All Posts Tagged With: "1st Amendment rights"
Olbermann – WTF?!? Miss California
Keith pokes fun at the concept of exercising corporate freedom of speech, not to be confused with the first amendment.
War is a racket
“War is a racket.†So spoke Marine Brigadier General Smedley D Butler, America’s most decorated general. “It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.â€
A twice recipient of the Medal of Honor, Smedley, also a devout Quaker, spoke those words in 1935. The general was perhaps more famous for organizing his men the “Bonus Marchers†to stay in camp in defiance of the administration until they received their just compensation. This spirit of defiance in pursuit of justice was evident throughout the Veterans for Peace National Convention I attended in Minneapolis last month.
Amongst the speakers was Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector and Marine intelligence officer. In advance of the Iraq invasion Ritter tried repeatedly to notify Congress that Iraq posed no threat to the US. Despite his unique position of knowledge and authority, Ritter was thwarted from testifying in Congress by vice presidential candidate, Joseph Biden, amongst others.
Ritter, his assertions vindicated when no WMDs were found, spoke passionately about the risks of US violations of airspace against Iran. He noted the seriousness of sending our military, risking both blood and treasure, when once again Iran poses no threat to the US.
David Gonzales, a Vietnam veteran and president of Local 10 of the ILWU spoke about the misuse of the military. Gonzales spearheaded the ILWU shut down of all West Coast ports last May in protest of the continued occupation of Iraq.
James Yee, former US Army Muslim chaplain related his experiences at Guantanamo Bay and being charged with espionage. All charges were dropped against Yee and he received a meritorious award for exemplary service upon his honorable discharge from the Army.
Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. Scahill was deeply concerned about threats to civil liberties that every veteran in the room had hoped and believed they were fighting for. He noted both McCain and Obama have not voted to defend the constitution 100% of the time and decried violations of the 1st Amendment including freedom of the press.
The next day, fellow journalist Amy Goodman, also present at the event, was arrested while trying to protect her producers at the Republican National Convention. Video of that arrest is available on my website at mgx.com as is an interview of Scott Ritter by Amy Goodman.
Ritter noted that war is a failure of diplomatic and political processes. The veterans attending this event, many having seen and participated first hand in the horrors of war, seek to honor the sacrifice and courage of the men and women in uniform by not allowing diplomatic failures to take us to war.
Nevertheless, universally the convention goers believe corporate greed is at the root of sending our young men and women into battle. Smedley Butler would agree as he wrote in 1937, “Why don’t those damned oil companies fly their own flags on their personal property – maybe a flag with a gas pump on it.â€
Police raids in Minneapolis and St Paul
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, along with Jeremy Scahill were present to video this encounter by one of their producers with the police and shared the experience with us at the VFP National Convention.
Bill Moyers on 1st Amendment and media consolidation
Bill Moyers address the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis, June 7, 2008. Presented by FreePress.net, full text here
Education not incarceration
Washington State trooper confuses codes. These citizens have stood out weekly with a sign “Education not Incarceration” for over a year but this cop over reacted. Where have we seen that happen before?
Peace activists encounter ‘fighting words’!
This is America?!?! Peaceful teens endure hate filled insults in Florida highschool . Evidently, to be an American
“We’ve worn handmade peace shirts every Thursday since the first week of school, without fail,” Skylar said.
But what started out as a light-hearted gesture soon started to be taken out of context. Students started approaching the group members, yelling obscene things at them, said Lauren.
“People just turned on us like that,” she said. “At least 10 boys stood up and yelled things at me at once, and we couldn’t even walk through the halls without a harsh comment being made.”
Imagine a country where peace is riduculed!
Thought police in the guise of a new commission enacted in the House
Went for a 42 mile bike ride at break neck speed in an effort to make some sense out of this bill passed quietly in the House with only 6 rational dissenters. Our own Peter DeFazio voted yea by the way and I will waste no time finding out what the hell he was thinking.
(2) VIOLENT RADICALIZATION- The term `violent radicalization’ means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change. (emphasis mine)
`(3) HOMEGROWN TERRORISM- The term `homegrown terrorism’ means the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.
`(4) IDEOLOGICALLY BASED VIOLENCE- The term `ideologically based violence’ means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual’s political, religious, or social beliefs.
The Orwellian implications are clear but the most scary thing about this is that ‘violence’ and ‘ideology’ are open to the interpretation of the government. Many people I have spoken with thought perhaps it was just a joke and not real, but evidently it is very real and you can see the vote results here.
A few months ago I listened to Peter DeFazio at a local townhall meeting in Bandon assert that our civil liberties meant nothing if we were dead. My mouth fell open, I was so shocked, appalled and hurt to hear this. Our forefathers, my son, millions have been willing to die to defend civil liberties, to defend the constitution. Our civil liberties have been worth dying for since this nation began and this bill smacks in the face of every patriotic American. I am disgusted.
Nothing is efficient in Oceania except the Thought Police….A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police. Even when he is alone he can never be sure that he is alone. Wherever he may be, asleep or awake, working or resting, in his bath or in bed, he can be inspected without warning and without knowing that he is being inspected. Nothing that he does is indifferent. His friendships, his relaxations, his behaviour towards his wife and children, the expression of his face when is alone, the words he mutters in sleep, even the characteristic movements of his body, are all jealously scrutinized. Not only any actual misdemeanour, but any eccentricity, however small, any change of habits, any nervous mannerism that could possibly be the symptom of an inner struggle, is certain to be detected. He has no freedom of choice in any direction whatever. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside you skull.
FCC update
As of yesterday the FCC have yet to announce the meeting in Seattle, although the news media have picked up the efforts to relax cross-media ownership in competing coverage areas. While it is likely that the date for public hearings will be pushed back the Seattle location will probably stay the same. Groups are mobilizing to speak in opposition to the Zell/Tribune merger and relaxing rules protecting against cross media mergers. Until such time as another date is set, November 2 is still the accepted date but may be changed to the middle of November. Please visit The Oregon Alliance to Reform Media for more information on this matter and why it is so important to rural Oregon to fight this.
Reactive or proactive?
As everyone knows by now there are peace demonstrations planned across the country including in Seattle, October 27th. Since September, ‘05 I have attended three massive marches in DC and countless local events and believe me attending a peace march can be a very energizing thing to do. Where else can you get together with several thousand of your closest friends? Nevertheless, I probably will not attend this march or any more marches on a weekend because I am just too angry anymore.
The next time I spend money to march I want to shut a city down, I want the media to have no excuse not to cover the event, I want to make it impossible for those legislators to leave their offices so they may as well just stay and and hash out and end to this bitter war because they aren’t going home until they do. Screw getting a permit to demonstrate! Why should I require a permit to voice my 1st Amendment rights with thousands of other people? We all just need to show up in DC on a bright Wednesday morning and clog the streets, block the subways, halt all pizza deliveries and force Congress to end this occupation.
Next, while we are doing this we all need to be providing our legislators with a plan to end our dependence on foreign resources, especially oil ’cause they aren’t going to come up with one themselves. We have to do these things for Congress, we cannot depend upon them to imagine anything on their own. We will probably have to defend ourselves against Blackwater in the process, it will not be painless or bloodless, but it must be done.
Urban warfare now and the future
Joint Urban Operations Office at US Joint Forces Command held a Joint Urban Operations, 2007 last month in DC. Nick Turse has written an in depth article about it at Asia Times. Apparently, the Pentagon has determined that urban warfare is the future and are planning for decades to come.
“We think urban is the future,” says James Lasswell, a retired colonel who now heads the Office of Science and Technology at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory. “Everything worth fighting for is in the urban environment.” And Wayne Michael Hall, a retired army brigadier general and the senior intelligence advisor in Schattle’s operation, has a similar assessment, “We will be fighting in urban terrain for the next hundred years.”
The article goes on to emphasize the technology being developed to subdue urban communities, including within the US.
On the technological front, the Pentagon’s blue-skies research outfit, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), sent its grandfatherly-looking deputy director, Robert F Leheny, to talk about such UO-oriented technology as the latest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and sense-through-walls technologies that allow troops to see people and objects inside buildings. While Leheny noted that 63% of DARPA’s US$3 billion yearly budget ($600 million of it dedicated to UO technologies in the coming years) is funneled to industry partners, DARPA is only a part of the story when it comes to promoting corporate assistance in this 100-year-war growth area.
The largest contractors in the military-corporate complex are already hard at work helping the Pentagon prepare for future urban occupations. Raytheon, L-3 Communications, and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) – the 5th, 7th, and 10th largest Pentagon contractors last year, taking in a combined $18.4-plus billion from the Department of Defense – have all signed Cooperative Research and Development Agreements with the US Joint Forces Command, according to Berry “Dan” Fox, the Deputy Director of Science and Technology at its Joint Urban Operations Office.
As you might imagine, smaller contractors are eager to climb aboard the urban warfare gravy train. At the conference, Lite Machines Corporation was a good example of this. It was vigorously marketing a hand-launched, low-flying UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) so light that it resembled nothing more than a large, plastic toy water rocket with miniature helicopter rotors. The company envisions a profitably privacy-free future in which urban zones are besieged by “swarms” of such small UAVs that not only peek into city windows, but even invade homes.
Some of these weapons have already been deployed to law enforcement agencies across the country for ‘crowd control’. Whether thinking of this type has the power to drive foreign and domestic policies that ensure a century of warfare is yet to be determined, however bear in mind that Blackwater is expanding domestic operations as we speak. Not only is Blackwater being employed on domestic issues but it is also training local police departments, 55 at last count and included in this list are the Oregon State Police. A Blackwater Northwest is in the planning stages and in the light of recent 1st Amendment rights violations our march to fascism is being enabled by our ‘democratic’ government. More on this later
War resistor advocate coming to Coos County
Will Show New Film about AWOL GI’s in Canada
During the last four years, more than 20,000 U.S. military personnel have gone AWOL. A couple hundred GI’s headed to Canada rather than deploy to the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq. Gerry Condon knows what these young men and women are going through. In 1969, he deserted from the U.S. Army after refusing orders to Vietnam. For six years, Condon lived in Sweden and Canada, where he organized for amnesty for all war resisters.
Now, as director of Project Safe Haven, Gerry Condon travels throughout the U.S. and Canada to drum up support for a new generation of war resisters. In October, Condon will be in Coos County where he will show a new film about U.S. war resisters in Canada and speak out on their behalf. His visit is sponsored by Veterans For Peace.
“It’s déjà vu all over again,†says Condon. “It’s really tragic that our nation has been dragged into another unjust, unnecessary and unwinnable war. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed for no good reason.
“This war is also illegal,†says Condon. “It violates the Nuremberg Principles, the Geneva Conventions on War, the UN Charter, and U.S law. President Bush and his entire war cabinet should be impeached and tried for war crimes. Unfortunately, this is not likely to happen. But those who refuse to be part of this illegal war should definitely not be punished.
“War resisters are obeying international law and following their own consciences,†says Condon. “They need and deserve our support.â€
During the Vietnam War, as many as 100,000 U.S. citizens immigrated to Canada. Pierre Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister at the time, welcomed the war resisters, saying, “Canada should be a haven from militarism.†But Canada’s immigration laws are much tighter now. So U.S. soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen are seeking to remain in Canada as political refugees. The Supreme Court of Canada is expected to make a landmark ruling in November.
“Iraq War resisters are getting a lot of love and support from the Canadian people,†says Condon. “Now it’s time for people in the U.S. to step up to the plate.â€
BREAKING RANKS is a one hour film that tells the stories of four young AWOL soldiers who are seeking sanctuary in Canada. This poignant new film was co-produced by the National Film Board of Canada and has been nominated for many awards.
Freedom of speech is fast becoming a thing of the past
In light of the tasing incident at Florida University and a similar event at our nation’s capitol reaction to the obvious restrictions on free speech have been loud and frequent. Yesterday, on Hardball, host Chris Matthews discusses 1st Amendment restrictions with Joe Conason and Media Benjamin and all three agree that our civil liberties are at risk and freedom of speech has been reduced to ‘free speech zones’.
Naomi Wolf, author of The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
speaks out
We have to understand what time it is. When the state starts to hurt people for asking questions, we can no longer operate on the leisurely time of a strong democracy — the ‘Oh gosh how awful!’ kind of time. It is time to take to the streets. It is time to confront those committing crimes against the Constitution. The window has now dropped several precipitous inches and once it is closed there is no opening it without great and sorrowful upheaval.
We also need to understand from history that the temptation at a moment like this to grow more quiet — to stay out of the line of fire — is the wrong choice by far. History shows categorically that if citizens do not stand up now to confront and imprison the abusers, things do not get safer — they get much more dangerous for ordinary people, activist or not.
I was scared when I wrote The End of America — personally scared because the blueprint I was tracing in the summer of 2006 showed clearly that protesters and critics would start to be hurt within the year. When I told a dear friend that I was scared, he gently reminded me of the history I was reading. He asked, will things be scarier for you and the ones you love if you speak up now — or if you are silent?
We don’t just need to speak up now. We need to act. It is time to rebel in the name of the flag and the founders.
Peaceful anti-war rallies are becoming more and more confrontational as police attempt to restrict free speech. Like Naomi Wolf said we may need to employ our 2nd Amendment rights to enforce our 1st Amendment.
Rev Yearwood speaks about his arrest
Two officers denied access to General Petraeus hearing and one is tackled and has his leg broken.
This is what our troops are fighting for?
Did I just hear you say "little" Trinity? I think not ! She's half-grown !
Congratulations to you all ...
http://www.larryvanelsberg2010.com/index.html 
Thanks, Den, this is very useful 