Ol’ Smedley knew a racket when he saw (and slew for) one

By Mark Drolette
Created Mar 22 2007 - 12:55am
Published on The Smirking Chimp (http://www.smirkingchimp.com)

On a picture-perfect St. Patrick’s Day morning, I heard that strangely seductive lament of bagpipes drifting through the open window of my downtown Sacramento apartment, a second-story unit right across the street from beautiful Capitol Park (an expanse of delightful urban greenery sullied only by the presence of the White Sepulcher of Corruption, otherwise known as the State Capitol, sitting smack dab in its middle).

Curious, I headed outside.

Spotting a sizeable crowd near the California Vietnam Veterans Memorial that sits just inside the park, I moseyed over.

As I neared, even these failing old eyes could make out soon enough it was some sort of support the troops/war/killing-of-swarthy-people rally. There were probably about two hundred folks present. Vets, obviously, but also wives, husbands, moms, dads and youngsters.

Including a few “Young Marines,” proudly decked out in big black boots and camouflage finery, signifying they were, indeed, well on their way to unquestioningly serving the good, ol’ Imperialistic States of America.

The Web site for “Young Marines” says it “is a youth education and service program for boys and girls, ages 8 through completion of high school. The Young Marines promotes the mental, moral, and physical development of its members.”

I don’t know about you, but I find this unsettling. What about all the six and seven year-olds who want to join, too?

Anyway, back at the park, it took but moments to sense a weird vibe.

A man, about sixty, wearing a military-type cap and adorned with a military-type vest with military-type patches on it -- in other words, a military type -- appeared to bark something at a woman near the memorial’s granite pedestal upon which was displayed, under glass, the cold, static names of California’s Vietnam War dead, all 5,622 of them. He then stood in front of it with arms crossed, staring straight ahead as if protecting it.

From whom? The woman? Oh my god, was she a terrorist? I just can’t tell who I’m supposed to be afraid of anymore. (Maybe that’s the point.)

Or maybe she’d violated some lesser-known provision of, say, the Military Commissions Act. You know, the one our freedom-loving Congress passed in October that, along with jettisoning habeas corpus and giving the current King George the power to unilaterally send any of us to the hoosegow forever, perhaps now also makes it a crime to read the names of Americans killed in war.

I just can’t tell what’s illegal anymore. (Maybe that’s also the point.)

Wondering what would happen if I audaciously began perusing the names of the hyper-vigilant vet’s unfortunate brethren who’d been soullessly used as corporate cannon fodder in Southeast Asia, I ambled over to the pedestal and began silently reading. I wasn’t told to move so I guess I’d not yet broken any unknown law, rule, regulation, tradition or superstition.

He was focused elsewhere at the moment anyway, for I soon heard him boom: “Get off my map!!” Within moments, he was striding over to the large bas-relief depiction of South Vietnam laid out at the memorial’s entrance, ready to admonish any hapless passersby who might happen to tread on it.

I was tempted to ask him what made it his map but thought better of it. Perhaps it was also forbidden now in these Orwellian days to walk on public property. More likely, of course, the poor guy had forever left a good part of his psyche fighting a pointless war inside the very country the map represented.

It appeared his body had fared no better, given his stiff gait which looked to belie the existence of an artificial leg inside those crisply-pressed slacks.

He soon returned to reassume his prior somber, cross-armed position.

In the meantime, a couple of other men, big guys who were also presumably veterans, had approached the pedestal from behind and were now leaning against it.

The first made small talk with Map Man and then asked: “So all these people, are they all supporters out here today?”

“Oh, yes,” came the authoritative response, “they’re all supporters.”

“Well,” the first vet rejoined, chuckling, “it’d take an awfully brave person not to be with this crowd.”

Now I’m not a brave person but I play one in my reverie. Besides, I could stay silent no longer.

“I don’t support the war,” I said, looking up.

“D’ya support the troops?” the second man shot back with amazing quickness, his sharp narrowed eyes zeroed in on mine.

With scant hesitation, I responded: “To engage in an illegal activity? No.”

“Well, love you my friend,” he said before immediately walking away.

I think he might have been being sarcastic.

I left soon thereafter because, as noted, I am not a brave person. I also had no great desire to determine if I could trigger a case (or several) of post-traumatic stress disorder all on my own.

I was not happy later with my response, however, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, I should’ve asked my knee-jerk inquisitor: “When you say ‘support the troops,’ just what, exactly, do you mean?”

Because, really, what does it mean? We’ve all heard and seen it for years now and yet no one, to my knowledge, has ever defined it. Here was a prime opportunity for me to at last find out for all of us, and I blew it.

Sorry, gang.

For another, I’d prettied up my reply. What I was thinking of saying was: “You mean, support their ongoing murder of innocents and continuing engagement in one colossal war crime? No.”

There. I said it.

As anti-war activist Stephen S. Pearcy stated so well recently in Counterpunch:

“…we’re all presumed to know the law. If we accept that fundamental legal presumption, then those of us who claim that the war is illegal must also acknowledge that the troops are unexcused aiders and abettors.

“Publicly available information about the Iraq invasion has become plentiful over the last several years. Reasonable people contemplating service in the U.S. military should know that people throughout the world regard participation in the occupation as tantamount to aiding and abetting in mass murder, fraud, human rights violations, and international war crimes. By now, all of the troops should recognize this, and ignorance is no excuse.”

So, no, I don’t support any aspect of the slaughter of over half a million innocents that the illicit presence and actions of American armed forces in Iraq have clearly precipitated, directly or not (dead is dead). This unquestioned “support for the troops,” regardless the troops’ actions or the reason(s) they’re there, has got to stop.

It’s time to end the slavish glorification of the U.S. military, the sanctity of warriorhood we’ve all been sold from day one in this country, a nonstop snake oil job from the ruling mega-wealthy warmakers who’ve forever wrapped their lust for new markets in the red, white and blue so they could once again scurry atop the resultant carnage to grab every last viscera-drenched dollar possible while making sure to never once personally risk setting foot in the firing line.

In A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn reports how a young James Mellon, who had (legally) paid three hundred dollars to avoid fighting in the American Civil War, subsequently received this heartwarming reassurance from his father Thomas, founder of Mellon Bank and patriarch of the filthy rich Mellon clan:

“…a man may be a patriot without risking his own life or sacrificing his health. There are plenty of lives less valuable.”

Yeah. One can only hope it works out quite well for them.

What kills me is how those who have killed, almost been killed and seen plenty of killing can still so vigorously perpetuate the notion that going to war in a U.S. military uniform is all invariably done in the defense of life, liberty and preservatives-laden apple pie. You’d think just about any surviving soldier ill-fated enough to have served in Vietnam would have a leg up (if lucky enough to still have one, that is) on this old load of tripe, especially given the extreme rankness of the travesty in question (not that any war is a “good” war but some are more obviously onerous than others).

Yet, while many do, too many don’t, as verified by my experience in Capitol Park, which, unsurprisingly, included espying a banner sporting this classic hackneyed propaganda tailor-made for a paranoid populace:

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

Freedom to what, shop? (Nine days after 9/11, George W. Bush exhorted traumatized Americans to show their patriotic mettle via “continued participation and confidence in the American economy.”)

Steve Vogel and Clarence Williams of The Washington Post, reporting on Washington, D.C., anti-war activities surrounding the Iraq War’s just-passed fourth anniversary, relay the following comments regarding “war protestors past and present” from Vietnam vet and counter-protestor Rod Linkous:

“We defended their right to say whatever they want. They have the freedom of speech. We gave that freedom by fighting and dying for it.”

No, Mr. Linkous, you didn’t. Truly, with all due respect to you and Map Man and all your soldier brothers, you weren’t shipped off half a planet away to kill to protect freedom of speech or even to stop commies from taking over the world. You were sent there to secure the considerable perimeter so American munitions makers could ceaselessly leap for joy and other U.S. corporate interests could do what they do best: steal as many resources as possible while maximizing profits and minimizing losses (your and your buddies’ irrecoverable ones glaringly excepted).

Same as it ever was.

Zinn again:

“Early in 1963, [President John F.] Kennedy’s Undersecretary of State, U. Alexis Johnson, was speaking before the Economic Club of Detroit:

“‘What is the attraction that Southeast Asia has exerted for centuries on the great powers flanking it on all sides? Why is it desirable, and why is it important? First, it provides a lush climate, fertile soil, rich natural resources, a relatively sparse population in most areas, and room to expand. The countries of Southeast Asia produce rich exportable surpluses such as rice, rubber, teak, corn, tin, spice, oil, and many others...’”

Now, I’m no foreign policy expert, but somehow I’m not thinkin’ this is what the U.S. government meant when it kept intoning all those years about the “domino effect.”

Mind you, it makes complete sense how one who had suffered through the soul-pulverizing madness that was Vietnam (or any war) would be desperately driven to use whatever rationalization it took to somehow “make sense of it all” because the alternative -- that one’s ass was on the line simply to (over)fill some anonymous greedhead’s pocket -- is too horrifying to contemplate.

Yet, for all their ham-fisted attempts at subterfuge, the plain fact is one couldn’t find a crew more obvious about its sick motives than this current crop of arrogant death-dealing fascists composing the Bush administration. From the very get-go, they couldn’t have been more breathtakingly overt about their intentions than if they’d been broadcast live on all seven thousand cable channels unlocking the doors to the U.S. Treasury, marching into an open vault and then cramming giant sacks full of bazillion dollar bills, the whole time evilly smiling (how else would they smile?) and leering straight into the camera, cackling: “Look what we’re doing here: ripping you all off big-time! Here, now we’re doing it again. And now, see? -- again! Hot-damn, here’s some more. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee! Suck-ers!”

The only surprise at this point, is that anyone would be surprised at this point.

For what it’s worth (zilch), at least the Democrats’ cover now has been thoroughly pulled (for those who still had doubt as to how shamefully compromised they are). Seems they’ve come up a bit short in stopping the war, since now there are even more troops in Iraq than there were before the Dems curiously “won” both houses in November. And that power of the purse thing? Not only do Democratic “leaders” agree to fully fund Bush’s latest wholesale money-grubbin’ grab for his (and their) weapons industry buds, they want to give him a billion dollars more!

I almost put the following on my sign at the March 18th San Francisco anti-war march: “Good thing the Dems have Congress. Else, we’d be in a real fix.”

What I wrote instead, though, was “Just imagine if America were war-like!” and, on the other side, “War is a racket -- Smedley Butler.”

For some strange reason (hmm, what could it be?), Americans aren’t taught in school about Smedley Butler, an important figure in United States history who spent thirty-three years in the Marine Corps before retiring as a major general in 1931. Widely respected (he’s one of only two Marines to win the Congressional Medal of Honor twice), he was recruited in 1933 by fascism-admiring, über-rich American businessmen to lead a coup against President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Imagine their surprise when Butler reported the plan to a congressional committee instead.

Though the committee’s final report corroborated Butler’s testimony, no further action was taken.

Shocking, eh?

Bluntly honest, Butler frequently spoke after his retirement to gatherings sponsored by “veterans, communists, pacifists and church groups” (Wikipedia) in which he made no bones about the masters he truly served during his career. Probably Butler’s best-known quote comes from a 1935 issue of Common Sense, a socialist newspaper:

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.”

Not a whole lot there about defending the Bill of Rights, I see.

In 1935, Butler penned a damning, no-frills booklet, War is a Racket, detailing his dim views on the real motivations behind armed conflict. In his short work, he asserts American military forces should be used only for defensive purposes. This would appear to be a no-brainer, although that’s obviously not quite how the no-brainers driving the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and next, Iran (count on it), see it.

And, hey -- what’s this? Even the Constitution supports Butler on this point, declaring it has been ordained and established to help we the people, among other stuffy stuff, “provide for the common defence….” (Yes, I know the Constitution no longer exists but I like to quote it now and again just for old time’s sake.)

So let’s not pretend “our troops” are innocent bystanders in America’s relentless wars of imperialism and profiteering. Let’s not try to have it both ways by (rightly) asserting how horrified we are by a conflict that is irrefutably illegal while at the same time saying that somehow those who continue the killing and the maiming and the torturing and the razing are blameless or have no choice. Granted, standing up to the mighty ‘merican military machine by refusing to follow illegal orders and risking incarceration for a good long while is an excruciatingly tough row to hoe -- just ask First Lieutenant Ehren Watada -- but so is the alternative: a lifetime of knowing you participated in immorally destroying an entire country just so the animals who sent you there can buy that nice little second yacht they’ve had their beady, greedy little eyes on for some time.

‘Course, there’s another pitiable group: the ones who never can see past the nationalistic catchphrases that were so freely bandied about to cynically insert them and their dead and crippled comrades into an utter hell, the same slogans they continue to swallow whole and unthinkingly repeat as they pass the bloody baton on to, say, Young Marines.

Signed your eight-year-old up yet?

Copyright © 2007 Mark Drolette. All rights reserved.

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Videos of Sacramento's Anti-Occupation Protest

View the 1st one HERE and the 2nd one HERE

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This video has been removed by Fox News

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Sacramento Peace Demo has Great Turnout

See the photos:

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Exposing the Elephant in the Room

Read the story HERE.

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New Gaza Video

View it HERE.

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Bush’s S.S. Grills 14 Year-Old Girl Over Funny, Appealing Art

By Stephen S. Pearcy
(also posted at CounterPunch, Information Clearing House, The Smirking Chimp, and Dissident Voice)


Two over-sized adult male U.S. Secret Service (“S.S.”) agents banged on the front door at 14 year-old Julia Wilson’s home last Thursday during school hours, but Julia wasn’t home. Predictably (except to the S.S. agents), the straight-A student was in her microbiology class at school.

But Julia’s mother, Kirstie, was home. When she opened her front door, she was a little taken aback, not only by the sizes of the agents and the official nature of the visit, but also by their questions and demeanor after she welcomed them inside.

The S.S. agents told Kirstie that they were investigating her daughter’s role in setting up a MySpace Web page. In particular, they were troubled because the Web page included the creation of art (pictured above) that the agents felt was extremely threatening to the life of the President of the United States.

The agents told Kirstie that since the art included the words, “Kill Bush,” and since it was accessible to anyone on the Internet, there was a very strong likelihood that someone—possibly a terrorist from a foreign country—might see the image and be inspired to act upon it. Thus, they reasoned, even if Julia only meant to be funny, the art put the President in grave danger. Many people are saying, “Nonsense!”

The agents proceeded to ask Kirstie if she or her husband were members of any organizations whose goal is to overthrow the U.S. government. Kirstie assured them that neither she nor her husband, Jim Moose (a Boalt Hall graduate and name partner at a reputable Sacramento law firm), were extremists of any sort.

The agents seemed anxious to speak with Julia, but after peering around the upscale Land Park house a bit (for Julia?) and receiving assurance from Kirstie that Julia would be home from school in an hour, the agents agreed to return later—-at least that’s what they led Kirstie to believe.

The S.S. agents left and made a beeline directly to Julia’s school, C.K. McClatchy High School, the alma mater of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy (‘54) (and my mother (‘52)).

Notwithstanding that Julia posted the artwork on MySpace when she was 13 and removed it last summer, and that the President had come to Sacramento twice while Julia’s art remained inconsequential, the agents had suddenly determined that time was of the essence. They ordered school officials to have Julia promptly removed from class and brought to the school office, where they proceeded to grill her about her art.

‘Bout that art

In the context in which the art was presented on a 13 year-old’s MySpace website, many attorneys, including my wife and me, agree that no reasonable person could regard the image as a credible threat to the life of the President. Indeed, the image is lawful in every respect and is protected by the 1st Amendment (that’s why we can show it here).

Aside from the fact that it’s Constitutionally protected, many people have said that they found it to be funny, and in that respect--heaven forbid--appealing.

Call me risky, but I’m willing to wager double or nothing that a 4 ft. x 8 ft. reproduction of this piece at an anti-war demonstration would cause people driving by to honk, laugh, wave and give thumbs up all day long. I think it might even be a smash, so much so that the t-shirts would sell faster than they could be printed.

I don’t know about you, but I think Julia’s art makes a political statement that the vast majority of the people on the planet Earth would find appealing, albeit in a humorous way (nudge, nudge).

Recently, when Al Franken came to the Crest Theater in Sacramento, I was there with a large sign that said, “Impeach Bush.” When a couple of old guys (who wore the hats of WWII veterans) walked by me, one said, “Impeach? Hell, kill the bastard!” Several people standing nearby broke out in laughter. I laughed too, just like I did when I first saw Julia’s art.

Seriously folks, this kind of thing is not unpopular humor. Of course, maybe that’s precisely what concerns the S.S.

“Kill”

There’s a difference between deciding whether something is right or wrong and deciding whether something’s unlawful. Julia’s parents know that Julia did nothing unlawful, but they didn’t like the image because it included the word kill. Even Julia decided, long before the S.S. ever contacted her, that she didn’t like the image with that word. Although right or wrong in this case was simply a matter of taste, we don’t need to look too far for people who routinely and quite comfortably use the word kill.

Our young students might not be so quick to use the word kill if our political leaders would stop using it in their rhetoric. A major battle between the Republicans and Democrats has been to convince the public that the opposing party will be “softer on terror” than the other. To gain the public’s confidence, politicians have been trying to outnumber their opponents in the use of the word kill in their speeches.

George Bush uses the word kill in just about every speech these days. Donald Rumsfeld talks about killing. Cheney wants to kill. John Kerry says we need to capture and kill the terrorists. Bill and Hilary Clinton now routinely use kill. Virtually every major speech that any of these leaders has given lately has included the word kill.

So is it any wonder that some of the bright 13 year-olds who actually pay attention to these speeches might also start using the word?

Meanwhile, back at school

Many critics of the S.S.’ creation of a “sense of urgency” to contact Julia believe that it was tactically intended to send a chilling message to other students. Many lawyers, activists and free speech advocates believe that the goal of the S.S. was to generally deter young people from being too critical of the President. And what better way to send a chilling message to students than for the S.S. to pull a student out of class at a large public school?

In the school’s office, the S.S. agents interrogated Julia, reducing her to tears at many points. They demanded to know whether she or her parents belonged to any subversive organizations, and they often raised their voices, especially when they detected that Julia was either scared or didn’t understand their ambiguous questions.

To the extent that the agents’ actions were calculated to deter Julia’s lawful political expression, their investigative conduct infringed upon Julia’s 1st Amendment right to free speech. It is one thing to investigate a matter, but it is quite another to use the investigative process to deter lawful political expression. In this case, there is a legitimate cause for concern about the latter.

For Julia’s parents, the most troubling aspect of the investigation was the fact that the S.S. agents conducted the interrogation with Julia alone without first giving her parents an opportunity to be present. Parents in California, and throughout the U.S., have expressed similar concerns recently, particularly now that law enforcement agencies have been given such carte blanche discretion and expanded protections through legislation and Supreme Court precedent.

Two recent bills in California proposed changes in the law to require that parents have an opportunity to be present during police questioning. Neither bill was passed, but the calls for change are increasing.

Happy ending

I spoke with Julia and her parents last weekend, and I learned that this entire event has made them more determined than ever to draw public attention to the injustices that are being perpetrated by this corrupt administration.

Jim and Kirstie’s immediate concern related to their rights as parents to be present at the school-facilitated discussion, especially since it had the potential for significant consequences for Julia. Their broader concern, however, was about the direction this country has been headed under a Republican leadership. They plan to be more politically active now.

Similarly, Julia is now more determined than ever to organize a student anti-war group, and she is convinced that George W. Bush is the worst president ever.

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Italian probe: Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip

By Meron Rapoport, Haaretz Correspondent

An investigative report to be aired on Italian television Wednesday raises the possibility that Israel has used an experimental weapon in the Gaza Strip in recent months, causing especially serious physical injuries, such as amputated limbs and severe burns.

The weapon is similar to one developed by the U.S. military, known as DIME, which causes a powerful and lethal blast, but only within a relatively small radius.

The Italian report is based on the eyewitness accounts of medical doctors in the Strip, as well as tests carried out in an Italian laboratory. The investigative team is the same one that exposed, several months ago, the use by U.S. forces in Iraq of phosphorous bombs, against Iraqi rebels in Faluja.

Israel Air Force Maj.-Gen (res.) Yitzhak Ben-Israel, formerly head of the IDF's weapons-development program, told the Italian reporters that "one of the ideas [behind the weapon] is to allow those targeted to be hit without causing damage to bystanders or other persons."

The investigation, by Rai24news, follows reports by Gaza-based doctors of inexplicably serious injuries. The doctors reported an exceptionally large number of wounded who lost legs, of completely burned bodies and injuries unaccompanied by metal shrapnel. Some of the doctors also claimed that they removed particles from wounds that could not be seen in an x-ray machine.

According to those who testified, the wounded were hit by munitions launched from drones, most of them in July.

Dr. Habas al-Wahid, head of the emergency room at the Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital, in Deir el-Balah, told the reporters that the legs of the injured were sliced from their bodies "as if a saw was used to cut through the bone." There were signs of heat and burns near the point of the amputation, but no signs that the dismemberment was caused by metal fragments.

Dr. Juma Saka, of Shifa Hospital, in Gaza City, said the doctors found small entry wounds on the bodies of the wounded and the dead. According to Saka, a powder was found on the victims' bodies and in their internal organs.

"The powder was like microscopic shrapnel, and these are what likely caused the injuries," Saka said.

The Italian investigative team raised the possibility that the IDF is making use of a weapon similar in character to DIME - Dense Inert Metal Explosive - developed for the U.S. military. According to the official website of a U.S. air force laboratory, it is a "focused lethality" weapon, which aims to accurately destroy the target while causing minimum damage to the surrounding.

According to the site, the projectile comprises a carbon-fiber casing filled with tungsten powder and explosives. In the explosion, tungsten particles - a metal capable of conducting very high temperatures - spread over a radius of four meters and cause death.

According to the U.S.-based website Defense-Tech, "the result is an incredibly destructive blast in a small area" and "the destructive power of the mixture causes far more damage than pure explosive." It adds that "the impact of the micro-shrapnel seems to cause a similar but more powerful effect than a shockwave."

The weapon is supposed to still be in the testing phase and has not been used on the battlefield.

The Italian reporters sent samples of the particles found in wounds of injured in the Gaza Strip to a laboratory at the University of Parma. Dr. Carmela Vaccaio said that in analyzing the samples, she found "a very high concentration of carbon and the presence of unusual materials," such as copper, aluminum and tungsten. Dr. Vaccaio says these findings "could be in line with the hypothesis" that the weapon in question is DIME.

On the matter of DIME, Ben-Israel told the Italian reporters that "this is a technology that allows the striking of very small targets."

The report says that the weapon is not banned by international law, especially since it has not been officially tested.

It is believed that the weapon is highly carcinogenic and harmful to the environment.

The non-governmental organization Physicians for Human Rights has written to Defense Minister Amir Peretz requesting explanations for the aforementioned injuries to Palestinians. Amos Gilad, a senior adviser to the minister, is supposed to meet with the group on the matter in the near future.

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Israel's war against Lebanon

A conflict rooted in sixty years of Arab dispossession

by Megan Cornish
from the Freedom Socialist Newspaper




A Jordanian woman waves a Lebanese flag to show her support during a July 31 march in Amman protesting Israel's war in Lebanon.

The devastation and occupation of Lebanon shows once again that the historic dilemmas of one oppressed people cannot be resolved at the expense of another oppressed people. For Lebanon is an integral part of that six-decades-long Arab Israeli conflict designed to serve Empire U.S.A. at whatever cost.

Outrage over Israel's July 12 assault propelled people into the streets —hundreds of thousands in Baghdad, several thousand in both Beirut and Tel Aviv, and in places far beyond. This fury and furor is directed at the unabated terror and suffering that Israel and its boss, the United States, continue to inflict on the Middle East.

Israel the aggressor. This conflict did not start because Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers, as the U.S. corporate media insists. It has not ended with the fragile ceasefire. Israeli troops remain in southern Lebanon, only to be replaced at some point by U.N. “peacekeeping” troops who will predictably act on behalf of imperialist forces, including Israel.

U.N. soldiers always play this role. This time they are guided by a U.N. resolution that calls for disarming Hezbollah, one of the primary reasons Israel attacked Lebanon in the first place.

It is now known that a plan to attack Lebanon was in the making for years. And Bush gave the go-ahead at his May 23 summit with Israeli Prime Minister Olmert. Israel immediately started provocations to goad Hezbollah into a military response. It shelled a crowded beach, and twice fired missiles to assassinate opponents. Finally, the day after Israel crossed the border and kidnapped two civilians, Hezbollah reacted and captured the two Israeli soldiers.

Israel responded with planned ferocity. While claiming to target Hezbollah, the bombs also sought civilians and key infrastructure — a collective punishment that is not a new tactic for Israel, and is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. Much of the country now lies in ruins. An estimated 1,200 Lebanese were killed, most of them civilians and a third, children under twelve. In contrast, 160 Israelis died, most of them soldiers. One million people, a quarter of Lebanon's population, were displaced by the relentless bombing.

Israel's paralyzing embargo of Lebanon by land, air and sea went on long after the ceasefire.

Who is Hezbollah? Israel occupied southern Lebanon in 1978 (never withdrawing completely), and from 1982-2000. Hezbollah is the Lebanese resistance movement that formed in response to the second invasion. It has no history of attacking Lebanese civilians and became a respected guerilla force that finally forced Israel to withdraw after 18 years of occupation. It is one of the many resistance groups in the world that the U.S. has condemned as “terrorist.”

Hezbollah's name means, “party of God” and its ideology is Islamic fundamentalist. Hezbollah has proclaimed Iran as its model; but today it acknowledges that Lebanon is a secular and religiously pluralistic society and will remain so. Probably because of Lebanon's cosmopolitan culture, Hezbollah calls for equal participation of women in public life. Its strongest support is among Shi'a Muslims in the south.

The party is also a social service organization and political mass movement. It has elected representatives in the Lebanese parliament and ministers in the current government. It has strong support throughout Lebanon and the Middle East as a whole, a popularity that has soared since Israel's latest invasion into this small Arab country.

Militarily, of course, Hezbollah is no match for the fourth largest army in the world and a 21st-century air power. Its rocket capability doesn't come close to Israel's sophisticated weaponry and targeting capacity.

And still, Hezbollah guerillas have proved once again that bullies cannot eliminate indigenous resistance forces. The reason the U.S. and Israel finally agreed to a ceasefire was that air power alone could not defeat the guerilla forces, and Israeli ground troops were suffering significant casualties.

The Palestine connection. From its inception, Hezbollah has been a supporter of the Palestinians and opponent of Zionism, Jewish nationalism. Initially, most Jews didn't advocate Zionism. Not until the Nazi, anti-Semitic genocide in World War II, when the imperialist countries refused to open their doors to fleeing Jews, did the Zionist movement get support from Jewish workers. In the horror of the Holocaust, the mirage of a safe, all Jewish homeland turned the trickle of immigrants into a flood.

They flooded a land already peopled by someone else — the Palestinians.

U.S. mainstream media never mention a defining characteristic of Israel — Jewish exclusivity. Zionist terror organizations forced over 800,000 Arab Palestinian inhabitants (Muslim and Christian) to flee from Palestine in the late 1940s. Israel then annexed their lands. Today, Israel is an apartheid society – Arabs there are third class citizens; dark-skinned Jews from Africa and immigrant workers are second class. Palestinian refugees cannot return, but Jews of any nationality automatically receive Israeli citizenship.

Israel is also aggressively expansionist. In 1967, it seized land that included the Gaza strip, West Bank and Syria's Golan Heights, and has systematically stolen more and more Palestinian land – and water access – ever since. Palestinian refugees constitute ten percent of the population of Lebanon.

Israel's murderous attacks on Gaza — a deadly wave begun on June 29 that continues still — was an immediate cause of Hezbollah firing rockets into Northern Israel, after a decade of not attacking Israeli civilians. So too was Israel's kidnapping of several elected Hamas representatives to the Palestinian government.

This excruciating tale of suffering confirms that as long as there is no justice for the Palestinians, Israel will never be at peace with its neighbors. Israeli anti-war groups and civil rights organizations know this and are making a determined fight to win over their compatriots. Women in particular are raising the cry against the impact of war on women and children and denouncing the militarization of Israeli society.

The only road to real peace is through a just solution of the Palestine question – and an Israeli divorce from the U.S.

Israel – the U.S.'s junior partner. As the British Empire receded after WWII, and the American Empire rose, Israel's ruling class was eager to take on the job of garrison state for this new master. The entire Israeli economy and huge military rely on massive funds from the U.S.

Not only was Israel's war against Lebanon blessed by the U.S., but it's been widely exposed in the press that the U.S. saw the Lebanon war as a template for its own future attack on Iran.

This can't be good news for anybody, including Israel.

Relying on U.S. loyalty and help is a perilous game. Already, Israel's actions are turning it into the most dangerous place on earth for Jews, exposing the myth of Israel as a safe haven. When the U.S. decides that underwriting Israel is not profitable, it will drop its junior partner in a minute.

Only socialist justice and equality can bring peace. For the beleaguered peoples of the entire region, neither Israeli proxy bullies working for the U.S., nor homegrown U.S.-backed Arab dictators are the solution. It is up to workers and peace activists in the U.S. and Israel to foil their governments' despotic plans. We must call for:

• Unconditional withdrawal from Lebanon by Israeli and U.N. forces!
• No more U.S. aid to Israel!
• Stop all attacks on Gaza and Lebanon and end the blockades!

Religion is not at the root of misery in the Middle East. The insatiable profit needs of international capitalism are the cause. What is urgently needed is one secular, socialist state in Palestine for both Arabs and Jews, in which the natural resources — and rich cultural diversity — are shared, enriched by economic and political democracy.

Ultimately, nothing less will allow this land and its peoples to flourish.

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Hundreds of thousands show up for victory rally

Nasrallah says resistance will keep its weapons until government is 'strong, just and capable'

By Nada Bakri

Saturday, September 23, 2006

BEIRUT: Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah told hundreds of thousands of supporters gathered for a "Divine Victory" rally Friday that Hizbullah would not disarm until the right conditions were in place - and demanded a national unity government in a blow to Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and the international community.

In his first public appearance since the recent month-long war with Israel sparked on July 12 by the capture of two Israeli soldiers, Nasrallah said the resistance would only hand over its weapons once Lebanon becomes "a strong, just and capable country."

"There is no army in the world capable of making us drop our weapons as long as there will be people who believe in this resistance," he said. "We don't want to keep our weapons forever and they will never be used against anyone inside Lebanon. These are not Shiite weapons but the weapons of all the religions and the Lebanese and will protect Lebanon's independence and sovereignty."

Nasrallah said disarming Hizbullah "under this government ... means leaving Lebanon exposed before Israel to kill and detain and bomb whoever they want, and clearly we will not accept that."

"When we build a strong and just state that is capable of protecting the nation and the citizens, we will easily find an honorable solution to the resistance issue and its arms," he added.

"Tears don't protect anyone," Nasrallah said in a barbed refer-ence to Siniora, who openly wept several times when describing the destruction of Lebanon during the war.

The resistance leader also claimed that his party now possesses 20,000 rockets, despite having fired more than 4,000 of them at northern Israel during 34 days of fighting.

Nasrallah vowed to the hundreds of thousands of supporters gathered in Beirut's southern suburbs that a beefed-up United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) would not affect Hizbullah's ability to stock weapons.

"Blockade the borders and the seas and the skies," he said. "This will not weaken the will of the resistance or the weapons of the resistance."

He also warned UN peacekeepers who are deploying in Southern Lebanon as Israeli forces withdraw not to seek a confrontation with Hizbullah.

"Your mission is not to spy on Hizbullah or to disarm the resistance," he said.

One of Israel's stated aims in the war was to eliminate Hizbullah's capacity to fire rockets into its northern territory.

"We were ready for a long war," Nasrallah said. "The resistance in a few days was able to rearm itself and is now stronger than it was on July 12."

Nasrallah also lashed out at Siniora and the March 14 Forces, who want Hizbullah to disarm and integrate into the Lebanese political scene.

The sayyed described Siniora's Cabinet as weak and incapable of protecting and defending Lebanon against Israel and doubted its ability to reconstruct what Israel has destroyed.

"We don't want to eliminate the presence of anyone from public life. What we are calling for is a national unity government. This is not a slogan; this is a serious project we will work for very hard," said the leader of Hizbullah, which has two representatives in the Cabinet.

Former President Amin Gemayel, a harsh critic of Hizbullah, said portions of Nasrallah's speech were "dangerous."

"He is linking giving up Hizbullah's weapons to regime change in Lebanon and ... to drastic changes on the level of the Lebanese government," Gemayel told the Associated Press. "This is very surprising and dangerous, and leads us to ask, what kind of government does Sayyed Hassan want for what kind of Lebanon?"

Gemayel said Nasrallah on the one hand "extended his hand" to various Lebanese parties, but on the other hand was "confrontational and made some very serious statements."

A short statement issued by Siniora's office said Nasrallah's focus "on the dialogue in his speech is a good and constructive thing and opens future horizons." It did not elaborate.

Fares Soueid, a Christian politician and former MP close to Siniora, insisted that the government would not bend to Hizbullah pressure.

"It will not scare the government of Fouad Siniora," he told Al-Arabiyya television. "It will not fall, not in the street and not because of political speeches."

Siniora has rejected calls from both Hizbullah and the Free Patriotic Movement for the government to resign.

Meanwhile, Israel responded quickly to Nasrallah's speech, saying he had issued a challenge to the Lebanese government and the international community.

"The international community can't afford to have this Iranian-funded extremist spit in the face of the organized community of nations," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.

In reply to Nasrallah's claim that Hizbullah now possesses over 20,000 rockets, Regev said that according to the UN-backed cease-fire, Hizbullah "shouldn't have any rockets."

UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which secured the cessation of hostilities put into effect on August 14, calls for Hizbullah to eventually be stripped of its weapons.

Friday's rally filled a vast lot in the capital's southern suburbs, a Hizbullah stronghold where entire blocks were leveled by Israeli strikes during the war. - With agencies

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Rise Up Against the Empire

Address to the United Nations
By HUGO CHAVEZ

Representatives of the governments of the world, good morning to all of you. First of all, I would like to invite you, very respectfully, to those who have not read this book, to read it.

Noam Chomsky, one of the most prestigious American and world intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, and this is one of his most recent books, 'Hegemony or Survival: The Imperialist Strategy of the United States.'" [Holds up book, waves it in front of General Assembly.] "It's an excellent book to help us understand what has been happening in the world throughout the 20th century, and what's happening now, and the greatest threat looming over our planet.

The hegemonic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the very survival of the human species. We continue to warn you about this danger and we appeal to the people of the United States and the world to halt this threat, which is like a sword hanging over our heads. I had considered reading from this book, but, for the sake of time," [flips through the pages, which are numerous] "I will just leave it as a recommendation.

It reads easily, it is a very good book, I'm sure Madame [President] you are familiar with it. It appears in English, in Russian, in Arabic, in German. I think that the first people who should read this book are our brothers and sisters in the United States, because their threat is right in their own house.

The devil is right at home. The devil, the devil himself, is right in the house.

"And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday the devil came here. Right here." [crosses himself] "And it smells of sulfur still today.

Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world.

I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday's statement made by the president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.

An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: "The Devil's Recipe."

As Chomsky says here, clearly and in depth, the American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its system of domination. And we cannot allow them to do that. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated.

The world parent's statement -- cynical, hypocritical, full of this imperial hypocrisy from the need they have to control everything.

They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that's their democratic model. It's the false democracy of elites, and, I would say, a very original democracy that's imposed by weapons and bombs and firing weapons.

What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize it or others who are at the root of democracy.

What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?

The president of the United States, yesterday, said to us, right here, in this room, and I'm quoting, "Anywhere you look, you hear extremists telling you can escape from poverty and recover your dignity through violence, terror and martyrdom."

Wherever he looks, he sees extremists. And you, my brother -- he looks at your color, and he says, oh, there's an extremist. Evo Morales, the worthy president of Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him.

The imperialists see extremists everywhere. It's not that we are extremists. It's that the world is waking up. It's waking up all over. And people are standing up.

I have the feeling, dear world dictator, that you are going to live the rest of your days as a nightmare because the rest of us are standing up, all those who are rising up against American imperialism, who are shouting for equality, for respect, for the sovereignty of nations.

Yes, you can call us extremists, but we are rising up against the empire, against the model of domination.

The president then -- and this he said himself, he said: "I have come to speak directly to the populations in the Middle East, to tell them that my country wants peace."

That's true. If we walk in the streets of the Bronx, if we walk around New York, Washington, San Diego, in any city, San Antonio, San Francisco, and we ask individuals, the citizens of the United States, what does this country want? Does it want peace? They'll say yes.

But the government doesn't want peace. The government of the United States doesn't want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war.

It wants peace. But what's happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? In Palestine? What's happening? What's happened over the last 100 years in Latin America and in the world? And now threatening Venezuela -- new threats against Venezuela, against Iran?

He spoke to the people of Lebanon. Many of you, he said, have seen how your homes and communities were caught in the crossfire. How cynical can you get? What a capacity to lie shamefacedly. The bombs in Beirut with millimetric precision?

This is crossfire? He's thinking of a western, when people would shoot from the hip and somebody would be caught in the crossfire.

This is imperialist, fascist, assassin, genocidal, the empire and Israel firing on the people of Palestine and Lebanon. That is what happened. And now we hear, "We're suffering because we see homes destroyed.'

The president of the United States came to talk to the peoples -- to the peoples of the world. He came to say -- I brought some documents with me, because this morning I was reading some statements, and I see that he talked to the people of Afghanistan, the people of Lebanon, the people of Iran. And he addressed all these peoples directly.

And you can wonder, just as the president of the United States addresses those peoples of the world, what would those peoples of the world tell him if they were given the floor? What would they have to say?

And I think I have some inkling of what the peoples of the south, the oppressed people think. They would say, "Yankee imperialist, go home." I think that is what those people would say if they were given the microphone and if they could speak with one voice to the American imperialists.

And that is why, Madam President, my colleagues, my friends, last year we came here to this same hall as we have been doing for the past eight years, and we said something that has now been confirmed -- fully, fully confirmed.

I don't think anybody in this room could defend the system. Let's accept -- let's be honest. The U.N. system, born after the Second World War, collapsed. It's worthless.

Oh, yes, it's good to bring us together once a year, see each other, make statements and prepare all kinds of long documents, and listen to good speeches, like Abel's yesterday, or President Mullah's . Yes, it's good for that.

And there are a lot of speeches, and we've heard lots from the president of Sri Lanka, for instance, and the president of Chile.

But we, the assembly, have been turned into a merely deliberative organ. We have no power, no power to make any impact on the terrible situation in the world. And that is why Venezuela once again proposes, here, today, 20 September, that we re-establish the United Nations.

Last year, Madam, we made four modest proposals that we felt to be crucially important. We have to assume the responsibility our heads of state, our ambassadors, our representatives, and we have to discuss it.

The first is expansion, and Mullah talked about this yesterday right here. The Security Council, both as it has permanent and non-permanent categories, (inaudible) developing countries and LDCs must be given access as new permanent members. That's step one.

Second, effective methods to address and resolve world conflicts, transparent decisions.

Point three, the immediate suppression -- and that is something everyone's calling for -- of the anti-democratic mechanism known as the veto, the veto on decisions of the Security Council.

Let me give you a recent example. The immoral veto of the United States allowed the Israelis, with impunity, to destroy Lebanon. Right in front of all of us as we stood there watching, a resolution in the council was prevented.

Fourthly, we have to strengthen, as we've always said, the role and the powers of the secretary general of the United Nations.

Yesterday, the secretary general practically gave us his speech of farewell. And he recognized that over the last 10 years, things have just gotten more complicated; hunger, poverty, violence, human rights violations have just worsened. That is the tremendous consequence of the collapse of the United Nations system and American hegemonistic pretensions.

Madam, Venezuela a few years ago decided to wage this battle within the United Nations by recognizing the United Nations, as members of it that we are, and lending it our voice, our thinking.

Our voice is an independent voice to represent the dignity and the search for peace and the reformulation of the international system; to denounce persecution and aggression of hegemonistic forces on the planet.

This is how Venezuela has presented itself. Bolivar's home has sought a nonpermanent seat on the Security Council.

Let's see. Well, there's been an open attack by the U.S. government, an immoral attack, to try and prevent Venezuela from being freely elected to a post in the Security Council.

The imperium is afraid of truth, is afraid of independent voices. It calls us extremists, but they are the extremists.

And I would like to thank all the countries that have kindly announced their support for Venezuela, even though the ballot is a secret one and there's no need to announce things.

But since the imperium has attacked, openly, they strengthened the convictions of many countries. And their support strengthens us.

Mercosur, as a bloc, has expressed its support, our brothers in Mercosur. Venezuela, with Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, is a full member of Mercosur.

And many other Latin American countries, CARICOM, Bolivia have expressed their support for Venezuela. The Arab League, the full Arab League has voiced its support. And I am immensely grateful to the Arab world, to our Arab brothers, our Caribbean brothers, the African Union. Almost all of Africa has expressed its support for Venezuela and countries such as Russia or China and many others.

I thank you all warmly on behalf of Venezuela, on behalf of our people, and on behalf of the truth, because Venezuela, with a seat on the Security Council, will be expressing not only Venezuela's thoughts, but it will also be the voice of all the peoples of the world, and we will defend dignity and truth.

Over and above all of this, Madam President, I think there are reasons to be optimistic. A poet would have said "helplessly optimistic," because over and above the wars and the bombs and the aggressive and the preventive war and the destruction of entire peoples, one can see that a new era is dawning.

As Silvio Rodriguez says, the era is giving birth to a heart. There are alternative ways of thinking. There are young people who think differently. And this has already been seen within the space of a mere decade. It was shown that the end of history was a totally false assumption, and the same was shown about Pax Americana and the establishment of the capitalist neo-liberal world. It has been shown, this system, to generate mere poverty. Who believes in it now?

What we now have to do is define the future of the world. Dawn is breaking out all over. You can see it in Africa and Europe and Latin America and Oceanea. I want to emphasize that optimistic vision.

We have to strengthen ourselves, our will to do battle, our awareness. We have to build a new and better world.

Venezuela joins that struggle, and that's why we are threatened. The U.S. has already planned, financed and set in motion a coup in Venezuela, and it continues to support coup attempts in Venezuela and elsewhere.

President Michelle Bachelet reminded us just a moment ago of the horrendous assassination of the former foreign minister, Orlando Letelier.

And I would just add one thing: Those who perpetrated this crime are free. And that other event where an American citizen also died were American themselves. They were CIA killers, terrorists.

And we must recall in this room that in just a few days there will be another anniversary. Thirty years will have passed from this other horrendous terrorist attack on the Cuban plane, where 73 innocents died, a Cubana de Aviacion airliner.

And where is the biggest terrorist of this continent who took the responsibility for blowing up the plane? He spent a few years in jail in Venezuela. Thanks to CIA and then government officials, he was allowed to escape, and he lives here in this country, protected by the government.

And he was convicted. He has confessed to his crime. But the U.S. government has double standards. It protects terrorism when it wants to.

And this is to say that Venezuela is fully committed to combating terrorism and violence. And we are one of the people who are fighting for peace.

Luis Posada Carriles is the name of that terrorist who is protected here. And other tremendously corrupt people who escaped from Venezuela are also living here under protection: a group that bombed various embassies, that assassinated people during the coup. They kidnapped me and they were going to kill me, but I think God reached down and our people came out into the streets and the army was too, and so I'm here today.

But these people who led that coup are here today in this country protected by the American government. And I accuse the American government of protecting terrorists and of having a completely cynical discourse.

We mentioned Cuba. Yes, we were just there a few days ago. We just came from there happily.

And there you see another era born. The Summit of the 15, the Summit of the Nonaligned, adopted a historic resolution. This is the outcome document. Don't worry, I'm not going to read it.

But you have a whole set of resolutions here that were adopted after open debate in a transparent matter -- more than 50 heads of state. Havana was the capital of the south for a few weeks, and we have now launched, once again, the group of the nonaligned with new momentum.

And if there is anything I could ask all of you here, my companions, my brothers and sisters, it is to please lend your good will to lend momentum to the Nonaligned Movement for the birth of the new era, to prevent hegemony and prevent further advances of imperialism.

And as you know, Fidel Castro is the president of the nonaligned for the next three years, and we can trust him to lead the charge very efficiently.

Unfortunately they thought, "Oh, Fidel was going to die." But they're going to be disappointed because he didn't. And he's not only alive, he's back in his green fatigues, and he's now presiding the nonaligned.

So, my dear colleagues, Madam President, a new, strong movement has been born, a movement of the south. We are men and women of the south.

With this document, with these ideas, with these criticisms, I'm now closing my file. I'm taking the book with me. And, don't forget, I'm recommending it very warmly and very humbly to all of you.

We want ideas to save our planet, to save the planet from the imperialist threat. And hopefully in this very century, in not too long a time, we will see this, we will see this new era, and for our children and our grandchildren a world of peace based on the fundamental principles of the United Nations, but a renewed United Nations.

And maybe we have to change location. Maybe we have to put the United Nations somewhere else; maybe a city of the south. We've proposed Venezuela.

You know that my personal doctor had to stay in the plane. The chief of security had to be left in a locked plane. Neither of these gentlemen was allowed to arrive and attend the U.N. meeting. This is another abuse and another abuse of power on the part of the Devil. It smells of sulfur here, but God is with us and I embrace you all.

May God bless us all. Good day to you.

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IDF commander: We fired more than a million cluster bombs in Lebanon

By Meron Rappaport

"What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs," the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war.

Quoting his battalion commander, the rocket unit head stated that the IDF fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets.

In addition, soldiers in IDF artillery units testified that the army used phosphorous shells during the war, widely forbidden by international law. According to their claims, the vast majority of said explosive ordinance was fired in the final 10 days of the war.

The rocket unit commander stated that Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) platforms were heavily used in spite of the fact that they were known to be highly inaccurate.

MLRS is a track or tire carried mobile rocket launching platform, capable of firing a very high volume of mostly unguided munitions. The basic rocket fired by the platform is unguided and imprecise, with a range of about 32 kilometers. The rockets are designed to burst into sub-munitions at a planned altitude in order to blanket enemy army and personnel on the ground with smaller explosive rounds.

The use of such weaponry is controversial mainly due to its inaccuracy and ability to wreak great havoc against indeterminate targets over large areas of territory, with a margin of error of as much as 1,200 meters from the intended target to the area hit.

The cluster rounds which don't detonate on impact, believed by the United Nations to be around 40% of those fired by the IDF in Lebanon, remain on the ground as unexploded munitions, effectively littering the landscape with thousands of land mines which will continue to claim victims long after the war has ended.

Because of their high level of failure to detonate, it is believed that there are around 500,000 unexploded munitions on the ground in Lebanon. To date 12 Lebanese civilians have been killed by these mines since the end of the war.

According to the commander, in order to compensate for the inaccuracy of the rockets and the inability to strike individual targets precisely, units would "flood" the battlefield with munitions, accounting for the littered and explosive landscape of post-war Lebanon.

When his reserve duty came to a close, the commander in question sent a letter to Defense Minister Amir Peretz outlining the use of cluster munitions, a letter which has remained unanswered.

'Excessive injury and unnecessary suffering'

It has come to light that IDF soldiers fired phosphorous rounds in order to cause fires in Lebanon. An artillery commander has admitted to seeing trucks loaded with phosphorous rounds on their way to artillery crews in the north of Israel.

A direct hit from a phosphorous shell typically causes severe burns and a slow, painful death.

International law forbids the use of weapons that cause "excessive injury and unnecessary suffering", and many experts are of the opinion that phosphorous rounds fall directly in that category.

The International Red Cross has determined that international law forbids the use of phosphorous and other types of flammable rounds against personnel, both civilian and military.

IDF: No violation of international law
In response, the IDF Spokesman's Office stated that "International law does not include a sweeping prohibition of the use of cluster bombs. The convention on conventional weaponry does not declare a prohibition on [phosphorous weapons], rather, on principles regulating the use of such weapons.

"For understandable operational reasons, the IDF does not respond to [accounts of] details of weaponry in its possession.

"The IDF makes use only of methods and weaponry which are permissible under international law. Artillery fire in general, including MLRS fire, were used in response solely to firing on the state of Israel."

The Defense Minister's office said it had not received messages regarding cluster bomb fire.

(from http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/761781.html)

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Some More Reasons to Support Hezbollah and Hamas

(also at Dissident Voice)
By Stephen Pearcy

I’ve been to a lot of peace demonstrations lately involving support for the Lebanese and Palestinian people and denouncing Israel’s attacks upon civilians in both Lebanon and Palestine. At the last two demos I attended—one in Sacramento and another in San Francisco—I brought a Hamas flag and a sign with Hassan Nasrallah’s portrait. At both events, many people came up to me and asked if they could hold my sign and flag. In San Francisco, so many people asked me if they could hold each display that I had to start saying, “No, sorry, I just got this back, and I want to hold it for a while.” There were many times when I was standing empty handed waiting to get back either my flag or my sign. If anyone had been there with a table selling Nasrallah posters or Hamas flags, he/she might have made a small fortune.

Even before Israel’s recent invasion of Lebanon, Hezbollah was already popular for its resistance to Israeli aggression, and Nasrallah, as the leader of Hezbollah, enjoyed widespread support. But after the onslaught of Israel’s recent military attacks, Hezbollah began experiencing a huge surge of popularity throughout the Middle East, because it was the only organized group of people willing risk their lives to defend the Lebanese people from Israel’s campaign of slaughter. Hezbollah essentially came to the rescue when the Lebanese army (and UN support) was nowhere in sight.

It is certainly not sufficient to say that one should support Hezbollah or Nasrallah just because they’re popular. What’s important is to consider the substantive reasons why they deserve our support.

Many people erroneously refer to Hezbollah as a “terrorist organization,” mostly because that’s the label that the Bush administration, the pro-Israel lobbies, the corporate media and the Republicans and Democrats have given it. However, Hezbollah arose as, and remains, a purely defense-oriented organization. Hezbollah’s existence is completely legitimate as a proper deterrent to Israel from attempting to bully the Lebanese people. Hezbollah only seeks to defend the Lebanese people from Israeli aggression and to defend Lebanese soil from Israeli incursions and occupations. Generally speaking, Hezbollah, as a group, couldn't care less about the “state of Israel’s land.” If the Israeli military stayed out of Lebanon, Hezbollah would pose no threat to Israel.

Some people in the West who regarded Israel’s actions as outrageous were nonetheless reluctant to side with, or seemingly embrace, Hezbollah. Part of this had a lot to do with the way that Americans have been conditioned by the corporate media to use the words “Hezbollah” and “terrorists” interchangeably. If we think about it, though, just about every policy that the Bush administration has implemented has relied upon similar word associations perpetuated by the media.

The other reason why some peace activists were slow to support Hezbollah was because, in response to Israel’s slaughter of huge numbers of Lebanese children and other civilians, Hezbollah also fired rockets into Israel. But since peace activists don’t condone violence of any kind, supporting Hezbollah, at first blush, seemed inconsistent.

Surprisingly, however, many of the activists I spoke with who were reluctant to support Hezbollah acknowledged that they voted Democratic in the last election and intended to do so again in the next one. These were people who agreed that what Israel was doing was egregious and amounted to mass murder, but they voted for Boxer and Feinstein, two of the one hundred U.S. Senators who voted to support Israel’s killing spree in Lebanon.

Peace-loving people seeking to curtail violence should understand that supporting Hezbollah involves supporting a position that promotes the most peaceful outcome among the readily available choices.

Most of us who vote typically end up choosing a “lesser of two evils” candidate or party. Doing so doesn’t produce the most optimistic outcome, but there’s nothing wrong whatsoever, in the context of analyzing the rationale of Israel and Hezbollah, with doing exactly the same thing. As it turns out, objective and informed Progressives who have considered this balancing test usually have no problem acknowledging moral support for Hezbollah. Again, the real trick for most people is to ignore labels and to realize that the approach is no different from what they already do when they choose candidates.

The pro-Israel groups also improperly refer to Hamas as a “terrorist organization.” However, analogous to Hezbollah, Hamas is the defense-oriented Palestinian group that has gained substantial popularity for providing social services (medical, educational, spiritual, and housing) to Palestinian people.

Only three months ago, Hamas announced that it would agree to provisionally recognize Israel until a more detailed agreement could be reached. This presented a huge new milestone in the potential for some lasting peace in the region, but Israeli officials apparently didn't want there to be any such agreement. Within days of Hamas’ landmark announcement, Israel launched a new deadly offensive in the Palestinian territory and again killed many civilians. Israel used the [justifiable] capture of two Israeli soldiers as a pretext to invade Gaza, notwithstanding that Israeli soldiers routinely kidnap Palestinian civilians and Israel continues to hold hundreds of them in Israeli prisons.

Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has continued over the last several months. Not only has the offensive claimed many lives of Palestinian children and other civilians, but it has also included the kidnapping of over 60% of the democratically elected members of the Hamas political party. Israel’s message has been clear: its action is intended to punish the Palestinian people for their political choices in the last elections.

But Israel’s concern about the rise of Hamas’ popularity seems misplaced. Ironically, ever since Hamas has gained control in the Palestinian Parliament, there hasn’t been a single suicide bombing in Israel. But Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians and kidnapped hundreds more since the elections. Hamas has shown great restraint, and Israel has shown the real meaning of “terrorism.”

Finally, Hamas has stated many times that it would recognize Israel if Israel will recognize Palestine, including East Jerusalem and the 1967 borders. Nonetheless, the U.S. corporate media invariably falsely states that the goal of Hamas is to annihilate Israel. The media’s goal is obviously to make dumb listeners think that Hamas wants to kill off all of the Israeli people. But it’s the state of Israel, and the corrupt manner in which it is governed, that troubles Hamas (and the majority of the international community). And no corrupt state has the “right to exist.”

People have rights to exist, but corrupt states don’t. Did Nazi Germany have the right to exist?

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Is Iran's President Really a Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying Islamo-fascist who has threatened to "wipe Israel off the map"?

Putting Words in Ahmadinejad's Mouth

By VIRGINIA TILLEY

Johannesburg, South Africa

In this frightening mess in the Middle East, let's get one thing
straight. Iran is not threatening Israel with destruction. Iran's
president has not threatened any action against Israel. Over and over,
we hear that Iran is clearly "committed to annihilating Israel" because
the "mad" or "reckless" or "hard-line" President Ahmadinejad has
repeatedly threatened to destroy Israel But every supposed quote, every
supposed instance of his doing so, is wrong.

The most infamous quote, "Israel must be wiped off the map", is the most
glaringly wrong. In his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used
the word "map" or the term "wiped off". According to Farsi-language
experts like Juan Cole and even right-wing services like MEMRI, what he
actually said was "this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish
from the page of time."

What did he mean? In this speech to an annual anti-Zionist conference,
Mr. Ahmadinejad was being prophetic, not threatening. He was citing Imam
Khomeini, who said this line in the 1980s (a period when Israel was
actually selling arms to Iran, so apparently it was not viewed as so
ghastly then). Mr. Ahmadinejad had just reminded his audience that the
Shah's regime, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein had all seemed
enormously powerful and immovable, yet the first two had vanished almost
beyond recall and the third now languished in prison. So, too, the
"occupying regime" in Jerusalem would someday be gone. His message was,
in essence, "This too shall pass."

But what about his other "threats" against Israel? The blathersphere
made great hay from his supposed comment later in the same speech,
"There is no doubt: the new wave of assaults in Palestine will erase the
stigma in [the] countenance of the Islamic world." "Stigma" was
interpreted as "Israel" and "wave of assaults" was ominous. But what he
actually said was, "I have no doubt that the new movement taking place
in our dear Palestine is a wave of morality which is spanning the entire
Islamic world and which will soon remove this stain of disgrace from the
Islamic world." "Wave of morality" is not "wave of assaults." The
preceding sentence had made clear that the "stain of disgrace" was the
Muslim world's failure to eliminate the "occupying regime".

For months, scholars like Cole and journalists like the London
Guardian's Jonathan Steele have been pointing out these mistranslations
while more and more appear: for example, Mr. Ahmadinejad's comments at
the Organization of Islamic Countries meeting on August 3, 2006. Radio
Free Europe reported that he said "that the 'main cure' for crisis in
the Middle East is the elimination of Israel." "Elimination of Israel"
implies physical destruction: bombs, strafing, terror, throwing Jews
into the sea. Tony Blair denounced the translated statement as ""quite
shocking". But Mr. Ahmadinejad never said this. According to al-Jazeera,
what he actually said was "The real cure for the conflict is the
elimination of the Zionist regime, but there should be an immediate
ceasefire first."

Nefarious agendas are evident in consistently translating "eliminating
the occupation regime" as "destruction of Israel". "Regime" refers to
governance, not populations or cities. "Zionist regime" is the
government of Israel and its system of laws, which have annexed
Palestinian land and hold millions of Palestinians under military
occupation. Many mainstream human rights activists believe that Israel's
"regime" must indeed be transformed, although they disagree how. Some
hope that Israel can be redeemed by a change of philosophy and
government (regime) that would allow a two-state solution. Others
believe that Jewish statehood itself is inherently unjust, as it embeds
racist principles into state governance, and call for its transformation
into a secular democracy (change of regime). None of these ideas about
regime change signifies the expulsion of Jews into the sea or the
ravaging of their towns and cities. All signify profound political
change, necessary to creating a just peace.

Mr. Ahmadinejad made other statements at the Organization of Islamic
Countries that clearly indicated his understanding that Israel must be
treated within the framework of international law. For instance, he
recognized the reality of present borders when he said that "any
aggressor should go back to the Lebanese international border". He
recognized the authority of Israel and the role of diplomacy in
observing, "The circumstances should be prepared for the return of the
refugees and displaced people, and prisoners should be exchanged." He
also called for a boycott: "We also propose that the Islamic nations
immediately cut all their overt and covert political and economic
relations with the Zionist regime." A double bushel of major Jewish
peace groups, US church groups, and hordes of human rights organizations
have said the same things.

A final word is due about Mr. Ahmadinejad's "Holocaust denial".
Holocaust denial is a very sensitive issue in the West, where it
notoriously serves anti-Semitism. Elsewhere in the world, however,
fogginess about the Holocaust traces more to a sheer lack of
information. One might think there is plenty of information about the
Holocaust worldwide, but this is a mistake. (Lest we be snooty,
Americans show the same startling insularity from general knowledge
when, for example, they live to late adulthood still not grasping that
US forces killed at least two million Vietnamese and believing that
anyone who says so is anti-American. Most French people have not yet
accepted that their army slaughtered a million Arabs in Algeria.)

Skepticism about the Holocaust narrative has started to take hold in the
Middle East not because people hate Jews but because that narrative is
deployed to argue that Israel has a right to "defend itself" by
attacking every country in its vicinity. Middle East publics are so used
to western canards legitimizing colonial or imperial takeovers that some
wonder if the six-million-dead argument is just another myth or
exaggerated tale. It is dismal that Mr. Ahmadinejad seems to belong to
this sector.

Still, Mr. Ahmadinejad did not say what the US Subcommittee on
Intelligence Policy reported that he said: "They have invented a myth
that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the
prophets." He actually said, "In the name of the Holocaust they have
created a myth and regard it to be worthier than God, religion and the
prophets." This language targets the myth of the Holocaust, not the
Holocaust itself - i.e., "myth" as "mystique", or what has been done
with the Holocaust. Other writers, including important Jewish
theologians, have criticized the "cult" or "ghost" of the Holocaust
without denying that it happened. In any case, Mr. Ahmadinejad's main
message has been that, if the Holocaust happened as Europe says it did,
then Europe, and not the Muslim world, is responsible for it.

Why is Mr. Ahmadinejad being so systematically misquoted and demonized?
Need we ask? If the world believes that Iran is preparing to attack
Israel, then the US or Israel can claim justification in attacking Iran
first. On that agenda, the disinformation campaign about Mr.
Ahmadinejad's statements has been bonded at the hip to a second set of
lies: promoting Iran's (nonexistent) nuclear weapon programme.

The current fuss about Iran's nuclear enrichment program is playing out
so identically to US canards about Iraq's WMD that we must wonder why it
is not meeting only roaring international derision. With multiple
agendas regarding Iran -- oil, US hegemony, Israel, neocon fantasies of
a "new Middle East" -- the Bush administration has raised a great
international scare about Iran's nuclear enrichment program. (See Ray
Close, Why Bush Will Choose War Against Iran.) But, plowing through
Iran's facilities and records, International Atomic Energy Agency
inspectors have found no evidence of a weapons program. The US
intelligence community hasn't found anything, either.

All experts concur that, even if Iran has such a program, it is five to
ten years away from having the enriched uranium necessary for an actual
weapon, so pre-emptive military action now is hardly necessary. Even the
recent report by the Republican-dominated Subcommittee on Intelligence
Policy, which pointed out that the US government lacks the intelligence
on Iran's weapons program necessary to thwart it, effectively confirms
that the supposed "intelligence" is patchy and inadequate.

The Bush administration's casual neglect of North Korea's nuclear
program indicates that nuclear weapons are not, in fact, the issue here.
The neocons are intent on changing the regime in Iran and so have
deployed their propagandists to promote the "nuclear weapons" scare just
they promoted the Iraqi WMD scare. Republican rhetoric and right-wing
news commentators have fallen into line, obediently repeating baseless
assertions that Iran has a "nuclear weapons program," is threatening the
world and especially Israel with its "nuclear weapons program," and must
not be allowed to complete its "nuclear weapons program." Those who
nervously point out that hard evidence is actually lacking about any
Iranian "nuclear weapons program" are derided as naïve and spineless
patsies.

Worse, the Bush administration has brought this snow-job to the UN,
wrangling the Security Council into passing a resolution (SC 1696)
demanding that Iran cease nuclear enrichment by August 31 and warning of
sanctions if it doesn't. Combined with its abysmal performance regarding
Israel's assault on Lebanon, the Security Council has crumbled into
humiliating obsequious incompetence on this one.

Like all phantasms, the nuclear-weapons charge is hard to defeat because
it cannot be entirely disproved. Maybe some Iranian scientists, in some
remote underground facility, are working on nuclear weapons technology.
Maybe feelers to North Korea have explored the possibilities of getting
extra components. Maybe an alien spaceship once crashed in the Nevada
desert. Normally, just because something can't be disproved does not
make it true. But in the neocon world, possibilities are realities, and
a craven press is there to click its heels and trumpet the
scaremongering headlines. It doesn't take much, through endless
repetition of the term "possible nuclear weapons program," for the word
"possible" to drop quietly away.

Evidence is, in any case, a mere detail to the Bush administration, for
which the desire for nuclear weapons is sufficient cause for a
pre-emptive attack. In US debates prior to invading Iraq, people
sometimes insisted that any real evidence of WMD was sorely lacking. The
White House would then insist that, because Saddam Hussein "wanted" such
weapons, he was likely to have them sometime in the future. Hence
thought crimes, even imaginary thought crimes, are now punishable by
military invasion.

Will the US really attack Iran? US generals are rightly alarmed that
bombing Iran's nuclear facilities would unleash unprecedented attacks on
US occupation forces in Iraq, as well as US bases in the Gulf. Iran
could even block the Straits of Hormuz, which carries 40 percent of the
world's oil. Spin-off terrorist militancy would skyrocket. The potential
damage to international security and the world economy would be
unfathomably dangerous. The Bush administration's necons seems capable
of any insanity, so none of this may matter to them. But even the
neocons must be taking pause since Israel failed to knock out Hizbullah
using the same onslaught from the air planned for Iran.

But Israel can attack Iran, and this may be the plan. Teaming up, the
two countries could compensate for each other's strategic limitations.
The US has been contributing its superpower clout in the Security
Council, setting the stage for sanctions, knowing Iran will not yield on
its enrichment program. Having cultivated a (mistaken) international
belief that Iran is threatening a direct attack on Israel, the Israeli
government could then claim the right of self-defense in taking
unilateral pre-emptive action to destroy the nuclear capacity of a state
declared in breach of UN directives. Direct retaliation by Iran against
Israel is impossible because Israel is a nuclear power (and Iran is not)
and because the US security umbrella would protect Israel. Regional
reaction against US targets might be curtailed by the (scant) confusion
about indirect US complicity.

In that case, what we are seeing now is the US creating the
international security context for Israel's unilateral strike and
preparing to cover Israel's back in the aftermath.

Is this really the plan? Some evidence suggests that it is on the table.
In recent years, Israel has purchased new "bunker-busting" missiles, a
fleet of F-16 jets, and three latest-technology German Dolphin
submarines (and ordered two more)- i.e., the appropriate weaponry for
striking Iran's nuclear installations. In March 2005, the Times of
London reported that Israel had constructed a mock-up of Iran's Natanz
facility in the desert and was conducting practice bombing runs. In
recent months, Israeli officials have openly stated that if the UN fails
to take action, Israel will bomb Iran.

But Hizbullah, Iran's ally, still threatens Israel's flank. Hence
attacking Hizbullah was more than a "demo" for attacking Iran, as
Seymour Hersh reported; it was necessary to attacking Iran. Israel
failed to crush Hizbullah, but the outcome may be better for Israel now
that Security Council Resolution 1701 has made the entire international
community responsible for disarming Hizbullah. If the US-sponsored 1701
effort succeeds, the attack on Iran is a go.

As Israel and the US try to make that deeply flawed plan work, we will
doubtless continue to read in every forum that Iran's president - a
hostile, irrational, Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying Islamo-fascist who
has threatened to "wipe Israel off the map" -- is demonstrably
irrational enough to commit national suicide by launching a
(nonexistent) nuclear weapon against Israel's mighty nuclear arsenal.
The message is being hammered home: against this media-created myth,
Israel must truly "defend itself."

Virginia Tilley is a professor of political science, a US citizen
working in South Africa, and author of The One-State Solution: A
Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock (University
of Michigan Press and Manchester University Press, 2005). She can be
reached at tilley@hws.edu.

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The US Peace Movement and Hezbollah

By JAMES BROOKS

Many peace activists may have felt somewhat bewildered by Hezbollah's smashing success in outfoxing and outfighting the Israeli army in southern Lebanon. Was it right to feel such a visceral satisfaction from these battles fought by a group that was also lobbing rockets at Israeli civilians? Where did we stand on Hezbollah, really?

We "peace activists" struggle to take rage, anguish, and disgust and channel them into language and tactics we believe will appeal to the general public. In order to persevere in our relatively fruitless efforts, we guard our optimism.

Whether our focus is Colombia, Haiti, Mexico, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other US-supported war-and-poisoning zone, our news is a steady diet of inhumane horrors and injustices. For many of us, that's enough. We may (wittingly or not) avoid or reject analysis and information that suggests the situation is much worse than we already know it to be, fearing burnout and despair.

We may also worry that an analysis that is too dissonant with the dominant paradigm will alienate the public. Leading figures in the movement remember to utter the pieties that are supposed to legitimize our message, such as the "importance of maintaining a strong defense." Connecting the wrong dots threatens the tenuous bridge we have built between reality and the world according to the machine.

But maintaining an unsatisfactory compromise built on increasingly unreal assumptions will inevitably produce denial. Thus we find ourselves where we are today, tripping over an array of mostly unconscious barriers to a realistic understanding of our present predicament.

The Israeli-US war on Lebanon crystallized the picture that we are afraid to see.

It put the Bush cabal's determination to attack Iran on "the front burner" and the "fast track", despite the consternation of old guard "realists" of US imperial diplomacy, who worry Bush is about to start World War III.

And it resoundingly affirmed the ability of today's resistance fighters to undermine Israeli and US-UK attempts to enforce foreign occupations, striking fear in the hearts of highly-placed warmongers on both sides of the Atlantic. They will probably respond by calling for even more "air power" next time.

Lebanon was the fourth all-out war on an Arab/Muslim country in the last four years, all waged by the US-UK "coalition" and/or the Israeli-US "alliance". Let's consider the pretexts offered to justify this serial criminal warfare.

Afghanistan was invaded and destroyed (again), ostensibly to avenge 9/11 by destroying Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, even though the FBI has admitted that it has "no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11."

Iraq was invaded and destroyed (again) to find mythical weapons of mass destruction.

The Gaza Strip was invaded and destroyed (again) because resistance fighters allied to Hamas captured an Israeli soldier in a retaliatory cross-border raid.

Lebanon was invaded and destroyed (again) because Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a retaliatory cross-border raid.

The grand total of pretexts? One unlikely suspect, one myth, and three captured soldiers, who were all doing fine at last report. For this?

Of course the US and Israel have a long list of genuine reasons to wage each of these wars and carry out the whole bloody scheme. But the official excuses they offer to the rest of the nations of the world have meaning, too.

In this case they appear to mean, "See, I can lie through my teeth and you can't do a damn thing about it except say, 'Yes, sir.' The world is what we say it is, or you don't have a place in it. I have many ways of making your life miserable. And don't forget, I'm unpredictable. I can do crazy things and get away with them."

The steady application of this kind of diplomacy has smashed our naïve hopes by sucking the EU and the UK ever more deeply into the orbit of US-Israeli foreign policy, to the point where the Arabs can't trust either of them any more than they can trust us.

While most people have been distracted by the shock and awe of America's military presence in the Middle East, Israel's studiously ignored long war on the Palestinians has descended to new depths of daily living hell.

The accelerating ethnic cleansing of the northern and eastern West Bank threatens to squeeze even the possibility of Palestinian life out of the land. The Jordan Valley is being prepared for illegal "annexation" to Israel.

In Israel's 'total war' on the "liberated" Gaza Strip, the IAF has destroyed the main power station, all major roads and bridges, the sole (unused) airport, several government and civic buildings, and dozens of homes.

Now at least a third of the poverty-stricken inhabitants do not have power or running water. Israel also imposed a total blockade on Gaza, which remains in force today with EU cooperation. This little "war", still raging on, has already killed nearly 200 Palestinians, more than half of them civilians. One Israeli soldier has died in the "fighting".

And more civilians are dying because Israel and the US and the EU and Canada and Britain, all those great democracies, conspired to cut off funds and embargo the finances of the PA when it became too democratic in a free and fair election last January.

The sick, especially children and the elderly, are dying because hospitals have little or no electricity, are running out of fuel, have only the most rudimentary medical supplies (if that) and no money to pay their staff. This is how the US plays politics in the Middle East.

And more war is on the way. Palestine now finds that its struggle for self-determination and survival has been hijacked to serve as a crucible for the next phase of the empire's plan, in which Iran and Syria are hot-branded as "terrorist states" that must also be forcibly "liberated".

The propaganda campaign is going on full-tilt as we speak. Its rules are wonderfully simple; whenever you mention the Palestinian or Lebanese resistance, follow it with this phrase, or its equivalent: "a terrorist group funded and armed by Syria and Iran".

As a result, the Palestinian-Lebanese resistance may become the hinge of a crystallizing global divide. It seems unlikely that Palestine will enjoy any benefit from this honor, but those pages have yet to be written.

In hindsight, wasn't it obvious that World War III had begun when the world's "sole superpower" declared an open-ended "global war" on an indefinite, multinational enemy?

And what is the big picture for us here at home? The debacle of last summer's hurricanes was searing evidence that the domestic underbelly of the government is rapidly withering into an outsourced husk of uselessness. The parasites continue to multiply, infecting the whole body with corruption, cronyism, profiteering, and lawlessness.

The vast wealth of the nation is controlled by one percent of its citizens. Draconian funding cuts drive people to food shelves and soup kitchens in unprecedented numbers, neglected by a fearful herd trying to work enough hours to sustain an unsustainable debt.

During the past fifty years, the relationship between the federal government and corporate-finance power has transformed from a formally bipolar arrangement into today's unipolar alignment. Government now functions primarily to serve shifting forces of corporate-finance power (and the odd foreign government) as a facilitator, benefactor, warrior, and spendthrift customer.

In the modern age, this fusion of money power and national government is called fascism. It has been observed that fascist governments typically resort to outlandish, racially-charged propaganda and embark on increasingly reckless wars of aggression. They usually conduct intensive domestic surveillance and counterintelligence, rig elections, imprison large percentages of their populations, sadistically torture prisoners and detainees, and police and "debate" by racial- and political-profiling. They always aggressively expand the executive power of the central government.

You don't have to wait until they arrest you, too, to decide that America has become a fascist state. The evidence is all around you. Those who still have difficulty seeing the picture might be advised to stop listening to National Public Radio.

What do "peace activists" do in a fascist state? What is the true potential of our efforts to "change public opinion" in the world's most advanced propaganda regime? What actions by a citizen are morally justified to resist this tyranny, injustice, and bloodshed? Which would be most effective? What have other people done in this situation? How do we feel about that?

Is it sane to continue to pretend that we live in a "democracy" when we manifestly do not? Does our squeamishness about armed resistance by Arabs and Muslims reflect an unconsciously imperial notion, that we might have peace if only they didn't fight back? Are we willing to do everything we can to stop this global menace, starting with ourselves? These are but a few of the questions dying to be asked now by all people of conscience.

So, how do we feel about Hezbollah, which dealt the quickest and most embarrassing blow yet to the war plans of "our" empire? How can we not feel admiration, even gratitude, for their determination to prevent another bloody occupation? Didn't they accomplish more in 34 days than we have accomplished in nearly four decades of a preposterous "peace process" chronically violated and manipulated to prolong the occupation?

At the end of his recent New Yorker article, Watching Lebanon: Washington's interests in Israel's war, Sy Hersh quoted John Arquilla, a defense analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, about the Bush neocons' view of warfare: "The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result."

We who seek peace must ask ourselves if we have not also gone 'insane', expecting different results from actions that obviously haven't worked. To guard our optimism in the New World Order, we Americans will have to learn to see peace the way most Palestinians see it: as the inevitable fruit of resolute resistance to aggression and injustice.

James Brooks serves as webmaster for Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel. He can be contacted at jamiedb@wildblue.net.

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The Lobby, the U.S. and the Israeli War on Hezbollah

August 30, 2006
by Terry Walz, CNI Staff



The U.S. blanket support for the Israeli war on Hezbollah can be laid at the feet of the Israel Lobby, concluded Professor Stephen Walt and Prof. John Mearsheimer in an analysis they presented at the National Press Club in Washington on August 28. Their presentation, which was sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, was a widening of their critique of the lobby and focused on the role it played in the recent Israel-Hezbollah war. It showed once again how the lobby works against both Israel's and the United States' national interests.

Their original thesis, "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy" was presented in shortened form in the London Review of Books in March and prompted a lively controversy in both the mainstream press and academic journals. Rarely has the subject of the power of the Israel lobby been approached by professors from such eminent universities. Mearsheimer is a professor of international politics and security issues at the University of Chicago and Walt is an international affairs scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Walt reviewed that thesis for the audience yesterday in his segment of the presentation, leaving Mearsheimer to discuss the role of the Lobby in the recent Israel-Hezbollah war. The destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure, the bombing of areas not associated with Hezbollah, and especially the killing of almost 1,200 civilians, many of them women and children – which constitutes an international war crime according to Amnesty International and other organizations – had no effect whatsoever on either the U.S. executive branch or Congress. On the contrary, working in lock-step with the Israel Lobby (especially AIPAC), Congress rushed through resolutions on both sides praising Israel for its war against Lebanon, disregarding the wanton death and destruction it was causing to civilian populations and ignoring world opinion. The U.S. was the only country to support Israel in this war.

Mearsheimer reviewed the pressure brought on Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. John Warner (R-VA) for offering softer language on the resolution, and on Chris van Hollen (D-MD) for daring to call for an immediate ceasefire in a letter to Condoleezza Rice. Van Hollen was in fact told what consequences he faced if he didn't withdraw his statement, and it came shortly thereafter in the form of an abject apology to the Jewish community. Nor, having received it, did local Jewish leaders seem satisfied, one saying that he needed to "continue to reach out to the Jewish community to reassure the Jewish community he was going to be there for Israel" – a clear threat to his political future should he deviate again from the lobby's script.

Mearsheimer said that the evidence shows that the Israelis had briefed the American administration before launching the war on Hezbollah, and therefore the US was in a position to give it a "red light instead of a green light when it proposed its plan to attack Lebanon." It provided support for the war despite worldwide condemnation of the attack, and only when it appeared that the Israeli army was unable to crush Hezbollah did the Bush administration and the Israeli government accepted the need for negotiations. The US diplomacy at the UN earned President Bush a compliment when the Israeli prime minister thanked Bush on August 11 for "safeguarding Israel's interests in the Security Council."

Mearsheimer and Walt suggested that the United States has three major strategic concerns in the Middle East: terrorism ("mainly about neutralizing al-Qaeda"), dealing with rogue states ("Syria and Iran"), and the war in Iraq ("which the United States is in danger of losing.") He pointed out that support for Israel's war on Lebanon complicated Washington's ability to deal with all three concerns. The US position is so closely aligned with Israel these days that, as Mearsheimer quoted Aaron Miller, "there is no daylight whatsoever between the government of Israel and the government of the United States."

Did the US push Israel to attack Lebanon, as might a state order a client state to do? Mearsheimer thought not, but since the United States had been briefed about the attack, it should have said no for its own national interests and for those of Israel. He concluded, "Until the lobby begins to favor a different approach or until its influence is weakened, U.S. policy in the region will continue to be hamstrung to everyone's detriment."

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Sacramento Cops Videotape Lawful Protesting Activity

See the video clip HERE.

(it may take several seconds to begin, or you might need Quicktime 7 to view it-- free download here.)

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Israel Continues to Murder Civilians; Dems Don't Care

On a daily basis for months, Israel's corrupt military has continued to indiscriminately and aggressively fire rockets and blow up civilians in residential neighborhoods of Palestinian territory. But now it has invaded another sovereign nation--Lebanon--and is doing the same thing.

In Lebanon, the Israeli military has been on a murderous rampage for over two weeks now. Noteworthy is the fact that Israel is knowingly using white phosphorous bombs in Lebanon that, when dropped, melt the faces off of Lebanese children.

There are countless photos of, and articles about, similar results of Israel's killing spree from Palestine to Lebanon here (notice the little Israeli girls sign the missile that kills the little Lebanese boy (whose body is shown).

and here.

For another example of Israel's baby killing in the news, go here.

This stuff isn't funny; it's sick. But the political leaders, such as Rice and Olmert, just sit on the stately couches and laugh while posing for the photo ops. Then they announce that nothing will change except that both Israel and the US will flex more military muscle.

Recently, the Israeli military intentionally blew up 5 members of a UN observation team. The UN is outraged, but their hands are tied because of the US veto power concerning any formal statements from the body (see this).

Israel initially escalated the violence several months ago, just after the Palestinian people elected, through honest and democratic elections (as opposed to ours), leaders from the highly respected Hamas party. Notwithstanding that the vast majority of the world's nations respected and applauded the outcome, Israel and the US regarded it as a slap in the face; so they collaborated to punish the Palestinian people for showing that democracy does not always mean that the US gets its way.

Although the international community repeatedly condemns Israel for its flagrant ethnic cleansing campaign, Israel has only intensified the civilian killings. One problem is that there haven't been any real and meaningful consequences for Israel to deter them from continuing. Israel's goal seems to be to wipe out its neighbors through attrition. Since, through military violence, the proportion of Israeli deaths to Lebanese and Palestinian deaths is very low, Israel simply regards it as a numbers game.

Last week, all 100 US Senators--including the pro-military extremist Democratic Senators (i.e., all of them)--voted to support more of Israel's civilian bombing. In Sacramento, Democratic City Council Members Rob Fong and Steve Cohn praised Israel at a pro-murder rally at the Capitol (really, this is an accurate description!). In spite of an urgent mass email I sent out several hours before the event, not one single Democrat joined us at our counter-demonstration. Still, we had a good turnout and we had enough of a presence to garner media coverage for the real story.

How could it be that, while every member country of the UN, except the US and Great Britain, is outraged by Israel's actions and by the US support for Israel, not one single Democrat in the entire US Senate voted for justice last week? Instead, they all voted along the AIPAC Party line.

The Democrats, in complete unity and hand-holding with the Republicans, essentially voted for a huge increase in the number of enemies our children will have later (see the UN's concern about increased hatred here). If they ever experience the consequences of such increased hatred, like the families of civilian WTC employees did, they will have themselves to blame. And if we give any of them our vote, we'll be to blame as well.

Since we invaded Iraq, more and more people throughout the world hate us and want to kill us. And the numbers grow exponentially when Democrats support Israel's savage acts. None of us should find this acceptable.

At this point, it's very clear to me that the Democratic party can NEVER be changed, either from within or without, and that the ONLY hope is that a brand new party surfaces that completely rejects pro-Israel ideology and has no ties whatsoever to the pervasively, marinated-in-corruption, AIPAC-beholden Democratic Party.

Finally, while the Bush administration, and others who have been brainwashed by the U.S. corporate media, continue to call Hamas and Hezbollah "terrorist organizations," the rest of the world whispers those same words about Israel and the US.

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Israeli Military Murders 9 year-old, Blinds 10 year-old Brother

This would be front page news if it happened in a western nation, but you didn't hear about it because reporting such stories is anti-semetic...(at least that's what AIPAC wants you to think).

Hadil Ghabin, 9 years old, was killed April 10th after an Israeli shell struck her family's home.

Hadil's 10-year-old brother, Ahmed, was blinded in the attack.

Read the story here.

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Marines Murder Iraqi Civilians--including 3 year-old girl!

American military continues to ignore international human rights.

Read the story here.

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The Israel Lobby

Read the story here.

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SACRAMENTO ANTI-WAR/PRO-DEMOCRACY DEMO THIS SATURDAY!

Hello everyone:

This Saturday, March 18th, from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm, we'll build upon the spectacular, colorful, energetic gathering of political voices that we had at 16th & Broadway the last two Saturdays! (see here)

Once again, we'll join forces with Sacramento for Democracy and hold a major anti-war/anti-Bush/pro-democracy demo, rain or shine.

This Saturday's event is the last of three consecutive Saturday rallies at 16th & Broadway and marks the third anniversary of the US-led/UN-opposed invasion of Iraq.

Please bring compelling signs and displays. Although our focus is to end the war, impeach Bush, and promote democracy, please feel free to draw attention to any injustice perpetuated by this administration: there are too many to enumerate!

We'll repeat our theme of international and cross-cultural solidarity for our opposition to the war.

To ensure another charged atmosphere with full participation, please forward this to others, and bring your friends, banners, flags, signs, art, instruments, etc., to 16th & Broadway on Saturday, March 18th, from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm.

Thank you. We look forward to seeing you!

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Lethal Ambiguity

by Laila El-Haddad
9-year-old Aya al-Astal was killed by Israeli snipers stationed on Gaza's borders on her way back home to her village of Qarrara in south-east Gaza. No investigation was every made into her death.

21-year-old Tom Hurndall spent 9 months in a coma before dying from gunshot wounds to his head. He was shot by an Israeli sniper when he tried to bring Palestinian children to safety.

Read entire story

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Cindy Sheehan unlawfully arrested by Capitol Police

Read the real story about how Cindy Sheehan was unlawfully arrested at the State of the Union address.

What Really Happened
By Cindy Sheehan
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Wednesday 01 February 2006

As most of you have probably heard, I was arrested before the State of the Union address last night.

I am speechless with fury at what happened and with grief over what we have lost in our country.

There have been lies from the police and distortions by the press (shocker). So this is what really happened:

This afternoon at the People's State of the Union Address in DC, where I was joined by Congresspersons Lynn Woolsey and John Conyers, Ann Wright, Malik Rahim and John Cavanagh, Lynn brought me a ticket to the State of the Union address. At that time, I was wearing the shirt that said: 2245 Dead. How many more?

After the PSOTU press conference, I was having second thoughts about going to the SOTU at the Capitol. I didn't feel comfortable going. I knew George Bush would say things that would hurt me and anger me, and I knew that I couldn't disrupt the address because Lynn had given me the ticket, and I didn't want to be disruptive out of respect for her. I, in fact, had given the ticket to John Bruhns, who is in Iraq Veterans Against the War. However, Lynn's office had already called the media, and everyone knew I was going to be there, so I sucked it up and went.

I got the ticket back from John, and I met one of Congresswoman Barbara Lee's staffers in the Longworth Congressional Office building and we went to the Capitol via the underground tunnel. I went through security once, then had to use the rest room and went through security again.

My ticket was in the 5th gallery, front row, fourth seat in. The person who in a few minutes was to arrest me, helped me to my seat.

I had just sat down and I was warm from climbing 3 flights of stairs back up from the bathroom so I unzipped my jacket. I turned to the right to take my left arm out, when the same officer saw my shirt and yelled, "Protester." He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat, and roughly (with my hands behind my back) shoved me up the stairs. I said something like "I'm going, do you have to be so rough?" By the way, his name is Mike Weight.

The officer ran with me to the elevators, yelling at everyone to move out of the way. When we got to the elevators, he cuffed me and took me outside to await a squad car. On the way out, someone behind me said, "That's Cindy Sheehan." At which point the officer who arrested me said, "Take these steps slowly." I said, "You didn't care about being careful when you were dragging me up the other steps." He said, "That's because you were protesting." Wow, I got hauled out of the People's House because I was "Protesting."

I was never told that I couldn't wear that shirt into the Congress. I was never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up. If I had been asked to do any of those things ... I would have, and written about the suppression of my freedom of speech later. I was immediately and roughly (I have the bruises and muscle spasms to prove it) hauled off and arrested for "unlawful conduct."

After I had my personal items inventoried and my fingers printed, a nice Sgt. came in and looked at my shirt and said, "2245, huh? I just got back from there."

I told him that my son died there. That's when the enormity of my loss hit me. I have lost my son. I have lost my First Amendment rights. I have lost the country that I love. Where did America go? I started crying in pain.

What did Casey die for? What did the 2244 other brave young Americans die for? What are tens of thousands of them over there in harm's way for still? For this? I can't even wear a shirt that has the number of troops on it that George Bush and his arrogant and ignorant policies are responsible for killing.

I wore the shirt to make a statement. The press knew I was going to be there, and I thought every once in awhile they would show me, and I would have the shirt on. I did not wear it to be disruptive, or I would have unzipped my jacket during George's speech. If I had any idea what happens to people who wear shirts that make the neocons uncomfortable, that I would be arrested ... maybe I would have, but I didn't.

There have already been many wild stories out there.

I have some lawyers looking into filing a First Amendment lawsuit against the government for what happened tonight. I will file it. It is time to take our freedoms and our country back.

I don't want to live in a country that prohibits any person, whether or not he/she has paid the ultimate price for that country, from wearing, saying, writing, or telephoning any negative statements about the government. That's why I am going to take my freedoms and liberties back. That's why I am not going to let BushCo take anything else away from me ... or you.

I am so appreciative of the couple of hundred of protesters who came to the jail while I was locked up to show their support. We have so much potential for good. There is so much good in so many people.

Four hours and 2 jails after I was arrested, I was let out. Again, I am so upset and sore it is hard to think straight.

Keep up the struggle ... I promise you, I will too.

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Sacramento's Top Political News Story for 2005 ...

The real news is that it was news at all.

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Cities Throughout the U.S. are Flagrant Violators of the 1st Amendment

Most major U.S. cities consistently operate with policies of unlawful censorship.

City councils in major cities throughout the U.S. tend to draft and implement a series of city ordinances that individually, and collectively, restrict the maximum amount of political speech that federal and state laws allow cities to restrict. In addition, city councils routinely test the limits of protected political speech by enacting ordinances that are overbroad, vague or otherwise unconstitutional. The combination of the two practices serves to maximize censorship. Such practices may be characterized as policies of censorship, and they violate the 1st Amendment and substantive due process. Therefore, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 and Monell v. New York City Dep't of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, any victim of these policies may sue a city, and the city officials who enforce such unlawful policies, for damages and injunctive relief.

Another way to state the two key claims above is this: first, that various city ordinances contain lawful restrictions on speech, and such lawful restrictions consistently tend to regulate speech to the maximum extent permissible; and, second, that ordinances frequently test the limits of what speech may be regulated, and such ordinances are often held to be unconstitutional or have not yet been challenged. For simplicity, I will refer to overbroad, vague or otherwise unconstitutional language as "overbroad rules."

Cities that favor broad restrictions on speech benefit from overbroad rules because most people will comply with the rules; and most others who are charged with violating an overbroad rule will cease their "violative" behavior. Often, if someone who is charged with violating an overbroad rule challenges the rule, the city will back off before litigation occurs. The rule will remain effective, but the daring violator is either not charged, or, if he is charged, the city will back down once it becomes clear that the violator will have competent legal counsel. Thus, the overbroad rule will continue to operate as a deterrent to others in the community unless it is eventually challenged by someone who has the energy, determination, financial ability and competent legal counsel to take on city hall in the courts.

Another claim I want to introduce is the idea that a city can violate the 1st Amendment (and be held liable under Monell), by its ordinances, even if every one of its ordinances is lawful. At first blush, this may sound absurd. That is, if every rule that a city enacts is constitutionally lawful, then how can its ordinances subject it to constitutionally-based liability? The answer is simple: a city's "policy of suppression" will suffice.

Consider the very common probable cause analysis that courts often apply in 4th Amendment search cases. A cop observes a series of factors, each of which would be independently insufficient to establish probable cause to charge a person with a particular crime. However, taken together as a whole, all of the factors do give such probable cause.

An example is where a cop charges someone with possession of marijuana with the intent to sell it. Suppose that a suspect is stopped in his car and that the cop noticed that the suspect was in possession of a small amount of loose marijuana. This, by itself, certainly doesn't warrant a charge of possession for sale. But suppose that the cop also saw a baggie on the back seat, an empty box of baggies on the floor, a wad of cash (maybe $100 in tens and twenties) wrapped in a rubber band. Would this be enough to establish probable cause of possession for sale? If not, then suppose that the cop also found a triple beam scale in the trunk. None of the items found by themselves could lawfully justify a charge of possession for sale; however, taken together as a whole, the courts will hold that there is sufficient evidence to establish probable cause.

There is absolutely no reason why the same kind of argument cannot apply to unconstitutional city policy analyses. Thus, even if no single ordinance that a city has enacted to regulate speech is an overbroad rule, if the pattern, taken as a whole, suggests a clear indication that the city's policy is to suppress either as much speech as it can or so much speech that the policy can be said to violate the "spirit of the 1st Amendment," then I am in favor of finding Section 1983 and Monell liability.

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Right Wing Hate Vandals Come To Justice in Sacramento!

Read the story HERE.

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Sacramento City Council gives BIG THUMBS DOWN to Bush and his failed "war"

A RESOLUTION OPPOSING THE WAR IN IRAQ AND CALLING ON PRESIDENT BUSH TO BEGIN THE WITHDRAWAL OF AMERICAN TROOPS

WHEREAS, the United States of America carried out an invasion of Iraq based upon the claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and therefore posed an immediate threat to the security of the United States and still no evidence has been found that Iraq possessed such weapons or the capability to deploy them; and

WHEREAS, the war and military occupation of Iraq, according to the Department of Defense, have cost the lives of over 2,000 U.S. troops, as well as wounding and disabling over 15,000 troops. Iraqi civilian deaths are estimated at over 100,000 men, women and children; and

WHEREAS, we recognize the courage of the over 1 million American military personnel, including city staff and many residents of the City of Sacramento, who have served in the war in Iraq. They have faced extraordinary danger and have made huge sacrifices in this war; we now want them to come home because bringing them home is the best means of protecting them and the interest of our nation; and

WHEREAS, Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stated in August of this year, "the reality is that we're losing in Iraq,” and that "there is a parallel emerging" between the War in Iraq and the War in Vietnam; and

WHEREAS, Retired Army Lieutenant General William Odom, a Vietnam veteran, said in September of this year that the invasion of Iraq alienated America's Middle East allies, making it harder to prosecute a war against terrorists, and he said the United States should withdraw from Iraq; and

WHEREAS, A Bi-partisan group of Members of Congress - two Republicans and two Democrats - introduced the Homeward Bound Act on June 16, 2005 to begin the process of putting in place an exit strategy from Iraq. The Act now has 60 co-sponsors; and

WHEREAS, Wisconsin United States Senator Russ Feingold, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has proposed a timeframe for the completion of the military mission in Iraq and suggested December 31, 2006 as the target date for the completion of the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq; and

WHEREAS, the war in Iraq has cost American taxpayers over $350 billion. Broken down per person in the United States, the cost so far is $727, or $295 million from the residents from the City of Sacramento, making the Iraq War the most expensive military effort in the last 60 years; and

WHEREAS, the continuation of the war and the redirection of our nation’s resources will cause grave harm to the people of Sacramento, especially its low income residents and communities of color; and

WHEREAS, the recent tragedies caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have shown the United States needs to direct massive resources to recovery in the Gulf Coast, and we as a nation should turn our attention and resources to domestic recovery, emergency prevention measures and preparedness activities; and

WHEREAS, over 100 United States cities have passed resolutions calling for an end to the war in Iraq; now

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT the City of Sacramento, on behalf of the citizens of Sacramento, urges President Bush and the United States Congress to commence a humane, orderly, rapid and comprehensive withdrawal of United States military personnel and bases from Iraq; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT the City of Sacramento calls on President Bush and the Congress of the United States to provide promised veterans’ health, education, disability, and rehabilitation benefits, and otherwise meet the needs of returning veterans.

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War Protest Has Captive Audience

Read the story here.

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BUSH HATED MORE THAN EVER NOW

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HUGE Anti-War Rally with CINDY SHEEHAN

(click photo to enlarge)

We had a big one! Saturday, October 15th, from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm, we held a major anti-war rally at 16th & Broadway, in Sacramento. Cindy Sheehan attended this one, and over 400 anti-war supporters showed up. The Capoeira Arts Academy performing group also charged the crowd with live percussion with an anti-war theme.

Better pay attention George: the crowds of people taking their complaints to the streets are getting bigger and less tolerant!

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Fantastic September 10th Anti-War Rally!

(click photo to enlarge)

Another great rally was held at 16th & Broadway on Saturday, September 10. This collage of photos shows only a sample of how much energy and enthusiasm we had out there.

Let's keep it up until we run the Bush administration out of town!

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August 30th Demo Attendance Climbs!

Roughly 350 people attended last Saturday's demo at 16th and Broadway. That was over 100 more people from the prior week and over 200 more people from the week before that. This Saturday's anti-war rally will move to Arden Way at Heritage Lane, and will occur from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm. Bill Lackemacher, of Sacramento for Democracy, has organized this Saturday's rally. The Arden Way location will be good for traffic this Saturday because this is the last weekend of the State Fair. Traffic is also significant at that intersection because many Arden Fair Mall-goers pass by.

In a few weeks, Virginia and I will likely organize some more 16th and Broadway demos.

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The Real Cost of War in Iraq

This is a photo of Yassin Salim Khalaf, an 18 year old Iraqi college-prep student. According Yassin's uncle, Hassan Al Sameraie, the following occurred:

In the night of 14 July, young Yassin was sleeping on the land in his garden because it was hot and there was still no electricity to cool the home. At 3 in the morning, an American armoured vehicle ran right over an exterior fence surrounding the garden and then ran right over Yassin. Some of Yassin's neighbors tried to help Yassin as he lay there, but the U.S. soldiers would not let them near. U.S. soldiers then immediately shot him dead. The armoured vehicle continued on and then broke through the house where Yassin had lived and destroyed it and then his family's car.

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News Links to Art Story

KCRA story w/video
KXTV story w/video
SF Chronicle article
Fox News w/video
Sacramento Union article
Progressive article
Sacramento Bee article
SF Chronicle again
WorldNetDaily article (funny)
CIRCA article (funny)
Michael Moore's site

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Letter from a Soldier in Iraq

Please forgive me for an e-mail when a comment would have been more appropriate. In my case, though, I wanted to be known without making myself known.

I write from the banks of The Tigris, where I have been making my home for the last seven months in service of our Country as a soldier. This is my second time in Iraq, my first being in 2003, when we invaded. I was supposed to leave the Army in March, but have been kept involuntarily under the Army's "stop loss" program.

I have been writing - in the form of a web journal - about my very specific worries of dying here as a victim of policies I so adamantly disagree with. It is true that I willingly enlisted, but I did so to champion values that were common to all Americans: upholding the constitution and protecting American interests. War is to be expected, but not one whose legitimacy contradicts the values I'm sworn to uphold. Worse, I am bound to continue that service past my contract's expiration.

So, I'm writing you because I saw the photo of the "soldier" you put up on your house, and I connected with him. That's me. And for all that crap everyone else is writing saying maybe you should take into account how the troops feel? Well, I think you've done a damn good job iconifying how I feel... and I'm a troop.

Please feel free to use all or part of this e-mail in any way you see fit. If you do, though, please do not mention me by name; even by initials. I recognize this may jeopardize it's validity in the eyes of your critics, but hope it sheds some light on their ridiculousness.

Warmest regards,

[Name]

Tikrit, Iraq

"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive how the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation." -George Washington

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July 28 Protest Another Blow to Move America Forward

Supporters of Free Speech (our side)


More of us


Still more of us


The paltry turnout for Mark Williams' pro-censorship group

Thursday's protest in front of the Attorney General's office went very well for supporters of free speech. Of the roughly 600 people who showed up, about 400 supported the Attorney General's firm stance against censorship. Although the right-wing group, Move America Forward ("MAF"), called for the demonstration, they were once again outnumbered by citizens who insist that patriotism means supporting the U.S. Constitution.

MAF was the same group that organized a vigil in front of my Land Park home in response to another political statement of mine. In that case, they said that my display of a soldier ("Bush Lied, I Died") was inappropriate in a residential neighborhood because it was an imposition on my neighbors and confused kids. This time, MAF said that my display is inappropriate in a public building. It seems that MAF simply doesn't want to see images of dissent anywhere.

Note that my soldier display and my painting sat in a public building for two months before going to the Attorney General's office. That's right: both pieces were part of an exhibit at the Sacramento County Public Law Library for two months, but MAF never said a word until it went to the AG's office.

The library exhibit was also publicized in local newspapers and on KOVR's news, so MAF and other right-wingers certainly had notice. KOVR also reported two months in advance that the library exhibit, which contained my displays, would go to the AG's office. In addition to KOVR's report, I had even told an associate of Eric Hogue, of KTKZ, about the library exhibit right after it began, and I said that my displays were there.

The fact that MAF never complained about the library exhibit suggests that they just wanted to wait for the exhibit to reach the AG's office so that they could use the event as a pretext to go after Bill Lockyer.

Whatever the case may be, the bottom line is that MAF failed miserably: the majority of Americans still favor free speech, my painting still remains in the AG's office, and my soldier display remains at the Sacramento County Public Law Library. Conservative Schooler's petition to have my painting removed will not succeed or change a thing, nor will any of the right-wingers' temper tantrums.

Once again, the drooling, toothless crowd had to go home with their heads hung low, but I hope they learned another valuable lesson about free speech and the U.S. Constitution.

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Another Art Critique

I got a nice laugh out of it. He hit the nail on the head pretty well.

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Unfairness in CA's Justice System

California's justice system needs a major overhaul. The vast majority of California's judges are former prosecutors. Increasingly over the last 20 years, California governors have appointed prosecutors or former prosecutors as judges because it's been politically popular to do so. Over the last 20 years, the rate of prosecutor appointments has increased dramatically in comparison with appointments of non-prosecutor attorneys. Today, the proportional difference between the number of appointments of prosecutors and appointments of defense attorneys with no prosecutorial backgrounds is staggering.

The high ratio of prosecutor judges is particularly troubling, because a fair judicial system relies on maximizing objectivity. But we can't reasonably expect objectivity from our justice system when the vast majority of judges are people who were predisposed to seek careers as prosecutors before they became judges. We need a balanced judiciary.

Politically popular appointments often yield unjust results; our current system is an example of how such popular appointments have led to substantial injustice. Consistent with the increase in appointments of prosecutors, rulings have increasingly favored the prosecution over the last 20 years. This has not been only true at the superior court level but also at the appeals and Supreme Court levels. Judges frequently rule on close issues, the outcomes of which could simply be justified by the difference between one political opinion or another. When the majority of judges' political ideologies favor the prosecution, it's easy to predict how close issues will be decided, especially in criminal cases.

A big part of this problem also lies in the fact that judges are elected in California; although, as I mentioned, appointments have favored the prosecution, too. Some judicial candidates have even succeeded by suggesting that they would NOT be objective. One judge who was recently elected in Sacramento County ran on a campaign slogan, "Law Enforcement's Choice." Certainly, that judicial candidate wanted to send the public the message that, as a judge, he would be inclined to rule with law enforcement. Thus, if he had a "close question" in front of him, his ruling would reflect one that is "law enforcement's choice."

Another unfair aspect of California's justice system involves "depublishing" cases. Depublishing has been occurring routinely in California for a number years, but there is virtually no media publicity about this. Depublishing doesn't involve the Supreme Court declaring that some holding is erroneous: they just say, "You can't use this as precedent, and we won't say why." Imagine if the U.S. Supreme Court said, "Roe vs. Wade is hereby depublished; we aren't saying that the decision was wrong or right; you just can't refer to it anymore in your briefs. That's all we're going to say." This is exactly what is occurring all the time in California!

What's happening is that after cases are decided, a party, such as the Attorney General, will ask the California Supreme Court to "depublish" the case or certain rulings within. Very often, a corporation is the party seeking to have a case depublished because the case involves an unfavorable holding against the corporation. If a corporation doesn't want the holding to serve as precedent in future cases where a new plaintiff might bring a similar action, that corporation might petition the California Supreme Court to depublish the case. If the California Supreme Court agrees to depublish part or all of the case, then the material depublished cannot be cited in future cases as precedent. Depublishing usually favors parties with deep pockets because they are not only more likely to have the financial resources to cover the legal costs of petitioning for depublication, but they also benefit financially from the effects of depublication. Individuals typically have no personal recurring incentive to seek depublication, and the process often is cost-prohibitive to individuals in any event.

Depublishing a case is not the same as reversing a case. In the case of depublishing, the court simply says that nobody can use the holding as precedent anymore. This is unjust, because cases are supposed to be a source of notice to citizens that if they ever confront similar circumstances then they will know how a court ruled. Moreover, depublishing can cause unequal outcomes in different jurisdictions.

In short, the current system is laden with problems involving bias, unfairness and balance. It is a very dangerous situation and needs substantial correction as soon as possible.

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Karl Rove: Future Death Row Inmate?

Read about it here.

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We Shocked and Awed the Conservatives

When the drooling, toothless conservatives gathered across the street from my home to hold their candlelight, faith-healing, vigilante prayer meeting, they were shocked to see that we outnumbered them.

Next time, for the sake of the neighbors, let's hope the bible-thumpers will remember to bring their drool buckets with them.

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"Heroes" of 9/11 Loot Stores During Chaos

Read about it here.

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Sacramento DA Ignored the Law

When the Sacramento DA, Jan Scully, decided not to file charges against the vandals and trespassers who tore down my soldier displays, she ignored all kinds of laws that she's charged with enforcing.

Consider this section of the Calif. Civil Code ("CCC"):

51.7. (a) All persons within the jurisdiction of this state have the right to be free from any violence, or intimidation by threat of violence, committed against their persons or property because of their race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, political affiliation, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, or position in a labor dispute, or because another person perceives them to have one or more of those characteristics. The identification in this subdivision of particular bases of discrimination is illustrative rather than restrictive.

The last sentence means that if somebody tears down my display (i.e., commits violence against my property) because of one of the reasons stated, or some other similar reason, such as because of my political statements, then the statute applies.

Now look at this CCC section:

52(b) Whoever denies the right provided by Section 51.7 or 51.9, or aids, incites, or conspires in that denial, is liable for each and every offense for the actual damages suffered by any person denied that right and, in addition, the following:

(1) An amount to be determined by a jury, or a court sitting without a jury, for exemplary damages.

(2) A civil penalty of twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000) to be awarded to the person denied the right provided by Section 51.7 in any action brought by the person denied the right, or by the Attorney General, a district attorney, or a city attorney.

(3) Attorney's fees as may be determined by the court.

Now let's look at some California Penal Code sections:

594. (a) Every person who maliciously commits any of the following acts with respect to any real or personal property not his or her own, in cases other than those specified by state law, is guilty of vandalism:
(1) Defaces with graffiti or other inscribed material.
(2) Damages.
(3) Destroys.

(b) (1) If the amount of defacement, damage, or destruction is four hundred dollars ($400) or more, vandalism is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison or in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by a fine of not more than ten thousand dollars ($10,000), or if the amount of defacement, damage, or destruction is ten thousand dollars ($10,000) or more, by a fine of not more than fifty thousand dollars ($50,000), or by both that fine and imprisonment.
(2) (A) If the amount of defacement, damage, or destruction is less than four hundred dollars ($400), vandalism is punishable by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by both that fine and imprisonment.

It's clear that Scully had many options to charge the vandals, so why didn't she?

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Protestor Acquitted of All Charges

Excellent story!
Banner-Bearing Protester at Convention Is Acquitted
By Andrew Jacobs, New York Times
Published: June 24, 2005

A Manhattan jury rejected all charges last night against a California woman who was arrested at the Republican National Convention, when she unfurled a banner criticizing President Bush during his acceptance speech.

Prosecutors had accused the woman, June Brashares, of several crimes, including the assault of two convention volunteers who had escorted her from Madison Square Garden moments after she stood on a chair and held up a hand-painted bed sheet that said "Bush Lies People Die."

One of the volunteers testified that he needed 10 stitches to close a gash on his shin caused by the heel of Ms. Brashares's shoe. Jurors, speaking after the verdict, said they rejected that allegation, however, and said they believed Ms. Brashares and other witnesses who said she was not even wearing shoes when she was dragged screaming from the hall.

"This is wonderful," said Ms. Brashares, 41, an events planner from San Francisco, after the verdict was read last night. "Free speech has been upheld."

In addition to misdemeanor assault, Ms. Brashares faced charges of disorderly conduct, harassment and attempted assault. Her case was one of the last stemming from the arrests of more than 1,800 people during last summer's convention. It was also one of the few to be argued in front of a jury.

Of the 1,670 cases handled by the Manhattan district attorney, 91 percent ended with the charges dismissed or with a verdict of not guilty after trial. In more than 160 others, defendants pleaded guilty or were convicted during trial. In at least 400 cases, charges were dropped or defendants were acquitted after videotapes undermined or contradicted the original accusations.

Although the three-day hearing in Manhattan Criminal Court largely focused on Ms. Brashares's shoes, and whether they were on her feet, her lawyer, Robert C. Gottlieb, tried to turn the case into a discussion of free speech, partisan politics and whether the two California men who pressed charges, Shaun Flanigan and John Peschong, had suppressed her First Amendment rights.

"Under our system, sometimes people disagree with you and when they disagree, they are not to be condemned, and the person who disagrees is not to be arrested," Mr. Gottlieb said in closing arguments. "The fact is that they were willing to assault someone in the name of politics."

During the trial he sought to turn the prosecutor's argument on its head, portraying Ms. Brashares as the victim of brutality and repeatedly describing the two men as "goons," thugs" and "brazen liars."

On the stand, Ms. Brashares testified that Mr. Peschong grabbed her so violently he tore the ligament in her ring finger. Although prosecutors dismissed her claim, saying she had no proof of the injury, their case suffered a significant blow when Mr. Gottlieb presented the jury taped news footage that clearly showed Mr. Peschong grabbing her fingers and attempting to cover her mouth as she was dragged through the crowd.

In arguing the case, Jessica Troy, the assistant district attorney, said the trial was not about politics but about a cunning woman who snuck into a private affair with the intention of provoking a nationally televised disruption. She compared Ms. Brashares's actions to interrupting a church service, a private party or a show, using the audience participation play "Tony 'n' Tina's Wedding" as an analogy.

"When you go to a play and stand up and start screaming 'I hate this play, you wasted my time and money,' what do you expect to happen?" she asked. "You're going to be pulled out by the ushers."

Ms. Brashares, a peace advocate and member of the protest group Code Pink, clearly planned her stunt well. She entered the arena with legitimate credentials obtained from a sympathetic conventioneer and smuggled the banner in her pantyhose. She settled into the section reserved for members of the California delegation and waited until Mr. Bush was well into his speech before unrolling the sheet.

The anti-Bush slogan immediately caught the attention of Mr. Flanigan, 27, and Mr. Peschong, 43, both of them so-called "floor whips" assigned to maintain order.

Although the jurors did not approve of her tactics and thought the convention organizers had a right to throw her out, they said they admired her temerity and conviction.

"We gave her a lot of credit for what she did," said one of them, Susan Flanders, a charity executive from the Upper East Side. "But it was wrong socially and against the mores of society to go in there and bust up their party."


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For Immediate Release: June 24, 2005

Contact: Attorney Robert Gottlieb 631-543-8300 or June Brashares 415-425-3733

San Francisco Peace Activist Found NOT GUILTY for Protesting Inside the Republican National Convention

New York, NY – June Brashares, the San Francisco activist who unfurled a banner reading “Bush Lies, People Die” inside the Madison Square Garden hall during George Bush’s speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC), was found not guilty yesterday of all charges. "I'm delighted that the jury upheld my right to free speech, especially at a time when our constitutional rights are under attack. I hope that others who hear about this case will be encouraged to speak out against the war," Brashares said.

Brashares had been peacefully exercising her constitutional free speech rights when she was tackled to the ground and dragged out of the convention hall during the RNC. In the process of tackling and dragging Brashares, one of the accosting parties claimed to have sustained an injury to his leg. Brashares was found not guilty of all charges, including assault, disorderly conduct, harassment and attempted assault.

During Bush’s speech, Brashares took off her shoes, stood up on a chair and held up her banner among the California delegation on the Convention floor less than a dozen rows from the front stage. The chair she stood on was apparently offered to her by an unwitting former Governor of California, Pete Wilson. Several TV cameras’ live coverage showed the banner and Bush was forced to pause uncomfortably during his speech while delegates shouted “four more years” to drown the commotion and Brashares’ chants of “Bush Lies, People Die.”

She does not regret her protest at the RNC and has maintained all along that the court would exonerate her. Brashares states, “what we in the anti-war movement were saying in September of 2004 has stood the test of time and in the wake of recent discoveries such as the Downing Street Memo has been shown to be even more profoundly tragically true. Now over 2,000 U.S. men and women have been killed in Iraq since March 2003. That’s the loss of life for over 1,700 soldiers plus hundreds of contractors and other civilians, including my dear friend Marla Ruzicka who was in Iraq to help civilian victims. Conservative estimates are that 22,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed and the British Journal “Lancet” has estimated over 100,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the US led invasion. In addition well over 12,000 U.S. soldiers have been wounded. Many of those injuries are profound and life-changing injuries like lost limbs and brain damage. There is no way to fully know the psychological damage.”

Brashares says, “the courts shouldn’t be going after people for expressing their opinions at political events, we need justice in regards to the U.S. Administration that has lied and is lying about its actions that have resulted in the unnecessary death of thousands upon thousands of people.”

Brashares will be returning to San Francisco tonight, Friday, June 24. She is available for comment at the cell phone number above today and over the weekend.

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Tanks Respond to LA Protest

To see an example of the admininistration's attempt to suppress dissent and chill free speech, go here.

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