I see Putin is going ahead with his trip to Tehran in spite of rumors that he’s to be assaulted by suicide bombers or captured. One has to say, however, that if the Russian president is assassinated, he’ll probably be blamed for plotting his own demise. After all, he’s been blamed for the death of practically every Russian “dissident” and half-baked journalist, from the nuclear poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko to the shooting death of Anna Politkovskaya.
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Antiwar.com regular contributor Aaron Glantz has been working very hard at KPFA Radio with his new project, The War Comes Home.
A sample:
[audio:http://warcomeshome.org/files/audio/005.Aguayo.mp3]Army medic Augustin Aguayo refused to load his gun in Iraq and then escaped through a base window in Germany rather than be deployed a second time. He said during basic training he realized that he could never use his gun to kill anyone. But the military turned down his application to become a conscientious objector and when he turned himself in at Fort Irwin in California they shackled him and flew him back to Germany – where he spent six months in a US military prison.
[audio:http://warcomeshome.org/files/audio/004.dean_.mp3]Last Christmas, Army Reservist James Dean barricaded himself in his father’s farm-house with several weapons and threatened to kill himself. Authorities responded by cordoning off the house and fired tear gas inside. They brought in armored vehicles and blew a hole in the right side of the house. Just past midnight on Dec. 26, a state police sharpshooter shot Jamie Dean dead.
[audio:http://warcomeshome.org/files/audio/008.casteel.mp3]After serving as an interrogator at Abu Ghraib prison, Joshua Casteel traveled to the Vatican where he was given an audience with Pope Benedict XVI. Casteel argued for a firmer antiwar stance from the Catholic Church. Church leaders, he says, should actively encourage soldiers to become conscientious objectors when political leaders wage an unjust war.
[audio:http://warcomeshome.org/files/audio/009.bolles.mp3]Dr. Gene Bolles has spent 30 years repairing bodies broken by disease, accidents and brutality. Drafted into the military during the Vietnam War, the Colorado neurosurgeon served for two years as a flight surgeon, witnessing the suffering of both U.S. military personnel and Vietnamese civilians. Yet, despite his extensive experience with war, nothing has shaken him up more than the 26 months he spent working at Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany treating U.S. soldiers wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Saving the Military from Itself
Ret. Lt. Col. Bill Astore, author of the recent article, “Saving the Military from Itself,” discusses the strain on the U.S. military, the Petraeus Report fraud, the necessity of withdrawal from Iraq, “troop support” and the difference between the war against al Qaeda and the occupation of Iraq.
MP3 here. (16:35)
William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), earned a doctorate in modern history from the University of Oxford in 1996. He has taught military cadets at the Air Force Academy, officers at the Naval Postgraduate School, and now teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. His books and articles, focusing primarily on military history, include Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism (Potomac Press, 2005).
A Matter of Conscience
Monica Benderman, wife of conscientious objector Sgt. Kevin Benderman, author of Letters from Fort Lewis Brig: A Matter of Conscience, explains the story of her husband’s persecution at the hands of the government for objecting to the war in Iraq.
MP3 here. (16:46)
Monica Benderman is the wife of conscientious objector, Sgt. Kevin Benderman.
Jeffersonians Vs. Hamiltonians
Jeff Taylor, author of Where Did the Party Go?: William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey, and the Jeffersonian Legacy, discusses the Hamiltonian legacy of Empire, corporatism and war, the flaws in modern liberal and conservative ideologies, factional fights and compromises within the establishment, the war-mongery of Barack Obama, .
MP3 here. (41:32)
Jeff Taylor is a political scientist in Minnesota and is the author of Where Did the Party Go?: William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey, and the Jeffersonian Legacy, he has written for Green Horizons Quarterly, Chronicles, Counterpunch.org, LewRockwell.com, For details, see: http://popcorn78.blogspot.com.
Try to Change the Law, Go to Prison
Paul Jacob, longtime libertarian activist and columnist for Townhall.com, discusses his persecution at the hands of the State of Oklahoma for participating the democratic process.
MP3 here. (41:14)
Paul Jacob is a Senior Advisor at The Sam Adams Alliance, a Townhall.com member group. His daily Common Sense commentary appears on the Web, via e-mail, and on radio stations across America.
For most of the last decade, Jacob was the term limits movement’s leading voice, running U.S. Term Limits, the nation’s largest term limits group. Paul continues to serve on the group’s board of directors and as a senior fellow.
