United States: ELECTIONS & WAR
Anti-War Veterans and Supporters Arrested and Trampled While Trying to Enter Final Presidential Debate
18 Oct 2008 18:56 GMTHEMPSTEAD, NY — Ten members of the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), a group of military veterans who are calling for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, were arrested along with at least five civilians outside the final presidential debate at Hofstra University on Wednesday, October 15. The group had been trying to get answers for their questions from the candidates. "Neither of the candidates has shown real support for service members and veterans," said Jason Lemieux, a former Sergeant in the US Marine Corps who served three tours in Iraq, and member of IVAW.
The veterans and their supporters were met by riot police as well as police on horseback. After a tense standoff for five minutes, police used their horses to attack the crowd, knocking over and trampling several — including Army Sergeant Nick Morgan (pictured), who suffered a broken cheekbone. Read Reports by Ben Dean-Kawamura | by Alex Kane | Photo by Bill Perry
The questions IVAW wanted to ask were:
* (To Obama): "As President of the United States of America, are you prepared to back up your own words [about the illegality of the Iraq War] and the U.S. Constitution by supporting service members refusing to participate in what you describe as an illegal occupation?"
* (To McCain): "What promises are you willing to make, as a veteran, as a senator, as a presidential candidate, to the veterans of the United States, to prove that you will ensure the V.A. is fully funded, staffed and capable of preventing troops from suffering as they are now?" Demands in full: IVAW Send Letter to Schieffer, Plan Protest at Hofstra Univ. Debate
MORE COVERAGE: Photos by Jamie Lehane | Video from DN! | Video from IVAW | IVAW Press Release
RELATED: Will YOUR vote count? State's polls lack uniform standards | Anti-War Sentiment Still Strong Six Years After Congressional War Vote
Source Article: Nine Demonstrators Arrested as Iraq Vets Try to Enter Final Presidential Debate
The Shield is Gone
Petros Evdokas 18.Oct.2008 23:50
The situation within the US right now, with this brutality coming in right on the heels of the recent unprovoked attacks by military and police forces against peaceful demonstrators at the St. Paul and Denver mobilizations against the war, underlines what the Weather Underground had to say immediately after the US Government massacre at Kent State in 1970: "The Shield is Gone".
http://petros-evdokas.cyprus-org.net/Another-sort-of-Introduction.html
This was in reference to the characteristic phase of Empire in which the system has gotten stuck again now, in this period: when the Empire is acutely and successfully challenged by its own people on the basis of its own morals and principles, when it is challenged to uphold the morals and principles to which it pretends and when the challenge proves irrefutably that system is thoroughly founded on lies, on illusions and on nothing else but sheer brute force, then that brute force becomes unleashed by the masters and allowed to come forth to crush "its own" people.
And in this period, who else embodies more perfectly the description of the Empire's "own" other than the men and women of its armed forces? These are the people who enlisted to go kill for money, kill for the Corporate State they mistook for a homeland and for reasons of some twisted sense of ideology, got themselves immersed in torture, in mass slaughter and genocide of totally innocent people ...and some of them suddenly woke up!
Embracing now a deeper and more true version of patriotis, a more profound sense of Justice and Democracy, some of those soldiers oriented with a more finely tuned moral compass and with a political awareness of the lies, the illegalities and violations of the Constitution they swore to protect, are coming home and mobilizing themselves and others to help the people of the homeland to see the Truth. What else can the system do now but try to brutalize them into silence?
The US soldiers used to be presented to the population as "the best of the best". Hailed as the "nation's heroes". With good reason the soldiers are now using that good reputation bestowed on them by the Empire and suing for Peace, moving for Justice and appealing to the moral integrity of the politicians to set things right again. But alas, they are finding out there is no moral integrity to appeal to...
Even the US Peace movement, on the whole, is asleep nowadays. What happened to its spirited demonstrations of tens of thousands in even small cities? The self-appointed leaders of the US Peace movement said, "got to sleep" and the people did that. The only significant and tangible moral and material forces in this period actively bringing us closer to Peace are the Iraqi, Afghani, Lebanese and Palestinian Resistance movements - by continuing to defeat the US, UK and Israeli forces on the battlefield. At a tremendous cost in lives. An incomprehensible price of lives lost to the cause.
But the cause is sacred, it is necessary, and it continues to lead the people of the Middle East to victories.
If the Empire's politician's won't hear the voices for Peace and Justice coming from their own people, coming from the soldiers who served them with weapons and up to their throats with blood (their own, as well as that of a multitude of innocents), then there's no other option available within this reality: the forces of Empire will continue to sustain military, moral, and political defeats on every front until they are kicked out permanently from where they do not belong. There IS, of course, a better scenario: it would be preferable if its own people, those within its homeland, can stop the Empire. As soon as possible.
The "Shield" that the Weather Underground was refering to in its communique after the Kent State massacre is the special priviledge with which the system endows some of its "own people" in order to maintain class rule by exploiting, cultivating, preserving and utilizing authoritarian patterns among us, embedding racism, sexism and homophobia in our day to day affairs of life within the microfolds of the Empire.
Those who are bestowed with a special priviledge like white skin priviledge, male privilidge, or "straight" priviledge become micro-emperors within the family, within the workplace, the schoolyard, the neighborhood. They operate as the vehicles of class rule, the prime perpetrators of the "divide and conquer" policy, the flags and mouthpieces of imperial propaganda.
The system endows those people with special privileges of many different flavors, and those find expression on all walks, all twists and turns of life. All of them add up to a special kind of privilege, keeping the system's chosen people safe and comfortable on almost every occasion. The Shield ensures that those people - its "own" - will have access to education, to employment, better salaries, access to healthcare, will be safe from institutionalized discrimination, will enjoy freedom of movement, the right to own property, the right to get married, to own weapons, to be free from illegal search and seizures, will enjoy basic political rights, will have access to safety in a crime scene, and will have the ability to get away with murder. None of "the other" people are allowed to enjoy all of those rights, certainly not gay and lesbian people, transsexual or bisexual people, people of color, women, the undocumented, the unorganized, the poor, nor any others among the multitude of "others" who are targeted by racism, sexism and homophobia.
In times of moral and political crisis things happen in regard to this special arrangement within Imperial society: When some of THOSE people, the people who have special privileges and who carry the special protection of the Shield - the Empire's "own" - begin to question the system, when they attempt to shed the priviledge and stand to challenge the system ...the system faces one of its greatest threats. Losing the moral high ground, losing the ideological domination of its people, is one of the greatest dangers for the Empire. If the challengers gain the upper ground, morally, nothing can stop the sense of moral imperative from infecting the population and spreading out everywhere... From there on, past the first few triggers, all it would take is spirited community organization, mobilizations, co-ordinated abstentions from the workings of the system, an avalanche of moral and political awakenings congealed into material and social force moving in larger and larger sweeps until a General Strike can bring down the whole damn thing.
But it all starts with the battle over morals and principles. If the Peace movement and the people who were formerly the Empire's "best of the best" become able to launch successful moral challenges to the system, the system has only two options left: either allow the next step of the avalanche to take place and face organized community mobilizations, or respond to peaceful gentleness with brutality.
When Imperial soldiers put their weapons down they renounce the Shield. Up until that moment, the Shield was protecting them not from the "enemy", but from the cannibals and demons who are the top of the pyramid. You dare challenge my Divine Right to make war for profits? I will eat you alive.
The oppressed - at least the large numbers of the oppressed - know the Truth. But when the Empire's "own" people realize it and attempt to make things right they find out that the system has no mercy for the righteous. It's horses will trample you; its assassins will kill you while you sleep; its operatives will threaten your loved ones; its "cultural attaches" will torture you in underground chambers buried in countries that are not on the map.
Friends and Comrades, we're in that period again: the Shield is Gone.
Welcome to the slightly deeper folds of the Movement.
Petros Evdokas
from the Belly of the Beast
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NYC public school teacher trampled
Steve 19.Oct.2008 23:48
The woman who was taken to the hospital:
She was thrown to the ground by a cop, then trampled by a horse. I think that her injuries were relatively minor, a bloody nose, though I am getting this second hand. She is a long time NYC public grade school teacher. 42 yrs old, petite build, about 5' 4" tall. A great threat to the safety of McCain/Obama, and the security of our nation.
more: school teacher trampled
Steve 20.Oct.2008 04:24
The school teacher suffered a gash across the bridge of her nose
Iraq Vet Crushed By Police Horse at Presidential Debate
iwitnessvideo.info 25.Oct.2008 04:03
Nick Morgan of Iraq Veterans Against the War is trampled by a police horse outside the last presidential debate. © Emily Forman, I-Witness Video
http://iwitnessvideo.info/blog/111.html
Video Captures Shocking Image
Wednesday, 22 Oct 2008
by Eileen Clancy and Emily Forman
Watch video: