The Guerrilla Campaign

Editor's note: Mike was at the Jesse Brown V.A. Medical Center because he's participating in the Voices for Creative Nonviolence's 30-day, 320-mile "Walk for Justice," from Springfield to North Chicago, Illinois, to reclaim funding for the common good and away from war. Has This Country Gone Completely Insane? June 30, 2006 by Mike Ferner This afternoon, drinking a cup of coffee while sitting in the Jesse Brown V.A. Medical Center on Chicago's south side, a Veterans Administration cop walked up to me and said, "OK, you've had your 15 minutes, it's time to go." "Huh?", I asked intelligently, not quite sure what he was talking about. "You can't be in here protesting," officer Adkins said, pointing to my Veterans For Peace shirt. "Well, I'm not protesting, I'm having a cup of coffee," I returned, thinking that logic would convince Adkins to go back to his earlier duties of guarding against serious terror...

by Mary Pitt June 30, 2006 The living sing songs of inspiration, songs of praise for the superiority of their own nation, their own principles, and their own concept of God. They are the best of humans and they will triumph over all because their hearts are pure. The dead are silent. The living tell tales of great wars, of valiant men who have willingly laid down their lives in the pursuit of victory for their side, (whichever side that might have been), of men who still fought bravely though gravely wounded because their cause was just. The dead remain still. The living expound on the greater good of "our side" while exposing what they believe to be the shortcomings of others. "We" are good and "they" are evil so "they" must yield to "our" will, must become not only subject but subservient to "our" interpretations of fact because "we" are always right. The dead say nothing. The living mourn the loss of their loved o...

Depleted uranium turns Bush's lies into high-tech horror by Robert C. Koehler Published on Thursday, June 29, 2006 by Common Wonders http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0629-32.htm The unending game of “pretend” that the U.S. media allow George Bush to play on the global stage, so often letting his lying utterances hang suspended, unchallenged, in the middle of the story, as though they were plausible — as though a class of third-graders couldn’t demolish them with a few innocent questions — feels like the journalistic equivalent of waterboarding. Gasp! Some truth, please! I suggest the prez has forfeited the right to command a headline, or half a story, or an uninterrupted quote: “. . . we’ll defend ourselves, but at the same time we’re actively working with our partners to spread peace and democracy,” he said last week in Austria. Surely “spreading democracy” should no longer be allowed to appear in print, between now and 2008, unless accompanied by a parenthetical clarification...

By James Vicini 6/29/06 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a major defeat for the Bush administration, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the military tribunal for a Guantanamo prisoner cannot proceed because it violates the Geneva Conventions. "We conclude that the military commission convened to try (Salim Ahmed) Hamdan lacks power to proceed because its structure and procedures violate" the international agreement that covers treatment of prisoners of war, as well as U.S. military laws, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the court majority in the 5-3 decision. That part of the decision was a stinging blow for the administration in a case brought by Hamdan, who was Osama bin Laden's driver in Afghanistan. At the White House, spokesman Tony Snow said, "We have no comment until we have read the decision but we will once we have read the decision."

The Bush War on Liberty Intensifies Written by Chris Floyd Tuesday, 27 June 2006 http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=718 Glenn Greenwald has the goods on the all-out war that the Bush Regime and its bootlicking sycophants throughout the right-wing media are waging against the free press. The recent "controversy" over the New York Times report on the Regime's surveillance of bank records is, as Greenwald astutely notes, based entirely on outright falsehoods. It is also being deliberately stoked by the White House, whose lies about the non-existent "damage" the NYT story has done to national security are exposed here -- by their own words. Greenwald turns up quote after quote, going back years, many of them from Bush himself, detailing the same kind of information relayed in the Times' story. Yet, as Greenwald and others report ( Atrios has been good on this as well), the Regime's hate campaign has now burst into...

Compromise vote leaving Constitution unaltered also fails The Associated Press Updated: 7:08 p.m. ET June 27, 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13579789/ WASHINGTON - A constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration died in a Senate cliffhanger Tuesday, a single vote short of the support needed to send it to the states for ratification a week before Independence Day. The 66-34 tally in favor of the amendment was one less than the two-thirds required. The House surpassed that threshold last year, 286-130. The proposed amendment, sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, read: "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States." Latest best bet The resolution represented Congress' response to Supreme Court rulings in 1989 and 1990 that burning and other desecrations of the flag are protected as free speech by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Senate supporters said the flag amounts to a national monument in cloth that r...

By Sheila Samples 6/26/06 I've been reading about this "grass roots" phenomenon that's sweeping the country. It must not have "swept" down this far, because I scoured the prairies and plains of Oklahoma, and the only thing I came up with was a clump or two of Johnson grass, a few scraggly buffalo and some errant loco weed... In fact, there's not much movement of any kind in Tom Joad Country. Maybe that's because Oklahoma has always been, or at least has had the reputation of being, not only poor but backwards both intellectually and culturally. If I were so inclined, I could probably debunk this fallacy, but I'd have to start in Tulsa and move east... People west of Tulsa aren't too concerned with politics. We get involved and come alive for only a couple of things -- A six-pack of Bud Light and OU football. Tulsa denizens like to think of themselves as "cosmopolitan" and politically hip, but they have a tendency to look at issues t...

Miami “terror” arrests—a government provocation By Bill Van Auken 24 June 2006 World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jun2006/miam-j24.shtml There are many incongruities surrounding the arrest of seven men from the impoverished Liberty City neighborhood of Miami on charges of conspiracy to “wage war on the United States” that suggest it, like so many previous “terrorist plots” announced by the Bush administration, is a government-inspired provocation mounted for reactionary political ends. None of the claims made by the government and repeated uncritically by the media concerning the arrest of these young working-class men can be accepted as good coin. Both the flimsiness of the criminal indictment and the lurid headlines surrounding it mark this event as an escalation in the anti-democratic conspiracies of the Bush administration. There is every indication that this latest purported terrorist threat—described by some media outlets as “even bigger than September 11”...

by Doris Colmes 6/24/06 Deputy District Attorney Richard Ceballos was outraged. He had just been disciplined after writing internal memos alleging that a police officer had blatantly lied in order to obtain a search warrant. But, when he continued to urge his supervisors to dismiss this pending criminal case because of the very specific police misconduct involved, Caballos’s advice was not only rejected, but he was transferred to a lesser job farther from his home, and denied a promotion. The result of Caballos’s indignation with the apparent collusion between the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Court System was a lawsuit against county officials in which he alleged that those county officials, including then district attorney Gil Garcetti, had retaliated against him for speaking out within his office. As reported by David G. Savage of the Los Angeles Times, the case did not fly in Los Angeles County, and, eventually, wound up with the Supreme Court. So, what’s t...

The big news tonight is the two captured Americans in Iraq. So, tell me again, why are we there? no weapons of mass destruction no threat to the United States no threat to anyone no ties to al-Qaeda no flowers BUT PLENTY OF THESE things are what they are, and no amount of spin, or bullshit congressional resolutions, no babbling from the fantasy dreams of the president bush, no ranting from the bush acolytes, is going to change that. And what they are, is an obscene disaster. A crime.

Majority Leader Boehner’s Confidential Strategy Memo For Thursday’s Iraq Debate http://thinkprogress.org/2006/06/14/boehner-memo/ On Thursday, the House of Representatives will hold a debate on the Iraq war. Media reports say Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) “ hopes to match the serious, dignified tone of deliberation that preceded the Gulf war , in 1991.” ThinkProgress has obtained a “ Confidential Messaging Memo ” from Boehner instructing his caucus to conduct a very different kind of deliberation. Here’s a quick summary: 1. Exploit 9/11. The two page memo mentions 9/11 seven times. It describes debating Iraq in the context of 9/11 as “imperative.” 2. Attack opponents ad hominem. The memo describes those who opposes President Bush’s policies in Iraq as “sheepish,” “weak,” and “prone to waver endlessly.” 3. Create a false choice. The memo says the decision is between supporting President Bush’s policies and hoping terrorist threats will “fade away on their own.” You can read the co...

August 26, 2005 From the web site: http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index809.htm Yurica Report Editor's Note: this article was written by a Russian citizen for a Russian audience. While we are not yet ready to accept terms that are considered inflamatory by many Americans, the over-all worth of this article is the revelation that Sorcha Faal brings to most of us that the Department of Homeland Security and its Bureau, ICE are planning to build temporary cities that will hold millions of undocumented aliens. The ramifications of these plans are mind numbing, especially if the best of intentions get way-laid. We urge you to download the PDF document titled "Endgame." It's worth the time and effort. The Yurica Report http://www.ice.gov/graphics/dro/endgame.pdf By: Sorcha Faal Being the students of history that we are, one cannot help but to be terrifyingly fascinated by the current transformation currently underway in America, and which is the shockingly mirror image of w...

By Sheila Samples 6/12/06 And it's up against the wall American Muthers, Barbara Bush, who raised her son so well. Now Dubya's out there smirkin' in God's honky tonk, Just kickin' soldiers' asses and raisin' hell. ~~apologies to Jerry Jeff Walker Once a year, George Bush shows up at Arlington National Cemetery and tells a tightly controlled, thoroughly vetted audience that he 'preciates the sacrifice of those who volunteered to die "in freedom's cause." There, surrounded by silent tombstones and armed Secret Service Police, this most infamous of military deserters befouls not only the hallowed ground, but the very air, as he regurgitates words he babbled the year before...and the year before. He reminds us that America is a "reluctant warrior," but we are resolved; our will must not be broken, no matter how many sacrifices it takes. During the annual photo-op, Bush reads exerpts of farewell letters allegedly from fallen soldiers a...

found at Jesus's General blog http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KiAvmzcZbg

The US version of the Guantánamo suicides is disgraceful. The cause of death was gross injustice by Zachary Katznelson Monday June 12, 2006 The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1795310,00.html On Friday night, three prisoners in Guantánamo Bay committed suicide. Two Saudis and one Yemeni hanged themselves. In a desperate attempt at spin, the US claims this was an act of war or a public relations exercise. The truth is quite different. Islam says it goes against God to kill yourself. So what would drive a man to take his own life, despite his religious beliefs? The answer shames the US and its allies, Britain prominently included. The 460-plus men in Guantánamo Bay have been held for longer than four years. Only 10 have been charged with a crime. Not one has had a trial. The men are not allowed to visit or speak with family or friends. Many have suffered serious abuse. Most are held on the basis of triple and quadruple hearsay, evidence so unreliable that a crim...

The Timely Death of al-Zarqawi Written by Chris Floyd Thursday, 08 June 2006 Empire Burlesque http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=689&Itemid=1 Abu Musab Saddam Osama al-Zarqawi, the extremely elusive if not entirely mythical terrorist mastermind responsible for every single insurgent action in Iraq except for the ones caused by the red-tailed devils in Iran or the stripey-tailed devils in Syria, has reportedly been killed in an airstrike in Hibhib, an area north of Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki announced today . Zarqawi, the notorious shape-shifter who, according to grainy video evidence, was able to regenerate lost limbs, speak in completely different accents, alter the contours of his bone structure and also suffered an unfortunate binge-and-purge weight problem which caused him to change sizes with almost every appearance, was head of an organization that quite fortuitously dubbed itself "Al Qaeda in Iraq" ...

By Pachacutec , Firedoglake June 6, 2006 http://www.alternet.org/story/36934/ There is no "War on Terror." There is, however, a "war" on the U.S. Constitution. Since Sept. 11, 2001, we've learned that we can take a punch and move on. We've faced far worse threats to our national survival -- the Civil War, the War of 1812, World War II, to name a few -- but we never abandoned our Constitution. Until now. Terror is an emotion. Emotions are part of human nature and cannot be eradicated. A "War on Terror" is therefore a war on humanity. The Bush administration has exploited the fear and shock of a nation in the wake of a surprising and dramatic act of violence to keep our fear and paranoia at a constant boil. Why? The evidence suggests the whole point has been to seize power and steal money. We are witnessing a creeping coup in the United States, the overthrow of the idea, promulgated by our founders, and by writers like Tom Paine, that the "Law ...