Tag: anti-war

Disclaimer – this is for all women:

You don’t have to have given birth to be a Mother, either.  Those who have not, by circumstance or choice still know well of what I speak, having witnessed as a female the roles of their own Mothers, and their Sisters who may have had kids.  

We act as caregivers, to our own and others.  Its who we are, not who we have borne.

Dear Mothers,

Society has often put us in a second class position; the patriarchy on which it was formed limits our potentials in so many ways.

Perhaps it is because the know the truth:  We hold immeasurable power.

I have some questions for you my dear ones, on this Mother’s Day across the pond, and the US Mother’s Day to come.  

What will you do with that power?

Tonight I am thrilled and honored to speak with Cindy Sheehan.  We will be discussing her new book, “Revolution, A Love Story” which chronicles her time spent in Venezuela, and her meetings with Hugo Chavez!  She has seen first hand, there is indeed a better way, than the predatory capitalism we suffer here, the World suffers under the US’s actions.

Cindy is a force of nature. I have long admired her tenacity, her bravery and her honesty. I imagine that when 2 middle aged, pissed off Moms – turned Revolutionaries sit down for a conversation; this shall be an amazing show!

The call in number is 646-929-1264 to join the conversation!

Tip: In order to comment in the show’s companion chat, you must create a BTR account, its free and only takes seconds. Chat is monitored during the show, so make yourself heard.

Miss the show? The podcasts are available at the link above, or at the Wild Wild Left

Join Wild Wild Left Radio every Friday at 6pm ET, with Hostess and Producer Diane Gee to guide you through Current Events taken from a Wildly Left Prospective….  

Originally posted at PoliZeros.

I went to a protest in Philadelphia this past Saturday, and it was more disheartening than anything else.  It was against the wars and various other injustices, with a special focus on he recent FBI raids of peace activists and Pennsylvania Homeland Security spying on innocent civilians and activists.

By the end of it, I kind of just felt like going up to the megaphone and asking, “How much moral outrage can one person muster?  There are more people handing out fliers here than not, and with this country committing so many disgusting, outrageous acts, I don’t blame you.”  I won’t lie, I handed a few out myself.  Yet the contrast between the righteous causes featured in the speeches and on the signs and on the fliers and the, as a fellow protester said to me, “complete lack of solidarity” was striking.

While the Netroots Nation 2010 conference was happening in Las Vegas last weekend, another conference, even more important IMHO, was occurring in Albany, New York.  The United National Anti-War Conference brought together a broad coalition of peace, anti-war, social justice, labor, ethnic, and other activists for the purpose of finding a new mode and presentation for our many, many righteous grievances.

From Glenn Ford to David Swanson to Noam Chomsky to Medea Benjamin, the hard core community of dissent and change gathered to explore why we have not been able to attain our goals and look for more productive roads to success.

Glenn Ford, one of my favorites, Editor of the “Black Agenda Report”, and an attendee at the conference reported on July 28th:

A renewed anti-war movement is under construction, one that breaks decisively from the Cult of Obama, demands an end to all U.S. aid to the Israeli “apartheid regime,” and calls for “immediate, total and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops, mercenaries and contractors from Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, and the immediate closing of all U.S. bases in those countries.”

…snip

The mission [of the nearly 600 delegates] is to rescue the anti-war movement from the rubble of its collapse with the ascent of Black Democrat Barack Obama to the presidency.

Ford goes on to name the anti-war defectors:

Leap with me beneath the fold…

Though the national student strike was three weeks old on May 21, 1970, it was not yet over. While this is a day late for the 40th anniversary, I am going to highlight the day in two separate posts.

Ohio State University saw one of the biggest clashes of the whole May upsurge with hours of mobile combat as students and townspeople from Columbus took on the Ohio National Guard, even though they were the force that had gunned down four students at Kent State University on May 4.

Actually Governor Rhodes had initially mobilized the Guard at the end of April, because OSU had already blown wide open, even before the Cambodia invasion and the start of the national student strike. As at other campuses, the issue of racism was an initial trigger, with two Black students brought up on charges after a March 13 protest.

On April 20, 100 students in the School of Social Work had walked out, demanding more student voice in decisions, followed a day later by protests targeting recruiters for corporations from the military-industrial complex at a campus jobs fair. Various activist groups united and issued a joint call for a student strike to begin on the April 29, a call quickly endorsed by the student government.

The strike started successfully with picket lines closing classes and a 2000 strong rally on the Oval. By evening it had evolved into a blockade at the campus gates to keep out the Ohio Highway Patrol, called in by the administration. After a night of fighting and 300 busts, student heading for the Oval on the 30th found their campus occupied by the Ohio National Guard.

The Guard teargassed a rally of 4000 students that day. Following days saw more fighting and more gas. On the May 4, the administration finally started making concessions, even as the Guard occupation and the strike continued. Once the news from Kent State hit, it was too little, too late. The protests stepped up!

Two days later the administration announced the suspension of classes. OSU was closed effective May 7 at Governor Rhodes’ urging. They tried to reopen it on the May 19. Mistake. Two days later, renewed clashes erupted on the campus and spilled into adjacent Columbus. Scores were arrested. The strike was still on!

I was there when the reactionary “white terror” kicked in.

After the Kent State shootings, a New York City-wide demonstration had called for Wall Street on Friday-that was 40 years ago today, on Friday, May 8, 1970. I have no idea who called the demo, though it targeted the financial center of US capital and was around the three demands: US Out Of Southeast Asia, End Campus Complicity With The War Machine, and Free Bobby Seale And All Political Prisoners.

A small crew of us from NYU Uptown were there-I can’t swear to it, but I think it might have been Lon E. Bich and maybe Jim Bean. I remember the big banner for Bobby, and I remember how many high school kids seemed to be in the crowd of a couple thousand, crammed into the narrow streets of downtown Manhattan.

Suddenly, just before noon, as Wall Street types on lunch further crowded the area, there was a big stir about 20 feet from us. A tight column of dozens of guys wearing construction helmets with a couple American flags was wading through the crowd. Almost immediately it became clear that they were not just pushing protesters out of the way, but slugging them, beating them to the ground and kicking them. (Some Wall Streeters helped the injured. More joined the attacks.)

Many of you are familiar with the Iraq Moratorium. Some of the discussion that led to its formation took place here and at Daily Kos in early 2007 and its launch on September 15, 2007 was well recorded here. Diaries since have covered it, and blogosphere luminaries like Meteor Blades and One Pissed Off Liberal have repeatedly given it play.

The idea is simple, and captured in our pledge:

I hereby commit that, on the Third Friday and/or Third Weekend of every month, I will take some action by myself or with others to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Early last year, the tiny all-volunteer committee that helps coordinate this effort made two changes reflected in the wording above. We added the Third Weekend at the request of some of the many longstanding anti-war vigils that take place on Saturdays and Sundays, and we added the war in Afghanistan.

At that time we decided to keep the name Iraq Moratorium because of its name recognition and because we feared that Iraq was falling off the media’s radar and out of public consciousness entirely.

Looking back, we feel that this was a mistake. Iraq has in fact faded in this country’s awareness, despite the 120,000 troops still stationed there, not to mention the similar number of “private contractors” our tax dollars are paying for. Meanwhile, the administration is in the early stages of its second escalation in Afghanistan in less than a year, and the death toll there is rising inexorably–troops, insurgents and Afghani civilians alike–which has placed the occupation there center stage.

The Moratorium committee’s feeling is that the name should be changed to the War Moratorium, but we ask your input because, as mentioned above, the shoestring operation that keeps the Moratorium going consists of a handful of us. Your views will be a welcome contribution to our decision-making.

This is not the place for a summation of the 2,500 plus events that have taken place in observance of the Moratorium so far, nor for a plea for volunteers to help us build it, especially on the Internet and in older forms of media. Both of those will be forthcoming in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, please check out the website and remember the Moratorium slogan:

It’s Got To Stop! We’ve Got To Stop It!

(This enraged sarcasm is crossposted from The WWL)

It has come to my attention repeatedly lately that the biggest threat to America is all the people trying to join our Military Forces and die for the New Crusades while having gender or orientation. They come as dirty sexual beings and ask to serve? How dare they!

This is beyond verboten, it is Mortal Sin!

One cannot serve the Lord and Holy Wars while being gay, let alone transgendered, or for that matter even female with a chance of reproduction. And pregnancy? Do these sluts not know what they did to become that way? A truly moral married woman will gladly give her Children to a State Institution for rearing to serve, anything less is Court Martial! Sex outside of a Man and Woman blessed by the Ordained is sinful, anyway, yet the Law prohibits family members from serving together. Our Military has been co-opted by the Satan of Lust. We must save our brave young children so they may fight with the Lord!

What is a Good Christian Nation to do against all these Unholy Masses of Antichrists swarming through the World, refusing to accept the Lord Jesus as their personal Saviour, and refusing to allow the Righteous Moral Leaders of our Land to use their Oil and Assets to further the spread of the Word of God? I mean, we would totally accept them as Servants of Christ, despite their very obvious non-whiteness, if they would only see that the only way to Salvation is to serve us, thus serving the Lord thy God. We are His Chosen.

I have the Answer: Eunuchs.  

A million dollars a year!

That’s what it costs to put one–that’s right, one–soldier or Marine on the ground in Afghanistan and to house and supply him or her there. This figure comes directly from the White House and was widely quoted in in the flurry of PR around President Obama’s West Point speech announcing his 30,000+ escalation of the occupying force in Afghanistan.

A million bucks a year. That’s a nice round figure. A more useful tool for those of us working to revive the anti-war movement is hard to imagine.

This struck me yesterday when the Transit Authority here in NYC, faced with a severe budget crunch, decided to eliminate passes for kids going to and from school, to close whole subway lines and bus routes, to cut services and crowd trains more, and to limit the Access-A-Ride program for seniors and the disabled. All of this, one report said, would save $139 million in the first year.

The math is easy–simply don’t send 139 troops to Afghanistan next year. That would cover the cost of averting brutal cuts to a public transit system used by more than 5 million people every day.

You get the idea. Call it what you want–a “troop year” perhaps. Anytime some government agency grappling with revenue collapse caused by the economic meltdown announces an increase in fees or a cutback in services, just figure how many troops not being shipped into harm’s way in Helmand Province it would take to make that budget good.

Then spread the word! Use the fact in conversations, letters to the editor, emails to friends and family, leaflets, faxes to Congresscritters who are about to vote to appropriate more money for the war.

People in this country may not like thinking about the war, but they sure can’t help thinking about the economy. This is a nice clear way to help them make the connection.

You know those college students in California who are in the middle of a fierce battle to block an unbelievable 32% tuition increase? That’s right, just bring 505 troops who are already in Afghanistan home in 2010. Some of them might even want to enroll, too.

Join WWL Radio cohosts Diane Gee and Michael Gottlieb tonight on BTR at 6PM Eastern Time.

Like enablers of an evil and demented child, once again America does little when its Power Structure expands its bootprint of hegemony by sending more of our souls and cents to Afghanistan.

The lie of a “War on Terror” covers the One Truth: It is a war on our own American Citizens as much as War on the Citizens of Afghanistan. It is a War on the Poor, perpetrated by the Ruling Elites and being enabled by President Obama.

Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil. – Robert Anton Wilson (1932-2007)

Tune in for an in depth report on this, and other news of the week.

See you there! As always, respectful questions and commentary are welcomed. Call in, or use our attached live chat function!

Join Gottlieb and Diane tonight at 6pm EDT on Wild Wild Left Radio, via BlogtalkRadio, for an interesting hour of Political Reporting and Commentary.

WWL Radio: Free Speech in Practice.

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