Stryker vehicles that returned from Iraq last November are being repaired and restored for "combat readiness" according to The Olympian.

Do you want the war to stop? If so, what are you doing about it?

I am very interested in hearing the voices of the Iraqi people. I have found a definite lack of coverage of the Iraqi people considering the vast amount of effort that our government is making in Iraq.

Today I found a blog called "Inside Iraq". It is a product of the McClatchy Baghdad Bureau. There are some very catching entries, and if you are interested in what is happening in Iraq and you don't want to hear a repeater of the government line, consider checking it out.

[via email:]

Twelve Arrested in Des Moines as Obama Campaign Hinders Press Coverage of Protest

by Michael Gillespie for publication

1/2/2008

Josh Earnest, Iowa communications director for U.S. Sen. Barak Obama (D-IL), is running scared in the final few days before the Iowa Caucuses. He must be, otherwise he would not have risked the consequences of ejecting half a dozen media workers from Obama's Iowa campaign headquarters on Wednesday, Jan. 2, and barring entry to several more.

Reporters and photojournalists representing news organizations in Japan, Germany, Great Britain, and the USA were hindered in their efforts to report on a bona fide news event when Earnest insisted they work outside in the sub-freezing single digit cold while inside a group of eight antiwar activists from Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCNV) and the Iowa Occupation Project questioned Obama's positions on the war in Iraq, military spending, and U.S. Middle East foreign policy.

Though he knew who the protesters represented and why they had come to Obama campaign headquarters (this reporter heard an Obama staffer say, "We knew they were coming and we have a plan to deal with them"), Earnest told one Iowa newspaper, "They basically just sort of came into the front office and were talking loudly and being disruptive."

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This is a must see video interview with Naomi Klein by Geoffrey Millard. Go to video (it's in two parts.)

What If America Were Invaded and Occupied? link to original

By Dahr Jamail, The Progressive. Posted December 21, 2007.

"Unembedded" journalist Dahr Jamail reviews Meeting Resistance. With video.

"Suppose Iraq invaded America. And an Iraqi soldier was on a tank passing through an American street, waving his gun at the people, threatening them, raiding and trashing houses. Would you accept that? This is why no Iraqi can accept occupation, and don't be surprised by their reactions," says "The Imam," a young man from a mixed Sunni-Shia family, as he explains the genesis of the insurgency in Iraq and its exponential growth.

...

Aside from screenings at international film festivals and numerous private and public shows, Connors and Bingham screened the film at West Point, the U.S. Marine Corps staff college at Quantico, and Baghdad.

Bingham feels that the film represented a radically different perspective to the military personnel who viewed it.

"The bulk of the people were taking on new information that was a dramatic paradigm shift for them," she says. "To see their enemy as largely fighting for their homeland because of nationalism and religion, rather than being terrorists, is a big deal."

go to original

This is an interesting and important article. There is also a trailer for the film available with the story.

This is directly related to the PMR protests against the illegal war of occupation in Iraq. For legal expert Francis Boyle, those PMR activists who organized and engaged in civil resistance toward the use of the municipal Port of Olympia to further, and to enable, an illegal military action are the true "sheriffs". You can find this article on the UFPPC website. read on:

ANALYSIS: Francis Boyle distinguishes 'civil resistance' from 'civil disobedience'
Written by Madeleine Lee
Friday, 14 December 2007

In a lecture given at Northwestern Law School on Nov. 20, 2007, Prof. Francis A. Boyle asserted, as he has many times while defending Lt. Ehren Watada's refusal to deploy to Iraq, that the Bush administration is a criminal regime:

"[I]n many instances specific components of the Bush Jr. administration's foreign policy constitute ongoing criminal activity under well recognized principles of both international law and United States domestic law."

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