131 Arrested at Veteran-led Civil Resistance Against Wars Dec. 16

The organizers wrote about their action, but corporate media hacks largely ignored it. Here's what they had to say.

After a 10 am rally in Lafeyette Park featuring Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame, retired CIA officer Ray McGovern, Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program, and others, activists formed a solemn single-file process to the White House, silent except for a drum beat. There, they encountered police barricades. Some veterans began climbing over the barricades, until the police opened them up, allowing people to approach the fence in front of the White House.

As the light snow increased to heavy and began accumulating, activists kept warm by singing and chanting. At about 12:30, police began arresting protesters who remained along the fence, while supporters who did not want to risk arrest were moved across the broad street. Some of the demonstrators stood in the snow and freezing temperatures for nearly four hours before being taken to Anacostia processing center and released. They have all since been released. Some have elected to pay a fine, while others, including Ellsberg and McGovern, will go to trial on the charge of disobeying a lawful order.

Video from the protest is available on YouTube:



Democracy Now, to its credit, did report on this. Here's a particularly interesting quote they ran from an Iraq War veteran.

Mike Prysner: "They’re not going to end the wars. And they’re not going to do it, because it’s not our government. It’s their government. It’s the government of the rich. It’s the government of Wall Street, of the oil giants, of the defense contractors. It’s their government. And the only language that they understand is shutting down business as usual. And that’s what we’re doing here today, and we’re going to continue to do until these wars are over. We’re going to fight until there’s not one more bomb dropped, not one more bullet fired, not one more soldier coming home in a wheelchair, not one more family slaughtered, not one more day of U.S. imperialism."

He's absolutely correct when he points out that our government is owned by wealthy and corporate interests. They are looting America to the point we may not be able to recover.

 

Now that Barack Bush is setting the groundwork to break his promise to get out of Afghanistan next year, it is becoming clear that Democratic politicians are just as pro war as Republican politicians. The people in the peace movement who trusted Obama and held back on protest made an enormous mistake.

Obama also is dragging out the Iraqtastrophe so corporations can keep making money off of it. Meanwhile, the Iraqis killed by "our" government's greed and corruption continue to add up. Meanwhile, more and more Americans in our military due to the economic draft are adding to the numbers of war veterans, facing the horrible physical and psychological scars of it.

At least the veterans who make it home have VA benefits, as weak as those are. The enormous numbers of mercenaries won't even have that. Considering that Obama has roughly 100,000 mercenaries in Iraq, that's a huge social problem for our country.

More war veterans mean increased competition for services that the GOP as well as Obama's Cat Food commission want to cut so they can cut taxes for the rich even more. Our veterans are treated in an extreme example of the shitty way the politicians treat everyone who isn't rich in this country.

Our veterans deserve better. We all do.

 

Mike Prysner, Iraq vet, shows how much a point of view can change when confronted with ugly reality.

There Iraq War isn't magically going to stop merely because we have a different politician in the White House. We will have to take action to stop it. The corporate media would very much like us all to forget about the following:

- The Iraq War has killed over 4000 US troops and an unknown number of mercenaries.

- Tens of thousands of US troops have been wounded in this war.

- The Iraq War is severely damaging our economy.

- The war on Iraq has killed over 1.3 million Iraqis.

- The war on Iraq has devastated that country's economy.

- The war on Iraq has forced at least 2 million Iraqis to become refuges.

There are plenty of veterans who are even more opposed to the war than the rest of us are. Some of them are taking decisive action against it.

Iraq Veterans Against the War has "Over 1,300 Members, 56 Chapters, in 48 States." They have managed to do this despite the fact that they limit their membership to veterans and despite the corporate media's near total censorship of their actions.



From the YouTube page description:

Iraq Veterans Against the War's "End the War Now" ad, aired once coast to coast on NBC during the inauguration of President Barack Obama on January 20, 2009 at 8:57am PST/11:57am EST.

Visit http://www.ivaw.org for more information about Iraq Veterans Against the War

You can go to the Digg.com page to promote the video too.

IVAW members also are asking that people post this video on their social networking pages and blogs. Here's the code:

<object width="445" height="364"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/UWKXJmIJpTM&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/UWKXJmIJpTM&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="445" height="364"></embed></object>

 

As part of this ongoing series on the last years Top 25 censored news stories according to Project Censored, I thought I would highlight an excellent resource of theirs:

List of Links to Independent News Sources

Now, here are items 6-10.

6: The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act

In a startling affront to American freedoms of expression, privacy, and association, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (H.R. 1955) passed the House on October 23, 2007, by a vote of 404–6. The Senate is currently considering a companion bill, S. 1959. The act would establish a national commission and a university-based “Center for Excellence” to study and propose legislation to prevent the threat of “radicalization” of Americans.

Author of the bill Jane Harman (D-CA) explains, “We’re studying the phenomenon of people with radical beliefs who turn into people who would use violence.”

...

UPDATE BY JESSICA LEE

While civil liberties and religious freedom groups credit independent journalists and grassroots activists with helping to stall the passage of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, some members of Congress continue to push for Internet censorship and racial profiling as necessary to prevent “homegrown terrorism.”

The House of Representatives approved the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act in October 2007 by a 404-6 vote, but widespread opposition forced the Senate to shelve the bill. As of June 1, 2008, no vote was scheduled or expected during the current legislative year.
Read More

7: Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking

While the guest worker program in the United States has been praised and recommended for expansion by President Bush, and is likely to be considered by Congress as a template for future immigration reform, human rights advocates warn that the system seriously victimizes immigrant workers. Workers, labor organizers, lawyers, and policy makers say that the program, designed to open up the legal labor market and provide a piece of the American dream to immigrants, has instead locked thousands into a modern-day form of indentured servitude. Congressman Charles Rangel has called the guest worker program “the closest thing I’ve ever seen to slavery.”
Read More

8: Executive Orders Can Be Changed Secretly

On December 7, 2007, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, disclosed on the floor of the US Senate that he had declassified three legal documents of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) within the Department of Justice that state:

1. An executive order cannot limit a president. There is no constitutional requirement for a president to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the president has instead modified or waived it.

2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.

3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.
Read More

9: Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify

Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are coming forward to recount the brutal impact of the ongoing occupations. An investigation by the Nation (July 2007) and the Winter Soldier hearings in Silver Spring, Maryland, in March 2008, which was organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War and brought together over 300 veterans, have made their experiences public. Soldiers’ harrowing testimony of atrocities they witnessed or participated in directly indicate a structural problem in the US military that has created an environment of lawlessness. Some international law experts say the soldiers’ statements show the need for investigations into potential violations of international law by high-ranking officials in the Bush administration and the Pentagon. Though BBC predicted that the Winter Soldier event would dominate headlines around the world that week, there was a near total back-out on this historic news event by the US corporate media.
Read More

10: APA Complicit in CIA Torture

When in 2005 news reports exposed the fact that psychologists were working with the US military and the CIA to develop brutal interrogation methods, American Psychological Association (APA) leaders assembled a task force to examine the issue. After just two days of deliberations, the ten-member task force concluded that psychologists were playing a “valuable and ethical role” in assisting the military. A high level of secrecy surrounding the task force prohibited disclosure of the proceedings and of members and attendees. It wasn’t until a year later that the membership was finally published on Salon.com, revealing that six of nine voting members were from the military and intelligence agencies with direct connections to interrogations at Guantánamo and CIA black sites that operate outside of Geneva Conventions.

...

Censored Update

Members of the American Psychological Association have voted to prohibit consultation in the interrogations of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, or so-called black sites operated by the Central Intelligence Agency overseas, the association said on Wednesday.

The vote, 8,792 to 6,157 in a mail-in balloting concluded Monday, may help to settle a long debate within the profession over the ethics of such work. Psychologists have helped military and C.I.A. interrogators evaluate detainees, plan questioning strategy and judge its psychological costs. The association’s ethics code, while condemning a list of coercive techniques adopted in the Bush administration’s antiterrorism campaign, has allowed some consultation “for national security-related purposes.”
Read More

Commentary and Analysis

All Items
All of these items have a common thread. Corporate media outlets are generally covering up misconduct commited by the Bush regime or with their encouragement or orders. It's interesting to note how most Americans are being kept in the dark about things that should make Americans cringe with shame. No wonder most people in this country are perplexed at the anti American sentiments abroad.

Item 9:
Project Censored referenced the efforts of Pacifica radio station KPFK and CorpWatch in their War Comes Home site, which has an audio archive of the Winter Soldier testimony. The Pacifica stations carried live coverage of the Winter Soldier hearings, in contrast to corporate media which censored the story. The text archives from Iraq Veterans Against the War also were mentioned.

You may be interested in the following YouTube Playlist: Winter Soldiers testimony

This blog also has done some coverage of the Winter Soldier hearings and the lead up to them.

Info From Winter Soldier - Part 4 - Sleep Deprivation of Prisoners in Iraq

Info From Winter Soldier - Part 3 - Winter Soldier on YouTube

Info From Winter Soldier - Part 2 - Taking Pictures With Corpses

Info From Winter Soldier - Part 1 - Traumatic Brain Injury

Action Alert: "Why Are Winter Soldiers Not News?"

Report on the Thursday Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) Fundraiser

Previous Censored News Stories:

11-15

16-20

21-25

 

When I started the March 19 Blogswarm Against the Iraq War with the blogger who does Ten Percent, it was done in part to counter pro-war bias and censorship in the corporate media. So, it is fitting that my contribution to the Blogswarm be to publicize and add to an action alert from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting on Winter Soldier.

3/19/08 FAIR Action Alert:

Dozens of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars gathered in Silver Spring, Maryland last weekend for the Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan hearings (3/13/08-3/16/08), where they offered harrowing testimony about atrocities they had witnessed or participated in directly. The BBC predicted that the event, organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, "could be dominating the headlines around the world this week" (3/7/08). The hearings were covered as far afield as the U.K. (Guardian, 3/17/08), Australia (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 3/14/08), Croatia (Javno, 3/16/08), and Iran (Press TV, 3/14/08). Yet there has been an almost complete media blackout on this historic news event in the U.S. corporate media.

Despite being noted in the New York Times' Paris-based International Herald Tribune (3/13/08), Winter Soldier has yet to be mentioned in the New York Times itself. No major U.S. newspaper has covered the hearings except as a story of local interest; the few stories major U.S. newspapers have published on the event have focused on the participation of local vets (Boston Globe, 3/16/08; Boston Herald, 3/16/08; Newsday, 3/16/08, Buffalo News, 3/16/08).

The Washington Post, too, published their account in the metro section (3/15/08). In contrast, the paper published an article about pro-war demonstrators protesting the Winter Soldier hearings in the A section (3/16/08), despite the fact that they were, according to the Post, "small in number."

None of the major broadcast TV networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) have mentioned the hearings in their newscasts. PBS has been silent as well.

But for a couple of exceptions (Time, 3/15/08; NPR, 3/16/08), the hearings have been virtually ignored by all but the independent media (Democracy Now!, 3/14/08; 3/17-18/08; In These Times, 3/17/08; Alternet, 3/14/08) and military publications (Stars and Stripes, 3/15/08 and the four Military Times newsweeklies, 3/15/08, 3/17/08), in a pattern reminiscent of the near complete corporate media blackout on the first Winter Soldier hearings. FAIR founder Jeff Cohen (Huffington Post, 3/16/08) traces the beginning of his career as a media critic back to his experience of watching as "one of the rare mainstream camera crews showed up at Winter Soldier... and then abruptly packed up to leave in the middle of particularly gripping testimony."

While the testimony of soldiers who had served multiple tours of duty was broadcast on Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now!, Free Speech TV, and the Real News network, the major broadcast networks and PBS instead devoted airtime to the pro-war assessments of Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. John McCain, both of whom have only made brief visits to Iraq (NBC Nightly News, ABC World News, CBS Evening News, PBS NewsHour, all 3/17/08).

Given the common media rhetoric of "supporting the troops" (FAIR Action Alert, 3/26/03), to ignore these same troops when they speak out about the horrors of the war is unconscionable. On the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, it is particularly important that the media reverse this silence, and include the voices of the vets who are speaking out about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan in national news coverage.

ACTION:
Contact the broadcast networks and ask them why they decided to ignore the Winter Soldiers hearings while carrying the less-informed observations on Iraq of John McCain and Dick Cheney.

CONTACT:

ABC World News
Web form: http://abcnews.go.com/Site/page?id=3271346&cat=World%20News%20with%20Charles%20Gibson
Phone: 212-456-7777

CBS Evening News
Email: evening@cbsnews.com
Phone: 212-975-3691

NBC Nightly News
Email: nightly@nbc.com
Phone: 212-664-4971

Coverage of Winter Soldier is missing from CNN.com.
Contact CNN!

The New York Times has censored coverage of Winter Soldier too:

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Chairman & Publisher:
publisher@nytimes.com.

Scott H. Heekin-Canedy, President, General Manager
president@nytimes.com.

The Real News Network Channel on YouTube has a variety of video segments from Winter Soldier. Below, Hart Viges testifies about being a morterman in Iraq. He also talks about being invited to take a picture with a corpse.



Here are some other YouTube users with Winter Soldier footage.

- Michael Moore

- Jophdu

Other Winter Soldier Coverage on YouTube:

- Why Not News

- Some BBC Coverage

 

I've had mixed feelings about John Edwards during this campaign. His rhetoric this time out has been refreshingly honest and surprisingly progressive. However, he ran as a conservative Democrat in 2004 and had a conservative record during his term in the Senate.

However, he has accomplished something big and admirable recently, putting a major focus on the national shame of so many veterans being homeless.



Of course, Bill O'Reilly deserves credit for unintentionally publicizing the issue by foolishly denying that there are 200,000 homeless veterans in this country. O'Reilly made a jackass of himself as usual, but the controversy he generated is making many face a problem that often has been avoided. The folks at FoxAttacks.com deserve credit for the above video publicizing the controversy, and more importantly, publicizing one of our most hideous national failure.

Despite the rain, it was energizing and reassuring to march along with thousands of people in one of eleven protests today against the insane and illegal war in Iraq. (It also was fun to yell "shut up and enlist" at the three GOP counter protesters.)

One of the things the organizers, United for Peace and Justice, did really well was to host a peace fair after the protest to connect protesters to organizations and build the movement for peace, human rights, and social justice.

The most moving thing for me was seeing the military families holding their signs at the peace fair. You could see how speaking out against the war was part of the grieving process for many of them. It is so tragic knowing that they are suffering so a bunch of war profiteers can make vast, unearned profits.

The best tee-shirt said: "My friends went to Iraq looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction and All They Found Was This Lousy Tee shirt"

Whether you attended or not, you still have a responsibility to follow through on what was done during this protest. Here are some excellent organizations and resources that you should look into both in NYC and nationwide.

United for Peace and Justice
This is the coalition of organizations that is trying to stop the Iraq war and prevent an even crazier one with Iran. They have an excellent events calendar with actions by a variety of groups trying to stop the war.


Kucinich Campaign Site
Kucinich has the strongest anti-war message of the major party candidates, and he supports the broadest range of liberal positions.


Code Pink NYC
They have a variety of actions you can support in the NYC area and had a big contingent in the protest march.

www.listenhillary.org
This is a Code Pink project trying to get Hillary Clinton to listen to the movement to stop the Iraq war. Their Bird Dog Talking Points does an excellent job rebutting the corporate media's claim that Clinton is a liberal.

Granny Peace Brigade
These grannies are some of the most courageous peace activists in the country. Their description tells us a lot about them and one of the more famous free assembly cases in recent memory.

Who We Are: When a group of women ages 59 to 91, many of us grandmothers, tried to enlist in the United States military on October 17, 2005 The Granny Peace Brigade was born. We asked to enlist in order to replace grandchildren who had been deployed in Iraq unnecessarily. However, we were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. After a six-day trial, we were acquitted. That was the beginning.

Here is an action of theirs you can support, and more are available on their web site.

Every Wednesday from 4:30 to 5:30 PM Grandmothers Against the War holds a vigil at Rockefeller Center. All are welcome.

Let Gravel Debate!
I prefer Kucinich to Gravel because I don't like Gravel's tax policies, but he certainly should be included in the Democratic presidential debates. NBC is excluding Gravel from the upcoming debate (actually joint appearance) at Drexel University. NBC is owned by GE, a war profiteer which is why one of the anti-war candidates is being excluded. They want the debate highly biased in favor of the war.

Half Empty has an excellent posting on the issue. The article has a variety of email addresses of NBC/GE executives you can contact as well.

Progressive Challenge 2008
They have an excellent, though abreviated, version of a progressive platform. When rightists ask "what do liberals stand FOR?," you can send them the link.

Peace Action New York State
Peace Action is one of the coalition partners in United for Peace and Justice, and does a lot of important work on its own as well. Staten Island has a particularly vibrant and active chapter.

Military Families Speak Out
They are doing an incredible job framing the war funding debate in a way that cuts through the corporate media spin.

"Funding the War is Killing Our Troops
Support Our Troops
Fund a Safe and Orderly Withdrawal from Iraq and Care for Them as They return"

"Military Families Speak Out continues to call on Congress to end funding for the war in Iraq, save what is needed to bring our troops home quickly and safely. Funding the war is not supporting our troops. The way to support our troops is to bring them home now and take care of them when they get here."

Read How Military Families Responded to the "Betray Us" Report. They also have some excellent actions you can take.

US Labor Against the War
This website has in depth coverage of the Iraqi oil law and mistreatment of Iraqi workers.

International ANSWER
This is the other organization that launches large, anti-war protests on a regular basis. They oppose the war in Iraq in a broader context of fighting racism and social injustice. Our society often ignores the racism involved in the Iraq war, but ANSWER does not. Check their website for future actions.

Our military is permeated with people who either were mislead or outright lied to by military recruiters. Anyone who has seen military recruiting commercials cannot help but notice how deceptive the ads are. Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) are doing something about it.

They are launching their Truth in Recruiting campaign on September 17. They make some important points.

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to rage on with ever-increasing violence and destruction, the U.S. military is at its breaking point. Our troops are being deployed repeatedly in combat zones for longer and longer periods of time. Most troops in Iraq are there for at least their second tour, some are there for a third or fourth time. Thousands of soldiers have been involuntarily held beyond their "voluntary" service obligation by the stop-loss policy. Many more thousands have been recalled to active duty as part of the Individual Ready Reserve. Our veterans are returning with unprecedented levels of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and life-changing physical injuries. While the burden of this misbegotten, shameful war continues to fall on the same troops and military families, recruiters are finding it more and more difficult to find eager military recruits.

In order to meet their recruiting quotas, many recruiters use deceptive tactics that don’t tell the whole truth. As Adam Kokesh, former Marine Corps sergeant and Iraq vet, says, “For many of those who enter the military today, their enlistments are based on lies. There are those who join hoping to go to Iraq for a variety of personal reasons, not knowing the truth about the occupation. But there are many more that are promised by recruiters that they will never go to Iraq, that they will get plenty of money for college, that they will receive adequate health care, and that the military will honor the time limit of their contracts without using the stop-loss or involuntarily extending them.”

IVAW already launched a small protest in St. Louis at the time of their annual meeting. The Army actually had a video game they use for recruiting at the Missouri Black Expo. The vets responded to this by standing in formation and shouting three times in unison, “War is not a game!” The protest received lengthy coverage in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Kelly Dougherty, 29, is executive director and served in the Army National Guard as a medic and military police officer in Iraq in 2003 to 2004. She said recruiters often stress the opportunities the military offers to low-income and minority groups.

"We want people to know the truth about military service and that it's not always what they say," she said.

Dougherty said many potential recruits may not realize the consequences the prolonged war in Iraq may have on their service — increased chances of repeated deployment, extended tours of duty, a call back into war even after a contract expires and difficulty accessing benefits upon return.

Video of the action also is available.


One of IVAW's members also has launched a one week vigil to protest the stop-loss policy, where the military breaks their promises made in recruiting by sending our troops to fight in Iraq after the time periods in their contracts are over.

Evan Knappenberger explained, “I spent a year in Iraq. I pulled 97 nights on tower guard. Many of the friends I served with have completed their active duty contracts. Now, they’re being sent back to Iraq for their third or fourth tours. Some soldiers are getting called up after living years of civilian life. Stop-loss is an unethical policy.”