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

Category: Antiwar crowd

  • Hey! You Nazis in the back want to get in step?

    Steve Yoczik is a pretty verbose guy. he writes long, rambling missives at IVAW that have no real unifying point so you have to read carefully if read his latest “Self-image versus organizational functionality, and the contradictions therein. (THE FLAG IS NOT THE ISSUE)“. Don’t worry, I’ve read the whole thing and I still don’t what the title means, but I did pick oout a point or two buried between the bloated linguistics;

    There needs to be a reality check across the board, and that can’t happen if we’re all adamantly holding to our individual beliefs and thinking we know what’s best for everyone else.

    Yeah, all of you better get step because we can’t have you “adamantly holding to [y]our individual beliefs”. You should only hold on to the beliefs that are approved by the board (in their spineless way of trying to make the communists and the straights both happy – and their constantly changing votes). Do you think the national Socialists would have risen to power if all of the members had “adamantly holding to [their] individual beliefs”? Of course not.

    So all of you clowns in the back row better straighten out otherwise the IVAW won’t become a socialist organization and realize it’s internationalist goals. Think that’s not what he meant?

    Che, King, and everyone else that is idolized or looked up to were nothing without those who unified around them. Instead of trying to be them right out of the gate, we should focus on being those that gather around.

    We don’t need you guys spoutin’ off, just be good sheep and get in the herd with the rest of us. Of course, Yoczik absconded to Canada when he received the call so is this another attempt by one of non-combat veterans of IVAW to preach to the combat veterans and chide them for their service?

    By the way, this is Matthis latest avatar on Facebook. I suppose it’s to give the impression that he’s the one being burned, not the flag. More of that martyrdom complex he has;

    matthis-buring

  • University of Regina responds part 2

    Yesterday I received a email from the Vice President of the University Barbara L. Pollock about the School’s view on Project Hero. I sent here a thank you letter for taking the time respond and to my my concerns clear.

    Dear Ms Pollock,

    First I would like to thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to reply to my email. It is a concern that programs like Project Hero may be protested because of it’s affliction with those in military service. If any of these programs were canceled I believe that it would be a legitimate concern that it would be used as a example to target similar programs in the United States.

    I understand the need for necessity to have a forum for debate and disagreement. However I believe that in opposing this project that it is forgotten that this is not the political leaders but the military dependents that are affected.

    So once again I want to thank you for taking the time to read my email and for your continued support for those who are in need.

    Andrews, Warren
    SPC

    Her letter to me was short but too the point.

    Thanks for your note. I don’t think our profs have forgotten the military dependents, I suspect their views about military policy are really the root of the debate. We continue. Thanks very much for writing. Barb

    Barbara L. Pollock, APR, FCPRS

    But the question that I have is if the professors have not forgotten about the dependents then why is the military policy even the main issue. They do not have control of it or responsible for how it is run. The Professors are there make sure that their students have the best chance to receive a quality education and the University Administration to give these students the best chance to get and stay in school.

    (1) The immediate withdrawal of our university from “Project Hero”.

    (2) An institutional deployment of public pressure on both orders of government to provide immediate funding sufficient for universal access to post-secondary education.

    (3) A public forum on the war in Afghanistan and Canadian imperialism more generally to be held this semester before exams begin.

    The only point in there, number two does not address that the school has a list of scholarships that regularly never get used.

    So why is military policy even a topic of debate when student needs are being put at risk over polices that these professors do not have control over.

    ADDED: July 10, 2010

    There has not been much more press about this since March. But I am happy to report that the Durham College is joining Project Hero as of June 24th of 2010.

  • University of Regina responds

    Yesterday I sent a email to the President of the University asking them continue to support Project Hero. I got a reply this afternoon. The important part is highlighted in bold.

    Mr. Andrews,

    President Timmons asked me to thank you for sharing your views with her.

    The University of Regina is participating in Project Hero to support the education needs of the children of those who have given their lives in service of the Canadian Forces. We join approximately 50 other Canadian universities and colleges who would like to smooth the path for those who might find it difficult to access post-secondary education. We plan to continue with that bursary program.

    Universities are places where diverse opinion and debate are encouraged and you are experiencing an example of that philosophy. We support our faculty in their right to express their views.

    Again, our thanks for taking the time to write.

    Barb Pollock

    Barbara L. Pollock, APR, FCPRS
    Vice-President (External Relations)
    University of Regina

    So it looks like the main staff does not appear to have any plans to end this program at the moment and something we should keep a eye on. Because if programs like Project Hero are tossed aside in Canada because petty politics then it will not be too long before we can to expect it here.

  • TAH on Fox News?

    I just watched a segment on Fox and Friends with Steve Doocy, one of the Baldwins, Robin Givens and some comedian dude. They were supposed to be discussing Matthis’ flag burning theater and why the media isn’t covering it. Doocy said something to the effect that none of the media are covering it, that there’s just one blog out there saying anything. Um, Steve, the name is “This Ain’t Hell”.

    Of course, Givens sucked all of the oxygen out of the room with her answer that all of the media only covers what they want. So it wasn’t really a discussion, it was Givens attempt to cover for the media and the White House with the “everyone does it” excuse.

    Apparently they’re not putting the video up because they just posted the following segment while I was typing this.

  • Project Hero and University of Regina

    There was some more thing about this story that I found to be interesting to say the least. One was this story from a guy saying that because he was a solider in the Canadian military that he can say that Project Hero is a waste of money.

    Garson Hunter teaches social work at the University of Regina and is one of the professors fighting the Project Hero scholarship fund.

    Hunter says that the dependents of fallen soldiers have post-secondary education already paid for under the Children of Deceased Veterans Education Assistance Act.

    The Act was created in 1953 to provide dependents of slain and disabled soldiers the opportunity to get a post-secondary education.

    “(Project Hero) comes with no (government) money. Project Hero is provided solely by the U of R,” said Hunter.

    So if you want to say that the reason is that the school needs to help other students, then explain this statement from the University.

    Barb Pollock, spokeswoman for the U of R, said the university doesn’t always know what funding may be available to certain students.

    “We don’t look at what else is available,” she said. “For example, there are many scholarships and awards that students with Aboriginal ancestry can access.”

    Pollock said the Project Hero scholarship will not stifle other scholarship opportunities.

    “Every year, there are numerous scholarships available that never get used,” she said. “Through these scholarships we try to open up our university to as many people as possible.”

    You mean that there is a large list of scholarships that are going unused? Never.

    But giving Children who have lost a parent to war is a political tool.

    “It is absolutely deplorable to use soldiers’ deaths to aggrandize military endeavors in Afghanistan,” said Hunter. “As a former soldier, I find this disgraceful.”

    I wonder if Canada has a equivalent Freedom of Information act, because right now would be a good reason to use it.

    Oh there is a facebook fan page that is protesting the actions of these professors. As of this posting it has close to three thousand members. I am sure that we can help put them over the top.

    Also I would encourage writing to the school and making a case for keeping this program.

  • The Media’s Dirty Little Secret About The Iraq War

    The coverage of the WikiLeaks “collateral murder” video continues to send my blood pressure higher and higher. Here is a choice article from AlterNet, in which the author repeats the “This is a horrible war crime” nonsense. A choice quote:

    This is definitely not Academy Award winner The Hurt Locker – where American soldiers are selfless heroes and Iraqis are faceless ghosts. This is real life – with American soldiers as video game killers and Iraqis as corpses. These are the kind of heroes who mistake a telephoto lens for an rocket-propelled grenade.

    Of course, yet again, no mention in the article of the fact that the insurgents that these Reuters employees were prancing around Baghdad with had REAL RPGs or of the fact that after the grunts arrived on scene they started taking more fire from an abandoned building that had to be blown up. For the author of this article, those are simply inconvenient facts.

    The video confirmed a dirty little secret about how the media has covered the Iraq War. Many major news organizations (Reuters, the AP, Time magazine, the networks, etc.) outsourced their reporting responsibilities to Iraqi journalists, many of whom were sympathetic to or actively involved in the insurgency. Does anybody really believe that if those two Iraqi Reuters employees weren’t in bed with an insurgent group that they wouldn’t have been on Al Jazeera begging for their lives or getting their heads chopped off? After the invasion, very few Western journalists embedded for long periods of time with American or other coalition units. If they did, it was only for a couple of weeks at the most. Most of the time, after their first firefight they would pop smoke and head back to the states thinking that they knew everything there was to know about Iraq. We all hear about people like Michael Yon, Michael Ware, and Pat Dollard who stayed in the fight for long periods of time and kept going back but unfortunately they are few and far between.

    Most of the time your typical Western journalist would fly into BIAP and stay in the Greenzone or on some big FOB around Baghdad. They would get their stories mostly through Iraqi “fixers” who would bring them photographs, videos, and packaged stories. Probably the most famous example of this is the Time magazine article on the Haditha killings. Tim McGirk, the author of the article, was not in Haditha nor was he even in Anbar province at the time. Instead, he got the bulk of the info for the article from an Iraqi named Taher Thabet, who was part of a group called the Hammurabi Human Rights group. It would come out  later that Thabet was a known AQI propagandist who even was suspected by the Marines of helping to film IED attacks on Americans. Did McGirk mention any of this in his article? No, another inconvenient fact for another lazy and bias lamestream media reporter. Of course, Mr. McGirk declined to testify in the hearings on the killings after the Marine Corps revealed these facts.

    I believe strongly in a free and independent press and I believe the media has a right to cover American military operations without compromising the integrity of those operations. Sometimes the military makes mistakes and only bad press will make them correct those mistakes (i.e. the debacle with the SEALs in Fallujah). However, the way that many journalists have behaved in their reporting of the Iraq War has been borderline treasonous in my mind. Now before some people jump on me, let me explain what I mean. If you want to go to Iraq and come back and say the war is illegal, immoral or whatever, that is your right. But when you go to a warzone and actively abet an international terrorist group like Al Qaida by hiring its members to do YOUR JOB, that in my mind is treason.

    I wonder what Ernie Pyle would think of all this…..

  • More flag burning opinion from IVAW

    IVAW's Matthis Chiroux, Robyn Murray and MFSO's Elaine Brower burn the US flag "This is not my country!"

    One Iraq Veterans Against the War member of whom I’ve never heard until today is Joyce Wagner. She’s one of those actual Iraq veterans whose number is dwindling at IVAW these days. She pens an opinion on the IVAW website today – probably the first hing I’ve seen written there with which I agree;

    So when Matthis took an action, whether right or wrong, without considering this community it became incredibly offensive. As Matthis continues to boast his righteousness, even having the audacity to compare himself to Martin Luther King, it becomes more offensive.

    Members from the Pittsburgh chapter composed a letter to the board of directors, which several other individual members signed onto in agreement. This letter was not asking for reprimand or punishment. It was simply asking for dialog, something that has thus been refused. We also suggested that if Matthis wants to perform renegade actions without care for the others in his community (including those who were present in DC on that same day who were performing their own action TOGETHER) he should voluntarily remove himself from the board in order to accomplish his own agenda, whatever that maybe.

    At least some members of IVAW see the act for what it was – a selfish plea for attention.

    Wagner writes that IVAW provides an opportunity for some members to express a unique shared viewpoint, But is that really the case these days, Joyce? The support that she claimed she got from IVAW membership has been co-opted by a far Left minority who only wants people in :Iraq veteran” T-shirts to prop up in front of their rallies. Matthis’ actions on March 20th prove this. He had no illusions that he was pissing on the more conservative, more “pro-America” membership of IVAW, but because he’s been able to twist the real message of IVAW, and bend the Board to his will with his idit antics, he knew that spinless Jose Vasquez and the other non-Iraq War veterans on the board would capitulate to him.

    Now your choice is whether you want to remain with the sinking ship of the IVAW or whether you want to seek the camaraderie of REAL Iraq veterans, or whether you want to wallow in theatrics of the porcine Left. The Board has left you no choice, except confronting Matthis yourself, with their decision to let Matthis continue unabated and to embrace the profane message of Elaine Brower “This is what we think of this country”. As well as, Matthis’ “This is not my country”.

    From this point forward, every IVAW T-shirt will be conflated with those messages of Matthis Chiroux and Elaine Brower.

  • Dahr Jamail: I said it first!

    DSC_0088

    This picture is of Dahr Jamail (center of the picture in black glasses and dark hair), eminent journalist for Truthout.org. He seems to be leading some IVAW protesters in their march on the National Archives in March, 2008, doesn’t he? Well, this photo probably represents that truth better than any Jamail himself could pen.

    Jamail has made it his life’s work to besmirch the reputation of the American soldier. We’ve compiled a fairly large number of posts about Jamail, a search on his name will demonstrate how he’s attached himself to James Branum, the IVAW and Under the Hood Cafe. Apparently, he took volumes of notes during the Winter Soldier hearing in March 2008, because he drags them out at every opportunity and repeats quotes from them like a trained bird.
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