Bring Them Home Now treks afoot to press conference
by Sarah Ferguson
September 21st, 2005 12:53 PM
Washington, D.C.—At just past noon on Wednesday, anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan and the rest of the Bring Them Home Now tour were stopped by a pair of squad cars two blocks from the U.S. Capitol by members of the Capitol police force. Officers explained that they wanted to use bomb-sniffing dogs to inspect the caravan of three RVs and several cars.
The officers said it was standard practice to inspect large vehicles in the area. “RVs aren’t allowed on Capitol Hill,” one said. “That’s standard procedure. Any trucks that come on Capitol Hill are stopped and turned around.” Campers aren’t allowed at all, the officer said, “unless they’ve been previously authorized.”
Officers told the peace activists they couldn’t park at the Capitol because they don’t have the proper permits. Sheehan and company then began preparing to make the rest of the trek on foot. Awaiting them near the Capitol steps were a crowd of television cameras for a scheduled noon press conference.
Earlier this week in New York City’s Union Square park, police officers unplugged Sheehan’s microphone, saying she didn’t have a proper permit for that either.
People with Bring Them Home Now seemed unfazed. “It’s always something,” said Stacy Bannerman of Military Families Speak Out, whose husband spent a year fighting in the Sunni Triangle. “It’s just part of the deal.
The conference is being held by Sheehan and the others to announce their arrival in Washington and to kick off a weekend of resistance that is expected to include a march of 100,000 people and mass civil disobedience.
At 1:30 p.m., Sheehan and her allies plan to head to the White House, where they’ll attempt to give President Bush a letter asking him to answer the question, “What noble cause are our loved ones dying for?”
********************************************************
Soldiers Back From Iraq Support Cindy Sheehan's Antiwar StanceSoldiers Back From Iraq Support Cindy Sheehan's Antiwar Stance on Video.Google.Com
(PRWEB) September 22, 2005 -- Antiwar statements from US Soldiers who have served in the Iraq War (OIF) appear online now at Video.Google.Com. Metropole Filmworx LLC choose Video.Google.Com as a distribution method for clips of soldier videos in order to insure they would be available on demand in time for the September 23, 2005 protest in Washington DC led by Cindy Sheehan.
Metropole Filmworx LLC has been recording interviews with soldiers who have returned from Iraq since March. The footage collected will be used in their documentary "BACK FROM IRAQ: The Citizen Soldier Speaks". They have posted clips from several interviews online at Video.Google.Com (video.google.com/videosearch?q=metropole&pl=1) in order to make sure that congressional representatives and the general public are aware that Cindy Sheehan speaks for many, many soldiers when she says the War in Iraq must be brought to a swift conclusion.
Nancy Fulton, co-producer of the documentary, reflects on why she chooses Video.Google.Com as a distribution method for these clips. "There's no doubt that we could have posted this content on our own site. But Video.Google.Com is an exceptional distribution choice for content which may draw hundreds or thousands of simultaneous viewers. Furthermore, clips posted on Video.Google.Com display inside the web browser rather than in a Real Media or Quick Time window. Our experience is that in order to make sure other viewers can play a clip; we often have to post several versions of the file in multiple file formats and resolutions. We like being able to post a single version of the file with the absolute confidence that anyone who installs the Google Video Viewer will be able to watch it with a single click."
In one clip, Marine Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey (ret'd) describes the killing of more than twenty unarmed protesters in the first days after the initial assault on Iraq, and the subsequent killing of many more unarmed Iraqi's at a military check point. Jimmy Massey, previously a Parris Island Trainer and Recruiter for the US Marine Corp. describes how, when he told his commanding officer "Today's been a bad day sir, we've killed a lot of civilians," his commanding officer responded "No, today is a good day." Massey adds, "When he said that I realized I was in the wrong place. Maybe I wasn't cut out for the Marine Corp."
In another clip, Patrick Resta, a Pennsylvania National Guardsman serving as US Army Medic, describes how he and fellow medics were prevented from providing medical care to desperate Iraqi civilians who approached them for help because their own hospitals had been devastated by the war. He also describes how, in violation of the Geneva Conventions regarding medics, he was required to carry a rifle. "I walked an oil pipeline for two days in a hundred and forty degree heat to keep it from being sabotaged and blown up . . . How dare you tell me this war isn't about oil."
What these clips make clear is that there are soldiers fulfilling their obligation to the US Military who do not support the war in Iraq. They feel their service in Iraq is in direct conflict with their commitment to "protect and defend" the United States.
Jeff Key, Lance Corporal in the US Marine Corp, is currently serving as Cindy Sheehan's body guard. In his clip he makes it clear that he is not a pacifist. He became a Marine to protect and defend defenseless people. "I'm sick to death of being told how much better the Iraqi's lives are." He suggests that if the people of the United States were offered a solution to all the nation's troubles, ranging from health care to education, at the price the Iraqi's have been asked to pay they wouldn't accept the offer. "What if someone came to us and said 'We're gonna fix all of these problems ... The only thing is, we're going to kill tens of thousands of you …' "
Nancy Fulton says, "James Metropole, Susie Shannon and I are just everyday citizens. We started making this documentary, a first for all of us, because we wanted to know the truth of what was going on in Iraq. We were tired of hearing generals and politicians talk about conditions in Iraq when their visits were little more than four hour touch downs. We were disgusted by the images we saw coming out of Abu Ghraib and the images of dead soldiers and civilians flooding our TV screens. So, we turned to our soldiers for answers. James Metropole was a soldier, my family has a tradition of military service . . . We knew US Soldiers are the only US citizens who know exactly how the United States is waging war in Iraq. We knew US Soldiers would tell us the unvarnished truth. Did they have the right training and equipment? What did they see? What did they do? We had no idea their responses would be so explosive or so compelling. Soldiers really are American heroes facing the kind of moral and ethical dilemmas the rest of us can only imagine. We came to understand the terrible price soldiers pay for the innocent deaths they cause and the lives they aren't allowed to save."
Metropole Filmworx will be putting DVD's containing soldier statements in the hands of elected representatives during the anti-war protest led by Cindy Sheehan. Anyone looking for the truth of what's happening on the ground in Iraq has to start with the soldiers who have spent months or years there.
Metropole Filmworx will be posting additional clips of soldiers talking about their service in Iraq in the weeks to come.
Information on how soldiers can arrange to be interviewed for the documentary, and links to soldier antiwar statements on video.google.com, can be found on www.metropolefilmworx.com.
For more information about antiwar soldiers visit www.ivaw.net and www.optruth.com and www.militaryproject.org.
********************************************************
Baltimore, MD
On September 20, 2005, Cindy Sheehan spoke at a rally in Baltimore and ripped into the War Party.
Film: Cindy Sheehan Rips War Party
*******************************************************
M. Kane Jeeves (sometimes creditedas Ed Naha)
9/20/2005
A boy and his dog in Bushland
Filed under: Constructive Criticism - MrBogle @ 5:11 pm
Last week, my wife and I lost our best friend to cancer, a fluffy Westie,
"Laughing Gravy, " named after an old Laurel and Hardy film. He'd been with
us 16 of our 17 years of marriage.
My wife cooked his meals, as she does for our other two dogs, after she
found out the contents of corporate dog food were notso hotso. When Gravy
went off his food? I barbecued for him. We hand fed him. I'd put on Dean
Martin songs and dance and sing around his bowl to give him his food and his
pills.
You can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat animals. My wife
cooked. I sang and danced.
In his youth, George W. Bush blew up frogs.
As an adult, to appear vaguely human, he carries around his Scottie, Barney,
like a log, dropping him on his head from time to time. Is it any wonder he
has no idea what he has done to the people of the Gulf Coast in terms of
Katrina? Is it any wonder he had no idea what he has unleashed in terms of
the catastrophe known as Iraq? 1,904 Americans dead. Countless Iraqis.
He has no depth, no feeling, no sense of self. But, he uses a dog to make
him seem human. A regular guy.
It's a family tradition.
After all, it was his mother, Babs, who used her dog Millie as a shill to
sell a book. She passed herself off to the public as the ultimate "Aunt
Bea."
But, her real self bubbles up every so often. And it ain't Aunt Bea.
It was Dubya's mother (dubbed by Jeb as "The Enforcer"), who said, before
the illegal invasion of Iraq: "Why should we hear about body bags and death
and how many? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on
something like that?" It was his mother who said, after the devastation
brought by Katrina and after visiting the homeless barely clinging to their
minds in the Houston Astrodome. "And so many of the people in the arena
here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very
well for them."
Then she added the capper: "What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is
that they all want to stay in Texas."
Whoops!
Dubya is a bad seed, spawned by other bad seeds. His family has never been
about feeling or compassion, but about making a buck.at any cost.
His mother, Barbara, didn't attend her own mother's funeral. After George's
younger sister died at the age of three, and he was just seven? She went
golfing the next day. George never even knew his sister was terminally ill.
The rest of the neighbors did, though. They wouldn't let their children near
the girl, fearing that leukemia was contagious.
George's Dad, George I, is a former CIA guy who facilitated dictators
getting U.S. guns and ammo and, then, when President, pardoned all who were
accused of concocting the Reagan era's Iran-Contra scam. George I, of
course, was innocent of any wrong-doing because he was out of the loop. as
the veep and a former CIA guy. Wanna buy a bridge?
Dubya's grandfather and great-grandfather, Prescott Bush and George Herbert
Walker, through the Union Banking Company and W. A. Harriman and Company,
raised funds for Hitler to the tune of $50 million between 1924 and 1942. It
was only in 1942, when the government seized Union Banking Company assets
under the Trading With the Enemy Act, that George Walker and Prescott Bush
stopped tossing money Hitler's way.
This is a family worthy of Caligula.or Masterpiece Theater.
When the hurricane hit New Orleans, and people were drowning, George was
literally eating cake at a previously set public appearance. He gasbagged
about the great things going on in Iraq, comparing Iraq to W.W. II and
inferring that he was today's FDR.
The next day? When New Orleans was inundated? He stuck to his political
schedule, pushing his idiotic domestic policies and, again, gasbagging about
his triumphs in Iraq.
When it became clear that the FEMA and the Homeland Security laddies were
running around with their pants around their ankles (For Christ's sake,
Homeland Security's Michael Chertoff was talking about Avian Flu at a
previously scheduled event while New Orleans was sinking deeper and deeper
into murky water after massive levee ruptures twenty four hours after the
storm made landfall. Chertoff didn't even consider declaring Katrina a
national disaster for 36 long hours.), Bush did.nothing.
Eventually, Dubya got into the "Rove" mode, realized everyone had been
asleep at the wheel and went down to the South and hugged a lot of black
people with his shirtsleeves rolled up. He tried to look like he cared. He
joked about getting soused in New Orleans as a youth and vowed to rebuild
Senator Trent Lott's house. His polls plunged. So, he went back there,
again, to hug a lot more black people. His polls plunged, again. Eventually,
he gave a Disneyland speech from New Orleans from a dry area of town in
Jackson Square, lit by Hollywood experts using generators flown into town
for a few hours.
His poll numbers continue to sink.
So, where are we, now?
Well, the first thing Bush did, aside from awarding billions of dollars'
worth of no-bid contracts to Halliburton and its ilk to rebuild the Big
Easy, was to suspend a Federal law dating back to 1931 that would guarantee
American workers the average rate of pay that prevails in the reconstruction
regions. It should be noted that in the Katrina-devastated section of the
country, construction wages are notoriously low as is.
Someone at Halliburton is dancing a jig, right now, crooning "Money Makes
the World Go Round" from the soundtrack of "Cabaret." Essentially, Bush has
just given them the right to hire workers at coolie wages.
We have a corrupt, unfeeling President, surrounded by corrupt, unfeeling
sycophants, who are trying to spin death as a GOOD thing. New Orleans will
be bigger and better than ever! Lots of jobs will be created! That next
Mardi Gras is gonna be bitchin'!
Meanwhile, we have another hurricane, Rita, spinning towards the Gulf Coast.
We have Republicans blaming the poor for not getting out of the way of the
storm in time.
We have Fox News bobble-heads blaming, of course, Clinton, for not
strengthening New Orleans's levees.
We have right-wing pundits blaming any Democrat in sight.
We have a President saying that he'll spend all that it takes to rebuild New
Orleans and ignoring the deficit while shoe-horning in every PNAC wet dream
imaginable from school vouchers to the corporate take-over of public schools
to free enterprise zones as part of his plan.
We have Bush's top federal procurement official in charge of Katrina
contracts, David Safavian, resigning on Friday and getting arrested on
Monday for lying and obstructing an FBI criminal investigation into "Honest"
Tom DeLay's old cronie Jack Abramoff's dealings with the federal government.
We have Bush flying back and forth from D.C. to the water-ravaged sections
of the country, talking about "armies of compassion," which is about as
moronic a phrase as "A-Bomb of love."
And, if these photo op trips don't boost his ratings? One of these days, he'
ll bring his dog.
Me?
I'm grieving, right now.
I'm grieving for my dog.
I'm grieving for my bestest, oldest friend.
And I'm grieving for my country.
A country destroyed by a man named Bush.
A man who doesn't know how to grieve.
I danced for my dog to get him to eat when he was sick.
Bush blew up frogs for the sheer fun of it.
You can tell a lot about a person from the way they treat animals.
No comments:
Post a Comment