Iraq War Veteran Critically Injured at Occupy Oakland
26 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Iraq Veterans Against the War, Occupy Oakland, Veterans for Peace, Wall Street
I was sickened to learn that a young Iraq war veteran was in critical condition last night, with a fractured skull and brain swelling, after being hit by a tear gas canister in an assault by the Oakland Police Department on peaceful Occupy Oakland protesters.
According to The Guardian, 24-year-old Scott Olsen, seen at the end of the video above as fellow protesters carry him away and frantically call for a medic, did two tours of duty in Iraq. Olsen is a member of both the Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War, and I noticed a Veterans for Peace flag as well as the fact that Olsen was wearing a t-shirt with their logo, and the group was standing near the cops.
What happened gets even more disturbing, however. Keith Shannon, one of his friends who served with him in Iraq, mentions he has seen “ the video footage showing Olsen lying on the floor as a police officer throws an explosive device near him.” As you can see in the footage below, the police officer is throwing the explosive into the crowd of people coming to Olsen’s aid. Truly outrageous, and there can be no excuse for this, even if they claim the original injury was accidental.
Another horrifying image, from Occupy Together‘s Facebook page is of a woman in a wheelchair trying to escape the tear gas:
Woman in Wheelchair, Trying to Escape Tear Gas in Oakland
MoveOn has an online action to the Mayor of Oakland in protest:
http://civic.moveon.org/oaklandpolice/?rc=c4_oaklandpolice_letter.fb.v2.g1
MoveOn also posted a link to a great video about what the protests are all about:
Wall Street still isn’t finished with trying to pass off their bad investments on American taxpayers. Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi reports about Bank of America’s attempt to shift risky investments to FDIC insured accounts in his article Occupy Wall Street: Washington Still Doesn’t Get It:
Bank of America is shifting a huge collection of Merrill Lynch derivatives contracts onto its own federally-insured balance sheet. This move of risky instruments off the uninsured Merrill balance sheet onto the commercial bank’s balance sheet was done to prevent Bank of America’s creditors from attacking the firm with collateral calls and other sorties. Essentially, an irresponsible debtor, B of A, is keeping a loan shark from breaking his legs by getting his rich parents to co-sign his loan. The parents in this metaphor would be the FDIC.
The FDIC naturally is not pleased with this development, but the Fed, the supreme banking regulator, is apparently encouraging this move. Here’s how Bloomberg characterized this move:
In short, the Fed’s priorities seem to lie with protecting the bank-holding company from losses at Merrill, even if that means greater risks for the FDIC’s insurance fund.
Risks for FDIC’s insurance fund. Think about that a bit. That’s the fund that protects our savings and checking deposits. Would you let your savings be used to bankroll gambling? Yet, that’s what we’re doing if we cover derivatives, otherwise known as futures – gambling on the future worth of something like stocks or farm commodities (pork bellies, anyone?). Its fine if you chose to invest and know the risks, but that is not what safe savings and checking accounts are supposed to be all about. All this making it safe for Bank of America, because, if it all goes bad, well. . .we can’t let FDIC fail, can we, and take all Americans’ savings?
Taibbi also reports:
Barack Obama is apparently expressing willingness to junk big chunks of Sarbanes-Oxley in exchange for support for his jobs program. Business leaders are balking at creating new jobs unless Obama makes compliance with S-O voluntary for all firms valued at under $1 billion.
Here’s how to translate this move: companies are saying they can’t attract investment unless they can hide their financials from investors.
Doesn’t seem like life is too good for the investors, even, if we let Wall Street have its way.
Seattle’s Winter Soldier Hearings
08 Jun 2008 2 Comments
in Iraq Veterans Against the War, Iraq War, Peace, Protests, Seattle, Veterans for Peace, Winter Soldier
What struck me most about the testimony I heard last week’s Winter Soldier hearing at Town Hall was not so much that I’ve heard it before, but the sinking feeling of hearing it all again, with a younger generation of vets.
I found it much more disturbing, and was surprised by that (and I actually missed much of the testimony, running late because my health was acting up again). I think maybe it was the rawness of seeing young veterans and soldiers just back, talking about what’s still going on.
Real Change published a good article on the hearings this week. One of the young men describes how what was supposed to be a humanitarian mission of his first tour turned out to be mostly about harassing people. Then shortly into his second deployment, a roadside bomb killed several officers in his platoon, and “the rules of engagement changed from disarming civilians to killing them.”
“Pretty much all we did was just go out on the town and search for people to shoot,” Kochergin said. “Later on, we had no rules of engagement at all. It was go out there and if you see something that you think is not right, take ‘em out.”
Another veteran described how “American soldiers rip Iraqi men from their homes and families, often based on a tip from a neighbor seeking a payoff from the U.S. military.” Now think about that. Imagine what it would be like if someone who didn’t like you could not only turn you in and have you put in detention and tortured, but could also get paid for it.
• Joshua Simpson: “People know that the U.S. has a military that will pay for people to give information to us, [but it’s] the names of people [that] don’t have anything to do with terrorist attacks or the insurgency. It’s people they dislike or something, a neighbor who had a feud with them – sometimes just random people. And this would be the basis of the raids that we would do.”
Nor are our troops or their families immune from the damage of this war:
About a third of those returning suffer from either PTSD or major depression, he said, with up to 20 percent struggling with the loss of function from a traumatic brain injury brought on by constant exposure to blasts in Iraq. At that rate, out of the 1.6 million military personnel deployed to Iraq, Kanter estimated a total of 300,000 to 400,000 “psychiatric casualties” will be coming home, out of which 18 veterans a day are already committing suicide – the highest rate ever recorded, he said.
The result for families, said Tracy Manzel, who spoke on the panel with her husband Seth, is domestic violence, broken marriages and, in one case she cited, a wife murdered by a husband in Seth’s unit. “The Bush Administration talks of family values and how much these values are attacked, but really what the administration is doing is splitting families apart,” she said.
Racism is, sadly, not dead in the U.S. military, as reported in the Seattle PI article on the hearings:
Many said they went to Iraq hoping to help civilians, but found that often wasn’t the case. U.S. troops frequently referred to all Iraqis and Middle Easterners as “hajji,” an ethnic slur. In medical units, they became “range balls,” meaning they were like the golf balls hit on driving ranges that are of low value and that you don’t mind losing.
Sexism isn’t either. One of the people who testified at the hearing was the mother of a young woman still in Iraq (though it sounds like, at least, with a different unit now) who suffered from “command rape.” It’s so common, there’s a name for it. Her daughter told her that the prevalent attitude in the military is that women in uniform are all either “bitches, dykes or whores.,” and didn’t know what to do.
There was a second panel on GI resistance (which is sprouting up, just as it did during the Vietnam War), including a film from those who have fled to Canada.
After the hearing, we all marched, down from Town Hall to Westlake, via Pike Place Market. I just wished there were more of us, more of us marching. There actually are more people against the war than when we held the biggest marches before it happened (I was remembering Seattle Center packed at the start of one of them as I walked through the grounds the other day).
A Little More on Peace. . .
30 Oct 2007 Leave a Comment
in Peace, Veterans for Peace Tags: Mike Hastie, Mike McCormick
from someone who’s seen war:
http://technorati.com/videos/youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVcPTag6AteU
So, I clicked on the “Veterans for Peace” tag link and come up with a familar face — Mike Hastie, speaking at a peace rally last year in Seattle (March 16,2006). I don’t know how I missed that one. I’m not sure if I missed the whole rally, or just Mike.
Nobody says it better about the true cost of war. What more is there to say?
Then I saw another familiar name on the credits. Who else, but Mike McCormick of Talking Stick TV and KEXP’s Mind over Matters?
PS: I would have posted the video, but the direct link is no longer there, so I linked to the Technerati site.
End the War Rally
29 Oct 2007 1 Comment
in Iraq War, Peace, Veterans for Peace
I was running late for the peace rally Saturday and missed the first rally before the march. My timing was good for the march itself, however. It was less than a block away and moving toward us as they rerouted the bus around the corner. So, once I got off, I got my camera out, and after fumbling through changing my batteries when I didn’t have to (it was in display mode), got some great pictures.
Well, maybe not so great (this is me), but, a lot of them!
One good video from the camera as well, if I can ever figure out how to convert and upload it again. . .
I got caught up with the energy, which was really inspiring. It has been hard to maintain the momentum as this war drags on and the will of the people is ignored (whether the massive crowds at the start, in spite of the neo-cons trying to invoke Sept. 11 and claim anti-patriotism; or the overwhelming majority agains the war now). Unfortunately, hard as well to maintain the momentum with our fractured peace movement.
Yet, there everyone was; and many from far away (while I wish there were more Seattlites out). Kitsap, Bellingham, and, oh, yes, Portland!
I started seeing familiar faces in the crowd. Wait is that. . .? It’s been a little over a decade, but recognition is dawning. . . (and it was the same for them, with me). First a familiar face, other than George Hickey taking pictures (not that it isn’t good to see George). Yes, with a good camera (now gone digital, though I’ll bet George is still a holdout) and wearing a green army shirt. No, yes, that really has to be – Mike Hastie (from the Northwest Veterans for Peace in Portland)!
Lost sight of him in the crowd while taking my own pictures. Then turning a corner, I see a white haired gentleman in a NW Veterans for Peace t-shirt and filming the march with said, “Hey!” No flicker of recognition (from either of us), and I was thinking this must be a more recent member, since I’ve been gone. So I continue on. . .
I’m taking some photos of the Portland contingent when I see Mike again. I tap him on the shoulder. He looks real confused (“Who is this lady?”), then recognition, a big smile, and a hug. We talk a bit, then split up and go back to taking pictures, planning to look for each other after the march.
So I’m at the rally at the end of the march, in Occidental Park in Pioneer Square, and I see the guy in the NW Vets for Peace shirt again. I keep looking at him. . . wait a minute, it’s Don Mills. . . He looks at me, slightly puzzled. . . then sees it’s me! Don’s up here with Carolyn (of course), and Ted Kiser. So we find them and have a little reunion. Great to see them! Funny thing is, of all the people up from Portland, I don’t think I’ve seen any of them since I left (either up here at WTO etc., or my rare trips back to PDX).
They leave to head back to Portland. I move closer to check out the rally, remembering I want to keep an eye open for Mike.
We have someone speaking out for immigrant rights (Si, se peude! Still echoes of Magdaleno, now rabble rousing in Miami.) We’re surrounded by puppets – a grieving Iraqi mother, a man who wants to know why the U.S. is so afraid of the International Criminal Court, and, oh, yes, the Bush chain gang who were marching with us earlier (Bush, Cheney, Condi and Rummy).
Coming up next, the Bush bunch are on trial for their crimes against humanity. Charges are read. Congress is implicated, too – for inaction. They are found guilty and led away in chains.
Now, the disturbing thing to me is that some people were yelling, “Torture them!” during the trial. While I know it was the Bushies themselves who brought the whole subject of torture out in the open and have been trying to make it acceptable (while using Orwellian language to claim it isn’t really torture), it still troubles me. I don’t expect to hear it from “our side”. I like to think “we” are better (like I liked to think the U.S. was better, or at least our people, as we didn’t openly torture before this, and our government’s complicity with those who did was kept secret).
That’s the trouble though. Once the concept is out there, and discussion (and use) of it is considered to be possibly acceptable, even some of those on the other side of the debate can start to think, “Hey, let’s torture the torturers!” Come to think of it, the whole concept behind capitol punishment.
What I like about Amnesty International is that they have always been consisantly agains torture, and other human rights violations — in all cases. No excuses being made for one side or the other. Before yesterday, I thought we were mostly “preaching to the choir” in speaking out against torture in Seattle, as most people here are liberal, and “know better”. Now, I think, maybe the choir needs preaching too, to.
Hungry Mob, a hip hop band from Portland came up to wind up the rally. I was wandering around, wondering whether to head off, when I saw the AFSC banner at the edge of the square. Then, the boots. Rows of them. Some with flowers. Many with photos.
I took a lot of pictures. I ran into Mike again, taking photos as well. Then, I thought I’d go around to the backside of the display and take some more. First I saw there were rows of names and dates on what looked like Tibetan prayer flags. Then I realized there were more shoes here as well, pouring out of bags. Shoes to represent the Iraqi dead, which, of course, includes children. Mike lined up a shot including the sign reading “1 shoe represents 3000 Iraqi deaths” over a bag of shoes, with the moving posters of a grieving Iraqi woman, and a smiling Iraqi girl, behind.
The cost of war. A cost that’s been going on so long in Iraq. I met Mike and our other Veterans for Peace buddies in Portland protesting the Gulf War. A war started by Bush I against a dictator his administration used to support, while Saddam was gassing and committing other human rights violations against his own people. After the Gulf War, where we had destroyed the Iraqi infrastructure (water, sewer, electricty. . .), we continued to let their children starve to death as a tactic of war. When pointed out, well, that was Saddam’s fault. Really, we could enforce two “no fly” zones, but couldn’t make sure the food got to the children? Why does a whole country have to suffer for one man? Who’s gone now? Now the country is so bitterly divided (Iraq, though to some extent the U.S.), there is little hope. Having us stay as the occupier is doing nothing but cause yet more deaths. Now Bush wants war with Iran and God knows who else.
Mike was in earnest discussion with an Iraq War veteran before I left. The baton of leadership being passed on in a way to the next generation; the one who can speak fully to the truth of this war.
How many more generations does this need to go on?
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