GI Special:

thomasfbarton@earthlink.net

5.1.06

Print it out: color best.  Pass it on.

 

GI SPECIAL 4E1:

 

 

America Pukes Up George W. Bush

Anti-war activists march down Broadway, to protest the war in Iraq, in New York April 29, 2006.  The 250,000 marchers demanded an immediate withdrawal of troops.  REUTERS/Chip East

 

 

“They Were Not Mindless War Machines To Be Used As Their Commanders Had Thought”

 

 

2006-04-28 by Felix Vasquez Jr., Filmthreat.com

 

To some viewers, “Sir! No Sir!” will come off as a surefire liberal manifesto, but to those who really know what we’re talking about, “Sir! No Sir!” is a documentation of a group of soldiers who served their country, but then decided they just couldn’t do it anymore because it was unjust, so they stood up for their rights and decided they would fight no longer, and were crucified at the stake.

 

Along with it came a domino effect of more and more protestors, gathering of activist organizations, and incidents that would further test their wills. 

 

But they stood up for their beliefs, and in that process, they became real heroes that chose not to kill.  And yes, there are the ever present parallels to the Iraq war.

 

The government lied to America to enter in to Vietnam and pointed success towards the body count of the Vietnamese they’d slaughtered days before, much as what has happened today.

 

Though “Sir! No Sir!” would possibly choose not to be put in to correlation with the Iraq war the obvious analogous allusions are there.

 

After the Tet offensive in 1968, and the utterly brutal incident known as the My Lai Massacre, many of the soldiers serving for their country realized that this was not a war, yet a goal put upon by the government simply for their own means, and “Sir! No Sir!” presents two parties of soldiers.

 

One party realized this war was a fraud and chose not to fight, while the other could not take the brutality of it all and chose not to fight any longer.  They weren’t soldiers who pulled out of combat, but men asked to be killers, not to mention men, many of whom, hadn’t achieved the civil rights of an organization who felt they weren’t equal in society, but equal enough to die for them.

 

Zeiger’s documentary, along with charismatic narration from actor Troy Garity, is a tight, engrossing and excellent chronicle of the movement made by these heroic men who chose to question authority instead of falling in line.

 

Thomas Jefferson said that the best form of patriotism is dissension, and it’s a safe bet that the men interviewed here are in fact patriots, and true patriots.  

 

They were not mindless war machines to be used as their commanders had thought, and showed that they chose not to murder innocent people for the sake of a meaningless conflict.

 

Interviewed here is one of their most ardent and vocal proponents: Jane Fonda.  Oddly though, they never take umbrage to her involvement in the Hanoi Jane incident, and it’s never explored, thankfully, but we do explore how she voiced her support, and how she put on shows for the protestors.

 

But “Sir! No Sir!” is a documentary based not on people who chose to speak out, but on people whom discovered that the cause they supported was in vain.

 

To be disillusioned with your government who you believed would do you good, and to find out they’ve lied to you and asked you to pick up a weapon and kill people you’ve never met, to people who’ve done you no harm is what’s really the heartbreaking aspect of “Sir! No Sir!”

 

All of these soldiers were valiant in their efforts to not fight in a war they felt was a deceitful practice in government fraud, and they succeeded through all the hardships.

 

But the focus later changes to those who fought all the way through and discovered in the end, much too late, that their battle was for nothing.  

 

Because, the worst punishment a man can endure is regret.

 

 

Sir! No Sir!:

Extended Until May 2 At The IFC Center

322 Sixth Avenue At West Third Street,

New York City

 

Advance tickets on sale NOW through the IFC box office

Recording: 212-924-7771

Live box office: 212-924-5246

Online at www.ifccenter.com

 

Check out the trailer at www.sirnosir.com

 

Please contact max@riseup.net or celia@riseup.net for posters, postcards and flyers to help promote this event!

 

 

 

 

IRAQ WAR REPORTS

 

 

Hernando County Marine Killed

 

April 29, 2006 By JONATHAN ABEL and ASJYLYN LODER, St. Petersburg Times

 

BROOKSVILLE:  The first time Lea R. Mills came into Christine Kostis' classroom at Hernando High School, Kostis mispronounced his name.

 

"I said Lea, like L-E-A-H," Kostis recalled.  He was used to it. "He said, "It's Lea like pea, P-E-A. Doesn't that make sense?"

 

Four years later, after graduating from high school, after joining the Marine Corps, after marrying his high school sweetheart, after getting promoted to sergeant and being sent to Iraq, Lea is still remembered vividly by teachers at Hernando High.

 

But on Friday, Mills' family learned the 21-year-old had been killed by an improvised explosive device while on patrol in Iraq. 

 

He is the first Hernando County man to be killed in the war in Iraq. Michael Schafer of Spring Hill died in Afghanistan in July.

 

Mills, of Masaryktown, joined the Marines after graduation in 2002 and had recently reupped to serve longer. His father, Rob Mills, said Lea asked to go to Iraq and had been there just six weeks when he was killed.

 

"He felt he needed to go and wanted to go, so he volunteered," his father said. "Everybody in the family, on the men's side, has been in the service. We believe we owe it to our country."

 

At the end of August 2004, Mills married Keesha Malicoate, who was two years behind him in school. They were living together in Oceanside, Calif., before Mills' deployment to Iraq.

 

"It wasn't an infatuation love like you see in junior high school," said teacher John Miller, who knew both of them. "They were soul mates."

 

Mills was so close to his best friend, Josh Perdue, that the two went everywhere together, even into the Marines.

 

Perdue was on a helicopter training mission in North Carolina when he heard about his friend's death, said his mother, Pam Perdue. She said her son was devastated. So was she.

 

"I had just talked to his mom," Pam Perdue said. "She (asked Lea), "Do you sleep with one eye open?' He said, "No, with both eyes open.' She could tell by talking to him that he was stressed."

 

Before they enlisted, Mills and Perdue were livening up Miller's American government and economics classes.

 

"They kind of skated, but they loved school. They were the kind of goof-offs you liked," Miller said. "They always participated when we talked about the military."

 

A few years after graduating, Mills came back to Hernando High to give a motivational speech. He told the kids to buckle down and study. If he had it to do over, he said, he would have been valedictorian.

 

Miller said his demeanor had changed. "Lea had something with his voice that would crack like a teenager," Miller remembers. "He came back from the Marines and he had a man's voice."

 

Newlywed Soldier Killed

Newlyweds Metodio and Charmaine Bandonill are pictured in a photo provided by the family.

 

April 28, 2006 By Rosemarie Bernardo, Honolulu Star-Bulletin

 

CHARMAINE BANDONILL was in bed Tuesday morning when military officials arrived at her home in County Tipperary, Ireland, to tell her that her husband, Staff Sgt. Metodio A. Bandonill, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq.

 

"They said words but I couldn't hear anything," Bandonill's wife said yesterday in a phone interview from Ireland.

 

"We just got married. Just one click and he's gone. It's very hard for me," a tearful Charmaine said. "He's the best thing that ever happened to me."

 

Bandonill, 29, a highly decorated soldier from Kalihi, was killed Monday when a roadside bomb exploded near his Humvee while on patrol in Baghdad.

 

He was a member of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) assigned to Troop B, 1st Squadron, 75th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, according to Army officials at Fort Campbell, Ky.

 

Bandonill joined the Army in May 1997 and arrived at Fort Campbell in October 2004. Before that, he spent two years training in Fort Knox, Ky. He also traveled to Korea, Louisiana and Colorado.

 

He and Charmaine married in a civil ceremony in their native Philippines on Jan. 14.  He returned to Iraq the next day.

 

The couple had planned to have a wedding reception in Hawaii after he completed his tour of duty in September.  Charmaine, a hotel supervisor in Ireland, also said they wanted to travel before settling down in Colorado and starting a family.

 

It will never happen now, Charmaine said who hasn't slept since she was informed of her husband's death.

 

The couple met through a Web site in 2003.  A year later, in June 2004, they met face-to-face at Shannon Airport in Ireland.  Charmaine said she was always distrustful of finding romance on the Internet, but that all changed.  "The first time I met him, I knew he was the one," she said.  A month later, Bandonill proposed.

 

Both visited each other often before tying the knot.  They also e-mailed and called each other often.  She described her husband as having a great sense of humor.  "He makes me laugh all the time," she said.

 

The couple last spoke to each other on Sunday when he had three minutes left on his phone card to tell her that he loved and missed her.  "He would tell me, 'you're my fuel, you keep me going.'" said Charmaine, who is expected to arrive in Hawaii tomorrow. Bandonill, the second of five children to Virginia and Virgilio Bandonill, was born and raised on a farm in Sison, Pangasinan.  He helped his parents tend to vegetables and farm animals.

 

Bandonill attended Northern Luzon Adventist College Academy before his family decided to move to Hawaii to seek better opportunities.  He and his mother joined his father in Hawaii in December 1995.  Bandonill's four other siblings arrived later.

 

Virginia Bandonill said he joined the Army for a better future.  He was on his second tour of duty to Iraq.

 

She said he spent a year in Iraq during his first tour and she did not want him to return. "It is very dangerous," she said.

 

Bandonill's mother said she was on her way to work Tuesday morning when military officials arrived at her home to inform her of her son's death.  She said her mind has since been in a "blurred" state.  "I can't believe my son has died," she said as she wiped away tears.  "I'm shocked. I don't know what to do."

 

A framed photo of Bandonill dressed in full military uniform was placed on a small table at his parents' Kalihi home with a bowl of kim-chee saimin in front of it.

 

Bandonill's mother described him as smart and friendly and said she last spoke to her son on Friday when he asked her to send him some spicy Korean saimin, his favorite.

 

Bandonill received many awards during his military career, including the Army Commendation Medal, Presidential Unit Citation, Army Achievement Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Iraqi Campaign Medal and Global War on Terrorism Service Medal.

 

"I'm very proud of him.  I call him a hero," said his father. "I salute him."

 

Bandonill is also survived by his sister Maria and brothers, Dionisio, Joseph and Domingo.  Funeral arrangements are pending.  A memorial service for Bandonill is also to be held in Iraq.

 

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO COMPREHENSIBLE REASON TO BE IN THIS EXTREMELY HIGH RISK LOCATION AT THIS TIME, EXCEPT THAT A CROOKED POLITICIAN WHO LIVES IN THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU THERE, SO HE WILL LOOK GOOD.

That is not a good enough reason.

U.S. soldier attaches a chain to a concrete barrier blocking the soldier's unit from access to a street in Baghdad, April 19, 2006.  (AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg)

 

Death Toll For Americans In Iraq Is Highest In 5 Months

 

29 April 2006 By Sabrina Tavernise, The New York Times

 

Baghdad, Iraq - The military announced the death of one American soldier on Friday, bringing the death toll so far in April to 69, the highest in five months.  The monthly figure disrupted a trend of steadily falling American fatalities that had begun in November.

 

The bulk of American deaths in April occurred in Baghdad and in the insurgent-controlled western province of Anbar, according to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an independent group that compiles casualty figures based on information provided by the American military.

 

Deaths in April could still climb, but are not likely to top the 84 American deaths in November.  The April figure is more than double the 31 troops killed in March, one of the lowest monthly tolls of the war, according to the group's statistics.

 

 

AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS

 

 

Assorted Resistance Action

 

[Thanks to PB, who sent this in.]

 

Apr 29 By Mirwais Afghan, Reuters

 

Taliban insurgents threatened on Saturday to kill a kidnapped Indian telecommunications worker unless Indians left Afghanistan.

 

The Indian and his Afghan driver were kidnapped after gunmen stopped their car on a road in the volatile southern province of Zabul on Friday.

 

"If India does not pull out all its nationals working in Afghanistan by 6 p.m. (1330 GMT) tomorrow, we're going to kill him," Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

 

Three policemen were killed in a Taliban attack in the southern province of Helmand, a provincial official said.

 

 

 

TROOP NEWS

 

 

THIS IS WHAT THE TRAITOR BUSH HAS NEVER DONE AND WILL NEVER DO:

THE PRESIDENT OF ITALY HONORS THEIR WAR DEAD

Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi touches the flag-draped coffin of Carabiniere Warrant Officer Carlo De Trizio during the arrival of the bodies of three personnel killed in Iraq, at Ciampino airport near Rome April 29, 2006. A roadside bomb killed three Italian soldiers in Iraq on April 27, 2006.  REUTERS/Enrico Oliverio/Pool

 

Rumsfeld Losing It:

Runs Away From Press And Acts Generally Weird On Baghdad Trip

 

April 28, 2006 By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post Staff Writer

 

BAGHDAD, April 27:  A full 10 seconds of silence passed after a reporter asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld what the intense secrecy and security surrounding their visit to Iraq signified about the stability of the country three years after the U.S.-led invasion. Rice turned to Rumsfeld to provide the answer. 

 

Rumsfeld glared at the reporter.

 

"I guess I don't think it says anything about it," he snapped.  He went on to say that President Bush had directed him and Rice to go to Iraq to "meet with the new leadership, and it happens that they are located here," a reference to the heavily fortified Green Zone where U.S. officials -- and many Iraqi leaders -- live and work.

 

Even though her arrival here followed an exhausting sprint through Greece and Turkey, Rice appeared energized by the task at hand.

 

Rumsfeld arrived directly from Washington, after a recent Asian tour, but he seemed disengaged and bored, both to reporters traveling with him and to some U.S. officials. Some said he seemed irritated by the whole exercise.  He did not speak a word to reporters with him on the flight to Baghdad.

 

During a joint meeting with reporters traveling with the secretaries, Rumsfeld frequently doodled with a black felt-tip pen or stared absent-mindedly at the ceiling when Rice spoke.  Rice would occasionally cast a nervous glance at Rumsfeld as he prepared to respond to a question.  His answers were terse; hers were expansive.

 

The two secretaries recently had a widely publicized dispute over a comment by Rice that the administration had probably made "thousands" of "tactical errors" in Iraq.  Aides later said she had meant it figuratively, but it generated headlines around the world.  In a radio interview, Rumsfeld dismissed it as a comment made by someone who didn't understand warfare.

 

Asked about the flap here in Baghdad, Rumsfeld replied, "I wasn't aware of what she meant." (The transcript shows that the radio interviewer described her remarks carefully and placed them in context.)  Rumsfeld made no effort to smooth over the issue but pointed to Rice and said, "She's right here, and you can ask her." 

 

Rice noted that her comment about tactical errors had been made "not in the military sense."

 

Rice courted the news media, racing through five television interviews in 17 minutes.

 

Rumsfeld gave no separate interviews.  At one point, he arrived early for a meeting and saw an array of television cameras inside the room.  He shook his head at the reporters and turned on his heel.

 

Before the two Cabinet members left Baghdad on Thursday, Rice dismissed any suggestions of tension.  "Secretary Rumsfeld and I have an excellent relationship," she told Fox News.  "We're working very hard together.”

 

“We’re actually having a great time here in Iraq."  [And if there is any justice in the world, next trip you’ll get to meet an IED up close and personal.  Those are always such fun.  Be sure to bring Donny Dickhead with you.]

 

 

 

FORWARD OBSERVATIONS

 

 

 

 

“How Does This Dusky Dare To Touch The White Masters’ Toys?”

 

April 30, 2006 By Israel Shamir [Excerpt]

 

The European and American reaction to Iran’s nuclear program was that of Uncle Tom’s slaveowner, Simon Legree, on learning of an escaped slave.  How does this dusky dare to touch the white masters’ toys?

 

Their empty talk of an “Iranian threat” is designed for the ignorant: Iran has never, ever attacked a European nation since the wars for Anatolia in the 5th century BC; whereas European imperialists have repeatedly occupied and controlled Iran, most recently in 1942, or by proxy in 1953, when they deposed democratically-elected Mosaddeq and returned to dominate this ancient nation.

 

 

 

“What’s Wrong With Marx?”

To his closest friends and comrades Karl Marx was known as “The Moor” (“El Moro”) because of his deep reddish brown complexion.  His family originated in Spain, where much of the population is of some African ancestry.

 

His motto: “Doubt all.”

 

From: WM

To: GI Special

Sent: April 03, 2006

Subject: What’s wrong with Marx?

 

Why don’t you ever reprint anything by Marx.  You got a problem with Marx?

 

[Reply:  No.  I have a problem with mass murdering shit eating tyrants who pretend they have something in common with Marx, such as Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sucks, Ho Chi Minh, and the rest of the parasites who feed themselves and their ruling class allies on what my working class brothers and sisters sweat to produce, while having the nerve to call their thieving dictatorships “socialism.”  

 

[Marx would have declared political war on all of them.  He knew which side he was on: the international working class, not those arrogant intellectuals using his name as a smoke screen to hide their own greed for power and class privilege. 

 

[With the implacable, principled, revolutionary, anti-capitalist Marx: always.  With those despicable traitors: never.

 

[You want some Marx?  OK, for May Day, try this.  T]

 

**************************************************

 

SEEING THE WORLD WITH NEW EYES

 

SELECTIONS FROM:

 

Preface To A Contribution To The Critique Of Political Economy,

and

The Eighteenth Brumarie Of Louis Napoleon

 

********************************************

 

From The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon:

 

On the other hand, proletarian revolutions, like those of the nineteenth century, criticize themselves constantly, interrupt themselves continually in their own course, come back to the apparently accomplished in order to begin it afresh, deride with unmerciful thoroughness the inadequacies, weaknesses and paltriness of their first attempts, seem to throw down their adversary only in order that he may draw new strength from the earth and rise again, more gigantic, before them, recoil ever and anon from the indefinite prodigiousness of their own aims, until a situation has been created which makes all turning back impossible.

 

[Which also applies to movements in general, and a movement against an Imperial war in particular. T]

 

*****************************************

 

Preface To A Contribution To The Critique Of Political Economy

 

I examine the system of bourgeois economy in the following order: capital, landed property, wage-labor; the state, foreign trade, the world market.

 

Under the first three headings, I examine the economic conditions of existence of the three great classes into which modem bourgeois society is divided; the interconnection of the three other headings is obvious at a glance.

 

The first section of the first book, which deals with capital, consists of the following chapters: 1) the commodity; 2) money or simple circulation; 3) capital in general.

 

The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies can be summarized as follows.

 

In the social production of their existence, men enter into definite, necessary relations, which are independent of their will, namely, relations of production corresponding to a determinate stage of development, of their material forces of production.  The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which there arises a legal and political superstructure and to which there correspond definite forms of social consciousness.

 

The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life-process in general. 

 

It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their consciousness.

 

At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production--or what is merely a legal _expression for the same thing--with the property relations within the framework of which they have hitherto operated.

 

From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.

 

At that point an era of social revolution begins.

 

With the change in the economic foundation the whole immense superstructure is more slowly or more rapidly transformed.

 

In considering such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic, in short, ideological, forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.

 

Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself so one cannot judge such an epoch of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social forces of production and the relations of production.

 

A social order never perishes before all the productive forces for which it is broadly sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the womb of the old society.

 

Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it can solve, since closer examination will always show that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the process of formation.

 

In broad outline, the Asian, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as progressive epochs of the socio-economic order.

 

The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production --antagonistic not in the sense of an individual antagonism but of an antagonism growing out of the social conditions of existence of individuals; but the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society simultaneously create the material conditions for the solution of this antagonism.

 

The prehistory of human society therefore closes with this social formation.

 

MORE:

 

It’s A Working Class World

 

April 14, 2006 By Mike Davis, Tomdispatch.com [Excerpt]

 

Although rural guerrillas survive in rugged redoubts like Kashmir, the Khyber Pass, and the Andes, the center of gravity of global insurgency has moved from the countryside back to the cities and their slum peripheries.

 

“Not Getting Trapped By This Tunnel Vision”

 

April 29, 2006 Camilo Meija interviewed by Eric Ruder, Socialist Worker [Excerpt]

 

Camilo Meija was the first U.S. soldier to be jailed for refusing to redeploy to Iraq. Since his release in February 2005, Camilo has organized tirelessly against the war in Iraq, taking part in last month's Latino march for peace from Tijuana, Mexico, to San Francisco, as well as the antiwar march along the Gulf Coast from Mobile, Ala., to New Orleans.

 

*************************************************

 

Camilo Meija:

 

Former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter said that the antiwar movement needs to be laser-focused on being antiwar, and not talking about other issues. 

 

I think that's a mistake, and that's one of the things that we have to appreciate about both the antiwar and immigrant rights movements.

 

They're not getting trapped by this tunnel vision: just looking to take care of their own grievances and then go home.  

 

They're being more analytical and going after the broader evil, the broader injustice.  They're realizing that it's not just a matter of Latinos being criminalized for looking for a better standard of living, but that it also has to do with imperialism--that it has to do with a chronic state of social injustice in this country and throughout the world.

 

The fact that both movements are making these connections is crucial.

 

This time around, we have the opportunity to not simply go after the war or go after anti-immigrant policies, but to go after the larger system.

 

 

How Crazy Is That?

 

April 28, 2006 Mike Whitney

 

Bush’s appeal to the Iranian people was meant to enlist them in the effort to topple their own government.  How crazy is that?

 

No matter how much one dislikes the Bush administration, we would still fight to defend our own country if invaded.  It’s absurd to think the Iranians would behave differently.

 

Anti-War Rally Infiltrated By Pro-War Slime

Working Assets organization hands a protester a sign during a mass rally against the war in Iraq on April 29, 2006 in New York, NY.  (AP Photo/Adam Rountree)

 

[Thanks to PB, who sent this in.  He writes: Terrible sign at anti-war demo.  Another chicken dove.]

 

[Got that right.  These pimps for the Empire don’t object to dead U.S. troops; they just want them dead in a different location.  Of course, they’re too cowardly to go to Darfur right now themselves.  Oh no, gasp, that might be dangerous.  They might get hurt.  T]

 

 

OCCUPATION REPORT

 

 

Collaborator Troops Won’t Collaborate:

Defy Their Officers After Graduation Parade

 

May 1, 2006 (Reuters)

 

HABBANIYA, Iraq

 

Newly graduated Iraqi soldiers protested after a passing out parade on Sunday saying they were promised they would serve only in their hometowns.

 

The troops were among 1,000 graduates, mostly from the Sunni Arab minority, at the Habbaniya base near Falluja west of Baghdad.

 

The protesters told reporters they were unhappy about their first assignments after being promised they would serve only in their hometowns.

 

Some took off their shirts and threw them down in anger.  Others yelled at their officers and threatened to quit.  One officer yelled back, telling them to leave, witnesses said.

 

"The movement of an integrated army in al Anbar is the only future," said Colonel Larry Nicholson, a U.S. commander in Falluja.  [If this is the “only future,” Col. Nicholson has a few simple choices:  A) Join the resistance  B) Do the honorable thing and kill himself or  C) Kiss Rumsfeld ass by pretending everything is just fine, thereby following a long tradition of Occupation commanders who put advancement before reality, however many of their troops had to die as they take another step up the career ladder, moving inexorably toward the Pentagon dining room.]

 

"When people look out their window and see the Army, they need to be able to say, `It's my Army.'  Today, we took a very positive step in that direction."  [Guess which one of the above choices he picked.  Well, maybe that’s not completely fair.  The action of the Iraqi troops described was indeed “a very positive step” -- towards mutiny, rebellion and insurrection against the U.S. stooges running the country.  They may turn out not to be traitors to their own country, serving a foreign Imperial occupation, after all.]

 

 

 

Kurdish Official Says Bush Collaborators Lying About An Attack By Iran

 

IRBIL, April 30 (KUNA)  A Kurdish official Sunday denied reports about Iranian forces' incursion into Northern Iraqi territories to hunt down Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) militants.

 

The official of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) said in press remarks the Iranian forces were doing routine military movements within the Iranian territories.

 

He added the borders of Kurdistan were fully protected and no country could penetrate into them.

 

He affirmed that the Iraqi defense ministry said today that Iranian forces penetrated earlier this month into Iraqi territories and bombed Kurdish parties sites.

 

 

DANGER: POLITICIANS AT WORK

 

 

They Hate Our Liberties:

Bush Regime Orders Secret Spying On Thousands Of American Citizens

 

April 29, 2006 By Richard B. Schmitt, L.A. Times Staff Writer

 

WASHINGTON: The FBI issued thousands of subpoenas to banks, phone companies and Internet providers last year, aggressively using a power enhanced under the Patriot Act to monitor the activities of U.S. citizens, Justice Department data released late Friday showed.

 

The report given to members of Congress was the first to detail the government's use of a controversial form of administrative subpoena that has drawn fire because it can be issued by investigators without court oversight.

 

The data show that U.S. authorities are in some cases escalating their use of anti-terrorism statutes.

 

The report includes the first look at the use of what are known as national security letters, which let the FBI obtain phone logs, Internet traffic records, and bank and credit information about individuals without a court order.

 

The Bush administration had fought the release of the information on grounds that it could imperil national security. But Congress ordered the release when it reauthorized portions of the Patriot Act this year.

 

 

The number of such letters previously had been provided to members of Congress on a classified basis.  Data from other years aren't available, although some experts said the number probably had increased substantially.

 

"Now we can see why the administration was so eager to hide the number," said Lisa Graves, a senior legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington.

 

The Justice Department report also included an annual update on the number of warrants that the department had obtained through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a secret federal court for intelligence and terrorism investigations.

 

Applications for electronic surveillance and physical search warrants — which almost always are approved by the court — rose to 2,074 in 2005, compared with 1,758 in 2004.  Last year's total was more than double the number sought in 2000.

 

That court is the tribunal that the Bush administration has been bypassing in a warrantless domestic surveillance program since shortly after Sept. 11.

 

James Dempsey, policy director of the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, said the increased use of the secret court belied the government's contention that it needed to go outside the court to get the information it needed.

 

In 1776 “They Fought A War To Stop It”

In 2006 , Time To Do It Again:

The Traitor Bush “Declares That He Can Throw Citizens In Federal Jails In Perpetuity On His Own Authority, Without Consulting A Judge Or Getting An Arrest Warrant”

 

[This is the only war worth fighting.  We need all our troops home now to protect us against the traitors running the government in Washington.  Our troops have sworn an oath to protect Americans against these enemies domestic, and they know how.]

 

30 April 2006 By Jim Hightower, The Hightower Lowdown [Excerpt]

 

Many of the colonists who rose in support of the rebellion of '76 did so because their government kept snooping on them and invading their privacy.

 

Especially offensive was the widespread use of "writs of assistance," which were sweeping warrants authorizing government agents to enter and search people's homes and businesses - including those of people who had nothing to hide.  The founders had a strong sense of the old English maxim "A man's house is his castle."

 

They hated the government's "knock at the door," the forced intrusion into their private spheres, the arrogant abrogation of their personal liberty.

 

So they fought a war to stop it.

 

Hence, the Fourth Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

 

Now comes the Bush-Cheney regime, pushing the most massive and rapid expansion of presidential might America has ever known.

 

Their push includes a White House program of domestic spying so sweeping that it would make Nixon blush; an audacious claim of a unilateral executive right to suspend treaties and ignore U.S. laws; an insistence that a president can seize U.S. citizens with no due process of law and imprison them in CIA "black sites" or send them to foreign regimes to be tortured; a series of new plans for military spying on the American people; the repression of both internal dissenters and outside protestors; an all-out assault on the public's right to know; and well, way too much more.

 

Bush maintains that, as "a war president," he has the inherent power (never claimed by any predecessor) to seize and imprison any American citizen suspected by his administration of having even the vaguest connection to terrorists.

 

He declares that he can throw citizens in federal jails in perpetuity on his own authority, without consulting a judge or getting an arrest warrant.

 

The hapless innocent suspects who wail that a nightmarish mistake is being made are out of luck.

 

Bush says that his executive prisoners can be taken in secret (without even notifying their families), do not have to be told of any specific charges against them, have no right to lawyers and can be held without trial.

 

 

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