Mike Ferner -

Veterans For Peace Delivers 23,000 Impeachment Petitions to House Judiciary Chair Conyers

Mike Ferner — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:08:34 -0500

Subtitle

Impeachment then Imprisonment!

Home Page Excerpt

June 11, 2008

“The next time we meet with him (Rep. John Conyers) we want to hear when he intends to move these articles of impeachment in his committee. I’m not planning on being as polite as we were today.” - VFP Assoc. Member, Debbie Tolson

Full Article

June 11, 2008

by Mike Ferner

Washington, D.C. - Yesterday, a 17-member delegation of Veterans For Peace presented some 23,000 petitions to Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), demanding the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Conyers, chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, is the Member of Congress with the authority to call for impeachment hearings.

That same day, the House of Representatives voted to send the 35 Articles of Impeachment, submitted June 9 by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), to the Judiciary Committee for consideration and hearings.

At their meeting with Conyers, several of the VFP members, each carrying a bundle of petitions, placed them on a table in front of the 21-term Michigan Democrat, and stated why they were in favor of impeachment.

Elliott Adams, VFP president, told Conyers, who is a Korean War veteran, emphasized “it’s not just about impeaching a President, it’s about defending democracy. It is about whether we will continue to have a government of the people and for the people.”

He warned against letting constitutional government slip into the dark waters of a unitary presidency, “…another name for a totalitarian state.”

After listening to the veterans, Conyers said he was not prepared to comment on the impeachment articles Kucinich introduced, but would examine them carefully. He invited VFP members to meet with him again immediately after the Fourth of July recess to hear what he intended to do.

Later that afternoon, Congressman Kucinich met with the VFP delegation In a corridor off the floor of the House of Representatives. Kucinich said that if the Judiciary Çommittee did not schedule hearings by the time the Independence Day break was over, he would “be back with 68 articles the next time, and more after that until they are heard.”

Debbie Tolson, a Washington, D.C. area resident who attended the meeting with Conyers said, “The next time we meet with him we want to hear when he intends to move these articles of impeachment in his committee. I’m not planning on being as polite as we were today.”

New Jersey VFP member, Joe Attamante, commented after the day’s events that the meeting “gave us the opportunity to tell Conyers why he must do what the constitution requires: remove a president and vice-president who blatantly place themselves above any law. I am pleased he has asked us to return, but we need to remind him that the president’s violations of law are clear and that the judiciary committee is obliged to act to preserve the constitution and our country. They have the resources, now they need the will and guts to stand for principle.”

VFP’s Impeachment Committee attempted unsuccessfully to get a meeting with Rep. Conyers for over two months. They finally determined they would take the petitions to Washington on June 11, and sit in at the Chairman’s office until they met with him or were arrested. The morning of the group’s news conference announcing their intentions, Conyers’ appointment scheduler called one of the VFP committee members and scheduled a meeting for that afternoon.

Real News Network covered the news conference and the delivery of petitions to Rep. Conyers. See their coverage here: VFP retained an indy videographer and that material can be viewed here: in addition to this Youtube clip:
Corporate news media was typically absent from the veterans’ news conference Wednesday morning with the exception of a UPI photographer.

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Published On

Published Address

War, Inc.

Mike Ferner — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:28:29 -0500

Subtitle

Why did our government respond to 9/11 with invasion and war?

Home Page Excerpt

June 6, 2008

“Markets function and flourish only when property rights are secure and can be enforced…And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.” - NY Times columnist, Thomas Friedman

Full Article

June 6, 2008

by Mike Ferner

[Note to the revised version: This article was first written for publication in December, 2001, weeks after the U.S. started bombing Afghanistan. It appeared in the April 2002 issue of “Wild Matters,” a national environmental journal Michael Colby published in Vermont.

The initial purpose of War, Inc. was to question why the U.S. chose to go to war after the attacks of September 11, 2001. One could argue that other kinds of responses were possible, such as treating the attacks as a criminal act instead of an act of war which, in any sense of how we understand the word, they were not. Pursuing a criminal response would have brought to bear the intelligence-gathering forces of virtually the entire world, then in universal sympathy with the United States, to arrest and try those responsible for the attacks. Leaving aside for a moment the argument that a criminal investigation into the September 11 attacks would never have been allowed since the federal government at the very least looked the other way before the attacks took place, I think we can safely say the last seven years prove that the path we chose – war – has generated far more innocent victims, grieving families, ruined lives and overall problems for the U.S. than had we sought justice without resorting to war.

Which leaves open the question, why did our government choose to respond by invasion and war?]

“So what is our mistake? We are also human beings. Treat us like human beings,” Gulalae, a 37 year-old Afghan mother, told the Toledo Blade from the dust, hunger and fear of the Shamshatoo refugee camp in Pakistan. She calls Osama bin Laden an “outsider” and says that because of him, “Afghanistan is made into a hell for others.”

Grim does not begin to describe the conditions Gulalae and her family endure. In one three-month period, in just one portion of Shamshatoo, bacteria-related dehydration killed a child nearly every day. The misery in this refugee city is like a grain of sand on the beach of suffering that is Afghanistan. But Americans know little of it.

If you only watch mainstream press accounts you’d never know that within the first three months of “America’s New War,” civilian deaths from U.S. bombing in Afghanistan surpassed 3,700—more than were killed in the attacks of September 11. The toll from unexploded cluster bombs, land mines, destroyed water and sewer systems and depleted uranium shells will no doubt reach into the hundreds of thousands. Add the additional innocents sure to die as the international cycle of violence continues, and our war to end terrorism seems calculated to do just the opposite – which points to a disturbing but plausible reason why we chose war: our government needs Osama bin Laden, just like we needed the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union.

For a year and a decade after the USSR dissolved in 1990, it looked like we would have to settle for homosexuals as the national boogeymen, but al Qaeda serves to crank up the armament budget much better than do homosexuals. We fool ourselves if we deny there was considerable behind-closed-doors celebrating in the board rooms of some of the biggest U.S. corporations when a distinctly unpopular president decided to become a War President and invade Afghanistan; then through the bloody logic of empire, Iraq.

Before the Evil Empire we had the Hun, the despicable Spaniards bombing the Maine before that, and the murderous Mexicans were in the way when we wanted Texas. Similar frights can be traced back through the British Empire and earlier than that to the Gauls up in France whom Caesar had to put to the sword to keep Rome safe.

These days government has much more sophisticated means of monitoring and spying on citizens, so the two plums of power and control now sway temptingly before those who would be our servants. How likely is it that without sufficient fright citizens would abide a PATRIOT Act, or partially disrobe to board a plane, or shrug off wiretaps or multitudes of surveillance cameras now invading city landscapes?

But returning for a moment to the economic incentives for war, the following explains as well as any and better than most: “War is a racket. It always has been…A racket is best described as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.”

Words of a radical peacenik? Only if a Marine Corps Major General qualifies as one. In his twilight years General Smedley Butler unburdened his soul as did other career militarists, such as Admiral Hyman Rickover, who admitted that fathering the nuclear Navy was a mistake and Robert McNamara, who almost found the words to apologize for overseeing the Viet Nam war. Though unlike Rickover and McNamara, Butler named names and exposed for whom the system works.

“I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914” Butler wrote in 1933. “I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.” Butler acknowledged that he’d spent most of his 33 years in the Marines as “a high class muscle man for Big Business, Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

Thus did Butler simply and effectively expose a largely unknown truth—how the military serves the interests of the propertied elite and their wealth-gathering machines, the corporations.

Perhaps more commonly known is the corrupting practice of war profiteering.

“…Only twenty-four at the (Civil) war’s beginning, (J. Pierpont) Morgan perceived from the first that wars were for the shrewd to profit from and poor to die in,” wrote Robert Boyer and Herbert Morais in Labor’s Untold Story. “He received a tip that a store of government-owned rifles had been condemned as defective and with the simplicity of genius he bought them from the government for $17,500 on one day and sold them back to the government on the next for $110,000…A Congressional committee investigating his little deal said of him and other hijacking profiteers, ‘Worse than traitors are the men who, pretending loyalty to the flag, feast and fatten on the misfortunes of the nation.’”

Lest we think such traditions are no longer observed, consider the case of Eagle-Picher Technologies Corp., producer of sophisticated batteries to power the guidance systems of “smart” bombs. Workers claim they were ordered to cover up defects on millions of batteries – defects that would ultimately cause guidance systems to fail. How many innocent civilians were killed by bombs guided by defective Eagle-Picher Corp. batteries?

Ignoring the indictable war profiteers like J.P. Morgan, consider just one instance of legal war profits and how they allow the few “inside the racket” to benefit economically and politically – for generations – at the expense of the many. The du Pont Corporation will suffice.

Compared to some of its fellow racketeers, the du Pont Corporation’s profits during WWI look downright patriotic. The company whose gunpowder saved the world for democracy saw its average annual pre-war profit jump from $6,000,000 to nearly 10 times that amount during the war.

With this wealth the du Pont family was able to buy nearly a quarter of all General Motors Corporation stock by the mid-1920’s. Not only would that become a shrewd investment during GM’s successful campaign to destroy urban mass transit systems, but who better than a du Pont to run President Eisenhower’s Bureau of Public Roads and develop the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways along with Eisenhower Defense Secretary (and former GM President), Charles Wilson?

If war profits provide such a good return on investment, imagine how much planning goes into winning the geostrategic spoils of war? For a peek inside this game there are few better tour guides than President Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Having also served on President Reagan’s Defense Department Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy, Brzezinski was well-qualified to write his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. It’s one of those books that beg the question, “why would anybody actually put this stuff in writing?” It also provides useful documentation for those who find it more than a little odd that “Zbiggy” has more recently joined critics of the war in Iraq.

Brzezinski describes the Europe-Asia landmass as the key to global dominance. He asserts that the fall of the Soviet Union cleared the way for the U.S. to become the first non-Eurasian power to dominate this critical area, “…and America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained…”

In 1977 he named the Central Asian “stans” as the next center of conflict for world domination, and in light of expected Asian economic growth, he called this area around the Caspian Sea “…infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves…dwarf(ing) those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea…in addition to important minerals, including gold.”

The former Reagan National Security Council member reasoned: “It follows that America’s primary interest is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it.”

He further deduced: “That puts a premium on maneuver and manipulation in order to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could eventually seek to challenge America’s primacy.” Leaving nothing to doubt, he clarified “…To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep (satellites) pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.”

For those foolish enough to imagine planet Earth not being ruled by the U.S., he warns that “America’s withdrawal from the world—or because of the sudden emergence of a successful rival—would produce massive international instability. It would prompt global anarchy.”

Brzezinski advises to “keep the barbarians from coming together,” and predicts “global anarchy” if U.S. dominance is threatened. The cold warrior’s language, while picturesque, is not as precise as that used by Thomas Friedman, yet another acolyte of empire who now wants to distance himself from a badly mismanaged adventure in Iraq.

The foreign affairs columnist for the NY Times in his much-hyped book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, wrote: “Markets function and flourish only when property rights are secure and can be enforced…And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”

With a Silicon Valley reference, Friedman updates General Butler’s statement that “I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests.” Notwithstanding Friedman’s update, oil retains its century-old rating as the imperial standard – now with Afghanistan and Iraq at center stage. UNOCAL Corp. for one does not hesitate to demand that Afghanistan be made safe for American oil interests. “From the outset,” a corporate executive testified to Congress in 1998, “we have made it clear that construction of our proposed ($2.5 billion Afghanistan) pipeline cannot begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders and our company. UNOCAL envisions the creation of a Central Asian Oil Pipeline Consortium…that will utilize and gather oil from existing pipeline infrastructure in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia.”

Smedley Butler learned that in war “nations acquire additional territory if they are victorious. They just take it.” With leasing more in vogue than ever, getting the use of additional territory – call it property –can be more profitable than actually acquiring it. But the end result is the same. “This newly acquired territory is promptly exploited by the few,” Butler explained, “the self-same few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.”

A small measure of historical perspective makes America’s latest war much less surprising. Yes, this time it’s oil. But as important as that commodity is, it’s not oil alone for which we are killing. It’s to insure that human rights are subjugated to property rights. Sometimes we call property “oil,” sometimes we call it “land,” sometimes we call it “human beings.” The names change, but the song remains the same throughout history.

For example, it is illuminating to read a few lines from our Constitution, such as Article 4, Section 2. Imbedded in the most fundamental law of our land was the duty to return property in the form of runaway slaves and indentured servants to the owners. The Commerce Clause and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of it has insured that property rights trump citizens’ rights to govern themselves as described in the new expose, “Gaveling Down the Rabble”. And no one who works for a living needs a source citation to tell them that corporations have more free speech rights than human beings.

That’s why the United States government didn’t choose to seek justice through a criminal prosecution after September 11. Our government wasn’t interested in justice. It was interested in empire and property. Some things never do change.

Published On

Information Clearing House

Published Address

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20070.htm

Memorial Day: Veterans Will Pray for Peace

Mike Ferner — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:12:22 -0500

Subtitle

Hold the hotdogs

Home Page Excerpt

May 22, 2008

“It is certainly fitting to place flowers on the graves of young men and women killed in our nation’s wars, but better still to place our hand over our heart and pledge there will be no more.” - VFP President, Elliott Adams

Full Article

May 22, 2008

by Mike Ferner

When General John Logan issued an order in May 1868 to place flowers on the graves of Civil War soldiers buried in Arlington National Cemetery — the first official step toward the holiday we know as Memorial Day — he was following a practice that had originated with women of the Confederacy.

By 1890 every northern state recognized the date of May 30 as a holiday. Following World War I, southern states finally joined them as the holiday began honoring not just Civil War dead, but Americans killed in any war.

As a Navy Corpsman, I tended the physical and mental wounds of hundreds of soldiers returning from Vietnam. It eventually became clear to me that war is not the answer. Coming to that realization is as much a spiritual journey as a political one. That is why I joined Veterans For Peace, because as a veteran, I know the true cost of war, both human and financial.

Of the many veterans’ organizations which mark Memorial Day in the U.S., Veterans For Peace explicitly works to stop producing any more war dead, any more tombstones in Arlington Cemetery, any more garlands for their graves.

Our president, Elliott Adams, a former Army paratrooper and Viet Nam combat vet, is heartfelt when he says, “Our statement of purpose is clear and direct. It says we intend to ‘abolish war as an instrument of national policy.’ We want this generation of veterans to be the last.”

VFP members choose different ways to walk the road of peace. In 2004, VFP Chapter 31 in Philadelphia started talking with a handful of young Iraq war veterans who came back questioning what the government had sent them to do. Eventually, Iraq Veterans Against the War became a VFP-sponsored project, grew to over 1,000 members, and today is off on its own.

The “Arlington West” project in California, originated by the Santa Barbara chapter, has inspired several similar memorials around the nation, each emotionally powerful with their precise rows of crosses or headstones for each soldier killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Truth in Recruiting campaigns that give high school students the facts military recruiters leave out, are conducted by several units including chapters in Santa Fe and Philadelphia.

A chapter in upstate New York marked Veterans Day last year by taking out a full page ad in the Watertown Daily Times to run an “Open Letter to the Soldiers of Fort Drum,” who are among the most frequently deployed to Iraq. The letter ended with a question certain to stir soldiers’ thinking. “How much longer must we support a mistake (and) send more and more members of our military to their early graves…to justify the mistakes of the politicians in Washington?”

“It is certainly fitting to place flowers on the graves of young men and women killed in our nation’s wars,” Adams said, “but better still to place our hand over our heart and pledge there will be no more.”

Indeed, many VFP members will acknowledge that making peace in one’s own heart can seem as daunting as making peace in the world, but that is where it must begin.

Published On

Mineral Daily News-Tribune, Keyser WV

Published Address

http://www.newstribune.info/archive/x1191427146/Veterans-will-pray-for-peace

(Almost) Inside American Royalty's Security Bubble

Mike Ferner — Fri, 02 May 2008 20:23:39 -0500

Subtitle

Bush family momentarily bumps into reality

Home Page Excerpt

April 28, 2008

The First Family Security Bubble was nearly pried open for a moment last Friday; but in the end Disneyland remained blessedly undisturbed.

Full Article

April 28, 2008

by Mike Ferner

Washington, D.C. – The First Family Security Bubble was nearly pried open for a moment last Friday; but in the end Disneyland remained blessedly undisturbed.

On a particularly warm spring evening, Laura and Jenna Bush alighted from a squadron of black SUVs at the Borders book store in downtown Washington, D.C., right on schedule at 7:00 pm. Flanked by Secret Service agents, they went inside to an area set up for authors to sign books – yes, sign books. The two Bush women have co-authored a 32-page children’s book, “Read All About It,” the story of Tyrone, a youngster who is good at everything in school but reading.

In line to have her copy signed, and more importantly, to get a moment to deliver a letter to the authors, waited Gilda Carbonaro, the mother of a U.S. Marine Sergeant who died a quite terrible death in Iraq.

After nearly an hour wait, Gilda approached the table to proffer her book for a signature.

“So that they wouldn’t see me as threatening, I made sure to introduce myself as a grade school teacher, like Jenna,” she said.

The moment she got her signed book back, she took her letter out from within its pages and extended it to Laura and Jenna. Not 500 words long, it was laminated so it would clearly not be in something as suspicious-looking as an envelope.

“At that moment, swooping down out of absolutely nowhere, a Secret Service agent grabbed it out of my hand,” Gilda explained. But before she was hustled away, she extracted a promise from the younger Bush to read it.

After her brief encounter with American royalty, the member of Gold Star Families Speak Out said, “If I had the chance, I would’ve liked to ask Laura Bush, ‘What would you consider enough of a real emergency to urge your kids to enlist? If New Jersey was invaded? Your husband constantly tells us that all hangs in the balance in this war. Just what would it take for your family to really risk something?”

You may be interested to read what Gilda Carbonaro wrote to Laura and Jenna Bush. Heaven knows they’re not likely to, inside the bubble.

Laura and Jenna Bush
c/o Borders Books
14th and F Streets NW
Washington, D.C.

April 25, 2008

Dear Laura and Jenna Bush,

As you promote your new children’s book, “Read All About It,” and advocate for literacy tonight I hope you will take but a few moments to read these heartfelt lines.

I write to you as one of thousands of parents and family members whose loved ones have been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan; whose child, parent or spouse has returned blinded or deaf, armless or legless, or unable to ever move their limbs again; or perhaps have returned apparently unharmed, but with nightmares and a ticking timebomb in their minds.

You may think this a grim postscript to an evening’s chat about a book for children, but when someone you love has been taken from you forever, or returned so terribly damaged you barely know them, it becomes foremost in your thoughts every waking moment. You then begin to understand what is truly grim. And, I must add, there are those among us who still carry such unspeakable pain and anger they’ve become all but exhausted.

But many of us have felt exhaustion be replaced by an energy and a clarity of purpose we have never experienced before. One thing that has become clear to us is an answer to the question, “How could anyone send the youth of its nation to invade Iraq?” We see now how differently someone would answer that question if they suffered the anguish of a family member being killed as the result.

Your children, Mrs. Bush, are safe and I am glad for you. But I wonder, have you ever urged them to enlist in this heroic adventure? Your husband has told us many times how important this cause is. Your children appear well qualified, and as part of the First Family you’ve no doubt taught them the value of demonstrating leadership for the nation.

Why, then, has the price for this war been paid only by people like my son, Marine Corps Sgt. Alessandro Carbonaro, who died May 10, 2006, eight days after being horrifically burned in an IED blast in Al Anbar Province, Iraq?

Can you not see the simple, basic unfairness of asking others to do what you yourself are unwilling to do? Have you drifted so far from an understanding of fundamental justice that you cannot see the contradictions apparent to so many of us?

These are not rhetorical questions. They are as real as the knot in our stomachs and the ache in our hearts. It is time – and past time – that you face these questions without blinking or dodging and give us a satisfactory answer.

Most Sincerely,

Gilda Carbonaro Bethesda, Maryland

Published On

Counterpunch

Published Address

http://www.counterpunch.org/ferner04292008.html

Anniversary of Another Infamous Date

Mike Ferner — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:54:43 -0500

Subtitle

The U.S. never remembers and our victims can never forget

Home Page Excerpt

March 19, 2003

“But you say you live in a democracy. How can this be happening to us?” - Village sheik, Abu Hishma, Iraq

Full Article

March 19, 2008

by Mike Ferner

March 19, 2003: a date that will live in infamy. Perhaps not in the minds of many of our fellow citizens, but surely to most people around the world. On that date, U.S. military forces invaded Iraq.

Almost a year later I was in a small farming village some miles north of Baghdad, accompanying members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams. They were recording the stories of the common people of Iraq who had no access to news media or decision-makers in the Green Zone. One of those stories was from a village sheikh who recounted his weeks of horror as a detainee under the control of the U.S. Army.

He and a dozen others were held in, or rather on, a patch of open ground, surrounded by concertina wire, exposed to the sun, huddled against a two-day rain, and only a hole, dug with their hands, for a toilet. After several days he finally was given at least a blanket.

With his humanity and graciousness somehow still intact, he quickly added that he understood the difference between the American people and their government. But then he uttered the words that haunt me to this day: “But you say you live in a democracy. How can this be happening to us?”

As we arrive at the heartbreaking fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and begin Year Six as that nation’s occupier, it is a good time to reflect on the words of that sheikh.

We might, for example, reflect on this democracy business and whether we have it in such surplus that we can drop quantities of it from F-16s on those we deem need it most; or whether shoveling additional billions into the treasuries of Exxon, Texaco, Shell, Halliburton, and Blackwater ultimately will make our society more or less democratic.

We might reflect on the 1 million-plus Iraqis we have killed, the likely 5 million wounded, the more than 4 million displaced from their homes, the untold millions desperate for clean water, electricity, food, work, security, and sanity in an unending madness. We might reflect on whether we are more or less safe following such a holocaust against our fellow human beings.

We also could reflect on some numbers painfully close to home — at least 3,984 U.S. troops killed and 29,320 wounded, according to President Bush. His definition of “casualties” conveniently does not include more than 100 suicides and 31,325 “nonhostile” injuries — such as getting hurt in a traffic accident racing down the road to a firefight. That is somehow not considered “wounded in action.”

We could reflect on all the doctors, teachers, scientists, and loving parents whose communities will never benefit from their skills and compassion because their blood drained into the sands of Iraq.

We could reflect on how much health care or schooling or public transit we might have bought with the $3 trillion plus this war is likely to cost, or the $390 million it has already taken from taxpayers in the city of Toledo, or the $18 billion vacuumed out of Ohio.

For generations, graveyards have been traditional places to pause and reflect. One particularly stirring and poignant portrayal of a graveyard, called Arlington Midwest, will be erected on the lawn of the Lucas County Courthouse today through Saturday. It consists of some 5,000 small, wooden tombstones, painted white and arranged in precise rows like its namesake in Virginia. Each marker bears the name, rank, branch of service, hometown, and place and date of death for every U.S. soldier killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unique to the dozen or so “Arlingtons” that Veterans For Peace has inspired around the country, Arlington Midwest also has a section memorializing the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have taken their own lives, and a moving tribute to the Iraqi dead.

Just as that mystified village sheikh wondered — “But you say you live in a democracy. How can this be happening to us?” — so might we stand silently for a moment in Arlington Midwest and ask ourselves, “How can this be happening to us?”

How indeed?

Published On

MRzine

Published Address

http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/ferner180308.html

Kick that Barrel

Mike Ferner — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:41:02 -0500

Subtitle

Protesting the Iraq Oil Law

Home Page Excerpt

February 23, 2008

Former Iraq War vet, Adam Kokesh, kick-rolled a 55-gallon oil drum lettered “Hands Off Iraqi Oil” across K Street – an avenue that has become synonymous with the power of corporate lobbyists.

Full Article

February 23, 2008

by Mike Ferner

Washington - In a town awash in irony, this particular example of it couldn’t have been more striking.

Yesterday, in Washington, D.C., former Marine Corps Sergeant and Iraq War vet, Adam Kokesh, kick-rolled a 55-gallon oil drum lettered “Hands Off Iraqi Oil” across K Street – an avenue that has become synonymous with the power of corporate lobbyists. Kokesh, former Army National Guard Sergeant Geoff Millard, and former Army Private Marc Train, in the center of a knot of demonstrators, took turns kicking the barrel up 16th Street towards Lafayette Park, adjoining the White House, for a protest sponsored by U.S. Labor Against the War(USLAW), Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), and Oil Change International.

The protest and an earlier news conference at the Institute for Policy Studies was called to bring public attention to the Oil Law passed by the Iraqi Cabinet one year ago and now waiting approval by Parliament.

Citing a letter USLAW sent yesterday to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and George Bush, Gene Bruskin, co-convenor of USLAW, said that under Paul Bremer, the man Bush put in charge of running Iraq right after the invasion, the Hussein administration laws were wiped off the books - except for Law 150 and Law 151 which prohibit Iraqi workers from organizing unions in the public sector, some two-thirds of the nation’s economy.

“For there to be freedom in Iraq,” Bruskin said, “working people have to have representation. And not just on labor contracts but on social policy.” He pledged the continuing support of USLAW, whose member organizations represent some three million U.S. workers, to Iraqi oil workers and their union, the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions.

Kokesh, who said his time in Iraq taught him that “we are making enemies faster than we can kill them,” called the U.S. presence in Iraq a military and an economic occupation, and that they are “inherently tied.”

Trina Zahller, representing Oil Change International, stated, “No law passed under the U.S. occupation can have legitimacy. Iraqi oil is not a resource for the oil companies, it is for the Iraqi people.”

She said her group’s position is that there should be an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq; that no oil law or long term contracts law be passed under the U.S. occupation; and that international oil companies should be prohibited from owning Iraqi oil. She added that the pending Oil Law provides that currently operating fields stay under Iraqi control, but that future profits from “undiscovered” oil - estimated at 50 percent of all Iraq’s oil – be controlled by oil corporations.

Maintaining its tradition of largely ignoring events critical of U.S. policy in Iraq, U.S. corporate news outlets were conspicuously absent from yesterday’s news conference and protest. United Press International, Talk Radio News, Voice of America and a D.C. television station were the only U.S. news media present. Representing the international press were Reuters; Agence France Press, one of the world’s top newswires; Telesur, a TV network serving much of Latin America; Al Jazeera; and the Japanese newspaper, Akahata.

Published On

Counterpunch

Published Address

http://counterpunch.com/ferner02232008.html

Clinton Campaign Office Re-occupied by Peace Activists on Day of Iowa Voting

Mike Ferner — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 11:42:13 -0600

Subtitle

Action caps four days of Iowa primary protests against war in Iraq

Home Page Excerpt

January 3, 2008

“While the people of Iowa are exercising their legal right…to choose their presidential nominees, it is appropriate that we exercise our extra-legal rights of nonviolent protest to bring this war to an end.”

Full Article

January 3, 2008

by Mike Ferner

Des Moines – Hours before voting begins in the nation’s first presidential poll, peace activists placed the Iraq war front and center again this afternoon as they occupied the Iowa headquarters of Senator Hillary Clinton for the second time since campaigning began last fall.

Over a dozen members of a campaign called “Seasons Of Discontent: A Presidential Occupation Project” (SODaPOP) went to Clinton’s office, saying they still had not gotten a response to a letter delivered in October demanding she publicly oppose any more spending for the war or occupation, and foreswear an attack on Iran.

But as the peace activists approached Clinton’s East Second Street office, staff members locked the main door and refused admittance. At a locked side door, a Clinton staff person was admitted but could not close the door before Jeff Leys, co-director of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, sat down in the doorway.

Leys, speaking on the phone as he remained in the doorway, said about another 15 peace activists were standing outside the entrance helping block it, several Clinton staffers were blocking the doorway into the office, and that no one was going in or out.

Asked why the campaign targeted Senator Clinton’s Iowa headquarters again, Leys said “because she is the most hawkish of any of the leading candidates on foreign policy and she refuses to commit to ending the war in Iraq.”

He said that they are also concerned with Senator Clinton’s connection to the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), at which she gave a keynote address for the center’s launch in June 2007. One of its initial reports released that day, “Phased Transition,” concluded that “…as a rough estimate 25,000 to 40,000 American troops might remain in Iraq” until as late as 2012.

“While the people of Iowa are exercising their legal right to go to the caucuses to choose their presidential nominees, it is appropriate that we exercise our extra-legal rights of nonviolent protest to bring this war to an end,” Leys concluded.

Extra-legal or not, Clinton’s office was reluctant to file a complaint that would trigger arrests, so police withdrew after being on the scene about an hour. Protesters continued their vigil until about 5 pm, by which time nearly all the Clinton staff had left.

Caucus voting was scheduled to begin at 7pm Iowa time and a “Caucus Night Celebration with Hillary” was scheduled at a downtown Des Moines hotel later in the evening.

Clinton’s Des Moines press office was contacted for a statement but had no comment.

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Obama and Romney Iowa Campaign Offices Occupied by Peace Activists

Mike Ferner — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 11:25:50 -0600

Subtitle

Third day of nonviolent resistance to Iraq occupation during presidential primary season

Home Page Excerpt

January 2, 2008

“Today we will visit Obama’s Iowa headquarters and ask him to publicly pledge to fulfill those demands and become a true antiwar candidate.”

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January 2, 2008

by Mike Ferner

Des Moines – Opponents of the occupation of Iraq today occupied the Iowa campaign headquarters of presidential candidates U.S. Senator Barak Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, waiting for a response to a letter requesting them to oppose any more spending for the war or occupation and foreswear an attack on Iran.

Eight people were arrested at Obama’s Iowa campaign headquarters and four at Romney’s, in this, the third day of such nonviolent “direct actions” organized by “Seasons Of Discontent: A Presidential Occupation Project” (SODAPOP) since the presidential primary season began in Iowa late last year.

Explaining why Senator Obama’s office was targeted, Voices for Creative Nonviolence co-director, Dan Pearson, pointed to the Illinois Senator’s consistent support for war funding until a May, 2007 supplemental funding vote “which everyone knew was going to fail anyway. Even his proposed Iraq De-Escalation Act of 2007 wasn’t really anti-war. It allows for thousands of U.S. troops to stay in Iraq and others to be deployed to Afghanistan and other countries in the region when the only place they belong is back here.”

Pearson said the SODAPOP campaign has not yet received a response to a letter delivered to Obama last October, asking him to pledge to completely withdraw from Iraq within 100 days of assuming office; halt all military actions against Iraq and Iran; fund the rebuilding of Iraq as well as health, education and infrastructure needs in the U.S.; and provide “…the highest quality health care, education and jobs training benefits for veterans of our country’s Armed Services.”

“Today we will visit his Iowa headquarters and ask him to publicly pledge to fulfill those demands and become a true antiwar candidate,” Pearson concluded.

Another SODAPOP participant, Brian Terrell, Director of the Catholic Peace Ministry in Des Moines, said that as of yesterday he was ambivalent about which candidate’s office to occupy, “but now I see this statement from (Ohio Congressman Dennis) Kucinich which I think is really irresponsible, asking his supporters to make Barak Obama their second choice…that they both stand for change. But what kind of change is he talking about? Leaving 40-60,000 troops in Iraq? Leaving on the table the bombing of Iran? Asking Iowans to support increased military spending? I hope our action here counters the message Kucinich is putting out (about Obama).”

Spokesperson Mona Shaw reported that at Obama’s office Kathy Kelly, 55, Chicago; Dicki Andrews, 63, Grand Rapids, Michigan; Diane Haugesag, 48, Minneapolis; David Hovee, 37 and Tom Roddy, 76 of Evanston, Illinois; Dan Pearson, 26, Chicago; Brian Terrell, 50, Maloy, Iowa and John Tuzcu, 23, Des Moines were arrested and charged with trespassing. She also said that arrested at Romney’s headquarters and charged with trespassing were Chris Gaunt, 51, a farmer from Grinnell, Iowa; Ed Bloomer, 63, Des Moines; Janice Sevre-Duszynska 57, Nicholasville, Kentucky; and Suzanne Sheridan, 31, Chicago.

Asked what kind of welcome the demonstrators received at each office, independent photographer Mauro Heck said, “The Romney people were friendlier than at Obama’s actually. They received the demonstrators about as warmly as one could expect, but at Obama’s office they blocked the door at first.”

Independent journalist, Michael Gillespie reported that while he was covering the occupations he saw only one U.S. news outlet, a Des Moines TV station. “German, British, Italian and Japanese press were there, but no others from the U.S.”

The Romney and Obama Iowa headquarters were each contacted for comment, but campaign spokespersons were unavailable.

Two days ago, three SODAPOP organizers occupied and were arrested at former governor Mike Huckabee’s Des Moines office, and in November a total of 18 were arrested at the Iowa campaign headquarters of Senator Hillary Clinton and former mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

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Peace Activists Occupy Huckabee's Iowa Campaign Office

Mike Ferner — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 11:14:43 -0600

Subtitle

Protesters ask former Baptist minister, “Who Would Jesus Bomb?”

Home Page Excerpt

December 31, 2007

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December 31, 2007

by Mike Ferner

Des Moines – With 40 percent of Iowa’s Republican caucus voters expected to come from the ranks of conservative Christians, peace activists occupied Mike Huckabee’s campaign headquarters in Iowa’s capital city today with signs asking the former Baptist minister, “Who Would Jesus Bomb?”

Eight members of the Iowa Occupation Project and Voices for Creative Nonviolence arrived at Huckabee’s Locust St. campaign office early Monday afternoon, waiting for the former Arkansas governor’s reply to a letter delivered two months ago that sought his pledge to completely withdraw from Iraq within 100 days of assuming office; halt all military actions against Iraq and Iran; fund the rebuilding of Iraq as well as health, education and infrastructure needs in the U.S.; and “…the highest quality health care, education and jobs training benefits for veterans of our country’s Armed Services.”

Brian Terrell, director of the Catholic Peace Ministry in Des Moines, said approximately 35 reporters, including a number of international journalists, were at Huckabee’s office during the protest.

Terrell said in addition to the “Who Would Jesus Bomb?” banner, the eight protesters held signs that read, “End Iraq War” and “No War with Iran,” sang the refrain from “Auld Lang Syne,” chanted ‘Who Would Jesus Bomb?’ and then read names of Iraqis and U.S. soldiers killed in the war.

Sgt. Vincent Valdez of the Des Moines Police Department said officers responded to an early afternoon complaint from the Huckabee Campaign office and arrested Robert Braam, Mona Shaw and Kathy Kelly, on charges of trespassing. He said the three were among a group “holding signs, singing and reading aloud, basically making a disturbance.” Valdez said the officers had no trouble making the arrests and the three were taken to the Polk County jail.

In a news release issued earlier by the Des Moines Catholic Worker, Kelly, co-director of VCNV, was quoted as saying, “We’re very respectful of the Iowa caucus process and the long history behind it but we feel quite strongly that the issues of this war must be inserted into the process of narrowing down the candidates for the presidential election.”

Huckabee spokesperson, Eric Woolson, could not be reached for comment after several attempts.

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God Bless the Senate Republicans!

Mike Ferner — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 20:17:45 -0600

Subtitle

Republicans for Peace?

Home Page Excerpt

November 17,2007

Into every tragically depressing world situation some light must shine if you wait long enough and the planets align just right.

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November 17, 2007

by Mike Ferner

Into every tragically depressing world situation some light must shine if you wait long enough and the planets align just right.

That glimmer of light came yesterday from, of all places, the Death Star known by many as Washington, D.C., from deep within one of the most unfathomable quadrants of that bleakness – the chambers of the United States Senate. Even more remarkably, it sprang from what some consider a true black hole – the Republican caucus.

But light it is, and in these times we need to celebrate every photon that comes our way.

Yesterday, the Senate voted 53-45, seven votes short of the 60 needed to advance the bill, against a $50,000,000,000 “supplemental” funding measure passed earlier this week by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives. What the Republicans objected to was the limp, inconsequential troop withdrawal plan supported by House and Senate Democrats – something that Groucho Marx would have much more accurately termed, “a sham of a mockery of a sham.”

The sham-of-a-mockery-of-a-withdrawal the Democrats wrote and the Republicans just could not stomach, required the president to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq by December 15, 2008 – all except a few thousand for “protecting United States diplomatic facilities;” perhaps ten thousand or so for “conducting limited training, equipping, and providing logistical and intelligence support to the Iraqi security forces,” a few more thousand for “protecting United States Armed Forces and American citizens” in Iraq, including those pillars of the community from Blackwater, Inc.; and a few more thousand for “engaging in targeted counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda affiliated groups, and other terrorist organizations in Iraq.”

They actually called this a “limited presence.”

This was the “withdrawal” plan the Democrats wanted in exchange for another 50 billion dollars to continue the war. To paraphrase the late Republican Senator Everett Dirksen: “Even though the dollar is rapidly going down the toilet, pretty soon it adds up to real money.”

To the Senate Republicans I send a warm “thank you” for killing a $50,000,000,000 cash infusion into this tragic, illegal war.

To the scores of peace activists around the country preparing to occupy their U.S. Senators’ local offices to press them to vote against more war funding I say, “Declare victory in this round. And then get 10 friends to pledge to occupy those offices with you in February, when the Democrats will feel compelled to bail out Bush again.”

To MoveOn.org and similar groups whose main purpose in life is toadying up to the Democratic Party, I say, “Spare us your electronic mobilizations of well-meaning citizens to bombard the airwaves and street corners with a ‘Damn the Republicans for voting against a timetable to end the war’ message. Leave the internet lines open for more meaningful emails like Nigerian business opportunities and penis patches.”

And to anyone who thinks this too cynical or too hard on our last, best hope, the Congressional Democrats, I commend this pompous, arrogant, condescending quote, dripping with hubris from a leading Senate liberal, Carl Levin (D-MI), during yesterday’s Senate debate: “We need to do more than say to the Iraqis that our patience has run out and that they need to seize the opportunity that has been given them…Their dawdling will only end when they have no choice.”

Yes, it’s quite an opportunity we’ve given the Iraqis, Senator Levin…but then they are such an ungrateful, dawdling lot.

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