Mariann Wizard was kind enough to contact Marilyn Buck and obtain permission from her to ‘rebroadcast’ a little of her poetry. This is a beautiful, haunting piece that invokes visions of youth and carefreeness, and consequences and darknesses. Many thanks to both our friends for sharing this. There will be another recording posted this coming Tuesday.
Sean Penn Accepts ‘First Amendment Award’ — Hits Media, Calls for Impeachment
By E&P Staff
Published: December 19, 2006 11:00 AM ET updated 2:45 PM
NEW YORK Sean Penn, the actor and occasional foreign correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, hit the media and called for impeachment of the president in receiving the 2006 Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award fromThe Creative Coalition Monday night in New York City.
Presented since 1997, the First Amendment Award recognizes “individuals who are dedicated to the sanctity of the first amendment and its free speech provision.” Other Creative Coalition honorees last night included Branford Marsalis, Harvey Keitel, Heather Graham and Marcia Gay Harden.
In his remarks, Penn listed more than a dozen serious issues facing the country, and commented, ”We depend largely for information on these issues from media industries, driven by the bottom line to such an extent that the public interest becomes uninteresting.”
Turning to his views of President Bush, Penn said, “Now, there’s been a lot of talk lately on Capitol Hill about how impeachment should be ‘off the table.’ We’re told that it’s time to look ahead – not back…
“Can you imagine how far that argument would go for the defense at an arraignment on charges of grand larceny, or large-scale distribution of methamphetamines? How about the arranging of a contract killing on a pregnant mother? ‘Indictment should be off the table.’ Or ‘Let’s look forward, not backward.’ Or ‘We can’t afford another failed defendant.’
“Our country has a legal system, not of men and women, but of laws. Why then are we so willing to put inconvenient provisions of the U.S. constitution and federal law ‘off the table?’”
Read the rest of it here.
USDA appoints corporate agribusiness reps to Organic Standards Board
Published on Tuesday, December 19, 2006.
Source: News Target
(NewsTarget) The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced last week that it has appointed four corporate agribusiness representatives to positions on the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), which advises the USDA on laws that govern the $16 billion organic industry, according to the Organic Consumers Association (OCA).
The Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) mandates that the NOSB be comprised of a diverse group of organic experts. However, the USDA appointed four corporate representatives to fill open spots on the board.
Katrina Heinze from General Mills was appointed to the position of scientist; Tracy Miedema from Stahlbush Island Farms — a largely non-organic operation — was appointed Consumer and Public Interest Group Representative; Tina Ellor of Phillips Mushroom Farms was appointed environmentalist; and Campbell Soup’s Steve DeMuri was appointed handler.
OCA National Director Ronnie Cummings said the USDA’s appointments are a “blatant attempt” by the Bush administration to stack the NOSB with industrial farming supporters.
“Stahlbush Farms, which admits on its website to using pesticides, fungicides, and insecticides on its crops is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an organic consumer or public interest group,” Cummins said. “Likewise, General Mills is not an academic institution, qualified to submit an impartial ‘scientist’ to serve on the NOSB.”
Read it here.
Much Ado
By: Jane Hamsher
Via Josh Marshall, we learn that the AP is trying to find out what happens to Guantanamo Bay detainees once they are released. These are, after all, the people who were so very dangerous that we desperately needed to legalize torture, whom the Pentagon referred to as “among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth.”
The AP tracked 245 of them in an investigation including 17 countries where they had been released, and found:
* Once the detainees arrived in other countries, 205 of the 245 were either freed without being charged or were cleared of charges related to their detention at Guantanamo. Forty either stand charged with crimes or continue to be detained.
* Only a tiny fraction of transferred detainees have been put on trial. The AP identified 14 trials, in which eight men were acquitted and six are awaiting verdicts. Two of the cases involving acquittals — one in Kuwait, one in Spain — initially resulted in convictions that were overturned on appeal.
* The Afghan government has freed every one of the more than 83 Afghans sent home. Lawmaker Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, the head of Afghanistan’s reconciliation commission, said many were innocent and wound up at Guantanamo because of tribal or personal rivalries.
* At least 67 of 70 repatriated Pakistanis are free after spending a year in Adiala Jail. A senior Pakistani Interior Ministry official said investigators determined that most had been “sold” for bounties to U.S. forces by Afghan warlords who invented links between the men and al-Qaida. “We consider them innocent,” said the official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
* All 29 detainees who were repatriated to Britain, Spain, Germany, Russia, Australia, Turkey, Denmark, Bahrain and the Maldives were freed, some within hours after being sent home for “continued detention.”
So did the government just sweep up a group of swarthy people on shaky evidence and then undermine deeply held core values of the American public abhoring the notion of torture as part of a big exercise in machismo posturing, or did they just release a passel of stone killers into the wild?
Read it here.
Having followed the events in the Iraqi blogosphere from early in 2003, this post from Faiza Al-Arji is so sad. I have not read the Family in Baghdad blog for quite some time, but I have followed one of the son’s blogs, Raed in the Middle. I do not think Amerika will ever understand the depth of depravity to which we have taken this innocent nation. We continue to work for justice that will see George Bush and Dick Cheney (and many others) in the dock of the Criminal Justice Court in the Hague.
Peace be upon you…
The news from Baghdad is depressing and deteriorated more and more… hope is diminishing in people everyday…
When you meet an Iraqi who is living inside, he is usually sad, broken, has lost hope, and keeps repeating a sentence: Iraq is lost, and will not come back…
And of course I cannot argue with people and cross them, telling them they are fools, and mistaken. I cannot play that silly role with them, for whoever lives inside sees the dark picture, and he is right.
But those who live outside; I mean- outside the borders of the Iraqi hell, who work with organizations or Parties, perhaps see the picture better, because that who works retains the hope to make a change more than that who doesn’t join or isn’t informed about events and their annoying daily details…
Other Iraqis are emigrating, fleeing the daily hell. Each one started thinking how to secure his future and that of his family.
Why do we blame them?
I read a report about members of the present Iraqi government and the one before it, and parliamentary members; most own houses outside Iraq, in neighboring countries or in Europe, in which to secure their families from the fires of strife, so why should I blame the ordinary people if the leadership has fled from the lands of the country, which has turned into a stage for violence and daily bloodshed?
And these people themselves, when they came along with the occupation, preached about a new, free, happy, democratic Iraq, then changed their minds, and arranged a residency for their families outside of the new, free, happy, democratic Iraq. Then they came back to live in the Green Zone, to attend the meetings of the Minister’s council or the Parliament, to debate about issues as far as possible from the daily sufferings of the people, or to quarrel and fight among themselves under the dome of the Parliament.
Alas; I regret, as a lot of other Iraqis regret, like me, having participated in the elections process, thinking we were making a better future for our country, that we were giving the chance to new, nationalistic leaderships to lead the country’s fate.
But after one year passed since the last elections, here we are asking ourselves; what have we reaped from this government?
We saw nothing but destruction and ruin, political stupidness and narrow, selfish viewpoints, while at the time of the elections the slogans were like honey…
We shall solve the country’s problems…
We shall have a national unity government…
We shall…
We shall…
And then what?
We saw nothing but dust.
Read the rest here.
John Kane died of cancer last Wednesday. Without going into too much detail, John was one of those who did much to make Austin weird in the first place.
John was my roommate at Nueces College House in the summer of 1967. We had both been in the military and had both had become very anti-military. If I remember correctly, John was from a military family and had once gone to West Point, before he had his epiphany. Throughout the late 60’s-early 70’s, he was consistently in the antiwar ranks – whenever he wasn’t wandering through Mexico.
A few years later, I ran into him in the little village of San Juan del Pacifico in the mountains of southern Oaxaca. We were both looking for the famed local mushrooms. Having acquired such, we adjourned to the “hippie beach” of Zipolite near Puerto Angel where we were miraculously not robbed or arrested. Then he drifted away into the Mexican interior for further research.
In a 1980’s incarnation, he was as a journalist/ documentary filmmaker who went to Nicaragua to support the Sandinista revolution. He lived there a couple of years, made films on the advances of feminism under Sandinista rule, met and married the fiery Argentinean revolutionary, Viviana Fernandez. Later, he returned to South Texas with Viviana and tried to continue his documentary film career. This didn’t exactly flourish and then daughter Tania came along. John became a devoted Dad. For the first time in his life, he tried to carve out a career in the straight world in
order to make a home for his family. But starting a career at 50 with no resumé is tough. For awhile, he did well as an electronics technician. Then those jobs were outsourced. In his late-fifties, he tried to break into teaching, substituting for a couple of years. But he was too out there, the kids too mean and the school district too skeptical. Finally, he started driving a cab. He told me he was making more money that way than any other job he ever had, but he was working hundred hour weeks and wasn’t feeling good.
John called me a month ago complaining about his back hurting. I asked what he had done about it. The answer was, essentially, nothing. He never had health insurance and didn’t go to doctors. I advised aspirin, but he said he tried to avoid such stuff. About 10 days ago I called him back to ask if he was feeling better. He said yes, but that he was working and would have to call me back. He didn’t.
They finally dragged him out of his cab and to the hospital on Saturday the 9th. He was already very terminal and died the following Wednesday. His ashes will flow down the Pedernales from a little piece of property he bought a few years back. And Tania, named after Che’s lover, is blossoming into a beautiful and intelligent young woman.
David Hamilton
December 04, 2006, Letters To The Editor, The Oregonian
To the Editor:
I have a son in Iraq: the 1st Armored Division of the Army, stationed at a remote outpost near the hotbed Ramadi.
Last week his platoon lost two to injuries — one a result of shrapnel to the testicles, the other a leg wound from small arms fire.
They’re down to 15 in the platoon. Nearly every day they’re out on patrol, generally by foot. Every day, they’re vulnerable, their lives held open to the potential of death or injury.
Two weeks ago he called by satellite phone, awakening Amy and me in the dead of the night. Machine gun fire was all around him, the sound of war filling our ears and hearts with grief and fear of loss.
He wanted to tell us that he loves us, that he was on a dangerous patrol and that if anything happened to his life, he would take his love for us to his death and beyond.
He made it through that day and night. As this is written, he is still here with us. His tour was to end the first week in November but he was extended until next February.
He said that the morale of the platoon was at an all-time low.
He said that the war is creating more insurgency, rather than less.
He says that he cannot trust anyone in an Iraqi military uniform.
He said that most of the Iraq people do not want us there.
He says that this war cannot be won!
He has no faith in the politicians who sent him there.
Question, America: Whom would you listen to, the soldier in the field or the padded politician in office in reference to how this war is really going?
LARRY TURNER, Malin
U.S. forces detain Reuters correspondent in Ramadi
Ramadi, Dec 19, (VOI) – U.S. forces early on Tuesday arrested the correspondent of Reuters news agency in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi, Iraqi police said.
“A large number of U.S. Hummer vehicles cordoned the house of Ammar al-Dulaimi, a correspondent for Reuters in Ramadi, and Marines raided his house and scattered his papers and equipment,” a police source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
The source said “the Marines arrested the journalist and confiscated his possessions including a camera,” adding the journalist “was taken to the U.S. base of al-Warrar in western Ramadi.”
AE
About Face: Soldiers Call for Iraq Withdrawal
Marc Cooper
For the first time since Vietnam, an organized, robust movement of active-duty US military personnel has publicly surfaced to oppose a war in which they are serving. Those involved plan to petition Congress to withdraw American troops from Iraq. (Note: A complete version of this report will appear Thursday in the print and online editions of The Nation.)
After appearing only seven weeks ago on the Internet, the Appeal for Redress, brainchild of 29-year-old Navy seaman Jonathan Hutto, has already been signed by nearly 1,000 US soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen, including dozens of officers–most of whom are on active duty. Not since 1969, when some 1,300 active-duty military personnel signed an open letter in the New York Times opposing the war in Vietnam, has there been such a dramatic barometer of rising military dissent.
Read the rest here.
Thorne Webb Dreyer, Editor
