visit my website www.michaelmunk.com
Picture Tribune Photo by L. E. Baskow
An interview with Michael Munk:
http://www.theportlandalliance.org/munk
Munk's Musings... a portal...
http://www.theportlandalliance.org/Munk
legally orders assassinations of US citizens.
> Liberal media are always beating up the straw men and women of the
> deranged Repubs but don't often note when they're joined by
> Dems--especially designated liberals.
>
> Senate warmongers led by Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Graham (R-SC) have been
> joined by almost one third of Senate in an "Israel First" demand --an even
> more aggressive posture toward Iran than Obama has already adopted. As
> Robert Perry points out
> http://consortiumnews.com/2012/02/18/lieberman-edges-us-to-war-with-iran/
> " the next preemptive war could be launched not against Iran for actually
> building a bomb or even trying to build a bomb but rather for simply
> having the skills that theoretically could be used sometime in the future
> to build a bomb. The "red line" has been moved from some possible future
> development to arguably what already exists."
>
> The Democratic warmonger cosponsors who include several "liberals" like
> Wyden (OR) Brown (Ohio) Udall (Col) and Blumenthal (CT). Other Dems are
> Casey (PA), (Maryland), Schumer and Gillibrand (NY), Nelson (FL) and
> Nelson (Neb), Pryor (Ark), Menendez (NJ), Cardin and Mikulski (Md),
> McCaskill (Mo), and Coons (Del). They join 14 of the most deranged Repubs
> plus Collins (Me) and Brown (Mass).
>
>
>
> visit the new photo gallery on my website
> www.michaelmunk.com
"The revolution is not going to
come through the labor movement." And that is true, at least
in its current configuration. But the revolution that many
occupiers dream about can't happen without workers either.
If the Occupy movement keeps growing, then organized labor
will have to decide which side it is really on."
The optimistic take should have also considered the often tense relation
between Occupy and the traditionally militant ILWU in Occupy's efforts to
shut down west coast
ports in solidarity with its Longview WA local' struggle with scab herder
EGT.-MM
What Occupy Taught the Unions
SEIU and others are embracing the movement that has
succeeded as they have faded
by Arun Gupta
Salon.com February 2, 2012
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/02/occupys_challenge_to_big_labor/singleton/
VIA Portside http://portside.org
Unions are in a death spiral. Private sector unionism has
all but vanished, accounting for a measly 6.9 percent of
the workforce. Public sector workers are being hammered by
government cutbacks and hostile media that blame teachers,
nurses and firefighters for budget crises. To counter this
trend organized labor banked on creating more hospitable
organizing conditions by contributing hundreds of millions
of dollars to the Democratic Party the last two election
cycles. In return Obama abandoned the Employee Free Choice
Act, which would have made union campaigns marginally
easier, failed to push for an increase in the minimum wage,
and installed an education secretary who attacks teachers
and public education.
The Obama administration's dismal record on labor issues has
been compounded by the rise of the Tea Party movement, which
portrays unions as public enemy No. 1, and the Supreme
Court's Citizens United decision, which opened the political
floodgates to corporate money. By last year, organized labor
realized that its days were numbered unless it took a
different approach.
So it went back to basics. Across the country unions threw
resources into community organizing, aiming to build a
broad-based constituency outside of the workplace for
progressive politics. In cities like Chicago, Philadelphia
and Portland, Ore., newly formed community groups found
ready support for organizing around issues of economic
justice, but they were stymied by a national debate
dominated by voices blaming government spending for an
economic crisis caused by Wall Street.
Occupy Wall Street changed that. It flipped the debate from
austerity to inequality, uncorked a wellspring of creative
energy and started taking creative risks that unions
typically shun. Within weeks unions adopted the 99 percent
versus the 1 percent and started organizing actions under
the Occupy banner. One labor leader said "the Occupy
movement has changed unions'" messaging and ability to
mobilize members. Union-affiliated organizers around the
country say it has helped workers win better contracts and
bolstered labor reformers.
While union organizers stress the importance of the
movement's autonomy, they are also joining in, providing
advice, experience, supplies and access to money and space.
Many believe, as one Chicago labor activist put it, that
"Occupy is too big to fail." In fact, the Occupy movement is
in the vanguard of labor, enticing workers into the streets,
making them negotiate harder and think bigger.
But the Occupy movement is also a double-edged sword. Some
observers say organized labor shares the blame for its
decline because unions treat members as clients who pay dues
in return for benefits, are riddled with self-serving
leaders, stuck in a busted collective bargaining system, too
close to Democrats and too willing to ally with big business
in return for jobs. If the Occupy movement revitalizes
labor, as the left did during the 1930s, then it could
invigorate rank-and-file militancy, foster internal
democracy and sweep out officials who protect their fiefdoms
and perks at the expense of fighting for the 99 percent.
"Point of no return"
Angus Maguire is communications director at We Are Oregon, a
community group active in Portland that was established last
summer by two Service Employees International Union locals.
In 2011, he says, "there was a general conversation
throughout SEIU, taking a sober look at the decline in labor
organizing. It was an explicit acknowledgment that if labor
doesn't change how it engages with people it would cease to
exist in a meaningful way. It was reaching a point of no
return."
In Oregon, SEIU locals 49 and 503, which represent more than
30,000 workers, decided they needed to organize non-union
members outside of the workplace "around the most pressing
issues relating to the economic crisis." The genial 35-year-
old father of two says, "We did a door-to-door outreach
campaign in East Portland, the poorest part of the city,
talking to people about unemployment and foreclosure."
Maguire says We Are Oregon's goals are twofold. "One is to
organize and achieve material wins. The second is to change
the political environment and conversation. When we started
last summer there wasn't much conversation in the media
around wealth disparity."
On the East Coast, Anne Gemmell, political director of Fight
for Philly, says the organization was founded in May by
labor and faith-based groups such as the SEIU, to organize
around issues of economic justice. One factor was Citizens
United, which she says "was a scary development for churches
and labor. If the gates are thrown wide open to corporate
money, then traditional organizing models could be in
danger."
Fight for Philly also began with a door-knocking campaign,
she says. "We were testing interest in fighting back against
inevitable service cuts as the economic meltdown hit
municipalities, and we had over 10,000 conversations." Fight
for Philly, she went on, is "trying to educate people that
the budget crisis is due to the 2008 economic meltdown
caused by banking and corporate greed, not by government
waste, fraud and mismanagement as many anti-government
voices would have the public believe." But last summer, she
explains, the media discussion "was all about austerity
debates, the super committee and how we are going to cut
social spending. It was not about growing inequality."
In stepped Occupy Wall Street on Sept. 17, but nearly every
left, progressive and labor group was skeptical or even
dismissive of the few hundred scruffy campers raging against
the machine in downtown Manhattan.
Some of the wariness stemmed from OWS's congenital aversion
to establishment politics. On the first day of the
occupation Zuccotti Park I talked to organizers, seasoned
and new, who were committed to radical democracy, skeptical
of electoral politics and opposed to capitalism. Their
politics couldn't have been more distant from unions like
the SEIU, Teamsters and United Auto Workers, which are top
down and centralized, joined at the hip with the Democratic
Party and eager, even desperate, to be the junior partner of
capital.
Even before Occupy Wall Street pitched its first tent, the
politics were so amorphous that one person kept blocking
outreach to unions on the grounds that it needed to attract
Tea Partyers. "When Occupy was conceived there was no
outreach to labor," says Ari Paul, a New York City labor
reporter. "They were hesitant to even let unions be a part
of it, because they were seen as bureaucratic and short-
sighted."
Jackie DiSalvo, who attended pre-occupation general
assemblies, helped change that by forming the labor outreach
committee the first week of OWS. She is a retired associate
professor of English who took part in the 1964 Mississippi
Freedom Summer.
"I was attracted to the movement because they adopted the
line of the 99 percent against the 1 percent," DiSalvo said
in an interview. "It was very class-conscious politics. I
thought the only way it was going to have any strength was
to have a working class and trade union base because they
bring resources, numbers and political realism. They would
give Occupy a broader constituency than the young people
sleeping in Zuccotti who were precarious workers, unemployed
or students."
For the first few days, however, the unions stayed away
because "the initial press reports were Occupy Wall Street
was a bunch of freaks," says DiSalvo.
On Sept. 22, five days after it began, Occupy Wall Street
received its first union backing: delegates from the City
University of New York's 25,000-member Professional Staff
Congress marched to the park in a show of support. Other
unions "were hesitant," says DiSalvo, "because they didn't
know who we were and what we were going to do, but they very
quickly got over their hesitancy and embraced us, endorsed
us, and provided support such as supplies, storage room,
printing literature and meeting space."
What changed?
On Saturday an unpermitted march that began at Zuccotti Park
swelled to more than 2,500 people as it coursed through the
streets of Lower Manhattan. It was set upon by riot police,
and in the first iconic incident of casual police violence
against occupiers, a commander was filmed pepper-spraying
women in the face who were standing on a public sidewalk.
The video of the women falling to the ground and screaming
in agony went viral. When I visited Zuccotti Park on Monday,
Sept. 26, it was bursting with occupiers and support. Unions
started showing up, and I heard the same story from two
reputable sources. A group of SEIU organizers with the
gigantic healthcare workers Local 1199 stopped by to deliver
blankets, ponchos, food and water. The labor organizers said
that the previous Friday they had been barred by their union
leadership from visiting the occupation, but now SEIU was on
board.
DiSalvo says, "It was the police attacks that made them
move. But it was also progressives in the unions who won the
leadership over." Over the next few months around 30 unions
endorsed Occupy Wall Street including SEIU and the AFL-CIO
executive board, whose president, Richard Trumka, traveled
to New York to meet with the labor outreach committee.
"Trumka felt that unions had been raising the point about
the growing inequality and the seizure of power of the
rich," says DiSalvo. "Occupy Wall Street was the first time
those issues received massive attention in the press. He
felt we were creating a lot of support for labor that they
were unable to generate because we broke through the media
blackout."
"Spillover effect"
There is widespread agreement that the Occupy movement has
directly benefited labor.
In Chicago an organizer with SEIU who wished to remain
anonymous called the Occupy movement "a game changer." He
said his union "recognized that it can no longer focus just
on what happens in the workplace. Our members who work in a
hospital go home to a community that is being devastated by
foreclosures and school closures."
The SEIU co-founded Stand Up! Chicago, which kicked off last
June with a protest against a convention for CFOs of major
corporations. When Occupy Chicago formed it coincided with
Stand Up! Chicago's week of actions last October in the
financial district. Occupiers were maintaining an around-
the-clock protest at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and
the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The organizer says, "We
had this great synergy because we were doing actions in the
financial district and Occupy Chicago was right there and
would join us. They helped us get the attention of the press
in a way we wouldn't have otherwise."
"Occupy is a true left expression and expansion of free
speech," Anne Gemmell of Fight for Philly says. "We are
going to occupy this space until you pay attention to us. It
has empowered the organizations that do the door knocking,
phone calling and rally planning." She explains that the
occupation at Philadelphia City Hall helped workers in
contract negotiations. Gemmell says about 1,000 support
staff and stagehands "were in negotiations that were tense
and confrontational with the Kimmel Center, a major arts
center near the occupation." A week after Occupy
Philadelphia set up camp the workers won a contract on
better-than-expected terms. Following that victory 2,500
office cleaners who were negotiating with the management of
some 100 corporate high-rises around City Hall inked a
contract with wage increases for three years in a row.
"Occupy has a positive spillover effect, even if it's not
directly involved in the organizing campaign," says Gemmell.
"There were very few office cleaners or stagehands ...
sleeping in tents at city hall, but they are all part of the
99 percent and benefited from the new political climate that
occupations created."
"Thrown together"
Steve Early, a former union organizer and author of "The
Civil Wars in U.S. Labor," says, "I was encouraged by the
positive interaction between Occupy Wall Street and the
Communication Workers of America," which staged a 15-day
strike against Verizon last August. Early says after the CWA
called off the strike with inconclusive results, "the union
was struggling to find ways to take action against Verizon."
Because Zuccotti Park is close to the work locations of CWA
Local 1101, which was involved with the strike, CWA workers
were regulars at the occupation.
"Things have gotten so bad in the private state of Verizon
that workers are much more open to different viewpoints,"
says Early. "At Zuccotti, unemployed youth were being thrown
together with workers who've been with Verizon for 20 years
and are trying to hold on to their pay and benefits."
The cross-pollination aided dissidents in Local 1101 who had
been organizing for four years, Early says. "The reform
slate swept out the incumbents in the Local 1101 election
held in November. Their victory was positively impacted by
their work with the Occupy movement as well as other
organizations like Labor Notes and the Association for Union
Democracy." Early adds, "The synergy works best when there
is an organized group within the unions. The Occupy movement
needs someone to relate to within labor."
Early claims Occupy's ability to organize with labor is
hamstrung by the tendency of many unions to undermine rank-
and-file militancy and democracy. He says union attempts to
mobilize the public against corporations - like SEIU's Fight
for a Fair Economy campaign - have not resonated as well as
the more spontaneous and grass-roots activities of OWS.
A year ago the 2.1-million member union launched the Fight
for a Fair Economy to mobilize low-income workers in urban
areas against public sector cuts. The price tag for the
campaign was in the millions of dollars, according to the
Wall Street Journal. Early says, "The campaign looked good
on paper, but was top-down, staff-driven and a consultant-
shaped message that was boilerplate union rhetoric. The
ground troops for Fight for a Fair Economy did not have much
visibility."
As for another campaign run by the California Nurses
Association/National Nurses United, which called for a
financial transaction tax on Wall Street traders, Early says
it was "much more savvy and programmatic but it framed the
fight as `Main Street vs. Wall Street,' without actually
reaching many Main Streeters beside nurses themselves."
Early says contrast that with the Occupy movement. "It is
bottom up, decentralized, has much better framing and uses
direct action creatively. These unions and others have
glommed onto it and have adopted the 99 percent versus the 1
percent rhetoric."
Like many, Early sees potential for occupiers and unions to
learn from each other, but he puts the emphasis on the
workers themselves. He says, "Hopefully, rank-and-filers
will realize they don't need to wait for grand plans and
official orders from union headquarters. As Wisconsin
workers demonstrated a year ago, they can take their own
creative initiatives and have much more impact. Plus,
exposure to Occupy will hopefully foster more Madison-style
cross-union activity and bottom-up decision making. By
continuing to organize, agitate and educate around labor
issues - while learning from union members in the process -
occupiers can help spread an anti-capitalist message that is
relevant to day-to-day workplace struggles but very
different from the much fuzzier official messaging of
organized labor."
The Occupy movement's 99 percent message could prove
troublesome for labor leaders. Ari Paul argues. "There is a
limit to how much union leaders will fight the 1 percent
because they do depend on the 1 percent." By way of example
he points to the issue of healthcare: "One of the reasons
unions don't call for universal healthcare is because it is
more politically expedient to get companies to fund good
healthcare plans for union members who will keep voting you
into office."
DiSalvo echoes this sentiment. "The labor movement has
fairly narrow orientation of just fighting for their own
members' contract demands to the point they don't fight for
their own members when they become unemployed. They should
have set up an unemployed workers council by now."
That is a big question on many people's minds. While
organized labor is potentially a powerful force with 17
million Americans in unions, it's dwarfed by the more than
25 million people who are unemployed or can't get full-time
work.
"The labor movement has so far missed an opportunity in
organizing the unemployed and underemployed," admits Maguire
of We Are Oregon. He says there are parallels with the Great
Depression when unemployed councils were pivotal to securing
relief and jobs programs as well as eviction defense on a
mind-boggling scale. (Some historians claim that councils in
New York City moved 77,000 evicted families back into their
homes.) Maguire maintains, however, that there "are also big
differences today in terms of the political climate and
class consciousness. It's fair to say there is an
opportunity in organizing the unemployed, and no one
including the labor movement has figured out how to do
that."
Unions are trying to think more creatively. On Nov. 17, as
thousands of occupiers were trying to actually shut down
Wall Street, unions organized actions in three dozen cities,
focusing on shutting down bridges to highlight the crumbling
infrastructure across the United States and the jobs that
could be created by funding repair and rebuilding. Nearly
1,000 people were arrested in the peaceful sit-down protests
and some bridges shut down for hours, but the unions seem
afraid to escape the confines of the very system responsible
for their demise.
The aim was to put pressure on Congress to pass the Obama
administration's jobs bill that could be most charitably
described as inadequate. Paul, the labor reporter, notes
that many unions back corporations in the hopes of getting
union jobs: Carpenters and electricians unions in New York
City side with the real estate industry in support of mega-
construction projects and the United Steel Workers has been
pushing for World Trade Organization sanctions against China
over allegations of "unfair trade practices."
More broadly, Steve Early has taken SEIU to task for
collaborating with the healthcare industry against the
interests of its union members. And Paul notes that leaders
of New York's Transit Workers Union Local 100, which was one
of the first unions to endorse Occupy Wall Street, has not
actively challenged the investment banks that make hundreds
of millions of dollars in profit on the bonds New York State
relies on to fund mass transit. Paul says while Occupy Wall
Street has been calling for the public transit debt to be
canceled, TWU leaders "do not publicly criticize the Wall
Street banks too much because the same banks are managing
the workers' pensions."
Many union organizers counter that labor is in a different
position than the Occupy movement, but they can still work
together. An SEIU organizer in Chicago, who asked not to be
identified by name, says, "When you are a labor leader you
have to be very pragmatic because you are making decisions
about contracts, wages and healthcare that affect your
members. What's exciting about Occupy is that it doesn't
have those contradictions. Occupy doesn't have to have a
million conversations to mobilize its members. They just do
it."
Anne Gemmell seconds that. She sees Occupy benefiting labor
in part because it doesn't have any issues of potential
liability that a union with resources, members and paid
staff do. "There are no leashes holding Occupy's energy
back."
That energy will intensify this year. Occupy Los Angeles has
put out a call for a general strike on May Day. There are
plans for a month-long occupation of Chicago in May when the
rulers of the world come to town in the form of the G-8 and
NATO, and it seems likely that many occupiers will flock to
the Democratic and Republican national conventions next
summer.
Next fall the presidential election could see both sides at
odds as occupiers will be decrying both parties as
hopelessly corrupted by corporate dollars, even as organized
labor mobilizes tens of thousands of union members to get
out the vote for the Democrats and Obama.
The Chicago organizer says, "The revolution is not going to
come through the labor movement." And that is true, at least
in its current configuration. But the revolution that many
occupiers dream about can't happen without workers either.
If the Occupy movement keeps growing, then organized labor
will have to decide which side it is really on."
[Arun Gupta, a New York writer and co-founder of Occupy the
Wall Street Journal, covers the Occupy movement for Salon]
visit the new photo gallery on my website
www.michaelmunk.com
McClatchy Washington Bureau
For years the Johnston County, N.C., air transport company, which has links to the CIA, has been accused of being a taxi service for paramilitary teams that pick up terrorism suspects in one country and fly them to another where it's easier to interrogate and, perhaps, torture them. The process is known as extraordinary rendition.
Law professor Deborah M. Weissman and members of the protest group North Carolina Stop Torture Now gave copies of their report to representatives of North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper and Gov. Bev. Perdue on Thursday morning, then released it during a news conference at the Johnston County Airport, where Aero is based.
www.michaelmunk.com
The Class War Has Begun (http://www.theportlandalliance.org/Munk)
And the very "Class-less-ness" of our society makes the conflict more volatile, not less.
by Frank Rich
New York Magazine, Oct 30, 2011
* For details on the Portland reference, see the Portland Red Guide (site # 49, pp 62-63) For the rest of Rich's article, go to http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/30-4
During the death throes of Herbert HooverÙs presidency in June 1932, desperate bands of men traveled to Washington and set up camp within view of the Capitol. The first contingent journeyed all the way from Portland, Oregon,* but others soon converged from all over—alone, in groups, with families—until their main Hooverville on the Anacostia RiverÙs fetid mudflats swelled to a population as high as 20,000. The men, World War I veterans who could not find jobs, became known as the Bonus Army—for the modest government bonus they were owed for their service. Under a law passed in 1924, they had been awarded roughly $1,000 each, to be collected in 1945 or at death, whichever came first. But they didnÙt want to wait any longer for their pre–New Deal entitlement—especially given that Congress had bailed out big business with the creation of a Reconstruction Finance Corporation earlier in its session. Father Charles Coughlin, the populist “Radio Priest” who became a phenomenon for railing against “greedy bankers and financiers,” framed WashingtonÙs double standard this way: “If the government can pay $2 billion to the bankers and the railroads, why cannot it pay the $2 billion to the soldiers?"
[ MPI/Getty Images)] The Bonus Army veterans stage a mass vigil on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol in 1932.
visit the new photo gallery on my website
www.michaelmunk.com
First The Oregonian ignores and then dismisses the ILWU's battle with the
Portland scab herder EGT*and now pronounces its knee jerk contempt
("illegal and inexcusable" behavior) for the working class. Its
prescription-- let a judge decide-- is based on the knowledge that
pro-union judges are a rare as a doug fir in the Alvord desert.
Several years ago, the ILWU held its international convention in Portland.
After a session, the hundreds of delegates marched from the convention
hotel to support the pickets at Powell's Books on Burnsde. Police in riot
gear and nightsticks barred the street. The longshoremen led by their
president pushed right through the police line, which gave way and all
traffic stopped as the demo joined the picket line.
The reason the ILWU survived scabs, vigilantes and McCarthyism is that as
a militant union, they haven't lain down before the bosses' judges with
their injunctions and police enforcers. And that's why the "somebody" who
can answer the Oregonian editorial board's question is not a judge but
union members and supporters who practice the solidarity contained in the
old Wobbly slogan: "An injury to one is an injury to all." -MM
* for details, go to
http://streetroots.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/biggest-labor-struggle-in-years-ismissed-by-major-media/
***************************************************************
Longview needs a swift answer
By The Oregonian Editorial Board
September 25, 2011
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/09/longview_needs_a_swift_answer.html
Yes or no, is a new terminal at the port obliged to use longshore union
workers?
They are literally fighting for jobs at the Port of Longview. The
pepper-spray arrests of longshore union leaders and other protesters
Wednesday was the latest spasm of violence surrounding a new $200 million
grain terminal on the Lower Columbia River.
Scores of members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local
21 have been arrested this month on charges of blocking trains, damaging
rail lines, spilling grain, threatening private security guards, and most
recently, assaulting police officers. That behavior is illegal and
inexcusable, and the blame belongs entirely with the union.
But it is the responsibility of the federal courts to resolve in a timely
manner the legal question at the heart of the incendiary dispute that has
passions running dangerously high not just at the port, but throughout
Longview and at ports elsewhere on the West Coast. Is Portland-based EGT,
the owner of the sophisticated new terminal, obliged under its lease with
the Port of Longview to use longshore union labor?
We'll not guess at the answer. But the stakes are high, and not just
because jobs are now so scarce. Since the 1930s, and the sometimes bloody
union battles of that era, the ILWU has handled grain at every major port
on the West Coast. If EGT breaks the longshore union's hold on grain at
the Longview port, it could embolden grain companies at other West Coast
ports to challenge one of the United States' most powerful unions.
This is a major economic issue potentially affecting the entire West
Coast, and it comes a crucial time for Northwest farmers trying to get
their wheat and other grain to market. However, the federal courts are
taking their sweet time with EGT's lawsuit against the port. The Longview
Daily News reports that a ruling isn't expected until sometime next
spring.
That's a mighty slow train to justice on an issue that threatens every day
to hurtle out of control, just as it did on Sept. 7 and 8, with hundreds
of union protesters stormed the EGT terminal. Again, there's no excuse for
the union's actions or for the smearing of the members of another union,
the Gladstone-based International Union of Operating Engineers Local 701,
which EGT's operating contractor has turned to for workers. The members of
the engineers union are not "scabs" or interlopers -- in fact, their
local's jurisdiction covers Southwest Washington, including the
Longview-Kelso area.
This is an issue that already has heated to a slow boil for a year. And it
has been more than nine months since EGT sued the port, arguing that it is
not bound by its lease to contract with the longshore union. And soon, it
will be three months since the port asked a federal judge to order EGT to
honor an agreement to hire Local 21 labor.
Longview shouldn't have to wait another six to nine months for an answer.
The community is burning through its limited law enforcement resources to
clear the way for grain trains to reach the EGT terminal. Last week there
were police in riot gear on hand from at least eight jurisdictions; police
even felt compelled to deploy an armored vehicle called the "Peacekeeper."
Cowlitz County Sheriff Mark Nelson had it right when he told The Daily
News, "The courts should recognize that this is not a situation that can
sit on a legal shelf for six to eight months. ... "Somebody needs to step
up and move this thing along."
That somebody is a federal judge.
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www.michaelmunk.com
********************************************************************************
War update! US military occupation forces in Iraq and Afganistan and attacking forces in Libya under Commander-in-Chief Obama suffered 111 combat casualties in the week ending March 22, as the official casualty total rose to 102,681.
The total includes 77,833 casualties since the US invaded Iraq in March, 2003 (Operations 'Iraqi Freedom" and "New Dawn"), 24,848 since the US invaded Afganistan in November, 2001 (Operation "Eduring Freedom").and none since it attacked Libya (Operation "Odessy Dawn").this month.
IRAQ THEATER: US forces suffered one combat casualty in the week ending March 22, as the total rose to 77,833. That includes 35,553 dead and wounded from what the Pentagon classifies as "hostile" causes and 42,280 dead and medically evacuated (as of Feb. 28) from "non-hostile" causes. NOTE: There are still 50,000 US troops in Iraq, but they rarely seek combat and remain in their bases most of the time.
AFGANISTAN THEATER: US forces suffered 110 combat casualties in the week ending March 22, as the official total rose to 24,856 The total includes 11,848 dead and wounded from "hostile" causes and 13,008 dead and medically evacuated (as of Feb 28) from "non-hostile" causes.
LIBYA THEATER The two air force officers in the downed F-15E were reportedly rescued but there was no information on whether they were injured..
US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb by only reporting regularily the total killed (5,945 -4,444 in Iraq, 1,501 in Afghanistan) but rarely mentioning those wounded in action (42,732--32,051 in Iraq, 10, 681 in Afghanistan). They ignore the 55,287 ( 41,338 in Iraq, 13,008 in AfPak as of Feb 28) military casualties injured and ill seriously enough to be medivaced out of theater, even though the 5,945 total dead include 1,276 (942 in Iraq, 334 in Afghanistan) who died from those same "non hostile" causes, including 282 suicides (as of Feb 28) and at least 18 from faulty KBR electrical work.
WIA are usually updated on Tuesday at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf
non combat casualties are usually reported monthly at http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/castop.htm
visit my website www.michaelmunk.com
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