Do We Really Have A Free Press In the U.S.? You Be The Judge

My graphic incorporating the now disappeared photo of napalm on the runway in Brunswick, 2012.

One of the reasons I started writing this blog in 2010 was to keep my head from exploding over current events.

The other reason is a persistent interest in battling information control. I am inspired by blogs and websites who peek around the corporate media monolith and report what they see and hear. 

I've written about this big picture topic many times but today I thought I'd share a specific, detailed example of information control on behalf of the U.S. military by corporate news entities in my home state of Maine.

Recently the Blue Angels brought their noise and air polluting daredevil show to Brunswick and I organized a protest that included speeches. It's not the first time I've protested air shows which are recruiting events and terribly harmful to our already struggling climate.

In my remarks, I mentioned that in 2012 the same air show had burned napalm on the runway as a grand finale. Vietnam vets that were inside at the time recognized it and I heard them talk about it; also, the local newspaper The Forecaster ran a photograph of the napalm burning with a plane overhead as part of their August 26, 2012 coverage of the show.

In my blog post about it, I inserted the photo using a url that directly linked to the photo. I used to put photos in blog posts this way because it was faster than downloading and then uploading photos, and also because it was more respectful to the source as it pinged back to them if a reader clicked on it.

Sadly, this is what my blog post looks like today:

Ok, so the old link is broken. Happens all the time. Just go to the archive of The Forecaster and get it again, right?

Wrong.

The Forecaster, now owned by the Portland Press Herald, mysteriously has no archived articles about that air show -- a two-day event that typically produces at least two articles. In fact, it mysteriously has zero articles on any topic for the two day duration of the show: August 25 & 26, 2012. 

Bear with me, it gets even stranger.

In my searching I did uncover an article reporting on the planned protests for the 2012 air show from a press release sent out by the organizers of the protest. This is from the Times Record, another local paper now owned by the Portland Press Herald. 

It, too, has a missing photograph though the caption remains humorously intact:

Who is this dude? No idea. 

Did a clerical error result in his face appearing where the banner pic was intended to go? We'll probably never know but in case you're curious, here's the banner:

Bruce Gagnon and Mark Roman at air show protest Sep. 4, 2021 Photo credit: Gigi Larc

Fast forward to this week when the Times Record refused to print a letter to the editor by Brunswick organizer Rosie Paul about the 20th anniversary of a weekly vigil for peace. Especially significant on the 20th anniversary of the events of 9/11, wouldn't you say? 

Here's the text of her letter:

Greater Brunswick PeaceWorks marks this Twentieth Anniversary

In the week following 9/11/01, members of the Brunswick community met together looking for what might be an effective response to the tragic events of that date.

We put out a call for a Vigil for Peace for that next Friday at 5, a Vigil urging non-retaliation so we could move ahead wisely from the crossroad all of us faced.

On that Friday, and for several subsequent Fridays, the edge of the Town Green was lined with as many as 90 community members who felt keenly the need to reflect on what had happened, to think about why it may have happened, and to see how we could help to shape a response that would lead to more understanding and certainly not to more violence.

When the United States chose to retaliate against Iraq and Afghanistan, the numbers at the vigil dropped, both in frustration and in disappointment. A core of some 10-15 members has met at the edge of the Green nearly every Friday since.

Gradually we gave our group a name - PeaceWorks of Greater Brunswick – and set about organizing monthly discussions, film showings, presentations of various kinds, and an annual Peace Fair to celebrate and build on the connections among Maine’s many non-profit groups working for Justice and Peace.

The weekly vigil has continued – fondly known as “Honk for Peace” – and we find our numbers growing again, infused with energy from other areas where violence needs to give way to compassion and cooperation: The Black Lives Matter Movement , The Poor People’s Campaign, and the looming Climate Crisis – all of them connected and all of them crying out for us to wake up, to find the sustainable future we know is possible.

You are warmly invited to join us on the Green (opposite Walgreens) next Friday and for as many Fridays as you can. www.peaceworksbrunswickme.org

Rosalie Paul, Brunswick 

Rosie's queries about why the letter was rejected have met with stonewalling by executive editor John Swinconeck. 

No surprise to me since Swinconeck is the one who terminated Peaceworks' monthly column which Rosie used to coordinate and where I was sometimes published. His reason given at the time was that there was not enough local content in our columns. That won't fly for her recent letter so he simply said, we have no plans to publish this letter at any time.

All this came up because someone who heard me speak on September 4 about napalm being burned for entertainment in 2012 was questioned by an acquaintance who was incredulous that it could be true. So she reached out to me for evidence, and I began my futile search.

Do we really have a free press in the U.S.? You be the judge.

"Free College Would Absolutely Crush Military Recruitment" -- David Swanson

So Bernie has thrashed Hillary in the New Hampshire primary, except among the very rich and/or very old. This is being seen as a triumph of hope and the desire of the Democratic Party electorate to get fooled yet again. 

One of Bernie's most alluring promises is that of free college education, like all the other wealthy countries have. Because entire generations are being shackled to crippling debt in a job-scarce economy that's teetering on the brink of collapse yet again. 

And, as Student Debt Crisis tweeted a couple of days ago:

Today, a student would need to work 991 hours for 1 year of #tuition. pic.twitter.com/IFgTKFGLQG

— StudentDebtCrisis (@DebtCrisisOrg) February 9, 2016

But as blogger and antiwar organizer David Swanson pointed out in a recent post How to Counter Recruitment and De-Militarize Schools, "Senator Bernie Sanders refuses to say he would pay for any of his plans by cutting the military." 

And the Pentagon budget is the trillion dollar elephant in all of our rooms.

Swanson's most interesting observation in his piece on the military presence in your public schools was this: "Free college would absolutely crush military recruitment." He's basing his claim on the most oft-repeated reason that young people enlist. Young people from predominately low-income families in economically depressed areas are the targets of the economic draft that replaced the wildly unpopular universal conscription.

How do recruiters with an already gargantuan budget use your public school resources to carry their message forward? Let Swanson count the ways:

U.S. military recruiters are teaching in public school classrooms, making presentations at school career days, coordinating with JROTC units in high schools and middle schools, volunteering as sports coaches and tutors and lunch buddies in high, middle, and elementary schools, showing up in humvees with $9,000 stereos, bringing fifth-graders to military bases for hands-on science instruction, and generally pursuing what they call "total market penetration" and "school ownership."

Even more shocking was news last week from Sarah Grey writing in Truthout that Kindergarteners are being subjected to military recruitment by their teachers, in their classrooms. 

Veteran's Day was morphed from Armistice Day, which celebrated the end of the industrial strength bloodbath of WWI, to the public relations opportunity for the Pentagon that is celebrated today. School children spend hours studying who to thank while never being taught about the high suicide rate of veterans (nearly one an hour), or the PTSD, the nightmares and chronic health problems that plague so many. 

Here's a bulletin board put up for Kindergarteners last Veteran's Day. See if you can find the unconstitutional claim:

I'll leave veteran Will Hopkins, director of Peace Action New Hampshire, with the last word here.

Stop Recruiting Our Children For War Protest At Air Show

Whether the result of love for the late counter-recruiting champion Tom Sturtevant,

or a desire to stand next to the awesome new banner created by Natasha Mayers and Nora Tryon, or just plain good organizing by Vets for Peace's Nicole Moreau, a protest of the Air Force Thunderbirds air show drew a good-sized crowd of protesters yesterday.

Or maybe it was the chance to wear one of the great drone hats created by Bowdoin College activist Phui Yi Kong that brought so many of us together yesterday, about 75 in all.

Ironically, the air show itself was way down in attendance. Local police estimated the crowd at about 25% of past years. There were no cars lined up to get through the gate at all, whereas usually they stretch for a half mile or so along the road we walked from the Bowdoin campus toward Cook's Corner and the airfield main gate.

T.V. news gave some good coverage to the protests, especially Channel 13 WGME out of Portland
which gave me a chance to say on camera what I object to about military air shows.

Of course local news also gushed about the effect displays of military might have on 11 year-old boys, the empire's future soldiers.

Tarak Kauf and Ellen Davidson of VFP's Veterans Peace Team speaking as Bowdoin's past president Joshua Chamberlain looks on in uniform. More photos here.

Will our sons ever learn to care that the U.S. military is the biggest polluter on Earth? Will they ever even know the facts as the planet's temperature spikes and human beings scramble to survive?

Will our sons and daughters ever see the faces of the children who are victims of U.S. military airplanes and the bombs they carry? Will they ever see the children's mothers cry?


CODEPINK members carried messages including Bring Our War $ Home, Ground the Drones, and the classic Julia Ward Howe inspired message from the origins of Mother's Day as a time to come together and oppose militarism:
 
Inside action is planned at the air show today. News at 11...

More drone resistance is planned for noon on Monday, October 8 when CODEPINK will sponsor a Die-in at Obama campaign HQ, 533 Forest Ave., Portland, Maine.

Real Men Make Peace

Mounted police flee?

Sadly, I could not be in Wash DC with the hundreds who were arrested in front of the White House yesterday, or at the solidarity rallies in Bangor, San Francisco, etc. "Veterans for Peace have been asking for a meeting with this president (Obama) on behalf of the majority for years...We can't get a meeting ... we're going to go to jail...the people who have not been charged with any crimes are in jail, and the criminals are roaming free," said an anonymous participant interviewed in front of the White House.

WE NEED A PEACE PRESIDENT and REAL MEN MAKE PEACE were messages brought by Codepink women to the rally. Jodie and Medea were among those arrested for failing to disperse, after the crowd threw postcards over the White House fence in a symbolic yet very real attempt to bring the voice of the majority of Americans to the seat of power.

I was consoled by being able to hear an excellent update on NATO-focused organizing in Europe on a conference call yesterday of the UFPJ Afghanistan working group . Elsa Rassbach is an activist and journalist in Germany who reported on the recent counter-NATO Summit Conference in Lisbon Nov. 19-21, where she represented Codepink. She also told us about the Peace Yes, NATO No demonstration in Lisbon Nov. 20, with approximately 30,000 marching "including more than 100 organizations such as trade unions, retirees, and academics."

One of the things she said last night on the call stayed with me: "If you look at a map, NATO is where the white people live. NATO is made up of what were the colonizing nations."

As NATO continues to arm itself for global domination, the regional designation of North Atlantic will probably be lost to history; later generations (if there are such) will remember it as the military arm of the multinational corporations that grew like cancer under state-subsidized capitalism.

Germany's participation in the occupation of Afghanistan has grown increasingly unpopular with its own people, and the role of Bundeswehr officer George Klein in calling down an airstrike that killed 142 people in Kunduz continues to be a cause célèbre in Germany. Elsa noted news that mandatory national service in the military or an alternative has just been abolished, replaced by a U.S. style system of "volunteer" soldiers. Germany's Bundeswehr

"recently began a rather massive and costly U.S.-style recruitment effort in the schools and job centers as well as via advertising. The German peace movement is countering an
anti-recruitment campaign, with participation of teacher unions, called "School Holiday for the Bundeswehr" that  opposes access of the military recruiters to the schools."

 Sound familiar?

This news made me think of our friend Arne who helped found our local Waterville Area Bridges for Peace & Justice group and was a German father of young children. Occasionally on local access t.v. you will still see him in a discussion about militarization of public schools in Maine, holding aloft a copy of Time for Kids with a cover glorifying combat troops, saying his son had received this material from his third grade teacher in Waterville. Arne and his wife decided to move back to Germany, because he said Germans would never dream of allowing military recruiters to use public school space and time.

I wonder how they will choose to educate their children now.

I wish my teachers' union here in the U.S. was willing to stand up for the right of students not to be preyed on by NATO in the lunchroom.

Spanner in the works

Sometimes you look back at those big, old, dumb empires lumbering around embarrassing themselves, kind of like the decrepit old Elvis -- Ottoman mobs smashing an observatory newly built, French royals fleeing as mobs tore apart the Bastille prison, Charles and Camilla sitting shocked in their Rolls Royce as university students in London holler about the 300% hike in tuition that the Liberals voted in after promising during elections not to do so -- and you wonder. How could the imperial heads of state not see the writing on the wall? (You can add your name to the wall here.)

Propaganda and public education are twin subjects of this great Truthout article exploring how we got into the mess we're in today.

Thomas Jefferson, slave owner, had this mission statement for free public education K-grad in Virginia:
1. To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business.
2. To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writing.
3. To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties.
4. To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either.
5. To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor and judgment.
6. And, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness, all the social relations under which he shall be placed.

Status check, U.S. seat of empire, 2010CE. How are we doing?

Time running out for the rule of the kleptocracies?

In breaking news I see that the U.S. Army has banned the use of thumb drives (or nerd sticks as the kids sometimes call them), USB drives, and writeable CD's on computers. This is a strike against freedom of information, and the best kind of news a counter recruitment worker like me could wish for. Once potential enlistees get wind of the fact that they can't download music and lip synch to Lady Gaga while they toil in the imperial cyber-mines, maybe they will think again about not signing eight years of their life and possible all of their sanity away for the money to buy a new pickup truck or Harley.

Then again, since that news is buried in an obscure technology publication, and news that the House of Representatives just voted 212-206 to pass the FY11 Defense (sic) Appropriations Bill is not so much as mentioned in newspapers of record, much less on the front page...methinks we will continue in ignorance.

Maine's Rep. Chellie Pingree voted yes to spend many more billions for wars. She may not think people are watching. But some of us are. Let's hope an angry mob doesn't surround the private jet she and her boyfriend ride in. If I stumbled on to that kind of opportunity, I would not break any windows or throw any paint. I certainly would not chant "Off with their heads" like the English students did. 

I would urge everybody to link arms and just sit down and stay there. Nonviolent methods are the most effective way to throw a spanner in the works. 

Look for the kickoff to the new season on December 16 at the White House.

art credit: Brian Reeves, Slopart

Iraq vet tells the truth: why Kittery can't fix a bridge

I am learning to be a videographer for peace. When you have such vibrant subjects as Will Hopkins, director of Peace Action NH, and Jade Forrester, founding member of UM Farmington peace activism group P.A.inT., plus the other wonderful people seen here, it is hard to go wrong. Still it is a very SLOW process with many frustrations along the way. Spurred on by my husband reporting that a friend of ours said iMovie is "easy" I was able to finish this short project. Thank the goddess for the technical help I get from well-wishers.

You would think I would be able to do something as simple as zoom in on the Bring Our War $$ Home banner that was directly across the street from where I was standing. Oh well. Here's a still photo instead (thanks to Nicole Moreau of P.A.inT.):

Wells Staley-Mays and Bruce Gagnon in Kittery protesting a $4 million new recruiting HQ being constructed at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Protests to continue monthly. Next date: Sat. 11/27 3:30-5pm  fmi see Peace Action NH website

DREAM workhorse for military funding??

I see where the DREAM act has become attached to the FY11 "defense" funding bill in the senate.

Just like the congress had education funding attached to the last war supplemental funding bill a few months ago. So orgs like my union could send out bulletins pushing members to call their rep or senator urging passage of the bill. Many members click without knowing much about the piece of legislation and certainly without being told that they are urging passage of the largest "defense" funding bill in history. Deception is a complicated game.

Respecting the educational needs of young undocumented immigrants is the aim of DREAM and this is a wonderful goal, but it's a tiny part of all that doesn't work about our immigration policies.

It makes me sick when ideals -- like not interrupting the education of undocumented youth -- are twisted for the profit of death dealers. But this is what our country has become.

And under DREAM service in the military would be equivalent to education as a path to citizenship.

I remember the fact that immigrants are offered a path to citizenship by enlisting came to light during the Winter Soldier hearings. We were in a local cafe screening the hearings and the young hometown waitresses were amazed by that fact.

DREAM is already a band-aid applied to a gaping wound and doesn't need this odious association to further weaken it. Real immigration reform is one of the many things that were supposed to change. Challenging AZ over SB1070 was a good gesture, but delivery on real change would have meant fixing large portions of the dysfunction of U.S. immigration policies.

Now immigration is brought in as a workhorse as congress labors to pass two war bills each year. One bill is hardly behind us before another bills begins the dark dance of committees and cloture and arcane rules. The chief executive of the nation renews the national "emergency" caused by 9/11. A constant state of war requires a constant flow of (borrowed to be paid back later) dollars gushing forth from our taxes and other revenues.

Private corporations are mercenaries paid for by public funds. Knowing this does not make me feel safer at all.

9/11 manufactured consent anniversary

How did you observe the manufactured consent anniversary of 9/11?

Here's what I did. I posted my skepticism about 9/11 origins. I read about one of the freshly dead soldiers on Military Resistance 817 by Thomas F. Barton (This is an email newsletter I get. I am not sure where to read it in full online but it is great and compiles news you see nowhere else.)

New Jersey-Born Army Spec. Pedro Millet Meletiche Killed On Third Day At Afghanistan Front

Spec. Pedro Millet Meletiche: Defense Dept./AP

August 25th 2010 BY Kerry Wills and Bill Hutchinson, DAILY NEWS WRITERS

A New Jersey soldier was killed on his third day on the front lines in Afghanistan, blown up by an explosive hurled at him by the enemy, officials and relatives said Tuesday.

Army Spec. Pedro Millet Meletiche, 20, of Elizabeth, was killed Sunday in the Arghandab River Valley when his unit was attacked as he was sweeping for mines.

“They sent him to the most dangerous part of the war,” his heartbroken mother, Denise, told the Daily News yesterday.

Her son was deployed to Afghanistan Aug. 1 and sent to the Arghandab River Valley on Friday.

Millet Meletiche joined the Army at the age of 17.

“He called me from the airport and said, ‘Mom, I’m leaving. I’m going in the Army,’” his mother said. “I didn’t know he was going. I said, ‘I don’t want you to go in the Army.’ He said, ‘I’m already on the airplane.’”

I read some of the Onion's 9/11 coverage for the last decade. My favorite:

• On TV Tonight

  	8:00		9:00		10:00
  NETWORK
  ABC	Attack On America	America Attacked	America In Crisis		America Still In Crisis
  NBC	A Nation Looks Around For Someone To Hit		America On The Verge Of Flying Off The Handle		America's Time Of Trial: Who Fucking Wants Some? You? Do You? How 'Bout You?
  CBS	Dan Rather's 83rd Straight Hour On The Air		Dan Rather Seriously Loses His Shit		Medicating Dan Rather
  CABLE
  BET	Wartime At The Apollow			Tavis Smiley Presents: Terrorists Strike America—The White Man Finds Somebody Else To Fear And Demonize For A Change
  MTV	The 100 Greatest, But, In Light Of Recent Events, Not As Important As Being Good To Our Loved Ones, Videos Of All Time			You! MTV Extends Its Condolences	Talking To Blink 182 About The Tragedy	Carson Daly In Way Over His Head
  Lifetime	Golden Girls	Golden Girls	Golden Girls	Golden Girls	Golden Girls	Golden Girls
  History	Last Tuesday In History		Two Weeks Ago, As Told By Those Who Lived It		Last Tuesday In History (rerun)
  Nickelodeon	Clarissa Explains The Attack On America		SpongeJohn SquareAshcroft		Rugrats Rising
  Animal Planet	Sharks: Terrorists Of The Sea		The Noble American Eagle: Long May She Fly		Fuck Everything, Here's Some Zebra Footage
  Public Access	Patriotism How-To With Rainbow Steve		Oh, Shit, Man... Oh, Shit	Attack On America: Live Drum-Circle Coverage From Peace Park		Extremely Uninformed Debate

I read Ten Reasons Not to Burn the Qur'an and then shared it on facebook.

I complained about a local public school having the kids put thousands of U.S. flags on the lawn every year. Because it "teaches kids to think." Yeah, I bet the ones riding by in the backseat of their mom's car while she picks up big brother have to think real hard to figure out what cemetery rows of the stars & stripes are supposed to stand for.

I had just heard from a girl in the first week of 9th grade that she is joining the Army because "they are going to send me to the Rhode Island School of Design. The recruiter promised." I wonder if she was even in double digits when the recruiters started talking to her.

I wrote to my Afghan-American friend about her Samsortya project regenerating trees in eastern Afghanistan. When I feel discouraged, I think about the last picture she sent me of those saplings thriving.

Then I watched this video made by Veterans for Peace member Jeanette McDermott of a bunch of us marching and talking about how the war economy (isn't) working for U.S. It has a lot of PINK in it plus VFP, IVAW, MFSO, and more, and a rousing rendition by emma's revolution of their song "Who Lies? Who Dies? Who Pays? Who Profits?" It lifted my spirits almost as much as the actual march itself. Thank you, peace friends, for being there.

Bravest Man I Know

l to r: Joe Lombardo, Kathy Kelly, Medea Benjamin, Dahlia Wasfi, Dr. Margaret Flowers, Ethan McCord

How much courage does it take to give the speech that Ethan McCord gave at the Albany National Peace Conference in July?

In it he talked about the day of the events shown in the Wikileaks video "Collateral Murder" which he witnessed from the ground as a soldier pulling bleeding children from the rescue van where their dad lay dying. He walked us, step by step, through the video and explained what was happening. He told us: "If this video disgusts you, it should. It happens daily."

I met Ethan in Albany when he spoke briefly at the opening news conference. It was clearly difficult to talk about something that had happened years ago but that he says he lives with every day.

When we have to talk to a crowd of strangers about things that touch us deeply, most of us are afraid we will break down and cry. You could hear Ethan's voice tremble at times when he spoke. He was taking responsibility for his participation in a military occupation he has come to see as inhuman and immoral. That is hard to do in public also.

I can't think of a better way to bring the truth of military enlistment to young men seduced by the barrage of glamorous ad campaigns, and subjected to the sophisticated hard-sell tactics of recruiters who prey on them. Recruiters are in your shopping centers, on your websites, and in your public schools, in the lunchroom even.

How to be a man when you will not find a steady job to maintain a home and contribute to a family? How to afford even transportation to go out and look for work? How to get a college education without the G.I. bill? These are the choices young American men face today.

Young women face hard economic choices, too. But nobody implies they are less of a woman for not enlisting. There are special problems young males have in this messed up culture of ours. Ethan testified that when he told his commanding officer he wanted to talk to someone to get help for his PTSD he was told, "Stop being a pussy. Get the sand out of your vagina and get back to duty."

My youngest son just told me the other day he would like to have a T-shirt that World Can't Wait is selling as a fundraiser. It says "MILITARY RECRUITERS, GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME!" on the front and "We are not your soldiers" on the back. I went online here and ordered him one.

Personally I'm thinking about making and wearing a T-shirt of my own: "Proud to be a Pussy."

My heart goes out to everyone caught in the military machine our society has become. Support our troops -- bring them home. And hope they get to talk to someone brave like Ethan McCord when they return to us.