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Sad News
Some of you may remember Gilda, the woman who spoke out at the vigil we ran for CIndy Sheehan last August. Her speech is located here. She is also the woman who came to the vigil where Cindy was arrested, and who was so deeply upset about the freepers yelling at Cindy and all of us that she had to leave.
Comment I wrote at that time:
Gilda is the woman I ran into tonight who was standing in front of one of the vilest people I have ever run into. She was shrieking at Gilda about her son, who was killed in Iraq, but she is OK about it because he volunteered and knew what he was getting into.
Nothing wrong with believing your son died for a good cause, but she was yelling at Gilda for grieving for her own son.
Gilda had moved away from her, and was starting to tear up, so I put my arms around her and told her that the woman was not worth listening to.
She began to sob, and she said, "There are so many more like her out there." I pointed across the street, at the good people lying on the sidewalk, many of them intending to be arrrested for the truth. I hoped to get her to see that there are many of us working hard every day to bring our children home, many more than there are people who feel compelled to scream at people at a peaceful protest.
She shook her head, I stepped away for a minute and she was gone.
So to all you good people, let's make sure that Gilda's pain is not replicated over and over. Leave her a message on that thread in the forum, or here, and show her how many of us do care, and are doing whatever we can.
Posted by: Karen at October 26, 2005 10:38 PM
Well, her son Alex was critically injured in a convoy expolsion in Iraq and he died May 10.
Fulvio (his father) has set up a blog and you can send them our regret, anger, concern, and love.
I will add only the last paragraph of Gilda's words in front of the White House last August:
“'We would send the wrong signal if we pulled out?' you say, Mr. Bush. What signal do you think we’ve sent to the world since we invaded Iraq? You’ve destroyed our credibility and our good standing in the world. Most of all, Mr. Bush, what’s unforgivable, is that you betrayed our idealistic American sons and daughters who trustingly placed their lives in your hands. We, their mothers, will not let you ‘move on with your life’, Mr. Bush. We hold you accountable for their deaths and injuries. And we call now for an immediate withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. Now, not next year, not in 10 years! Go meet with Cindy, Mr. Bush!"
I got nothin.
Unspeakably sad.
I'm so sorry!
At least a little good news .. (& I will pass the thread header on to Seattle & Mpls Vets for Peace) - This is encouraging in terms of the Senate, but the House is so much more Republican-dominated - their plan is not nearly this good. Hope there is a good outcome, eventually.
Kerry Amendment Passes Senate, Will Add Border Patrol Agents
Kerry Says National Guard Over-Stretched in Iraq and Afghanistan
The Senate today passed Senator John Kerry’s amendment to the Immigration Reform Bill to add 1,000 additional Border Patrol agents – bringing the total up to 3,000 new agents this year – plus add an additional 100 helicopters and 250 power boats to secure America’s borders.
“We need a comprehensive answer to immigration that includes tightening border security, but putting another burden on the backs of the National Guard troops who are serving their second tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan isn’t the right answer. The National Guard which has borne the burden of a broken policy in Iraq shouldn’t have to bear the burden of an incomplete immigration policy,” said Kerry. “We need to listen to the 9/11 Commission and put the border patrol agents we need right there on the border. It won’t satisfy the right wing, but it’s the right policy.”
John Kerry’s Rapid Response Amendment will increase the number of border patrol agents to 3,000 this year. It will allow the Secretary of Homeland Security to deploy up to 1,000 additional border patrol agents if the governor of a border state declares an international border security emergency and requests additional agents. In addition to the at least 100 additional helicopters and 250 power boats, as well as training for their use, it requires one police-type vehicle per every three border patrol agents and requires that each vehicle have a portable computer. It also requires that all agents have a two-way, clear and encrypted radio, a GPS device, night vision equipment when applicable, high quality body armor, reliable and effective weapons, and uniforms appropriate for climate conditions.
Kerry’s amendment is similar to legislation offered in the House by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims and Congressman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), who is a former Border Patrol agent.
Unbelievably sad.
Not a time for just words, but I do not believe Alex died in vain, and neither did Casey.
These women are going to be instrumental in one of the biggest anti-war movements in history.
Peace and love to this family.
I've been out of the loop!
Has Rover been indicted, or not?
Rove said Bush's popularity was at 60% - and a Fox News commentator REPEATED IT ON THE AIR!
http://mediamatters.org/items/200605160004
In one of his most famous plays, Arthur Miller insisted about one of his characters:
"Attention must be paid to such a person!"
Yes. Attention must be paid.
Attention *must* be paid.
Requiescat en pace, Alex, beloved son of Gilda and Fulvio Carbonaro.
blessed be,
Otter
I have nothing to say, except that this is a tremendous tragedy - and something extremely criminal.
Shame on you, W. And the worst thing is, he wasn't even "defending our freedom" - because you were so busy destroying it.
I hope someone from the blog went...
Cindy Sheehan to speak at Kalamazoo rally
Updated: May 16, 2006 03:01 PM EDT
KALAMAZOO -- Cindy Sheehan, the mother who has received international attention for her efforts concerning the war in Iraq, will speak at a rally tonight in Kalamazoo.
Sheehan's son, Casey, was killed in Iraq in 2004. She made headlines when she camped out in front of President Bush's Texas ranch demanding he meet with her for a second time.
Tuesday night's rally is at Bronson Park in downtown Kalamazoo starting at 6 p.m. It will be followed by a march to the State Theatre where Sheehan will speak.
In our opinion and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart. We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from. We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese or American. We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism - and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong. We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum. We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals. We watched the United States falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using weapons against "oriental human beings." We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater. We watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons they marched away to leave the hill for reoccupation by the North Vietnamese. We watched pride allow the most unimportant battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point, and so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 81s and Fire Base 6s, and so many others. Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese. Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war." We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?....We are here in Washington to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country - the question of racism which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions such as the use of weapons; the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage at the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam. That is what we are trying to say. It is part and parcel of everything. An American Indian friend of mine who lives in the Indian Nation of Alcatraz put it to me very succinctly. He told me how as a boy on an Indian reservation he had watched television and he used to cheer the cowboys when they came in and shot the Indians, and then suddenly one day he stopped in Vietnam and he said, "my God, I am doing to these people the very same thing that was done to my people," and he stopped. And that is what we are trying to say, that we think this thing has to end. We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We're here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatrick, and so many others? Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? These are the commanders who have deserted their troops. And there is no more serious crime in the laws of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The marines say they never even leave their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They've left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun in this country.... We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped away their memories of us. But all that they have done and all that they can do by this denial is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission - to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more. And more. And so when thirty years from now our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And from Boston, my only comment some thirty-five years later is, f**k.
Confidence In GOP Is At New Low in Poll
Democrats Favored To Address Issues
By Richard Morin and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 17, 2006; A01
Public confidence in GOP governance has plunged to the lowest levels of the Bush presidency, with Americans saying by wide margins that they now trust Democrats more than Republicans to deal with Iraq, the economy, immigration and other issues, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll that underscores the GOP's fragile grip on power six months before the midterm elections.
Dissatisfaction with the administration's policies in Iraq has overwhelmed other issues as the source of problems for President Bush and the Republicans. The survey suggests that pessimism about the direction of the country -- 69 percent said the nation is now off track -- and disaffection with Republicans have dramatically improved Democrats' chances to make gains in November.
Democrats are now favored to handle all 10 issues measured in the Post-ABC News poll. The survey shows a majority of the public, 56 percent, saying they would prefer to see Democrats in control of Congress after the elections.
more...
http://tinyurl.com/jeulz
BUSH — The president's situation is fairly dire. His approval rating now matches his father's low in August 1992, the summer before he lost re-election. His disapproval rating is the highest in ABC/Post polls since 1981, and a single point from the highest in Gallup polls since 1938 (that record is Richard Nixon's).
Intensity, too, is against him by record margins: Nearly half of Americans, 47 percent, "strongly" disapprove of Bush's job performance, while just 17 percent strongly approve, the lowest of his presidency. Viewed through a partisan lens, 73 percent of Democrats strongly disapprove of Bush, while far fewer Republicans, 41 percent, strongly approve.
While he's down across the board, Bush's biggest losses have been among moderate Republicans — 57 percent of them now approve of his job performance, compared with a career average of 84 percent. His approval rating is just 40 percent, even in the red states he won in 2004; in John Kerry's blue states, it's 25 percent.
Majorities overall disapprove of Bush's work on seven out of nine specific issues tested in this poll, soaring to a high of 76 percent disapproval for his handling of gasoline prices. His only positive ratings are for handling the United States' response to terrorism (53 percent, long the almost single-note source of his support) and protecting privacy rights in terrorism investigations (52 percent).
Other presidents have fared worse than Bush's current ratings: Harry Truman saw 22 percent in 1952, Richard Nixon 23 percent in 1974 and Jimmy Carter 28 percent in 1979 in Gallup polls. But historically, as first noted last fall, Bush's approval rating across his career most closely resembles Lyndon B. Johnson's as the country became enmeshed in Vietnam. Johnson's approval rating in Gallup polls fell from 75 percent on average in 1964 to 43 percent in 1967 and 1968. Bush, for his part, has gone from an average of 73 percent approval in 2001 and 2002 to an average 40 percent so far this year. The trend lines are strikingly similar.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/PollVault/story?id=1968029
Raise your hand if you predicted all this in 2000. Now scream.
Deepest sympathies to Gilda and all who loved Alex.
Posted by: battlebob at May 16, 2006 09:38 PM
Heck, I didn't even realize it or I would have grabbed alot of people I know and dragged them there with me.
and this one too.
http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/05/16/to-rubber-stamp-is-to-weaken-democracy/
I heard the other day about Spector caving in and I wondered why the guy doesn't just grow a spine.
This is his chance to stand up for truth and justice and instead, once again, he is scurrying away. Let me remind you that his press office had told me that they'd be putting Gonzales under oath, yet when that day arrived he let him off the hook.
Then Gonzalez lied without being under oath. Surprise, surprise...
Karl Rove, George Tenet, Chertoff and Wolfowitz all have duel citizenship. If they would flee to Switzerland they could not be extradited. Karl Rove is the grandson of Karl Heinz Roverer, the man whose company built Birchenau, a concentration camp in Nazi Germany.
Grand Jury Meets Today
http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2006/05/15/ap2747060.html
A guy I know has champagne on dry ice
Posted by: DiAnne at May 17, 2006 09:11 AM
Do you have documentation on that DiAnne?
VIDEO | Silent March Honors the Fallen
A Report by Scott Galindez
http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm
On Saturday, May 13th, a silent march was held on the National Mall in
Washingon, DC. Family members of soldiers who have died in Iraq were joined by
families of those currently serving and Iraq War veterans who now oppose the
war. The event was held in conjunction with a display of boots for every soldier
who has died in Iraq.
VIDEO | Mothers Say No to War
A Report by Geoffrey Millard and Scott Galindez
http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm
Code Pink has launched a 24-hour Mother's Day peace vigil in front of the White
House. Participants include Susan Sarandon, Cindy Sheehan, Ann Wright, Patch
Adams, and Medea Benjamin. TruthOut's Geoffrey Millard and Scott Galindez filed
this report from Washington, DC.
Dwahzon
I can get it.
I can't do this from work - I'll ask the person who sent me the info (on Rove et al). I do see this "retraction" whereby it wouldn't be Rove's father but stepfather who was Roverer, and our Rover in fact may have a father unknown, and if so, that's a sad story of dysfunction.
I'll try not to spread rumors even if they're tasty, but he's a bad man. That's easy to substantiate.
http://www.unknownnews.org/06A08-A14d-412Cassandra.html interesting retraction
VIDEO | Mothers Say No to War
A Report by Geoffrey Millard and Scott Galindez
http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm
Posted by: DiAnne at May 17, 2006 10:26 AM
Hey! I'm in that one: at 4:59, you see me taking pictures of the group--I have a hat on (OK, so it's the BACK of me, and I move out of the way quickluy, but at least you all know I was there, doing my DCP work--documenting dissent!)