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US soldiers fire on Iraqi citizens and Journalists working for US media

4:52 pm By la Macha · Iraq War|Violence · 6 Comments

5 Apr 2010

I am not going to frame this video with my response to it–I am only going to say two things:

1. I give a massive trigger warning to all who watch this, in particular war survivors or those connected those who were in war. It is horrifying, disgusting, sickening. But it is essential it is seen. So those who are like me–who abhor violence, but will not be emotionally traumatized as a survivor would–I feel it is a duty to watch it. To see what it is being done in your name. And take responsibility for it.

2. As a US citizen, I forcefully denounce what these soldiers did in the name of the US government. As a child of immigrant parents and a member of the immigrant community, I suggest on the strongest terms possible that the pro-immigration activist community complicate and challenge the prevailing idea that we intend to “march for America” as a way to “win” pro-immigration agenda from the government that committed this horrific atrocities.

That said, please watch this video–if you can’t, please forward it as far and wide as you can.

via Huffington Post

A crewman begs for permission to open fire on the van and its occupants, even though it has done nothing but stop to help the wounded: “Come on, let us shoot!”

Calling it a case of “collateral murder,” the WikiLeaks Web site today released harrowing until-now secret video of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter in Baghdad in 2007 repeatedly opening fire on a group of men that included a Reuters photographer and his driver — and then on a van that stopped to rescue one of the wounded men.

None of the members of the group were taking hostile action, contrary to the Pentagon’s initial cover story; they were milling about on a street corner. One man was evidently carrying a gun, though that was and is hardly an uncommon occurrence in Baghdad.

Reporters working for WikiLeaks determined that the driver of the van was a good Samaritan on his way to take his small children to a tutoring session. He was killed and his two children were badly injured.

In the video, which Reuters has been asking to see since 2007, crew members can be heard celebrating their kills.

“Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards,” says one crewman after multiple rounds of 30mm cannon fire left nearly a dozen bodies littering the street.

A crewman begs for permission to open fire on the van and its occupants, even though it has done nothing but stop to help the wounded: “Come on, let us shoot!”
Story continues below

Two crewmen share a laugh when a Bradley fighting vehicle runs over one of the corpses.

And after soldiers on the ground find two small children shot and bleeding in the van, one crewman can be heard saying: “Well, it’s their fault bringing their kids to a battle.”

Where the March for America and the Anniversary of the Iraq Invasion Intersect

6:48 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Immigration|Iraq War|March for America|Politics · 4 Comments

19 Mar 2010

I will be at the March for America on Sunday, but the 7th Anniversary of the United States invasion of Iraq is on Saturday and that is something that I have marched against. There are a flurry of protests and remembrances planned across the country and a march on Saturday in DC against the ongoing 7 year war in Iraq.

Pero why is neither side talking about where the two issues, immigration and war, intersect? Is this one of the glaring failures of “reform” movements that are single issue and don’t talk about how different policies inside the United States feed each other?

What am I talking about?

While the face of wartime motherhood in the media was Cindy Sheehan but it could have been the mother of Jose E. Ulloa, or the mother of Jesus Alberto Suarez del Solar, or the mother of a young Latino soldier whose funeral bells I could hear from my apartment, Sgt. Alex R. Jimenez. This is not an attempt to disrespect or diminish the work of Cindy Sheehan or the death of her son Casey but rather to point out, that as support for the war waned, efforts to recruit soldiers from low-income communities of color were stepped up. Recruiters targeted schools and subway stations and they still do, promising money in a tough economy and promising legal status in the midst of a broken immigration system.
Read more…

Mixing the Bible with an unrighteous war

12:50 pm By la Macha · Iraq War|Religion · 1 Comment

18 May 2009

seenodead As a person of very mixed faith I read the following article with sort of a sick feeling in my stomach. Apparently, Rumsfeld (remember him?) used to send daily updates to President Bush that were plastered with quotes from the bible:

One showed US troops trudging through the desert under a passage from Isaiah: “Their arrows are sharp, all their bows are strung; their horses’ hoofs seem like flint, their chariot wheels are like a whirlwind.”

Another showed Saddam delivering a speech to camera with these words from the First Epistle of Peter: “It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.”

Draper noted that unlike Bush, Rumsfeld did not wear his faith on his sleeve. And he said the use of the biblical passages was the brainchild of a director for intelligence working under the Pentagon chief.

“Still, the sheer cunning of pairing unsentimental intelligence with religious righteousness bore the signature of one man: Donald Rumsfeld,” Draper’s report said.

“At least one Muslim analyst in the (Pentagon) building had been greatly offended,” it said.

“Others privately worried that if these covers were leaked during a war conducted in an Islamic nation, the fallout — as one Pentagon staffer would later say — ‘would be as bad as Abu Ghraib’.”

Now, really–I don’t think that Rumsfeld technically did anything wrong, at least not compared to the other shit he did (advocating torture, starting wars with little rhyme or reason, etc). But on a purely emotional level, I find this news to be reprehensible. It demonstrates to me on the most base level that the wars the U.S. are in right now were not based on what is best for U.S. citizens–but rather instead were based on and justified on the religious beliefs of a few powerful white men that remain completely disconnected from the people they claim to represent.

Does that sound like anybody else to you?
It does to me.

You can see the images of the folders here at GQ

Shoe thrower gets sentence reduced

1:18 pm By la Macha · Iraq War · Comments Off

7 Apr 2009

shoe-thrower It was good to read that the man who threw the shoe at George Bush in Iraq got his sentence reduced from three years to one.

Iraq’s highest court reduced the prison sentence Tuesday for an Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at former President George W. Bush from three years to one, a court spokesman said.

Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar, the spokesman, said the decision was taken because the journalist had no prior criminal history. The Federal Appeals Court ruled on the defense’s appeal, which cited an Iraqi law stipulating a maximum sentence of two years for publicly insulting a visiting foreign leader.

Torture was an abstract word to me

8:39 pm By la Macha · Health|Immigration|Iraq War|race · Comments Off

23 Feb 2009

The latest Gitmo prisoner to be released is Binyam Mohamed of Britian. As with previous men who were held at the prison for years without ever being allowed a day in court, Mohamed was charged but never went to trail. He is now asserting that he was subjected to torture (including forced feeding when he was on hunger protests), and actually initially cooperated with British intelligence. Imagine his horror to find out that British intelligence was handing everything he was saying to it over to the U.S.:

From the Guardian

Andrew Dismore, chairman of parliament’s joint human rights committee, said he would lead a private meeting today to consider where their inquiry goes next. Separately, Mike Gapes, chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, said: “We will be pursuing the issue with ministers,” adding that his cross-party group had been trying to discover the UK’s role in the rendition of terror suspects for years. His committee intended to question David Miliband, the foreign secretary, and the Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch Brown, over what he called “outstanding issues”. He said they included “rendition, what happened to people in Guantánamo Bay and black sites” – a reference to prisons in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

In the prepared statement issued as he landed in the UK, Mohamed said: “I have to say, more in sadness than in anger, that many have been complicit in my own horrors over the past seven years … I realised in Morocco that the people who were torturing me were receiving questions and materials from British intelligence. I had met with British intelligence in Pakistan. I had been open with them. Yet the very people who I had hoped would come to my rescue, I later realised, had allied themselves with my abusers.”

The high court has heard evidence of British security and intelligence officials’ involvement in secret interrogations endured by Mohamed. What two judges have described as “powerful evidence” relating to Mohamed’s treatment is being suppressed under pressure from Miliband and the US authorities.

Every single solitary one of the men who have been released have spoken of some type of torture–whether it be forced feeding, beatings or sleep deprivation. Will we in the U.S. listen to them and demand that our government at least *pay* these people for the years stolen and the bodies damaged? Will we demand this knowing that if these men can’t get accountability from our government, there’s no way on earth *we’ll* ever be able to?

El Salvador : Last Latin American Country in Iraq Leaving

1:57 pm By Maegan La Mala · El Salvador|Iraq War · Comments Off

24 Dec 2008

In exactly a week, the last Latin American country with troops in Iraq will withdraw.

According to remarks made yesterday by Salvadoran President Tony Saca, troops will withdraw from the country on December 31st. “Considering the lack of a United Nations resolution, the government of El Salvador decided to end our presence in Iraq,” Saca said.

Other Latin American nations that used to have troops in Iraq were Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic.

The Salvadorian contingent is made up of 200 soldiers. In the five years since the Salvadorian troops have been stationed, five soldiers have been killed.

Via / The Latin Americanist

Navidad Gift Idea : Model 271

3:27 pm By Maegan La Mala · Fashion|Iraq War|Politics · Comments Off

21 Dec 2008

While the protagonist of the shoe toss seen round the world, Muntadar al-Zaidi, remains in jail and is by many accounts being tortured, there seems to be more debate as to where the shoe came from and how people can get one.

Some say the shoe is from Lebanon, others say it’s from Iraq, and a Turkish company is claiming it’s model 271 is THE shoe.

Though most shoes commonly available in Iraq are factory-made in China, Mr. Zaidi’s brother dismissed such reports, as well as those claiming the shoes came from Turkey or Lebanon:

“One hundred percent they are Iraqi-made shoes,” Udai al-Zaidi told Reuters. “His shoes are not Chinese, nor Turkish.”

Udai said they came from the Baghdad factory of Iraqi shoemaker Alaa Haddad, viewed as among the country’s best.

Meanwhile, Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak ran a front-page story — with accompanying headline, “Made in Turkey,” — stating that the shoes were consistent with a design by Turkish businessman Ramazan Baydan:

Baydan said he had designed the style in 1999, and orders from Iraq had increased by 100% since the Bush incident.

“If it had hit Bush’s head it wouldn’t have hurt him,” he said of his shoe, apparently referring to the softness of the leather.

Lebanese newspaper as-Safir also ran a front-page story with a photo showing Zaidi during a recent visit to Beirut with the headline, “Did he buy the shoes in Beirut?”

Bush Gets a Goodbye Gift in Iraq : Two Shoes to the Head

7:45 am By Maegan La Mala · Iraq War|Politics · 2 Comments

15 Dec 2008

But the president’s message on progress in the region was having trouble competing with the videotaped image of the angry Iraqi who hurled his shoes at Bush in a near-miss, shouting in Arabic, “This is your farewell kiss, you dog!” The reporter was later identified as Muntadar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, an Iraqi-owned station based in Cairo, Egypt.

In Iraqi culture, throwing shoes at someone is a sign of contempt. Iraqis whacked a statue of Saddam with their shoes after U.S. Marines toppled it to the ground following the 2003 invasion.

Unfortunately, the journalist missed (that or Bush’s reflexes are that good).

Do You Have a Question for the Obama – Biden Transition Team?

11 Dec 2008

The Obama Transition team launched its new “Open for Questions” tool today on Change.gov. This new tool will allow anyone to ask and vote on questions they have for the transition team. Popular questions selected by the community of web users on Change.gov will be answered on a regular basis by the Obama team.

I suggest going online and asking/voting questions about immigration and hate crimes.

Regrets Only : Bush is Sorry About Immigration and Iraq

1:37 pm By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Iraq War|Politics · Comments Off

2 Dec 2008

As President Bush prepares to leave office, he’s reflecting on what went wrong and according to him immigration and the war in Iraq went wrong. Well kind of sort of.

Bush said that one of his biggest disappointments was the failure to pass a comprehensive bill on immigration reform.

“I firmly believe that the immigration debate really didn’t show the true nature of America as a welcoming society,” he said. “I fully understand we need to enforce law and enforce borders. But the debate took on a tone that undermined the true greatness of America, which is that we welcome people who want to work hard and support their families.”

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