photo by Stephen C Webster

Domestic terrorism strikes in Austin, Texas by Stephen C Webster

Frustrated home owner bulldozes own house after bank forecloses

Greed trophy up for grabs by Jim Hightower

Transparency groups slam lobbyists plotting ‘sufficient cover’ to buy elections

Giles admits O’Keefe & Breitbart’s ACORN pimp story was a lie from Brad Blog

Bob Barr jeered at CPAC for saying waterboarding is torture from Raw Story

Rep. Conyers plans hearings on Bush torture lawyers by Muriel Kane

White House will back public option if Senate passes it by John Byrne

More states move toward single-payer health care from After Downing Street

The race for clean energy jobs from NRDC

Medical studies show cannabis effective for treating pain, spasms

School district admits to installing covert webcam software on student laptops

Sales of ‘Daybreak’ hurt by rebranding Iraq War ‘New Dawn’ by David Swanson

Army soldier jailed for rap lyrics to face court-martial in Iraq by Dahr Jamail

Ayatollah Khamenei: Iran will never seek atomic bombs from Antiwar.com

Full page ads in the London Independent? Though the word ‘Russia’ is nowhere to be seen, instead it’s RT.com. What we used to know as Russia Today is engaged in a no doubt expensive marketing and advertizing campaign here in the UK. But RT.com is a far cry from its crude beginnings four years ago as a mouthpiece for the Russian state. The question is, what kind of animal is it now?

An RT newspaper ad. RT’s ‘biased’ programming enraged some people.

Dilip Hiro, Dahr Jamail, Danny Schecter, Amy Goodman, Noam Chomsky, Norman Solomon… the list goes on. It’s a veritable roll call of the left and leftish of ‘new’ and ‘old’ media. All have appeared in long, independently produced videos on RT tackling issues like Falujah, Afghanistan and Iran. See for example, Dilip Hiro in ‘End of the American Superpower’.

The same and similar people are also appearing on short news pieces as analysts and commentators.

Many of the productions take a decidedly anti-US government/anti- big business position and pro the ‘Third World’. It’s the kind of stuff you’d normally see on The Real News Network or Youtube. (See CBC News and reporter William Dunbar’s protest departure over RT’s Georgia coverage.)

I’ll tell you though that it’s a weird feeling to be watching these guys on digital Freeview (it’s also on Sky, Murdoch, eat your heart out), a couple of whom I’ve known for years, tearing into USUK policies. And you could see it on their faces as they spoke: this is mainstream TV! I tried and failed to find out what the viewing figures are now but I suspect very few people know of its existence, yet. I now watch it almost every night simply because I get to see a very different point of view, but as with all TV, it ain’t all good, there’s the usual ‘human interest’ stories, it’s just that the good stuff is very good by television standards.

“The Arabic channel of RT was created by the guys from Al Jazeera. There are still a lot of them working in RT.” — Roman Tomberg, Strategic Culture Foundation

And it comes across a bit Al-Jazeerish which comes as no surprise as some of the same people are involved according to Roman Tomberg who works at another relatively new Russian venture, The Strategic Culture Foundation. SCF to the best of my knowledge seems to best represent the post-Soviet left in Russia, but with its roots much more firmly planted in what we used to call the Third World. Which in itself I think heralds a return as it were to the roots of the Bolshevik Revolution, where the early gaze was not toward the West but the East. We’re so Euro-centric that we forget that the bulk of Russia is in Asia, not Europe.

So what’s the deal here? Clearly it has the backing of Putin and his posse, or perhaps a faction? Or maybe it suits their purpose to have Noam Chomsky and Norman Solomon and Amy Goodman and Dahr Jamail and… all on the same show?

“The audience [for RT] is people who have business in Russia or a strong interest in Russia: “Mainly the audience we are trying to get is the type of audience which is not usually satisfied in the normal type of stories” — ‘RT editor-in-chief wants to make Western image of Russia ‘closer to reality’’ Margarita Simonyan, RT.com

The above quote was taken from a piece written in September of 2009, and according to Simonyan,

“As a broadcaster, RT enjoys editorial freedom – a point Simonyan is very clear on. This, she says, is because RT is ‘funded by the state budget, which is not even decided by the government, it is decided by the state Duma’.”

One thing is clear, that for whatever reasons, RT.com is deliberately targeting a left/progressive and questioning Western audience. Do they see something that we don’t?

Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t | Report

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: The U.S. Army, Hayley Austin)

A core tenet of the Obama administration’s plans for “victory” in Iraq and Afghanistan is an increased reliance on counterinsurgency.

As previously reported on this web site, the US military has sent shock troops – anthropologists, sociologists and social psychologists – with their own troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan, who also donned helmets and flak jackets. By the end of 2007, American scholars in these fields were embedding with the military in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of a Pentagon program called Human Terrain System (HTS), which evolved shortly thereafter into a $40 million program that embedded four or five person groups of scholars in the aforementioned fields in all 26 US combat brigades that were busily occupying Iraq and Afghanistan. The program is currently comprised of approximately 400 employees, and is actively seeking new recruits.

Continues >>

Denver mayor Hickenlooper vs. VT Sen. Sanders

War is peace & right is center: Newspeak skews political debate by David Sirota

TOP 4

Fri. news dump: ACLU wins release of names of Bagram detainees from FDL

Rep. Schakowsky prepares legislation to ban Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill

Sen. Dodd may drop consumer protection agency from Wall St Journal

Scientists cautiously optimistic as Doomsday clock reset from AFP

MEDIA

Read the best of the 13,000 net neutrality comments now on the public record

How the music industry is about to change from Inside Music Media

Jan. 31 deadline approaches for Internet radio stations from Broadcast Law Blog

Clear Channel debuts Google-like contextual radio ad platform from MediaPost

ETC

Reporter Dahr Jamail on Iraq War vet jailed for writing Stop Loss hip hop song

Beijing police cancel China’s 1st ever gay pageant from AFP

NY Post claims Lou Dobbs will not run for office from Think Progress

A letter to Rush Limbaugh by Roger Ebert

However, it is nearly always the case that those who enact this repression on behalf of the powerful are working class themselves. Soldiers, policemen, bailiffs, prison officers, and border control officials are amongst those who perform jobs antithetical to the interests of the working class. The inherent contradiction is in the fact that these people share the plight of the workers whilst being the most powerful instruments of established power to maintain that plight.

How do we respond to this problem?

A class analysis

The working class constitutes the vast majority of people on this planet. All who have to sell their labour in order to survive, having no independent access to capital, are of the working class. This basic definition can be applied to agents of state enforcement as readily as to ordinary workers in the public and private sectors.

As I have noted previously for the specific context of soldiers;

Soldiers are neither heroes nor villains but members of the working class who, like everyone else, must sell their labour to survive. That it was the armed wing of the state who employed them is not in itself enough reason to raise them on a pedestal or condemn them to hell.

This does not mean, however, that such as soldiers, the police, and similar groups should be considered comrades. The fact remains that they represent institutions antagonistic to working class interest, enforcing the borders, territorial expansion, property rights, prisons, and limitations on dissent that define our society and entrench its ruling class. If we are to move beyond this fact, we cannot simply attack or damn those who serve the state.

Class struggle involves seemingly endless organising and education, and so it must be in this case as well.

Class traitors?

According to Unfinished business – the politics of Class War, the aforementioned groups are “class traitors.” In final analysis, they can be counted on to take their stand against the workers;

The police and similar groups like bailiffs, prison officers and DSS snoopers have a unique role to play in the preservation of the status-quo. Some actually do believe in trying to do good like stopping crime, but such naivety quickly disappears after entering the force. The Establishment only want those people who are suited by character, temperament and politics to join the ranks of the police force. Those unsuited quickly leave. History is full of instances of soldiers etc. coming over to the side of the people in revolutions. The same cannot be said of the police. While most of the police start off from a working class background they cannot be included in our view of the working class. A very large section of our class has a healthy contempt and disdain for this type of traitor and practically keep them at arms length.

There is, of course, considerable weight to this argument.

A young activist murdered by police during the G8 protests in Genoa in 2001, a graphic example of the antagonism between working class activists and their fellows who serve the state

The behaviour of the police towards protesters and dissidents across the world does not speak in their favour. A record of violence, repression, and murder cannot easily be reconciled with the goals of the anarchist movement. Indeed, where the army mutinies were essential to the February Revolution in Russia, the police served a counter-revolutionary role first for the Tsar then for Lenin.

However, there is a precedent for police siding with the interests of the working class. One prominent example is the Listowel Police Mutiny of 1920;

On June 19 the Republican forces were greatly strengthened in their struggle against the R.I.C. by the mutiny of the police in Listowel barracks. This incident had repercussions far beyond the confines of north Kerry. Indeed, it was an important factor in determining the outcome of the Anglo-Irish war. It was the dilemma in which most of the R.I.C. found themselves. As hostilities intensified they had to regard as their enemies most of the people from whom they had sprung. Consequently, within three months of this highly-publicised event, some 1,100 men resigned from the force. This was a crippling blow to the Black and Tans and a great influx of military, none of whom had the local knowledge or information which was all-important in trying to contain the republican’s growing grip on the countryside.

The mutiny itself had all the ingredients of high drama. It was triggered off by the visit of ex-war hero, Colonel Gerald Bryce Ferguson Smyth who, on June 3, had been appointed Divisional Police Commissioner for Munster. However, the situation had been building up for some days. On June 17 the police in Listowel were ordered to hand over their barracks to the British military and most of them were transferred to different stations in the district where they were to act as scouts for the troops. The police held a meeting and decided not to obey these orders. The following day the county inspector, Poer O’Shee, came to Listowel and when he tried to force the men to obey fourteen of them threatened to resign.

Next morning, June 19, Colonel Smyth arrived at Listowel barracks. He was accompanied by the inspector general, General Tudor, a commissioner of police from Dublin Castle, Major Letham, the county inspector, Poer O’Shee, the O.C. of the military stationed at Ballinruddery, Captain Chadwick, and Assistant County Inspector Dobbyn, and it was obvious that the purpose of his visit was to deal with insubordination on June 17.

When the police had been assembled in the barrack-room he addressed them. He asserted that from then on the crown forces would have to take the offensive and beat the Republicans at its own game. To this end martial law would come into force immediately and by June 21 the police and military would be completely amalgamated. Then, together, police and military would engage in a ruthless pacification programme and if, in the course of it, innocent people were killed he would see to it that no policeman would have to answer for such an eventuality. He concluded by saying that the government wanted their assistance to wipe out the Republicans and that any man who was not prepared to help in doing so ought to leave the job at once.

Then came the first of a number of dramatic incidents. He approached the constable who stood at the top of the police line and pointing to him asked, ‘Are you prepared to co-operate with me?’ There was a tense moment or two as the constable, a Protestant from the north of Ireland, paused before replying that Constable Mee would speak for him. Thereupon Constable Jeremiah Mee startled Smyth, by saying, ‘By your accent I take it you are an Englishman. You forget you are addressing Irishmen.’ Then taking off his cap, belt and bayonet and laying them on the table, he continued: ‘These too are English. Take them as a present from me, and to hell with you, you murderer.’ Smyth immediately ordered Mee to be arrested. As two army officers moved to take Mee away the rest of the police, prompted by Constable Thomas Hughes, crowded round them and refused to let them move. After a few tense minutes Smyth ordered the officers to desist and together with all the visiting officers entered another room, adjoining the barrack day-room, in order to discuss the situation.

At this point Mee, on behalf of the police, wrote a note, which all signed, in which the entire group assumed responsibility for Mee’s words and actions and indicated that they would resist Mee’s arrest even to the point of bloodshed. Then ignoring Smyth, one of them handed the note to the inspector general. Another tense period followed while the officers considered this note. After about fifteen minutes the inspector general emerged from the adjoining room, shook hands with all the policemen and left with the visitors. The police who no longer felt safe in the barracks, held a meeting in the public-house then known as ‘T.D. Sullivans’ (now John B. Keane’s Pub – owned by John B. Keane who wrote ‘The Field’ on which the movie of the same name was based) and, of the twenty-five of them who had been involved in the incident, fourteen, who were single, decided to resign. However, two of these, John McNamara and Michael Kelly, were asked by Michael Collins, who was taking a personal interest in the entire matter, to stay on and carry out merely ordinary police duties. This they did and the following day, when summoned to appear before a court-martial, they demanded a civil trial instead. Next morning a high-ranking military officer arrived at the barracks and told them that they had been dismissed and ordered them to leave the barracks at once.

At this stage there was a very important development. John McNamara went to James Crowley, V.S., who later that year became the Sinn Féin representative for north Kerry, and gave him a detailed account of what had happened and a statement, signed by the fourteen constables who resigned, describing the remarks of Colonel Smyth and requesting an official investigation into the incident. Crowley had the entire story printed by Robert I. (Bob) Cuthbertson and motored to Dublin in with it that afternoon, and the full story appeared in the first edition of the Freeman’s Journal on the following morning. However, it was seen in good time by the authorities and was suppressed. Subsequently it appeared in the Freeman’s Journal of 10 July 1920.

Though not given prominence in the media, there are many further examples of police mutiny and opposition to their bosses[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], the earliest one I could find being a rebellion of native policemen on the island of Manilla against their colonial masters [pdf]. Though, of course, not all of the cited examples reveal any class consciousness or revolutionary fervour, evidence of a willingness of police to stand up against their employers is a promising development. As is the empathy occasionally demonstrated towards those who would normally be the victims of their actions.

Of course, not all agents of the state can be brought around to a class perspective. Signing up for the security services, for example, requires a greater level of loyalism and indoctrination than can be expected elsewhere. The collusion between British intelligence and Unionist terrorists is just one example of this.

However, a considerable degree of trade union organisation does exist amongst prison officers, border control agents, and other state enforcement agencies less inculcated than the security services. It is a promising start, and one that can be built upon to bring these “traitors” over to the side of their class.

The barracks of the Listowell Royal Irish Constabulary, whose mutiny in 1920 was "a crippling blow to the Black and Tans" in favour of the rebellious working class

Organising the authorities for resistance

In order to begin discussing how this might be done, we have to look once more to the example of the military.

Although, in theory, the most loyal servants of the nation state, soldiers are integral to revolutionary movements. For activists and organisers, history and experience offers far more examples of this group being galvanised against their masters than any of the other groups mentioned above.

As already stated, army mutiny was integral to the success of the February revolution in Russia. Disobedience by soldiers was also vital to the anti-Vietnam war movement. And as Michael Zweig reports in the Nation, veterans continue to be integral to actions against war in the present;

Counter-recruitment activity, an important element of the anti-Iraq War movement, responds to the many ways recruiters imply commitments to prospective enlistees that the military is under no obligation to keep and promise benefits that in the end do not materialize–a pattern with many parallels in working-class civilian life. Common among the misleading enticements are offers of training that will lead to civilian employment in good jobs; education benefits to pay for college costs and even the signing bonuses, $10,000 or more, that can seem like a fortune to the kids at the desk. The most outrageous reason for yanking back the signing benefits comes when a soldier leaves the military before the full commitment is over because of severe combat injuries. The military, insisting that the benefits are contingent on honorable discharge after completing the full term of service, has moved to take back the signing bonuses that injured servicemembers, unable to complete their tours, have already collected. To combat these practices, young people, often accompanied by veterans with their own stories to tell, are challenging military recruiters in high schools, shopping malls and other places where recruiters seek out volunteers to fill their quotas.

In Dissident Voice last year, Ron Jacobs drew attention to Dahr Jamail’s book, The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, which “highlights the various organizations organizing GI resistance, from the Iraq Veterans Against the War to the group Courage to Resist. He also commits a chapter to each of the primary forms of resistance and reasons for that resistance. He describes instances of individual resistance and the refusal of entire units to carry out missions. He also explores the nature of the sexist culture of the military and the immorality of the wars themselves. One of the most interesting chapters in The Will to Resist is titled “Quarters of Resistance.” It describes the mission and interior of a house in Washington, DC run by a couple veterans. The purpose of the house is to operate as a sort of clearinghouse for the GI resistance movement. At times, the house has provided shelter for veterans and GIs attending antiwar activities in DC. It is also a place that the founder of the house, Geoffrey Millard, calls a “training ground for resistance.” In addition to these quarters, Jamail discusses the beginnings of a coffeehouse movement slowly developing outside major US military bases.”

Clearly, the lessons cited above are instructive for those involved in the anti-war movement. But they should also be taken on board for the class war. There needs to be a concerted effort to disseminate information and ideas amongst those who work for the state, to educate them on how what they do harms their fellow members of the working class, and to offer them a way to change that and to resist. Most importantly, that effort must support those who do resist and help them to face off against potential repercussions.

If they choose to ignore these efforts or even to react with hostility, and continue to act against their class, then so be it. But we should not be willing to write off an entire segment of society as “class traitors” until we have at least made the effort to show them that there is a choice and to offer a perspective on solidarity and rebellion.

airing during 12/20/2009 to 1/1/1010 in Ventura (see air times)
airing 12/14 and 12/21/09 in other cities in Ventura County (see air times)

click to view Part 1
click to view Part 2
click to view full-length including short interview by Cindy Piester

Daniel Ellsberg, leaked the Pentagon Papers during Vietnam War

Dahr Jamail, award-winning, independent journalist about the Mideast

Conversation between Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers about Vietnam in 1971, and Dahr Jamail, independent journalist on the Mideast. Discuss whistle-blowers, Iraq and Afghanistan, the military, resistance, and the Obama administration.

Dear ______,

I just had several email exchanges with another young man who started the conversation with the fact that he had seen the movie on Showtime and had some concerns about going into the military since he was gay. I kind of got the feeling that he was so hell-bent on going that he… I don’t know, basically he just wanted me to say “you’ll be fine, Bruh. Just don’t act like no bitch or nuthin’…. Bruh.” Ends up he, like every queer man I’ve ever met almost, has all this internalized homophobia and is convinced that the military is gong to fix that. I’m not saying that’s the case with you. What I wanted to talk to him about was our foreign policy in the Middle East and to help him make sure he was 1000% behind the mission. After all, he might have to take innocent life or give up his own or his mind or parts of his body in support of the mission. Actually, I’m wrong, he didn’t find me by seeing the movie about me, he found me through reading Dahr Jamail! Dahr’s a very smart, very compassionate man who was an un-embedded journalist in Iraq. He’s written several books. In one, “The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he talks about me and my crisis of conscience surrounding Iraq. Anyway, I thought it was at least unusual that this guy is reading Dahr Jamail and isn’t even thinking about why serving in the occupations might not fit with his morals. I guess he just Googled “gays, marines, Iraq” and got that hit. (kind of amazing he didn’t get porn. he probably did)

So in the end, and to make a long story short, he ended up telling me how closed minded I was for trying to help him explore he feelings about our policies there. What a fucking Jerk, man! I am up to my eyeballs in my to-do list and I took the time to talk to this guy honestly about my feelings about what’s best for my nation and because I didn’t send him any tips on “how to put on cammie paint and not look like a fag” advice, he’s all “you’re just closed minded that’s all.” Goddamn, I work so hard to process all this ancient homophobia and then some guy like this comes along and that’s all it takes for me to start hating again. My inner Aaron James McKinney is awakened!
So once again, I’m not saying that you are anything like him but if you really want my advice about joining the military, I’m going to have to talk to you about the morality of how our military is being used right now. If you’re down with that, I’ll continue the conversation but if you’re going to get pissed with me that I won’t play G.I. Joe with you and if, in the end after taking the time, you’re going to insult me for even trying to talk to you about broader issues, let’s not move forward.
This may sound weird coming from a guy who doesn’t even know you but I care about you. If for no other reason that in a time of “what’s in it for me” you are considering putting yourself in a situation where you might have to sacrifice a lot of yourself, even to include your life. That level of selflessness is unusual these days. Beyond sacrificing your own life, as an officer, you might be put in a position where you have to sacrifice a lot of other people’s sons and daughters. I’ve co-counseled with a lot of vets over the last five years. Some of the most heartbroken ones are the ones who make it out but sent others to their death.
On September 11th, 2001 we were mercilessly attacked on our own soil. Because of the clusterfuck of our nation’s attempt to respond to it and ALL the political banter and the ways that the left and right have upped their level of combat, American against American, we have completely lost our ability to look at what happened on that awful Autumn morning and what we should have done and now that we’ve fucked it all up, what we should do as we attempt to move forward without making things exponentially worse as the sand keeps falling!
I’m willing to have that conversation with you, about what the right approach to thwarting future 9-11′s is and what that means for you personally as a man who’s thinking about joining the fight; but only if on the other side of it I’m not going to get kicked in the teeth for caring enough about you to say some things you might not want to hear.

Respectfully,

Jeff Key

“A 2008 court case in California revealed a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) email that revealed 1,000 veterans who are receiving care from the VA are attempting suicide every single month, and 18 veterans kill themselves daily.”

What might these numbers be if the Civilian Contractors were included in these figures?

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Nov 16 (IPS) – According to a soldiers’ advocacy group at Fort Hood, the U.S. base where an army psychiatrist has been charged with killing 13 people and wounding 30 in a Nov. 5 rampage, the official suicide figures provided by the Army are “definitely” too low.

Chuck Luther served 12 years in the military and is a veteran of two deployments to Iraq, where he was a reconnaissance scout in the 1st Cavalry Division. The former sergeant was based at Fort Hood, where he lives today.

“I see the ugly,” Luther told IPS. “I see soldiers beating their wives and trying to kill themselves all the time, and most folks don’t want to look at this, including the military.”

Luther, who in 2007 became the founder and director of the Soldier’s Advocacy Group of Disposable Warriors, knows about these types of internal problems in the military because he has been through many of them himself.

Luther told IPS that he believes the real number of soldiers at Fort Hood committing suicide is being dramatically underreported by the military.

“There are suicides of active-duty troops occurring regularly both on and off base,” Luther said. “One of them I knew personally since I served with him in Iraq and he was one of my soldiers, and they still have him listed as under investigation for suicide.”

“From what I know right now, there are at least three suicides they are not reporting at all. Most notably, there is a soldier who committed suicide that the Army confirmed through a press conference, and this is not being reported, and I’m working with the Pentagon to try to find out why that is not being reported,” he said. “The Army won’t even release his name.”

Yet Luther believes the situation is even worse.

“I definitely believe there are more than these. If this is what they’ve hidden from us that we know of, we can rest assured there are many, many more than this. We filed a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] to get information from them [Army], but they bog you down in red tape,” he said.

Due to the military’s continued attempts to mask the true number of suicides in the ranks, along with an ongoing refusal to make the radical policy changes necessary to properly treat soldiers and psychiatric care providers exposed to secondary post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Luther fears the worst for the future.

“There will be more 5 November [referencing the recent Fort Hood tragedy] attacks on fellow soldiers, and they will likely be even more drastic,” he said.

“Everybody has to outdo someone, so the next are likely to be worse. Violence breeds violence. I was trained to be very violent in combat as a scout…we killed or detained Iraqis before anyone else got there. Two months ago I warned the Army’s Chain of Command that before we had an attack by a soldier on other troops when they come home, we needed to make some dramatic changes.”

At the time of the interview, one week after army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan’s shooting rampage left 13 dead and over 30 wounded at Fort Hood, Luther informed IPS that in the previous three days at Fort Hood, “I’ve heard commanders tell soldiers requesting psychological help that they are full of crap and don’t have PTSD…so if we can’t implement these needed changes quickly and rapidly we are going to have more loss of life on U.S. soil by soldiers killing other soldiers.”

While not on the scale of the recent shooting incident, several other killings by soldiers have been reported at Fort Hood over the last two years.

According to official military statistics, Fort Hood already suffers the highest number of suicides among Army installations since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. While Luther believes the number is far higher, Army officials at Fort Hood admit to at least 10 suicides on the base from January to July of this year, and at least 75 “confirmed” suicides since 2003.

Several years of repeated war-zone deployments are taking their toll, as Army personnel are experiencing record rates of PTSD, depression, other mental health problems, alcohol and drug abuse, and suicides.

According to the Army Suicide Event Report, a total of 99 soldiers killed themselves in 2006, the highest rate of military suicides in the 26 years the military has been keeping statistics on suicides. More than a quarter of them were by troops in combat postings in Iraq and Afghanistan. The figure does not include post-discharge suicides by military personnel.

In 2007, at least 115 suicides were reported by the Army, another record. Last year set another record, with at least 133 reported suicides, in addition to there being a record number of suicides in the Marine Corps that year.

The suicide rate for the Army for 2008 was calculated roughly at 20.2 per 100,000 soldiers, which for the first time since the Vietnam War is higher than the adjusted civilian rate.

Thus far, 2009 is on pace to set another record for the number of suicides in the Army.

Private Michael Kern, an active-duty Iraq war veteran who is based at Fort Hood, served in Iraq from March 2007 to March 2008.

On Nov. 9, four days after the shooting spree at Fort Hood, Kern told IPS, “The 20th Engineering Battalion was hit hard in this rampage. They are scheduled to deploy in January to Afghanistan, and lost a lot of good folks on Thursday [Nov. 5]. I personally know a soldier in that Battalion who attempted suicide last night.”

Mental health problems and suicide appear to now be systemic in the military.

By October 2007, data within the Army’s fifth Mental Health Advisory Team report indicated that approximately 12 percent of combat troops in Iraq and 17 percent of those in Afghanistan were coping by taking prescription antidepressants and/or sleeping pills to cope.

In 2008, the Daily Telegraph of London reported that two out of five suicide victims among troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have been found to be on antidepressants.

In April 2008, the RAND Corporation released a stunning report revealing, “Nearly 20 percent of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan – 300,000 in all – report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, yet only slightly more than half have sought treatment.”

A 2008 court case in California revealed a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) email that revealed 1,000 veterans who are receiving care from the VA are attempting suicide every single month, and 18 veterans kill themselves daily.

President Barack Obama is not satisfied to execute on any of the options his national security team have brought to the table, “pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government”, the Associated Press (AP) reports tonight from a senior administration official. The Afghan government has shown itself to be nothing more or less than a brutal mafia. The druglords and warlords are now the taxmen—rightfully scrutinized for being immoral, but actually just acting as a government.

The news comes as Karl Eikenberry, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, “sent two classified cables to Washington in the past week expressing deep concerns about sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan until President Hamid Karzai’s government demonstrates that it is willing to tackle the corruption and mismanagement that has fueled the Taliban’s rise”, The Washington Post reported earlier from senior officials.

At today’s meeting with the War Council, Mr. Obama entertained—what was referred to throughout the day as—”the four options”, which WaPo reported would cost around $1bn per thousand troops. Christi Parsons and Julian Barnes reported them at the Los Angeles Times as:

1. At least 40,000 additional troops, the ‘medium-risk’ option from General Stanley McChrystal, the top commander of the U.S.-led occupation—the ‘low-risk’ option being an escalation of 80,000 troops;
2. 34,000 additional troops, including 23,000 for combat and support, 7,000 for the occupiers’ command base and 4,000 trainers, officials confirmed over the weekend;
3. 20,000 additional troops, the ‘high-risk’ option from Gen. McChrystal—”known by military planners as ‘the hybrid’,” WaPo reports, “to shore up security in 10 to 12 major population areas”; and
4. around 12,000 additional troops, supported by Senator John Kerry (D-MA), more geared toward counterterrorism operations, maintaining the same troop level for counterinsurgency.

Mr. Obama was “leaning toward” escalating the occupation by 34,000 and announcing it after his trip to Asia in a week, Jonathan Landay reported at McClatchy over the weekend.

“The sense that he was being rushed and railroaded has stiffened Obama’s resolve to seek information and options beyond military planning, officials said, though a substantial troop increase is still likely,” the AP reports tonight, adding: “The options presented to Obama by his War Council will now be amended.”

Since Mr. Obama began his presidential run in early 2007, he referred to the occupation of Afghanistan as a “war of necessity”. Leading political scientists, notably Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, see no reason for such an assessment.

Counterterrorism operations have been dubbed by human rights groups and military officials as “death from above”, as strikes have killed 49 civilians for every terrorist leader assassinated. It’s uncontroversial such civilian casualties are counter-intuitive to “winning the hearts of minds of the population”, as Gen McChrystal reported to the president was crucial to avoid “mission failure”.

The argument for shifting to a counterterrorism mission is the concern over the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, the possibility of Afghanistan or Pakistan becoming a ‘safe haven’ or ‘base of operations’ for ‘terrorists to conduct operations against the U.S. and the fulfillment of juvenile revenge fantasies over 9/11.

Seymour Hersh wrote of the politics toward understanding the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal at The New Yorker over the weekend, of which Little Alex partially analyzed. He discussed the battle between the military and the White House over the Afghanistan occupation and his article with Rachel Maddow this evening (7:18):

Here at Wonderland, we’re not giving the president as much credit as Mr. Hersh. (In his defense, Mr. Hersh was probably not aware that the reports actually stated there was no indication Mr. Obama would cease to escalate the occupation, as Ms. Maddow mistook.) Our message to the president remains the same: Stop dithering and bring the troops home, now!

To execute a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, the U.S. and its allies would need to commit at least another 100,000 troops to begin building an Afghan Security Force of 400,000. This assessment was made by us before military officials confirmed the number, 600,000, as the amount of counterinsurgent forces needed to begin stablizing Afghanistan.

“Nation-building would be impossible even if we knew how, and even if Afghanistan were not the second-worst place to try,” George Will wrote at WaPo over two months ago. “Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.”.

On Veterans Day, we’re reminded of the deaths of U.S. soldiers during war, but the casualties of war remain, recklessly, forgotten.

“On MSNBC, and the other cable hawkers of government propaganda this morning, veterans were absent, despite the constant invocation of Veterans Day,” Lew Rockwell, Jr., president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, commented. “All the photos and discussion were of active-duty troops in the various U.S. occupations. None of the kids with missing limbs or brain parts were shown, the actual veterans, nor that single-payer Hell, the V.A. medical system and its inmates. It was all lies about the glory of war, by a caw-cawing bunch of chickenhawks.”

In-action U.S. casualties from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan total over 90,000, on record. “That includes a tire-screeching 75,134 dead, wounded-in-action, and medically evacuated due to illness, disease, or injury in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), and 14,323 and counting in Afghanistan, or Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF),” Kelley B. Vlahos reports at AntiWar.com, adding:

Larry Scott, who runs VAWatchdog.org, an invaluable daily monitor of ongoing issues affecting the 23.4 million living U.S veterans, said the 90,591 figure relating to OIF/OEF casualties is valid—and ultimately overwhelming. “People just forget, they don’t realize there is an ongoing cost of war. Whether you agree with the war or not is not the issue. We have to be ready to pay the price.”

Documents from the government and non-governmental organizations have found that 170,000 veterans of the Vietnam Counterinsurgency have committed suicide, Dahr Jamail reported at AntiWar Radio today. The Veterans Health Administration confirmed in an email dated 15 December 2007: 6,552 veterans commit suicide every year—126 every week, 18 every day. Any suicide survivor can attest to the fact that the casualties of every suicide are exponential to the statistic itself.

The RAND Corportation, according to the Online Journal in April 2008, stated around 300,000 troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering major depression or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder—better known as shell shock—and nearly 370,000 received traumatic brain injuries.

Any native of a nation-state invaded by the U.S. Armed Forces can attest to the fact that for every U.S. casualty is a potential nationwide population of human beings and property and natural resources damaged or destroyed.

Mr. Obama won the 2008 presidential election with 52.9% of the vote. That was a year ago. Today, a CNN poll reports 56% of those polled oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan and 58% oppose the occupation as a whole.

Mr. President, politics has a price. Life does not. Morality exceeds value. Integrity makes you a man. Defying power with integrity makes you a leader.

End the occupation of Afghanistan. Yes, you can.

Crossposted at Air America Radio.

Dahr Jamail is an award-winning independent journalist whose work has appeared on National Public Radio, in The Guardian (UK), The Nation, The Progressive, and more. In his latest book, The Will to Resist: Soliders who refuse to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, Jamail brings us inside the movement of military resistance to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. War is traumatic and many veterans who speak out against their actions (or their government’s policies) want their experiences to be validated, understood and accepted. Yet anti-war veterans organizations are not honored to the same degree as the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion or Disabled American Veterans. Jamail believes all veterans must be honored, even those who speak out against war. The Will to Resist opens the door to the lives of many servicemen and veterans who speak out against war and killing, and their need to regain their humanity. Jamail talked about what war resisters endure on a daily basis, including the recent tragedy at Fort Hood, TX.

In researching this book, is it true that many service members and veterans lack adequate psychological and emotional counseling? Did Nidal Malik Hasan received adequate attention for his needs? Could the Fort Hood tragedy have been avoided if he had received adequate attention?

It’s true that people in the U.S. military who need post-traumatic stress disorder treatment as well as secondary trauma treatment, like Nidal Malik Hasan, are not getting what they need. I can’t tell you how many soldiers I’ve been talking to, some who are in the book, who are already diagnosed with PTSD and then they are sent back over to the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. As of last year, more than 43,000 soldiers already diagnosed with a medical condition, including PTSD, were classified as non-deployable and were deployed anyway. In Hasan’s case, this is a guy who was counseling people with severe PTSD who had lost limbs and were at Walter Reed. He had an extremely heavy workload, he was overworked, and he clearly needed counseling himself for secondary trauma he was experiencing. This was certainly a factor that contributed to what he chose to do by carrying out this atrocity. I think the Fort Hood situation on Friday, as well as what’s been happening there this year, clearly illustrates more than anything else, how severe the situation is in the military with people not getting psychiatric and psychological treatment they need. Another thing to add about Fort Hood that Friday’s tragedy doesn’t illustrate enough: this is an Army base that so far, this year, according to the most recent statistics we have, there have been 10 suicides this year- at that base alone.

Is it systemic that the military’s reaction to handling soldiers’ and veterans’ emotional and psychological problems is, “suck it up,” “don’t be a pussy,” or “quit being a fag?” What did you discover?

Absolutely. I just wrote a story about a guy who came back from Iraq with severe PTSD. He was being held in this unit and they were threatening to send him back again. He was trying to get counseling because he was suffering from regular abuse from his commander. One time the soldier met up with some of the other folks suffering from PTSD. They were all talking with each other and the commanding officer called them “a bunch of PTSD pussies.” It falls right in line with this kind of code in the military you exactly described. It’s based on the whole premise that boys don’t cry. It’s the grade school mentality of ,”we need you to be a mindless robot that’s willing to follow any order we give you.” If you have any concerns, physical or psychological, you need to suck that up and keep moving forward. Anyone that shows weakness or asks for help, they are ridiculed regularly and ostracized and this is another factor why so many people who need help are not getting it.

You write about stories of discrimination in “The Courage to Resist.” What about racism and Islamophobia? The Armed Forces claims they do not have any form of racism. Is it more prevalent than we think? Does the military cover it up like they often do with sexual violence and other recurring social problems?

Racism, sexism, homophobia are all a big problem. This is an institution where mysogynistic behavior is embedded in people. That would certainly include race and racism. I’d say there is a kind of informal segregation in the military. When I was in Iraq, I talked to several people, including a Jordanian contractor who worked at a base serving food to soldiers. There were entire units that were only Hispanic, and Spanish was the only language they spoke. Slang terms like “nigger” and “spic”are used and all of this is common in the military. I think this is another indicator of how dysfunctional the military really is as an institution.

I know racist language is used in dehumanizing the enemy. But on an ordinary day-to-day basis, is it bigger than we think?

Absolutely, I think all of that falls under the umbrella of dehumanization. When someone joins the military, the military will break them down in basic training and prepare them to follow orders to kill people. To do that, you have to dehumanize the people they’re going to kill. So Iraqis become “Ragheads” or “Terrorists.” In Vietnam, the Vietnamese were “Gooks” and in World War II, they were “Japs.” In that process of dehumanizing “the other”- they cannot do that without dehumanizing themselves. They have to kill off parts of their own humanity so they can be willing to go out and kill somebody else. This is another factor of why racism is so bad in the military. Anything that doesn’t fit in with the dominant paradigm of a white male soldier is going to be an object of racism and discrimination in that institution.

One of the responses I often hear is “this isn’t systemic” or “there are always rotten apples” or “there’s always going to be some element of racism” in any institution. What is your response to that?

Yes, because when soldiers complete their training, they’ve all been through this process and were subjected to what we were just talking about. I’ve had many veterans tell me that’s exactly what it’s like. It’s like the high school boys locker room syndrome where you are consistently reinforced- all the talk and behaviors in basic training- if anyone goes against it, they are ostracized or ridiculed.

Vietnam Veterans got significant attention for speaking out against the war in the 1960s and 1970s. Polls constantly show that the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations are very unpopular with the American public. Why aren’t groups like the Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Gold Star Mothers for Peace, and such, gaining ground like Vietnam Veterans did? Especially with all the activist tools they have today that they didn’t have back then…

I think it’s because it was an entirely different era. The first main thing we could point to is lack of a draft. The draft mobilized the entire population in the country. It wasn’t just poor people that were forced to get a college education or serve. All of a sudden upper middle class kids had to be very concerned and of course, people resisted. Nobody wanted to be forced to go. So not having a draft is a critical component. Also, the lack of a real antiwar movement with any real power (like) the civil and women’s rights movements (had). All of these things were going on simultaneously and Vietnam was the perfect storm for an antiwar movement to stand up and give the backing necessary for an effective GI movement. All of what’s said is in the context and what I hear so much from soldiers today is, “Look, I was afraid to stand up because I felt like I would be all alone. I didn’t feel like there would be any support and I felt like I’d be hung out to dry.” That was not the case during Vietnam. It was the opposite. The people who stood up were heroes. They had housing, friends, they were hooked into this underground railroad where you could be shipped to Mexico or Canada and it was a completely different scenario.

A thing I often hear is soldiers don’t decide where they go, they’re not supposed to have opinions of the conflict, and it was all part of the contract they signed. I’ve heard this in regards to Ehren Watada’s recent case and others veterans you talked to. How do you and/or your book respond to that?

Here’s my rebuttal. According to the U.N. Conventions, the United Nations charter says there’s only two reasons why a country is allowed to have a “just war.” One, it must be ratified by the U.N. Security Council. The other is it must be an act of self-defense. Iraq doesn’t pass either of those. This war violates that and it also contravenes the Geneva Conventions. With Afghanistan, international lawyers like Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild, are arguing that Afghanistan does not meet those qualifications. It did not have the U.N. Security Council ratification and they’re now arguing this was not an act of self-defense. Neither the country nor the people of Afghanistan attacked the United States. Thus, it’s a violation of international law. Because of that, there’s a (supremacy) law in the U.S. Constitution that states that when the United States signs a foreign treaty, that law becomes our law and essentially a part of our Constitution. Soldiers are sworn to support and defend the Constitution and they are violating their own oath by following an unlawful order (namely Iraq and Afghanistan). Those who are standing up and refusing are actually being hyper-patriotic. When you stop and read the laws of the letter and listen to what these international lawyers are talking about, it’s very clear that the people who are dissenting and refusing these orders are following the law right to the letter.

This interview will be published on Veteran’s Day. Why are veterans’ peace groups and veterans who speak out against war not taken seriously on Veteran’s Day? Every year I read about how this group or that veteran was not allowed to march in this parade or that one. It seems that Americans are pushed into honoring only those veterans that are sanctioned. Your response?

It sounds like a similar situation as to why my articles (and probably your articles) are never going to make it into the New York Times or the Washington Post. If you take a stand and you write an article coming down on the side of international law and you’re being critical of government or the wars, you’re perceived as biased. But if you write articles that are pro- war or pro-U.S. government policy, then you are considered objective. It’s the same thing with these veterans groups. They are censored and kept out of the public eye. Another example is high schools. Military recruiters can go into any high school, hand out their propaganda, help them go to college and recruit people. But Veterans for Peace can’t go into high schools because what they’re talking about is too political. The military is going in and that’s not political, but people talking about peace and alternative ways to get college funding is political. It’s the same thing when these organizations are censored and kept out of the media.

airing during 11/22 to 12/4/2009 in Ventura (see air times)

airing 11/23 and 11/30/2009 in other cities in Ventura County (see air times)

click to see full interview

Dahr Jamail - award-winning, independent journalist

Interview with Dahr Jamail, award-winning, independent journalist and author of “Beyond The Green Zone” and his most recent book “The Will To Resist” and website “Mideast Dispatches”. Interviewed by Cindy Piester with PULSE TV. Discuss Ft. Hood, Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers’ resistance and U.S. foreign policy including Obama administration. Produced by Maverick Media and filmed at CAPS TV Channel 6 in Ventura, CA on Nov. 9, 2009.

Cindy Piester - host and producer of PULSE TV

Good Morning, Conflucians. The big story of the day is the massacre at Fort Hood in Texas. Last night it was reported that the shooter, Major Malik Nadal Hasan, was dead. But he is still alive and in stable condition even though he was shot several times. It still isn’t clear what motivated Hasan, who was a both a devout Muslim and a psychiatrist and was going to be deployed to Iraq at the end of November. A short time ago, the 13th shooting victim died. Reports say that 31 victims were injured.

From The New York Times: Suspect Was ‘Mortified’ About Deployment to War

Born and reared in Virginia, the son of immigrant parents from a small Palestinian town near Jerusalem, he joined the Army right out of high school, against his parents’ wishes. The Army, in turn, put him through college and then medical school, where he trained to be a psychiatrist.

But Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old man accused of Thursday’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, Tex., began having second thoughts about a military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim, he told relatives in Virginia.

He had also more recently expressed deep concerns about being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Having counseled scores of returning soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, first at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and more recently at Fort Hood, he knew all too well the terrifying Da

Hasan may have posted sympathetic writings about suicide bombers on the internet. Someone with the same name did so, according to this and other stories. Hasan had not told his family he was scheduled to be deployed to Iraq.

More Stories on the Shooting and Aftermath:

Army post shooting rampage leaves 13 dead, 30 hurt

NYT:
Army Doctor Held in Fort Hood Rampage

NYT: Shooting Victims Flood Local Hospitals

Raw Story: Muslims fear backlash in wake of Fort Hood massacre

Other stories on Hasan:

SF Examiner: Troubling portrait emerges of Army psychiatrist suspected in rampage at Fort Hood, Texas

Roanoke Times: Suspected Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan: Social awkwardness kept with him into adulthood

Analysis of the Fort Hood Story

There is an excellent discussion of the significance of the story by Dahr Jamail at Truthout: Mass Shooting Indicates Breakdown of Military

Jamail interviewed a soldier at Fort Hood who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The soldier says that the mood on the base is “very grim,” and that even before this incident, troop morale has been very low.

“I’d say it’s at an all-time low – mostly because of Afghanistan now,” he explained. “Nobody knows why we are at either place, and I believe the troops need to know why they are there, or we should pull out, and this is a unanimous feeling, even for folks who are pro-war.”

After a similar incident in May, in which

a US soldier gunned down five fellow soldiers at a stress-counseling center at a US base in Baghdad. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at a news conference at the Pentagon that the shootings occurred in a place where “individuals were seeking help.”

“It does speak to me, though, about the need for us to redouble our efforts, the concern in terms of dealing with the stress,” Admiral Mullen said. “It also speaks to the issue of multiple deployments.”

Commenting on the incident in nearly parallel terms, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that the Pentagon needs to redouble its efforts to relieve stress caused by repeated deployments in war zones; stress that is further exacerbated by limited time at home in between deployments.

The condition described by Mullen and Gates is what veteran health experts often refer to as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

How much longer will our government continue sending people back to Iraq and Afghanistan even though they are suffering from serious psychological disorders?

We need to end both of these wars, but will President Obama have the courage to do it when it might mean he’ll be a one-term President? That is what Gary Wills claims in a recent blog post at The New York Review of Books blog. Wills foolishly believes that Obama has the will and the guts to do what Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon didn’t do when we were in Vietnam. Poor Gary. He’ll wake up to reality eventually, no doubt.

OTHER NEWS

Wall Street Firms getting H1N1 Vaccine ‘ahead of hospitals’

Pelosi scrambles for health care votes

Details on Health Care Bills in House, Senate

Pentagon pursuing new investigation into Bush propaganda program

Deal Over Honduran Crisis ‘Dead’

Families in Cleveland Wait for ID’s of Victims

Texas polygamist sect member found guilty of sexual assault

After all that horrible news, here’s an interesting story from developmental psychology and specifically my own field–language development.

Babies ‘cry in mother’s tongue’

Babies Cry With an Accent, Study Finds
Newborns Cry With the Melody of Their Parent’s Language

I hope today will be a better day than yesterday.

THANK GOODNESS IT’S FRIDAY

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