{"id":13671,"date":"2009-08-16T13:40:39","date_gmt":"2009-08-16T18:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=13671"},"modified":"2009-10-28T07:51:39","modified_gmt":"2009-10-28T12:51:39","slug":"james-branum-lawyer-to-malcontents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=13671","title":{"rendered":"James Branum; lawyer to malcontents"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"branum-and-bishop-pretrial-glee\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You’ve probably been wondering who is defending these “resisters” who are being prosecuted by the military during their court cases. For Victor Agosto<\/a>, Travis Bishop<\/a>, Robin Long<\/a>, Cliff Cornell<\/a>, and pot smoking deserter Ryan Jackson<\/a>, it’s been James M. Branum, who calls himself the GI Rights Lawyer<\/a>. He’s also a co-chair of the Military Law Task Force<\/a> branch of the communist National Lawyer’s Guild.<\/p>\n

So who is James Branum? In his own words<\/a>;<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

If I had to describe myself, I would say that I\u2019m an old style (as in cir. 1912) Oklahoma Agrarian Socialist. My primary political influenced has been the Jesus. I believe his way of radical peace, love and sharing could change the world. I also draw a great deal from the writings of Wendell Berry, Thomas Jefferson, Thoreau, Buddha and even Marx (but mostly second-hand when it comes to Marx). In modern terms, I guess I fit best in the Green Party, but I don\u2019t really dig the way the Green Party (at least nationally does things), and in many ways fit better with the anarchist approach of the Catholic Worker Movement and the Wobblies.I believe strongly in both the sanctity of life, but take it further than many do. True peace includes both a spiritual element and an economic element, because true peace can only come when everybody had enough and no one goes hungry.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, that’s why Osama bin Laden attacked us – he was hungry. That’s why Saddam Hussein attacked Iran and Kuwait and his own people – he was hungry. That’s why the Serbs attacked the Kosovars – Milosevic was hungry. It all seems so simple, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n

So, here’s Branum giving advice to the YouTube audience last year on “resisting”. He talks about people who didn’t do any jail time – unfortunately for his clients, none of the people who didn’t go to jail were Branum’s clients. He also discusses how liberating Thoreau claims he found prison – Branum’s clients will more than likely get that same feeling Thoreau felt;<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Anyway, what has this lawyer, James Branum, done for his clients? So far, he’s had a 100% success rate getting them all imprisoned. In fact, he’s managed to get all of them max sentences. When I wrote about Branum last month<\/a>, before the Victor Agosto court martial, he’d already had four clients get the max sentences. Since then, Agosto got 30 days, and now Travis Bishop got a year in prison.<\/p>\n

Here’s one of the statements Branum posted after Bishop was convicted;<\/p>\n

\n

To everyone who still cares:<\/p>\n

I can not say that a year in prison doesn\u2019t scare me: I am terrified. I just cried in the bathroom so no one could see.<\/p>\n

But still, though I am terrified, it would be scarier still to know that my fellow soldiers who feel as we feel would never find out what we are trying to accomplish had I not gone to prison.<\/p>\n

Everyone who hears or reads this should know that I love you all, and my life is forever changed because of you.<\/p>\n

Victor and myself are starting something big . . . and it is now up to all of you to continue on.<\/p>\n

With all of my heart,<\/p>\n

Travis [Bishop]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So, ya know, ya hafta wonder why these clowns are hiring an incompetent doofus lawyer that gets them the max sentence every single time. Why pay someone to do the exact same thing an Army lawyer would do for free?<\/p>\n

I guess it’s because they ain’t all that bright – like Branum;<\/p>\n

\"bishop-peace\"<\/a>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

If all of Branum clients are in jail, it just makes it easier to visit them;<\/p>\n

\"visiting-clients\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And in a movement that doesn’t require success, intentions are all that matter;<\/p>\n

\"jamail-to-branum\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You’ve probably been wondering who is defending these “resisters” who are being prosecuted by the military … James Branum; lawyer to malcontents<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,47,84,30,52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antiwar-crowd","category-liberals-suck","category-military-issues","category-phony-soldiers","category-usual-suspects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13671\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}