A boy in my daughter's class, let's call him Tim Howe, felt the need to pull his pants down on the playground today. The teacher handled it very well, I thought.
Myself? I would've humiliated the boy. I would have pointed out how very tiny Tim Howe was (in fact, I believe Tim Howe is Old English for "Stumpy") and that something so small should be hidden away.
That's because I don't cut a lot of slack there. I've got two sons and I know what is done and what isn't done and why things get done. He was playing up for someone. And I really wouldn't have cared about humiliating him.
Although maybe a Tim Howe can't be humilitated?
I think I'm going to suggest that we make a character in a regular story we are now doing at Third (see "Lt. Muthana Shaad's Gay Boy Chronicles" for the first installment) be named Tim Howe. I just think that name captures all that is disgusting and mishapen in the world.
Tim Howe sounds like the name of a serial killer, doesn't it?
It doesn't even require a middle initial because it is so very Son of Sam.
But I was flipping through a baby's name book and saw that Tim Howe is actually an ugly baby's name. It warned that if you named your child Tim Howe, he would be ugly in the cradle and at the table.
That seems right.
It also advised that a child named Tim Howe would never be toilet trained, that they'd go through adult life soiling themselves.
Just a few things to think about.
Monday I may print some e-mails. Or maybe I'll just write more about what a freak boys named Tim Howe are.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Friday, April 17, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces a death, the US State Dept fudges in a new report, Matthis Chiroux prepares for a court date, and more.
Starting with war resistance, Matthis Chiroux was supposed to stand before a military body last month but that changed. He explained to Digital Journal's Stephen Dohnberg why the date was changed to April 21st, "My former JAG attorney volunteered for Iraq service and was deployed a number of weeks ago. Thus, I had to get a new lawyer and a new court date. I think the Army may have been hoping I'd already bought tickets for people to be in attendance and it would have wiped out my finances. Lucky for me, I'm a last minute kinda guy. My replacement is a JAG attorney. Thomas M. Roughneen." This is "Resistance to an Abhorrent Occupation: Press Release of Matthis Chiroux" (World Can't Wait):(ST. LOUIS, MO) The U.S. Army will hear the case of Sgt. Matthis Chiroux, an Individual Ready Reservist who last summer publicly refused activation and deployment orders to Iraq, on April 21 at 1 Reserve Way in Overland, St. Louis, MO, at 9 a.m. Chiroux, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, refused to participate in what he described as "an illegal and immoral occupation" May 15th, 2008, in Washington D.C., after nine other veterans testified to Members of the U.S. Congress about atrocities they experienced during deployments to Iraq. Chiroux also vowed to remain public in the U.S. to defend himself from any charges brought against him by the military. (see matthisresists.us for a record of that speech and others by Chiroux) "My resistance as a noncommissioned officer to this abhorrent occupation is just as legitimate now as it was last year," said Chiroux, adding, "Soldiers have a duty to adhere to the international laws of war described as supreme in Art. 6 Para. 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which we swear to abide by before the orders of any superior, including our former or current president." Following Chiroux's refusal to deploy, the military did not contact him until after he and 10 other IVAW members marched on the final presidential debate Oct. 15, 2008, in Hempstead, N.Y. demanding to question then Senators Obama and McCain regarding their war policies and plans to care for returning veterans. After the veterans were brutalized and arrested by police, (one suffered a fractured skull and is currently suing the police for damages) the Army charged Chiroux with "misconduct" for refusing to deploy, announcing their intentions to discharge him from the reserves as a result. "I go now to St. Louis to honor my promises and convictions," said Chiroux. "Obama or No-Bama, the military must cease prosecuting Soldiers of conscience, and we will demonstrate to them why." Following the hearing, Chiroux and other IVAW members will testify about their military experiences which led them all to resist in different capacities the U.S.'s Overseas Contingency Operation (formerly the Global War on Terror). For more information, see matthisresists.us and ivaw.org.
Betty covered Mathis last night in "April 21st, St Louis, Matthis needs your support." June 15, 2008, Matthis explained his reasoning which includes:
I believe that this nation and this military may come to know the same truth: That the rule of law has been forsaken and we must return to it or be doomed to continue disaster. I believe in the goodness of the American people and I believe that justice is not dead because we as a people believe that it is our responsibility to resist the injustices done by our government in our names. We know this truth to be self-evident that our nation can unite to oppose an illegal occupation which is killing and scarring and shattering the lives of our youth and the Iraqi people. On this Fathers Day, know, America, that your children need you. We need you to care for us and to care for our country which we will inherit when you are finished with her. We need you to end this occupation of Iraq which has destroyed a country and scattered its people to the wind like ashes in the tempest -- a tempest that has engulfed the nation of Iraq and scrubbed any sign of peace and prosperity from the surface of a civilization older than even history itself. Fathers, we need you to care for your children and the children of Iraq for they know not why you fight and carry no fault in the conflict. Fathers, your sons and daughters need you now to embrace peace for though we were attacked, we have dealt in retaliation that same suffering one-thousand times over to a people who never wronged us. The nation will know little healing until first we stem off the flow of blood and human life for justice and healing will never be done by a blade or a bullet or a bomb or a torture cell. By continuing to participate in the unjust occupation of Iraq, we, as service members, are contributing to that flow of human life and we cannot now -- nor could we ever -- call the Iraqi people an enemy in the fight against the use of terror. But terror is all we now know. We are terrified of the prospect that we have been lied to. We are terrified by the idea that we have killed for nothing. We are terrified to break the silence. We are terrified to do what we know is right. But never again will I allow terror to silence me. Nor will I allow it to govern my actions. I refuse terror as a tactic for uniting a people around an unjust cause. I refuse to allow terror to motivate me to do violence on my fellow man especially those who never wronged me in the first place. I refuse to be terrified to stand in defense of my Constitution. And I refuse to be terrified of doing so in great adversity. As a resister to the Iraq Occupation, I refuse to be terrified by what may come for I know those who stand against me are in terror of the truth. But I will speak my truth, and I will stand by it firmly and forever will my soul know peace. Thank you.
Matthis Chiroux's entire speech is in the June 16, 2008 snapshot. Iraq Veterans Against the War notes:
On Tuesday April 21st an Army administrative discharge board will hear the case of Sgt. Matthis Chiroux, an Individual Ready Reservist (IRR) who last summer publicly refused activation orders in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The board will convene at 9am at the Army Human Resources Command, 1 Reserve Way in Overland, Missouri, just outside of St. Louis. IVAW members and supporters will rally outside the hearing starting at 8:30am.
Although Chiroux is voluntary attending this hearing, all other IRR members who have refused activation have not had any disciplinary actions taken against them by the military other then receiving a General or Other Than Honorable discharge from the IRR. This discharge has no effect on benefits like the GI Bill that IRR members earned through their service while on active duty. Service members who have questions about the IRR can click here or contact the GI Rights Hotline at 877-447-4487.
So that's this coming Tuesday. Wednesday the 15th, the latest 'progress' report on Iraq was released. The US State Dept report is entitled [PDF format warning] "Iraq Status Report." Page 3 offers an overview of the report entitled "Highlights" which includes:
* Amnesty International Calls on PM Maliki to Protect Homosexuals in Iraq (POLITICAL, page 4).
* Iraqi Vice President to Meet with Executives from Total (ECONOMIC, page 10).
* Prime Minister Maliki Visits Moscow for High-Level Talks (DIPLOMATIC, page 20).
* High-Profile Attacks Fail to Re-Ignite Sectarian Violence (SECURITY, page 22).
We'll dive into security and move to page 23 where the following appears -- see if you can catch the distortion:
MNF-I COMMANDER Says U.S. on Track to Meet Withdrawal Deadlines:
* General Odierno said he believes the United States is on track to withdraw from major Iraqi cities by the end of June and all combat troops to depart Iraq by the end of 2011. Speaking on CNN's "State of the Union," General Odierno said "We continue to work with the Government of Iraq so they can meet that timeline so that they are able to maintain stability after we leave. . . I still believe we're on track with that."
It continues but that quote had NOTHING to do with the June deadline. John King never combined the two -- the June deadline and end of 2011 one -- into one question asking
Gen Ray Odierno's thoughts. Here's the section they've pulled the quote from and the quoted section above will be in italics:
KING: Let me -- let me ask you -- let me move back to a more serious question, and the idea that, in the previous administration and in your service prior to this administration, you were very clear that you thought these decisions should not be based on political timelines; they should be based on conditions on the ground. I understand you're executing the orders of the commander in chief. I just want to get a sense of, are you concerned at all that the bad guys, the enemy, knows the timeline, too, and they are simply going into hiding, hoarding their resources, gathering their weapons and waiting for you to leave? ODIERNO: There is always that potential. But, again, let me remind everyone what change was in December when the United States and the government of Iraq signed an agreement, a bilateral agreement that put the timeline in place, that said we would withdraw all our forces by 31 December, 2011. In my mind, that was historic. It allowed Iraq to prove that it has its own sovereignty. It allows them, now, to move forward and take control, which was always -- it's always been our goal, is that they can control the stability in their country. So I think I feel comfortable with that timeline. I did back in December. I do now. We continue to work with the government of Iraq so they can meet that timeline, so that they are able to maintain stability once we leave. I still believe we're on track with that, as we talk about this today.
First note that the State Dept did not even get the words correct ("once we leave," not "after we leave" -- and, yes, in a government report, quotes should be correct). Second, notice that entire quote is to King's question about 2011. Click here for full transcript and here for report and video option (all links are CNN). In that interview, Odierno was not stating that the June deadline was on track. He has, publicly, with other outlets, raised the possibility of remaining in Iraqi cities past June 30th and did in that interview. The paragraph as written is a deliberate distortion and including his qualifiers somewhat (as the report finally does) comes after the report has already established a contrary message and it distorts what Odierno said. That's unacceptable. It is not accurate to take comments Odierno makes about a 2011 deadline and pass them off as remarks regarding a June 30, 2009 deadline. It's also bad p.r. because the rumors already that Gen Ray Odierno is being "censored" and that he was balled out for some of his public statements two days before that CNN interview. The State Dept misrepresenting Odierno's words only appears to confirm those rumors since they indicate an urge to put words into the general's mouth. Moving on, page 7 is "Key Legislative Issues" and we'll note that in full.
* Hydrocarbons Package: The Framework Law was resubmitted to the Oil and Gas Committee on October 26 and then returned to the Council of Ministers. There has been no progress on the other three laws in the package.
* Budget: The Council of Representatives (COR) passed a budget on March 5. The Presidency Council approved the 2009 budget on April 2.
* COR Speaker: The COR has yet to reach a consensus on appointing a new Speaker since Mahmoud Mashadani was ousted on December 23, 2008. The COR concluded spring recess and resumed on April 14.
Credit to whomever wrote the report for at least getting it correct that the Speaker was ousted. Very few press reports -- including the New York Times -- get that correct. We'll note the LGBT section in full:
Amnesty International issued a letter to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki urging the Iraqi government to take "urgent and concerted action" against the recent rise in violence against the gay community in Iraq, including by condemning the killing of six men found dead in Sadr City in past weeks, and bringing the murderers to justice. Congressman Jared Polis also brought the issue to the attention of Iraqi officials during his delegation's recent visit to Iraq.
We noted the letter earlier this week. Amnesty International has not posted it online but they have posted this:
Amnesty International has written to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki expressing grave concern about a reported spate of killing of young men solely because of their sexual orientation and calling for urgent and concerted action by the government to bring those responsible to justice and to afford effective protection to the gay community in Iraq.
Over the last few weeks at least 25 boys and men are reported to have been killed in Baghdad because theyw ere, or were pereceived to be, gay. The killings are said to have been carried out by armed Shi'a militamen as well as by members of the tribes and families of the victims. Certain religious leaders, especially in al-Sadr City neighbourhood, are also reported in recent weeks to have urged their followers to take action to eradicate homosexuality in Iraqi society, in terms which appear effectively to constitute at least an implicit, if not explicit, incitement to violence against members of the gay community. Three corpses of gay men are reported to have been found in al-Sadr City on 2 and 3 April 2009; two of the bodies are said to have had pieces of paper bearing the word "pervert" attached to them, suggetsting that the victims had been murdered on account of their sexual identitiy.
In the letter sent to the Prime Minister Amnesty International expressed concern at the government's failure to publicly condemn the killings and ensure that they are promptly and effective investigated, and that the perpetrators are brought to justice. The letter also drew attention to reported statements by one senior police officer that appear to condone or even encourage the targeting of members of the gay community in Baghdad, in gross breach of the law and international human rights standards.
Amnesty International reminded the Iraqi government that it is a fundamental principle of international human rights law, including international treaties that have been ratified by and are binding on Iraq, that "All human beings are equal in dignity and rights" and are entitled to all rights and freedom set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, without distinction of any kind, such as on grounds of race, sex, religion, political, or other status, including sexual orientation and gender identity. The organization called on Prime Minister al-Maliki [to] take immediate and concrete steps to address this sitatuion, including to publicly condemn, unreservedly and in the strongest terms, all attacks on members of the gay community or others on account of their sexual, gender, ethnic or other identity, and to commit to ensuring that those responsible for such abuses are identified and brought to justice. Further, police officers or other officials who encourage, condone or acquiesce in such attacks must also be held to account and either prosecuted or disciplined and removed from office.
This morning AFP is reported that signs are going up around the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad threatening to kill a list of people alleged to be gay. The posters are put out by the Brigades of the Righteous and AFP translates the posters as stating, "We will punish you, perverts" and "We will get you, puppies" has been scrawled on some posters -- "puppies" being slang for gay males in Iraq. The Australian carries the AFP report here. Liz Sly and Caesar Ahmed (LAT's Babylon & Beyond) report the message on the posters included, "If you don't cease your perverted acts, you will get your fair punishment." The reporters also noted that a Sadr City resident saw a poster with approximately 15 names (of people who would be killed) written on it. These posters are going up around Sadr City. Where is the United Nations condemnation? Where is the White House, where is the US State Dept? Chris Johnson (Washington Blade) notes the only member of the US Congress to condemn the targeting of Iraq's LGBT community, US House Rep Jared Polis and reports:
Noel Clay, a State Department spokesperson, said U.S. officials "condemn the persecution of LGBTs in Iraq," but he couldn't confirm whether the violence they're facing in Iraq is because of their sexual orientation. Clay noted that while homosexuality is against the law in Iraq, the death penalty is not the punishment for homosexual acts.
And yet at the start of this month the State Dept's Iraqi Desk John Fleming was telling Kilian Melloy (The Edge) that, "Homosexuality not a crime in Iraq." He was also stating that same-sex relations were of no conern to Iraqis ("immaterial"). That is laughable. Noel Clay has stated that same-sex relations have been criminalized in Iraq so unless or until the State Dept issues a public clarification, we will operate under the belief that Clay is correct. Attempts by the press to figure this out has been stonewalled.
Stonewalling? That brings us to yesterday's attack in Anbar Province on the Tamouz Air Base. How many died? No one can find out. Liz Sly and Usama Redha (Los Angeles Times) explain, "It is common in Iraq to receive contradictory information about casualties in the initial hours after an attack, though such a major discrepancy is unusual. A spokesman for U.S. Marines in Anbar declined to comment." Ernesto Londono (Washington Post) quotes Iraqi Maj Yassen al-Dulaimi stating, "We are shocked by the fact that a suicide bomber was able to infiltrate the guarded camp and passed through the gate to carry out this terrible attack." "Confusion often clouds accounts of attacks here, but rarely have senior officials offered such divergent reports about a death toll," observes Steven Lee Myers in this morning's New York Times. But the key note by Myers is this one: "Journalists were prohibited from entering the base and the hospital, which Iraqi and American officers visited after the wounded arrived." That's what this is, an attack on a free press. A bombing took place. A death toll is known and should not be in dispute. The puppet government (and possibly the US as well) is worried about 'embarrassment' and that apparently trumps facts and the right-to-know. This is appalling and would be similar to the US hiding an attack (example, 9-11) and barring the press from the area and from hospitals. It is an attack on the press and it is an attack on the historical record. Staying with attacks on the press, Wednesday Marc Lynch (Foreign Policy) weighed in on the efforts of the Iraqi military to close the newspaper Al-Hayat: "That's not a good sign. Reminds me of the bad old days of 2004-2005 when the Iraqi government and MNF-I were routinely attacking the Arab media for fueling the insurgency and the offices of al-Jazeera and other satellite television stations were shuttered. You would think that they would have learned form the experience of banning al-Jazeera, which didn't prevent it from covering Iraq politics but did reduce the access that officials had to its airtime."
Iraq got some airtime on the second hour of The Diane Rehm Show today when guest host Susan Page (USA Today) spoke with Barbara Slavin (Washington Times), Warren Strobel (McClatchy Newspapers) and Kevin Whitelaw (US News & World Reports).
Susan Page: Barbara, we saw some bombings -- some uptake in violence there.
Barbara Slavin: Yeah, there've been a number of bombings there in Baghdad, in Kirkuk, in Mosul. There was a suicide bomber who went into an Iraqi army installation which was supposed to be secure in western Iraq so this is worrisome. The US is beginning to draw down, it's moving its soldiers out of the cities and the question is: Can Iraqis cope? We had a guest yesterday, we had an advisor to the president of the Kurdish Region of Iraq who said he was, frankly, very, very worried that if Iraqis could not make some important decisions in terms of political reconciliation -- I mean they still don't have an oil law, they still haven't figured out what to do about the status of Kirkuk which is a city claimed by many, you know there are still problems between Sunni and Shia -- that if they couldn't have these political reconciliations within the next years, this Kurdish leader said he didn't want the Americans to withdraw. Now I don't think there's much of a stomach frankly to stay but it is worrisome in terms of the continued violence in their country.
Susan Page: Could it complicate the timetable that President Obama laid out for pulling out US troops?
Warren Strobel: I think it absolutely could. You know I think there's a minset, Susan, in this country that, certainly, the American people and officialdom that "Iraq is over, it's getting better, we're getting out, problem done, let's move on to Afghanistan, Pakistan." But that's not necessarily so. And I think what you're seeing in Kirkuk and elsewhere is various ethnic groups, they're positioning themselves for post-US Iraq. And that's uh -- it could complicate Obama's withdrawal timeline.
Slavin was referring to tensions between the Kurds and the central government. Ernesto Londono (Washington Post) reports that "some Iraqi and U.S. officials believe [tension over Kirkuk] could escalate into armed conflict" and that this has "prompted the U.S. military in January to increase its troop level in Kirkuk from a battalion, roughly 900 troops, to a combat brigade of about 3,200 soldiers."
Today the US military announced: "AL ANBAR PROVINCE, Iraq - A Multi National Force -West Marine died as the result of a non-combat related incident here April 16. The Marine's name is being withheld pending next-of-kin notification and release by the Department of Defense. The incident is under investigation." This brings the number of US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war to 4274. In other violence,
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) notes a Baghdad mortar attack which left 4 dead and either more injured.
Meanwhile in the US, Jo Freeman examines the state of the peace movement at Senior Women Web and notes the March 21st march on the Pentagon staged by A.N.S.W.E.R. and others turned out "[b]etween one and two thousand people" (it was at least 10,000) while UPFJ saw "a few hundred" on April 4th (that tally is correct). Freeman's biggest contribution is in explaining that the Friday April 3rd action (which had a few thousand) was by the Bail Out the People Movement. Freeman also provides the background on several organization but is sketchy on UPFJ. Jo is incorrect that the Iraq War is ending and, for the record, during Nixon's time she was far less likely to present an assertion as a fact. But in good news for the peace movement, some realities about Barack are beginning to stick. The issue of torture was covered last night by Mike ("Barack's latest disgrace"), Marcia ("Ray McGovern"), Ruth ("Ray McGovern"), Kat ("It's called 'justice,' Barack") and Cedric ("Barack needs a Constitutional tutor") and Wally ("THIS JUST IN! HE DOESN'T KNOW JUSTICE!"). Amnesty International notes:
US President Barack Obama has been accused of "condoning torture" following his announcement that CIA agents who used harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects will not be prosecuted. Amnesty International has called on the US administration to initiate criminal investigations and prosecutions of those responsible for carrying out acts of torture, including waterboarding, in its "war on terror". "President Obama's statements in the last days have been very disappointing. In saying that no one will be held to account for committing acts of torture, the US administration is in effect condoning torture," said Daniel Gorevan, of Amnesty International's Counter Terror with Justice campaign. "It's saying that US personnel can commit acts of torture and the authorities will not take any action against them. Memos were released this week detailing the range of techniques the CIA was allowed to use during the Bush administration, including sleep deprivation and simulated drowning (otherwise known as waterboarding). "The memos, in effect, justified torture techniques," said Daniel Gorevan. "We want to see prompt movement on behalf of the US administration on this to prosecute those responsible for the acts of torture, as well as those who authorised and justified these acts."
National Lawyers Guild member and GI Rights attorney James Branum observes, "President Obama and AG Holder are in my opinion now complicit in these crimes. Their argument that the CIA agents were relying on legal advice is a crock of ****. I'm sure Nazi lawyers said the holocaust was 'legal' too." Chris Floyd (Empire Burlesque) explains, "Barack Obama is being given great credit for releasing the memos, although as the president himself points out in his statement, their release was actually required by law. I suppose it's true that the United States government has become so degraded that we must be surprised and glad when a president actually obeys the law when it suits him, but I must say that I can't find any great cause for rejoicing -- especially as Obama's statement immediately and definitely ruled out prosecuting any of the direct perpetrators of these criminal actions." At Just Left, Michael Ratner (Center for Constituational Rights president) explains, "In making the decision not to prosecute, President Obama is acting as jury, judge and prosecutor. It is not his decision to make. Whether or not to prosecute law breakers is not a political decision. Laws were broken and crimes were committed. If we are truly a nation of laws as he is fond of saying, a prosecutor needs to be appointed and the decisions regarding the guilt of those involved in the torture program should be decided in a court of law." With Dalia Hashad, Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith, Michael Ratner also co-hosts WBAI's Law and Disorder. The American Civil Liberties Union encourages people to "demand accountability for torture" and makes it simple to send a message to the US Attorney General's office with a form at the previous link. World Can't Wait's Debra Sweet states it clearly, "And, given that Obama is releasing these memos AT THE SAME TIME as he is officially announcing he won't prosecute those who carried all of this out means --in my view - - that nobody familiar with the release of these memos can any longer claim honest confusion about whether or not Obama represents 'change'." World Can't Wait is staging a forum on torture tomorrow in Orange, California (near Santa Ana and Anaheim):
Bush's Department of Justice legalized torture. Now Obama's Department of Justice won't prosecute and will even provide free legal representation to torturers. Your government refuses to bring war criminals and torturers to account. Will you remain silent or get informed, take a stand and build a movement to stop torture and demand accountability for war crimes?
WHAT: Forum on National Security, Rule of Law & Torture: The Torture Memos of John Yoo
WHEN: Saturday, April 18th, 2009 10 AM - 2 PM
WHERE: Chapman University Law School, Kennedy Hall, Rms. 237 A&B, 370 N. Glassell (at Sycamore), Orange, CA 92866
WHY: John Yoo, while working for the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel, drafted legal memos which, some say, influenced the U.S.'s decision to legalize torture. John Yoo is currently a visiting professor at Chapman University School of Law, where the controversy continues.
"John Yoo's complicity in establishing the policy that led to the torture of prisoners constitutes a war crime under the US War Crimes Act". Cited from testimony provided to U.S. Congress on May 6, 2008 by Marjorie Cohn, National Lawyers Guild President.
WHO: Concerned residents and students from the Chapman community and surrounding area came together and formed Stop Torture Coalition to voice opposition to legalization of torture, inform people about torture, and call on people to stand against this assault on human rights and civil liberties. This forum is hosted by the National Lawyers Guild, Chapman Student Chapter.CONTENT: A public forum with Question and Answer session to examine• Whether Yoo is complicit in the commission of war crimes.• Whether torture is necessary for national security.• What is the impact on our basic human and civil rights.
SPEAKERS:
M. Katherine B. Darmer, Professor of Law, Chapman University Law School
Larry Everest, author of "Oil, Power & Empire", writer for Revolution newspaper
Ann Fagan Ginger, President of the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute
Tim Goodrich, Iraq Veterans Against the War
Ameena Qazi, staff attorney for Council on American-Islamic Relations
Moderated by Michael Slate, host of KPFK's Tuesday edition of Beneath the Surface
ENDORSED BY: Answer-LA, California Teachers for Academic Excellence; Code Pink- OC; David Swanson / AfterDowningStreet.org; Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute; Military Families Speak Out- OC; National Lawyers Guild Chapman Students Chapter; National Lawyers Guild –LA; Orange County Peace Coalition; Patrick Henry Democratic Club; Peace and Freedom – OC; Progressive Democrats of America; Scientists Without Borders; Social Justice Committee of the Unitarian-Universalist Church in Anaheim; US Federation of Scholars and Scientists; Westside Progressives; Women For: Orange County; and World Can't Wait.
TV notes. NOW on PBS begins airing Fridays on most PBS stations (check local listings) and this week:Americans are addicted to coal--it powers half of all our electricity, and is both plentiful and cheap. In fact, some call America the "Saudi Arabia of Coal." But are we paying too high an environmental price for all this cheap energy?With carbon emissions caps high on the Obama Administration's agenda, coal is in the crosshairs of the energy debate. This week, NOW Senior Correspondent Maria Hinojosa travels to Wyoming to take a hard look at the coal industry there and its case that it can produce "clean coal"--coal that can be burned without releasing carbon into the atmosphere. President Obama has been outspoken in his support for "clean coal" technology, but some say the whole concept is more of a public relations campaign than an energy solution.As part of the report, Hinojosa talks with Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal and Jeff Goodell, the author of "Big Coal," who says that carbon dioxide emissions generated from coal contribute to global warming.Our investigation is part of a PBS-wide series on the country's infrastructure called "Blueprint America."Washington Week also begins airing tonight on most PBS stations and sitting down with Gwen this week are Tom Gjelten (NPR), Spencer Hsu (Washington Post), Eamon Javers (publication which shall not be named) and Martha Raddatz (ABC News). Also on PBS (and begins airing tonight, check local listings) Bonnie Erbe sits down with Eleanor Holmes Norton, Genevieve Wood, Linda Chavez and Melinda Henneberger to discuss this week's news on To The Contrary. And turning to broadcast TV, Sunday CBS' 60 Minutes offers:401K RecessionNever created to be a mainstay of workers' retirement funds, 401ks became just that to millions of Americans who are now facing uncertain futures because of the devastating losses in the stock market. Steve Kroft reports.
Cold Fusion Is Hot AgainPresented in 1989 as a revolutionary new source of energy, cold fusion was quickly dismissed as junk science. But today, the buzz among scientists is that these experiments produce a real physical effect that could lead to monumental breakthroughs in energy production. Scott Pelley reports. Watch Video
Blood BrothersMatador Cayetano Ordonez nearly dies during this segment when he's battered by a bull in a Bob Simon report about him and his brother Francisco – Spain's remarkable bullfighting family – who these days are creating just as much drama outside the ring as in it. Watch Video
60 Minutes, Sunday, April 19, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
iraq
iraq veterans against the war
matthis chiroux
the los angeles timesliz slyusama redhathe new york timessteven lee myers
chris johnsonthe washington bladekilian melloydoug irelandernesto londonothe washington post
nprthe diane rehm show
jo freeman
60 minutescbs newsnow on pbspbsto the contrarybonnie erbe
law and disordermichael ratnermichael smithdalia hashadheidi boghosian
debra sweet
cnnjohn king
mcclatchy newspapershussein kadhim
Friday, April 17, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
April 21st, St Louis, Matthis needs your support
Matthis Chiroux is a very brave person and he isn't afraid to speak the truth even when others feel they have to 'finesse' it. C.I. called this afternoon and asked if I was planning to blog tonight and I was. Did I want to post something about Matthis? Absolutely. This is "Resistance to an Abhorrent Occupation: Press Release of Matthis Chiroux" from World Can't Wait:
The U.S. Army will hear the case of Sgt. Matthis Chiroux, an Individual Ready Reservist who last summer publicly refused activation and deployment orders to Iraq, on April 21 at 1 Reserve Way in Overland, St. Louis, MO, at 9 a.m. Chiroux, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, refused to participate in what he described as "an illegal and immoral occupation" May 15th, 2008, in Washington D.C., after nine other veterans testified to Members of the U.S. Congress about atrocities they experienced during deployments to Iraq.
Chiroux also vowed to remain public in the U.S. to defend himself from any charges brought against him by the military. (see matthisresists.us for a record of that speech and others by Chiroux)
"My resistance as a noncommissioned officer to this abhorrent occupation is just as legitimate now as it was last year," said Chiroux, adding, "Soldiers have a duty to adhere to the international laws of war described as supreme in Art. 6 Para. 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which we swear to abide by before the orders of any superior, including our former or current president."
Following Chiroux's refusal to deploy, the military did not contact him until after he and 10 other IVAW members marched on the final presidential debate Oct. 15, 2008, in Hempstead, N.Y. demanding to question then Senators Obama and McCain regarding their war policies and plans to care for returning veterans. After the veterans were brutalized and arrested by police, (one suffered a fractured skull and is currently suing the police for damages) the Army charged Chiroux with "misconduct" for refusing to deploy, announcing their intentions to discharge him from the reserves as a result.
"I go now to St. Louis to honor my promises and convictions," said Chiroux. "Obama or No-Bama, the military must cease prosecuting Soldiers of conscience, and we will demonstrate to them why." Following the hearing, Chiroux and other IVAW members will testify about their military experiences which led them all to resist in different capacities the U.S.'s Overseas Contingency Operation (formerly the Global War on Terror).
I want to put that with something from the March 6th snapshot:
Yesterday in NYC, Elaine Brower, Matthis Chiroux and Debra Sweet discussed upcoming actions and the need for them. Click here to stream at wearechangetv. Debra Sweet is the national director of World Can't Wait and this from the discussion:
Debra Sweet: To my right is Matthis Chiroux who is a resister of the Iraq War -- someone who came out of the US army and decided that he would refuse orders to go into Iraq. And he's courageously right now fighting a battle with the US army so that he's not put in a position of having to back off that stand and he's trying to make a fight on principle. That the war is illegitimate in the first place and no one should have to serve. We got to know him very well when he led a group of Iraq Veterans Against the War and hundreds of others of us to protest at the last debate between Obama and McCain out in Hampstea,d New York -- a bunch of them got beat up. And what they did were very righteous. To my left is Elaine Brower who is also a member of World Can't Wait and also a member of many other organizations -- such as Peace Action, Military Families Speak Out -- and is leading a national effort to get the Guard out of the federal government which would allow, we hope, them to be pulled out of US military adventures around the [world] including Iraq and Afghanistan. So we want to just have a conversation first among ourselves and, once we turn the cameras off, we'll bring everyone else in New York into this conversation. And again we're urging people listening right now to listen and then go out and make your plans for March 19th. Thursday March 19th is two weeks from today. There's plenty of time to make the kind of strong message we need to put together, emanating from this country. So I want to turn to Matthis and Elaine and ask a couple of questions. We're going to have a conversation. First of all what do we think about the responsibilities of the people living in this country in regards to the occupations of both Iraq and Afghanistan and especially the escalation of Afghanistan 17,000 more troops being sent by Obama and what about the responsibility we have for the US torture state and the announcement that, number one, there will be no prosecution, if Obama has anything to say about it, of the people who put together the us torture state and, number two, that he wants to continue both the use of state secrets to keep this quiet and secret rendition to take people from third countries to be tortured. I guess I've given an indication of what I think about this but let's hear from Matthis and Elaine.
Matthis Chiroux: Hi, everybody here, everybody here, joining us at home via the internet, all around the world. Thank you for taking this moment to try and understand where our responsibility lies in this movement to resist the crimes of our government. What Debra said is very true. I think it is our responsibility to not only be organizing and demonstrating against these occupations but to being taking responsibly for them because ultimately I believe this isn't Bush's war, this isn't Obama's war, this is America's war. And in a democratic society, the more we would like to believe that we have a say so, in the same sense the more responsibility that we share for the actions of our elected representatives. It is imperative that the entire country go into mourning on March 19th for the 2 million dead of both of the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our movement needs to be distancing itself from President Obama. I'm sorry to say it because I know he was many of our candidate. But he has chosen not to be our president instead he has chosen to be an emperor and I protest emperor's and everybody should in this entire country and across this entire planet. So ultimately it is our responsibility and if we are not in the streets on March 19th protesting loudly and furiously the crimes of our government the world will consider it complicity and we cannot afford for that to happen. So, as a brief opening statement, yes, it is absolutely our responsibility to oppose these crimes and to demonstrate in the streets and to be putting our bodies on the line for peace and justice as citizens as the world not simply America. And I'll turn it over to Elaine.
Elaine: Good evening everybody and thanks for being here and thanks for watching. I just want to say that we invaded Iraq. It's six years now. And we protested the invasion before it happened and we need to keep protesting the occupation. And people sort of got complacent with the election coming. And we see that now there's slogans out there "Yes we can end the war," "Yes we can bring the troops home" but we're not saying what we used to say. We're not demanding -- demanding -- that the occupation and the wars end now. What we need to do for the world -- because the Afghani civilians are depending upon us, the soldiers are depending on us and the Iraqi civilians are depending on us to -- get out in the streets in mass mobilization on the 19th and shut down business as usual. We've been saying this for six years we've tried and we haven't accomplished it. People voted for change twice in this country In 2006 they went out and they tried to vote in Democrats for change and that didn't happen. And now they thought, "Well okay so we're going to vote in a new administration that's all Democrats and yes we're gonna get change." Well maybe we'll get some domestic change but we certainly are not getting a change in foreign policy. In fact If you listen to the pundits, they've been saying that they're very disappointed and things are absolutely not changing under this administration. So it's up to us in the movement to make sure that we're visible not on a weekend but during the week when people can see us out in the streets. And I know this is difficult to do this and I know -- I've been doing it myself for seven years, pretty much everybody here has been doing it and I know people that are watching have been doing it. But we cannot stop. This is the point where really need to mobilize and say, "No, you're not going to continue this killing and occupation in our name with out dollars." Obama's not talking about taking the mercenaries out of Iraq or Afghanistan. He's only talking about possibly drawing down troops, maybe. And he could always change his mind depending upon what goes down on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan. So we've got to make sure that they know we're out there.
Debra Sweet: I'd like to talk for a moment, since I raised it and since it's a demand, I think it's a just demand, for March 19th The occupation of Iraq has to end. I think most people are very clear on that. But I will tell you this right now, many people are not clear about Afghanistan. Many people are not clear that it is a terrible thing to be sending drones dropping bombs on people in Pakistan. Many people are not clear that Obama talking about diplomacy with Iran can be and has been used as just another way of making war on the Middle East and moving towards controlling it. And I think our responsibility -- yes, I think we have a responsibility to resist and I really agree with what Matthis and Elaine are saying, but we have even a heavier responsibility. We have to go out to the people we know who are not in this room, who are not watching who are thinking about something else and thinking everything has been solved and talk to them about why sending 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan after you've already raised the civilian murder rate. The killing of civilians, 40% in the last year, is absolutely unacceptable. And this is, I think, part of this heavier layer of responsibilty that I'd like us all to think about and to talk about. What does it take for people to start looking at this situation not just as Americans but through the eyes of humanity? And to give you a really shaper example, I was at a peace meeting two nights ago and it was a film called Obama's War. A representative of United For Peace and Justice -- of which World Can't Wait and many of us are members -- actually said, "Aren't you glad this is Obama's War and not McCain's War?" And I said, and I thought and said to myself, "How do the people in feel that this is Obama's War?" Do we think they're celebrating that the bombs being dropped on them have a big "D" for Democrat on them? I think hell no. This is an outrage that this president right now is still being seen by people all over the country as an anti-war president. Let's just be for real, this is a continuation of an unjust war no matter what it is called and it is a rebraniding of injustice in the name of something that it isn't, peace. What do you think?
Matthis Chiroux: I absolutely agree. I think one of the most important things for this movement to remember right now is that while this war was a liability to the Bush administration, it is something that was an embarssment for them. Every time something about the war came up, they were on the defensive -- trying to defend why we had to go get Saddam Hussein and why we still had to be going after bin laden in Afghanista. And people thought, "Oh, this is your fault. This is your mistake." This war is not a liabilty to Obma. This war is potentially something he can use to look like he's being strong on terror as a Democrat. This is something that he can escalate. And if the slightest, tiniest bit of progress can come out of it, this country will want to hail him as the hero of peace and justice and all of that stuff when, in reality, what we're doing is what we've always done. And I can say it having been in the US military and having been part of the occupation of German and Japan sixty years after WWII. I literally lived in the old Axis of Evil. And what I learned is that: we never leave. Right now in Iraq, while people believe that the war is over and that we won and we've struck a blow upon the anvil of imperialism and so on and so forth, it is just not the case. We are building permanent bases and leaving troops on a permanent timetable when we ought to be admitting wrong and paying reperations to people whose society we have destroyed. And there's no amount of capitulation that we can do to the Obama administration that is going to make the bombs stop falling. It was one of the first things he did when he took office, the bombs started falling on Pakistan. And then it came out that he was going to continue this legacy of state secrets to hide the fact that tortture does take place on a regular basis by the orders of the US government . Fahad Hasmi is still lingushing in solitary confiement right here in NYC We're talking about Guantanamo closing in a year as being a great victory for this movement when, in fact, all that's going to happen is they're going to shut down and they're going to move them back into the federal system here where every bit as much injustice is occuring. For those who do not know, Fahad Hashmi is an American citizen who has been held in solitary confiement now for more than a year while in a state of presumed innocence for the supposed crime of allowing af riend to sleep on his couch for two months three or four years ago. It's craziness. Obama . . . I, right now, have a hearing with the military where I'm going to have to defend my decision not to report to duty last summer to deploy to Iraq The army's decision [applause], I say that because the army's decision to prosecute me, to set a date and show up, didn't come until after Obama took office. If we could expect serious change that would have stopped. But It's not. Those policies are continuing policies that are keeping poeple like Fahad literally, I'm sorry you don't have to water board someone to torture him. I think leaving him in a solitary confined space for a year without telling them what they did wrong is torture and we have to oppose that just as loudly. Look we have to understand change will absoultely not manifest itself in this country until we cease the unjust practices of the past. And when those unjust practices are simply being rebranded under a different face and a different name, it is our responsibility as a movement to provide clear contrast to something that people want to believe in but is ultimately a fairytale. Obama has plotted* a clear choice for this country from imperalism to impearlism-lite And I said it before and I'll say it again, as any ex-smoker will tell you, just because you switched from Reds to Marlboro Lights doesn't mean you quit the habit. You don't quit the habit until you put it out and we need to extinughs this war on terror because until we do the habit continues
Debra Sweet: I want to ask Elaine a specific question because I've known Elaine snce after her son was deployed to Afghanistan -- right aft 9-11 -- and since then he's been in Iraq twice and in fact he's there for the second time now. So this is a very personal question and a personal quest but what do we say to people who say that Afghanistan is the good -- "Yeah, yeah, I know Iraq is bad, we should get out of there. But what about Afghanistan isn't that the good war, isn't this a good thing?"
Elaine: Well it's interesting because as a member of Military Families Speak Out, we just opened up a discussion form because it became a hot topic. Now what's happening is a lot of the military families are seeing their loved ones instead of going to Iraq, they're going to Afghanistan. And this is something they never expected. So there's a real debate now amongst military families, shouldn't we add this to our mission, shouldn't this be a part of our mission statment that we do not want to send our soldiers to afhgnaistan? And people now are sort of getting on board with that it's dawning on them, "Well why are we going to afghanistan?" They're questioning that: "Well what are we looking for? The Afghani people never attacked us. Okay, so mabye it was bin Laden, who knows? We don't even know that for a fact. But let's say it was that's one person and al Qaeadea is one group of people. So we just bomb Afghansitan? Do we send soldiers into the mountains to kill innocent people in villages that have nothing to do with this?" So this discussion is starting to surface. And, no, it is absolutely wrong to send soldiers into Afghanistan. In fact today I was talking about National Guard and now they're taking the national guard and sending them to Afghanistan. For what? Our National Guard is supposed to be here in the United States responding to any emergeinces we have here -- whether they be hurricanes or accidents of major magnitude. But they're no longer here. In fact, yesterday in Wisoncisn, they sent 3200 national gaurd members to Iraq they happened to go, but here from Rochester we lost 2000 national guard going to Afhgnistan. So this is definitaly a situation where, being a military family member, I live and breathe this every day. I have to tell you personally when you have children what you do -- or a loved one -- I knd of have this little grid in my head. And I know where my daughter is. And I know where my husband is. And when my son joined the military I lost track of him in this grid. And I had to place him where ever he was. And I was thinking today on my wall, I used to have a map and I had thumbtacks in it. And before 9-11 and he was in Afghansitan I'd put a thumbtack and then he went to Australia and East Timor and then he kind of got lost in Iraq and it was very traumatic for me. And I have been going through this for seven years. And there are other military family members who are saying "When is this going to end? Even if he's going to keep 50,000 troops in Iraq, who are those 50,000? Are they the same people that have gone three four times already? Or are they now freshly recruiting right out of high school" -- which we've seen new young people -- "to go over there to do what? What are they protecting?" They're protecting this monstrotisty of an embassy What are we doing there? What's the purpose? So Afghanistan is defintely wrong. I know that and I think now it's sort of bubbling to the surface and people are starting to question that which they didn't before. But I think we're going to see more of that. Getting out on the 19th, to me, is very critical because . . . I do not want my son to come back from Iraq -- he's supposed to come back in June, I hope he comes back in one piece -- I don't want to see him go to Afghanistan. Or back to Iraq for that matter. I want this over and I think pretty much everyone who is in my position does also.
All three spoke important truths and I don't wish to take anything away from the other two speakers but Matthis really broke with the 'script' and called truth to power. Bless him for doing so. He is very brave. (Adam Kokesh has also shown real bravery.) That's what it's going to take to take on the War Party dominating the US and end the empiralistic, illegal wars.
You can read an interview with Matthis by clicking here. C.I. will be noting Matthis' press release in tomorrow's snapshot but she knows how important I think Matthis is and gave me the chance to note it first in our community. (Thank you, C.I.) For more on Matthis, you can check his website.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Thursday, April 16, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, Iraq tries to firm up a deal with Total oil, the LGBT community remains targeted, New York Times runs state propaganda passed off as 'reporting,' Deborah Haynes exposes state propaganda (demonstrating what actual reporting is), and much more.
Today a bombing attack on a US and Iraqi military base in Al Anbar Province took place and the results are in disputes. BBC maintains that there were no deaths but twenty-six people were wounded. Leila Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) explains Iraqi Maj Gen Mrdhi Mishhen Al Mahalawi and others are insisting that no one died. Aseel Kami (Reuters) states 16 are dead with at least fifty injured, that a suicide bomber in Iraqi military garb took his own life and the lives of others by detonating "at the base's cafeteria". At the New York Times website, Steven Lee Myers reports the confusion, offers reports of "at least 15 Iraqi soldiers" dead and identifies the location as Tamouz Air Base while noting that all journalists have been banned from the base and from the hospital where the wounded and/or dead were taken. As stated several times already this month, Nouri al-Maliki has no respect for the press, has no interest in a free press and the idea that 'democracy' will ever come to Iraq while US puppet Nouri sits in the catbird seat is laughable. AP spoke to two Iraqi officers and allowed them to remain nameless, one confirmed deaths but would not give a number, the other told AP 16 Iraqi soldiers had died. Iran's Press TV also states 16 killed and says fifty were wounded.
While the puppet government attempts to control the reporting on today's bombing, Kim Sengupta (Indpendent of London) reports on a new study by Iraqi Body Count which finds that "[a]ir strikes and artillery barrages have taken a heavy toll among the most vulnerable of the Iraqi people, with children and women forming a disproportionate number of the dead." The report, entitled "The Weapons That Kill Civilians -- Deaths of Children and Noncombatants in Iraq, 2003-2008," is co-authored by Iraqi Body Count and King's College London and Royal Holloway, University of London in the UK and it is published in the New England Journal of Medicine. IBC notes:
For Iraqi females, and children, events involving air attacks and mortar fire were the most dangerous. In air attacks causing civilian deaths, 46% of victims of known gender were female, and 39% of victims of known age were children. Mortar attacks claimed similarly high proportions of victims in these two demographic groups (44% and 42%). By comparison, 11% of victims across all weapons types were Iraqi females, and 9% were children. The authors argue that their findings showing that air attacks (whether involving bombs or missiles) and mortars killed relatively high proportions of females and children is further evidence that these weapons should not be directed at civilian areas by parties to conflict because of their indiscriminate nature. As co-author Professor John Sloboda of Royal Holloway, University of London, who is also a co-founder of IBC, notes, "Our weapon-specific findings have implications for a wide range of conflicts, because the patterns found in this study are likely to be replicated for these weapons whenever they are used."
Alsumaria notes the report finds that for all Iraqis, "abudctions of people who are later executed" results in the bulk of deaths. "Relatives of the dead, most of them women and some quietly wiping away tears, sit in a room trying to spot the missing among the photos of men and boys, many mutilated or severely decayed, cycled on a bank of screens," reports Mohammed Abbas (Reuters) on the unclaimed and unidentied corpses that continue, year after year, at Baghdad's central morgue.
Meanwhile Martin Chulov (Guardian of Manchester) plays 'ignore the violence there, look over here!' Chulov is all giddy about a reconstructed shrine in Samarra which will allegedly soon re-open. It's more garbage from a piece of trash outlet and if you're wondering where little Chulov got his 'idea,' Dallas Morning News religious reporter Bruce Tomaso noted Monday an article in the Smithosian (by Joshua Hammer with photos by Max Becherer) which explores the rebuilding of the shrine. Chulov buries the lede which is that Sunnis and Shi'ites were working on the rebuilding together -- the only point of interest to the story that took beyond the Smithsonian for most people. Chulov 'forgets' to mention the brief by Tomaso or the article in the Smithsonian and wants you to believe he's reporting on something he witnessed (he's reporting from Baghdad, he didn't go to Samarra) -- that actually is funny. But the Guardian's nothing but a laugh these days anyway as it attempts to battle Google and whine about profits -- for those not in the know, the Guardian is set up in the non-profit mode. In reality, it's nothing but a party organ (and therefore apologist) for the neo-liberal New Labour Party. Any article not pushing/pimping/excusing neo-liberal policies exists in the hope that it will attract readers it might otherwise miss and hopefully bring them over to neo-liberalism during their stop-over. Joshua Hammer opens his article with:
I'm standing on a street corner in the center of Samarra--a strife-scarred Sunni city of 120,000 people on the Tigris River in Iraq--surrounded by a squad of American troops. The crackle of two-way radios and boots crunching shards of glass are the only sounds in this deserted neighborhood, once the center of public life, now a rubble-filled wasteland. I pass the ruins of police headquarters, blown up by an Al Qaeda in Iraq suicide truck bomber in May 2007, and enter a corridor lined by eight-foot-high slabs of concrete--"Texas barriers" or "T-walls," in U.S. military parlance. A heavily guarded checkpoint controls access to the most sensitive edifice in the country: the Askariya Shrine, or Mosque of the Golden Dome, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam.
Here, in February 2006, Al Qaeda militants blew up the delicate gold-tile dome atop the thousand-year-old Shiite shrine, igniting a spasm of sectarian killing that brought the country to the edge of civil war. For the past year and a half, a committee led by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has been working with United Nations consultants to clear debris from the site and to begin rebuilding the Golden Dome--a $16 million project that aims to restore the shrine sufficiently to receive Shiite pilgrims by this summer.
I've been trying for three days to get close to the shrine, stymied by an order from al-Maliki's office barring journalists from the site--an indication of how sensitive the bombing remains in this country. U.S. military officers in Samarra have pulled strings on my behalf with the mayor, Iraqi police officials and the Ministry of Planning in Baghdad. This time, after I reach the checkpoint, a friendly commander of the Askariya Brigade, a predominantly Shiite police force dispatched from Baghdad last year to guard the site, makes a call to his superiors in the Iraqi capital, then escorts me through.
Joshua Hammer wrote a very good article, we don't, however, buy into the belief that it was the moment that changed everything. The bombing provided photos and the press ran with those. The bombing was only one of a long series of incidents that cemented the sectarian conflict.
On the political front, Iraq remains in disarray. Yesterday Corinne Reilly and Ali Abbas offer "Kurdish-Arab tensions continue to grow in northern Iraq" (McClatchy Newspapers) and Liz Sly and Caesar Ahmed's "Establishment of Iraq provincial councils drags" (Los Angeles Times) documented many of the problems and today Steven Lee Myers (New York Times) reports:
Two and a half months after the elections, the 14 provinces that voted have only now begun forming provincial councils, the equivalent of state legislatures in the United States. Five provinces, including Babil, Najaf and Basra, still have no functioning governments, despite a deadline that passed last week, as party leaders squabble over the selection of governors, council chairmen and their deputies. Elections that were supposed to strengthen Iraq's democracy, unite its ethnic and sectarian factions, and begin to improve sorely needed basic services -- water, electricity, roads -- have instead exposed the fault lines that still threaten the country's stability.
In an update, Alsumaria reports a president and a vice president for Najaf's provincial council has been elected today. Myers refers to the economic 'problems' of Iraq -- other countries have economic problems, the puppet government in Baghdad is rolling in the cash. Provincial governments should not be effected by the decrease in price per barrel of oil unless there has been major theft within a province. The reason for that is none of them spent all their previous yearly budgets. They stockpiled that money. So were their budgets slashed, they'd still have the excess from previous years which they didn't spend. If they don't have that money, it's because someone or somones stole it. We'll return to the issue of the money 'troubles' shortly.
This morning the Daily Coverup (aka New York Times), found Alissa J. Rubin joining with Rod Nordland for more please-love-us-and-don't-kick-us-out-of-the-country efforts. This follows yesterday's garbage (Rubin's "Iraq Tries to Prove Autonomy, and Makes Inroads") made it into print for anyone who didn't grasp what was what yesterday. Today's article never goes deeper than the headline ("U.S. Military Expresses Concern About Perception of an Iraqi Crackdown on Sunnis"). It's not an article, it's a damn press release and your first clue is the fact that the headline expresses a point of view which Rubin and Nordland carry through in their article. Reporters do not do that. If one person has a point of view and they present that point of view in their article, they also present other points of view. So X is saying there is no problem. A reporter then goes to Z, goes to Y, etc. to find out whether or not the claim is true. Various points of view are presented -- especially when a claim cannot be independently verified.Rubin and Nordland don't do that. They're not interested in evaluating the claim, they're only interested in making sure they were good little stenographers who dotted every "i" and crossed every "t" in what the US military told them to write down. It's shameful and it's embarrassing. The New York Times is never supposed to be part of the US military's counter-insurgency operations but that's what they do this morning and it's shameful and it needs to be called out. There is no excuse for it at all.For the record, the press didn't create the tensions between Sahwa and Nouri. Those tensions were always present and you can go back to 2007 reports and find that. In terms of the Baghdad armed conflict which took place last month, BBC and Reuters were the only ones filing early reports (when the conflict had just started) and those were innocuous reports nothing like what would come out by the end of the day about US forces joining with Iraqi forces to battle Sahwa in the Fadhil section of Baghdad. The press didn't create that armed struggle, didn't encourage it and, honestly, was caught by surprise when those tensions flared up so dramatically. Yesterday Rubin served up propaganda that rivaled the garbage Eason Jordan attoned for in a Times' column (he admitted CNN regularly covered up stories of abuse in Iraq to curry favor with Saddam Hussein). Today, Rubin and Nordland enlist in the US military in order to pull a fast one on the public in the US and in Iraq. Today they set journalism aside because they've been told they need to serve a 'higher purpose.' Any journalist who has so little pride in their field that they'd do this sort of stenography needs to take a good hard look at themselves and whether they belong in journalism.What Rubin and Nordland have written is an embarrassment and it's an embarrassment for their paper which indicates just how awful their article is. Check "Rudith Miller" for how the paper works. It always cowtows to what the US government wants. But even Judith, even Judith Miller, knew you just bury the contrary opinions when presenting government assertions as fact. Rubin and Nordland present US government assertions as fact but they're worse than Judith Miller. Take a moment to grasp that. While Miller would wait until paragraph 13 to briefly note a voice that called into question a government claim, Rubin and Nordland just eliminate those voices, they refuse to cover them, they refuse to include them. The US military is doing cartwheels this morning because they dictated an article to the Times and the Times ran it without any efforts to verify it and without any efforts to include any other opinions. This is propaganda pure and simple and, no, that is not how an allegedly free press works. And for those who wish to play as dumb as Rubin and Nordland, among the people real reporters could have interviewed to round out and evaluate a claim were: Iraqi police officers, Sahwa, academics who follow the situation (especially academics in Baghdad and Dubai) and NGOs. By refusing to do so, by printing 18 paragraphs that's nothing but an attempt at perception management on the part of the US military, the reporters disgrace themselves and their profession.
And we return to the money issue by noting one of the most laughable US military assertions that made it into print this morning, that Sahwa's not being paid due to money shortages. Nouri's got money problems because of falling oil prices, the US military insists and Rubin and Nordland spit back at American readers without question. From yesterday's snapshot, "AFP reports reality, 'Iraq has signed a contract with British engineering and construction company Foster Wheeler to build the country's largest-ever oil refinery, an Iraqi official said on Wednesday'." The cost of the plant? $128,000,000. That deal was announced yesterday. And Rubin and Nordland want to repeat (without question) US military tales of Nouri having to count and watch his pennies. Remember Nouri always says "only boys who save their pennies make my rainy day." Alsumaria reports Iraq's Shi'ite vice president Adel Abdul Mehdi met with French president Nicolas Sarkozy today and delcared that oil conglomerate Total was very likely to win a contract in Iraq -- that would mean, pay attention, more money forked over to Iraq. Meanwhile Simon Webb and Amena Bakr (Reuters) interview Iraqi MP Jabir Khalifa who states that the Parliament is seeking to revoke the contract Royal Dutch Shell made with the country's Oil Ministry because it is "unconstitutional and detrimental to Iraq's economic interests".
While Rubin and Nordland serve up propaganda, independent journalist Dahr Jamail offers some reality at ZNet:
While the US military maintains 138,000 soldiers in Iraq, and there are over 200,000 private contractors enabling the occupation, and the president intends on keeping at least 50,000 US troops in Iraq indefinitely, Obama managed to keep a straight face whilst pressuring the Iraqi government to "take responsibility for their country" and adding that the United States has "no claim on Iraqi territory and resources." All of this nice talk from President Obama, which he articulated just hours after a spate of bombings across Baghdad killed 15 Iraqis and wounded 27, was complimented by his and Bush's Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who claimed that al-Qaeda in Iraq appeared to be making a "last gasp" attempt to foment sectarian violence in Baghdad. Those who have been following the news about the US occupation of Iraq closely over the last six years know all too well how many "last gasps" and "turning the corners" there have been - of which there are too many to count. This one is no different, and the fallacy of the statement was punctuated on April 10 in Mosul, when a suicide car bomb attack killed five US soldiers, along with two Iraqi troops. Taking another page out of the Bush playbook for the occupation of Iraq, while speaking at Baghdad's airport, Obama also said the next 18 months are "going to be a critical period." Again, there have been more "critical periods" in Iraq throughout the occupation than I care to remember. Two days after Obama's visit to Baghdad's airport, Gen. Ray Odierno told The Times that US combat troops may remain in Iraq's cities beyond the June 30 deadline mandated by the Status of Forces Agreement. Of course, throughout all of this rhetoric, the glaring omission is any discussion about the massive "enduring" US military bases in Iraq and the US "embassy" that is the size of the Vatican City. Meanwhile, the bloodletting and destruction of Iraq continues.
Surprisingly, Dahr Jamail isn't the only one taking on propaganda. Peter Baker (New York Times) observes, "For all the perception of a major course correction, Mr. Obama so far appears to be presiding over a foreign policy that may seem more different than it really is. As Mr. Obama heads to Mexico on Thursday for his second foreign trip of the month, he is bringing with him many of the same American interests as his predecessor, even if they are wrapped in a different package." On Iraq, Baker explains, "Mr. Obama's decision to withdraw from Iraq is not as sharp a change as it once seemed during the presidential campaign. Mr. Obama deferred to military commanders in agreeing to leave the vast bulk of American forces in place until next year, when a phased pullout would begin, leaving 50,000 troops in place after August 2010." The third term of George W. Bush is more than underway as is obvious by this headline at CBS News "CIA Off The Hook For Past Waterboarding"-- no punishment for those crimes against humanity. Barack prefers to instead just walk on by, don't stop, just walk on by. How very Bully Boy Bush of him. The policies of the previous administration also continue when it comes to the silence on the targeting of Iraq's LGBT community as Doug Ireland reports at GayCityNews noting State Dept staffer Felming (who spent a year in Iraq under Bully Boy Bush) dismissing concerns for LGBT Iraqis recently. Ireland reports:
Hili told this reporter, "There is an intensive media campaign against homosexuals in Iraq at this time which we believe is inspired by the Ministry of the Interior, both in the daily newspapers and on nearly all the television stations. Their reports brand all gays as 'perverts' and try to portray us as terrorists who are undermining the moral fiber of Iraqi youth." Hili said the current homo-hating media campaign appears to have been sparked as an unfortunate reaction to an April 4 Reuters dispatch that reported: "Two gay men were killed in Baghdad's Sadr City slum, a local official said, and police said they had found the bodies of four more after clerics urged a crackdown on a perceived spread of homosexuality... The police source said the bodies of four gay men were unearthed in Sadr City on March 25, each bearing a sign reading 'pervert' in Arabic on their chests."
Amnesty International has called out the targeting -- publicly called out the targeting which puts them way ahead of the United Nations, the US White House and the US State Department. We'll note this section of Ireland's report:
Dalia Hashad of Amnesty International told Gay City News, "Amnesty has been unable to get from the Iraqi government any confirmation that the men are in custody or that they are facing execution, but from what we have heard from individuals in Iraq, they were sentenced to die for belonging to a 'banned group.' We are protesting to the Iraqi government and are continuing to try to investigate, but it is very difficult to get any information about such prisoners in Iraq."
Dalia Hashad is an attorney and, along with Michael Ratner, Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith, she co-hosts WBAI's Law and Disorder. Rex Wockner (PrideSource) adds that there is a lack of clarity over whether or not Iraq re-instated (in 2003) a law making same-sex relations illegal. He quotes Iraqi LGBT's Ali Hili explaining, "That's what they have been told by a judge in a brief court hearing. I don't think this is in the Iraqi constitution as a death penalty (crime). The court is ... kangaroo-style. It was brief and people weren't able to present legal representation or defend themselves in that kind of court. Our information is that these five members have been convicted to death for running activities of a forbidden organization on Iraqi soil."
In the most shocking refusal to report propaganda, Deborah Haynes (Times of London) takes a train ride in Baghdad and quickly grasps that it is proganada and -- pay attention Alissa J. Rubin and Rod Nordland -- reports examples of that. An alleged commuter train, supposedly to transport workers, "leaves at 8am -- rather late in the morning for Baghdad's only commuter service" and that's far from the only puzzling moment. She asks a 'commuter' where he is going and he gets the destination wrong. And then there is this:
The picture-perfect scene looks too good to be true. There is also the mystery of why commuters are so eagerly commuting in reverse, from the centre of the city to the outskirts. Further fuelling our suspicion, a local television crew is conveniently on hand to film the hustle and bustle. A press officer at the station tells us upon arrival that the train has been laid on especially for the media. He then changes his story, after seeing our crestfallen expressions, to explain it is a later service that sometimes follows the earlier train at 6.30am.
This is really an amazing report and praise for Deborah Haynes for reporting it.
Meanwhile Alsumaria reports, "Iraq Army units supported by US air forces launched a wide scale operation in southern Kirkuk after a suicide bombing killed 10 policemen and wounded around 20 others. Second Brigade Commander Abdul Amir Al Zaidi affirmed that two senior officials of Ansar Al Sunna were killed and two others were wounded in the operation after Iraq Army received intelligence about their involvement in yesterday's bombing." They report it and only they report it, why is that? A major operation, an assault, and where is the press coverage from US outlets?
In some of today's reported violence . . .
Bombings?
Laith Hammoudi and Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Mosul grenade attack which left three injured, a Mosul car bombing which injured three prison guards and a Baquba sticky bombing which claimed the life of 1 Sahwa leader.
Shootings?
Laith Hammoudi and Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 1 police officer shot dead in Mosul and another injured. KUNA reports a border clash between the Turkish military and the PKK resulted in 1 Turkish soldier being killed.
Yesteday's snapshot noted the conviction of US Master Sgt John E. Hatley in Germany. In today's New York Times, Paul von Zielbauer quotes James D. Culp ("former Army trial defense lawyer"), "When the first sergeant of a company snaps, taking a sergeant first class and a senior medic with him, it's a sign that they've just had too much." AP reminds, "Military cases go through an automatic appeal process, and his sentence also could be reduced in a clemency proceeding."
iraqthe new york timessteven lee myers
alissa j. rubinrod nordlandmcclatchy newspaperscorinne reillyali abbasthe los angeles timescaesar ahmedliz sly
aseel kamipaul von zielbauer
kim sengupta
laith hammoudimcclatchy newspapers
leila fadel
hussein kadhim
peter baker
mohammed abbas
dahr jamail
doug ireland
law and disordermichael ratnermichael smithdalia hashadheidi boghosian
deborah haynes
The U.S. Army will hear the case of Sgt. Matthis Chiroux, an Individual Ready Reservist who last summer publicly refused activation and deployment orders to Iraq, on April 21 at 1 Reserve Way in Overland, St. Louis, MO, at 9 a.m. Chiroux, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, refused to participate in what he described as "an illegal and immoral occupation" May 15th, 2008, in Washington D.C., after nine other veterans testified to Members of the U.S. Congress about atrocities they experienced during deployments to Iraq.
Chiroux also vowed to remain public in the U.S. to defend himself from any charges brought against him by the military. (see matthisresists.us for a record of that speech and others by Chiroux)
"My resistance as a noncommissioned officer to this abhorrent occupation is just as legitimate now as it was last year," said Chiroux, adding, "Soldiers have a duty to adhere to the international laws of war described as supreme in Art. 6 Para. 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which we swear to abide by before the orders of any superior, including our former or current president."
Following Chiroux's refusal to deploy, the military did not contact him until after he and 10 other IVAW members marched on the final presidential debate Oct. 15, 2008, in Hempstead, N.Y. demanding to question then Senators Obama and McCain regarding their war policies and plans to care for returning veterans. After the veterans were brutalized and arrested by police, (one suffered a fractured skull and is currently suing the police for damages) the Army charged Chiroux with "misconduct" for refusing to deploy, announcing their intentions to discharge him from the reserves as a result.
"I go now to St. Louis to honor my promises and convictions," said Chiroux. "Obama or No-Bama, the military must cease prosecuting Soldiers of conscience, and we will demonstrate to them why." Following the hearing, Chiroux and other IVAW members will testify about their military experiences which led them all to resist in different capacities the U.S.'s Overseas Contingency Operation (formerly the Global War on Terror).
I want to put that with something from the March 6th snapshot:
Yesterday in NYC, Elaine Brower, Matthis Chiroux and Debra Sweet discussed upcoming actions and the need for them. Click here to stream at wearechangetv. Debra Sweet is the national director of World Can't Wait and this from the discussion:
Debra Sweet: To my right is Matthis Chiroux who is a resister of the Iraq War -- someone who came out of the US army and decided that he would refuse orders to go into Iraq. And he's courageously right now fighting a battle with the US army so that he's not put in a position of having to back off that stand and he's trying to make a fight on principle. That the war is illegitimate in the first place and no one should have to serve. We got to know him very well when he led a group of Iraq Veterans Against the War and hundreds of others of us to protest at the last debate between Obama and McCain out in Hampstea,d New York -- a bunch of them got beat up. And what they did were very righteous. To my left is Elaine Brower who is also a member of World Can't Wait and also a member of many other organizations -- such as Peace Action, Military Families Speak Out -- and is leading a national effort to get the Guard out of the federal government which would allow, we hope, them to be pulled out of US military adventures around the [world] including Iraq and Afghanistan. So we want to just have a conversation first among ourselves and, once we turn the cameras off, we'll bring everyone else in New York into this conversation. And again we're urging people listening right now to listen and then go out and make your plans for March 19th. Thursday March 19th is two weeks from today. There's plenty of time to make the kind of strong message we need to put together, emanating from this country. So I want to turn to Matthis and Elaine and ask a couple of questions. We're going to have a conversation. First of all what do we think about the responsibilities of the people living in this country in regards to the occupations of both Iraq and Afghanistan and especially the escalation of Afghanistan 17,000 more troops being sent by Obama and what about the responsibility we have for the US torture state and the announcement that, number one, there will be no prosecution, if Obama has anything to say about it, of the people who put together the us torture state and, number two, that he wants to continue both the use of state secrets to keep this quiet and secret rendition to take people from third countries to be tortured. I guess I've given an indication of what I think about this but let's hear from Matthis and Elaine.
Matthis Chiroux: Hi, everybody here, everybody here, joining us at home via the internet, all around the world. Thank you for taking this moment to try and understand where our responsibility lies in this movement to resist the crimes of our government. What Debra said is very true. I think it is our responsibility to not only be organizing and demonstrating against these occupations but to being taking responsibly for them because ultimately I believe this isn't Bush's war, this isn't Obama's war, this is America's war. And in a democratic society, the more we would like to believe that we have a say so, in the same sense the more responsibility that we share for the actions of our elected representatives. It is imperative that the entire country go into mourning on March 19th for the 2 million dead of both of the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our movement needs to be distancing itself from President Obama. I'm sorry to say it because I know he was many of our candidate. But he has chosen not to be our president instead he has chosen to be an emperor and I protest emperor's and everybody should in this entire country and across this entire planet. So ultimately it is our responsibility and if we are not in the streets on March 19th protesting loudly and furiously the crimes of our government the world will consider it complicity and we cannot afford for that to happen. So, as a brief opening statement, yes, it is absolutely our responsibility to oppose these crimes and to demonstrate in the streets and to be putting our bodies on the line for peace and justice as citizens as the world not simply America. And I'll turn it over to Elaine.
Elaine: Good evening everybody and thanks for being here and thanks for watching. I just want to say that we invaded Iraq. It's six years now. And we protested the invasion before it happened and we need to keep protesting the occupation. And people sort of got complacent with the election coming. And we see that now there's slogans out there "Yes we can end the war," "Yes we can bring the troops home" but we're not saying what we used to say. We're not demanding -- demanding -- that the occupation and the wars end now. What we need to do for the world -- because the Afghani civilians are depending upon us, the soldiers are depending on us and the Iraqi civilians are depending on us to -- get out in the streets in mass mobilization on the 19th and shut down business as usual. We've been saying this for six years we've tried and we haven't accomplished it. People voted for change twice in this country In 2006 they went out and they tried to vote in Democrats for change and that didn't happen. And now they thought, "Well okay so we're going to vote in a new administration that's all Democrats and yes we're gonna get change." Well maybe we'll get some domestic change but we certainly are not getting a change in foreign policy. In fact If you listen to the pundits, they've been saying that they're very disappointed and things are absolutely not changing under this administration. So it's up to us in the movement to make sure that we're visible not on a weekend but during the week when people can see us out in the streets. And I know this is difficult to do this and I know -- I've been doing it myself for seven years, pretty much everybody here has been doing it and I know people that are watching have been doing it. But we cannot stop. This is the point where really need to mobilize and say, "No, you're not going to continue this killing and occupation in our name with out dollars." Obama's not talking about taking the mercenaries out of Iraq or Afghanistan. He's only talking about possibly drawing down troops, maybe. And he could always change his mind depending upon what goes down on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan. So we've got to make sure that they know we're out there.
Debra Sweet: I'd like to talk for a moment, since I raised it and since it's a demand, I think it's a just demand, for March 19th The occupation of Iraq has to end. I think most people are very clear on that. But I will tell you this right now, many people are not clear about Afghanistan. Many people are not clear that it is a terrible thing to be sending drones dropping bombs on people in Pakistan. Many people are not clear that Obama talking about diplomacy with Iran can be and has been used as just another way of making war on the Middle East and moving towards controlling it. And I think our responsibility -- yes, I think we have a responsibility to resist and I really agree with what Matthis and Elaine are saying, but we have even a heavier responsibility. We have to go out to the people we know who are not in this room, who are not watching who are thinking about something else and thinking everything has been solved and talk to them about why sending 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan after you've already raised the civilian murder rate. The killing of civilians, 40% in the last year, is absolutely unacceptable. And this is, I think, part of this heavier layer of responsibilty that I'd like us all to think about and to talk about. What does it take for people to start looking at this situation not just as Americans but through the eyes of humanity? And to give you a really shaper example, I was at a peace meeting two nights ago and it was a film called Obama's War. A representative of United For Peace and Justice -- of which World Can't Wait and many of us are members -- actually said, "Aren't you glad this is Obama's War and not McCain's War?" And I said, and I thought and said to myself, "How do the people in feel that this is Obama's War?" Do we think they're celebrating that the bombs being dropped on them have a big "D" for Democrat on them? I think hell no. This is an outrage that this president right now is still being seen by people all over the country as an anti-war president. Let's just be for real, this is a continuation of an unjust war no matter what it is called and it is a rebraniding of injustice in the name of something that it isn't, peace. What do you think?
Matthis Chiroux: I absolutely agree. I think one of the most important things for this movement to remember right now is that while this war was a liability to the Bush administration, it is something that was an embarssment for them. Every time something about the war came up, they were on the defensive -- trying to defend why we had to go get Saddam Hussein and why we still had to be going after bin laden in Afghanista. And people thought, "Oh, this is your fault. This is your mistake." This war is not a liabilty to Obma. This war is potentially something he can use to look like he's being strong on terror as a Democrat. This is something that he can escalate. And if the slightest, tiniest bit of progress can come out of it, this country will want to hail him as the hero of peace and justice and all of that stuff when, in reality, what we're doing is what we've always done. And I can say it having been in the US military and having been part of the occupation of German and Japan sixty years after WWII. I literally lived in the old Axis of Evil. And what I learned is that: we never leave. Right now in Iraq, while people believe that the war is over and that we won and we've struck a blow upon the anvil of imperialism and so on and so forth, it is just not the case. We are building permanent bases and leaving troops on a permanent timetable when we ought to be admitting wrong and paying reperations to people whose society we have destroyed. And there's no amount of capitulation that we can do to the Obama administration that is going to make the bombs stop falling. It was one of the first things he did when he took office, the bombs started falling on Pakistan. And then it came out that he was going to continue this legacy of state secrets to hide the fact that tortture does take place on a regular basis by the orders of the US government . Fahad Hasmi is still lingushing in solitary confiement right here in NYC We're talking about Guantanamo closing in a year as being a great victory for this movement when, in fact, all that's going to happen is they're going to shut down and they're going to move them back into the federal system here where every bit as much injustice is occuring. For those who do not know, Fahad Hashmi is an American citizen who has been held in solitary confiement now for more than a year while in a state of presumed innocence for the supposed crime of allowing af riend to sleep on his couch for two months three or four years ago. It's craziness. Obama . . . I, right now, have a hearing with the military where I'm going to have to defend my decision not to report to duty last summer to deploy to Iraq The army's decision [applause], I say that because the army's decision to prosecute me, to set a date and show up, didn't come until after Obama took office. If we could expect serious change that would have stopped. But It's not. Those policies are continuing policies that are keeping poeple like Fahad literally, I'm sorry you don't have to water board someone to torture him. I think leaving him in a solitary confined space for a year without telling them what they did wrong is torture and we have to oppose that just as loudly. Look we have to understand change will absoultely not manifest itself in this country until we cease the unjust practices of the past. And when those unjust practices are simply being rebranded under a different face and a different name, it is our responsibility as a movement to provide clear contrast to something that people want to believe in but is ultimately a fairytale. Obama has plotted* a clear choice for this country from imperalism to impearlism-lite And I said it before and I'll say it again, as any ex-smoker will tell you, just because you switched from Reds to Marlboro Lights doesn't mean you quit the habit. You don't quit the habit until you put it out and we need to extinughs this war on terror because until we do the habit continues
Debra Sweet: I want to ask Elaine a specific question because I've known Elaine snce after her son was deployed to Afghanistan -- right aft 9-11 -- and since then he's been in Iraq twice and in fact he's there for the second time now. So this is a very personal question and a personal quest but what do we say to people who say that Afghanistan is the good -- "Yeah, yeah, I know Iraq is bad, we should get out of there. But what about Afghanistan isn't that the good war, isn't this a good thing?"
Elaine: Well it's interesting because as a member of Military Families Speak Out, we just opened up a discussion form because it became a hot topic. Now what's happening is a lot of the military families are seeing their loved ones instead of going to Iraq, they're going to Afghanistan. And this is something they never expected. So there's a real debate now amongst military families, shouldn't we add this to our mission, shouldn't this be a part of our mission statment that we do not want to send our soldiers to afhgnaistan? And people now are sort of getting on board with that it's dawning on them, "Well why are we going to afghanistan?" They're questioning that: "Well what are we looking for? The Afghani people never attacked us. Okay, so mabye it was bin Laden, who knows? We don't even know that for a fact. But let's say it was that's one person and al Qaeadea is one group of people. So we just bomb Afghansitan? Do we send soldiers into the mountains to kill innocent people in villages that have nothing to do with this?" So this discussion is starting to surface. And, no, it is absolutely wrong to send soldiers into Afghanistan. In fact today I was talking about National Guard and now they're taking the national guard and sending them to Afghanistan. For what? Our National Guard is supposed to be here in the United States responding to any emergeinces we have here -- whether they be hurricanes or accidents of major magnitude. But they're no longer here. In fact, yesterday in Wisoncisn, they sent 3200 national gaurd members to Iraq they happened to go, but here from Rochester we lost 2000 national guard going to Afhgnistan. So this is definitaly a situation where, being a military family member, I live and breathe this every day. I have to tell you personally when you have children what you do -- or a loved one -- I knd of have this little grid in my head. And I know where my daughter is. And I know where my husband is. And when my son joined the military I lost track of him in this grid. And I had to place him where ever he was. And I was thinking today on my wall, I used to have a map and I had thumbtacks in it. And before 9-11 and he was in Afghansitan I'd put a thumbtack and then he went to Australia and East Timor and then he kind of got lost in Iraq and it was very traumatic for me. And I have been going through this for seven years. And there are other military family members who are saying "When is this going to end? Even if he's going to keep 50,000 troops in Iraq, who are those 50,000? Are they the same people that have gone three four times already? Or are they now freshly recruiting right out of high school" -- which we've seen new young people -- "to go over there to do what? What are they protecting?" They're protecting this monstrotisty of an embassy What are we doing there? What's the purpose? So Afghanistan is defintely wrong. I know that and I think now it's sort of bubbling to the surface and people are starting to question that which they didn't before. But I think we're going to see more of that. Getting out on the 19th, to me, is very critical because . . . I do not want my son to come back from Iraq -- he's supposed to come back in June, I hope he comes back in one piece -- I don't want to see him go to Afghanistan. Or back to Iraq for that matter. I want this over and I think pretty much everyone who is in my position does also.
All three spoke important truths and I don't wish to take anything away from the other two speakers but Matthis really broke with the 'script' and called truth to power. Bless him for doing so. He is very brave. (Adam Kokesh has also shown real bravery.) That's what it's going to take to take on the War Party dominating the US and end the empiralistic, illegal wars.
You can read an interview with Matthis by clicking here. C.I. will be noting Matthis' press release in tomorrow's snapshot but she knows how important I think Matthis is and gave me the chance to note it first in our community. (Thank you, C.I.) For more on Matthis, you can check his website.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Thursday, April 16, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, Iraq tries to firm up a deal with Total oil, the LGBT community remains targeted, New York Times runs state propaganda passed off as 'reporting,' Deborah Haynes exposes state propaganda (demonstrating what actual reporting is), and much more.
Today a bombing attack on a US and Iraqi military base in Al Anbar Province took place and the results are in disputes. BBC maintains that there were no deaths but twenty-six people were wounded. Leila Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) explains Iraqi Maj Gen Mrdhi Mishhen Al Mahalawi and others are insisting that no one died. Aseel Kami (Reuters) states 16 are dead with at least fifty injured, that a suicide bomber in Iraqi military garb took his own life and the lives of others by detonating "at the base's cafeteria". At the New York Times website, Steven Lee Myers reports the confusion, offers reports of "at least 15 Iraqi soldiers" dead and identifies the location as Tamouz Air Base while noting that all journalists have been banned from the base and from the hospital where the wounded and/or dead were taken. As stated several times already this month, Nouri al-Maliki has no respect for the press, has no interest in a free press and the idea that 'democracy' will ever come to Iraq while US puppet Nouri sits in the catbird seat is laughable. AP spoke to two Iraqi officers and allowed them to remain nameless, one confirmed deaths but would not give a number, the other told AP 16 Iraqi soldiers had died. Iran's Press TV also states 16 killed and says fifty were wounded.
While the puppet government attempts to control the reporting on today's bombing, Kim Sengupta (Indpendent of London) reports on a new study by Iraqi Body Count which finds that "[a]ir strikes and artillery barrages have taken a heavy toll among the most vulnerable of the Iraqi people, with children and women forming a disproportionate number of the dead." The report, entitled "The Weapons That Kill Civilians -- Deaths of Children and Noncombatants in Iraq, 2003-2008," is co-authored by Iraqi Body Count and King's College London and Royal Holloway, University of London in the UK and it is published in the New England Journal of Medicine. IBC notes:
For Iraqi females, and children, events involving air attacks and mortar fire were the most dangerous. In air attacks causing civilian deaths, 46% of victims of known gender were female, and 39% of victims of known age were children. Mortar attacks claimed similarly high proportions of victims in these two demographic groups (44% and 42%). By comparison, 11% of victims across all weapons types were Iraqi females, and 9% were children. The authors argue that their findings showing that air attacks (whether involving bombs or missiles) and mortars killed relatively high proportions of females and children is further evidence that these weapons should not be directed at civilian areas by parties to conflict because of their indiscriminate nature. As co-author Professor John Sloboda of Royal Holloway, University of London, who is also a co-founder of IBC, notes, "Our weapon-specific findings have implications for a wide range of conflicts, because the patterns found in this study are likely to be replicated for these weapons whenever they are used."
Alsumaria notes the report finds that for all Iraqis, "abudctions of people who are later executed" results in the bulk of deaths. "Relatives of the dead, most of them women and some quietly wiping away tears, sit in a room trying to spot the missing among the photos of men and boys, many mutilated or severely decayed, cycled on a bank of screens," reports Mohammed Abbas (Reuters) on the unclaimed and unidentied corpses that continue, year after year, at Baghdad's central morgue.
Meanwhile Martin Chulov (Guardian of Manchester) plays 'ignore the violence there, look over here!' Chulov is all giddy about a reconstructed shrine in Samarra which will allegedly soon re-open. It's more garbage from a piece of trash outlet and if you're wondering where little Chulov got his 'idea,' Dallas Morning News religious reporter Bruce Tomaso noted Monday an article in the Smithosian (by Joshua Hammer with photos by Max Becherer) which explores the rebuilding of the shrine. Chulov buries the lede which is that Sunnis and Shi'ites were working on the rebuilding together -- the only point of interest to the story that took beyond the Smithsonian for most people. Chulov 'forgets' to mention the brief by Tomaso or the article in the Smithsonian and wants you to believe he's reporting on something he witnessed (he's reporting from Baghdad, he didn't go to Samarra) -- that actually is funny. But the Guardian's nothing but a laugh these days anyway as it attempts to battle Google and whine about profits -- for those not in the know, the Guardian is set up in the non-profit mode. In reality, it's nothing but a party organ (and therefore apologist) for the neo-liberal New Labour Party. Any article not pushing/pimping/excusing neo-liberal policies exists in the hope that it will attract readers it might otherwise miss and hopefully bring them over to neo-liberalism during their stop-over. Joshua Hammer opens his article with:
I'm standing on a street corner in the center of Samarra--a strife-scarred Sunni city of 120,000 people on the Tigris River in Iraq--surrounded by a squad of American troops. The crackle of two-way radios and boots crunching shards of glass are the only sounds in this deserted neighborhood, once the center of public life, now a rubble-filled wasteland. I pass the ruins of police headquarters, blown up by an Al Qaeda in Iraq suicide truck bomber in May 2007, and enter a corridor lined by eight-foot-high slabs of concrete--"Texas barriers" or "T-walls," in U.S. military parlance. A heavily guarded checkpoint controls access to the most sensitive edifice in the country: the Askariya Shrine, or Mosque of the Golden Dome, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam.
Here, in February 2006, Al Qaeda militants blew up the delicate gold-tile dome atop the thousand-year-old Shiite shrine, igniting a spasm of sectarian killing that brought the country to the edge of civil war. For the past year and a half, a committee led by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has been working with United Nations consultants to clear debris from the site and to begin rebuilding the Golden Dome--a $16 million project that aims to restore the shrine sufficiently to receive Shiite pilgrims by this summer.
I've been trying for three days to get close to the shrine, stymied by an order from al-Maliki's office barring journalists from the site--an indication of how sensitive the bombing remains in this country. U.S. military officers in Samarra have pulled strings on my behalf with the mayor, Iraqi police officials and the Ministry of Planning in Baghdad. This time, after I reach the checkpoint, a friendly commander of the Askariya Brigade, a predominantly Shiite police force dispatched from Baghdad last year to guard the site, makes a call to his superiors in the Iraqi capital, then escorts me through.
Joshua Hammer wrote a very good article, we don't, however, buy into the belief that it was the moment that changed everything. The bombing provided photos and the press ran with those. The bombing was only one of a long series of incidents that cemented the sectarian conflict.
On the political front, Iraq remains in disarray. Yesterday Corinne Reilly and Ali Abbas offer "Kurdish-Arab tensions continue to grow in northern Iraq" (McClatchy Newspapers) and Liz Sly and Caesar Ahmed's "Establishment of Iraq provincial councils drags" (Los Angeles Times) documented many of the problems and today Steven Lee Myers (New York Times) reports:
Two and a half months after the elections, the 14 provinces that voted have only now begun forming provincial councils, the equivalent of state legislatures in the United States. Five provinces, including Babil, Najaf and Basra, still have no functioning governments, despite a deadline that passed last week, as party leaders squabble over the selection of governors, council chairmen and their deputies. Elections that were supposed to strengthen Iraq's democracy, unite its ethnic and sectarian factions, and begin to improve sorely needed basic services -- water, electricity, roads -- have instead exposed the fault lines that still threaten the country's stability.
In an update, Alsumaria reports a president and a vice president for Najaf's provincial council has been elected today. Myers refers to the economic 'problems' of Iraq -- other countries have economic problems, the puppet government in Baghdad is rolling in the cash. Provincial governments should not be effected by the decrease in price per barrel of oil unless there has been major theft within a province. The reason for that is none of them spent all their previous yearly budgets. They stockpiled that money. So were their budgets slashed, they'd still have the excess from previous years which they didn't spend. If they don't have that money, it's because someone or somones stole it. We'll return to the issue of the money 'troubles' shortly.
This morning the Daily Coverup (aka New York Times), found Alissa J. Rubin joining with Rod Nordland for more please-love-us-and-don't-kick-us-out-of-the-country efforts. This follows yesterday's garbage (Rubin's "Iraq Tries to Prove Autonomy, and Makes Inroads") made it into print for anyone who didn't grasp what was what yesterday. Today's article never goes deeper than the headline ("U.S. Military Expresses Concern About Perception of an Iraqi Crackdown on Sunnis"). It's not an article, it's a damn press release and your first clue is the fact that the headline expresses a point of view which Rubin and Nordland carry through in their article. Reporters do not do that. If one person has a point of view and they present that point of view in their article, they also present other points of view. So X is saying there is no problem. A reporter then goes to Z, goes to Y, etc. to find out whether or not the claim is true. Various points of view are presented -- especially when a claim cannot be independently verified.Rubin and Nordland don't do that. They're not interested in evaluating the claim, they're only interested in making sure they were good little stenographers who dotted every "i" and crossed every "t" in what the US military told them to write down. It's shameful and it's embarrassing. The New York Times is never supposed to be part of the US military's counter-insurgency operations but that's what they do this morning and it's shameful and it needs to be called out. There is no excuse for it at all.For the record, the press didn't create the tensions between Sahwa and Nouri. Those tensions were always present and you can go back to 2007 reports and find that. In terms of the Baghdad armed conflict which took place last month, BBC and Reuters were the only ones filing early reports (when the conflict had just started) and those were innocuous reports nothing like what would come out by the end of the day about US forces joining with Iraqi forces to battle Sahwa in the Fadhil section of Baghdad. The press didn't create that armed struggle, didn't encourage it and, honestly, was caught by surprise when those tensions flared up so dramatically. Yesterday Rubin served up propaganda that rivaled the garbage Eason Jordan attoned for in a Times' column (he admitted CNN regularly covered up stories of abuse in Iraq to curry favor with Saddam Hussein). Today, Rubin and Nordland enlist in the US military in order to pull a fast one on the public in the US and in Iraq. Today they set journalism aside because they've been told they need to serve a 'higher purpose.' Any journalist who has so little pride in their field that they'd do this sort of stenography needs to take a good hard look at themselves and whether they belong in journalism.What Rubin and Nordland have written is an embarrassment and it's an embarrassment for their paper which indicates just how awful their article is. Check "Rudith Miller" for how the paper works. It always cowtows to what the US government wants. But even Judith, even Judith Miller, knew you just bury the contrary opinions when presenting government assertions as fact. Rubin and Nordland present US government assertions as fact but they're worse than Judith Miller. Take a moment to grasp that. While Miller would wait until paragraph 13 to briefly note a voice that called into question a government claim, Rubin and Nordland just eliminate those voices, they refuse to cover them, they refuse to include them. The US military is doing cartwheels this morning because they dictated an article to the Times and the Times ran it without any efforts to verify it and without any efforts to include any other opinions. This is propaganda pure and simple and, no, that is not how an allegedly free press works. And for those who wish to play as dumb as Rubin and Nordland, among the people real reporters could have interviewed to round out and evaluate a claim were: Iraqi police officers, Sahwa, academics who follow the situation (especially academics in Baghdad and Dubai) and NGOs. By refusing to do so, by printing 18 paragraphs that's nothing but an attempt at perception management on the part of the US military, the reporters disgrace themselves and their profession.
And we return to the money issue by noting one of the most laughable US military assertions that made it into print this morning, that Sahwa's not being paid due to money shortages. Nouri's got money problems because of falling oil prices, the US military insists and Rubin and Nordland spit back at American readers without question. From yesterday's snapshot, "AFP reports reality, 'Iraq has signed a contract with British engineering and construction company Foster Wheeler to build the country's largest-ever oil refinery, an Iraqi official said on Wednesday'." The cost of the plant? $128,000,000. That deal was announced yesterday. And Rubin and Nordland want to repeat (without question) US military tales of Nouri having to count and watch his pennies. Remember Nouri always says "only boys who save their pennies make my rainy day." Alsumaria reports Iraq's Shi'ite vice president Adel Abdul Mehdi met with French president Nicolas Sarkozy today and delcared that oil conglomerate Total was very likely to win a contract in Iraq -- that would mean, pay attention, more money forked over to Iraq. Meanwhile Simon Webb and Amena Bakr (Reuters) interview Iraqi MP Jabir Khalifa who states that the Parliament is seeking to revoke the contract Royal Dutch Shell made with the country's Oil Ministry because it is "unconstitutional and detrimental to Iraq's economic interests".
While Rubin and Nordland serve up propaganda, independent journalist Dahr Jamail offers some reality at ZNet:
While the US military maintains 138,000 soldiers in Iraq, and there are over 200,000 private contractors enabling the occupation, and the president intends on keeping at least 50,000 US troops in Iraq indefinitely, Obama managed to keep a straight face whilst pressuring the Iraqi government to "take responsibility for their country" and adding that the United States has "no claim on Iraqi territory and resources." All of this nice talk from President Obama, which he articulated just hours after a spate of bombings across Baghdad killed 15 Iraqis and wounded 27, was complimented by his and Bush's Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who claimed that al-Qaeda in Iraq appeared to be making a "last gasp" attempt to foment sectarian violence in Baghdad. Those who have been following the news about the US occupation of Iraq closely over the last six years know all too well how many "last gasps" and "turning the corners" there have been - of which there are too many to count. This one is no different, and the fallacy of the statement was punctuated on April 10 in Mosul, when a suicide car bomb attack killed five US soldiers, along with two Iraqi troops. Taking another page out of the Bush playbook for the occupation of Iraq, while speaking at Baghdad's airport, Obama also said the next 18 months are "going to be a critical period." Again, there have been more "critical periods" in Iraq throughout the occupation than I care to remember. Two days after Obama's visit to Baghdad's airport, Gen. Ray Odierno told The Times that US combat troops may remain in Iraq's cities beyond the June 30 deadline mandated by the Status of Forces Agreement. Of course, throughout all of this rhetoric, the glaring omission is any discussion about the massive "enduring" US military bases in Iraq and the US "embassy" that is the size of the Vatican City. Meanwhile, the bloodletting and destruction of Iraq continues.
Surprisingly, Dahr Jamail isn't the only one taking on propaganda. Peter Baker (New York Times) observes, "For all the perception of a major course correction, Mr. Obama so far appears to be presiding over a foreign policy that may seem more different than it really is. As Mr. Obama heads to Mexico on Thursday for his second foreign trip of the month, he is bringing with him many of the same American interests as his predecessor, even if they are wrapped in a different package." On Iraq, Baker explains, "Mr. Obama's decision to withdraw from Iraq is not as sharp a change as it once seemed during the presidential campaign. Mr. Obama deferred to military commanders in agreeing to leave the vast bulk of American forces in place until next year, when a phased pullout would begin, leaving 50,000 troops in place after August 2010." The third term of George W. Bush is more than underway as is obvious by this headline at CBS News "CIA Off The Hook For Past Waterboarding"-- no punishment for those crimes against humanity. Barack prefers to instead just walk on by, don't stop, just walk on by. How very Bully Boy Bush of him. The policies of the previous administration also continue when it comes to the silence on the targeting of Iraq's LGBT community as Doug Ireland reports at GayCityNews noting State Dept staffer Felming (who spent a year in Iraq under Bully Boy Bush) dismissing concerns for LGBT Iraqis recently. Ireland reports:
Hili told this reporter, "There is an intensive media campaign against homosexuals in Iraq at this time which we believe is inspired by the Ministry of the Interior, both in the daily newspapers and on nearly all the television stations. Their reports brand all gays as 'perverts' and try to portray us as terrorists who are undermining the moral fiber of Iraqi youth." Hili said the current homo-hating media campaign appears to have been sparked as an unfortunate reaction to an April 4 Reuters dispatch that reported: "Two gay men were killed in Baghdad's Sadr City slum, a local official said, and police said they had found the bodies of four more after clerics urged a crackdown on a perceived spread of homosexuality... The police source said the bodies of four gay men were unearthed in Sadr City on March 25, each bearing a sign reading 'pervert' in Arabic on their chests."
Amnesty International has called out the targeting -- publicly called out the targeting which puts them way ahead of the United Nations, the US White House and the US State Department. We'll note this section of Ireland's report:
Dalia Hashad of Amnesty International told Gay City News, "Amnesty has been unable to get from the Iraqi government any confirmation that the men are in custody or that they are facing execution, but from what we have heard from individuals in Iraq, they were sentenced to die for belonging to a 'banned group.' We are protesting to the Iraqi government and are continuing to try to investigate, but it is very difficult to get any information about such prisoners in Iraq."
Dalia Hashad is an attorney and, along with Michael Ratner, Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith, she co-hosts WBAI's Law and Disorder. Rex Wockner (PrideSource) adds that there is a lack of clarity over whether or not Iraq re-instated (in 2003) a law making same-sex relations illegal. He quotes Iraqi LGBT's Ali Hili explaining, "That's what they have been told by a judge in a brief court hearing. I don't think this is in the Iraqi constitution as a death penalty (crime). The court is ... kangaroo-style. It was brief and people weren't able to present legal representation or defend themselves in that kind of court. Our information is that these five members have been convicted to death for running activities of a forbidden organization on Iraqi soil."
In the most shocking refusal to report propaganda, Deborah Haynes (Times of London) takes a train ride in Baghdad and quickly grasps that it is proganada and -- pay attention Alissa J. Rubin and Rod Nordland -- reports examples of that. An alleged commuter train, supposedly to transport workers, "leaves at 8am -- rather late in the morning for Baghdad's only commuter service" and that's far from the only puzzling moment. She asks a 'commuter' where he is going and he gets the destination wrong. And then there is this:
The picture-perfect scene looks too good to be true. There is also the mystery of why commuters are so eagerly commuting in reverse, from the centre of the city to the outskirts. Further fuelling our suspicion, a local television crew is conveniently on hand to film the hustle and bustle. A press officer at the station tells us upon arrival that the train has been laid on especially for the media. He then changes his story, after seeing our crestfallen expressions, to explain it is a later service that sometimes follows the earlier train at 6.30am.
This is really an amazing report and praise for Deborah Haynes for reporting it.
Meanwhile Alsumaria reports, "Iraq Army units supported by US air forces launched a wide scale operation in southern Kirkuk after a suicide bombing killed 10 policemen and wounded around 20 others. Second Brigade Commander Abdul Amir Al Zaidi affirmed that two senior officials of Ansar Al Sunna were killed and two others were wounded in the operation after Iraq Army received intelligence about their involvement in yesterday's bombing." They report it and only they report it, why is that? A major operation, an assault, and where is the press coverage from US outlets?
In some of today's reported violence . . .
Bombings?
Laith Hammoudi and Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Mosul grenade attack which left three injured, a Mosul car bombing which injured three prison guards and a Baquba sticky bombing which claimed the life of 1 Sahwa leader.
Shootings?
Laith Hammoudi and Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 1 police officer shot dead in Mosul and another injured. KUNA reports a border clash between the Turkish military and the PKK resulted in 1 Turkish soldier being killed.
Yesteday's snapshot noted the conviction of US Master Sgt John E. Hatley in Germany. In today's New York Times, Paul von Zielbauer quotes James D. Culp ("former Army trial defense lawyer"), "When the first sergeant of a company snaps, taking a sergeant first class and a senior medic with him, it's a sign that they've just had too much." AP reminds, "Military cases go through an automatic appeal process, and his sentence also could be reduced in a clemency proceeding."
iraqthe new york timessteven lee myers
alissa j. rubinrod nordlandmcclatchy newspaperscorinne reillyali abbasthe los angeles timescaesar ahmedliz sly
aseel kamipaul von zielbauer
kim sengupta
laith hammoudimcclatchy newspapers
leila fadel
hussein kadhim
peter baker
mohammed abbas
dahr jamail
doug ireland
law and disordermichael ratnermichael smithdalia hashadheidi boghosian
deborah haynes
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