WASHINGTON - March 18 - WHAT: Press Conference.
Iraq Veterans Against the War Commence "OPERATION NOT CHANGE"
Iraq and Afghanistan veterans begin a tower-guard vigil across from the White House. The towers will be manned 24 hours a day March 19th to March 21st, Saturday. (All are welcome to come speak to the vets on post and ask questions about their deployments.)
WHEN: 10:00 A.M. Thursday, March 19th
WHERE: Constitution Avenue between 15th and 17th Streets, North of the Washington Monument
WHY: To protest President Obama's deceptions about his foreign policy and mark the sixth year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.
WHO:
Adam Kokesh: (505) 470-1917 adam.kokesh@gmail.com. IVAW board member who served in Fallujah with a Marine Corps Civil Affairs team. "Relabeling the remaining forces in Iraq 'non-combat troops' will not change the fact that these occupations are being perpetuated to maintain a criminal empire."
James Circello: (419) 905-8305. ANSWER organizer, former Airborne soldier, Iraq veteran, and Afghanistan war resister. "President Bush would often boast that, under his watch, the United States hadn't been attacked since September 11, but the working class has been attacked every day since."
James Gilligan: (267) 506-1495 gilligan007@gmail.com, Served with the USMC in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo. "The backlash of the actions by both administrations, of pursuing the enemy outside of the combat regions will only spread the violence further.
Bryan Casler: (315) 877-3420 bryancasler@rochesterivaw.org. Deployed three times in his four years with the United States Marine Corps as an Infantry man, including a tour to Kabul, Afghanistan. "No matter how Obama spins a surge into Afghanistan, it's still a criminal occupation and we don't want it."
Tracey Harmon: (808) 292-0525 tracey.harmon@gmail.com Conscientious Objector, served six years in the US Army Reserves.
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Iraq Veterans Against the War Links: HomepageIVAW (Press Center)IVAW (Action Center)From MPs visit deserter in U.S. prison, urge Ottawa to allow resisters refuge in Canada
TORONTO — Two members of Parliament who met Sunday with an Iraq army deserter court-martialed after fleeing to British Columbia are hopeful their San Diego prison visit reignites debate about allowing others to take refuge in Canada.
New Democrat Olivia Chow and Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj spent 45 minutes discussing the issues around Robin Long's deportation and learning about his condition behind bars.
Long, 25, who the Toronto MPs call a "war resister," was deported from Canada in July 2008 after fleeing to avoid serving in Iraq - the first deserter to be sent back to the U.S. by the courts.
"The (incarceration) conditions are acceptable, but what's unacceptable is the fact that this young man, as a consequence of taking a principled stand, is spending 15 months of his life while he's in his 20s in prison," Wrzesnewskyj said from San Diego.
"It coincides with the key formative years of his young Canadian son who's two years old. That's a terrible thing to do to someone."
Long's deportation occurred one month after Chow initiated a motion urging that U.S. military deserters be allowed to stay in Canada.
Parliament passed the nonbinding motion but so far the Conservatives have ignored the directive.
With three more deserters facing the possibility of deportation, Chow plans to re-introduce the motion when Parliament resumes next week.
It comes almost exactly six years after the Iraq war began.
"Hopefully we can debate it again," she said. "And we certainly hope that (Prime Minister) Stephen Harper will not ignore the will of Parliament one more time."
When the two MPs and a representative of the War Resisters Support Campaign entered the barbed wire-enclosed Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar to speak with Long they discovered a young man who continues to hold an unshaken belief in the rightness of his cause, Wrzesnewskyj said.
"There didn't seem to be any hint of anger or vindictiveness, he seems like a well-balanced young man and hopeful," he said.
But there were several issues raised in the meeting that alarmed the group, who now believe Canada's methods in deporting Long may have worsened his prosecution.
Long told them he was driven across the border in handcuffs and not allowed to enter the country and surrender on his own will, which potentially opened him up to more serious charges.
Long also alleged that citizenship and immigration officials had compelled him to hand over original military documents, stating they would be returned.
When instead he later only received copies, he faced charges of handing over military documents to a foreign power.
From "Gospel spirituality of resistance"
Father Harak, a Jesuit priest and author, helped found Voices in the Wilderness, which was nominated in 2000, 2002, and 2003 for the Nobel Peace Prize. Father Harak is both a war resister and theology professor at Marquette University, and director of The Center for Peacemaking at Marquette, which is committed to support research on the effectiveness of initiatives to prevent violent conflicts and to reconcile communities in the wake of violence.
From Naomi Klein Interview
Naomi Klein inherited some of her politics. Her grandfather was blacklisted by Joe McCarthy for being a union agitator at Walt Disney, where he worked as an animator. Her grandmother worked for Henry Wallace in 1948. Her father fled the United States as a Vietnam-era war resister and became a medical doctor and a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Her mother was a feminist filmmaker for Canada's National Film Board.
But upbringing is not destiny, and Klein has created her own. She was a student journalist and activist at the University of Toronto. She edited the leftist Canadian publication This Magazine. In 2000, she became an instant sensation when she published No Logo, which served as a manifesto for the anti-corporate, global justice movement. After that, she chronicled the rebellion against neoliberalism in Latin America. With her husband, Avi Lewis, she made a film called The Take, which is about autoworkers in Buenos Aires who occupy their idle factory.
A columnist for The Nation and The Guardian, Klein published the monumental book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism in 2007, which systematically refutes the claim that democracy and free markets are inseparable. In part, the book is a history of U.S. imperialism since the overthrow of Allende's Chile. And in part, it's an exposé on how Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics, the U.S. Treasury, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank all do the bidding of U.S. corporations and banks, especially in times of crisis.
Klein was recently profiled in The New Yorker, which called her “the most visible and influential figure on the American left—what Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky were thirty years ago.”
From André Shepherd, Iraq War Resister, Applies for Asylum in Germany
U.S. Army Specialist André Shepherd, who went AWOL after serving in Iraq, has applied for asylum in Germany. Shepherd refused military service because he is morally opposed to the Iraq War.
"It is a sickening feeling to realize that I took part in what was basically a daily slaughter of a proud people," said Shepherd at a press conference announcing his application for asylum. "I am remorseful for my contribution to these heinous acts, and I swear that I will never make these mistakes again."
Shepherd, who has been living underground in Germany for nearly two years, applied for refugee status on November 26th on the grounds that the Iraq War is illegal.
This makes Shepherd the first Iraq War Veteran to apply for refugee status in Europe. His case may have profound implications for the growing ranks of troops who are refusing to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Who is André Shepherd?
Shepherd did not set out in life intending to build a career in the military. He grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and went to school at Kent State University, where he studied computer science. He graduated in 2000 in the midst of the dot-com bubble burst, and he found himself unable to get a job in his field. Shepherd embarked on a litany of odd jobs to get by, including working fast food, stuffing envelopes, couriering, and selling vacuum cleaners. Yet it often wasn't enough to cover his basic living expenses.
In the summer of 2003, Shepherd ran into an army recruiter who told him of the army's benefits: free travel, healthcare, and free housing. "At the time, I was living in my car, so that sounded appealing," said Shepherd.
On January 27, 2004, Shepherd decided to join the army. "At that time, I didn't have the knowledge I have now. All I had was pretty much what the mass media was telling me and what the Bush Administration was saying on the mass media," said Shepherd.
Shepherd was trained in Apache helicopter repair and sent first to Achach Germany, then to Iraq, where he was stationed from September 2004 to February 2005.
"While I was in Iraq, the first thing I noticed was when the local population would come on our base. Usually when you liberate a people, they are overjoyed to see you, they are happy to see you, they would welcome you with open arms," said Shepherd. "When I would see the Iraqi population, they didn't look like they were in any way happy to see us. They looked like either they were afraid of me or if I turned my back without my weapon, they would probably want to kill me. That started me thinking."
Shepherd started talking to soldiers on his base and was shocked to learn that many did not understand why they were there and did not see any benefit. He began doing research and started seeing "inconsistencies between what the Bush Administration was saying and what was actually happening."
Eventually, Shepherd began analyzing his own contribution to a war that was making less and less sense to him. "My job appeared harmless until one factors in the amount of death and destruction those helicopters cause to civilians in Iraq," he said.
"Once I pretty much figured out the truth, that this war was nothing more than a fraud, not only on the American people but the entire world, I resolved within myself that I would no longer go on another deployment to Iraq," he said in an interview with Courage to Resist, one of the many U.S.-based organizations rallying support for him.
From DVD FOCUS: Jane Fonda's anti-war years lived anew
A time capsule of the anti-Vietnam War movement, "FTA" is also a vivid flashback to a world-famous movie star's stint as a political radical. At the peak of her celebrity, which coincided with the dawning of her political consciousness, Jane Fonda abdicated her Hollywood throne and remade herself as the face of the anti-establishment.
With government agents and the news media watching her every move, she led a vaudeville troupe on a tour of U.S. military bases in 1971—a trip chronicled in this fascinating documentary, largely unseen since its brief, abortive release and finally available on DVD this week.
In the disc's only extra, a 20-minute interview, Fonda recounts how the project came about. She and Donald Sutherland, her co-star in 1971's "Klute" (which won her an Oscar), were approached by Howard Levy, a doctor who had become an anti-war cause celebre for refusing to train Green Beret medics. He proposed that they put on a corrective to Bob Hope's gung-ho USO shows, giving voice not just to the growing peace movement but to anti-war sentiment within the ranks of the military.
The FTA troupe staged its first shows in the U.S., with Fonda and Sutherland (who had just played the irreverent Hawkeye in Robert Altman's "M*A*S*H") headlining a company that included Peter Boyle and Howard Hesseman. (The all-purpose acronym is short for "Free the Army" and a more profane variation.)
When it came time to embark on the two-week Pacific Rim tour, Fonda assembled a more politically correct lineup that stressed racial and gender parity—equal numbers of black and white, and male and female, performers, including singer Holly Near and comedian Paul Mooney.
Fonda, Sutherland and company stopped off in Hawaii, the Philippines, Okinawa and Japan (where they were initially refused entry). Denied permission to perform on U.S. bases, they set up shop in nearby coffeehouses and other venues, although military officials apparently tried to minimize attendance by publicizing incorrect showtimes .
All told, the troupe played 21 shows, which were attended by some 64,000 servicemen and women. Many of the male GIs, as Fonda ruefully concedes in the interview, must have been anticipating the Space Age sex kitten from "Barbarella" and not the righteous radical who took the stage in jeans, no makeup and a raised fist.
The show mixes protest songs with broad and bawdy skits, taking potshots at military chauvinism and top-brass privilege. But what it lacks in finesse, it makes up for with a raucous energy. Directed by Francine Parker (who died in 2007), the documentary alternates between the song-and-dance routines and behind-the-scenes footage of soldiers talking candidly to the troupe members about their frustration and anger at the ongoing war and the American presence in the region.
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