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Today's
Stories
Febrauary 16, 2006
Paul Craig Roberts
Their Own Economic Reality
February 15,
2006
Brian Conacnnon,
Jr.
Haiti's Elections: Chaos, Supression
and Fraud
Dave
Lindorff
Democrats Shoot Their Own, Too
Saree Makdisi
Israeli Ultimatums
Joshua
Frank
The Rhetorical Gore
Amira Hass
Down the Expulsion Highway
CounterPunch
Wire
Winter of Discontent: a 34--Day Fast
Against the War
Robert Bryce
The United States of Enron
Website
of the Day
Osama's
Game: an Interview with Michael Scheuer
February
14, 2006
John Sugg
Those Cartoons and the Neo Con: Daniel
Pipes and the Danish Editor
Don
Santina
DiFi and the Royal Democrats: the
Curious Withdrawal of Cindy Sheehan
William A.
Cook
Shaming Sharon
Ray
McGovern
Who Will Blow the Whistle About
Iran?
John
Ross
Bush's Mexican Poodle
Website
of the Day
Willie
Nelson Records CPer Ned Sublette's "Cowboys Are Frequently
Secretly"
February 13, 2006
Lila
Rajiva
Axis of Child Abusers: UK Troops Beat
Up Barefoot Iraqi Teens
Christopher
Brauchli
Whistleblowers and Witch Hunters:
the Bush Inquisition
Dave
Lindorff
Deadeye Dick: If Stupidity Were
Impeachable, Cheney Would Be History
Ron
Jacobs
Black Liberation
Mike
Whitney
Riding High with Hugo Chavez
Michael
Neumann
Respectful Cultures and Disrespectful
Cartoons
Website
of the Day
Virtual Resistance
February
11 / 12, 2006
Alexander
Cockburn
How Not to Spot a Terrorist
Ralph Nader
Bringing Democracy to the Federal Reserve
Paul Craig Roberts
Nuking the Economy
Pat Williams
John Boehner's Dirty Little Secret:
Flying Lobbyist Air at $4,000 a Junket
Fred Gardner
Dr. Mikuriya's Appeal: a Last Minute
Twist
Saul Landau
From Munich to Hamas
John Chuckman
Cartoons and Bombs: Was Rice Right
for Once?
Roger Burbach
Evo Morales: the Early Days
Seth Sandronsky
Economy on Ice
Website of the Weekend
Just Say Know
February 10, 2006
Carl
G. Estabrook
A US War Plan for Khuzestan?
Sen.
Russell Feingold
A Raw Deal on the Patriot Act
Roxanne
Dunbar--------Ortiz
How Did Evo Morales Come to Power?
Saree Makdisi
The Tempest Over the Hamas Charter
Website of the Day
The
New York Art Scene: 1974--------1984
February 9, 2006
Dave Lindorff
Bush
and Yamashita: War Crimes and Commanders--------in--------Chief
Mike Marqusee
The
Human Majority was Right About Iraq
Paul Craig Roberts
How Conservatives Went Crazy: the Rightwing Press
Peter Phillips
Inside
the Global Dominance Group: 200 Insiders Against the World
William S. Lind
Rumsfeld the Maximalist: the Long War
Christine Tomlinson Innocent
Targets in the "Long War": False Positives and Bush's
Eavesdropping Program
Will Youmans
Church of England Votes to Divest from Israel
Robert Robideau
An American Indian's View of the Cartoons
Richard Neville
The Cartoons That Shook the World: All This from the Danes, the
Least Funny People on Earth
Peter Rost
The New Robber Barons
Website of the Day
Eyes Wide Open
February 8,
2006
Ron Jacobs
The
Once and Future Sly Stone: Soundtrack to a Riot
Stan Cox
Making
and Unmaking History with General Myers
Sen. Russ Feingold
Why
Bush's Wiretapping Program is Illegal and Unconstitutional
Robert Jensen
Horowitz's
Academic Hit List: Take a Class from One of the CounterPunch
16
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Bush Should Have Wiretapped FEMA and Chertoff
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Alberto Gonzales Channels Mark Twain
Don Monkerud
Covenant Marriage on the Rocks
David Swanson
Inequality and War
C.L. Cook
Nuking Ontario
Christopher
Fons
Chill Out Jihadis: They're Just Cartoons!
Jeffrey Ballinger
The Other Side of Nike and Social Responsibility
Website of
the Day
Encyclopedia of Terrorism in the Americas
February 7,
2006
Edward Lucie--------Smith
An
Urgent Plea to Save a Small Estonian Museum from Neo--------Nazis
Robert Fisk
The Fury: Now Lebanon is Burning
Paul Craig Roberts
Colin Powell's Career as a "Yes Man"
Neve Gordon
Why Hamas Won
Joshua Frank
The Hillary and George Show: Partners in War
Peter Montague
The Problem with Mercury: a History of Regulatory Capitulation
Jackie Corr
The
Last Best Choice: Public Power and Montana
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Rumsfeld's
Enforcer: the Secret World of Stephen Cambone
Website of the Day
Negroes with Guns
February 6,
2006
Christopher
Brauchli
Spilling
Blood: Two Sentences
Robert Fisk
Don't
Be Fooled: This Isn't About Islam vs. Secularism
John Chuckman
What Did Stephen Harper Actually Win?
Jenna Orkin
Judge Slams EPA for Lying About 9/11's Toxic Air
Paul Craig
Roberts
Who
Will Save America: My Epiphany
February 4
/ 5, 2006
Alexander Cockburn
"Lights
Out in Tehran": McCain Starts Bombing Run
Mike Ferner
Pentagon
Database Leaves No Kid Alone
James Petras
Evo Morales's Cabinet: a Bizarre Beginning in Bolivia
Alan Maass
Scare of the Union: Dems Collaborate with Bush on Surveillance
Fred Gardner
Annals of Law Enforcement: a Look Inside the San Francisco DA's
Office
Ralph Nader
Bush's
Energy Escapades
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Speaking in Tongues
Saul Landau
Freedom 2006: Buying Sex on the Net or Those Older Freedoms?
Laura Carlsen
Bad Blood on the Border: Killing Guillermo Martinez
James Brooks
Our Little Shop of Diplomatic Horrors
Mike Roselle
Hippies and Revolutionaries in Carcacas
John Holt
Black Gold, Black Death: Canada's Oil Sands Frenzy
Sarah Ferguson
Cops Suing Cops ... for Spying on Cops
William S.
Lind
Beware the Ides of March
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Price of Globalization: Free Trade or Free Speech?
Seth Sandronsky
The Color of Job Cuts in the Auto Industry
Derrick O'Keefe
Rumsfeld's Hitler Analogy
Michael Donnelly
Hop on the Bus
Ron Jacobs
Religion and Political Power
Elisa Salasin
RSVP to Bush
St. Clair / Vest
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week
Stew Albert
God's Curse: Selected Poems
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, LaMorticella and Engel
Website of
the Weekend
Killer
Tells All!
February 3,
2006
Toufic Haddad
A
Parliament of Prisoners
Heather Gray
Working with Coretta Scott King
Tim Wise
Racism,
Neo--------Confederacy and the Raising of Historical Illiterates
Conn Hallinan
Nuclear Proliferation: the Gathering Storm
Eva Golinger
Rumsfeld and Negroponte Amp Up Hositility Toward Venezuela
Daniel Ellsberg
The World Can't Wait: Invitation to a Demonstration
Dave Zirin
Detroit: Super Bowl City on the Brink
Robert Bryce
The
Problem with Cutting US Oil Imports from the Middle East
Website of
the Day
The Chavez Code
February 2,
2006
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Pentagon
Pork: How to Eliminate It
Stan Cox
Outsourcing
the Golden Years
Rachard Itani
Danes
(Finally) Apologize to Muslims (For the Wrong Reasons)
Mike Whitney
Afghanistan Five Years Later: Buildings Down, Heroin Up
Amira Hass
In
the Footsteps of Arafat: an Interview with Hamas' Ismail Haniya
Norman Solomon
When Praise is Desecration: Smothering King's Legacy with Kind
Words
Michael Simmons
Stew Lives!
Christopher
Reed
Japan's
Dirty Secret: One Million Korean Slaves
Website of the Day
State of Nature
February 1,
2006
Sharon Smith
The
Bluff and Bluster Dems: Alito and the Faux Filibuster
Jason Leopold
Enron and the Bush Administration
Cindy Sheehan
Getting
Busted at the State of the Union: What Really Happened
Joseph Grosso
Oprah
and Elie Wiesel: a Match Made in "Neutrality"
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Coretta Scott King was More Than Just Dr. King's Wife
Steven Higgs
Life After Roe. v. Wade
Robert Robideau
"God Given Rights": Palestine and Native America
R. Siddharth
Tales of Power: When Gandhi Rejected a Faustian Bargain with
Henry Ford
Jim Retherford
Remembering Stew Albert: the Quiet Genius
Rep. Cynthia
McKinney
The Legacy of Coretta Scott King
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
True State of the Union
Website of
the Day
Candide's Notebooks
| February
16, 2006
"At
Some Point We Have to Take Seriously the Idea of Putting a Very
Large Wrench Into the Gears of This War Machine"
An Interview with
Anti-War Faster Mike Ferner
By RON JACOBS
On
Wednesday, February 15, 2006, a group of war resisters began a 34
day liquids only fast in Washington, DC. The fast is sponsored by
the Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCNV)--a nonviolent action
group made up of regular citizens who are fed up with the direction
of the US government, especially as regards its foreign policy.
The name VCNV has given the campaign that this fast is part of is
the Winter of Our Discontent.
One
of the fast participants is a man named Mike Ferner. I first heard
of Mike when he traveled to Iraq in the winter of 2003 just before
the US/UK invasion in March of that year.
Mike
is a Vietnam vet who served as a Navy Corpsman and then received
an honorable discharge from the service as a conscientious objector.
He is also a union organizer, member of Veterans for Peace, and
served on the Toledo, Ohio city council. His book on his trips to
Iraq (he went there again in 2004) is titled Inside the Red Zone:
A Veteran For Peace Reports from Iraq, and is due out in August,
2006. I have maintained a rather loose email contact with Mike over
the past several months and, when I heard he was participating in
this fast, decided to ask him a couple questions. The email "conversation"
follows.
Ron:
Hi Mike, I heard that you were participating in the 34 day fast
to protest the war in Iraq and thought I would check in with you.
What made you decide to participate? Furthermore, since the administration
is unlikely to be affected, whose conscience do you hope to stir
with this action?
Mike:
I decided to participate because I needed to do something more to
up the ante against the war. If you go to this page and watch the
video featuring Jackson Browne singing "Lives in the Balance,"
you'll get as good an idea as I can give you why we need to do more
for peace. There ARE lives in the balance and we in this country
are all complicit in the suffering our government is causing.
I
agree with you that our fast/vigil/sit-ins won't affect the criminals
waging the war. We certainly want to call people's attention to
the crimes they are committing, but we know we won't change their
behavior by our small presence in Washington over the next month.
What will change their behavior (and hopefully impeach and imprison
them) however, is if every person in the U.S. who opposes this war
will stop and think for a moment about what they can do to up the
ante. Those are the people whose hearts we need to reach.
We
can all do more--every one of us--no matter what our job or station
in life. And if every person mad as hell that this war continues
will think about what more they can do for peace it will indeed
make a difference...and more than just "make a difference"
in some abstract way. It will throw a wrench into the gears of the
war machine and grind it to a halt. This we can do, if every person
of good conscience decides they have to do more than they thought
they could do.
Ron:You have a book scheduled to be published in late summer
2006. What is it about and when did you write it?
Mike:
We just settled on a title, Inside the Red Zone: A Veteran For Peace
Reports from Iraq. It's about my trips to Iraq and the people I
met. People in the peace movement, Iraqis, G.I.'s, and journalists.
My first trip was just prior to the U.S. invasion when I went with
Voices in the Wilderness for a month. The second trip was in early
2004 for two months when I went specifically to report and write.
I wasn't thinking at the time of writing a book, actually, but the
more I worked at the stories, the more I realized I had experienced
something that needed to be told.
Ron:
From your involvement in Voices for Creative Nonviolence, it seems
apparent that you believe in the power of nonviolent direct action
as practiced and preached by Martin Luther King, Jr. What experiences
in your life led you to this commitment?
Mike:
First off, I don't consider myself a pacifist...yet, anyway. Even
though I'm learning more about Gandhi and King and nonviolent principles
and I'm getting closer to being a pacifist the older I get, I can
still see why people will resort to violence if they're oppressed
long enough. What has lead me to a life of activism was, initially,
being a hospital corpsman during the Viet Nam war and taking care
of the young men who came back in pieces from that conflict. Few
things will turn you against war quicker than that kind of work.
Then, through life I realized that the Viet Nam war wasn't the only
injustice, simply the first one I had experienced directly. I got
involved in the environmental movement and the labor movement over
the years. So social change has been the constant theme in my life
since I getting out of the Navy.
Ron:What do you think lies ahead for the people of Iraq?
Mike:While
the U.S. continues to occupy it, nothing but violence and suffering.
I believe that every political institution created in Iraq since
the invasion will be seen as tainted by the invader, and as such,
stands a good chance of being torn down once we are finally gone.
That is not a pleasant picture to imagine, but it will happen whenever
we leave. And until then, the violence and suffering will continue
because our presence is fueling the resistance. Withdraw that fuel
and the fire will subside. Who knows what will follow, but whatever
it is, it will happen when (not if) we leave. Then, the peace movement's
mettle in the U.S. will be put to the test to see if we can force
our government to make amends for what we've done to the extent
that is possible.
Ron:
How about the people of Iran?
Mike:Our
government leaders will seal the case for their insanity diagnosis
if they take military action against Iran. If they do so, however,
it won't be anything like the Iraq war. Iran has got military capabilities
far in excess of Iraq's. They have missile systems that will inflict
terrible damage and casualties to U.S. ships and ground forces in
the region. Beyond that, of course, violent reprisals will become
the order of the day and we will have succeeded in making the world
considerably more unbalanced and frightening.
Ron:The people of the US?
Mike:That's
a good question, isn't it? Do we think that except for the relatively
small number of military casualties coming back from Iraq we will
be unaffected? I'm sure that's what our "leaders" would
like to promote, but that's not the reality. Every G.I. that's been
killed, and every one of the tens of thousands who've been wounded--physically
and mentally--has a family; has a city or town they're from; had
hopes and dreams and skills they would have shared fully with their
communities and society. Instead, we will bear the financial and
emotional costs of dealing with the families of those men and women
and everyone their pain has touched, radiating out in ever-larger
circles--for the rest of their lives. Say nothing of the opportunities
lost, the health care these billions could have provided, the civil
liberties we have lost, etc. etc. Just the direct costs, financial
and emotional, from this war will be felt for generations. And as
a people we will be much less safe when it is finally over. Look
at what other countries thought of the U.S. right after September
11, 2001, and what they think of us now. We are making a dangerous
world for our children and grandchildren.
Ron:Despite my better judgment, I occasionally get incredibly
frustrated with the failure of the antiwar movement to end this
damn war. In fact, sometimes I feel like going the route of the
Weather Underground. I know I am not alone in this. Indeed, I would
imagine that you feel this way sometimes. What do you do to convince
yourself to continue the struggle?
Mike:It
is most definitely frustrating, without a doubt. Is violence the
answer? I can understand what drives oppressed people to it, but
I still think it can never really be the answer.
Ron:
Last fall before the big antiwar march on Washington you wrote an
article calling on people to sit-in around the White House a la
the Chinese occupation of Tianamen Square. Do you still think this
is a good strategy?
Mike:
Actually, my suggestion was that when we were hundreds of thousands
strong we sit down then, not two days later in a staged sit-in at
the White House, which is what happened. Bless every one of those
400+ people who got arrested there (I was arrested earlier that
morning at the Pentagon with 40 others), but at some point we have
to take seriously the idea of putting a very large wrench into the
gears of this war machine--make the nation simply ungovernable in
every way we can. We have to do more.
Ron:
Back to the fast--will there be a way for people to keep in touch
with this campaign and publish its progress on their email lists
and in their local organizations?
Mike:
Check out the Voices for Creative Nonviolence website for updates.
MORE IMPORTANTLY, organize a fast, or a vigil, or better yet, a
sit-in at your local congressional offices, and let us know what
you're doing so we can fan the flames of protest.
Ron:
As a vet, do you have any special message for women and men who
are currently in the service (or considering joining)?
Mike:
If you're thinking of joining, don't. It ain't worth it. And I don't
just mean you might get killed or wounded. The military is not what
we should be using as a tool to protect the holdings of the empire,
and that's its basic role no matter what the enlistment commercials
say. If you're already in and have come to believe what we're doing
is wrong, call the G.I. Hotline 800-394-9544 and find out what you
can do to get out.
Ron:
Thanks for your time. I'll keep in touch.
(Interviewer's
note: The title of this article is a paraphrase of a sentence that
I lifted from Martin Luther King Jr.'s April 4,1967 specch against
the US war in Vietnam.)
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