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Memorial Day Special: U.S. Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan Return War Medals at NATO Summit

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Nato summit leaders ‘were busy posing for photo ops’ as war veterans staged protest. Photograph: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Democracy Now! returns to Chicago, site of the largest NATO summit in the organization’s six-decade history, where nearly 50 veterans discarded their war medals by hurling them down the street in the direction of the NATO summit. We hear the soldiers’ voices as they return their medals one by one from the stage. “I’m here to return my Global War on Terror Service Medal in solidarity with the people of Iraq and the people of Afghanistan,” said Jason Hurd, a former combat medic who spent 10 years in the U.S. Army. “I am deeply sorry for the destruction that we have caused in those countries and around the globe.” Scott Kimball, an Iraq war veteran, adds: “For all the servicemembers and veterans who are against these wars, you are not alone!” Click here to see the other parts of the 2012 Memorial Day Special: 2, 3, 4, 5. [includes rush transcript]

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“No NATO, No War”: U.S. Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan Return War Medals at NATO Summit

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DEMOCRACY NOW : We broadcast from Chicago, site of the largest NATO summit in the organization’s six-decade history. On Sunday, veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as members of Afghans for Peace, led a peace march of thousands of people. Iraq Veterans Against the War held a ceremony where nearly 50 veterans discarded their war medals by hurling them down the street in the direction of the NATO summit. We hear the soldiers’ voices as they return their medals one by one from the stage. “I’m here to return my Global War on Terror Service Medal in solidarity with the people of Iraq and the people of Afghanistan,” said Jason Hurd, a former combat medic who spent 10 years in the U.S. Army. “I am deeply sorry for the destruction that we have caused in those countries and around the globe.” [includes rush transcript]

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A shameful impasse on Syria

The Post’s View

By Editorial Board, Published: May 10

THE OBAMA administration has reached an ignominious impasse on Syria. Administration spokesmen now publicly recognize that the United Nations diplomatic initiative it has backed for the past seven weeks has been a failure. They acknowledge — as they should have long ago — that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has no intention of ending violence against his opposition, or meeting any other condition of the “Annan plan.”Yet President Obama refuses to embrace other options. His administration’s strategy is one of militant passivity: Officials say they are waiting for U.N. envoy Kofi Annan to agree with them that his diplomacy has failed, and to say so to the U.N. Security Council. They are waiting for the Russian regime of Vladi­mir Putin, which has been pummeling its own pro-democracy movement in the streets of Moscow, to be shamed into abandoning its support for the Assad dictatorship. And they are waiting for the Syrian opposition — which is either in exile or under relentless assault from tanks and artillery — to metamorphose into a coherent alternative with detailed plans for governance.

A shameful impasse in Syria

U.S. passivity is costing more than innocent lives.

This strategy will allow Mr. Assad to go on killing indefinitely. Mr. Annan, after all, describes his plan as the only alternative to a Syrian civil war, so he is unlikely to abandon it any time soon. The Russians don’t sound at all shamed: “Things are moving in a positive direction,” Moscow’s U.N. ambassador Vitaly Churkin chirped Tuesday. The Syrian opposition, like any beleaguered resistance to a murderous dictatorship, can be counted on not to reach the high bar set by disdainful desk officers at the State Department.More than 1,000 men, women and children have died since Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, declared the Annan plan “the best way to end the violence.” But the consequences of U.S. passivity go beyond loss of innocent Syrian life. The prolongation of the conflict poses serious threats to U.S. interests and allies.

Three nascent or foreseeable developments stand out. One is that what began as a secular, peaceful and pro-democracy movement in Syria will degenerate into a sectarian war in which the majority Sunni community targets Mr. Assad’s minority Alawites, while Kurds, Christians and other minorities are caught in the middle. In several parts of the country, including the cities of Homs and Hama, that already has happened.A second danger is that al-Qaeda and other Sunni extremist movements will take advantage of the chaos. As The Post’s Liz Sly recently reported, jihadists have flowed into Syria from Iraq and Jordan, and operatives linked to al-Qaeda are believed to have carried out a series of bombings in the last five months. A double-suicide bombing in Damascus on Thursday was the worst yet.The third and most grave threat is that sectarian war in Syria will jump across borders. Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey all have the same divides among Shiite and Sunni sects; Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said Syria’s fighting could spread “like a house on fire.” Once that happens, outside intervention by the United States would be impossible and the damage uncontainable.The administration’s experts on Syria recognize the danger. Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey D. Feltman told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “it’s one of the reasons why I said our policy is to try to accelerate the arrival of that tipping point” at which Mr. Assad falls. “The longer this goes on, the higher the risks of long-term sectarian conflict, the higher the risk of extremism. So we want to see this happen earlier,” Mr. Feltman said.

That testimony was delivered on March 1.

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Malcolm X: Make It Plain (Full PBS Documentary)

[youtube http://youtu.be/6zvGRmX2gcs?]
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On Democracy Now : Booker’s story

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In 1965, Booker Wright, an African-American waiter in Greenwood, Mississippi, dared to be interviewed by NBC about racism in America, a decision that forever changed his and his family’s lives. Wright said during the interview, “I always learned to smile. The meaner the man be, the more you smile. Do all your crying on the inside.” He would later lose his job, be beaten by police, and ultimately be murdered. Wright’s story is told in the new documentary film, “Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story,” a collaboration between our two guests: co-producer Yvette Johnson, Wright’s grand-daughter, and director Raymond De Felitta, whose father, Frank De Felitta, originally filmed the interview with Wright and later said he regretted it. [includes rush transcript]

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Jimmy Kimmel Hosts the 2012 White House Correspondents’ Dinner

[youtube http://youtu.be/vK8ID0Eki68?]

See Stephan Colbert  in 2006

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Whistleblowers prosecuted while war criminals remain free?

[youtube http://youtu.be/gB4o6o2WYL0?]

A newly released document acquired by Wired Magazine exposes the United States Defense Department’s torture techniques. In the 37 page report, former CIA official John Kiriakou warns the George W. Bush administration about the techniques that were being used on detainees and explains how they are against US law. His warnings went unheard of, until Kiriakou was indicted for leaking the information to the media. David Swanson, campaigner for Roots Action, joins us with more.

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The Angola three (USA)

click on image for Democracy Now section on the Angola Three

Visit Herman’s House

“A FORTY YEAR HISTORY OF REPRESSION:

On April 17, 1972, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox of the Angola 3 were placed in solitary confinement at Angola Prison in Louisiana. Wallace and Woodfox were subsequently railroaded and convicted for the murder of a prison guard, and remain in solitary to this day. They were framed COINTELPRO-style, in retaliation for co-founding a Black Panther chapter at Angola that initiated multiracial work and hunger strikes.

Currently held inside California’s notorious Pelican Bay State Prison, Hugo “Yogi Bear” Pinell, of the San Quentin Six, has now been in continuous solitary for at least 42 years. A participant in the recent statewide prisoner hunger strike, Pinell was a close comrade of Black Panther and prison author, George Jackson. Having been continually denied parole despite a clean record for the last 27 years, Pinell is, in the words of the Angola 3’s own Robert H. King, “a clear example of a political prisoner.” His next parole hearing is scheduled for this May.

The stories of the Angola 3 and Hugo Pinell are the most extreme examples of a widespread human rights crisis in US prisons, where prolonged solitary confinement has become routine. According to http://www.solitarywatch.com, there are “at least 75,000 and perhaps more than 100,000 prisoners in solitary confinement on any given day” in the US.” from this source

See also this clip : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RorvRbUWWTE&feature=related

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Who Am I?

 Asrar Anwar

April 12, 2012

I am the Iraqi child of Fallujah you exposed to cancer with your depleted uranium.

I am the Palestinian women whose olive tree you uprooted and kids you left starving.

I am the Afghan man who has only seen years of brutal Soviet war and now US occupation.

I am the Iraqi man you shot dead at a checkpoint because you felt like it.

I am the Palestinian family you forcibly removed from their home.

I am the widowed Afghan whose land you continue to occupy and children you continue kill.

I am the Iraqi women you raped in the name of liberation.

I am the prisoner you tortured at Abu Ghraib and Bagram in the name of democracy.

I am the civilian in Iraq you named ‘collateral damage’ and left to rot.

I am the Palestinian school child you prevented from getting to school with your apartheid roads forcing me to wait hours at a checkpoint and miss class.

I am the Afghan woman you so wish to liberate, except you can leave your liberation in the trash can where it belongs.

I am the Muslim man you accused of being a terrorist, water-boarded and locked up in Guantanamo without parole.

I am the victim of your so called war on terror.

I am the shadow that walks alone.

I am the one that haunts your dreams.

How can you go to sleep with the bloody image of me in the back of your mind?

I am Palestine. I am Iraq. I am Afghanistan.

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