determination by the prosecution had nothing to do with advice given by the Attorney General to the government in connection with the legality of the Iraq War.”

Instead, the prosecution stated that “there was no longer a realistic prospect of convicting Katharine Gun”. The reasons for this remain a mystery, especially considering that Gun had admitted to the crime of leaking the document. Her only defence was the untried “defence of necessity”, under which her lawyers would have argued that her actions were designed to stop the imminent loss of human life.

The CPS statement contains the following intriguing paragraph: “The evidential deficiency related to the prosecution’s inability, with in the current statutory framework, to disprove the defence of necessity to be raised on the particular facts of this case.”

Read through the legalese, this is an astonishing admission from the government that Katharine Gun’s actions were entirely honourable. She really had tried to stop a war.

Source

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Manzanillo, And Memories of the Merry Prankster

Posted on March 22, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

In Mexico, on the Lam With Ken Kesey
By Lawrence Downes / New York Times / March 23, 2008

I am in the ocean, doing nothing, just bobbing.

I am facing a golden-sugar beach, a low pink hotel, a thatched palapa baking in the heat. To my left, a long crescent stretch of bay, a cradling arm around a basket of blue. To my right, a stone jetty. Beyond it, a port full of oceangoing tankers and the cliff-hugging city of Manzanillo. Behind me, the limitless Pacific. All around, pelicans loitering in the swells, which lift and gently drop me, my arms out, toes brushing velvet sand.

I said I was doing nothing, but I’m actually trying to summon somebody: Ken Kesey, novelist, psychedelic prophet, leader of the Merry Pranksters, hero of “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.”

It was here, on this beach, that he took to the waves as I did, back in 1966. He was a hunted man then, on the run from the F.B.I. and Mexican federales, but even he, a man of great aplomb, found time for thoughtful bobbing.

“He’s working on his wave theory. This morning for breakfast he brewed and drank enough weed to put a horse in orbit. He’s been out there for three hours with his eyes closed … imagining that he’s a piece of kelp or a jellyfish.”

The observer is Mountain Girl, one of several Merry Pranksters who followed Kesey to Manzanillo. She watches from the beach while pondering his oracular musings.

“It isn’t by getting out of the world that we become enlightened, but by getting into the world … by getting so tuned in that we can ride the waves of our existence and never get tossed because we become the waves.”

Manzanillo now is not nearly as metaphysical as that account, from a trippy Kesey volume called “Over the Border,” would suggest. It’s a tourist town, a cruise destination, one gem in the resort strand of Mexico’s Pacific coast, cousin to Acapulco, Ixtapa, Puerto Vallarta. It’s a city of strip malls and cineplexes, dive shops and all-inclusive resorts where the help wears uniforms.

But Manzanillo then was jungle outpost, a nowhere port town on a two-lane road from Guadalajara. It was a place where a gringo — even a famous novelist gringo accompanied by family and friends, an abundant supply of drugs and an International Harvester school bus covered in Day-Glo paint and blaring music from a sophisticated loudspeaker system — could reasonably expect to hide out for a while.

You probably know most of the back story. Kesey is a promising writer at Stanford, publishes “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” his first novel, in 1962, and a huge deal is made of it. A circle forms in Palo Alto, bound by Kesey’s charisma and brightened by psychoactive chemicals and Day-Glo paint. It moves to the woods of La Honda, Calif., and roams the country in an old school bus. Kesey and the Merry Pranksters stage a journey into life, art, rock-and-roll and experimental drug use that attracts hangers-on, Hell’s Angels, Tom Wolfe and, inevitably, cops.

Kesey is busted for marijuana possession once, twice. Now he faces real time: a bad trip he does not want to take. He parks a truck on a coastal bluff, writes a fake suicide note — Ocean, Ocean, I’ll beat you in the end — then slips into Mexico in a car trunk.

The headline: “LSD GURU SUICIDE!”

He hides in Puerto Vallarta, then Mazatlán, has B-movie escapes from undercover agents, and ends up in dead-end Manzanillo.

There the circle reconnects. Kesey is joined by his wife, Faye, their young children and a squad of Pranksters, including Mountain Girl, a k a Carolyn Adams; Ken Babbs; Mike Hagen; Gretchen Fetchin the Slime Queen; and the Beat legend Neal Cassady, with his parrot, Rubiaco.

Kesey and family and Mountain Girl take a little rented house on the beach. The others hang their hammocks across the road, in an abandoned pet-food factory they called La Casa Purina.

The sun pours off the mountains. The Pranksters soak in it, melting in heat so thick they call it Manzanillo mucus. They swim, they fish, they do laundry, they get stoned. They wait for family and lawyers to wire money. Mountain Girl gives birth to Sunshine, her daughter with Kesey, in the charity ward at the Hospital Civil.

The idyll lasted only into the fall. Kesey went home, did his five months in jail, and got right back to being an author and counterculture icon. His was a well-lived, well-loved, well-documented life, and it ended in rural Oregon in 2001.

I flew into Mexico at the end of August, a late arrival to the Kesey fan club, looking to unearth whatever traces remained of the Manzanillo episode.

I brought my 20-year-old stepson, Zak, who came well qualified because of his skill with a camera and fondness for the Grateful Dead, the Pranksters’ house band. I brought my battered undergraduate copy of “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” and “Mexico on 5 Dollars a Day,” the 1963-64 edition, which reported that Manzanillo’s “prettiest senorita” could be found, along with aspirin and diarrhea treatments, behind the counter of the Farmacia America on Avenida Mexico. I also brought a Hermes 3000 portable typewriter, at which I planned to sit and write in the heat and moonlight, with cold, sweaty beers.

I’m sorry, reader. I did not become a wave and did not find many physical traces of the Kesey interlude, though I came close, much closer than I thought I would.

You can, too, if you go as the Pranksters did, poor and open-minded, and look in the right places. Spend as little money as possible and stick to the far, far southern end of Manzanillo Bay, away from the high-end resorts and close to the jetty and pelicans.

Before I left New York, I had lucked upon Bart Varelmann, who had owned the little Hotel La Posada, one of Manzanillo’s only hotels back then. It’s still there, steps from the beach and that jetty, which borders a channel leading into Mexico’s biggest Pacific port.

Mr. Varelmann told me that the Pranksters had spent the summer next to his hotel, parking their bus beside a huge rock. Mr. Varelmann is now retired to Florida. He said he couldn’t remember Kesey very well, but he remembered the Pranksters and their kids, and the bus.

“The interior of Ken’s bus was a grab-bag cornucopia of strange pills, exotic herbs, magic mushrooms, peyote buttons, LSD, uppers, downers, poppers and of course marijuana,” Mr. Varelmann writes in his self-published memoir, “Innkeeper.” “On a windless day one could get stoned just strolling past the bus. A battery-powered tape machine enhanced the scene with a dreamy, pre-rock music by the likes of Mile Davis, Stan Kenton and the Modern Jazz Quartet.

We hung a lot at Ken’s magical bus that summer.”

There’s a problem with Mr. Varelmann’s tantalizing story. He insists that it all happened in 1963, which is impossible. Still, factoring in the memory-glazing effects of time and heavy drug use, it was the best lead I had, so I booked a room at La Posada for a week.

The first night, Zak and I walked through downtown Manzanillo, still bustling near midnight. Sidewalk food stands glowed under bare bulbs; it was a carnival of grease, of chorizo and chilies, roasted corn ears and ice pops. Looking up in the narrow streets, I saw thousands of swallows nestled for the night on telephone lines, evenly spaced, like zipper teeth. We had a late dinner, bistek tacos and pulpo gallego, octopus in olive oil and garlic, soft like butter.

The next morning, Zak sleeping, I slipped onto the beach to await the sunrise. The windy tumult of the day before was gone; it was still but not dark. Klieg lights from hotels cast a prison-camp glare, and development all along the bay cast a pallid wash of light into the sky. The most distant lights shimmered in the heat. The stifling, hushed air, the sand and thumping waves all seemed to be waiting for the sun to rise to ignite the conflagration of another stifling Manzanillo day.

MY other source of Kesey memories was Robert Stone, the novelist, who had been there.

Although he listened kindly when I called, he could not answer all my questions about addresses and landmarks. He confessed that it had been 40 years ago, and he too had been stoned a lot of the time. The buildings were already ruins in ’66, he said. “We weren’t much into infrastructure.”

Read all of it here.
Slideshow, narrated by author, with Kesey photos and audio.

From Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

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