War

Here are more of Elizabeth Upton's student submissions to 10Questions.com. They are in the CUNY Language Immersion Program at LaGuardia Community College. The previous videos are here.

Maria has a simple question about Iraq:

Magdalena is worried about the internet :

Elizabeth wants to know about how they will handle violence in schools:

Ricardo Lovato is the go-to-guy for anything having to do with the current trends towards militarization of all immigration and migrant workers issues in the United States. He is also a very good friend of mine; which is why you should read his blog on a daily basis.

I got this video clip via Andrew Sullivan via Memeorandum. Two things immediately jump out of this video.

1. What the Southern Avenger says here is in line with what a lot of liberals and progressives have been saying for the last eight years : That people like George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin are extremists and not conservatives at all.

2. Exactly because the argument of this video is that true conservatives are against the war, I find interesting that Andrew Sullivan doesn't waste time to call out the author a paleo-conservative. And yet, if you go to the guys' website ... paleoconservative is the last word to come to my mind.

What do you think?

In 2001 I started writing a novel. It was based on a handful of facts but was supposed to be pure fiction. The premise was that the Republican Party had become the arm of fanatic Apocalyptic Christians who wanted to force Armageddeon. My jumping off point was Reagan's Interior Secretary, James Watt's statement that the second coming was at hand so we don't need an environmental policy. My premise was that the selection of George Bush as resident of the White House was intended to put a malleable figure head who could be manipulated into starting the final war over the Holy Land with America as the force of God against Islam. I had reached a point where I was considering what kind of dramatic event I could use for the climax.

The next day was 9/11/2001. I was in Manhattan on 9/11. There was no way I could continue my novel after that day.

But as the years have continued, even though I can't return to the novel (not even sure it was ever worth it!), I realize that my premise was frighteningly close to the truth. And it is increasingly clear that America IS being led by fanatics who believe we are in the midst of a Crusade against Islam.

We are on a collision course to war that will be far, far worse than the Iraq quagmire. We are going headlong into a war that will link up the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And this collision course is being driven by BOTH sides.

The President of the United States is playing the same "smoking crater" lie with Iran that he did with Iraq. From Guysen.International.News:

from Talk to Action

Like both James Dobson and Tony Perkins’ pro-war Family Research Council prayer team, Conservative Woman is hell on both Islamist plots and abortion – but what happens when their twin “Christian” crusades collide?

What is happening is exactly what anyone should have expected. Pregnant Iraqi women and their babies are dying in unprecedented numbers – and women who fear adding to that horrendous death toll with their own lives and those of their children are taking what they see as a lesser gamble by seeking out illegal and unsafe abortions.

The War on Terror is making us all safer, one tiny terrorist at a time.

Remember when Bush told us that Saddam Hussein was linked to al-Qaeda? Well I was one of those who was saying back then that was impossible. Hussein, a secularist who spent a fair amount of time torturing and oppressing the religious extremists of Iraq, and the religious extremists of al-Qaeda who spent a fair amount of time killing and oppressing secularists, had nothing in common. I spoke out as much as possible saying that Bush was lying. And, in the end, the only link between Iraq and al-Qaeda was al-Qaeda support for one of the anti-Hussein Kurdish groups. Bush lied to get us into a war we never should have been in and look where it has taken us.

Well, it's happening again as Bush is trying to expand the war into Iran. This comes from Guysen Israel News:

The American Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns has said that Iran was transferring arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan. He added that talks regarding new sanctions against Tehran would start in the UN in a few weeks. (Guysen.Isra×›l.News)

No. Iran is NOT transferring arms to the Taliban. The Taliban is a group of Sunni fanatics linked to al-Qaeda who have spent a great deal of time oppressing and killing Shi'ites in Afghanistan. Iran is a Shi'a theocracy that would love to see the Shi'a of Afghanistan independent of the Sunnis of Afghanistan, including the Taliban. After 9/11 I felt that one of our best strategies would have been to work with Iran to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban because if there is one nation on earth that hates al-Qaeda as much as America it is Iran. Instead Bush has done his best to prove correct the accusations that America is conducting a crusade against all Islam by picking fights with the most prominent secularist (Saddam Hussein), the most prominent Shi'a extremists (Iran) and the most prominent Sunni extremists (al-Qaeda and the Taliban), all of whom hate eachother as much as they hate America.

It is amazing that in this day and age anybody would think that you could create a neuro-toxic bomb that would turn soldiers gay and render them incompetent for war, but that's exactly what the Pentagon considered when they took a look at a proposed $7.5 million chemical weapon project.

CBS5.com reports :

Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsequently rejected, building the so-called "Gay Bomb."

Edward Hammond, of Berkeley's Sunshine Project, had used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the proposal from the Air Force's Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.

As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior."

The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.

"The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soldiers to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistibly attractive to one another," Hammond said after reviewing the documents.

"The notion was that a chemical that would probably be pleasant in the human body in low quantities could be identified, and by virtue of either breathing or having their skin exposed to this chemical, the notion was that soldiers would become gay," explained Hammond.

Are you gung-ho Marine Corps dog-face for Memorial Day, or just hangdog, as in depressed and demoralized? Favorite Daughter has been thinking about this in her drought-parched Hammock of Death:

"Of (Puppy) Dogs and Marines" by Favorite Daughter

There's a little girl who lives next door to me, about 5, and fully capable of walking and talking and waving to me on occasion, which is always mind-blowing because I remember her family moving in prior to her existence.

The family is, I guess, a good one, at least in the traditional American sense. They have a yard with nice grass and a back deck, an easy southern drawl on the rare occasions I hear them speak. They play country music on the radio on the weekend, host some sort of church get-together on Wednesday nights. They possess a comfortable façade of Americana, which I'm sure I could peel back quite easily, revealing a healthy amount of sordidness, but I won't.

They also have the meanest dog I've ever met.

He's a Boston Terrier, a breed second only to the pug in its tenacious ugliness. He despises me even more than he despises the rest of the world; whenever we're outside together, he runs to the edge of his yard and threatens me in every way he can. He once chased a garbage man up a brick mailbox.

John Edwards by Liza Sabater

I have to say that John Edwards may be the hardest working candidate from the whole crop of presidential hopefuls on both ends of the political spectrum. It's not just the fact that he is the only one who continues to put out the most policy proposals on a regular basis. It's the fact that he started earlier and with a clearly long-term strategy represented by the community platform his developed under for JohnEdwards.com.

Whereas Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton have created sites to support their candidacies money making strategies, Edwards site was founded as a platform for communications, strategy deployment and community building before it became a source for his presidential fundraising.

You can tell by perusing John Edwards's site that he has a well developed and strategized use of blogs, forums, chatrooms and other new media tools. The feel and tone of his site is head and shoulders above the Obama and Clinton sites as far as full civic engagement that goes beyond his candidacy.

Which is why I am completely impressed by his use of Memorial Day to call for action. This is the kind of strategy that would not only spring from an online community but that would be called by someone who knows they can pull it off with the community of communicators, influencers and citizen leaders they have cultivated.

"The power to end the war is in the people's voices, not in Congress' ability to fund the war".
John Edwards

I just got off a conference call between John Edwards and several members of the blogosphere.

John Edwards has just launched an initiative to end the war in Iraq. With Support The Troops, End The War, Edwards is asking Americans to reclaim patriotism from the Bush Administration on this Memorial Day by holding events all across the country that show We The People's support of the troops by demanding an end of the war :

Take Action May 26th, 27th, 28th
As citizens, we honor and support our troops for their service and sacrifice.

As Americans, we are blessed by that sacrifice and support, which keeps us safe and keeps us strong.

As patriots, we call on our government to support our troops in the most important way it can - by ending this war and bringing them home.

This Memorial Day weekend, we will all take responsibility for the country we love and the men and women who protect it. We will volunteer, we will pray, and we will speak out. Each of us has a responsibility to act, a duty to our troops and to each other. Support the troops. End the war.

In the Q&A Arianna Huffington asked if he was going to ask other Democrats in Congress to put pressure on those who didn't vote against Bush's veto. He said that, indeed, that was part of the strategy of this call to action. He has been running ads in DC focused on members of Congress; yet the second veto makes it clear that unless the American people take the war into their own hands, we will continue to have the political push and pull going on between Congress and the White House.

Press Release after the jump

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“First of all, stop the bleeding.”
--perhaps the most often repeated line in Khassan Baiev’s memoirs, Grief of my Heart

Grief of my Heart is the memoir of Khassan Baiev, a Chechen surgeon who was a witness to both Russo-Chechen wars since the fall of the Soviet Union. Baiev stayed in Chechnya through most of these two wars treating the wounded on all sides: wounded Chechen civilians, wounded Russian civilians who lived in Chechnya, wounded Chechen fighters, wounded Russian soldiers. He helped Chechens escape the Russians and Russians escape the Chechens. And through it all he helped keep his family alive and together.

A remarkable man with a remarkable story, but not a story for the faint of heart or for those who want simple good-vs.-evil. It is a story of how personal lives and entire cultures get subsumed in the supposedly cerebral chess game of international politics…and how the consequences are very bloody, very tragic, and full of immoral and criminal acts. It is also about how personal lives and entire cultures survive the bloody, tragic, immoral consequences and rise to heroism and kindness.

Dagestan…Chechnya…Ingushetia…North Ossetia….Georgia…Armenia….Azerbaijan

The Caucus Mountains dominate these nations, would-be nations, and territories. This has been a crossroads for millennia, the meeting point of large ethnic groups, religions and civilizations from the earliest moments of history.

I swear. John McCain once seemed reasonable to me. But he has become the worst, most glibly foolish war monger in the running, it seems. From MoveOn.org (the group that has recently teamed up with VoteVets.org to give our veterans more of a voice):

At a campaign stop on Wednesday, Sen. John McCain was asked what to do about Iran. His response? He sang "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann."

Seriously.

He says it was a joke, but the bottom line is that it is reckless saber-rattling against Iran at a time when tensions are high. Will you help us counter his message on TV?

McCain is laughing at the idea of unilaterally attacking Iran.

McCain is, in effect, laughing at this:

and this: (from the New England Journal of Medicine via The Memory Hole)

Because THAT is what his Iraq Escalation/Iran attack would produce more of. Dead and wounded American soldiers. And for what? NEITHER Iraq under Hussein nor Iraq have had any dealings with al-Qaeda. Why aren't we fighting al-Qaeda. While McCain wants to expand the Iraq quagmire into Iran, al-Qaeda is also expanding, entering Iraq thanks to us, expanding in Somalia, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Algeria, Morocco...and extremists are taking power in Bahrain. And McCain wants to make it all worse.

Even when the words in question have had 40 years' worth of sacred, timeless truth seeping into each and every one of them.

March is an insane month for the amount of political events you can go to. The proof is in the amount of political heavy hitters DL21C was able to wrangle during that month : Jon Kerry, Wesley Clark, John Tester, John Edwards, Bill Richardson. It is also an insane month for the amount of technology and media conferences you can get invited to, the most important (at least for me) being SXSW --but there's eTech and IDPI as well.

I missed almost all the events involving presidential candidates because of the amount of conferences I was involved in during the month of March. Once I was done with my last one, ARC's national conference on "Facing Race", I was free to enjoy a candidate or two by the end of the month. I wasn't able to make it to the John Edwards event (I was having some fun at a party with Nancy Pelosi).

So 3/26 was Bill Richardson's lucky number.

We keep hearing from the Republicans about how somehow the McCain/Bush/Lieberman escalation of the Iraq quagmire will somehow bring us victory and solve all of our problems. My main questions I have had to date is just why are our soldiers dying in Iraq in the first place, what do they MEAN by victory (no exit strategy has yet been formulated!) and just where is Osama bin Laden, the guy who actually attacked America and who has never set foot in Iraq?

But now I have a new question. Just who is it who is winning? From what I can see, it sure as hell isn't us.

In Afghanistan, things have deteriorated so badly, that Republicans like Bill Frist are practically begging the Taliban to help us out. Remember the Taliban? Our enemies who are allied with Osama bin Laden? Well, Bill Frist wants us to patch things up with the Taliban and get them to pull our asses out of the fire in Afghanistan. So, Osama bin Laden is still free, al-Qaeda still operating in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and we are begging the Taliban to rejoin the government. Who's winning in Afghanistan?

Now let's look at the latest developments in Iraq, a nation pretty much undergoing a civil war thanks to our failure to actually have a plan for what to do once we removed their dictator. The Iraqi government, the one we put into power, is now offering amnesty (after a three month period where legal challenges are allowed) to all members of Saddam Hussein's Baathist Party if they return to their official posts in the government. Yes, the Iraqi government wants to REINSTATE the very group we overthrew. Now what is wrong with this OTHER than the fact that we are reinstating the very group we overthrew? Simple. This is also the party that represents the Sunni minority and disenfranchised the Shi'ite majority and the Kurdish minority. We are being attacked from at least two sides: the Shi'a Islamists and the Sunni former-Baathists. If we make our peace with the latter, who oppressed the Shi'ites and Kurds in the first place, isn't that in essence simply making the civil war worse? We are siding with the dictators...again.

I try to get my news from several sources, and that can lead to some interesting discoveries. It seems that in the early days of Israel's attack on Lebanon, Jacques Chirac wanted Israel to go into Syria as well. This is from Guysen Israel News:

Jacques Chirac had urged Israel to attack Syria in the first few days of the war in Lebanon. According to the army radio Galei Tsahal, the French president sent a message to Jerusalem, via a secret channel. He proposed that Israel launch an offensive against Damas and bring down the regime of Bashar al-Assad in exchange for total French support in the war. According to the message from Paris, Syria was held responsible for sparking the war on the northern border and encouraged Hizbollah to act. (Guysen.Isra×›l.News)

I have found no confirmation of this. Most of the coverage of Chirac's view of Israel's attack on Lebanaon is of his condemnation of Israel's "disproportionate actions," as in here:

President Jacques Chirac said Friday that Israel's military offensive against Lebanon is "totally disproportionate" and asked whether destroying Lebanon was not the ultimate goal.

However, he also said that rockets fired on Israel by Hezbollah and Hamas are "inadmissible, unacceptable and irresponsible."

Chirac implicitly suggested that Syria and Iran might be playing a role in the expanding crisis in the Middle East which, along with the Iranian nuclear issue, creates "a truly dangerous situation in which we must be very, very careful."

This would have been an awesome Daily Show or Stephen Colbert skit. The problem is that this "gathering" of "soaring eagles" did happen as a counter-rally to the demonstrations happening across the nation on the 4th anniversary of the occupation of Iraq.

Here's a taste of their mission statement :

Gathering