"Healthcare Fighting (Kung Fu Mix)" - Democratic Underground
Need A break from the health care battle? Here it is! And it makes fun of both sides so I guess you could call it bipartisan. ;-)
Monday, October 12, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Orlando protest targeting defense contractors October 17th
Peace protesters targeting defense contractors -- OrlandoSentinel.com: "EAST ORANGE -- - Peace activists from throughout the state plan to descend on East Orange in mid-October for rallies against defense contractors that have branches at the Central Florida Research Park near the University of Central Florida.
A coalition of more than 30 groups under the Florida Peace Congress will hold two days of protest against four companies that they call 'corporate war profiteers' because of their multibillion-dollar defense contracts with the U.S. government, said Jeff Nall, an organizer from Palm Beach. The companies are Boeing, Northrup Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon.
The first rally, mostly a warm-up for local peace advocates, will take place Oct. 14, starting at 12 p.m. in front of the UCF Student Union. The statewide rally will be Oct. 17, starting at 12 p.m. at the southeast corner of Alafaya Boulevard and University Boulevard."
A coalition of more than 30 groups under the Florida Peace Congress will hold two days of protest against four companies that they call 'corporate war profiteers' because of their multibillion-dollar defense contracts with the U.S. government, said Jeff Nall, an organizer from Palm Beach. The companies are Boeing, Northrup Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon.
The first rally, mostly a warm-up for local peace advocates, will take place Oct. 14, starting at 12 p.m. in front of the UCF Student Union. The statewide rally will be Oct. 17, starting at 12 p.m. at the southeast corner of Alafaya Boulevard and University Boulevard."
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
McCrystal requests 500,000 troops for 5 years in Afghanistan
Robert Naiman: McChrystal's "Ground Truth": Need Half a Million Boots on the Ground:
Andrea Mitchell reports: "with the leaks that have come, most likely from the military, about the troop strengths and all this, you have to really wonder, what would people expect? The numbers are really pretty horrifying. What they say, embedded in this report by McChrystal, is they would need 500,000 troops - boots on the ground - and five years to do the job. No one expects that the Afghan Army could step up to that. Are we gonna put even half that of U.S. troops there, and NATO forces? No way."
Andrea Mitchell reports: "with the leaks that have come, most likely from the military, about the troop strengths and all this, you have to really wonder, what would people expect? The numbers are really pretty horrifying. What they say, embedded in this report by McChrystal, is they would need 500,000 troops - boots on the ground - and five years to do the job. No one expects that the Afghan Army could step up to that. Are we gonna put even half that of U.S. troops there, and NATO forces? No way."
Saturday, September 19, 2009
VFP Chapter 14 tables at Crosby Stills and Nash Concert
Stephen Hunter
It was a beautiful day in St. Augustine for a concert under a canopied amphitheatre.
It was a beautiful day in St. Augustine for a concert under a canopied amphitheatre.
Bill Warrick (left) and myself, Stephen Hunter (right), represented the Gainesville, FL chapter of Veterans For Peace. We were joined by two members from the Central Florida chapter, Tom Santoni and Terry Buckenmeyer (center), both St. Augustine residents.
In the CS&N contract it states that local VFP members be provided with a table and chairs to hand out free literature about VFP and our activities. As stated in our charter, we must remain unbiased in our presentations.
Along with VFP, the Autism Speaks group, promoting autism awareness and Donate Life, an organization promoting organ donations were represented. The band is devoted to supporting these organizations.
Bill and I arrived in the parking lot at the exact same time as the St. Augustine members. (There was a little grumbling about being charged to park...) We pooled our resources and carried all our materials to the gate. We were met by a helpful attendant who was expecting us. It was just minutes before we gained entry and were led to our table. We hung the banners and placed a sign, set up the table with our literature and waited, watching what was happening in the pre-concert atmosphere as masses of fans (mostly aging ex-hippies like ourselves) were gathering at the gates.
In our bundle of materials brought were gifts for the band, T-shirts reading "Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam" a book Lions of Medina and a CD on "Winter Soldier II." We contacted the "guy in charge" again and told him we had things for the band. Graham Nash's son, Will, came to see us and received the gifts for his dad and the rest of the band. We had hoped that the band might come out to see us, but to our (mild) disappointment, they did not. It is understandable that they can't just walk around in a huge crowd of fans.
Our table was just a few yards from the arena and we could hear all of the concert. We took turns going in to watch. With a triple encore, it was a good time for us all to the very end.
We encountered a lot of interest about our organization. Many who stopped by had family or friends, either in the military or thinking about joining. We handed out "Enlistment Guides" explaining the truth about recruiting and what to expect from the military, the VA and other organizations concerned with the welfare of our men and women in uniform.
Some people told us stories of people they knew and how they have been treated. One school teacher from a St. Augustine high school requested a stack of "Enlistment Guides" to hand to her students. A lot of people asked questions and took literature from the St. Augustine representatives. Their chapter may be getting new aapplications for membership. Overall, I think VFP was well received.
We want to thank Crosby, Stills and Nash for supporting our efforts to promote peace.
Why I threw the shoe | And Why We at VFP Stand Against the Occupation of Iraq
Why I threw the shoe | Muntazer al-Zaidi | The Guardian:
This is for me the heart of why I participate in Vets For Peace.
"I am free. But my country is still a prisoner of war. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act. But, simply, I answer: what compelled me to act is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.
Over recent years, more than a million martyrs have fallen by the bullets of the occupation and Iraq is now filled with more than five million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed. Many millions are homeless inside and outside the country.
We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shia would pray with the Sunni in one.
Our patience and our solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. But the invasion divided brother from brother, neighbor from neighbor. It turned our homes into funeral tents."...
"As soon as I finished my professional duties in reporting the daily tragedies, while I washed away the remains of the debris of the ruined Iraqi houses, or the blood that stained my clothes, I would clench my teeth and make a pledge to our victims, a pledge of vengeance.
The opportunity came, and I took it...
When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, George Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora."
This is for me the heart of why I participate in Vets For Peace.
"I am free. But my country is still a prisoner of war. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act. But, simply, I answer: what compelled me to act is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.
Over recent years, more than a million martyrs have fallen by the bullets of the occupation and Iraq is now filled with more than five million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed. Many millions are homeless inside and outside the country.
We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shia would pray with the Sunni in one.
Our patience and our solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. But the invasion divided brother from brother, neighbor from neighbor. It turned our homes into funeral tents."...
"As soon as I finished my professional duties in reporting the daily tragedies, while I washed away the remains of the debris of the ruined Iraqi houses, or the blood that stained my clothes, I would clench my teeth and make a pledge to our victims, a pledge of vengeance.
The opportunity came, and I took it...
When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, George Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora."
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Juan Cole on Afghan - nam and the End of Western Colonialism in Asia
Informed Comment
Some excerpts from Juan Cole's analysis on Afghanistan. Whole article is linked above.
"Obama ... rejected any analogy between Vietnam and Afghanistan: “You have to learn lessons from history. On the other hand, each historical moment is different. You never step into the same river twice. And so Afghanistan is not Vietnam.” Obama may be the first American president to quote pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus."...
"the process of decolonization after WW II, while it unfolded differently in different colonies/ countries, did have some common or at least widespread characteristics. One of the reasons the Project for a New American Century and the Bush administration failed in their attempt to reinvent 19th-century empire in the 21st century is that peoples of the global south are now politically and socially mobilized en masse in a way they were not in 1850. Some 15,000 British troops could no longer hope to hold all of India. In some important respects, "Vietnam" partook of characteristics of decolonization and one could compare it to Algeria, e.g."...
"On Wednesday morning, MSNBC's "Morning Joe" had as a guest Jamie Rubin, an adjunct professor at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia U., and a "kitchen" adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the president (also husband of CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour). Rubin also took up cudgels against the Vietnam analogy.
"I think that Vietnam is a terribly debilitating analogy for our country. Every time something is difficult, we say, oh, it's Vietnam."...
Afghanistan and Vietnam have nothing to do with each other. The whole world is on our side in Afghanistan; the whole world was clearly not on our side in Vietnam."...
Here is Juan Cole's answer to Professor Rubin:
Afghanistan differs from Iraq in the following respects:
1) The Pashtuns from whom the anti-government forces derive are some 44% of the population, not a 20% or less minority the way the Sunnis of Iraq are. While most Pashtuns still reject the guerrillas, so did most Sunni Arabs reject the extremist guerrillas; the latter still controlled significant swathes of Sunni Iraq. The Taliban and kindred groups are a significant presence everywhere there are large Pashtun populations.
2) The Tajik and Hazara militias have largely been demobilized and are not available for deployment against the Taliban and other fundamentalist groups. The pro-Kabul Pashtuns typically do not have militias.
3) The pro-Karzai Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazara Shiites and Uzbeks that form the ruling clique are not united, and the government they dominate is extremely weak and poverty-stricken (the GDP in international currency [not purchasing power parity] is only about $9 bn a year, and the government budget is a little over $1 bn.). Iraq has something close to $70 bn. in reserves from oil sales. The Afghan government controls only 30% of the country. The country is resource-poor and there is no prospect of it having a proper tax base for a competent bureaucracy and army any time soon.
4) The Pashtun plurality is backed by the enormous Sunni country of Pakistan, whereas the pro-Kabul Pashtuns have no regional foreign patron to speak of; Iran generally supports the Tajiks and Hazaras, but it is hard to discern that they have pumped very significant resources into the country. In essence, Washington's regional ally, Pakistan, is ambivalent about the Tajik/Hazara/Uzbek takeover of Kabul and not close to Karzai's faction of Pashtuns.
5) In the aftermath of the recent election, probably a majority of Afghans and of Pashtuns sees the Karzai government as corrupt and illegitimate.
6) The Afghan army has faced extreme difficulties in training and expansion. Some 90% of the troops are illiterate, which limits how much they can be trained and even their ability to read street signs when they are sent into an unfamiliar city. (Iraq's literacy rate is 76%). Many Afghan troops lack discipline and some proportion regularly use recreational drugs during work hours. There is no evidence of any great esprit de corps or attachment to the Karzai government, in contrast to the Iraqi army's willingness to fight for PM Nuri al-Maliki and his ruling coalition.
7) US troops have proven unable to disarm the Taliban, Hizb-i Islam, or the Haqqani group. The number of fighters attached to these guerrilla groups has grown from 3,000 a few years ago to 15,000- 20,000 today. They are local, know the terrain, and receive patronage and support from Pashtun tribes who resent the foreign troop presence.
8) Pashtuns are not for the most part secularists, and a combination of religious and nationalist rhetoric such as is deployed by old-time guerrilla leader Gulbadin Hikmatyar and his "Islamic Party" has a great deal of appeal to them. Although the Taliban are only thought well of by 5% of Afghans in polls, that is probably 10% of Pashtuns. And many of the guerrilla groups opposing Karzai are not properly called Taliban (Pashtuns in Kunar Province are not thinking of Islamic Party when they denounce Taliban). Virtually no Pashtuns, who are a plurality of the country and the largest single ethnic group, want US or NATO troops in their country.
So Afghanistan is not very much like Iraq (there are other differences, as in the organization of the tribes), and if Rubin advises H. Clinton and Obama to depend on a "surge" plus a "Sons of Afghanistan" artificial militia policy, I think that would be dangerous advice.
Afghanistan is more like Vietnam than Obama and Rubin suggest. And, it is becoming more like it all the time."...
"By the way, Mr. Rubin, we Americans don't call "anything that is hard" Vietnam. We don't call keeping up a space station "Vietnam" or getting universal health care "Vietnam." We invoke Vietnam against long, costly Asian land wars, the objectives of which are murky and the medium-term and long-term success of which is in significant doubt. And by these criteria, Afghanistan has "Vietnam" written all over it."
Some excerpts from Juan Cole's analysis on Afghanistan. Whole article is linked above.
"Obama ... rejected any analogy between Vietnam and Afghanistan: “You have to learn lessons from history. On the other hand, each historical moment is different. You never step into the same river twice. And so Afghanistan is not Vietnam.” Obama may be the first American president to quote pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus."...
"the process of decolonization after WW II, while it unfolded differently in different colonies/ countries, did have some common or at least widespread characteristics. One of the reasons the Project for a New American Century and the Bush administration failed in their attempt to reinvent 19th-century empire in the 21st century is that peoples of the global south are now politically and socially mobilized en masse in a way they were not in 1850. Some 15,000 British troops could no longer hope to hold all of India. In some important respects, "Vietnam" partook of characteristics of decolonization and one could compare it to Algeria, e.g."...
"On Wednesday morning, MSNBC's "Morning Joe" had as a guest Jamie Rubin, an adjunct professor at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia U., and a "kitchen" adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the president (also husband of CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour). Rubin also took up cudgels against the Vietnam analogy.
"I think that Vietnam is a terribly debilitating analogy for our country. Every time something is difficult, we say, oh, it's Vietnam."...
Afghanistan and Vietnam have nothing to do with each other. The whole world is on our side in Afghanistan; the whole world was clearly not on our side in Vietnam."...
Here is Juan Cole's answer to Professor Rubin:
Afghanistan differs from Iraq in the following respects:
1) The Pashtuns from whom the anti-government forces derive are some 44% of the population, not a 20% or less minority the way the Sunnis of Iraq are. While most Pashtuns still reject the guerrillas, so did most Sunni Arabs reject the extremist guerrillas; the latter still controlled significant swathes of Sunni Iraq. The Taliban and kindred groups are a significant presence everywhere there are large Pashtun populations.
2) The Tajik and Hazara militias have largely been demobilized and are not available for deployment against the Taliban and other fundamentalist groups. The pro-Kabul Pashtuns typically do not have militias.
3) The pro-Karzai Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazara Shiites and Uzbeks that form the ruling clique are not united, and the government they dominate is extremely weak and poverty-stricken (the GDP in international currency [not purchasing power parity] is only about $9 bn a year, and the government budget is a little over $1 bn.). Iraq has something close to $70 bn. in reserves from oil sales. The Afghan government controls only 30% of the country. The country is resource-poor and there is no prospect of it having a proper tax base for a competent bureaucracy and army any time soon.
4) The Pashtun plurality is backed by the enormous Sunni country of Pakistan, whereas the pro-Kabul Pashtuns have no regional foreign patron to speak of; Iran generally supports the Tajiks and Hazaras, but it is hard to discern that they have pumped very significant resources into the country. In essence, Washington's regional ally, Pakistan, is ambivalent about the Tajik/Hazara/Uzbek takeover of Kabul and not close to Karzai's faction of Pashtuns.
5) In the aftermath of the recent election, probably a majority of Afghans and of Pashtuns sees the Karzai government as corrupt and illegitimate.
6) The Afghan army has faced extreme difficulties in training and expansion. Some 90% of the troops are illiterate, which limits how much they can be trained and even their ability to read street signs when they are sent into an unfamiliar city. (Iraq's literacy rate is 76%). Many Afghan troops lack discipline and some proportion regularly use recreational drugs during work hours. There is no evidence of any great esprit de corps or attachment to the Karzai government, in contrast to the Iraqi army's willingness to fight for PM Nuri al-Maliki and his ruling coalition.
7) US troops have proven unable to disarm the Taliban, Hizb-i Islam, or the Haqqani group. The number of fighters attached to these guerrilla groups has grown from 3,000 a few years ago to 15,000- 20,000 today. They are local, know the terrain, and receive patronage and support from Pashtun tribes who resent the foreign troop presence.
8) Pashtuns are not for the most part secularists, and a combination of religious and nationalist rhetoric such as is deployed by old-time guerrilla leader Gulbadin Hikmatyar and his "Islamic Party" has a great deal of appeal to them. Although the Taliban are only thought well of by 5% of Afghans in polls, that is probably 10% of Pashtuns. And many of the guerrilla groups opposing Karzai are not properly called Taliban (Pashtuns in Kunar Province are not thinking of Islamic Party when they denounce Taliban). Virtually no Pashtuns, who are a plurality of the country and the largest single ethnic group, want US or NATO troops in their country.
So Afghanistan is not very much like Iraq (there are other differences, as in the organization of the tribes), and if Rubin advises H. Clinton and Obama to depend on a "surge" plus a "Sons of Afghanistan" artificial militia policy, I think that would be dangerous advice.
Afghanistan is more like Vietnam than Obama and Rubin suggest. And, it is becoming more like it all the time."...
"By the way, Mr. Rubin, we Americans don't call "anything that is hard" Vietnam. We don't call keeping up a space station "Vietnam" or getting universal health care "Vietnam." We invoke Vietnam against long, costly Asian land wars, the objectives of which are murky and the medium-term and long-term success of which is in significant doubt. And by these criteria, Afghanistan has "Vietnam" written all over it."
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