It's Monday and it's been a busy day. We're all hoping to blow off some steam and have some fun so we all agreed to post quickly. For me, that means go where I know I can find something quickly. I chose Democracy Now! and I'm noting two headlines and discussing them (briefly), then handing my laptop over to Kat.
"Granny Peace Brigade Protests in Times Square" (Democracy Now!):
Here in New York, the Granny Peace Brigade has begun a six-day protest in Times Square. The anti-war group made up mostly of grandmothers, plans to read the names of the Americans and Iraqis that have died since the war began four years ago on March 19th.
Molly Klopot, 88-year-old organizer: "These are wasteless, awful deaths, of young people, of children, of women, all over the world. This is just not the United States who suffered. How many thousands have been killed in Iraq? Look what we've done to that country. So it's very important, I think, that we give credence to the symbol that they represent of the useless death and destruction that this war has brought upon the world."
The Granny Peace Brigade is one of the groups that keeps going and going. They have shown up at recruiters stations to protest, they have demanded that recruiters register them instead, and they've done a great deal more and always with spirit, humor and song. I hope their protest is covered on Democracy Now! (which I didn't see today, our schedule was too tight) and that it includes at least one of their songs. In January, in DC, they sang about the Bully Boy's "Urge to Surge" which sets up the next item.
"Bush to Send 8,200 More Troops to Iraq & Afghanistan" (Democracy Now!):
President Bush has approved sending 8,200 more U.S. troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. The troop escalation comes in addition to the 21,500 troops Bush ordered to Iraq in January. On Friday night, President Bush officially asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for $3.2 billion in emergency funding to pay for the troop increases.
Did anyone see the film Say Anything? Do you remember Lili Taylor's character in the movie? She plays a guitar and writes songs including one entitled "Joe Lies" (like all of her songs in the film, it's about her ex-boyfriend Joe). "George Lies." That's what the song should be remade as. Usually his lies get exposed (by himself or someone else) much more slowly. But in January he said 21,500 was the amount needed and now he's already upped the figure. It won't be the last time. "George lies . . . George lies . . ." indeed. Bully Boy doesn't sit in the Oval Office, he sits on top of a mountain of lies and the fact that he's still treated as a straight forward speaker goes to the sickness of the media. As C.I. pointed out last night, the American people have rejected the initial escalation but here comes Bully Boy, ignoring the rejection, and announcing that even more US service members will be sent to Iraq. There is nothing hidden -- and hasn't been -- about his disregard for the will of the American people, for the functions of democracy or for the rule of law. History will remember him as a tyrant -- and it should.
That's going to be it because I'm about to copy the snapshot and then pass my laptop over. Again, we're all hoping to see some more of Austin and have a little fun this evening.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Monday, March 12, 2007. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq, Cheney froths again, the scandal of medical care for veterans continues, and broken promises create more Iraqi refugees.
Starting with the latest news in the continued scandal that is Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Tony Capaccio and Ken Fireman (Bloomberg News) report that the U.S. Army's surgeon general, Kevin Kiley, is "the third official to lost his job after disclosures last month of substand care for injured soldiers at Walter Reed Medical Center" following in the footsteps of Secreatry of the Army Francis Harvey (March 2nd) and George Weightman (March 1st). CNN reports that although the official explanation is the Kiley wanted to retire, he was, in fact, asked to resign. Andrew Gray (Reuters) reports, "A senior U.S. defense official said surgeon general Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley had been asked to request retirement by acting Army Secretary Pete Geren." Last month, reporting by Dana Priest and Anne Hull (Washington Post) and Bob Woodruff (ABC News) shined a spot light on the long ignored problem of the medical services for veterans. At the Post, Josh White notes, "Kiley had faced intense scrutiny during hearings on Capitol Hill during the past two weeks, when numerous members of Congress asked him directly if he should resign either because he failed to notice horrid living conditions and a tangled bureaucracy at Walter Reed or because he failed to fix them. Kiley had said he wanted to stay on the job and lead the Army's medical community through systemic change, but he also acknowledged that he was in a tenuous position." The position is no longer "tenuous," he has left after being asked to do so.
Across the Atlantic, similar problems with medical care are being noticed. Mark Townsend and Ned Temko (The Observer) report that Selly Oak Hospital in Brimingham is providing questionable care and note that British soldier Jamie Cooper recently begged repeatedly (in front of his parents) for a nurse to empty his colostomy bag but, despite requests to three nurses, he had to continue begging before his very basic need could be met and notes that Cooper "may as well have begged for his dignity." Kevin Sullivan (Washington Post) also examines the situation and speaks with Cooper's father, Phillip, who tells him that he and his wife have twice had to empty their hospitalized son's colostomy bag because nurses wouldn't, "We didn't mind doing it -- he's our son -- but we shouldn't have had to." The Royal British Legion's Sue Freeth calls the care "a national disgrace" and tells Sullivan, "They are not getting what they expect, nor are their family members getting what they expect."
Turning to news of war resistance, US war resister Joshua Key was interviewed on Australian TV last week. Key, who remains in Canada, is the author of The Deserter's Tale.
Appearing on Lateline, Key was interviewed by Tony Jones:
TONY JONES: Now of the numerous raids and other incidents you participated in you've written, "It struck me that the American soldiers themselves were the terrorists." Now people back home, your own family, are going to be horrified to hear you say that.JOSHUA KEY: I'm sure they will be, but the way I look at it, that was the truth. We had no justification after all them homes that I raided, there was no justification. I felt that we were more antagonising, causing in my picture to myself, we had become the terrorists. I wasn't getting terrorised. I was more doing the terrorising.TONY JONES: In what regard? What do you mean by that?JOSHUA KEY: Raiding the homes, taking their sons and their husbands. If they were over five foot tall they were sent off regardless of whether anything was found in that house or not. Through everyday night raids, of course, illumination rounds - used to do the rounds all night long, complete patrolling of the streets non-stop. It was more antagonising. We weren't -- we would go out on a patrol it's not -- we would be saying derogatory names even to the Iraqi women. We antagonised, we brought it -- we made it the way it was.
Key is a part of a movement of resistance within the military that includes Agustin Aguayo, Ehren Watada, Kyle Snyder, Agustin Aguayo, Mark Wilkerson, Camilo Mejia, Patrick Hart, Ivan Brobeck, Darrell Anderson, Ricky Clousing, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Corey Glass, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
From courage to craven groveling, CNN reports Dick Cheney slammed Democrats in Congress which, in and of itself, is not surprising but he elected to do so while speaking to AIPAC today. The lobby group for a foreign government (Israel) would not seem the setting to trash Americans after the fright-wing created a phony hailstorm over Natalie Maines comments (before the illegal war began) made in England. It's also rather shocking that a sitting vice-president would seek to court the lobby group that Larry Franklin provided classified U.S. information to members of that was then passed on (illegally) to another government (Israel) -- for which Franklin was sentenced to 151 months in prison in January of 2006 -- a crime that led to the indictment's of the organization's former policy director (Steven Rosen) and Iran analyst (Keith Weissman). Possibly Cheney felt he couldn't throw stones since last week his former right hand, Scooter Libby, was convicted in the controversy surrounding the government's outing of then undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame? Cheney got off several howlers including that Democrats were "undermining the war on terror" -- this from the man involved in the outing of Valerie Plame? Between open mouth kisses (Israel is the United States' "best friend"), Cheney also pushed the lie that morale was high among US troops stationed in Iraq. Nothing like redeployments, back door drafts and doing the same thing, over and over, for four years to boost morale. Reality may better be reflected in a new survey. AP reports that an anonymous survey of soldiers with the Maine Army National Guard who had served in Iraq "found that more than one-third of Iraq veterans reported 'hyperarousal' symptoms associated with post traumatic stress disorder, and about one-fourth reported significant symptoms of depression."
From the violent froth of Cheney to the violence of the war crimes against Abeer Qasim Hamza (gang raped and murdered) and her family (her parents and five-year-old sister were murdred), Brett Barrouquere (AP) reports that attempts by Steven D. Green's attorneys to get the charges against Green dismissed were overruled by U.S. District Judge Thomas B. Russell today. Two US service members, James P. Barker and Paul Cortez, have confessed in military courts to their part in the war crimes. Two other soldiers await court-martial. Green, fingered by Cortez and Barker as the ringleader in their confessions (and the one who killed Abeer, her parents and her sister), had been discharged from the military before the March 2006 war crimes came to light. For that reason, Green is being tried in a civilian court and not a military court.
In other legal news, it's not a good time to be Mister Tony. Blair's hoped for victory lap of soft press to accompany his departure as prime minister was already taking hits before the scandal of medical care was revealed and with Cheney designating Israel, and not England, as America's "best friend," Blair didn't need a new scandal but he's got one. In an ongoing court case into the abuse of Iraqis by British soldiers, Judge Sutart McKinnon shocked some last month when he began dropping some charges. Peter Graff (Reuters) reports that today, McKinnon revealed why those charges were dropped "because headquarters had approved some of the abuse." Nothing that the abuses are "generally accepted to be contrary to the Geneva Conventions and the law of armed conflict," McKinnon stated, "It is now effectivly common ground that brigade did indeed sanction the use of hooding and stress positions."
Staying on the topic of violence, we'll return to MADRE's "Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy: Gender-Based Violence and the US War on Iraq" (which can be read in full in PDF format or, by sections, in HTML). Wednesday, section one ("Towards Gender Apartheid in Iraq") was noted, Thursday, section II, "Iraq's Other War: Impsoing Theocracy Through Gender-Based." Section III is "The Rise of US-Backed Death Squads" was noted Friday and today the focus is section four, "Violence Against Women Within Families," focuses on the rise in honor killings (and notes that the practice is not rooted in Islam). This section charts how the rise has been condoned and encouraged by the US military by failure to prevent or prosecute the practice and due to the fact that they "empowered Islamist political parties whose clerics promote 'honor killing' as a religious duty. As Yanar Mohammed explained, 'Once the religious parties came to power, Iraqi men began hearing in the mosques that it was their duty to protect the honor of their families by any means. It is understood that this entails killing women who break laws'." 'Breaking the law' can include, but is not limited to, being raped and, as of 2004, "Iraq's Ministry of Women's Affairs [had] revealed that more than half of the 400 reported rapes since the US invasion resulted in the murder of rape survivors by their families." Women need not be raped to be targeted, they only need be detained by US or Iraqi forces. "Extensive documentation of the sexualized torture of detainees by US forces in Iraq confirms the widely-held assumption that any woman who is arrested is also raped". Women can be targeted for any number of reasons including that they "make automous decisions about issues such as marriage, divorce, and whether and with whom to have sex". Along with targeting women, "the Badr milita began a program of surveillance of unmarried men over the age of 30, threatening the men with violence if they did not get married." Women can also be targeted for working outside the home. Honor killings are tied into the economics since the destruction of Iraq's economy has forced many Iraqis to depend upon the very political parties that the "US has empowered" and since the US decision to "fire all public sector workers" impacted women who had made up 40 percent of the public sector work force. Along with destroying the Iraqi economy, the US destroyed the civil judicial system which only increased the power of "tribal authorities" whose religious sentences vary in the extreme to what, for instance, murders would have faced in a civil court.
Bombings?
Robert H. Reid (AP) reports that a Baghdad bombing aimed at "an Agriculture Ministry convoy" killed three security guards, two roadside bombs in western Baghdad that left at least two people wounded, and a mortar attack "at the headquarted of President Jalal Talabani's Kurdish party in Mosul" which left four guards injured.
Shootings?
Robert H. Reid (AP) notes that "the director of a government irrigation project" was shot dead in northern Iraq.
Corpses?
Robert H. Reid (AP) notes that nine corpses were discovered in Baghdad today while five corpses were discovered in Wasit province ("One of the bodies was a woman wearing a gold necklace and earrings who had been shot in the head"). Reuters notes a corpse was discovered in Mahaweel (and that 20 corpses were discovered in Baghdad on Sunday).
Today, the US military announced: "A Marine assigned to Multi National Force-West was killed Sunday while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar Province." And they announced: "Baghdad Soldier died March 11, due to a non-battle related cause." So in the last eight days, 22 US service members have been reported dead in Iraq.
Meanwhile AFP reports that the bodies of 12 of the 31 of the pilgrims killed in a car bombing in Baghdad yesterday were part of a funeral procession leaving Baghdad for the destination of Najaf and notes: "Coffins were draped in Iraqi flags and loaded on to pick-ups and minibuses, accompanied by women in black crying and screaming in horror at their loss and in fear of the trip ahead, which would take them back into danger."
Turning to the topic of oil, CBS and AP note that the passage of the Iraqi oil law is a U.S. "want" and they also note that Nouri "al-Maliki's Cabinet endorsed" it but "the draft may have to be sent back to the Cabinet because al-Maliki's staff skipped some legal stpes in endorsing it the first time." They're very careful to avoid saying that al-Maliki's staff wrote it because, in fact, they didn't. Raed Jarrar (Raed in the Middle) described the proposed legislation: "This law legalizes PSAs (production sharing agreements) in Iraq. Iraq will be the only country in the middle east with such contracts privatising Iraqi oil and giving foreign companies crazy rates of profit that may reach to more than three fourth of the general revenue. Iraq and Iraqis need every Dinar that comes from oil sales. In addition to the financial aspects of this law, it can be considered the funding tool for splitting Iraq into three states. It undermines the central government and distributes oil revenues directly to the three regions, which sets the foundations for what Iraq's enemies are trying to achieve in terms of establishing three independent states." (Click here for the English retranslation -- the law was written in English, translated into Arabic, then handed to to the puppet of the occupation. Iraqis did not write the law.)
Antonia Juhasz (writing at The Huffington Post) has noted of the proposed law: "Contrary to the Bush administration's claims, Iraq does not need foreign oil corporations in order to reap the benefits of its oil. Prior to the U.S. invasion, Iraq produced an average of 2.5 million barrles of oil a day. Since the invasion, the Iraqis have averaged approximately 2.2. million barrels of oil a day. This amount has dropped recently due to the surve in violence to about 1.7 million barrels a day. Because Iraq's oil is the cheapest in the world to produce, only about sixty cents a barrel, and oil is selling today at $61 per barrel -- the return on any investment is enormous. . . . The administration has been selling the law as a way to bring increased equality and stability to Iraq. It is correct on one point. The law does introduce an equitable distribution of Iraq's oil revenues from the central government based on population. However, the benefits of this new provision are dramatically redcued if the majority of Iraq's revenues are going overseas. The law is likely to bring far more instability to Iraq. In fact, many Iraqi oil experts are already referring to the draft law as the 'Split Iraq Fund,' arguing that it facilitates plans for splitting Iraq into three ethnic/religious regions. The experts believe the law undermines the central government and shifts important decision-making and responsibilites to the regional entities. This shift could serve as a foundation for establishing three new independent states, which is the goal of a number of separatist leaders." Andy Rowell (Oil Change) informs that despite praise from the puppet, the proposed law has led "Iraqi parliamentarians and oil unions" to beging working to stop what they see "is a desperate attempt by al-Maliki's government to satisfy Western oil company demands" and quotes Saleh al-Mutlaq (National Dialogue Front) saying, "It divides the country and the wealth into groups -- Kurds, Sunnis, Shi'ites." CBS and AP do note that provincial elections remain unaddressed despite the fact that the last deadline for that to be achieved was December 31, 2006. So what you have is the puppet government under US control making decisions that will effect the people of Iraq who have no say in the process -- a clear violation of the responsiblities of the occupying power (the US in this case) under international law.
Yesterday, on CBS' 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley reported on a refugee situation in Iraq -- Iraqis who have aided the US military and are then left without any protection from Iraqis who see them as collaborating with the enemy. "Rami" explained his situation, "I lost everything. I lost my country, I can not stay there, anymore, and I lost all my friends. I can't see them, I lost my family, and I feel like a prisoner." U.S. service member Joe Seemiller shared guard duty with 'Rami' and he believes the US has an obligation to 'Rami': "He gave up his entire life for this country. And now he's stuck. And there's no one to help him. And we owe him whatever service we can provide to make him safe. . . . Bring him here. Bring him home. He can stay at my apartment. I got a spare bed for him."
If the story seems familiar, it's because it has happened repeatedly since the start of the illegal war, often with those assisting the US military receiving false promises. One such instance is documented in Joshua Key's The Deserter's Tale -- Sayeed, a young boy, began working for the US military as a translator and would do his duties and then return home. Over time, he couldn't return home and would have to sleep on base. He was paid the 'grand' amount of $20 a week for his duties and promised that he would be taken to the United States. In the end, Sayeed quit. On page 163 of Key's book, Sayeed quits and explains that, "Captain Bower told me that I can't go to America." It's a nice little lie that Iraqis are repeatedly told and it's a real crime that some of the liars who tell them that they will be brought to the United States as a result of the help they are providing are not held accountable. Instead, those helping quit when they finally are told the truth and then are left to fend for themselves.
From Friday's snapshot:
Also in protest news, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez (Democracy Now!) interviewed Wally Cuddeford about the protests going on in Tacoma which resulted in four arrests Sunday night. Cuddeford explains the purpose behind the protests: "Our goal is to stop military shipments from Fort Lewis going to Iraq. We were successful stopping the shipments through the Port of Olympia and now we're helping our friends in Tacoma stop the shipments there. The shipments are Stryker vehicles, they are speedy combat trasnprots, armed transports. They are the back bone of the occupation.
Half of all the Stryker vehicles to Iraq. If we are able to cut off Stryker vehicles to Iraq we could easily end this occupation."
Examining the above protest and others, Ron Jacobs (CounterPunch) notes: "The City of Tacoma has dropped the charges against the three individuals arrested Monday morning. According to Berryhill, the original charge was for third degree felony assualt on a police officer. The city attorney failed to even file a probable cause and 'quickly dismissed the charges'." The arrested were Jeff Berryhill, Wally Cudderford (who spoke on Democracy Now!) and Caitlin Esworthy. The fourth was arrested Tuesday and Jacobs notes he was arrested for the 'crime' of not turning off his video camera.
Finally, in US political news, US House Rep Dennis Kucinich, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, notes that the cancellations of two debates for Democratic presidential nominees (Nevada and New Hampshire) are providing cover for a number of candidates: "Whatever their excuses, some candidates are clearly trying to avoid any head-to-head public debate where they will have to answer tough questions -- questions about their votes in favor of the Iraq war, their votes in favor of trade policies that have wiped out millions of American jobs, their votes in favor of abridging Constitutional rights by approving the Patriot Act, and their collaboration with insurance companies and pharmaceutical corporations to deny Americans adequate health care protection." The cancelled debates, one of which was to have been televised by Fox "News," have not been rescheduled and continues to demonstrate that the debates have been nothing but jokes since the parties took over the right to stage them. (The answer would be to return the debates to the League of Women Voters and for parties to not attempt to dictate 'guidelines' to the League.)
Kucinich said "it's an insult to the voters, and the height of cynicism, for candidates to refuse to take the public stage and subject themselves to public scrutiny."
iraq
joshua key
antonia juhaszraed jarrar
amy goodmanjuan gonzalezdemocracy now
the washington post
Monday, March 12, 2007
Friday, March 09, 2007
Anthony Arnove & Left Forum events Sat. & Sun.
Two great events coming up in NYC. Please announce and forward widely!
Readings from Voices of a People's History of the United States
With performances by Staceyann Chin, Deepa Fernandes, Brian Jones,
Erin Cherry, Najla Said, Mario. A Murillo, Deepa Fernandes, and other
special guests
Narration and introduction by Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! and
Anthony Arnove
Saturday, March 10
8 pm
The Great Hall, Cooper Union
as part of Left Forum 2007 (http://www.leftforum.org ), March 9-11 at
Cooper Union
Free for conference participants and the general public.
(Anthony Arnove also will be on the panel "Iraq: What's at Stake?"
Sunday, March 11, 10 am, at Left Forum, with Gilbert Achcar,
Christian Parenti, Nir Rosen, and AK Gupta. Info at:
http://www.leftforum.org/leftforum2007/panels.html#me4 )
*
FRIENDLY FIRE
An Independent Journalist's Story of Being Abducted in Iraq, Rescued,
and Shot by U.S. Forces
Wednesday, March 14
7 pm
Judson Church
55 Washington Square South
New York, NY
http://www.judson.org/
with Giuliana Sgrena, journalist, Il Manifesto, and author, Friendly
Fire
Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! (http://www.democracynow.org/)
Vince Warren, executive director, Center for Constitutional Rights
(http://www.ccr-ny.org/)
sponsored by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Haymarket Books
About the book:
While reporting the effects on civilians of the U.S. bombing campaign
in Falluja, Giuliana Sgrena was taken hostage in Iraq on February 4,
2005, and held for one month. On the day of her release, as she was
being escorted to Baghdad Airport by Italian security, U.S. forces
fired on her vehicle, killing Major General Nicola Calipari, as he
shielded Sgrena.
Mario Lozano, the soldier who shot at her vehicle, will be placed on
trial April 17th for voluntary manslaughter. Giuliana Sgrena demands
that the Pentagon be held responsible for the shooting-a product of
the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and not the actions of an individual
soldier.
About the author:
An expert on the Arab world, Sgrena has reported frequently from
Afghanistan and Iraq, for which the president of Italy awarded her
the prestigious Cavaliere del Lavoro prize. In her book Friendly
Fire: The Remarkable Story of a Journalist Kidnapped in Iraq, Rescued
by an Italian Secret Service Agent, and Shot by U.S. Forces
(Haymarket), Sgrena describes her experience as a hostage and
provides unique insights into the situation of Iraq under occupation,
exposing U.S. war crimes there.
Friendly Fire
The Remarkable Story of a Journalist Kidnapped in Iraq, Rescued by an
Italian Secret Service Agent, and Shot by U.S. Forces
by Giuliana Sgrena
Introduction by Amy Goodman
ISBN 9781931859394 $20.00 Trade Cloth
http://haymarketbooks.org/
http://www.cbsd.com/inventory.aspx?id=19871
I'm opening with that for a reason. It came in Tuesday to my e-mail account. Sunny had jury duty this week and I'm so lazy that I didn't bother to check my own account. She was back this morning and saw it. She immediately fowarded it to C.I. who was kind enough to include it in the snapshot but my apologies for not noting it sooner. Ty had actually passed it on to C.I. from an e-mail to The Third Estate Sunday Review on Thursday and it was too late for the snapshot but C.I. hoped to include it in the "And the war drags on . . ." entry Thursday night; however, Danny Schechter has a campaign (last item in the snapshot) regarding the mainstream media and C.I. opened with that and tried to structure all of "And the war drags on . . ." to explain the importance of the campaign. (I think the point was made beautifully.) So, my apologies and regrets that I didn't see it until today. I'm lazy. Sunny loves reading the e-mails (including right-wingers who are unhappy with what I write) and I'll grab any excuse to avoid going through what is often hate mail. (Hint to right wingers, threatening me -- no matter how colorful your language is, does not and will not my change my mind. I am opposed to the illegal war. I was opposed to it before it started.)
Speaking of C.I., the article C.I. and Ava wrote awhile back, "TV: Boys' WB!," came up in an e-mail. Joe'l e-mailed to ask if I had caught "Actor Geena Davis on Her Quest to Reduce Gender Stereotyping in Media forChildren" on Democracy Now! yesterday? I caught the last half of the show, so, yes, I did hear that. She thinks it is a serious problem and notes that she had never considered it until Ava and C.I. tackled cartoons. She wrote, "After I read their article, I really thought about it. I have three kids, two sons and one daughters, the oldest is nine-years-old and the youngest is five-years-old. Saturday morning cartoons have basically vanished but there's still enough on for this Mom to enjoy sleeping a little later as the kids park in front of the TV. After reading Ava and C.I.'s article, I wondered what cartoons my kids were watching, we do block some channels, and they watch Kids WB! straight through because it is one of the longest block of cartoons. So the first Saturday after I read the article, I made a point to get up and watch the cartoons with them. I was very bothered by what I saw. I was bothered because my daughter's being socialized to believe that she's a tag along and an exception and my sons are being socialized to believe that too. I think both points are important and I'm really glad Ava and C.I. made them. Could you pass that on to Ava and C.I. and also recommend that everyone read their article and watch or listen to the speech on Democracy Now!?" Yes, I can.
I believe Sunny already did that but I will mention it when we're all working on the edition this weekend. I will also urge everyone to check out both reports.
It is important. I know Ava and C.I. weren't planning on writing about cartoons. They're delaying 30 Rock because they've been told it's 'safe' in terms of not being cancelled. So they're hoping to save that for the summer. (They only review network shows and they need to things to grab over the summer. I'm amazed when I realize how many reviews they have done. A point that Joe'l made as well.) There were some e-mails about cartoons that had come in and they decided, at the last minute, to tackle that. I think they did a wonderful job of it and wonder why there is not more outcry. In her speech, Geena Davis makes the point about young girls being almost invisible in films for children and how it's surprising that reviewers don't note that when they write about a film. The same point is true of television and, let me toot their horn, Ava and C.I. always note it. I think they have an amazing body of work and that their feminist critiques are incredible contributions. I always think of, for instance, their review of "Threshold" and remember how some sites with strong feminists writing at them (I'm not referring to the Mud Flap Gals, I'm talking adult women) were praising that show. Joe'l noted
"Katie Was a Cheerleader" as her personal favorite and it's on my list of favorites too. I was talking to Kat briefly about her wonderful "It's about perspective and humanity" and she really nailed it when she said, "I think Ava and C.I. really set the mark for all of us." I would agree with that. I think MADRE's report fits with the points Ava and C.I. were making in "TV: Aftermath leaves an aftertaste." Their reviews have a huge audience and I think they've had a huge impact. (The last one noted, on Jericho, is being re-printed in a pamphlet by a group of feminists in New York. Kat told me about that. That's like the fifth or sixth time that's happened. They always say yes and ask only that, if there are typos, they get cleaned up.)
"Making Democrats Pay the Price" (Kevin Zeese, CounterPunch):
Tina Richards son, Cloy, is a corporal in the U.S. Marines. He is facing his third tour of duty in Iraq. He and his mother oppose the war. Ms. Richards is living in Maryland lobbying Congress to end the war. She has joined Maryland voters who are occupying the office of Maryland's senior senator, Barbara Mikulski.
Tina saw Sen. Mikulski leaving a hearing recently going to the women's room. She followed her and mentioned that protesters were occupying her office to protest the war. Mikulski said she did not understand why they were protesting her saying "I voted against the war." Tina answered "That is no longer enough."
She's right. Now, as we approach the fourth anniversary of the war it is time for the Congress to end it. Senator Barbara Mikulski, like most Democrats, has been a critic of President Bush, describing him as a reckless and irresponsible commander in chief. But she has voted to give this reckless commander in chief more than $420 Billion, as have almost all Democrats.
That is the problem Democrats like Mikulski say they are opposed to the war but keep appropriating more money for the war. They need to realize that if they pay for it, it's theirs.
Maryland voters have occupied the office of Senator Mikulski twice so far in what will be a series of efforts to convince Mikulski to lead efforts to end the Iraq War. At the second occupation Sen. Mikulski had four of her constituents arrested after they occupied her offices for three hours placing photographs of all the Maryland soldiers who had died around her office, and reading the names of soldiers and Iraqis killed in the war. (Links to videos of the two occupations are at the bottom of this article.)
Her constituents are holding Sen. Mikulski accountable for her actions. When she votes to fund the war she is putting U.S. troops in harms way and adding to the quagmire of the Iraq War. If Mikluski votes for this next supplemental she will be sending under-trained troops with inadequate equipment and an unclear purpose into an unwinnable quagmire. Real support for the troops requires more than criticizing Bush, it requires acting to remove the troops from harms way.
It would take only 41 votes to stop the war in the U.S. Senate. A filibuster of Iraq funding would not even require all of the 51 Democrats in the Senate to support it in order to succeed. If the Senate filibustered the president's $99 billion request it could then pass an alternative that would really support the troops by bringing them home safely, reduce the violence in Iraq by providing funds to allow Iraqis to re-build their own country and underwrite a regional peace keeping force. If this exit were combined with a diplomatic surge in the region the U.S. could bring greater stability to the Middle East. Those steps would restore U.S. leadership and prevent further U.S. and Iraqi casualties. This approach would also save tax payers tens of billions of dollars in 2007 alone.
Tina Richardson and her son Cloy were noted in "Flashpoints, Impeachment, etc." after she spoke Monday on KPFA's Flashpoints. If you missed it, her son is seriously suffering from PTSD and another son, who has served in Iraq, is now going to be serving in Afghanistan. If you think that she's treated with any respect by elected officials, think again.
"Shocking Video of the Dark Side of the Democrats: Rep. David Obey: 'Idiot Liberals' Need to Support War Money" (David Swanson, CounterPunch):
House Appropriations Chair David Obey (Dem., Wisc.) ran into woman in the hallway in Washington recently and ended up yelling at her and her friends, accusing them of "smoking something that's not legal" if they disagreed with him, and denouncing "idiot liberals."
The woman, Tina Richards, introduced herself to Obey as the mother of a Marine about to depart for his third tour of Iraq, and as someone who has tried to communicate with Obey but received no response. Then she
Well, watch the video yourself. It may be depressing, but it's certainly entertaining (just like network television).
David Obey is such a manly man wanting to demonstrate that he respect the troops and he does that by . . . treating the mother of two soldiers like dirt. What a big, brave, manly man he is. I know some people aren't able to watch (or listen) due to computer issues. For those people and for anyone who needs or prefers a transcript due to hearing issues, please refer to David Swanson's transcript of the exchange between Tina Richards and David Obey.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Friday, March 9, 2007. Chaos and violence (though little reported) continues, protests continue, the country of Georgia provides mirth in the illegal war (if not genuine support for the Bully Boy), a US marine is announced dead, footage of another US service member's death is supposedly set to be released, Dems plan receives muted response, and the veterans health care crisis moves from Walter Reed to VA hospitals.
Starting with war resistance. Agustin Aguayo was court-martialed and sentenced Tuesday. Circles Robinson (Ahora) notes: "Doing the right thing can be costly, but in the end one can at least sleep at night. Ask Spc. Agustin Aguayo, 35, a U.S. citizen born in Guadalajara, Mexico, who was just sentenced by a US military court in Wurzburg, Germany. His crime was a gut feeling shared by a growing number of ordinary citizens and soldiers alike: President Bush's war in Iraq isn't their war." He was sentenced to eight months but given credit for the days he had already served since turning himself in at the end of September. Rosalio Munoz (People's Weekly World) sees a victory in the outcome: "The March 6 military court conviction of pacifist soldier Agustin Aguayo was reversed in the court of public opinon as Amnesty International officially recognized him as a 'prisoner of conscience,' and a battery of progressive attorneys began efforts to get a federal court to reverse the Army's denial of conscientious objector status to Aguayo." Stefan Steinberg (World Socialist Web) sees the line of continuity from one war resister to another, "Aguayo has become the latest in a growing list of US soldiers who are facing trials and courts-martial for refusing to serve in Iraq. Recently, Lt. Ehren Watada, 29, became the first US officer to be tried for refusing to obey a command to return to Iraq. In his defence, Watada argued he was merely following his constitutional rights to oppose fighting in a war he regarded as illegal. The Japanese American described the US invasion and occupation of Iraq as 'an illegal and unjust war ... for profit and imperialistic domination.' Watada's attorney Eric Seitz, had sought to defend his client on the basis of the Nuremburg Principles -- i.e., that soldiers have the duty to disobey unlawful orders in the case of an illegal and unjust war."
Steinberg is correct, Agustin Aguayo is part of a movement of resistance with the military that includes others such as Ehren Watada, Kyle Snyder, Agustin Aguayo, Mark Wilkerson, Camilo Mejia, Patrick Hart, Joshua Key, Ivan Brobeck, Darrell Anderson, Ricky Clousing, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Corey Glass, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
It is vital that we build a strong counter-recruitment movement to expose lies used by the military to send working-class and poor children to war. We must also lend our full support to the soldiers and reservists who are refusing to fight in Iraq.
[. . .]
During the Vietnam War, the U.S. government learned how quickly the discipline of an army fighting an unjust war can break down. Today soldiers in the field can see the contradictions between the claims of their officers and especially the politicians who sent them to war and the reality of the conflict on the ground. They now know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and posed no imminent threat. And as the Iraqi resistance to occupation grows, more soldiers have come to see that they are fighting not to liberate Iraqis but to 'pacify' them. To end this war, more will need to follow their conscience, like [Camilo] Mejia and the other soldiers who have refused to die -- or kill -- for a lie.
The excerpt above is from Anthony Arnove's IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal. Arnove has an event on Saturday the 10th and on Sunday the 11th (Ty and Sunny -- for Elaine -- passed on the following):
Saturday, March 10
8 pm
Readings from Voices of a People's History of the United States
The Great Hall, Cooper Union
NYC
as part of the Left Forum 2007
Free for conference participants and the general public.
With performances by Staceyann Chin, Deepa Fernandes, Brian Jones, Erin Cherry,
Najla Said, Mario A. Murrillo, and other special guests.
Narration and introduction by Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! and
Anthony Arnove (who, with Howard Zinn, authored
Voices of a People's History of the United States)
Sunday, March 11
10 am
"Iraq: What's at Stake?"
Cooper Union
NYC
Left Forum 2007
Panelists: Anthony Arnove, Christian Parenti, AK Gupta, Nir Rosen, and Gilbert Achcar.
Wednesday, March 14
7:00 pm
"Friendly Fire: An Independent Journalist's Story on Being Abducted in Iraq,
Rescued, and Shot by U.S. Forces"
Judson Church
55 Washington Square South
NYC
featuring: Giulian Sgrena the Il Manifesto journalist and author of Friendly Fire who was abudcted in Iraq, rescued by Italian security forces only to be shot at (Nicola Calipari would die from the gun fire) by US forces while en route to the Baghdad Airport; Amy Goodman and the Center for Constitutional Rights' executive director Vince Warren.
Sgrena is calling for the Pentagon to take responsibility for the shooting.
Yesterday, in the United States, Democrats in the US House and Senate unveiled their plans for Iraq. Michael Rowland (AM, Australia's ABC) explains the House legislation: "Democrats have been talking about setting a troop withdrawal deadline ever since opposition to the war swept them to power in last year's congressional elections. Today they bit the bullet, unveiling legislation that sets down actual dates. . . . The legislation sets out a set of benchmarks that must be met in Iraq in the coming year. They're mainly to do with quelling the sectarian violence on the streets of Baghdad, the very objective of the president's plan to send an extra 22,000 US troops to Iraq. The House of Representatives speaker, Nancy Pelosi, says the strategy will be given time to work. But she warns the troop withdrawal will be fast-tracked if the re-enforcements fail to make any difference." John Nichols (The Nation), picking up at the benchmarks: "If those benchmarks remain unmet, a slow process of extracting troops would begin under the plan favored by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, Wisconsin's David Obey and Pennsylvania's John Murtha, the chair and defense subcommittee chair respectively of the appropriations committee; and Missouri's Ike Skelton, who chairs the armed services committee. The fact that Democratic leaders are talking about attempting to impose a timeline for withdrawal is good. It puts the opposition party in a position of actually opposing an unpopular president's exceptionally unpopular policies. Unfortunately, because the president wants to maintain the occupation on his terms, Bush can be counted on to veto legislation establishing benchmarks and a timeline. So the Democrats find themselves in a difficult position. They plan to expend immense time and energy -- and perhaps even a small measure of political capital -- to promote a withdrawal strategy. Yet, the strategy they are promoting is unlikely to excite Americans who want this war to end. In other words, while Pelosi and her compatriots propose to fight for a timeline, it is not the right timeline."
John A. Murphy (CounterPunch) observes, "The Democratic House has drafted legislation which has no chance of surviving a presidential veto and at the same time does not meet the hopes and aspirations and demands of the overwhelming majority of the American voting public. They have however drafted legislation that makes them feel good. Somehow or other the so-called 'liberal Democrats' are going to be happy about supporting a bill which would kill 60,000 Iraqis and 1,800 Americans because the bill will not alienate the 'more moderate Democrats'." Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) points out: "Anti-war Democrats have also come out against the plan. New York Congressmember Jerrold Nadler, a member of the Out of Iraq caucus, said: 'All this bill will do is fund another year of the war, and I can't vote for that'."
NYU professor Stephen F. Cohen (writing at The Nation) notes: "Unless the United States withdraws its military forces from Iraq in the near future, a war that began as an unnecssary invasion based on deception and predictably grew into a disastrous occupation will go down in history as a terrible crime, if it hasn't already. For Americans of conscience, Iraq has therefore become the paramount moral issue of our time."
On that note, we'll return to MADRE's "Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy: Gender-Based Violence and the US War on Iraq" (which can be read in full in PDF format or, by sections, in HTML). Wednesday, section one ("Towards Gender Apartheid in Iraq") was noted and, Thursday, section II, "Iraq's Other War: Impsoing Theocracy Through Gender-Based." Section III is "The Rise of US-Backed Death Squads" which further documents how the US equipped, trained and facilitated the ongoing femicide in Iraq.
The femicide has its roots in "The Salvador Option," so, as the report notes, it is not surprising to find the same actors involved. Just as James Steel and John Negroponte were involved in the death squads in El Salvador during the 1980s, they teamed up in Iraq with Negroponte acting as US ambassador to the country and James Steele commanding the US troops who trained the Badr and Mahdi militias. While the Bully Boy made noises to domestic audiences about 'freedom' and 'liberation,' "on the ground in Iraq, the Islamist militas were wholly tolerated." Backing, training and arming them "offered an enticing advantage over government troops. For a time, their quasi-official status allowed the US to out-source the violence of its count-insurgency operations without having to answer for the militias' gross human rights violations, including their campaign of terror against the women of Iraq." When not training these militias themselves, the US out-sourced the training to DynCorp which
Working women have been especially targeted because "they commit a double offense -- by advocating a secular society and by being accomplished, working women." But the press has refused to cover this campaign of violence against women as one of the stories coming from Iraq and treated acts of violence against women as incidental to the larger story (it is the story). "To cite just one example, in October 2005, journalist Robert Dreyfuss, known for his authorative and critical analysis of Iraqi politics, reported that in addition to targeting Sunnis, the Shiite Badr Brigade was 'terrorizing Iraq's secular, urban Shiite population.' Although gender-based violence was a central tactic of this terror campaign, Dreyfuss does not mention it. Nor does he explore why a supposedly sectarian militia was terrorizing members of its own sect. Like most media accounts, Dreyfuss' report fails to consider the Badr milita from the perspective of Shiite women. From women's vantage point, the militia is typical of theocratic fundamentalists everywhere. For such groups, asserting control over members of their own religion -- especially women, who are seen as the carriers of group identity -- is a prerequisite to extending control over society at large, including, ultimately, the institutions of the state."
The report notes that the press is not the only grouping that has failed to draw attention to the ongoing femicide and notes the anti-war movement has also ignored the gender violence that is taking place. The clampdown, by the US, on the Iraqi Health Ministry has prevented already faulty data on the attacks from being released. The report uses Maha as an example of how the militias and the police work together in Iraq -- Maha "was abducted from her home in Najaf and trafficked from brothel to brothel in Baghdad for nearly two years. She managed to escape twice and flee to the police station in Baghdad's Amiriyah neighborhood. Both times the police forcibly returned her to the brothel."
Noting the report, Laura Flanders (writing at The Notion -- Nation's blog) pointed out that 100 female corpses were left unclaimed in a Basra hospital "mutilated . . . families are too scared to pick them up." Flanders is the host of RadioNation with Laura Flanders which airs each Saturday and Sunday, 7:00 to 10:00 pm EST, on Air America Radio, XM radio and online. Saturday's guest will include one or both of her uncles as guests -- Andrew Cockburn and/or Patrick Cockburn. The program's website says Andrew, the blog post says Patrick. Either (or both) will be worth hearing.
Bombings?
AFP reports at least one person died from a roadside bombing in Kirkuk. CBS and AP report that Donald Neil, civilian contractor, was killed while trying to dismantle a bomb. (Location given is "Iraq.")
Shootings?
AFP reports that, in Kirkuk, two Iraqi soldiers were shot dead. Sami al-Jumaili (Reuters) reports that one police officer was shot dead and three more wounded when a police station in Hibhib was attacked -- ten police officers are missing and assumed/feared kidnapped. Australia's The Daily Telegraph reports that the attack included "setting fire to vehicles and destroying the building".
Corpses?
Reuters reports that ten corpses were discovered in Baghdad. Voices of Iraq reports seven corpses were discovered today in the Diala province.
Today, the US military announced: "A Marine assigned to Multi National Force-West was killed March 9 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar Province." In addition, CBS and AP report: "On Friday, the Islamic State of Iraq announced it would soon be releasing a video on the death of a U.S. Air Force pilot whose F-16 jet crashed Nov. 27 north of Baghdad, according to the IntelCenter, which monitors insurgent Web sites. The pilot, Maj. Troy L. Gilbert, was listed officially as 'whereabouts unknown' but then reported by the U.S. military as dead following DNA tests from remains at the scene."
Meanwhile, in military news, Alexandra Zavis (Los Angeles Times) reports that David Petraeus' much noted Thursday press converence "did not offer . . . a strategy for dealing with such attacks, underscoring a major dilemma facing U.S. and Iraqi forces as they carry out what has been described as a last-ditch effort to curb the deadly civil war." Ernesto Londono and Thomas E. Ricks (Washington Post), on the same press conference, noted the fact that not only has Petraues upped the escalation numbers but he's dropped Casey's talk of "the summer, late summer" when the supposed, alleged accomplishments of the latest crackdown version will be visible. And the escalation continues to add numbers. Yesterday, it was an additional 2,000. Today, Andrew Gray (Reuters) reports that Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon is requesting more troops for the Diyala province.
The BBC notes that Georgia (the country) "will more than double the number of troops it has in Iraq" from 850 to 2,000. 2,000 isn't a large number and some wonder what the US government offered to get the small figure doubled? (Georgia's population is estimated to 4.6 million.)
Things not worth noting in depth. Puppet of the occupation, Nouri al-Maliki toured Baghdad -- with a heavily armed squad of bodyguards numbering at least six who shadowed him at all times as he shook hands with Iraqi soldiers at checkpoints. US forces announced another al Qaeda (alleged) leader captured. Don't they get tired of selling that nonsense?
Turning to the issue of health care for veterans, Ian Urbina and Ron Nixon (New York Times) report on the Veterans Affairs where the government is slow to respond and refuses to anticipate or calculate need resulting in various horror stories such as prolonged waiting for claims to kick in (James Webb returned from Iraq injured from a bombing and had to wait 11 months for the promised and obligated payments to kick in while Allen Curry fell "behind on his morgage while waiting nearly two years for his disability check"). Hope Yen (AP) reports that, testifying before US House Veterans Affairs committee yesterday, Paul Sullivan (one time VA project manager) stated he repeatedly "warned officials" at the VA that "there would be a surge in claims as veterans returned from Iraq and Afghanistan," and that he began sounding the alarm in August 2005. Joel Connelly (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) notes that US Senator Patty Murray, who severs on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, has drawn comparisons to today's health crisis for veterans with the illegal war itself: "They have lowballed the cost of this war, and the cost of caring for our soliders. . . . It goes to the top, to the highest level. The Bush administration wants the country to feel there is no cost to war." Rick Maze (The Navy Times) covers an idea by US Senator Larry Craig which would require "issuing veterans an authorization card that would allow them to seek care anywhere could address two longstanding complaints: long waits to see a VA doctor, and long trips for veterans who live far from a VA hospitals." Based on Urbina and Nixon's reporting, 'portability' might be besides the point when "the current war has nearly overwhelmed an agency already struggling to meet the health care, disability payment and pension needs of more than three million veterans." Zooming in on one VA center, Mike Drummond Peter Smolowitz and Michael Gordon (The Charlotte Observer) discover that a 2005 inspection of North Carolina's Hefner VA Medical Center found a substandard facility: "Using the clinically blunt language of the medical bureaucracy, the team describes a facility with poorly trained doctors and nurses who, among other things, cut corners on treatment, manipulated records and did't talk enough with paitents and families." In one tragic example, they note 41-year-old Robert Edward Lashmit who died: "Lashmit's condition and vital signs were not updated during his 19-day stay. Instead, investigators found, his doctor 'copied and pasted the same daily progress note for the entire hospitalization.' That meant information vital to Lashmit's treatment remained the same even as his condition deteriorated. He died of live failure. Later, when investigators asked Lashmit's doctor about pasting outdated records, they said he told them: 'no one told him he could not do it'."
Turning to the scandal of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Brooke Hart (NBC News) reports on the scramble as the army attempts to address the disgrace -- the army willl institute a "30-day study of problems at major military facilities" and will establish a complaint hotline for veterans that will be allow for complaints to be registered twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. In another quick fix measures, Alana Semuels (Los Angeles Times) reports that Michael Tucker ( a brig. general) will move from Fort Knox to become the "deputy commanding general of the Walter Reed Army Medical Ceneter." Interviewed by Jake Stump (Charleston Daily Mail), US Senator Jay Rockefeller declares that "[t]he real question is not necessarily what happens at Walter Reed," but the refusal of the US Defense Department to meet the needs of veterans. US Rep Kirsten Gillibrand tells Albany's Time Union that she hopes the Walter Reed scandal starts a new debate on topics such as funding of the VA and veteran's' benefits. Walter Reed Army Medical Center, FYI, is funded by the Defense Department, not the VA. Interestingly, one Congressional rep wanted answers but he appeared to have had them some time sgo. Adam Schreck (Balitmore Sun) reports that US House Rep C.W. Bill Young made frequent visits to Walter Reed with his wife where they "found wounded sholdiers who didn't have adequate clothes, even one doing his rehabilitation in the bloody boots he had on when he was injured. One soldier, ashamed that his mattress was soaked with urine, tried to turn Young's wife away, the Florida Republican recalled yesterday. Another with a serious brain injury fell out of bed and his head three times before someone was assigned to make sure it didn't happen again." For those who've forgotten, Dana Priest, Anne Hulle (Washington Post for the first two) and Bob Woodruff (ABC News) shined the light on the issues in the last few weeks. What did US House Rep Young do since, by his own accounting, he was familiar with many issues that needed addressing? As Florida's Star-Banner notes in an editorial: "The St. Petersburg Times and other media reported on Thursday that U.S. Rep Bill Young, a Republican from Indian Shores and formerly one of the most powerful members of Congress, acknowledged that he knew of the squalid conditions at Walter Reed but failed to disclose them. In one instance, Young recalled one soldier who was sitting his his bed in a pool of urine when Young's wife discovered him. Hospital staff, Young noted, did nothing and when questioned told him, 'This is war. We have a lot of casualties. We don't have enough sheets and blankets to go around.' Young, according to the Times, kept quiet because he wanted to respect family privacy and 'did not want to undermine the confidence of the patients and their families and give the Army a black eye while fighting a war'." What a load of hogwash. By staying silent he allowed the problem to continue and worsen. Staying silent helped no one and, were it not for the press doing their job and his, he'd probably still be silent today.
In protest news, Frederic J. Frommer (AP) reports that the Occupation Project (ongoing visits, sit-ins, and of sustained nonviolent civil disobedience to put the pressure on elected officials to stop funding the war) continues and focuses on actions in Wisconsin and Minnesota. In Wisconsin, US House Rep David Obey has not met with them but did have four arrested on Monday including Joy First. In Minnesota, US Senator Herb Kohl did meet with them but is quite happy to continue funding the illegal war and play stupid (all his life). Frommer notes that every Tuesday, two nuns, Kate and Rita McDonald, are occupying the office of US Senator Norm Coleman who is a Republican but also "a former anti-war protester himself from the Vietnam era". Despite knowing better, Coleman remains firmly behind funding the illegal war. Also in protest news, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez (Democracy Now!) interviewed Wally Cuddeford about the protests going on in Tacoma which resulted in four arrests Sunday night. Cuddeford explains the purpose behind the protests: "Our goal is to stop military shipments from Fort Lewis going to Iraq. We were successful stopping the shipments through the Port of Olympia and now we're helping our friends in Tacoma stop the shipments there. The shipments are Stryker vehicles, they are speedy combat trasnprots, armed transports. They are the back bone of the occupation.
Half of all the Stryker vehicles to Iraq. If we are able to cut off Stryker vehicles to Iraq we could easily end this occupation." Clear Channel reports that Ann Wright (retired Army colonel and retired State Department) spoke to the Jefferson Community College about the war ("For us to have gone into Iraq, invaded and occupied it, and not even with the agreement of the UN Security Council, unfortunately it falls into the category of a war of aggression and in my opinion is a war crime.") in an event sponsored by Veterans for Peace and Different Drummer Cafe. She will be speaking at Different Drummer Cafe today at 6:00 pm at 12 Paddock Arcade, 1 Public Square, Watertown, NY.
Finally, Danny Schechter and MediaChannel.org have started a new campaign:
It's Time to Make the US Media Accountable!Are you willing to join and support Mediachannel's "TELL THE TRUTH" campaign? Help us press the press and move the media to tell the truth and report in more balanced manner, the way so many Canadian and European outlets seem to be able to do.Click here to send an email to U.S. media outlets now!
iraq
agustin aguayo
amy goodmanjuan gonzalezdemocracy now
anthony arnove
howard zinn
danny schechter
laura flandersradionation with laura flanders
the washington posternesto london
the new york times
Readings from Voices of a People's History of the United States
With performances by Staceyann Chin, Deepa Fernandes, Brian Jones,
Erin Cherry, Najla Said, Mario. A Murillo, Deepa Fernandes, and other
special guests
Narration and introduction by Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! and
Anthony Arnove
Saturday, March 10
8 pm
The Great Hall, Cooper Union
as part of Left Forum 2007 (http://www.leftforum.org ), March 9-11 at
Cooper Union
Free for conference participants and the general public.
(Anthony Arnove also will be on the panel "Iraq: What's at Stake?"
Sunday, March 11, 10 am, at Left Forum, with Gilbert Achcar,
Christian Parenti, Nir Rosen, and AK Gupta. Info at:
http://www.leftforum.org/leftforum2007/panels.html#me4 )
*
FRIENDLY FIRE
An Independent Journalist's Story of Being Abducted in Iraq, Rescued,
and Shot by U.S. Forces
Wednesday, March 14
7 pm
Judson Church
55 Washington Square South
New York, NY
http://www.judson.org/
with Giuliana Sgrena, journalist, Il Manifesto, and author, Friendly
Fire
Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! (http://www.democracynow.org/)
Vince Warren, executive director, Center for Constitutional Rights
(http://www.ccr-ny.org/)
sponsored by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Haymarket Books
About the book:
While reporting the effects on civilians of the U.S. bombing campaign
in Falluja, Giuliana Sgrena was taken hostage in Iraq on February 4,
2005, and held for one month. On the day of her release, as she was
being escorted to Baghdad Airport by Italian security, U.S. forces
fired on her vehicle, killing Major General Nicola Calipari, as he
shielded Sgrena.
Mario Lozano, the soldier who shot at her vehicle, will be placed on
trial April 17th for voluntary manslaughter. Giuliana Sgrena demands
that the Pentagon be held responsible for the shooting-a product of
the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and not the actions of an individual
soldier.
About the author:
An expert on the Arab world, Sgrena has reported frequently from
Afghanistan and Iraq, for which the president of Italy awarded her
the prestigious Cavaliere del Lavoro prize. In her book Friendly
Fire: The Remarkable Story of a Journalist Kidnapped in Iraq, Rescued
by an Italian Secret Service Agent, and Shot by U.S. Forces
(Haymarket), Sgrena describes her experience as a hostage and
provides unique insights into the situation of Iraq under occupation,
exposing U.S. war crimes there.
Friendly Fire
The Remarkable Story of a Journalist Kidnapped in Iraq, Rescued by an
Italian Secret Service Agent, and Shot by U.S. Forces
by Giuliana Sgrena
Introduction by Amy Goodman
ISBN 9781931859394 $20.00 Trade Cloth
http://haymarketbooks.org/
http://www.cbsd.com/inventory.aspx?id=19871
I'm opening with that for a reason. It came in Tuesday to my e-mail account. Sunny had jury duty this week and I'm so lazy that I didn't bother to check my own account. She was back this morning and saw it. She immediately fowarded it to C.I. who was kind enough to include it in the snapshot but my apologies for not noting it sooner. Ty had actually passed it on to C.I. from an e-mail to The Third Estate Sunday Review on Thursday and it was too late for the snapshot but C.I. hoped to include it in the "And the war drags on . . ." entry Thursday night; however, Danny Schechter has a campaign (last item in the snapshot) regarding the mainstream media and C.I. opened with that and tried to structure all of "And the war drags on . . ." to explain the importance of the campaign. (I think the point was made beautifully.) So, my apologies and regrets that I didn't see it until today. I'm lazy. Sunny loves reading the e-mails (including right-wingers who are unhappy with what I write) and I'll grab any excuse to avoid going through what is often hate mail. (Hint to right wingers, threatening me -- no matter how colorful your language is, does not and will not my change my mind. I am opposed to the illegal war. I was opposed to it before it started.)
Speaking of C.I., the article C.I. and Ava wrote awhile back, "TV: Boys' WB!," came up in an e-mail. Joe'l e-mailed to ask if I had caught "Actor Geena Davis on Her Quest to Reduce Gender Stereotyping in Media forChildren" on Democracy Now! yesterday? I caught the last half of the show, so, yes, I did hear that. She thinks it is a serious problem and notes that she had never considered it until Ava and C.I. tackled cartoons. She wrote, "After I read their article, I really thought about it. I have three kids, two sons and one daughters, the oldest is nine-years-old and the youngest is five-years-old. Saturday morning cartoons have basically vanished but there's still enough on for this Mom to enjoy sleeping a little later as the kids park in front of the TV. After reading Ava and C.I.'s article, I wondered what cartoons my kids were watching, we do block some channels, and they watch Kids WB! straight through because it is one of the longest block of cartoons. So the first Saturday after I read the article, I made a point to get up and watch the cartoons with them. I was very bothered by what I saw. I was bothered because my daughter's being socialized to believe that she's a tag along and an exception and my sons are being socialized to believe that too. I think both points are important and I'm really glad Ava and C.I. made them. Could you pass that on to Ava and C.I. and also recommend that everyone read their article and watch or listen to the speech on Democracy Now!?" Yes, I can.
I believe Sunny already did that but I will mention it when we're all working on the edition this weekend. I will also urge everyone to check out both reports.
It is important. I know Ava and C.I. weren't planning on writing about cartoons. They're delaying 30 Rock because they've been told it's 'safe' in terms of not being cancelled. So they're hoping to save that for the summer. (They only review network shows and they need to things to grab over the summer. I'm amazed when I realize how many reviews they have done. A point that Joe'l made as well.) There were some e-mails about cartoons that had come in and they decided, at the last minute, to tackle that. I think they did a wonderful job of it and wonder why there is not more outcry. In her speech, Geena Davis makes the point about young girls being almost invisible in films for children and how it's surprising that reviewers don't note that when they write about a film. The same point is true of television and, let me toot their horn, Ava and C.I. always note it. I think they have an amazing body of work and that their feminist critiques are incredible contributions. I always think of, for instance, their review of "Threshold" and remember how some sites with strong feminists writing at them (I'm not referring to the Mud Flap Gals, I'm talking adult women) were praising that show. Joe'l noted
"Katie Was a Cheerleader" as her personal favorite and it's on my list of favorites too. I was talking to Kat briefly about her wonderful "It's about perspective and humanity" and she really nailed it when she said, "I think Ava and C.I. really set the mark for all of us." I would agree with that. I think MADRE's report fits with the points Ava and C.I. were making in "TV: Aftermath leaves an aftertaste." Their reviews have a huge audience and I think they've had a huge impact. (The last one noted, on Jericho, is being re-printed in a pamphlet by a group of feminists in New York. Kat told me about that. That's like the fifth or sixth time that's happened. They always say yes and ask only that, if there are typos, they get cleaned up.)
"Making Democrats Pay the Price" (Kevin Zeese, CounterPunch):
Tina Richards son, Cloy, is a corporal in the U.S. Marines. He is facing his third tour of duty in Iraq. He and his mother oppose the war. Ms. Richards is living in Maryland lobbying Congress to end the war. She has joined Maryland voters who are occupying the office of Maryland's senior senator, Barbara Mikulski.
Tina saw Sen. Mikulski leaving a hearing recently going to the women's room. She followed her and mentioned that protesters were occupying her office to protest the war. Mikulski said she did not understand why they were protesting her saying "I voted against the war." Tina answered "That is no longer enough."
She's right. Now, as we approach the fourth anniversary of the war it is time for the Congress to end it. Senator Barbara Mikulski, like most Democrats, has been a critic of President Bush, describing him as a reckless and irresponsible commander in chief. But she has voted to give this reckless commander in chief more than $420 Billion, as have almost all Democrats.
That is the problem Democrats like Mikulski say they are opposed to the war but keep appropriating more money for the war. They need to realize that if they pay for it, it's theirs.
Maryland voters have occupied the office of Senator Mikulski twice so far in what will be a series of efforts to convince Mikulski to lead efforts to end the Iraq War. At the second occupation Sen. Mikulski had four of her constituents arrested after they occupied her offices for three hours placing photographs of all the Maryland soldiers who had died around her office, and reading the names of soldiers and Iraqis killed in the war. (Links to videos of the two occupations are at the bottom of this article.)
Her constituents are holding Sen. Mikulski accountable for her actions. When she votes to fund the war she is putting U.S. troops in harms way and adding to the quagmire of the Iraq War. If Mikluski votes for this next supplemental she will be sending under-trained troops with inadequate equipment and an unclear purpose into an unwinnable quagmire. Real support for the troops requires more than criticizing Bush, it requires acting to remove the troops from harms way.
It would take only 41 votes to stop the war in the U.S. Senate. A filibuster of Iraq funding would not even require all of the 51 Democrats in the Senate to support it in order to succeed. If the Senate filibustered the president's $99 billion request it could then pass an alternative that would really support the troops by bringing them home safely, reduce the violence in Iraq by providing funds to allow Iraqis to re-build their own country and underwrite a regional peace keeping force. If this exit were combined with a diplomatic surge in the region the U.S. could bring greater stability to the Middle East. Those steps would restore U.S. leadership and prevent further U.S. and Iraqi casualties. This approach would also save tax payers tens of billions of dollars in 2007 alone.
Tina Richardson and her son Cloy were noted in "Flashpoints, Impeachment, etc." after she spoke Monday on KPFA's Flashpoints. If you missed it, her son is seriously suffering from PTSD and another son, who has served in Iraq, is now going to be serving in Afghanistan. If you think that she's treated with any respect by elected officials, think again.
"Shocking Video of the Dark Side of the Democrats: Rep. David Obey: 'Idiot Liberals' Need to Support War Money" (David Swanson, CounterPunch):
House Appropriations Chair David Obey (Dem., Wisc.) ran into woman in the hallway in Washington recently and ended up yelling at her and her friends, accusing them of "smoking something that's not legal" if they disagreed with him, and denouncing "idiot liberals."
The woman, Tina Richards, introduced herself to Obey as the mother of a Marine about to depart for his third tour of Iraq, and as someone who has tried to communicate with Obey but received no response. Then she
Well, watch the video yourself. It may be depressing, but it's certainly entertaining (just like network television).
David Obey is such a manly man wanting to demonstrate that he respect the troops and he does that by . . . treating the mother of two soldiers like dirt. What a big, brave, manly man he is. I know some people aren't able to watch (or listen) due to computer issues. For those people and for anyone who needs or prefers a transcript due to hearing issues, please refer to David Swanson's transcript of the exchange between Tina Richards and David Obey.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Friday, March 9, 2007. Chaos and violence (though little reported) continues, protests continue, the country of Georgia provides mirth in the illegal war (if not genuine support for the Bully Boy), a US marine is announced dead, footage of another US service member's death is supposedly set to be released, Dems plan receives muted response, and the veterans health care crisis moves from Walter Reed to VA hospitals.
Starting with war resistance. Agustin Aguayo was court-martialed and sentenced Tuesday. Circles Robinson (Ahora) notes: "Doing the right thing can be costly, but in the end one can at least sleep at night. Ask Spc. Agustin Aguayo, 35, a U.S. citizen born in Guadalajara, Mexico, who was just sentenced by a US military court in Wurzburg, Germany. His crime was a gut feeling shared by a growing number of ordinary citizens and soldiers alike: President Bush's war in Iraq isn't their war." He was sentenced to eight months but given credit for the days he had already served since turning himself in at the end of September. Rosalio Munoz (People's Weekly World) sees a victory in the outcome: "The March 6 military court conviction of pacifist soldier Agustin Aguayo was reversed in the court of public opinon as Amnesty International officially recognized him as a 'prisoner of conscience,' and a battery of progressive attorneys began efforts to get a federal court to reverse the Army's denial of conscientious objector status to Aguayo." Stefan Steinberg (World Socialist Web) sees the line of continuity from one war resister to another, "Aguayo has become the latest in a growing list of US soldiers who are facing trials and courts-martial for refusing to serve in Iraq. Recently, Lt. Ehren Watada, 29, became the first US officer to be tried for refusing to obey a command to return to Iraq. In his defence, Watada argued he was merely following his constitutional rights to oppose fighting in a war he regarded as illegal. The Japanese American described the US invasion and occupation of Iraq as 'an illegal and unjust war ... for profit and imperialistic domination.' Watada's attorney Eric Seitz, had sought to defend his client on the basis of the Nuremburg Principles -- i.e., that soldiers have the duty to disobey unlawful orders in the case of an illegal and unjust war."
Steinberg is correct, Agustin Aguayo is part of a movement of resistance with the military that includes others such as Ehren Watada, Kyle Snyder, Agustin Aguayo, Mark Wilkerson, Camilo Mejia, Patrick Hart, Joshua Key, Ivan Brobeck, Darrell Anderson, Ricky Clousing, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Corey Glass, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
It is vital that we build a strong counter-recruitment movement to expose lies used by the military to send working-class and poor children to war. We must also lend our full support to the soldiers and reservists who are refusing to fight in Iraq.
[. . .]
During the Vietnam War, the U.S. government learned how quickly the discipline of an army fighting an unjust war can break down. Today soldiers in the field can see the contradictions between the claims of their officers and especially the politicians who sent them to war and the reality of the conflict on the ground. They now know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and posed no imminent threat. And as the Iraqi resistance to occupation grows, more soldiers have come to see that they are fighting not to liberate Iraqis but to 'pacify' them. To end this war, more will need to follow their conscience, like [Camilo] Mejia and the other soldiers who have refused to die -- or kill -- for a lie.
The excerpt above is from Anthony Arnove's IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal. Arnove has an event on Saturday the 10th and on Sunday the 11th (Ty and Sunny -- for Elaine -- passed on the following):
Saturday, March 10
8 pm
Readings from Voices of a People's History of the United States
The Great Hall, Cooper Union
NYC
as part of the Left Forum 2007
Free for conference participants and the general public.
With performances by Staceyann Chin, Deepa Fernandes, Brian Jones, Erin Cherry,
Najla Said, Mario A. Murrillo, and other special guests.
Narration and introduction by Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! and
Anthony Arnove (who, with Howard Zinn, authored
Voices of a People's History of the United States)
Sunday, March 11
10 am
"Iraq: What's at Stake?"
Cooper Union
NYC
Left Forum 2007
Panelists: Anthony Arnove, Christian Parenti, AK Gupta, Nir Rosen, and Gilbert Achcar.
Wednesday, March 14
7:00 pm
"Friendly Fire: An Independent Journalist's Story on Being Abducted in Iraq,
Rescued, and Shot by U.S. Forces"
Judson Church
55 Washington Square South
NYC
featuring: Giulian Sgrena the Il Manifesto journalist and author of Friendly Fire who was abudcted in Iraq, rescued by Italian security forces only to be shot at (Nicola Calipari would die from the gun fire) by US forces while en route to the Baghdad Airport; Amy Goodman and the Center for Constitutional Rights' executive director Vince Warren.
Sgrena is calling for the Pentagon to take responsibility for the shooting.
Yesterday, in the United States, Democrats in the US House and Senate unveiled their plans for Iraq. Michael Rowland (AM, Australia's ABC) explains the House legislation: "Democrats have been talking about setting a troop withdrawal deadline ever since opposition to the war swept them to power in last year's congressional elections. Today they bit the bullet, unveiling legislation that sets down actual dates. . . . The legislation sets out a set of benchmarks that must be met in Iraq in the coming year. They're mainly to do with quelling the sectarian violence on the streets of Baghdad, the very objective of the president's plan to send an extra 22,000 US troops to Iraq. The House of Representatives speaker, Nancy Pelosi, says the strategy will be given time to work. But she warns the troop withdrawal will be fast-tracked if the re-enforcements fail to make any difference." John Nichols (The Nation), picking up at the benchmarks: "If those benchmarks remain unmet, a slow process of extracting troops would begin under the plan favored by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, Wisconsin's David Obey and Pennsylvania's John Murtha, the chair and defense subcommittee chair respectively of the appropriations committee; and Missouri's Ike Skelton, who chairs the armed services committee. The fact that Democratic leaders are talking about attempting to impose a timeline for withdrawal is good. It puts the opposition party in a position of actually opposing an unpopular president's exceptionally unpopular policies. Unfortunately, because the president wants to maintain the occupation on his terms, Bush can be counted on to veto legislation establishing benchmarks and a timeline. So the Democrats find themselves in a difficult position. They plan to expend immense time and energy -- and perhaps even a small measure of political capital -- to promote a withdrawal strategy. Yet, the strategy they are promoting is unlikely to excite Americans who want this war to end. In other words, while Pelosi and her compatriots propose to fight for a timeline, it is not the right timeline."
John A. Murphy (CounterPunch) observes, "The Democratic House has drafted legislation which has no chance of surviving a presidential veto and at the same time does not meet the hopes and aspirations and demands of the overwhelming majority of the American voting public. They have however drafted legislation that makes them feel good. Somehow or other the so-called 'liberal Democrats' are going to be happy about supporting a bill which would kill 60,000 Iraqis and 1,800 Americans because the bill will not alienate the 'more moderate Democrats'." Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) points out: "Anti-war Democrats have also come out against the plan. New York Congressmember Jerrold Nadler, a member of the Out of Iraq caucus, said: 'All this bill will do is fund another year of the war, and I can't vote for that'."
NYU professor Stephen F. Cohen (writing at The Nation) notes: "Unless the United States withdraws its military forces from Iraq in the near future, a war that began as an unnecssary invasion based on deception and predictably grew into a disastrous occupation will go down in history as a terrible crime, if it hasn't already. For Americans of conscience, Iraq has therefore become the paramount moral issue of our time."
On that note, we'll return to MADRE's "Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy: Gender-Based Violence and the US War on Iraq" (which can be read in full in PDF format or, by sections, in HTML). Wednesday, section one ("Towards Gender Apartheid in Iraq") was noted and, Thursday, section II, "Iraq's Other War: Impsoing Theocracy Through Gender-Based." Section III is "The Rise of US-Backed Death Squads" which further documents how the US equipped, trained and facilitated the ongoing femicide in Iraq.
The femicide has its roots in "The Salvador Option," so, as the report notes, it is not surprising to find the same actors involved. Just as James Steel and John Negroponte were involved in the death squads in El Salvador during the 1980s, they teamed up in Iraq with Negroponte acting as US ambassador to the country and James Steele commanding the US troops who trained the Badr and Mahdi militias. While the Bully Boy made noises to domestic audiences about 'freedom' and 'liberation,' "on the ground in Iraq, the Islamist militas were wholly tolerated." Backing, training and arming them "offered an enticing advantage over government troops. For a time, their quasi-official status allowed the US to out-source the violence of its count-insurgency operations without having to answer for the militias' gross human rights violations, including their campaign of terror against the women of Iraq." When not training these militias themselves, the US out-sourced the training to DynCorp which
Working women have been especially targeted because "they commit a double offense -- by advocating a secular society and by being accomplished, working women." But the press has refused to cover this campaign of violence against women as one of the stories coming from Iraq and treated acts of violence against women as incidental to the larger story (it is the story). "To cite just one example, in October 2005, journalist Robert Dreyfuss, known for his authorative and critical analysis of Iraqi politics, reported that in addition to targeting Sunnis, the Shiite Badr Brigade was 'terrorizing Iraq's secular, urban Shiite population.' Although gender-based violence was a central tactic of this terror campaign, Dreyfuss does not mention it. Nor does he explore why a supposedly sectarian militia was terrorizing members of its own sect. Like most media accounts, Dreyfuss' report fails to consider the Badr milita from the perspective of Shiite women. From women's vantage point, the militia is typical of theocratic fundamentalists everywhere. For such groups, asserting control over members of their own religion -- especially women, who are seen as the carriers of group identity -- is a prerequisite to extending control over society at large, including, ultimately, the institutions of the state."
The report notes that the press is not the only grouping that has failed to draw attention to the ongoing femicide and notes the anti-war movement has also ignored the gender violence that is taking place. The clampdown, by the US, on the Iraqi Health Ministry has prevented already faulty data on the attacks from being released. The report uses Maha as an example of how the militias and the police work together in Iraq -- Maha "was abducted from her home in Najaf and trafficked from brothel to brothel in Baghdad for nearly two years. She managed to escape twice and flee to the police station in Baghdad's Amiriyah neighborhood. Both times the police forcibly returned her to the brothel."
Noting the report, Laura Flanders (writing at The Notion -- Nation's blog) pointed out that 100 female corpses were left unclaimed in a Basra hospital "mutilated . . . families are too scared to pick them up." Flanders is the host of RadioNation with Laura Flanders which airs each Saturday and Sunday, 7:00 to 10:00 pm EST, on Air America Radio, XM radio and online. Saturday's guest will include one or both of her uncles as guests -- Andrew Cockburn and/or Patrick Cockburn. The program's website says Andrew, the blog post says Patrick. Either (or both) will be worth hearing.
Bombings?
AFP reports at least one person died from a roadside bombing in Kirkuk. CBS and AP report that Donald Neil, civilian contractor, was killed while trying to dismantle a bomb. (Location given is "Iraq.")
Shootings?
AFP reports that, in Kirkuk, two Iraqi soldiers were shot dead. Sami al-Jumaili (Reuters) reports that one police officer was shot dead and three more wounded when a police station in Hibhib was attacked -- ten police officers are missing and assumed/feared kidnapped. Australia's The Daily Telegraph reports that the attack included "setting fire to vehicles and destroying the building".
Corpses?
Reuters reports that ten corpses were discovered in Baghdad. Voices of Iraq reports seven corpses were discovered today in the Diala province.
Today, the US military announced: "A Marine assigned to Multi National Force-West was killed March 9 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar Province." In addition, CBS and AP report: "On Friday, the Islamic State of Iraq announced it would soon be releasing a video on the death of a U.S. Air Force pilot whose F-16 jet crashed Nov. 27 north of Baghdad, according to the IntelCenter, which monitors insurgent Web sites. The pilot, Maj. Troy L. Gilbert, was listed officially as 'whereabouts unknown' but then reported by the U.S. military as dead following DNA tests from remains at the scene."
Meanwhile, in military news, Alexandra Zavis (Los Angeles Times) reports that David Petraeus' much noted Thursday press converence "did not offer . . . a strategy for dealing with such attacks, underscoring a major dilemma facing U.S. and Iraqi forces as they carry out what has been described as a last-ditch effort to curb the deadly civil war." Ernesto Londono and Thomas E. Ricks (Washington Post), on the same press conference, noted the fact that not only has Petraues upped the escalation numbers but he's dropped Casey's talk of "the summer, late summer" when the supposed, alleged accomplishments of the latest crackdown version will be visible. And the escalation continues to add numbers. Yesterday, it was an additional 2,000. Today, Andrew Gray (Reuters) reports that Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon is requesting more troops for the Diyala province.
The BBC notes that Georgia (the country) "will more than double the number of troops it has in Iraq" from 850 to 2,000. 2,000 isn't a large number and some wonder what the US government offered to get the small figure doubled? (Georgia's population is estimated to 4.6 million.)
Things not worth noting in depth. Puppet of the occupation, Nouri al-Maliki toured Baghdad -- with a heavily armed squad of bodyguards numbering at least six who shadowed him at all times as he shook hands with Iraqi soldiers at checkpoints. US forces announced another al Qaeda (alleged) leader captured. Don't they get tired of selling that nonsense?
Turning to the issue of health care for veterans, Ian Urbina and Ron Nixon (New York Times) report on the Veterans Affairs where the government is slow to respond and refuses to anticipate or calculate need resulting in various horror stories such as prolonged waiting for claims to kick in (James Webb returned from Iraq injured from a bombing and had to wait 11 months for the promised and obligated payments to kick in while Allen Curry fell "behind on his morgage while waiting nearly two years for his disability check"). Hope Yen (AP) reports that, testifying before US House Veterans Affairs committee yesterday, Paul Sullivan (one time VA project manager) stated he repeatedly "warned officials" at the VA that "there would be a surge in claims as veterans returned from Iraq and Afghanistan," and that he began sounding the alarm in August 2005. Joel Connelly (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) notes that US Senator Patty Murray, who severs on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, has drawn comparisons to today's health crisis for veterans with the illegal war itself: "They have lowballed the cost of this war, and the cost of caring for our soliders. . . . It goes to the top, to the highest level. The Bush administration wants the country to feel there is no cost to war." Rick Maze (The Navy Times) covers an idea by US Senator Larry Craig which would require "issuing veterans an authorization card that would allow them to seek care anywhere could address two longstanding complaints: long waits to see a VA doctor, and long trips for veterans who live far from a VA hospitals." Based on Urbina and Nixon's reporting, 'portability' might be besides the point when "the current war has nearly overwhelmed an agency already struggling to meet the health care, disability payment and pension needs of more than three million veterans." Zooming in on one VA center, Mike Drummond Peter Smolowitz and Michael Gordon (The Charlotte Observer) discover that a 2005 inspection of North Carolina's Hefner VA Medical Center found a substandard facility: "Using the clinically blunt language of the medical bureaucracy, the team describes a facility with poorly trained doctors and nurses who, among other things, cut corners on treatment, manipulated records and did't talk enough with paitents and families." In one tragic example, they note 41-year-old Robert Edward Lashmit who died: "Lashmit's condition and vital signs were not updated during his 19-day stay. Instead, investigators found, his doctor 'copied and pasted the same daily progress note for the entire hospitalization.' That meant information vital to Lashmit's treatment remained the same even as his condition deteriorated. He died of live failure. Later, when investigators asked Lashmit's doctor about pasting outdated records, they said he told them: 'no one told him he could not do it'."
Turning to the scandal of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Brooke Hart (NBC News) reports on the scramble as the army attempts to address the disgrace -- the army willl institute a "30-day study of problems at major military facilities" and will establish a complaint hotline for veterans that will be allow for complaints to be registered twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. In another quick fix measures, Alana Semuels (Los Angeles Times) reports that Michael Tucker ( a brig. general) will move from Fort Knox to become the "deputy commanding general of the Walter Reed Army Medical Ceneter." Interviewed by Jake Stump (Charleston Daily Mail), US Senator Jay Rockefeller declares that "[t]he real question is not necessarily what happens at Walter Reed," but the refusal of the US Defense Department to meet the needs of veterans. US Rep Kirsten Gillibrand tells Albany's Time Union that she hopes the Walter Reed scandal starts a new debate on topics such as funding of the VA and veteran's' benefits. Walter Reed Army Medical Center, FYI, is funded by the Defense Department, not the VA. Interestingly, one Congressional rep wanted answers but he appeared to have had them some time sgo. Adam Schreck (Balitmore Sun) reports that US House Rep C.W. Bill Young made frequent visits to Walter Reed with his wife where they "found wounded sholdiers who didn't have adequate clothes, even one doing his rehabilitation in the bloody boots he had on when he was injured. One soldier, ashamed that his mattress was soaked with urine, tried to turn Young's wife away, the Florida Republican recalled yesterday. Another with a serious brain injury fell out of bed and his head three times before someone was assigned to make sure it didn't happen again." For those who've forgotten, Dana Priest, Anne Hulle (Washington Post for the first two) and Bob Woodruff (ABC News) shined the light on the issues in the last few weeks. What did US House Rep Young do since, by his own accounting, he was familiar with many issues that needed addressing? As Florida's Star-Banner notes in an editorial: "The St. Petersburg Times and other media reported on Thursday that U.S. Rep Bill Young, a Republican from Indian Shores and formerly one of the most powerful members of Congress, acknowledged that he knew of the squalid conditions at Walter Reed but failed to disclose them. In one instance, Young recalled one soldier who was sitting his his bed in a pool of urine when Young's wife discovered him. Hospital staff, Young noted, did nothing and when questioned told him, 'This is war. We have a lot of casualties. We don't have enough sheets and blankets to go around.' Young, according to the Times, kept quiet because he wanted to respect family privacy and 'did not want to undermine the confidence of the patients and their families and give the Army a black eye while fighting a war'." What a load of hogwash. By staying silent he allowed the problem to continue and worsen. Staying silent helped no one and, were it not for the press doing their job and his, he'd probably still be silent today.
In protest news, Frederic J. Frommer (AP) reports that the Occupation Project (ongoing visits, sit-ins, and of sustained nonviolent civil disobedience to put the pressure on elected officials to stop funding the war) continues and focuses on actions in Wisconsin and Minnesota. In Wisconsin, US House Rep David Obey has not met with them but did have four arrested on Monday including Joy First. In Minnesota, US Senator Herb Kohl did meet with them but is quite happy to continue funding the illegal war and play stupid (all his life). Frommer notes that every Tuesday, two nuns, Kate and Rita McDonald, are occupying the office of US Senator Norm Coleman who is a Republican but also "a former anti-war protester himself from the Vietnam era". Despite knowing better, Coleman remains firmly behind funding the illegal war. Also in protest news, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez (Democracy Now!) interviewed Wally Cuddeford about the protests going on in Tacoma which resulted in four arrests Sunday night. Cuddeford explains the purpose behind the protests: "Our goal is to stop military shipments from Fort Lewis going to Iraq. We were successful stopping the shipments through the Port of Olympia and now we're helping our friends in Tacoma stop the shipments there. The shipments are Stryker vehicles, they are speedy combat trasnprots, armed transports. They are the back bone of the occupation.
Half of all the Stryker vehicles to Iraq. If we are able to cut off Stryker vehicles to Iraq we could easily end this occupation." Clear Channel reports that Ann Wright (retired Army colonel and retired State Department) spoke to the Jefferson Community College about the war ("For us to have gone into Iraq, invaded and occupied it, and not even with the agreement of the UN Security Council, unfortunately it falls into the category of a war of aggression and in my opinion is a war crime.") in an event sponsored by Veterans for Peace and Different Drummer Cafe. She will be speaking at Different Drummer Cafe today at 6:00 pm at 12 Paddock Arcade, 1 Public Square, Watertown, NY.
Finally, Danny Schechter and MediaChannel.org have started a new campaign:
It's Time to Make the US Media Accountable!Are you willing to join and support Mediachannel's "TELL THE TRUTH" campaign? Help us press the press and move the media to tell the truth and report in more balanced manner, the way so many Canadian and European outlets seem to be able to do.Click here to send an email to U.S. media outlets now!
iraq
agustin aguayo
amy goodmanjuan gonzalezdemocracy now
anthony arnove
howard zinn
danny schechter
laura flandersradionation with laura flanders
the washington posternesto london
the new york times
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Aguayo, Madre, more
The illustration is of Agustin Aguayo and from "War resister Agustin Aguayo to be court-martialed Tuesday" (The Third Estate Sunday Review). Aguayo was court-martialed yesterday. Mike and I almost ran the illustration yesterday but there are these rules you have to agree to if you have a Flickr account. We've heard C.I. complain about them. (It's very different from Hello! which used to be used before they broke with Blogger/Blogspot.) Mike mentioned that to C.I. and C.I. said, "Those rules apply to me, I have the account. You and Elaine can post it however you want." So we're doing that. See, the way Flickr appears to work is that people have no choice about whether text runs along side or not. You also have to have an account and log in to get the code to post the visual. So we're using it the same we would Hello! and, as C.I. pointed out, Mike and I do not have Flickr accounts and are under no obligation to follow their rules. Aguayo does matter (and I think the gang did a great job with the illustration). He stood up and he's made a difference. His children get that, even if e-activists don't.
"War Resister Agustin Aguayo Sentenced to 8 Months in Prison" (Democracy Now!):
A US Army medic who refused to fight in Iraq has been sentenced to eight months in prison. Agustin Aguayo went AWOL last year just before he was to return to Iraq for a second deployment. He had made several unsuccessful requests for conscientious objector status.
Aguayo's attorney David Court: "We are both very grateful that the military judge gave a relatively light sentence. As you all know, he could have done seven years based upon the findings. I believe that based upon his sentence of only eight months he accepts that Aguayo believes that he is a conscientous objector."
David Court expects Aguayo to serve six more weeks of his sentence because he's already been jailed for one-hundred sixty-one days. The military hearing was held in Germany where Aguayo's unit is based. Kelly Dougherty of Iraq Veterans Against the War was there to support Aguayo.
Kelly Dougherty: "While Agustin is first and foremost a man who is sincerely and morally opposed to war in all forms, he is also a proud example to other soldiers who are also questioning the war in Iraq and who feel like they might want to refuse or they might want to apply for conscientious objector or in some way object and resist this war in Iraq."
In a statement, Amnesty International said Aguayo is a legitimate conscientious objector who should not be imprisoned for his beliefs. Democracy Now! interviewed Aguayo and his wife Helga the day before he turned himself in to a California base last September.
Agustin Aguayo: "It's not my job to decide who's going to live or who's going to die. That's something that I’ve had to deal with morally and that I’m convinced of. Nothing is more clear in my mind that war is wrong. And I won't be a tool of war anymore. And the end result of war is the destruction of human life, and governments use that to solve problems. And I think it's a great tragedy of our lifetime, with so much technology, that we still feel that that solves problems."
Individual actions do matter and there is no mass movement without individuals. There is also no movement without inspiration and Aguayo, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Ehren Watada, Ivan Brobeck, Mark Wilkerson and others have provided that and more.
"PROTESTS IN SOUTH AMERICA AHEAD OF BUSH VISIT" (Free Speech Radio News):
Demonstrations, street clashes, and property takeovers have erupted in South America in the run-up to an official visit by President Bush to the region. University students clashed with riot police in the Colombian city of Cali yesterday during a 5 hour protest against Bush's visit. In Brazil, hundreds of small farmers with the Via Campesina organization occupied an iron ore mine this morning as well as a sugar and ethanol mill owned by the US agribusiness giant Cargill. Bush will kick off his Latin American tour in Brazil tomorrow and will then travel to Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico.
This is a light item. We're limited in what we can highlight tonight because there's something already claimed for Sunday and it knocks out about three highlights I would have used otherwise. (Do not miss The Third Estate Sunday Review this Sunday if you're sick and tired of The Elector.) So this is more of a ha-ha, can't go anywhere without protests sort of item. Bully Boy has not fooled the world and if he thinks it's rough right now, he better get ready for life after the White House because the reality is that even with crowds turning out to protest him, most people are still in the dark about some of the things he has done. I believe they will be exposed before he leaves office and there will be much more (and things already suspected that get confirmed) to draw the protests.
"Human Rights Group Signals Iraq is becoming a Theocracy" (Free Speech Radio News):
"Human Rights Group Signals Iraq is becoming a Theocracy" (Free Speech Radio News):
A report released by Madre, the international women's human rights organization, shows that Iraq is fast becoming a theocracy - one financed, armed and trained by the United States, and which threatens the rights of women like those theocracies established in Iran, Algeria and Afghanistan. Rebecca Myles has more.
If you can listen to Myles' story, you should. The report is very important and it gets to who is responsible -- the United States government. This should be a very big story and you'd think it would be at least in feminist circles, right?
So I checked out the Mud Flap Gals to see if, between fixing their push-ups, they had time to note this? No. They were too busy with a nipple makeup and apparently that's more important than the United States' trashing life as we know it for Iraqi women.
They do, however, want you to support an action. It's supposedly, blog against sexism and one of the last points is this:
Slavery still exists! Women and girls are the majority of the 800,000 to nearly 4 million people trafficked (bought and sold as property) internationally every year.
Oh, so it's not just the United States, it's global? Then where the hell is Iraq?
Not a mention about Iraq. I don't think the Mud Flap Gals know we're at war -- probably why Katha Pollitt says she learns from them everyday. Sadly, I believe that since Pollitt never wrote a single word about Abeer. What's happening to the women in Iraq is happening and has happened because of the US government. This isn't an "over there" kind of thing, it is directly related to actions taken by the United States. The administration wasn't in the dark about what would happen in Iraq by taking these actions, they had the blue print from Afghanistan.
It's becoming sadly obvious why Pollitt's considered so wonderful (after her worst year), the Mud Flap Gals don't know 'real much' about feminism. They don't know 'real much' about the world either, but they're young. So maybe Pollitt should stop bragging that she learns from them and starting writing about topics that adults do? Here's a hint, no lists passing off as columns. Here's another, the NAACP really doesn't need to hear from a White woman that she doesn't think media portrayals are important.
Kat wrote a thing last night that I compliment her on and she said it wasn't worth reading. It was. You can see her weighing and formulating through the post. But her comments regarding Pollitt of late (Kat says of late) go to the point that Pollitt's writing is just cold these days. With everything going on in the world, her book reviews and her top ten lists just don't cut it. It's a bit like the embarrassing drivel "Stab" writes.
The US government has destroyed Iraq and that shouldn't be ignored. Women are losing their rights and that shouldn't be ignored. The crimes against women are a direct result of the illegal war and the US government's goals. The Mud Flap Gals had many other things to cover and, too often, that's true of everyone. So when you wonder why the illegal war has lasted for nearly four years, look at the Mud Flap Gals.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Wednesday, March 7, 2007. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq, pilgrims continue to be targeted; a US war resister was sentenced to 8 months yesterday; in Santa Barbara, JROTC out and The Peace Academy; 3 US service members die; and MADRE charts the violence against Iraqi women.
Starting with news of war resistance. Yesterday, in Germany, Agustin Aguayo was court-martialed and sentenced. Agustin Aguayo served in Iraq as a medic and attempted to be granted c.o. status. As the military repeatedly refused to do so. Bertrand Benoit (Financial Times of London) notes "Aguayo, a US citizen born in Mexico who enlisted in 2002, had twice failed to obtain an honorable discharge as a conscientious objector and refused to load his weapon while on his first tour to Iraq." That count fails to factor in the civilian court attempts. As his case was winding through the civilian courts and as the military threatened to drag him to Iraq in chains and handcuffs, Agustin Aguayo self-checked out --September 2nd through September 26th. Reuters notes: "A deserter is defined by the U.S. Department of Defense as a member of the armed forces who is absent from their unit or post without authorization, quits their unit to avoid duty or enlists improperly in another service. It can also apply to people who are absent without leave for 30 straight days or more." Obviously, Aguayo was not absent without leave for 30 or more days. The 30 days is a rule of thumb and not etched in stone. However, the military elected to toss that standard out the window.
With his parents present, his wife Helga and his two eleven-year-old daughters Rebecca and Raquel, Aguayo stood trial. In addition, Charles Hawley (der Spiegel) notes, "thrown in among the couple dozen journalists on hand for the trial were those for whom Aguayo symbolizes a much broader message. They were representatives of the anti-Iraq War movement in the US and in Europe. For them, Aguayo is something of a hero." George Frey (AP) reports that Aguayo (with "a shaky voice") declared: "I respect everyone's views and your decision, I understand that people don't understand me. I tried my best, but I couldn't bear weapons and I could never point weapons at someone. The words of Martin Luther come to mind, 'Here I stand, I can do no more'." Aguayo acknowledged missing movement and pleaded guilty to AWOL, but the judge (Colonel Peter Masterton) found Aguayo guilty of desertion.
On Tuesday, Ashraf Khalil (Los Angeles Times) reported Courage to Resist's Jeff Paterson expects "Aguayo will get up to a year in jail followed by a less than honorable or bad conduct discharge." Paterson guessed well. The judge sentenced Aguayo to eight months, reduced him in rank (down to private) and he will receive a bad conduct discharge upon completition of his jail time. Bertrand Benoit (Financial Times of London) reports: "Anti-war activists, who had followed the case closely, said the mild sentence was a positive signal to the rapidly increasing number of Germany-based US military personnel who are seeking to avoid serving in Iraq."
The issue of how much time Aguayo will serve appears to be settled. Mark St. Clair (Stars and Stripes) reports, "Aguayo was credited with 161 days of pre-trial confinement and will serve 79 more days, according to Hilda Patton of the V Corps public affairs office." Or, as Courage to Resist observes, "he should be free within a few weeks!" Present for the court-martial was Iraq Veterans Against the War's Kelly Dougherty. Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) quotes Dougherty: "While Agustin is first and foremost a man who is sincerely and morally opposed to war in all forms, he is also a proud example to other soldiers who are also questioning the war in Iraq and who feel like they might want to refuse or they might want to apply for conscientious objector or in some way object and resist this war in Iraq." Iraq Veterans Against the War reminds: "A critical part of the GI movement to end the war in Iraq is service members' refusal to participate in it. Agustin's stance against the war, and his moral decision to refuse re-deployment, sends a message to others in the military that they can refuse to go to Iraq. Agustin is a brave leader, IVAW commends and fully stands behind him."
It is a critical part and it is a movement. Aguayo is part of a movement of resistance with the military that includes others such as Ehren Watada, Kyle Snyder, Mark Wilkerson, Camilo Mejia, Patrick Hart, Joshua Key, Ivan Brobeck, Darrell Anderson, Ricky Clousing, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Corey Glass, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
Turning to Iraq, MADRE has released a report entitled "Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy: Gender-Based Violence and the US War on Iraq." The report can be read in full in PDF format or, by sections, in HTML. The report is divided into seven sections. We'll focus on the first section today ("Towards Gender Apartheid in Iraq"). The sections covers the destruction of women's rights and the gender-based attacks that have largely gone unnoticed and unremarked upon. The family law of 1959 (which predated Saddam Hussein's rule) resulted from mass protests by women and allowed women to have their full voices heard in a court of law as opposed to in a religous hearing. This law gave women equal voices, allowed them to divorce, to retain custody, the right to inherent property, etc. Even in the lead up to the illegal war, women still retained rights in Iraq. That would quickly change. First, the appointed (by the US) Director of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, Paul Bremer, made it clear that women would be sacrificed to public relations spin. Bremer "hand-picked" the members of the Iraqi Governing Council and was happy to side with them (such as when they did away with "Iraq's observance of International Women's Day") -- most obviously with regards to the proposed Resoultion 137 which would have been constitutional law and would replace the 1959 family law and was stopped not due to any concern for women but as a result of Iraqi women taking to the streets and calls from women's organizations and members of the US Congress.
Though Resolution 137 was stopped, it was more important to get a puppet government in place quickly to pass the laws the US wanted passed and "liberation" and "democracy" were not the concerns of the US. That was made obvious by Bremer's refusal to answer the cries for help as violence against women grew more common, by his refusal to "appoint women to the drafting committee of Iraq's interim constitution" or "guarantee that 40 percent of US appointees to Iraq's new government women were women" or "pass laws codifying women's rights and criminalizing domestic violence" or "uphold UN Security Council Resolution 1325 which mandates that women be included at all levels of decision-making in situations of peacemeaking and post-war reconstruction."
Women were targeted for violence and Bremer refused to address it (thereby encouraging the violence by sending the message that attacks on women would not be punished) and he refused to allow them a seat at the decision-making table. This wasn't "liberation" and it wasn't "democracy." As the report underscores, "rather than support progressive and democratically minded Iraqis, including members of the women's movement, the US threw its weight behind Iraq's Shiite Islamists, calculating that these forces, long suppressed by Saddam Hussein, would cooperate with the occupation and deliver the stability needed for the US to implement its policies in Iraq."
In 2005, the US's puppet government began work on Iraq's constitution. "Throughout the summer 2005, the Bush Administration exerted tremendous pressure on Iraqi politicians to complete a draft of the constitution within three months (though the same process took more than 10 years in the United States). At the time, the Bush Administration was in desperate need of a public relations victory in Iraq: it needed a display for US audiences of the 'democratic progress' that had replaced the 'threat of weapons of mass destruction' as the rasion d' etre for attacking Iraq. The Administration was also afraid that failure to meet the timetable for drafting a constitution would trigger new elections in Iraq, which would have likely produced a less compliant government."
Enter Zalmay Khalilzad who sold women out in Afghanistan and apparently was sent to Iraq for the same results. "As in Afghanistan, Khalilzad supported the Islamist factions of the Iraqi constitutional drafting committee. The result was a new constitution that declared Islam to be the official religion of the state and a fudnamental source of legislation." And women were sold out as the US government -- while talking liberation and democracy -- yet again through their lots in with radical zealots who would destroy women's rights.
Page 6 lists examples of how the US allowed the legalization of "Violence against Women" which includes establishing Islam as the Iraq's national religion, barring free speech if it might hamper "public order and morality," allowing the federal court to not be made up solely of judges but by "judges and experts in Sharia" (the report notes that these are "presumably clerics"). Artilce 39 refutes the 1959 family law by turning all matters of "marriage, divorce, alimony, inheritance, and other presonal status issues" over to religious courts where "a woman's legal testimony is worth half that of a man's."
The report documents the reality of life for women in Iraq -- a reality that has been dismissed as "personal problems" by the likes of Bremer and others but the abuses and the violence are rooted in the non-democratic laws that the US government has applauded or looked the other way on and the abuses and violences are rooted in the US government tossing their lot in with religious zealots that they thought would be compliant to their larger goals (which never included liberation or democracy).
How much attention will the report receive? Last week the Minority Rights Group International's (PDF format) report "Assimilation, Exodus, Eradication: Iraq's minority communities since 2003" which did include a discussion of the realities now facing women (click here for a summary of that section). The report was largely ignored. Patrick Cockburn did write of it (one of the very few) but he made no mention of the realities facing women in Iraq.
Publications such as the New York Times spent the bulk of 2003 and 2004 ignoring women. Women weren't just targeted for attacks, didn't just see the loss of rights from a US selected government, they also saw themselves rendered invisible by the so-called watchdog. It was as though they no longer existed and it's very likely this report will get no more than one day's attention because Iraqi women have been on their own in terms of the mainstream press throughout this illegal war. It's why the New York Times would say "14-year-old girl" in their laughable articles that were supposed to be covering the Article 32 hearing into the rape and murder of Abeer and the murder of her five-year-old sister and her parents. It's always a "personal problem" with them, it never results from actions backed by the US, from actions encouraged and endorsed by looking the other way when women are raped, murdered, attacked . . .
What did the US government care about, what did the mainstream press gush over? If you've paid attention at all in the last month and a half, it's the Iraqi oil law that now awaits approval from the Iraqi parliament. Last week, Antonia Juhasz (writing at The Huffington Post), addressed the proposed law: "If passed, the law would transform Iraq's oil system from a nationalized model all-but-closed to U.S. oil companies, to a commercialized model, all-but-fully privatized and opened to U.S. corporate control. Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, U.S. oil companies were shut out of Iraq's oil industry with the exception of limited marketing contracts. As a result of the invasion, if the oil law passes, U.S. oil companies will emerge as the corporate front-runners in line for contracts giving them control over the vast majority of Iraq's oil under some of the most corporate-friendly terms in the world for twenty to thirty-five years. The law grants the Iraq National Oil Company oversight only over "existing" fields, which is about one-third of Iraq's oil. Exploration and production contracts for the remaining two-thirds of Iraq's oil will be opened to private foreign investment. Neither Iraqi public nor private oil companies will receive any preference in contracting decisions." Echoing that is the Green Party (US) which warns that a "new 'hydrocarbon law' up for approval in Iraq would lead to a prolonged, possibly permanent U.S. presence in Iraq, with U.S. military and Iraqi civilian casualties for years to come" and quotes Liz Arnone ("co-chair of the Green Party of the United States") stating: "The Iraqi hydrocarbon law, if approved by Iraqi lawmakers, will provide lucrative profits for U.S. energy corporations by placing up to 2/3 of Iraqi oil resources under foreign control. The U.S. government, whether led by Democrats or Republicans, will be committed to protecting American energy company operations and investments in Iraq by keeping U.S. troops there."
The warning comes as as The No Bases Network is created. Kintto Lucas (IPS) reports that, in Ecuador, an international conference has created The No Bases Network (some countries, such as Ecuador, already had a national movement) out of concerns, citing Lina Cahuasqui, "that most of the 1,000 foreign military bases on the planet belong to the United States, which has 737 in different countries. Others belong to Russia, China, the United Kingdom and Italy." Among those attending the ongoing conference is Cindy Sheehan.
Sheehan was recently in Vermont drawing attention to the issue of impeachement and she wrote about that (at Common Dreams) noting: "We made 13 stops across Vermont (which is bigger than it looks) and found ourselves settling into a routine. First the Iraq Vets would speak. Adrienne was an Arabic linguist for 10 years and knew the intelligence that our country was gleaning from such sources as Ahmed Chalabi was false because she, using her brain, figured out that he had much to gain from the invasion of Iraq. When she brought this up to her commander he accused her of not supporting their unit or the mission. Adrienne now works in a VA hospital in Vermont and hears tragic tales of why our vets have PTSD. Stories of soldiers who were driving down the road in a sandy country that they had no business being in one minute and who awaken to find themselves covered in blood with a body parts in their laps, not knowing if it was their own or one of their buddies." Shay Totten and Christian Avard (Vermont Guardian) report that the results have been 36 towns voting in favor of impeachment hearings for the Bully Boy: Bristol, Burke, Calais, Craftsbury, Dummerston, East Montpelier, Greensboro, Guilford, Grafton, Hartland, Jamaica, Jericho, Johnson, Marlboro, Middlebury, Montgomery, Morristown, Newbury, Newfane, Peru, Plainfield, Putney, Richmond, Rochester, Roxbury, St. Johnsbury, Springfield, Stannard, Sunderland, Townshend, Tunbridge, Vershire, Warren, Westminster, Wilmington, and Woodbury
Turning to Iraq, where the violence continues. Commenting on yesterday's violence targeting pilgrims, Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General, issued a statement condeming "these heinous acts which appear to be aimed at provoking sectarian strife." As Alexandra Zavis (Los Angeles Times) notes the count of Shi'ite pilgrims killed on Tuesday is now at "more than 150". As AFP notes, "The killings continued on Wednesday as -- undaunted -- thousands of pilgrims continued their march of devotion, carrying banners and copies of the Koran and marching hundreds of kilometres to Karbala's revered shrines."
Reuters reports six pilgrims were killed in Iskandariya (13 wounded) in a mortar attack, seven dead and 27 wounded in Baghdad from a roadside bomb, seven shot dead in Baghdad with 3 wounded. Alexandra Zavis (Los Angeles Times) notes that four pilgrims were shot dead in Dora (8 were injured).
Bombings?
Lauren Frayer (AP) reports on a bombing in Balad Ruz where a man walked into a cafe, set off a bomb, killing himself and at least 30 other people. Mohammed al Dulainy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a mortar attack in Baghdad that wounded a police officer, a Baghdad roadside bomb that killed one person, a car bomb that killed 10 people ("including 6 policemen") and left 42 wounded.
Shootings?
Mohammed al Dulainy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports that two police officers were wounded in an attack "in Al Abara town," while a person was shot dead in Muqdadiyah, a person was shot dead in Jurf Al Milah and a person was shot dead in Khaniqeen. Lauren Frayer (AP) notes a butcher was shot dead in his shop in Ramadi.
Corpses?
Mohammed al Dulainy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 10 corpses were discovered in Baghdad,
Today, the US military announced: "On March 7, an MND-B unit was conducting a route clearance patrol in order to secure a commonly traveled route of improvised explosive devices northwest of the Iraqi capital when they were struck by a roadside bomb, killing three Soldiers and wounding another."
In peace news, Mary Johnston-de Leon (Veterans for Peace) reports Santa Barbara High School has a new development -- The Peace Academy. After mobilization led to lack of interest in the Junior ROTC program at the high school, it was shut down and Veterans for Peace's Lane Anderson and Babatunde Folayemi have helped the school start The Peace Acadmy which "will provide classes in mediation and conflict resolution, boxing, aikido, martial arts, sailing, fishing, outdoor activities including indigenous rites of passage ceremonies," etc.
Finally, the United Nations will be closing its weapons inspection commission in Iraq. Evelyn Leopold (Reuters) reports: " The staff of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Agency, known as UNMOVIC, had not been allowed to return to Iraq by the United States since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003." they have not been back since, in the midst of their inspections, Bully Boy gave his 'get out in 48 hours' bullying speech. No weapons were ever found, by the UN or the US, because WMD ever existed.
iraqagustin aguayo
ashraf khalil
antonia juhasz
cindy sheehan
Wednesday, March 7, 2007. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq, pilgrims continue to be targeted; a US war resister was sentenced to 8 months yesterday; in Santa Barbara, JROTC out and The Peace Academy; 3 US service members die; and MADRE charts the violence against Iraqi women.
Starting with news of war resistance. Yesterday, in Germany, Agustin Aguayo was court-martialed and sentenced. Agustin Aguayo served in Iraq as a medic and attempted to be granted c.o. status. As the military repeatedly refused to do so. Bertrand Benoit (Financial Times of London) notes "Aguayo, a US citizen born in Mexico who enlisted in 2002, had twice failed to obtain an honorable discharge as a conscientious objector and refused to load his weapon while on his first tour to Iraq." That count fails to factor in the civilian court attempts. As his case was winding through the civilian courts and as the military threatened to drag him to Iraq in chains and handcuffs, Agustin Aguayo self-checked out --September 2nd through September 26th. Reuters notes: "A deserter is defined by the U.S. Department of Defense as a member of the armed forces who is absent from their unit or post without authorization, quits their unit to avoid duty or enlists improperly in another service. It can also apply to people who are absent without leave for 30 straight days or more." Obviously, Aguayo was not absent without leave for 30 or more days. The 30 days is a rule of thumb and not etched in stone. However, the military elected to toss that standard out the window.
With his parents present, his wife Helga and his two eleven-year-old daughters Rebecca and Raquel, Aguayo stood trial. In addition, Charles Hawley (der Spiegel) notes, "thrown in among the couple dozen journalists on hand for the trial were those for whom Aguayo symbolizes a much broader message. They were representatives of the anti-Iraq War movement in the US and in Europe. For them, Aguayo is something of a hero." George Frey (AP) reports that Aguayo (with "a shaky voice") declared: "I respect everyone's views and your decision, I understand that people don't understand me. I tried my best, but I couldn't bear weapons and I could never point weapons at someone. The words of Martin Luther come to mind, 'Here I stand, I can do no more'." Aguayo acknowledged missing movement and pleaded guilty to AWOL, but the judge (Colonel Peter Masterton) found Aguayo guilty of desertion.
On Tuesday, Ashraf Khalil (Los Angeles Times) reported Courage to Resist's Jeff Paterson expects "Aguayo will get up to a year in jail followed by a less than honorable or bad conduct discharge." Paterson guessed well. The judge sentenced Aguayo to eight months, reduced him in rank (down to private) and he will receive a bad conduct discharge upon completition of his jail time. Bertrand Benoit (Financial Times of London) reports: "Anti-war activists, who had followed the case closely, said the mild sentence was a positive signal to the rapidly increasing number of Germany-based US military personnel who are seeking to avoid serving in Iraq."
The issue of how much time Aguayo will serve appears to be settled. Mark St. Clair (Stars and Stripes) reports, "Aguayo was credited with 161 days of pre-trial confinement and will serve 79 more days, according to Hilda Patton of the V Corps public affairs office." Or, as Courage to Resist observes, "he should be free within a few weeks!" Present for the court-martial was Iraq Veterans Against the War's Kelly Dougherty. Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) quotes Dougherty: "While Agustin is first and foremost a man who is sincerely and morally opposed to war in all forms, he is also a proud example to other soldiers who are also questioning the war in Iraq and who feel like they might want to refuse or they might want to apply for conscientious objector or in some way object and resist this war in Iraq." Iraq Veterans Against the War reminds: "A critical part of the GI movement to end the war in Iraq is service members' refusal to participate in it. Agustin's stance against the war, and his moral decision to refuse re-deployment, sends a message to others in the military that they can refuse to go to Iraq. Agustin is a brave leader, IVAW commends and fully stands behind him."
It is a critical part and it is a movement. Aguayo is part of a movement of resistance with the military that includes others such as Ehren Watada, Kyle Snyder, Mark Wilkerson, Camilo Mejia, Patrick Hart, Joshua Key, Ivan Brobeck, Darrell Anderson, Ricky Clousing, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Corey Glass, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
Turning to Iraq, MADRE has released a report entitled "Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy: Gender-Based Violence and the US War on Iraq." The report can be read in full in PDF format or, by sections, in HTML. The report is divided into seven sections. We'll focus on the first section today ("Towards Gender Apartheid in Iraq"). The sections covers the destruction of women's rights and the gender-based attacks that have largely gone unnoticed and unremarked upon. The family law of 1959 (which predated Saddam Hussein's rule) resulted from mass protests by women and allowed women to have their full voices heard in a court of law as opposed to in a religous hearing. This law gave women equal voices, allowed them to divorce, to retain custody, the right to inherent property, etc. Even in the lead up to the illegal war, women still retained rights in Iraq. That would quickly change. First, the appointed (by the US) Director of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, Paul Bremer, made it clear that women would be sacrificed to public relations spin. Bremer "hand-picked" the members of the Iraqi Governing Council and was happy to side with them (such as when they did away with "Iraq's observance of International Women's Day") -- most obviously with regards to the proposed Resoultion 137 which would have been constitutional law and would replace the 1959 family law and was stopped not due to any concern for women but as a result of Iraqi women taking to the streets and calls from women's organizations and members of the US Congress.
Though Resolution 137 was stopped, it was more important to get a puppet government in place quickly to pass the laws the US wanted passed and "liberation" and "democracy" were not the concerns of the US. That was made obvious by Bremer's refusal to answer the cries for help as violence against women grew more common, by his refusal to "appoint women to the drafting committee of Iraq's interim constitution" or "guarantee that 40 percent of US appointees to Iraq's new government women were women" or "pass laws codifying women's rights and criminalizing domestic violence" or "uphold UN Security Council Resolution 1325 which mandates that women be included at all levels of decision-making in situations of peacemeaking and post-war reconstruction."
Women were targeted for violence and Bremer refused to address it (thereby encouraging the violence by sending the message that attacks on women would not be punished) and he refused to allow them a seat at the decision-making table. This wasn't "liberation" and it wasn't "democracy." As the report underscores, "rather than support progressive and democratically minded Iraqis, including members of the women's movement, the US threw its weight behind Iraq's Shiite Islamists, calculating that these forces, long suppressed by Saddam Hussein, would cooperate with the occupation and deliver the stability needed for the US to implement its policies in Iraq."
In 2005, the US's puppet government began work on Iraq's constitution. "Throughout the summer 2005, the Bush Administration exerted tremendous pressure on Iraqi politicians to complete a draft of the constitution within three months (though the same process took more than 10 years in the United States). At the time, the Bush Administration was in desperate need of a public relations victory in Iraq: it needed a display for US audiences of the 'democratic progress' that had replaced the 'threat of weapons of mass destruction' as the rasion d' etre for attacking Iraq. The Administration was also afraid that failure to meet the timetable for drafting a constitution would trigger new elections in Iraq, which would have likely produced a less compliant government."
Enter Zalmay Khalilzad who sold women out in Afghanistan and apparently was sent to Iraq for the same results. "As in Afghanistan, Khalilzad supported the Islamist factions of the Iraqi constitutional drafting committee. The result was a new constitution that declared Islam to be the official religion of the state and a fudnamental source of legislation." And women were sold out as the US government -- while talking liberation and democracy -- yet again through their lots in with radical zealots who would destroy women's rights.
Page 6 lists examples of how the US allowed the legalization of "Violence against Women" which includes establishing Islam as the Iraq's national religion, barring free speech if it might hamper "public order and morality," allowing the federal court to not be made up solely of judges but by "judges and experts in Sharia" (the report notes that these are "presumably clerics"). Artilce 39 refutes the 1959 family law by turning all matters of "marriage, divorce, alimony, inheritance, and other presonal status issues" over to religious courts where "a woman's legal testimony is worth half that of a man's."
The report documents the reality of life for women in Iraq -- a reality that has been dismissed as "personal problems" by the likes of Bremer and others but the abuses and the violence are rooted in the non-democratic laws that the US government has applauded or looked the other way on and the abuses and violences are rooted in the US government tossing their lot in with religious zealots that they thought would be compliant to their larger goals (which never included liberation or democracy).
How much attention will the report receive? Last week the Minority Rights Group International's (PDF format) report "Assimilation, Exodus, Eradication: Iraq's minority communities since 2003" which did include a discussion of the realities now facing women (click here for a summary of that section). The report was largely ignored. Patrick Cockburn did write of it (one of the very few) but he made no mention of the realities facing women in Iraq.
Publications such as the New York Times spent the bulk of 2003 and 2004 ignoring women. Women weren't just targeted for attacks, didn't just see the loss of rights from a US selected government, they also saw themselves rendered invisible by the so-called watchdog. It was as though they no longer existed and it's very likely this report will get no more than one day's attention because Iraqi women have been on their own in terms of the mainstream press throughout this illegal war. It's why the New York Times would say "14-year-old girl" in their laughable articles that were supposed to be covering the Article 32 hearing into the rape and murder of Abeer and the murder of her five-year-old sister and her parents. It's always a "personal problem" with them, it never results from actions backed by the US, from actions encouraged and endorsed by looking the other way when women are raped, murdered, attacked . . .
What did the US government care about, what did the mainstream press gush over? If you've paid attention at all in the last month and a half, it's the Iraqi oil law that now awaits approval from the Iraqi parliament. Last week, Antonia Juhasz (writing at The Huffington Post), addressed the proposed law: "If passed, the law would transform Iraq's oil system from a nationalized model all-but-closed to U.S. oil companies, to a commercialized model, all-but-fully privatized and opened to U.S. corporate control. Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, U.S. oil companies were shut out of Iraq's oil industry with the exception of limited marketing contracts. As a result of the invasion, if the oil law passes, U.S. oil companies will emerge as the corporate front-runners in line for contracts giving them control over the vast majority of Iraq's oil under some of the most corporate-friendly terms in the world for twenty to thirty-five years. The law grants the Iraq National Oil Company oversight only over "existing" fields, which is about one-third of Iraq's oil. Exploration and production contracts for the remaining two-thirds of Iraq's oil will be opened to private foreign investment. Neither Iraqi public nor private oil companies will receive any preference in contracting decisions." Echoing that is the Green Party (US) which warns that a "new 'hydrocarbon law' up for approval in Iraq would lead to a prolonged, possibly permanent U.S. presence in Iraq, with U.S. military and Iraqi civilian casualties for years to come" and quotes Liz Arnone ("co-chair of the Green Party of the United States") stating: "The Iraqi hydrocarbon law, if approved by Iraqi lawmakers, will provide lucrative profits for U.S. energy corporations by placing up to 2/3 of Iraqi oil resources under foreign control. The U.S. government, whether led by Democrats or Republicans, will be committed to protecting American energy company operations and investments in Iraq by keeping U.S. troops there."
The warning comes as as The No Bases Network is created. Kintto Lucas (IPS) reports that, in Ecuador, an international conference has created The No Bases Network (some countries, such as Ecuador, already had a national movement) out of concerns, citing Lina Cahuasqui, "that most of the 1,000 foreign military bases on the planet belong to the United States, which has 737 in different countries. Others belong to Russia, China, the United Kingdom and Italy." Among those attending the ongoing conference is Cindy Sheehan.
Sheehan was recently in Vermont drawing attention to the issue of impeachement and she wrote about that (at Common Dreams) noting: "We made 13 stops across Vermont (which is bigger than it looks) and found ourselves settling into a routine. First the Iraq Vets would speak. Adrienne was an Arabic linguist for 10 years and knew the intelligence that our country was gleaning from such sources as Ahmed Chalabi was false because she, using her brain, figured out that he had much to gain from the invasion of Iraq. When she brought this up to her commander he accused her of not supporting their unit or the mission. Adrienne now works in a VA hospital in Vermont and hears tragic tales of why our vets have PTSD. Stories of soldiers who were driving down the road in a sandy country that they had no business being in one minute and who awaken to find themselves covered in blood with a body parts in their laps, not knowing if it was their own or one of their buddies." Shay Totten and Christian Avard (Vermont Guardian) report that the results have been 36 towns voting in favor of impeachment hearings for the Bully Boy: Bristol, Burke, Calais, Craftsbury, Dummerston, East Montpelier, Greensboro, Guilford, Grafton, Hartland, Jamaica, Jericho, Johnson, Marlboro, Middlebury, Montgomery, Morristown, Newbury, Newfane, Peru, Plainfield, Putney, Richmond, Rochester, Roxbury, St. Johnsbury, Springfield, Stannard, Sunderland, Townshend, Tunbridge, Vershire, Warren, Westminster, Wilmington, and Woodbury
Turning to Iraq, where the violence continues. Commenting on yesterday's violence targeting pilgrims, Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General, issued a statement condeming "these heinous acts which appear to be aimed at provoking sectarian strife." As Alexandra Zavis (Los Angeles Times) notes the count of Shi'ite pilgrims killed on Tuesday is now at "more than 150". As AFP notes, "The killings continued on Wednesday as -- undaunted -- thousands of pilgrims continued their march of devotion, carrying banners and copies of the Koran and marching hundreds of kilometres to Karbala's revered shrines."
Reuters reports six pilgrims were killed in Iskandariya (13 wounded) in a mortar attack, seven dead and 27 wounded in Baghdad from a roadside bomb, seven shot dead in Baghdad with 3 wounded. Alexandra Zavis (Los Angeles Times) notes that four pilgrims were shot dead in Dora (8 were injured).
Bombings?
Lauren Frayer (AP) reports on a bombing in Balad Ruz where a man walked into a cafe, set off a bomb, killing himself and at least 30 other people. Mohammed al Dulainy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a mortar attack in Baghdad that wounded a police officer, a Baghdad roadside bomb that killed one person, a car bomb that killed 10 people ("including 6 policemen") and left 42 wounded.
Shootings?
Mohammed al Dulainy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports that two police officers were wounded in an attack "in Al Abara town," while a person was shot dead in Muqdadiyah, a person was shot dead in Jurf Al Milah and a person was shot dead in Khaniqeen. Lauren Frayer (AP) notes a butcher was shot dead in his shop in Ramadi.
Corpses?
Mohammed al Dulainy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 10 corpses were discovered in Baghdad,
Today, the US military announced: "On March 7, an MND-B unit was conducting a route clearance patrol in order to secure a commonly traveled route of improvised explosive devices northwest of the Iraqi capital when they were struck by a roadside bomb, killing three Soldiers and wounding another."
In peace news, Mary Johnston-de Leon (Veterans for Peace) reports Santa Barbara High School has a new development -- The Peace Academy. After mobilization led to lack of interest in the Junior ROTC program at the high school, it was shut down and Veterans for Peace's Lane Anderson and Babatunde Folayemi have helped the school start The Peace Acadmy which "will provide classes in mediation and conflict resolution, boxing, aikido, martial arts, sailing, fishing, outdoor activities including indigenous rites of passage ceremonies," etc.
Finally, the United Nations will be closing its weapons inspection commission in Iraq. Evelyn Leopold (Reuters) reports: " The staff of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Agency, known as UNMOVIC, had not been allowed to return to Iraq by the United States since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003." they have not been back since, in the midst of their inspections, Bully Boy gave his 'get out in 48 hours' bullying speech. No weapons were ever found, by the UN or the US, because WMD ever existed.
iraqagustin aguayo
ashraf khalil
antonia juhasz
cindy sheehan
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