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

Category: Antiwar crowd

  • Edinboro “peace thugs” admit “They were wrong”

    Frequent commenter and good friend to This Ain’t Hell, Dan Maloney, NY State Coordinator, Gathering of Eagles, and a blogger in his own right, alerts us to the judgment in the Swartout case that has been the subject of much discussion here over the few weeks. GoErie.com reports;

    A peace group that meets in Edinboro will receive training in nonviolent conflict resolution — a result of two members being charged for their parts in an April 22 brawl.

    Trainers from the Erie Peace Initiative will meet with the Tuesdays at Two group, which includes a number of students from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. The session has not yet been scheduled.

    Two members of the group — Alyssa Stelmack, 21, and her sister, Andria Stelmack, 23, both of Erie — were charged with harassment after they fought with a Townville couple that crossed the street to challenge their anti-war rhetoric.

    The group’s leader issued a mealy-mouthed apology of sorts;

    “They were wrong,” said Richard McVay, a Penn Action activist who met with the sisters after the fight. “They were wrong to react violently to a violent provocation. But I can see how it could happen.”

    The Swartouts had the same charge levied on them;

    The Townville couple — Jason Swartout, 33, and his wife, Carrie Swartout, 30 — also were charged with harassment, a summary offense. They have not responded to requests for comment.

    Despite the fact that I’ve been accused of being against the Swartouts by implying they had some measure of culpability here, apparently the court agreed with me. No amount of exclamation points can change the truth. I hope this a lesson for both sides – if we’re going to have a discussion about this, neither side wins when the discussion is raised to the level of physical confrontation. I’ll admit there have been times my anger has boiled over, but nothing is gained by clocking the opposition and getting arrested.

  • Enforcing the peace

    A week ago, I first republished an email I received ostensibly from the Swartout family who were attacked while filming an anitwar demonstration in Edinboro, PA. I won’t recount the story, but a link to the first post is here, so you can refresh yourselves. I felt at the time that there was probably more than what we were being told. My buddy Bostonmaggie wrote me earlier that a video was in the hands of Fox News and that O’Reilly planned on doing a story about it tonight, so I thought I’d wait to see the tape before I passed judgement.

    Well, a friend of this blog sent me a link to a copy of the video yesterday on the condition that I wouldn’t make it public until after Fox News broadcast their story on the incident. I’ve been getting antsy all day, everytime I saw an O’Reilly commercial tempting viewers with the tape, but I like getting tips and stuff before Fox News so I kept my trap shut as I promised. If you missed the O’Reilly broadcast, here’s the video.

    (Editor’s note: Apparently, whoever put the video up changed their mind and marked it “private”, but I found the link at GOE-NY)

    The Swartouts weren’t exactly angels, but it’s clear from this video that the antiwar folks clearly escalated the confrontation to violence. I’m surprised that the police didn’t at least take one of those folks off in handcuffs to make a point. As I said last week this will only encourage the antiwar types.

    What put an end to the protests of the seventies was after the unfortunate events at Kent State, at a demonstration in New York City, constructions workers were tired of listening to the constant whining and climbed down from their steel and started beating hippies in the streets. The police were reticent about forcing the Left to behave themselves and decent citizens were forced to put an end to the useless bellyaching and anti-social behavior.

    Am I threatening the Left or inciting the Right – absolutely not. I’m just drawing lessons from history, something the Left has failed to do in this escalation of reactions. The police have a responsibility to establish and enforce boundaries of civil behavior. Throughout history when the authorities have failed to enforce those boundaries, people have taken it on themselves to enforce those boundaries, with much more disastrous results.

    Crossposted at Talon

  • The continuing Swartout saga

    Last Wednesday, I posted an email I’d gotten in a post I titled “The Peaceful Left” about the family of an Iraqi veteran who had been assaulted at a counter protest in bitter Pennsylvania (also reported on Gateway Pundit and updated). I just received an update to that story;

    I have noticed some folks are questioning the validity of our assault because no video has been produced yet. I can’t go into too many details but I can tell you there are two videos. One taken by my son which is in the hands of Fox News right now. And the other was taken by someone on their side and is in the hands of the Edinboro PD. I have seen that video and it is even more incriminating of the protesters. I can also tell you that Jason and I will be interviewed on the O’Reilly Factor Tuesday. I assume we will be on there Tuesday night? So, I thank everyone for their patience. We are all doing well and just working to get justice for our family. I do have a concussion which is affecting me a lot but that will heal in time. We have a great lawyer and are doing everything we can to get this resolved.

    So I guess if we all tune to O’Reilly Tuesday night (something I haven’t done in years), we’ll finally get to see what happened.

  • [Fill in the blank] Against the War

    I had an email exchange with Thus Spake Ortner this morning (that’s right, IVAW, not everything I say about ya’all is public) that got me to thinking. He sent me a link of an IVAW member named PJSChicago who wrote about how the evil Army made him into a killer without him realizing it. He ends his wildly idiotic rant with;

    When I think back on what the Army made me capable of, I feel angry because I’m only figuring it out now. Duped again! 12 years of learning to hate and learning to want to kill people because it was kill or be killed.

    He joined the infantry and was assigned to an artillery unit, what did he think the Army wanted him for? Some worldwide meals-on-wheels program? But that’s not my point, actually. TSO wrote another piece on another IVAW goofball, Thomas J. Buonomo, a homey, actually, from Rochester, New York who spent four years in the Air Force Academy and then got tossed out of the Army for being an advocate for the impeachment of Dick Cheney.

    So what does PJSChicago and Inmate Buonomo have in common? The same thing alot of IVAW members seem to have in common – they’ve never been to Iraq but they’re in an organization called IRAQ VETERANS Against the War. Am I the only one who thinks this is disingenuous?

    Back a few years ago, I went to photograph the Code Pink Mother’s Day protest at the White House. There were about 8 ladies holding a twenty-foot long banner that read “Mothers Against the War”. After taking their pictures, I asked them how many were really mothers – they all pointed at one woman. I asked her if she had a son or daughter in the military. She replied her son was in the Army. I asked her if he was in Iraq or Afghanistan and she said ‘no’…then she confessed that her son had gotten out of the military ten years earlier.

    Out of eight women with a “Mothers Against the War” banner, only one actually qualified as a mother – and her son wasn’t in the military and not in danger of being sent to Iraq. So what was the point?

    What’s the motivation of joining an organization that claims to be something that it’s really not? And why should we believe anything else they tell us if their name is even a lie? Are you guys scoring hot, hairy-legged hippy chics and they didn’t seem taken with your first choice of names – Doofuses Against the War?

  • The peaceful Left

    I received this in my email this morning;

     The AAR for Saturday’s Iran-mobile counter in Meadville will be delayed.  Our video camera has been confiscated by the Edinboro PD.  We had a counter protest today in Edinboro.  It was an Iraq war protest put together by Richard McVay.  He was not present but there were about 10 college students, a couple professors and a group of Hillary supporters.

    Anyways, Andrew went to the their protest site to videotape a couple odd displays they put up.  They were beginning to get aggressive with Andrew simply because he was recording their protest.  Jason and I went over to make sure he was ok.

    Long story short one girl attacked me which turned into 2 girls attacking me.  Jason pulled one off of me and then he was attacked and held down by 4-5 people getting punched in the head.  Meanwhile Andrew pulled the other girl off me and then she kicked me in the head with a great big boot.  I called the cops and while we were waiting on them the girl that kicked me in the head went over to Andrew(14 years old) and punched him right in the face.  My 12, 9, and 7 year olds were standing across the street witnessing the whole thing.  Here’s the kicker.

    The cops watched the video at the scene and no arrests were made.  One of the cops was very aggressive toward us.  The girl later spit on Jason right in front of the cop and nothing was done about it.  Amazing!  Right now I have a huge headache and knots coming up all over my head.  Jason has scratch marks on his face not to mention someone stomping on his glasses when they fell off.  Andrew has a red cheek.  So we’ll get a AAR for this event and Saturday’s maybe tomorrow night after we get our camera back.

    Just last month our own buddy, Skye from Midnight Blue was attacked by anti-war protesters and Free Republic members were attacked in front of the Army Recruiting station in downtown DC. Out of all of these incidents, only Skye’s attacker was arrested. The attack at the recruiting office was even witnessed by police – at least one officer was struck with a bottle of paint – yet no arrests were made.

    There is a disturbing trend of escalating violence from the Left, probably stemming from their frustration that they’re losing the argument and they’re being proved wrong,  in terms of our national security. They’re coming to the realization that they don’t represent the majority of Americans like Nancy Pelosi and Medea Benjamin told them last year.

    But, I blame this trend of violence on authorities who coddle the protesters fearing lawsuits and taking a beating the media. The longer authorities allow this behavior to continue, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. The more crimes the Left can get away with, the more they’re going to attempt until someone finally dies (that’s what ended the Vietnam War protests). The Left are like insolent children who will continue to push the limits of the law until the law starts pushing back.

  • Iraq withdrawal revisted in defense bill

    The Democrats have decided that adding a withdrawal schedule to the defense bill AGAIN is a good idea. Ignoring the news that Iraqis have retaken Basra and are in the process of sealing off the remnants of the Mahdi Army in Sadr City, they’ve decided to do the same thing that sent their approval ratings south last year (The Hill link via Redstate);

    “I would expect the House to pass legislation similar to that which we passed in the past … a date for the redeployment of the majority of U.S. combat forces,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in an interview with The Hill Monday.

    The decision on whether to include withdrawal language in the supplemental spending bill for Iraq is one of the biggest questions looming for Democratic leaders. The Iraq debate consumed the House for months last year, prompting criticism that Democrats wasted time on a politically unwinnable fight.

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said Democrats’ inability to force President Bush to change course on Iraq has been her greatest disappointment.

    Yeah, that’s my idiot congressman, Chris VanHollen, but notice in what capacity he’s speaking to the press – Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman. In other words, they’re still convinced that Code Pink speaks for America, and that they won Congress in 2006 for their anti-war blather. Of course, if they do it often enough, eventually they’ll get what they want – when the war is over without a bit of help from them.

    Mark at Redstate wrote;

    All they are left with is hollow, partisan, political stunts, like their upcoming pretend vote to end the war. One could say that they are just playing the cards they were dealt. But Democrats have been dealing since the beginning of last year. And no matter how they try to stack the deck against them, Bush and Petraeus keep drawing the inside straight.

    Hollow, partisan, political stunts is all they’ve had for the last eight years.

  • “Why I Left Greenpeace”

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    The Wall Street Journal celebrates Earth Day with a column by Patrick Moore, former co-director of Greenpeace entitled “Why I Left Greenpeace“;

    I observed that none of my fellow directors had any formal science education. They were either political activists or environmental entrepreneurs. Ultimately, a trend toward abandoning scientific objectivity in favor of political agendas forced me to leave Greenpeace in 1986.

    The breaking point was a Greenpeace decision to support a world-wide ban on chlorine. Science shows that adding chlorine to drinking water was the biggest advance in the history of public health, virtually eradicating water-borne diseases such as cholera. And the majority of our pharmaceuticals are based on chlorine chemistry. Simply put, chlorine is essential for our health.

    My former colleagues ignored science and supported the ban, forcing my departure.

    Now he writes that the self-centered Luddites at Greepeace are targeting DINP which makes plastic more flexible;

    Commonly used phthalates, such as diisononyl phthalate (DINP), have been used in everyday products for decades with no evidence of human harm. DINP is the primary plasticizer used in toys. It has been tested by multiple government and independent evaluators, and found to be safe.

    Despite this, a political campaign that rejects science is pressuring companies and the public to reject the use of DINP. Retailers such as Wal-Mart and Toys “R” Us are switching to phthalate-free products to avoid public pressure.

    It may be tempting to take this path of least resistance, but at what cost? None of the potential replacement chemicals have been tested and found safe to the degree that DINP has. The Consumer Product Safety Commission recently cautioned, “If DINP is to be replaced in children’s products . . . the potential risks of substitutes must be considered. Weaker or more brittle plastics might break and result in a choking hazard. Other plasticizers might not be as well studied as DINP.”

    The hysteria over DINP began in Europe and Israel, both of which instituted bans. Yet earlier this year, Israel realized the error of putting politics before science, and reinstated DINP.

    But that’s just par for the course for the entire Left. Everything is a political football to toss around, a way to sucker some more chumps out of their money – regardless of the consequences.

    Does anyone think that Al Gore wants to save the world from global warming and give up his hot gig as some sort of speaker extraordinaire?

    Does Code Pink and the IVAW really want to end the war and end their cash flow? No. They all need the drama. I’ll concede that maybe there are some that do want to end wars and global warming, but the organizations are pulling in cash hand-over-fist. They’d have to either retool their organizations or find real work.

  • What’s good for the Goose…(Updated)

    Zombie, in the new blog Zomblog has photos of Code Pink getting a taste of their own medicine. Apparently, Marine Corps veterans are protesting outside the Code Pink recruiting center in Albany, CA.

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    Poifect.

    Update: While we’re in a mood for protests, Skye at Midnight Blue and Flopping Aces has pictures of yesterday’s Chester County, PA rally and a video that takes some shots at the Left and their “projection”.

    [youtube 4k-3nSlysMo nolink]

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