military resistance 8l9 a hidden history[1]

8/8/2019 Military Resistance 8L9 a Hidden History[1]

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Military Resistance: [email protected] 12.19.10 Print it out: color best. Pass it on.

Military Resistance 8L9

The Soldiers Truce:A Hidden History From The First

World War

German and British soldiers fraternize Christmas 1914

[Thanks to Dennis Serdel, Vietnam 1967-68 (one tour) Light Infantry, Americal Div. 11thBrigade, purple heart, Veterans For Peace 50 Michigan, Vietnam Veterans Against TheWar, United Auto Workers GM Retiree, in Perry, Michigan]

To many, the end of the war and the failure of the peace would validate theChristmas cease-fire as the only meaningful episode in the apocalypse.

It belied the bellicose slogans and suggested that the men fighting and oftendying were, as usual, proxies for governments and issues that had little to do withtheir everyday lives. A candle lit in the darkness of Flanders, the truce flickeredbriefly and survives only in memoirs, letters, song, drama and story.

December 1, 2005 by John V. Denson, 2005 LewRockwell.com [Excerpts]
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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The Christmas Truce, which occurred primarily between the British and Germansoldiers along the Western Front in December 1914, is an event the officialhistories of the Great War leave out, and the Orwellian historians hide from thepublic.

Stanley Weintraub has broken through this barrier of silence and written a moving

account of this significant event by compiling letters sent home from the front, as well asdiaries of the soldiers involved. His book is entitled Silent Night: The Story of the WorldWar I Christmas Truce. The book contains many pictures of the actual events showingthe opposing forces mixing and celebrating together that first Christmas of the war.

This remarkable story begins to unfold, according to Weintraub, on the morning ofDecember 19, 1914:

Lieutenant Geoffrey Heinekey, new to the 2ND Queens Westminster Rifles, wroteto his mother, A most extraordinary thing happened. . . Some Germans came outand held up their hands and began to take in some of their wounded and so weourselves immediately got out of our trenches and began bringing in our wounded

also. The Germans then beckoned to us and a lot of us went over and talked tothem and they helped us to bury our dead. This lasted the whole morning and Italked to several of them and I must say they seemed extraordinarily fine men . . . .It seemed too ironical for words. There, the night before we had been having aterrific battle and the morning after, there we were smoking their cigarettes andthey smoking ours. (p. 5)

Weintraub reports that the French and Belgians reacted differently to the war and withmore emotion than the British in the beginning. The war was occurring on their land andThe French had lived in an atmosphere of revanche since 1870, when Alsace andLorraine were seized by the Prussians in a war declared by the French. (p. 4).

The British and German soldiers, however, saw little meaning in the war as tothem, and, after all, the British King and the German Kaiser were both grandsonsof Queen Victoria. Why should the Germans and British be at war, or hating eachother, because a royal couple from Austria were killed by an assassin while theywere visiting in Serbia?

However, since August when the war started, hundreds of thousands of soldiers hadbeen killed, wounded or missing by December 1914 (p. xvi).

It is estimated that over eighty thousand young Germans had gone to England beforethe war to be employed in such jobs as waiters, cooks, and cab drivers and many spokeEnglish very well. It appears that the Germans were the instigators of this move towards

a truce.

So much interchange had occurred across the lines by the time that ChristmasEve approached that Brigadier General G.T. Forrestier-Walker issued a directiveforbidding fraternization:

For it discourages initiative in commanders, and destroys offensive spirit in allranks . . . Friendly intercourse with the enemy, unofficial armistices and exchange


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of tobacco and other comforts, however tempting and occasionally amusing theymay be, are absolutely prohibited. (p. 67).

Later strict orders were issued that any fraternization would result in a court-martial.

Most of the seasoned German soldiers had been sent to the Russian front while theyouthful and somewhat untrained Germans, who were recruited first, or quicklyvolunteered, were sent to the Western Front at the beginning of the war. Likewise, inEngland young men rushed to join in the war for the personal glory they thought theymight achieve and many were afraid the war might end before they could get to the front.They had no idea this war would become one of attrition and conscription or that it wouldset the trend for the whole 20TH century, the bloodiest in history which became knownas the War and Welfare Century.

As night fell on Christmas Eve the British soldiers noticed the Germans putting upsmall Christmas trees along with candles at the top of their trenches and manybegan to shout in English We no shoot if you no shoot.(p. 25).

The firing stopped along the many miles of the trenches and the British began to noticethat the Germans were coming out of the trenches toward the British who responded bycoming out to meet them.

They mixed and mingled in No Mans Land and soon began to exchange chocolates forcigars and various newspaper accounts of the war which contained the propaganda fromtheir respective homelands.

Many of the officers on each side attempted to prevent the event from occurringbut the soldiers ignored the risk of a court-martial or of being shot.

Some of the meetings reported in diaries were between Anglo-Saxons andGerman Saxons and the Germans joked that they should join together and fightthe Prussians.

The massive amount of fraternization, or maybe just the Christmas spirit, deterred theofficers from taking action and many of them began to go out into No Mans Land andexchange Christmas greetings with their opposing officers.

Each side helped bury their dead and remove the wounded so that by Christmasmorning there was a large open area about as wide as the size of two football fieldsseparating the opposing trenches.

The soldiers emerged again on Christmas morning and began singing Christmascarols, especially Silent Night. They recited the 23RD Psalm together and playedsoccer and football. Again, Christmas gifts were exchanged and meals wereprepared openly and attended by the opposing forces.

Weintraub quotes one soldiers observation of the event: Never . . . was I sokeenly aware of the insanity of war. (p. 33).


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The first official British history of the war came out in 1926 which indicated that theChristmas Truce was a very insignificant matter with only a few people involved.However, Weintraub states:

During a House of Commons debate on March 31, 1930, Sir H. Kinglsey Wood, aCabinet Minister during the next war, and a Major In the front trenches at

Christmas 1914, recalled that he took part in what was well known at the time as atruce. We went over in front of the trenches and shook hands with many of ourGerman enemies. A great number of people (now) think we did something thatwas degrading.

Refusing to presume that, he went on, The fact is that we did it, and I then cameto the conclusion that I have held very firmly ever since, that if we had been left toourselves there would never have been another shot fired. For a fortnight thetruce went on. We were on the most friendly terms, and it was only the fact thatwe were being controlled by others that made it necessary for us to start trying toshoot one another again.

He blamed the resumption of the war on the grip of the political system whichwas bad, and I and others who were there at the time determined there and thennever to rest . . . Until we had seen whether we could change it. But they couldnot. (p. 16970)

Two soldiers, one British and one German, both experienced the horrors of thetrench warfare in the Great War and both wrote moving accounts whichchallenged the idea of the glory of a sacrifice of the individual to the nation in anunnecessary or unjust war.

The British soldier, Wilfred Owen, wrote a famous poem before he was killed inthe trenches seven days before the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.

He tells of the horror of the gas warfare which killed many in the trenches and ends withthe following lines:

If in some smothering dreams you too could paceBehind the wagon that we flung him in,And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,His hanging face, like a devils sick of sin;If you could hear, at every jolt, the bloodCome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cudOf vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues My friend, you would not tell with

such high zestTo children ardent for some desperate gloryThe old Lie: Dulce et decorum estPro patria mori.

(The Latin phrase is translated roughly as It is sweet and honorable to die for onescountry, a line from the Roman poet Horace used to produce patriotic zeal for ancientRoman wars.)


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The German soldier was Erich M. Remarque who wrote one of the best anti-warnovels of all time, entitled All Quiet On The Western Front, which was later madeinto an American movie that won the Academy Awards in 1929 as the Best Movieof the year.

He also attacked the idea of the nobility of dying for your country in a war and hedescribes the suffering in the trenches:

We see men living with their skulls blown open; We see soldiers run with their twofeet cut off; They stagger on their splintered stumps into the next shell-hole; Alance corporal crawls a mile and half on his hands dragging his smashed kneeafter him; Another goes to the dressing station and over his clasped hands bulgehis intestines; We see men without mouths, without jaws, without faces; We findone man who has held the artery of his arm in his teeth for two hours in order notto bleed to death.

I would imagine that the Christmas Truce probably inspired the English novelist and

poet, Thomas Hardy, to write a poem about World War I entitled The Man He Killed,which reads as follows:

Had he and I but metBy some old ancient inn,We should have sat us down to wetRight many a nipperkin!

But ranged as infantry,And staring face to face,I shot at him as he at me,And killed him in his place.

I shot him dead because Because he was my foe,

Just so: my foe of course he was;Thats clear enough; although

He thought hed list, perhaps,Off-hand like just as I Was out of work had sold his traps No other reasonwhy.

Yes, quaint and curious war is!You shoot a fellow down

Youd treat if met where any bar is,Or help to half-a-crown.

Many leaders of the British Empire saw the new nationalistic Germany (since 187071)as a threat to their world trade, especially with Germanys new navy.

The idea that economics played a major role in bringing on the war was confirmedby President Woodrow Wilson after the war in a speech wherein he gave hisassessment of the real cause of the war. He was campaigning in St. Louis, Missouri


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in September of 1919 trying to get the U.S. Senate to approve the Versailles Treaty andhe stated:

Why, my fellow-citizens, is there (anyone) here who does not know that the seedof war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?. . . This war, in itsinception, was a commercial and industrial war. It was not a political war.

Weintraub alludes to a play by William Douglas Home entitled A Christmas Trucewherein he has characters representing British and German soldiers who just finished asoccer game in No Mans Land on Christmas day and engaged in a conversation whichvery well could represent the feelings of the soldiers on that day.

The German lieutenant concedes the impossibility of the war ending as the soccergame had just done, with no bad consequences Because the Kaiser and thegenerals and the politicians in my country order us that we fight.

So do ours, agrees Andrew Wilson (the British soldier)

Then what can we do?

The answers nothing. But if we do nothing . . . . like were dong now, and go ondoing it, therell be nothing they can do but send us home.

Or shoot us. (p. 110)

The Great War killed over ten million soldiers and Weintraub states, Following the finalArmistice came an imposed peace in 1919 that created new instabilities ensuringanother war, (p. 174). This next war killed more than fifty million people, over half ofwhich were civilians. Weintruab writes:

To many, the end of the war and the failure of the peace would validate theChristmas cease-fire as the only meaningful episode in the apocalypse.

It belied the bellicose slogans and suggested that the men fighting and oftendying were, as usual, proxies for governments and issues that had little to do withtheir everyday lives. A candle lit in the darkness of Flanders, the truce flickeredbriefly and survives only in memoirs, letters, song, drama and story. (p. xvi).

He concludes his remarkable book with the following:

A celebration of the human spirit, the Christmas Truce remains a movingmanifestation of the absurdities of war. A very minor Scottish poet of Great War

vintage, Frederick Niven, may have got it right in his A Carol from Flanders,which closed,

O ye who read this truthful rimeFrom Flanders, kneel and say:God speed the time when every dayShall be as Christmas Day. (p. 175)

MORE:


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British And German Soldiers Arm-In-Arm

The Illustrated London News of January 9, 1915 [Thanks to June VI, who sent this in.]

BRITISH AND GERMAN SOLDIERS ARM-IN-ARM AND EXCHANGING HEADGEAR: ACHRISTMAS TRUCE BETWEEN OPPOSING TRENCHES.

DRAWN BY A. C. MICHAEL

SAXONS AND ANGLO-SAXONS FRATERNISING ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE ATTHE SEASON OF PEACE AND GOODWILL: OFFICERS AND MEN FROM THEGERMAN AND BRITISH TRENCHES MEET AND GREET ONE ANOTHER - AGERMAN OFFICER PHOTOGRAPHING A GROUP OF FOES AND FRIENDS.

The spirit of Christmas made itself felt in at least one section of the trenches at the front,where British and German soldiers fraternised, and for a brief while, during an informaland spontaneous truce, there was peace on earth and goodwill towards men amongthose who a few hours before had been seeking each others blood, and where bound todo so again after the truce was over.

The part of the British lines where these incongruous scenes occurred, was, it is said, ata point where the enemys trenches, only about eighty yards away, were occupied by aSaxon regiment. Further along the line, where Prussian troops were said to be stationed,there was a certain amount of fighting.

It was apparently towards the British left that the friendly truce was observed, whileofficers and men from both sides left their trenches and met in No Mans Land between,where, as a rule, no man dares to show so much as the top of his head.


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British and Germans met and shook hands, exchanged cigars and cigarettes,newspapers and addresses, and wished each other the compliments of the season,conversing as far as possible with the aid, as interpreter, of a German soldier who hadlived in America.

A group of British and German soldiers, arm-in-arm, some of whom had exchangedhead-gear, were photographed by a German officer.

The figure on the extreme left in our drawing, for instance, is a German soldier in aBritish service-cap, while the fourth figure from the left is a British soldier in his goat-skincoat wearing a Pickelhaube, or German helmet.

Some of the British, it is said visited the German trenches and an Anglo-German footballmatch was even played. The dead who lay in front of the trenches were buried, and aparty of German brought back the body of a British officer.- [Drawing Copyrighted inUnited States and Canada.]

German and Russian soldiers fraternise on the Eastern Front

AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS

Foreign Occupation ServicememberKilled Somewhere Or Other In

Afghanistan:Nationality Not Announced

December 18 Reuters

A foreign servicemember died following an improvised explosive device attack insouthern Afghanistan today.


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Odessa Family Remembers Fallen Hero

December 8, 2010 Meron Berkson, CBS 7 News

Staff Sergeant Jason Reeves became the 4th soldier from Odessa to be killedoverseas.

He lived in Odessa for only 2 years, but made a lifetime of an impact on those who knewhim. He was a real hard worker about doing his job, doing it right and in the army heobeyed and thats the reason he excelled like he did in the service, said Earl Moize, Sgt.Reeves grandfather.

Staff Sgt. Jason Reeves moved from Phoenix to Odessa at the age of 19 after droppingout of high school. He worked for his grandparents, Earl and Wuanell Moize at theircabinet shop in Odessa while getting his high school degree through correspondence.

He always made sure to put a smile on his families faces.

He had a real dry sense of humor, he would say things that would crack you up, saidWuanell Moize, Sgt. Reeves grandmother.

Reeves enlisted in the army at the Music City Mall in Odessa following his fathersfootsteps who had been in the Air Force for over 20 years. He served in Korea and Iraqbefore being deployed to Afghanistan three months ago. It was there where animprovised explosive device took his life, leaving his family stunned.

It was sort of a shock. It took several hours before it sunk in to me. Our daughter hadcalled and she told me over the cell phone, and it was still a shock. Of course when

theyre over there you worry about them. When theyre anywhere you worry about them,the Moizes said

Reeves remains were shipped to Delaware earlier today and his parents were there,waiting for him. But Jasons name and legacy will still live on with his family. He hasone sister in California and she had a new baby yesterday, a little boy and she namedhim after Jason, so were pleased with that too, said Wuanell Moize.


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For An Unforgettable Experience, VisitBeautiful Nangahar

Taliban fighters in Nangarhar province December 13, 2010 picture. REUTERS/Stringer

ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT;ALL HOME NOW

US soldiers from First Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division patrolalong a dried water channel in district Panjwai, Afghanistans Kandahar province, , Nov.25, 2010. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)


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US troops patrol around Kop Ahmed camp near Kandahar city on November 28, 2010.(AFP/Martin Bureau)

MILITARY NEWS

THIS IS HOW OBAMA BRINGS THEM HOME:ALL HOME NOW, ALIVE


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The casket of Marine Mike Geary, a 2009 graduate of Pinkerton Academy, who wasrecently killed in Afghanistan, passes by Pinkerton Academy in Derry, N.H., Dec. 15,2010. (AP Photos/Cheryl Senter)


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The casket of Lance Cpl. Michael Geary of Derry, N.H., at the Veterans Cemetery, in

Boscawen, N.H., Dec. 17, 2010. (AP Photos/Jim Cole)

POLITICIANS CANT BE COUNTED ON TO HALTTHE BLOODSHED

THE TROOPS HAVE THE POWER TO STOP THEWARS

Retired Colonel Sues PentagonShitheads For First Approving,

Then Ripping Up His Book:Passages Were Removed From 250

Of The Books 320 Pages


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Many Of The Asserted Redactions AreObjectively Absurd

December 14, 2010 By SCOTT SHANE, The New York Times

WASHINGTON A former Defense Intelligence Agency officer whose Afghan memoirwas belatedly censored by the Pentagon filed a lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to have thebooks full text restored in future printings.

In September, the Defense Department spent $47,300 to purchase and destroy the

entire first printing of Operation Dark Heart by Anthony A. Shaffer, asserting that itcontained classified information.

The book was hastily reprinted with many passages blacked out and has become a bestseller.

But unredacted advance copies of the book, among a few dozen distributed by St.Martins Press before the Pentagons intervention, are still for sale on eBay for $1,995 to$4,995.

The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court here, recounts how Mr. Shaffer, alieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, submitted his original manuscript to the

Army to be checked for classified information and got official approval to publishit last January.

But when the Defense Intelligence Agency saw the manuscript in May and showedit to the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, all threeagencies asserted that the approved manuscript still contained secrets.

After a second review was completed, passages were removed from 250 of thebooks 320 pages.


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The lawsuit claims that little to none of the information blacked out of the second printingis actually classified and that the censorship violated Mr. Shaffers First Amendmentrights. Many of the asserted redactions are objectively absurd, the lawsuit says.

A paperback edition is scheduled for publication next year, and Mr. Shaffer is asking the

court to order the Pentagon not to require the redactions in the new edition and not topursue civil or criminal penalties against him for releasing it.

A Defense Department spokesman, Col. Dave Lapan, said that by policy, he could notcomment on pending litigation.

DO NOT BE DECEIVED!GATES SAYS DONT ASK DONT

TELL IS STILL MILITARY LAW:In The Meantime, The Current Law And

Policy Will Remain In Effect

18 December 2010 By Faiz Shakir, ThinkProgress [Excerpt]

In a statement released this evening, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, Once thislegislation is signed into law by the President, the Department of Defense willimmediately proceed with the planning necessary to carry out this change carefully and

methodically, but purposefully. ... It is therefore important that our men and women inuniform understand that while todays historic vote means that this policy will change, theimplementation and certification process will take an additional period of time. In themeantime, the current law and policy will remain in effect.

DO YOU HAVE A FRIEND OR RELATIVE IN THEMILITARY?

Forward Military Resistance along, or send us the address if you wish andwell send it regularly. Whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or stuck on a base inthe USA, this is extra important for your service friend, too often cut off

from access to encouraging news of growing resistance to the wars, insidethe armed services and at home. Send email requests to address up top orwrite to: The Military Resistance, Box 126, 2576 Broadway, New York, N.Y.10025-5657. Phone: 888.711.2550


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FORWARD OBSERVATIONS


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The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh had Ithe ability, and could reach the nations ear, I would, pour out a fiery stream ofbiting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke.

For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder.

We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.

Frederick Douglass, 1852

Hope for change doesnt cut it when youre still losing buddies.-- J.D. Englehart, Iraq Veterans Against The War

What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time totime that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.-- Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787

One day while I was in a bunker in Vietnam, a sniper round went over my head.The person who fired that weapon was not a terrorist, a rebel, an extremist, or aso-called insurgent. The Vietnamese individual who tried to kill me was a citizenof Vietnam, who did not want me in his country. This truth escapes millions.

Mike HastieU.S. Army Medic

Vietnam 1970-71December 13, 2004

The Social-Democrats ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but thetribune of the people who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny andoppression no matter where it appears no matter what stratum or class of thepeople it affects; who is able to generalize all these manifestations and produce asingle picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; who is able to takeadvantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all hissocialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all andeveryone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of

the proletariat.-- V. I. Lenin; What Is To Be Done

A revolution is always distinguished by impoliteness, probably because the rulingclasses did not take the trouble in good season to teach the people fine manners.-- Leon Trotsky, History Of The Russian Revolution


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The Nixon administration claimed and received great credit for withdrawing theArmy from Vietnam, but it was the rebellion of low-ranking GIs that forced thegovernment to abandon a hopeless suicidal policy-- David Cortright; Soldiers In Revolt

It is a two class world and the wrong class is running it.-- Larry Christensen, Soldiers Of Solidarity & United Auto Workers

DANGER: POLITICIANS AT WORK

[By David Rees, New York Magazine, 12.6.2010]

The Emperor Gifts His Friends:


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The Tax Deal Agreed To BetweenPresident Obama And The Republicans

Will Give Dimon An Extra $1,179,000Next Year

Graphic: New Statesman

15 December 10 By Robert Reich, Robert Reichs Blog

Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., praises the Presidentsagreement with Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts.

If were going to strengthen our economy and grow jobs, this type of outreach - andcooperation between the administration, Congress, and the private sector - are critical,says Dimon.

Dimon met last week with the President. Thirty other CEOs are meeting with him today.

Dimons compensation over the last three years has averaged $21,991,394 a year.

The tax deal agreed to between President Obama and the Republicans will giveDimon an extra $1,179,000 next year, according to an analysis by Citizens for TaxJustice.

The bank Dimon heads was also the beneficiary of the giant Wall-Street bailout of 2007and 2008.

JPMorgan Chase & Co, along with other Wall Street banks, also poured millions ofdollars into a lobbying campaign to water down the financial reforms Congressconsidered earlier this year.


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261 Of The 535 Members OfCongress Were Millionaires

For The Senate Alone, MedianIncome Was An Astounding $2.38Million

Politics Has Increasingly Been TurnedOver To The Wealthy

You need only study income distribution over the last quarter of a century to seethat the nations policies have been slanted overwhelmingly in favor of the rich.

Between 1979 and 2004, the after-tax income for the top 1% skyrocketed 176%,according to the Congressional Budget Office.

December 12, 2010 By Andrew Trees, Los Angeles Times [Excerpts]

Swilling the planters with bumbo was what it was once called the Colonial Americantradition of treating voters with gifts during election campaigns, particularly plying themwith rum (including a concoction known as bumbo).

I was reminded of this phrase when a recent Center for Responsive Politics study of2009 data found that 261 of the 535 members of Congress were millionaires (thisprobably understates the actual number because members of Congress arent requiredto report their homes as assets).

When looking at both houses together, the legislators weighed in with a hefty medianincome of $911,000.

For the Senate alone, median income was an astounding $2.38 million. This is not tooshabby when the median household income in America is roughly $50,000.

In other words, politics has increasingly been turned over to the wealthy.

Meg Whitman spent more than $160 million $140 million-plus of which was her ownmoney in a failed effort to seize the governorship of California, or roughly $50 pervote. Rick Scott lavished more than $70 million of his and his familys fortune to snarethe job as Floridas governor. Both campaigns seem like a relative bargain comparedwith Michael Bloomberg, who spent $102 million to win a third term as mayor of NewYork, or roughly $174 per vote.

This is not simply a local or state phenomenon. Mitt Romney spent more than $40million in his losing bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Even Hillary Rodham


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Clinton, who had a well-established fundraising machine, lent $13.2 million to hercampaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

With the modern return of the practice of swilling the planters with bumbo, though, wenow find ourselves in a new age of aristocratic despotism.

You need only study income distribution over the last quarter of a century to seethat the nations policies have been slanted overwhelmingly in favor of the rich.

Between 1979 and 2004, the after-tax income for the top 1% skyrocketed 176%,according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Arizona Death Panel Picks WhichSeverely Ill To Kill Off:

Other States Are Eager To FollowArizonas Example

Obamas Fake Health Care Reform NotEven Mentioned In This Article

December 14, 2010 By Elizabeth Schulte, Socialist Worker [Excerpts]

OCTOBER 1 should have been a great day for Mark Price, a father of six children

who was battling leukemia. That day, his doctor found donor matches for the bonemarrow transplant that Price needed to stay alive.

But October 1 was the also the day that the state of Arizona changed its rules fortransplant coverage under the state Medicaid program. Without the coverage,Price could no longer afford the operation.

An anonymous donor came forward and offered the money to cover theprocedure. But it was too late.

Mark Price died before he could get the operation.

In the name of cost-cutting, the Arizona agency that administers Medicaid at thestate level--the bizarrely named Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System--has stopped covering several potentially lifesaving transplant operations,including certain transplants of the heart, liver, lung, pancreas and bone marrow.

For low-wage workers and their families, who will now have to go without theseprocedures, this is nothing less than death by budget cut, as the New York TimesMarc Lacy put it.


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The most difficult discussions are those that involve patients who had been on the donorlist for a year or more and now we have to tell them theyre not on the list anymore, Dr.Rainer Gruessner, a transplant specialist at the University of Arizona College ofMedicine, told the Times.

About 100 people have been cut from the list, and now cant afford to get their

transplants.

Francisco Felix, who has hepatitis C, believed that the operation he needed waswithin arms reach when a dying family friend said that she wanted to donate herliver to him. When state funding for his operation was cut, his family tried to raisethe $200,000 they needed in time for the operation, but couldnt. The liver went tosomeone else on the transplant list.

I know times are tight and cuts are needed, but you cant cut human lives, said Felixswife, Flor. You just cant do that.

Patients and their families have stepped forward, turning out for a press conference to

ask legislators to call a special session to reinstate transplant funding. But ArizonasRepublican Gov. Jan Brewer has responded with nothing but contempt.

Bottom line is that the state only has so much money, and we can only provide so manyoptional kinds of care, and those are one of the options that we had to take, the governorsaid--after offering her condolences to Mark Prices family.

Its interesting what Brewer considers optional spending. According to a pressrelease from her office in 2009, the state could spare $20 million--including $1.7million in federal stimulus funding--to renovate the Veterans Memorial Coliseum inPhoenix.

As Randy Sheperd, who needs a heart transplant, told reporters, Its not an option for us;its a necessity.

But if Brewer isnt listening, just about everyone else is. According to the ArizonaRepublic, patients registered in the National Transplant Assistance Fund have seen asurge of donations since the news coverage of the story. As of December 4, FranciscoFelix had raised $74,124, and heart transplant patient Randy Shepherd had raised$52,720.

But both need hundreds of thousands more.

*******************************************************

IN THE name of balancing the state budget, Arizona lawmakers claim that these kinds ofdeep and dangerous cuts are unavoidable.

But even if you accept their heartless logic, the cutbacks related to transplants for stateMedicaid patients wont come close to filling the budget gap. Jennifer Carusetta, thelegislative liaison for Arizonas Medicaid agency, told the New York Times that thetransplant cuts would save a mere $800,000 in the current fiscal year, and only $1.4million for a full year. And this is supposed to close Arizonas $2.6 billion shortfall?


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Arizona is also cutting Medicaid coverage for emergency dental procedures,insulin pumps and orthotics. And Medicaid isnt the only social program thatsfeeling the attack.

This year, state lawmakers decided to put a stop to the Childrens Health Insurance

Program, which covers 47,000 children of working-class families. They had to backtrackthough, when they found out it might keep Arizona from being eligible for federal funds.

Jan Brewer--the same person who came to national prominence for her anti-immigrantscapegoating with the racial profiling law SB 1070--is also leading the way in mean-spirited cuts.

But other states are eager to follow Arizonas example.

According to a September Kaiser Family Foundation report, 39 states cut providerpayments and 20 cut optional benefits in their 2010 fiscal years, with similar numbersplanning to do so in 2011.

And the cuts will have a long-term effect on patients, because when state governmentscut payments, some providers choose to opt out, leaving patients who use Medicaid tobe refused by more health care providers down the line.

Medicaids killing all of our state budgets, Gov.-elect Rick Scott told a conservative blogduring a recent Republican Party meeting in his home state of Florida--a state thatrecently tried to cut costs with a pilot program that requires Medicaid patients in somecounties to enroll in managed-care organizations, or HMOs. The theory is thatcompetition for profits will make the HMOs perform better, and at lower costs.

This is the backwards, upside-down and inside-out logic of state governments putting

the priority on balancing their budgets during the worst recession in decades.

In Idaho, the demand for food stamps is going up, but the state close nearly a third of thefield offices of the states Department of Health and Welfare, the place where people goto apply for food stamps. And the state cuts are flowing down to the local level, wheremunicipal governments are cutting such luxury items as fire stations.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, the percentage of people who had employer-subsidized health insurance dropped three percentage points between 2008 and 2009,falling to 59 percent. Yet the state of Arizona feels like this is the perfect time to cutgovernment health care subsidies.

In a sense, states like Arizona are mimicking the model thats kept the private sectorprofitable, even during the Great Recession--force workers and their families to make dowith less.

Only when it comes to someone like Mark Price, desperately in need of a bone marrowtransplant, making do with less means a needless death.


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Cowardly, Sadistic Freaks In BlueMurder Unarmed Man Whose Family

Won A Suit Against The Police,Resulting In The Firing Of TwoOfficers:

Then Oakland Police Told Michael JonesWell Kill Your Whole Family

Comment: TInstead of dying for the Empire in Afghanistan, our active duty and National Guard

troops may be more usefully deployed to protect us at home and clean filth likethe Oakland Police off the streets of our cities, once and for all. Cowardly sadisticfreaks like the Oakland Police, who kill unarmed civilians and threaten to killwhole families, will find armed soldiers have sufficient training and experience toput them down permanently in the blink of an eye.

Social crisis has not yet deepened enough for that happy day to come now, but itwill come, not as soon as we might wish, but sooner than the politicians and thepolice who defend them can possibly imagine.

***********************************

December 15, 2010 By Francois Hughes, Socialist Worker [Excerpts]

OAKLAND, Calif.--Some 75 protesters gathered at a City Council meeting on December14 to protest the killing of Derrick Jones and the inaction of the city government in theface of racist police murder.

Derrick Jones was murdered on November 8 while running from police--he was shoteight times. It has been over a month since Derrick Jones was killed, but there has beenno discipline or prosecution of Oakland police officers Omar Daza-Quiroz or EribertoPerez-Angeles.

The Oakland police department had allegedly harassed Derrick ever since his family

won a suit against the police 20 years ago, which resulted in the firing of two officers.

The rally was organized by the civil rights activist group By Any Means Necessary.Participants came from a number of groups, including many who have been organizingaround the case of Oscar Grant, an unarmed man who was shot and killed by BARTtransit officer Johannes Mehserle in the early morning hours of January 1, 2009.

The protesters held a rally outside Oakland City Hall and then went inside for publiccomment. Inside, only 15 people were allowed to speak to the City Council--while the


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council allowed speaker after speaker from the Fruitvale Merchants Association to askfor more police patrols in their neighborhood.

This was too much for those protesting Derricks murder. Many could not keep silent andinterjected with shouts of No police! and Police dont make me safer! After all of themerchants spoke, the council cut off public comment. Activists then raised fists and

chanted Justice for Derrick Jones. We flooded up the aisles to the front of the room.

The council would still not let the anyone from the crowd speak, but promised to have ameeting about Derrick Jones and police bias on December 16. The Council shut downdiscussion, saying that there wasnt time.

Then, councilors proceeded to what they thought was the more important business--singing Christmas songs. A local choir filed into the chamber and led the city officials insong, complete with audience and council members jangling keys like bells. Thosefighting against police murder regrouped outside to the sound of merry caroling and puttheir names down again to comment on the next item.

The council got an earful. Council member Desley Brooks and Jean Quan, the newlyelected mayor of Oakland, couldnt muster the courage to look anyone in the eye.Ronald Cruz, a lawyer representing Derrick Jones brother, Michael Jones, spoke to theCouncil about the case.

According to Cruz, police picked up Michael after a recent rally for his brother andcharged Michael with driving while intoxicated. According to Ronald Cruz, ThenOakland police told Michael Jones Well kill your whole family, and called him then-word.

Oakland police allegedly used similar tactics in the Oscar Grant case, with policerepeatedly arresting, threatening and harassing Oscars family and friends who

witnessed his murder.

Derricks family friend, Madison, also came to the stand. She talked about howwell liked Jones was in his neighborhood.

Jones ran a barbershop that was a community gathering point.

Madison talked about Derricks barbecues, the way he was goofy and how heused to feed homeless folks.

She compared the treatment of Derrick Jones to the treatment of a pit bull recently shotby Oakland police. The pit bull was shot in the leg and survived, while Jones was shot

eight times.

The Oakland police department is conducting its own internal affairs investigation, butinternal review is a sham. Even an independent review board (like exists San Francisco)or a police auditor (like exists in Sacramento) frequently do not punish crooked cops. InSan Francisco, police will often quit before being judged, and then are able to keep theirpensions and avoid sanction.


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But as the Oscar Grant struggle has shown, mass mobilization can force the state togrant us a small bit of justice. Oscar Grants murderer Johannes Mehserle received asentence of two years in jail. This is, of course, not nearly enough. However, the fact thathe was locked up at all is a rarity in police shootings.

If we win any justice for Derrick Jones it will only come through the same protests and

mobilizations. This will have to start with people getting the word out and mobilizing--inchurches, in streets and in schools.

It will come through not being afraid to stand up and speak out, even if we have to yellover carols at City Council meetings.

Troops Invited:Comments, arguments, articles, and letters from service menand women, and veterans, are especially welcome. Write to Box126, 2576 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10025-5657 or send email [email protected]: Name, I.D., withheld unless yourequest publication. Same address to unsubscribe.

Authorities Piss Pants Over BlinkingChristmas Ornament

12/15/2010 msnbc.com

WASHINGTON Authorities shut down the subway station at the Pentagon anddiverted hundreds of passengers in frigid temperatures early Wednesday whileinvestigating a suspicious object that turned out to be a blinking Christmas ornament.

Trains on the Washington area Metro system were forced to bypass the huge DefenseDepartment headquarters after the object was discovered in the station at 7:15 a.m.,said Chris Layman, spokesman for the Pentagon police force.

Someone spotted some lights that were was blinking in a trash can, Layman said. Wetook it seriously, it was called a suspicious object and they came and x-rayed andinspected the item.

Trains were forced to pass through the station without stopping, meaning passengershad to get off at a different station and walk, or take a bus back, to the building.

The Pentagon is also a major transit point for a number of area buses, and people linedup by the hundreds as police investigated.

Some 16,000 commuters use the Pentagon station, which is part of the WashingtonMetropolitan Area Transit Authority, Reuters reported.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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The teachers say they would be willing to accept a 2 percent cut if it were temporaryrather than a permanent reduction.

But the school boards aggressive move to impose the cuts left teachers seething. Theypointed to the districts $8.2 million reserve as they voted November 19 to authorize a

strike.

The district imposed an unfair contract that was extreme and unnecessary--and thenthey refused to negotiate, said Rogers. We had to strike.

The La Habra School District is small, with only five elementary and two middle schools.Consequently, the 225 teachers are a tight-knight group. They picketed outside eachschool and held rallies to build solidarity.

Some 93 percent of teachers actively supported the strike.

Most dramatic is the level of parent support for teachers.

At a meeting of the La Habra school board December 9, nearly 100 parents stoodin line outside to pack the meeting--the boardroom only holds 140 people,showing how concerned with parent participation and democracy the schoolboard really is.

Teachers got out of line to let parents go ahead. Then, to pack more parents in, allthe children were sent outside to the teachers, who organized impromptu childcare outside the meeting. Every single parent spoke either in support of teachersor about the levels of chaos at the schools in their absence.

The school district reported student attendance on the third day of strike at just 62

percent of the normal rate.

The parent support is notable because 87 percent of children in the district qualify forsubsidized lunches, and La Habra teachers are among the best-paid in Orange County.Still, parents seem to recognize that the relatively higher pay of their teachers explains alot about the good quality of their schools.

According to Bill Guy, a union staff member, approximately 35 businesses indowntown La Habra have posted signs that read, We Support La Habra Teachers!Settle the Contract!

For now, the reduced pay for teachers remain in force, but the school board has been

forced to return to the bargaining table.

THE LA Habra strike and lockout highlights the latest wave of attack on teachers livingstandards, which has become a local expression of the austerity programs that leaveworking people from California to Ireland paying for the financial shenanigans of theelites.

In April, the Capistrano Unified Education Association struck for five days over a 10.1percent pay cut, similarly imposed by the school board. San Juan Capistrano is on the


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opposite side of Orange County from La Habra. That strike failed to rescind the cuts, butwon restorative language in the contract promising to undo the reductions as theeconomy improves.

And a few days after the Capistrano Unified School District imposed its draconian cutson teachers, the Oakland Unified School District ignored a fact finders

recommendations and imposed a contract on its teachers that eliminated contractualclass size caps (effectively, a speedup that results in a loss of teachers jobs). Oaklandteachers responded with a one-day strike.

The CTA was missing in action in those earlier fights. This time, however, the CTA hasgreatly ramped up its support.

Calls for solidarity went out to CTA locals across the state, and they have begunpouring money into the La Habra strike fund. A Facebook group for La Habrateachers gathered hundreds of statements of solidarity, from as far away asAlaska and New York City.

The struggle in La Habra isnt over.

But the strike shows how teachers can gain union solidarity and community supportwhen they draw the line and fight back.

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