Resistance Forum!

In preparation for our event next week, post/add to comments/label anything you find relating to Iraqi, student, or military resistance!

Turkey Forum!

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Pakistan Forum!

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Upcoming Event: Berkeley Teach-In Against America's Wars

America's Current and Impending Wars:

From Campus to the Middle East

Thursday, December 6, 2007 at 7 PM

155 Dwinelle Hall, UC Berkeley Campus

Shahram Aghamir, KPFA, Co-Producer of "Voices of the Middle East and North Africa"

Wendy Brown, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley

Samera Esmeir, Professor of Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley

Dahr Jamail, Independent Reporter and Author of "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq"

Last year, a group of UC Berkeley students and faculty members organized a teach-in about Israel's war on Lebanon. Attended by hundreds of students, faculty, and community members, the event was an opportunity to challenge assumptions and consensuses. The teach-in on December 6 is a follow-up event to last year's, stemming from our concern about the direction of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and increasing campaigns against critics on U.S. campuses.

The teach-in focuses on the continuing occupations of Iraq and Palestine, on the threats of American wars against Syria and Iran, and on the intimidation crusades of lobbies and pressure groups against members of the academic community who have voiced criticism. We think these issues are linked and need to be publicly debated. Our teach-in features four experts who will provide informed and critical perspectives.

Organized by a UC Berkeley Faculty and Students Collective: Berkeley Teach-In Against America’s Wars http://www.btiaw.org/. For the list of co-sponsors and for more information, visit our website, email us at info@btiaw.org or visit our facebook site: http://berkeley.facebook.com/event.php?eid=7153556003. Developed by the student movements of the 1960s and the opposition to the Vietnam war, teach-ins are forums for controversial discussions and have a proud history in the civil rights and anti-war movements.

This event is free, open to the public, and wheelchair accessible.

Another reason we're not too fond of the military...

Another appalling development:

Pentagon Demands Wounded Soldier Return Re-enlistment Bonus
By Spencer Ackerman - November 20, 2007

Just in time for the holidays, there's a special place in Hell just waiting to be filled by some as-yet-unknown Pentagon bureaucrat. Apparently, thousands of wounded soldiers who served in Iraq are being asked to return part of their enlistment bonuses -- because their injuries prevented them from completing their tours. From Pittsburgh's KDKA:

One of them is Jordan Fox, a young soldier from the South Hills.

He finds solace in the hundreds of boxes he loads onto a truck in Carnegie. In each box is a care package that will be sent to a man or woman serving in Iraq. It was in his name Operation Pittsburgh Pride was started.

Fox was seriously injured when a roadside bomb blew up his vehicle. He was knocked unconscious. His back was injured and lost all vision in his right eye.

A few months later Fox was sent home. His injuries prohibited him from fulfilling three months of his commitment. A few days ago, he received a letter from the military demanding nearly $3,000 of his signing bonus back.

"I tried to do my best and serve my country. I was unfortunately hurt in the process. Now they're telling me they want their money back," he explained.

Perversely, President Bush phoned Fox's mother to ask after Fox in May. Now his administration is taking money out of the pockets of wounded veterans like him.

Back in October, Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA) introduced a bill, the Veterans Guaranteed Bonus Act, that would require the Pentagon to pay bonuses to wounded vets in full within 30 days after discharge for combat-related wounds. Back then, the Pentagon's flack vaguely assured The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "We are going to give our wounded warriors and their families what they need to recover and return to duty or private life." But apparently the policy has yet to change. It seems that the enlistment contract that at least some troops sign (whether it's service-specific is unclear) allows for withholding some of the signing bonus if a tour isn't completed.

Thanks to TPM Reader DB

In case anyone forgot...

Please please PLEASE do not sign anything without reading through it first! One would think this is obvious, but...

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Possible *Ballot Petition* Fraud in California: Electoral Vote Initiative
by Vikingkingq, Wed Nov 14, 2007

First, I should explain that I'm a graduate student at the University of California Santa Barbara.

Today I witnessed what I think is an incidence of ballot petition fraud relating to the electoral vote apportionment initiative - the proposal to apportion California's electoral votes by congressional district, unilaterally giving 19 of California's electoral votes to the Republicans in 2008.


Outside the UCEN (student center plus bookstore plus food court) at UC Santa Barbara, there were a number of people with cardboard clipboards soliciting people to sign ballot petitions for a proposal to spend $1 billion on cancer hospitals for kids. If you agree to sign, they tell you "you need to sign 4 times." What they do not tell you is that the three pages after the ballot initiative on cancer hospitals are different ballot initiatives: the second proposes to abolish eminent domain, the third proposals to abolish rent control, and the fourth is the proposal to apportion California's electoral votes by district (the so-called Dirty Tricks Initiative).

I should note that the clipboard is arranged such that a rubber band holding the petitions to the cardboard is positioned on the top of the page, across the actual ballot language in question - thus, partially hiding the text of the ballot initiatives on pages 2-4 unless you actually stop and pull down the top of the page.

I agreed to sign the cancer initiative, but the comment about signing four times raised a red flag, because I'm familiar with the structure of ballot petitions, so I paused before signing and looked at the other initiatives. However, I'm absolutely sure that most of the people signing, young college students on a rush to get their lunches and off to class, did not take this step.

What they are doing is getting people to sign for ballot initiatives without their knowledge or informed consent, using young peoples' desire to do a good thing and their lack of familiarity with the legal paperwork of initiative petitions. If this is not illegal it is certainly deeply unethical. The moment I realized what was going on, I told the petitioners that they shouldn't be telling people to sign for ballot initiatives they're not aware of. Immediately after, I called the school newspaper, the Daily Nexus, the Courage Campaign, the Santa Barbara Democratic Central Committee, and the California Democratic Party.

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This is the Dirty Tricks Initiative I've been ranting about for a while. Sure enough, it's come back to life, and college students are prime targets for signature gathering because either they don't care or they don't take the time to try. These people are in Berkeley--it's been reported that they're doing the same thing here. More info