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Friday, August 15, 2008
Friday,
August 15, 2008. Chaos and violence continue, the US military
announces more deaths, Ralph Nader keeps issues on the table and more. JEREMY
HINZMAN: Well, essentially, it turns our lives upside down. We, as you
said, just had a baby [daughter Megahn]. Our son [Liam] knows nothing
else aside from Canada. And if we do go back, which it's looking like,
I will undoubtedly be court-martialed and serve some time in jail.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Is there any appeal process left to you yet that might delay the September 23rd deadline?
JEREMY
HINZMAN: There is. It's not guaranteed that we'll be granted leave to
appeal, but if my lawyer can find errors in the compassionate and
humanitarian decision that the Canadian Border Services rendered, then
we can--we can appeal. But there's no guarantee that the court will
grant us leave.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And what were the arguments the court used in rejecting your appeal?
JEREMY
HINZMAN: Well, in a compassionate and humanitarian case, you need to
show that there would be undue hardship if you returned to your country
of origin, and we--and you also need to show that you've been
established in Canada and can live independently. And we did that. In
the decision, the officer said we've established ourselves well in
Canada. We haven't been a hindrance to the social assistance programs.
But he said that wasn't enough for us to stay. He said the US has a
fair justice system. My First Amendment right to free speech is
protected. And they also mentioned that--for whatever reason, I don't
know--they mentioned George Bush's No School Left Behind program to say
that our son would be able to get a good education. I found that kind
of humorous. [. . .] JUAN GONZALEZ: Have you maintained ties with other US war resisters who are in Canada, who have gone there in recent years?
JEREMY
HINZMAN: There are a number of us in Toronto, and I am acquainted with
them. There's a movement called the War Resisters Support Campaign
that's been active pretty much since we got here, and we have meetings,
and there's been a lot of lobbying in support of us. And on June 3rd,
the Canadian parliament passed a nonbinding motion by a vote of
137-to-110 saying that US war resisters should be able to remain in
Canada. However, the conservative government is refusing to enact the
legislation.
JUAN
GONZALEZ: Now, Canada, of course, has a long history of giving refugee
status to resisters from American wars. Obviously, during the Vietnam
War, there were many who went there. How would you characterize the
difference between this government's treatment of war resisters and
what you know of past times?
JEREMY
HINZMAN: Well, during the Vietnam era, of course, Pierre Trudeau, who
was a liberal, was in power, and he famously stated--at least up
here--that Canada should be a haven from militarism, and that kind of
opened the floodgates for American soldiers to come to Canada. I think
50,000 eventually settled here. Right now, there's a conservative
minority government. Canada has a parliamentary system, and they hold
the balance of power. And I wouldn't say they're lapdogs to the US, but
they share many of the same values of the Bush administration and
aren't really sympathetic to what we're doing. AP files another story where they quote Jeremy stating,
"I went through all the training. I served honorably in my unit. I
used army provisions to try become a noncombatant and remain in the
army as a medic or something, but I still would be subject to going on
combat missions as a medic. I can't bring myself to shoot another
person. If people want to criticize me for that, then I'm honored to
be criticized because I'm not a killer."
Jeremy Hinzman and other war resisters in Canada need support and to pressure the Stephen Harper government to honor the House of Commons vote, Gerry Condon, War Resisters Support Campaign and Courage to Resist
all encourage contacting the Diane Finley (Minister of Citizenship and
Immigration -- 613.996.4974, phone; 613.996.9749, fax; e-mail finley.d@parl.gc.ca -- that's "finley.d" at "parl.gc.ca") and Stephen Harper (Prime Minister, 613.992.4211, phone; 613.941.6900, fax; e-mail pm@pm.gc.ca -- that's "pm" at "pm.gc.ca"). Courage to Resist collected more than 10,000 letters to send before the vote. Now they've started a new letter you can use online here. The War Resisters Support Campaign's petition can be found here.
Long expulsion does not change the need for action and the War
Resisters Support Campaign explains: "The War Resisters Support
Campaign is calling on supporters across Canada to urgently continue to
put pressure on the minority conservative government to immediately
cease deportation proceedings against other US war resisters and to
respect the will of Canadians and their elected representatives by
implementing the motion adopted by Parliament on June 3rd. Please see
the take action
page for what you can do." The War Resisters Support Campaign has
called an "Emergency Meeting to Stop the Deportation of Jeremy Hinzman
and his family, Wednesday August 20 at 7 p.m. at the Steelworkers Hall,
25, Cecil Street" (Toronto) and encourages everyone to " Read the War Resisters Support Campaign press release and circulate it widely James
Burmeister is a US war resister. He is the whistle blower who went to
Canada and told the world (or those who would listen) about the kill
teams. Last month, Dee Knight's " Army court-martials resister for blowing whistle on 'bait-and-kill'" ( Workers World)
offered an overview of Burmeister's court-martial providing the context
and why the US military brass wanted to silence him. Today Evan
Kornfeld (US Socialist Worker) also offers a look at James
court-martial (James was not deported or extradited, he returned to the
US from Canada of his own accord earlier this year and was court-martialed July 16th): James Burmeister Box A Fort Knox, KY 40121 There
is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which
includes Yovany Rivero, William Shearer, Michael Thurman, Andrei
Hurancyk, Megan Bean, Chris Bean, Matthis Chiroux, Richard Droste,
Michael Barnes, Matt Mishler, Josh Randall, Robby Keller, Justiniano
Rodrigues, Chuck Wiley, James Stepp, Rodney Watson, Michael Espinal,
Matthew Lowell, Derek Hess, Diedra Cobb, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn,
Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross
Spears, Peter Brown, Bethany "Skylar" James, Zamesha Dominique,
Chrisopther Scott Magaoay, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Jose Vasquez,
Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada,
Terri Johnson, Clara Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen,
Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman,
Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck,
Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, Blake LeMoine,
Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey,
Logan Laituri, Jason Marek, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua
Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell,
Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake,
Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Wilfredo Torres,
Michael Sudbury, Ghanim Khalil, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and
Kevin Benderman. In total, at least fifty US war resisters in Canada
have applied for asylum. Turning to Iraq. Tina Susman (Los Angeles Times) reports
that the death toll for yesterday's bombing attack on pilgrims is 20
"and it raised the specter of more bloodshed as the pilgrimage route
becomes crowded before the event Saturday." Sami al-Jumaili (Reuters) explains
that "Despite the [security] precautions, Kerbala is bracing for
the worst. Local health director Alaa Hammoudi said that 40 medical
units were standing by, and that extra hospital beds were made ready.
Near the mosque, makeshift clinics were set up in tents and trailers.
Some pilgrims donated blood." Campbell Robertson and Riyadh Muhammed (New York Times) quote
an eye witness to yesterday's bombing, Ali, who explains, "I saw smoke,
and I smelled the very bad smell of burned flesh and blood. The
reactions were a little less than at the last blast maybe because they
already have been shocked." Sudarsan Raghavan and Saad Sarhan (Washington Post) cite
Iskandariyah police chief Ali al-Zahawi insisting there is "a shortage
of female police officers in the town". And why is that? Hey,
remember when women were being purged? Remember when female police
officers were informed they could not carry fire arms? And remember how
the pig and thug and puppet Nouri al-Maliki was pleased as punch with
all of that and shocked when a few (very few reports) objections were
raised? The puppet needs the illegal war to stay in power. And the
White House doesn't give a damn about the rights of Iraqi women. So it
was the perfect blend for pigs everywhere. Anna Badkhen (Salon) reports
that, even in the crack-downed Baghdad, "women here still feel
threatened. One can't yet see a pervasive shift in the way women
dress. They continue to wear the conservative clothing that the
militias began compelling them to wear after the U.S. invasion. Most
women remain cocooned in shapeless, black abaya dresses and hijab
scarves that covered their hair. . . . Before the war, Tammy says, she
could walk down the streets of her hometown, the southern and heavily
Shia Iraqi port city of Basra, dressed like most teenagers in the
United States -- in jeans and no head scarf. Saddam Hussein's regime
was one of the world's most despotic, but it was secular and allowed
Iraqi women personal rights and freedoms unparalleled in the Persian
Gulf. Women, who make up more than half of the country's populartion,
could drive, travel abroad alone, serve in Iraqi security forces and
work side-by-side with men. They chose whom to marry and whether to
marry at all, and were among the most educated in the region. . . .
After the U.S. invasion in 2003, conservative Muslim clerics called for
Iraq to become an Islamic state. In the name of Islamic values, they
eroded the liberties women here enjoyed even under Saddam's oppressive
regime. Schools, once coed, became segregated by gender; women were
afraid to go outside without a head scarf. As sectarian violence
engulfed Baghdad and other parts of the country in 2006, it brought in
its wake even more constraints on women's freedoms." And the White
House didn't just let it happen, they encouraged and, in fact, still
encourage it. At a time when female bombers are said to be the biggest
threat to stability in Iraq (foreign forces on the ground in Iraq are
the biggest threat to the country's stability), the US military
actively recruits women into their "Awakening" Councils and yet --
despite a supposed need which should be driving the market forces --
they pay these women 20% less than their male counterparts. No one
objects. No one calls it out. And it reinforces the message to those
installed into power in Iraq (by the US) that women are not equal and
that their worth is less than that of a man's. Helen Benedict (In These Times) reports
on the increased number of sexual assaults in the US military -- women
serving assaulted and abused by their "comrades-in-arms" -- and notes
that "the attention always focuses on the women: where they were when
assaulted, their relations with the assailant, the effects on their
mental health and careers, whether they are being adequately helped,
and so on. That discussion, as valuable as it is, misses a fundamental
point. To understand military sexual assault, let alone know how to
stop it, we must focus on the perpetrators. We need to ask: Why do
soldiers rape?" It's the culture of the institution (which includes
looking the other way) and that institution has had a bigger impact
than any other US institution in Iraq. Institutions,
organizations. How does the peace movement ever plan to be effective
in the US with such sorry-ass 'leaders.' Tom Hayden shows up to soil
his own name at The Nation this week with "The Defunding of the Peace
Movement." He pretends to be talking straight (no doubt inflicting
howls of laughter from all who know Tom-Tom) and pretends like Barack
has pledged to end the illegal war. Barack has pledged no such thing.
He might reduce the number of US forces in Iraq (to send them to
Afghanistan) but he has not called for all US troops out of Iraq -- and
long ago refused to promise in a televised debate that, if elected
president, all US troops would be out of Iraq by 2012. Tom-Tom's
heart-heart races for Barack so he lies and lies. The problem, as
Tom-Tom sees it, is that people aren't giving money to peace
organizations. Or 527s. 527s? No, those are not peace organizations
but Tom was never a peace leader. Not now, not back then. He was
always someone lusting after a political career and that motivated him
then and does so now. It's always been about setting Tom's end up. He
talks to Leslie Cagan of UPFJ and she's wondering what her organization
could do with $100,000? More of the same, Leslie, absolutely nothing.
Say it again. When UPFJ (not one of the worst
offenders in my opinion) had more money it didn't change the way they
operated. At best, they were silent on John Kerry. Other orgs and
'leaders' made it their life's work to shill for his 2004 election. If
UPFJ is facing fund shortages it goes to the lousy leadership they've
shown since the start of the illegal war. Engaging in their sniping
with A.N.S.W.E.R. which is fine if it's just an open debate but is not
fine when it prevents actions from taking place. There has not been a
huge peace rally since January 2007. No one's in the mood to give one
damn dime to any of these useless organizations. (IVAW remains the
only organization that is working at ending the illegal war.) They all
go rushing off to "War With Iran Tomorrow!" or "Saint Bhutto Has Died!"
or one hundred and one other causes while they abandon Iraq. (Again,
my opinion, UPFJ has not been the worst offender there. CODESTINK has
been the worst and the most hypocritical. UPFJ has tended to go for
silence as opposed to hawking non-peace events/candidates.) Barack's
greedy. How surprising that people are just now grasping that. How
pathetic that Leslie's going to whine to Tom-Tom instead of taking to
the UPFJ website to state, "We are an organization trying to end the
illegal war. We are not endorsing any candidate. We are endorsing the
end of the Iraq War. If you are with us on that, we could use some
donations to continue this struggle." Tom-Tom lies as well and claims,
"The Obama finance committee is under more pressure, literally, to pay
Hillary Clinton's debt to Mark Penn than to fund any messages on war,
recession and global warming." Tom Hayden, you sexist pig, drop the Bash The Bitch
games. At your age, it only makes you look older, uglier and more
pathetic. Barack hasn't done a damn thing to retire Clinton's debt
(and Hillary has stated that she's paying off small vendors first).
That joint-appearance where he gave the speech and 'forgot' to ask
people to donate to Hillary and only returned to the stage when
reporters questioned him on it? He's done nothing to help her with her
debt and shame on you, a man who'd be living on the streets were it not
for his divorce settlement, for pretending otherwise and yet again
trying to make it all about Hillary. Your Lover Man has failed you
Tom. Your limp and inactive and it has nothing to do with Hillary.
You fell in love with Barack and he broke your heart. Those are the
breaks, grow the hell up before senility sets in. Or has that already happened. Tom-Tom was one of the signers of that ridiculous ass-kiss to Barack from The Nation. As we observed at Third: Because The Nation
is run by the brain dead and the socially stunted today, they decide to
copy that with an open letter. (They only know how to do what was done
before, no visionaries or dreamers they.) The open letter is called
"Change *We* Can Believe In" and if the starring of "We" didn't
indicate to you there was a lot of ego tripping going down, you only
had to read the names of those who signed on to the garbage --
including non-Democrat Frances Fox Piven (billed as Francis Piven --
what happened, she looked in a mirror?), The Ego Of Us All's Red Buddy
who pimped her hard to The New York Times and did more to lie
for Friedan than even she herself did, Democratic Groupie (in the worst
sense of "groupie" in the rock world) Norm Solomon, Tom-Tom Hayden
(still fretting about the 1969 violence we pointed out recently), Red
Billy Fletcher, Take Me To My Divorce Pay Day! Jodie Evans, Emma
Goldman lookalike Barbara Ehrenreich,
Does-Marlo-Know-You-Signed-That-Garbage Phil Donahue, School Girl
Katrina vanden Heuvel (who reportedly came up with the embarrassing
phrase "the long night of greed" -- to which C.I. responded, "Oh, she's
turned her hand to autobigoraphy?") and, yes, Howard Zinn. The
letter is also frankly dishonest when it says that Obama is simply
moving to a more "centrist stance" In what sense "centrist"? The war is
wildly unpopular and close to 70% of Americans want the U.S. out of
Iraq asap. What is "centrist" about moving away from a landslide
majoritarian position? And what is the "peace" candidate doing when he
calls for 100,000 more active duty army and marines, when he calls for
more military spending, when he calls for stepping up the war on
Afghanistan, when he talks belligerently about Iran, and when he
equivocates on how many tens of thousands of troops are to be left in
Iraq? All these are positions that the "peace" candidate took during
the primary. They are not new. [. . .] What
is awfully irritating is that Katrina Vanden Heuval and the rest of the
"liberal" elite criticize supporters of McKinney/Clemente and
Nader/Gonzalez for "wishful thinking." Compared to the sentiments and
views of the supplicants' letter, supporters of third party candidates
are hard core realists. And it is very sad to see some of the
signatories of this letter who in better times would have been men and
women who put principle over "lesser evil" politics. Read the letter
carefully. Look at the signatories. It may bring tears. Turning to some of today's reported violence . . . Bombings? Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports
pilgrims continue to be targeted with a Baghdad roadside bombing
claimed the life of 1 (nine more wounded), a Baghdad mortar attack left
two people wounded, another Baghdad roadside bombing left six people
wounded, and a Salahudding car bombing that claimed 5 lives (twenty
more wounded). Shootings? Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports
an armed clash in Kirkuk that resulted in 1 death and an Al Anbar
Province assassination attempt on "Sheikh Kahmees Al-Dulaimi, the Imam
of one of the mosques in Falluja" who was taken to the hospital for
medical care Today the US military announced:
"A Multi-National Force -- West Marine was killed Aug. 14 when his unit
received small-arms fire during security operations approximately 1 km
east of Fallujah." And they announced:
"A Multi-National Corps-Iraq Soldier died of non-battle related causes
Aug. 15 in Baghdad. An investigation into the cause of death is under
way." That brings the total number of US service members killed in
Iraq since the start of the illegal war to 4143 and the death toll for the month thus far is 16 -- which is 3 more than the July total that all the news outlets thought was news. Neil Conan: We're talking with independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader here at the Newseum. I'm Neil Conan along with NPR Political Junkie Ken Rudin. If you'd like to join us, 800-989-8255 e-mail talk@npr.org. This is Talk of the Nation from NPR News. And let's get a question from here in the Newseum. Patty:
Hi, good afternoon. I'm Patty from San Francisco, California and as a
retired public school principal I'd like to know your views on No Child
Left Behind. And I'd also like to know what your education platform
is. Ralph
Nader: Well the way No Child Left Behind has been implemented is not
good. First of all, there are too many tests. It ruptures the
relationship between teachers and students -- they've got to have a
test Tuesday and a test Thursday. They're the wrong kind of tests in
my opinion: A, B, C, D, "None of the above." That's not the assessment
test that I think are better evaluators They make teachers teach to the
test. It's this frantic test mania. It creates unnecessary anxiety
among children. So I'm against it. Teachers are against it too. A lot
of people think it was underfunded and I think the key thing in
environmental agenda for a presidential candidate is more decent
facilities -- I mean a lot of these inner-city schools are crumbling,
we have gleaming stadiums funded by you the tax payer in the same
cities the schools, and clinics and libraries are crumbling. The
second thing is decent pay for competent teachers. They should be
assessed too. And the third is citizen skills, civic skills. We
should teach students connecting the classroom with their town with
their community so they can learn about the history, the geography,
economics, government of their town and in the process learn citizen
skills. How to use the Freedom of Information Act in your state, how
to build coalitions, how to get information from City Hall. How to do
comparative price analysis of staples in supermarket. That's what
makes student learn indirectly reading, writing and arithmetic. I hope
a lot of teachers will . . . push to replace No Child Left Behind with
this kind or practical and down to earth and very exciting educational
process. Neil Conan: Thanks for the question. Let's go the phones, line six, and Mike is with us from Boca Raton in Florida. Mike:
Good morning or good afternoon. Mister candidate, considering what's
happened since the year 2000, don't you think that your candidacy
creates too much of a risk of unintended consequences based on your
past performance? Ralph
Nader: Well the social scientists who studied that say that [Al] Gore
won the election, he won the popular vote. The electoral college stood
in his way and the press investigations and others in Florida indicate,
and Gore believes this, that he won Florida but it was taken from him
before, during and after election day in all kinds of tricky ways that
have been subject to documentaries and investigations, to the five
Republicans in the Supreme Court who selected George Bush. I keep
saying to Democrats "Look in the mirror Go after the thieves because
they might do it again and there was a lot of shenanigans in Ohio --
the swing state that left Kerry behind -- Mike: You obviously can't win. Which of the two candidates would you prefer to be president. The other two candidates. Mike:
Well you know, I'm all for anyone being able to run but candidly we
can't stand another eight years of George Bush, McCain and that crowd. Ralph
Nader: Nor can we. In fact if Al Gore picked up my withering criticism
in detail of Bush's record in Texas when he was governor, he'd have won
even over the obstacles that these Republican illegally put in his way. Team Nader has set up Ralph's Daily Audio to leave audio commentaries and the one that went up today is entitled "Impeachment:" This
is Ralph Nader. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are the most
impeachable president and vice president in the history of the United
States. The Constitution of the United States structures our democracy
within the rule of law. Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi,
Senator Barack Obama and their Republican associates are seriously
subverting the rule of law by blocking the impeachment of George W.
Bush and Dick Cheney. Bill Clinton must
be shaking his head in wonderment. High Crimes and Misdemeanors are
what get a president impeached. That's in Article II, Section IV of
our Constitution. Let's consider the case of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. High
crimes and misdemeanor number one: The criminal war, invasion and
occupation of Iraq in violation of our Constitution, federal statutes
and international treaties that our country belongs to. The second is
systemic torture condoned at the top of our government. That even
violates the US Army Field Manual as well as FBI procedures. High
crimes and misdemeanor number three: the arrests and imprisonment of
thousands of Americans without charges, denying ha beaus corpus the
fundamental requirement for a restraining power to show why the liberty
of a person is being restrained. High crimes and misdemeanor number
four: spying on millions of Americans without a judicial warrant. This
one violates the FISA Act which provides for a five-year jail term.
High crimes and misdemeanor number five are all those signing
statements that George W. Bush declared when he signed one bill after
another from Congress saying that it would be up to him to decide
whether or not to obey the law. I guess one could call him King George
IV. The American Bar Association, the
largest barre association in the world, quite conservative, has sent
three major reports to President George W. Bush outlining his serious
violations of provisions in our Constitution. I stood in front of the
White House for 45 minutes a few weeks ago and declared the reasons for
the impeachment or resignation or subsequent prosecution of Bush and
Cheney for the five categories of High Crimes and Misdemeanors. If
we allow rampant, recidivist criminal activity in the White House -- as
Speaker Pelosi, Senators Barack Obama and John McCain have done week
after week, month after month -- that'll simply set the stage for
future presidents to think that they too can break the law with
impunity and run our civil liberties, our civil rights, our safety, our
freedoms, our status before the world into the ground. I'm Ralph Nader.
Posted at 04:02 pm by thecommonills
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jeremy hinzman
james burmeister
robin long
evan kornfeldt
juan gonzalez
tina susman
the los angeles times
the new york times
campbell robertson
riyadh muhammed
the washington post
sudarsan raghavan
saad sarhan
anna badkhen
janine zacharia
todd s. purdum
jeffrey birnbaum
washington week
now on pbs
talk of the nation
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