This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Antiwar crowd

  • Occupy Wall Street trying to reoccupy Liberty Square.

    So is seems that the Occupy movement is trying get back into Liberty Square. Oh and the comments are priceless.

    Liberty Square is our home. The 1% stole the homes of thousands, but they will not steal Liberty Square! Reoccupation begins NOW!

    If you’re in the NYC area: join the thousands gathering to defend our home, our movement, and our rights! Come to Liberty Square (Zuccotti Park) now!

    If you’re elsewhere: blast this call with every form of media the 99% can muster!

    But it is the comments that are the real kicker and why there will be a disconnect between reality and OWS.

    This goes on further in the comments but you get the general idea.

  • Scott Olsen’s public press release.

    So is seems that Scott Olsen has made his promised public statement that he was to have presented on Veterans day. I guess the was unable to leave the hospital. But here it is.

    “After my freedom of speech was quite literally taken from me, my speech is coming back but I’ve got a lot of work to do with rehab,” Olsen wrote. “You’ll be hearing more from me in the near future.”

    That is it? I guess I was expecting something more. Oh and seems that he is on Google plus if anyone wants to follow him. Oh and lookes like more of his past is catching up with him.

    Oh and I thought that this little gem was note worthy.

    The spokesperson also said documentary filmmaker Michael Moore had tried to visit Olsen against the wishes of the hospital and Olsen’s family.

    I am sure that Moore would love to explain this. I mean not just “No we cannot let you see him” but a hell no.

    The spokesperson also said documentary filmmaker Michael Moore tried to visit Olsen on Saturday. The hospital said the family has asked for Olsen’s privacy and asked Moore not to try to visit Olsen and the hospital again.

    “We have a very, very polite message to Mr. Moore: Mr. Olsen is not here,” the hospital spokesperson said, “and if you do find out where he is, the Olsen family doesn’t want you to come there either.”

  • Professor calls care packages shameful.

    So just like a similar case that happened Saint Xavier University a few years ago. Professor Michael Avery sent the email in response to a campus wide email asking support for care packages. According to the people over at “Above the Law”, he said the following below.

    I think it is shameful that it is perceived as legitimate to solicit in an academic institution for support for men and women who have gone overseas to kill other human beings. I understand that there is a residual sympathy for service members, perhaps engendered by support for troops in World War II, or perhaps from when there was a draft and people with few resources to resist were involuntarily sent to battle. That sympathy is not particularly rational in today’s world, however.

    The United States may well be the most war prone country in the history of civilization. We have been at war two years out of three since the Cold War ended. We have 700 overseas military bases. What other country has any? In the last ten years we have squandered hundreds of billions of dollars in unnecessary foreign invasions. Those are dollars that could have been used for people who are losing their homes due to the economic collapse, for education, to repair our infrastructure, or for any of a thousand better purposes than making war. And of course those hundreds of billions of dollars have gone for death and destruction.

    Perhaps some of my colleagues will consider this to be an inappropriate political statement. But of course the solicitation email was a political statement, although cast as support for student activities. The politics of that solicitation are that war is legitimate, perhaps inevitable, and that patriotic Americans should get behind our troops.

    We need to be more mindful of what message we are sending as a school. Since Sept. 11 we have had perhaps the largest flag in New England hanging in our atrium. This is not a politically neutral act. Excessive patriotic zeal is a hallmark of national security states. It permits, indeed encourages, excesses in the name of national security, as we saw during the Bush administration, and which continue during the Obama administration.

    Why do we continue to have this oversized flag in our lobby? Why are we sending support to the military instead of Americans who are losing their homes, malnourished, unable to get necessary medical care, and suffering from other consequences of poverty? As a university community, we should debate these questions, not remain on automatic pilot in support of the war agenda.

    The author over at “Above the Law” does a good job at destroying Avery’s email. So head on over there for his full reply. Also 96.9 Boston Talks is asking for feedback on this email. They can be reached at this link.

  • The scumbags and Veterans Day

    One of my ninjas trolled the Facebook walls of some of the derelicts this past Veterans’ Day and sent me these screen shots of Doug Zachary and Bobby Whittenburg respectively;

    Zachary was chaptered out of the Marines for his bad behavior, but he makes it sound like he was ‘resisting” – like Ward Reilly’s AWOL stint shacked up in Bavaria with a German chick was “resisting” the war which had ended the year before.

    In the same vein, Whittenburg chooses to honor the military’s shitbirds instead of the people who serve honorably. I think it’s an attempt to justify their bad behavior and to tempt others to follow suit.

    Zachary, by the way is the chief fund raiser for veterans For Peace, Whittenburg left IVAW when they proved to be not as radical as he’d like. Both of them are from Austin, former Marines and friends of Carl Webb.

  • At the intersection of Crazy and Stupid

    Jose Vasquez, the executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the War (what war?) sits down with Cornell Ag School grad, Keith Olbermann, to discuss how IVAW finds itself intermingled with smelly hippies of the Occupy Wall Street movement (it’s a movement in the “bowel” sense of the word).

    I just think it’s hilarious that I get to hear Vasquez talk about “taking an oath to serve the country”. Vasquez decided to become a conscientious objector to the war in Iraq after ten years of service as a medic in the final moments before his unit deployed to Iraq. Vasquez said publicly that if his unit had deployed to Afghanistan instead, he would have deployed to the “just” war, too. Under his leadership, while the Iraq War was winding down, IVAW voted to oppose the war in Afghanistan, so his sense of “taking an oath to serve the country” are somewhat narrowly defined.

    Of course, he has to mention that crank General Smedley Butler…using him as figurehead doesn’t help IVAW. Olbemann and Vasquez agree that veterans give the Occupy movement a measure of credibility. In that, they’re sadly mistaken. As the occupy movement collapses, it proves that no amount of credibility veterans give them will improve their image in the public’s eyes. In fact, I figure veterans’ participation in the display of public masturbation called the Occupy movement with have some splash back on veterans as a whole.

    I call it public masturbation because it does nothing productive, only gives the occupiers a measure of satisfaction and embarrasses anyone else who happens to see it. Kind of like the mutual stroking Vasquez and Olbermann are involved in during this video.

    Thanks to one of my ninjas for the video.

  • The single dumbest thing I have read in a long time.

    Here is another article about the Occupy movement and how the IVAW are taking part. It is titled “At Occupy Camps, Veterans Bring the Wars Home” It gets to the crazy in short order.

    In Zuccotti Park, Army Specialist Jerry Bordeleau, 24, was sitting next to a table of IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) literature. On his sweater were two buttons: an Iraq Campaign metal and one from the IWW. He served two tours in Iraq and now says he’s unemployed and can’t find work for over $10 an hour. And he can’t live on $10 an hour. When I asked him why he’s at Occupy Wall Street he says, “I went and fought for capitalism and that’s why I’m now a Marxist.”

    At Occupy Baltimore, I met 21-year-old Justin Carson, who tells me he served in the Army National Guard in Iraq from 2009 until this February. His nickname is Crazy Craze. He says he has PTSD and is bipolar but won’t “do pharmaceuticals.” Then he told me I should look into the Illuminati since I’m writing an article.

    I had to double check to make sure that I am not reading the onion. Because for a movement that is desperate not to be linked to socialism or communism that Jerry Bordeleau’s comments are exact opposite of this. Not to mention that Justin Carson’s comments are very damaging to the image of veterans today. It is bad enough that Veterans are fighting against the craze war vet meme of old, but worse when people are actively trying to bring it back. This is how you want to open your story?

    At Occupy DC, a painting of Scott Olsen in uniform is draped on the side of a tent. He’s become a symbol of the Occupation Movement — he fought overseas only to be injured when exercising his “freedom” of peaceful assembly at home. His name has become a shorthand to talk about why so many vets are at Occupy Wall Street.

    Ok that is creepy, I thought the picture of him in a stain glass artwork was bad enough but this is just weird. Also considering how he spoke out against the Marine Corps image, but the people have no problem doing for his uniform that he was never suppose to wear in the first place. Also I thought that he had a non-combat MOS. If so how much “fighing” did he really do? Moving on.

    Patterson still sports a military haircut and a bit of the Army swagger. He also has a touch of that telling hyper-awareness war vets sometimes display; he’s a little twitchy, a little intense. He tells me he has PTSD and has been self-medicating with weed. He says it helps. What’s also helped is being a part of this protest movement. “This is the only peaceful solution,” he says. “If this movement doesn’t work, our country is not going to make it … We’re just not going to make it.”

    Great, so your third Vet is a self medicating with illegal drugs. Still trying to push the “Crazy War Vet” meme. Also I promise you that the Country will carry on without your movement.

    Patterson became an interrogator in Iraq straight out of high school. His mother had to sign his enlistment papers. He turned 18 in Basic. “We’re an industrialized nation who’s a third world country. The super wealthy elite pretty much control our democratic process and everyone here is pretty much fighting for scraps and that’s not right,” he says.

    What? Are you kidding? I promise you people who live in real third world nations would jump at the change to live here. Because I promise you that there is a drastic difference between the two.

    I ask him what was the switch for him and when. He explained that it was WikiLeaks. It was the footage of the Apache helicopter gunning down Iraqis released by WikiLeaks in April of 2010.

    This is a dead horse that Doc Bailey has handled nicely. I am sure that he can rehash all the fallacies in anything that follows the statement above.

    He interrogated people who were later put to death in Iraq with no appeals process, he says. It haunts him. He didn’t fulfill his contract so he’s not eligible for the GI Bill. Even if he were, he explains, he still couldn’t afford to go to school without loans. He’d be wracked with debt just like so many other students who are down at their city’s Occupations. “I just want to go to college and teach high school,” he says

    Then stop taking about it and go do it. I hate to break this to you but sooner or later your going to have to take out a loan. Be it for school, house, or car. Also call BS on his Iraq interrogations as well.

    I say again, with this listed above is it any shock that most Veterans do not associate themselves with the occupy movement?

  • IVAW to march for Occupy Oakland again

    So Ouccpy Oakland is going to be marching with IVAW today in protests against Oakland Police Force. It seems that Scott Olsen will be speaking at the event.

    As part of Veterans Day, veterans will be leading a march against police brutality on November 11th, 2011 in Oakland. We will start with a press conference and rally with an update and statement from Scott Olsen at Oscar Grant Plaza starting at 4pm.

    We welcome all veterans of the 99% to lead the way and all supporters to join us as we march the streets. We march not only for injured veterans Scott Olsen, Kayvan Sabeghi and Doug Connor, but for all those who have been killed or injured as a result of police brutality.

    Yea because that is what I think of when I think of Veterans day or IVAW for that matter. Also should be interesting to hear what Olsen is going to say about his past if at all.

    But I am sure that few Veterans would throw in their hat in with the IVAW if they saw photos like this.

    Jonn Added: Here’s the backstory on the toy soldiers picture above.

  • Who is teaching your kids?

    Ya know, when I read shit like this, it’s no wonder that the brainless college kids are acting like they do in Berkeley and Harvard. Michael Graham at 96.9 FM Boston Talks relates the letter a Suffolk Law School group received in response to their solicitation for stuff to send to troops serving overseas from a law professor by the name of Michael Avery;

    I think it is shameful that it is perceived as legitimate to solicit in an academic institution for support for men and women who have gone overseas to kill other human beings. I understand that there is a residual sympathy for service members, perhaps engendered by support for troops in World War II, or perhaps from when there was a draft and people with few resources to resist were involuntarily sent to battle. That sympathy is not particularly rational in today’s world, however.

    The odious goat only goes further downhill from there, you should click over and read the whole steaming pile of shit. So you can imagine my lack of surprise when I discovered that communist, punk-ass Avery attended Moscow University while dodging the draft in 1968 – 69 and that he was the president of the Stalinist sympathizers National Lawyers Guild from 2004 until 2006. He was also the “Special Staff Counselor” for the ACLU 1970-71, instead of fulfilling his duty in the military during the draft era.

    Wouldn’t you just to love to shove your fist through this face?

    I concede that he has a right to his opinion, but who would want their child instructed by a draft dodging communist sympathizer who has no respect for the people who’ve sacrificed for his right to express his ignorant opinion on Veterans’ Day. The asshole probably has a picture of Castro in his wallet.

    Thanks to Robert for the link.