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

Category: Antiwar crowd

  • Ex-Marine Ken O’Keefe of the Mavi Marmara

    Few people actually qualify for the label “bat shit crazy”, but Ken Nichols O’Keefe truly does qualify. He claims that he was a Marine in Desert Storm and that even then he railed against his superiors;

    As a Marine I spoke out openly about abuse of power by my “superiors” and as a consequence I paid a heavy price. I realised that honour and integrity were virtues which are often punished rather then rewarded and the Marines supplied me with my first serious taste of injustice.

    I guess injustice tastes like MREs. So anyway, after he left the Marines, he rescued sea turtles and became a member of the “Lawful Hawaiian Government” – apparently it’s a group of Hawaiians who couldn’t get elected legally so they founded their own government which makes laws they can’t enforce. More Leftist mental masturbation.
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  • CIA’s drone program under assault

    In this morning’s Washington Post, Mark Theissen warns that the United Nations and the American Civil Liberties Union are joining forces to end the CIA’s successful drone program in Afghanistan;

    The special rapporteur, Philip Alston, was joined in his condemnation by the American Civil Liberties Union, which in an April 28 letter to Obama, accused him of supporting a “program of long-premeditated and bureaucratized killing” and declared that the program “violates international law.” The ACLU wrote that “financiers, and other non-combat ‘supporters’ of hostile groups cannot be lawfully targeted with lethal force.” Yet that is precisely what Obama did in the case of Yazid.
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    On The Post’s op-ed page Sunday, Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey called the killing of Yazid a “major blow” to al-Qaeda because “Yazid has essentially served as al-Qaeda’s ‘chief financial officer,’ coordinating the group’s fundraising and overseeing the distribution of money essential to its survival.” By the ACLU’s reasoning, this would make the strike that killed Yazid illegal. Does the ACLU want to see the Predator operator who took out al-Qaeda’s third in command prosecuted for murder? The ACLU has already gone after CIA interrogators — surreptitiously photographing these covert operatives and sharing the images with al-Qaeda terrorists in Guantanamo. CIA drone operators may soon be in for similar treatment.

    Yeah, it frightens me that lawyers are trying to insinuate themselves into the role of war fighters. It’s impossible to hold warriors to a civilian legal standard during day-to-day operations when their crime is just doing their jobs.

  • The face of treason

    Specialist Bradley Manning was arrested this weekend for perpetrating the Wikileaks video release. He has bragged that he was also responsible for countless other release according to Wired;

    He said he also leaked three other items to Wikileaks: a separate video showing the notorious 2009 Garani air strike in Afghanistan that Wikileaks has previously acknowledged is in its possession; a classified Army document evaluating Wikileaks as a security threat, which the site posted in March; and a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables that Manning described as exposing “almost criminal political back dealings.”

    “Hillary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public,” Manning wrote.

    Wired.com could not confirm whether Wikileaks received the supposed 260,000 classified embassy dispatches. To date, a single classified diplomatic cable has appeared on the site: released last February, it describes a U.S. embassy meeting with the government of Iceland. E-mail and a voice mail message left for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on Sunday were not answered by the time this article was published.

    The State Department said it was not aware of the arrest or the allegedly leaked cables. The FBI was not prepared to comment when asked about Manning.

    Of course, he was turned in by a former hacker who wasn’t so disturbed by the release of the “Collateral Murder” video as he was about the 2009 diplomatic communications. So I guess he was politically motivated to rescue Obama and Clinton from the evil clutches of whistleblowers.

    I’m surprised that CID agents took valuable time away from harassing bloggers to arrest this guy, who was benign compared to antics of folks releasing ORBs of terrorists.

    Thanks to Junior AG for the link. More from Jimbo.

  • Elaine Brower calls the troops ‘Baby Killers’

    Brower and matthis burn the flag
    You may remember that I introduced you to Elaine Brower, the Staten Island Blue Star Mom who runs the area’s Military Families Speak Out chapter, who stood with Matthis when he burned a flag, while shouted something about ‘this what we think of this country’ or something equally childish. She also pays for the blog that Matthis doesn’t use anymore.

    Well, on Saturday, Tommy dropped off this video taken out on Coney Island by Elaine Brower in which you can hear her call the military helicopter pilots “Baby Killers”.

    Now, Brower’s son, a Marine sergeant, has done more than three tours of Afghanistan and Iraq. Does she think her son is a baby killer, too? Or just the whole military except her son? More than likely, Brower, who opens up nearly every speech with the fact that her son is in the military doesn’t realize that she includes he son in the ‘baby killer’ crowd. Or maybe only Army personnel are ‘baby killers’.

    Or maybe Brower is such an idiot that she doesn’t even know what she’s saying these days.

  • Matthis: Vacation or jail?

    So Matthis is trying to make up his mind whether he should fulfill his obligations or totally blow off jail in favor of a Caribbean vacation in regards to his arrest in Highland Falls during the President’s speech there. Guess which way he’s leaning;

    I called the District Attorney’s Office this morning, but they said the responsibility for Matthis and his community service will fall to the probation department, who won’t have responsibility until the disposition of the case has been determined.

    I hope someone in Orange County, New York is listening so they can hold the local justice officials’ feet to the fire on this. It seems to me that if Matthis leaves the country while under jurisdiction of the case, he could be in serious trouble – federal pound-you-in-the-ass-prison kind of trouble. Sure would hate to see that happen.

  • IVAW Convention at Huston-Tillotson University

    Next month is the annual IVAW Convention. This year it will be held at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, TX. Here’s what they say about the purpose of their convention;

    All members of Iraq Veterans Against the War are highly encouraged to attend convention. In addition to building relationships with other members, we will be discussing the most important issues facing our GI and veterans movement.

    Members will have a chance to discuss lessons learned, brainstorm innovative ideas, and develop a common orientation towards the goals and strategy of IVAW for the upcoming year.

    Members will also meet with the current board and candidates, elect members for open board positions, review the status of our organization including finances, and participate in active duty outreach at Fort Hood.

    Key allies and supporters are also welcome to attend convention but are responsible for the cost of their own registration and travel arrangements. We are happy to recommend housing accomodations near the convention site.

    Preference for on campus housing is given to members and those with disabilities.

    Sounds like a joyful reunion of all of the folks the military has divested itself of the last few years. If you’d like to call Huston-Tillotson Univ., here’s their phone and fax respectively; Telephone at 512.505.3000, Fax at 512.505.3190.

    Oh, and there’ll be a special guest. I’m not sure if he’s invited or just in town;

    Yes, our favorite derelict and reject from the human race (and frequent troll) Carl Webb plans on crashing the convention. Let’s see to what degree Webb is welcomed. I wonder if the leeches and pedophiles from VFP and Military Families Speak Out will be having their convention at the same place and time this year like last year in College Park to keep the kiddies in (party) line. Since that’s his AO, you can be sure Doug Zachary will be there to raid the coffers at every opportunity.

    Sounds like oodles of fun.

  • Navy puts kibosh on IVAW-UXO concert

    The latest money-raising scheme of the Iraq Veterans Against the War is their UXO Tour. UXO means unexploded ordinance – hinting that veterans back from the war are going to go off any minute now. Well their first concert was on a cruise ship in New York City and it was timed to coincide with Fleet Week when the most active duty service members, mostly Marines and Navy personnel, would be there.

    Well of course, the Navy forbade their people to go to this concert and IVAW is mightily upset. I won’t link to them, because they block traffic to their site from this blog anyway, but here’s the “press release” they link.

    “The military chain of command has no right to micromanage what service-members are doing in their off time”, said Nick Morgan, an Iraq veteran and UXO organizer. “They have no right to censor the information that’s available to them, especially when it’s within the confines of the law.”

    You remember Nick Morgan, don’t you? He was the IVAW member who got stomped by horse-mounted police at the last Presidential debate on Long Island. I guess he’s survived.

    Another organizer was junior rocket scientist Bobby Joe Grubb;

    Grubb, another IVAW member who has never seen Iraq, said;

    “We were incredibly successful in reaching out to these Sailors and Marines,” says Grubb. “We made solid contact with those we met while doing outreach”. He said many of them were interested in getting more involved in the active-duty and veteran-led anti-war movement.

    But then the Navy forbade Navy personnel from attending. So I called the Navy in New York City and spoke to a PAO LT Sean P. Riordan. LT Riordan told me the reason the Navy restricted attendance at this particular GI Resistance Concert is because all of the Marines and Sailors were in New York in an official capacity and they were all in uniform, so the Navy decided that attendance at a GI Resistance Concert in NYC during Fleet Week in uniform would be inappropriate according to military guidelines.

    Morgan also added that these concerts are helping to bring legal and mental-health resources to members of the military. “It’s imperative for these veteran-led efforts to be accessed by active-duty troops to make up for the lacking support they get from the current administration, the Department of Defense, and the Veterans Administration.”

    Yeah, that’s why they had a concert. They could hand out brochures describing the help IVAW provides soldiers – like homeless Trey Kindlinger (a former member of the Navy) and legal help like James Branum. And if the concert was about providing veterans services, why is it called a GI Resistance Concert?

    The Sailors and Marines weren’t “off” the whole time they were in NY, Nick Morgan, neither did the Navy restrict information. You could talk to them all you wanted.

    The Navy made the correct call and IVAW is left to cry into their empty glasses because they overplayed their hand.

  • But we knew that already.

    We just need you to say it yourself.

    First meet Greta Berlin Seems like your standard Professor with many different credentials in various academic subjects and teaching it on to the next generation.

    Well seems that she was a major player in organizing the ships to try to run past the Blockade. But it gets interesting with this quote from her about why the ships did not dock in Egypt.

    “This mission is not about delivering humanitarian supplies, it’s about breaking Israel’s siege on 1.5 million Palestinians,” she said.

    So it was never about getting aid into Gaza but “helping” the Palestine People Hamas from the blockade.

    Of course Hamas is all in support of these suppliers of blank market crayons.

    “The occupation’s threat to prevent the Freedom Flotilla from arriving in the besieged Gaza Strip is Zionist piracy and a violation of international law,” senior Hamas leader Ismail Radwan said in a statement.

    “The occupation is concerned about these ships… because they grant legitimacy to engagement with the Palestinian government and confirm that the attempts to isolate Hamas have failed,” he added.

    So in the end it is all about politics and nothing more.