This started out as a story for Free Speech Radio News but didn’t make it into today’s newscast. I’ve heard of the Flash player not working for a few folks. Listen to the MP3 if that’s the case for you. Cross-posted to Houston Indymedia, now featured on Indymedia.us.

A Fort Hood soldier faced a military trial today for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan, one week after another member of his unit was sentenced to 30 days in jail for refusing to go to war. Sergeant Travis Bishop was convicted on all charges and sentenced to one year in prison, loss of pay, and reduction in rank.

Unlike Victor Agosto, who resisted deployment to Afghanistan on the grounds that the war is unconstitutional, Bishop is a conscientious objector. He opposes all wars because of his Christian faith. I spoke with Bishop on Friday evening before he was sentenced.

“Jesus is very vocal about non-violent conflict resolution. Jesus is very, very anti-war. You can tell from all his sermons. As far as my state of mind I feel good. I feel better about facing prison because of that belief than going to Afghanistan and coming back a quote unquote ‘American hero.’”

Bishop says he realized he could file for conscientious objector status only days before his scheduled deployment to Afghanistan in March. He left the sprawling Killeen base for one week and is now charged with going AWOL and disobeying orders.

Desertion rates among the Army ranks rose 80 percent between 2003 and 2007. With tens of thousands more troops now headed to Afghanistan, anti-war activist Cynthia Thomas says G.I. support networks are crucial. She co-founded the Under the Hood Outreach Center and Cafe in Killeen.

“Our soldiers know here at Fort Hood that if they choose to be a soldier of conscience and resist orders to deploy that we are here, that they have the support, that we have this network here in Killeen. It’s really amazing sometimes when you have all these boys in here, sometimes they just come into sleep, to get away from the base…”

Bishop said he wouldn’t be able to resist deployment orders without the support from the local coffeehouse.

“Under the Hood has been incredibly good to me. They said no matter what my decision, deploy or not deploy, they were going to support me. I don’t think I’d have been able to do this at all, just by my lonesome. I don’t.”

Bishop said he hopes his decision will inspire other troops to question their service in the military. Last week supporters of Victor Agosto from across Texas gathered at Under the Hood cafe and rallied across from Fort Hood. [Chants from rally]

They’ll rally outside the base again for Travis Bishop this evening. Ansel Herz, Austin.

Zinn spoke a few weeks ago at the 100th Anniversary of the Progressive Magazine. Speaking without notes, he proceeded to lay out a common-sense rebuttal to what passes for common sense in this country – the idea that the Revolutionary War, Civil War, and World War II were all necessary and just wars. Good wars, as many call them. It’s a talk that, like his book, fundamentally challenges the normative identity of America. Watch it here.

He does speak slowly. That might make the talk less accessible to some people, understandably. So if you’re pressed for time, listen to the edited version of the speech below. I shaved about 12 minutes of mostly dead air off the original recording and it moves along more quickly. But in this version you do miss Zinn’s wry humor, which is hilarious at times. Have a listen, and pass it on. Embed code here, mp3 here.

This is the first time I’ve seen the bombing of a city live on a screen. It’s one thing to see footage after the fact of injured and dead families.  It’s another to sit and witness the bombing itself as it happens.  To know that innocent people are dying in that moment.  To hear a rooster crowing and morning prayers amidst the deafening booms of falling shells and bombs.   I keep cringing and covering my eyes every time there’s another blast, as if I’m shielding myself from something.  It is horrifying, just to watch.

Again, download Livestation (small, clean program) to watch AJE live.  We need media reform justice in this country so that people can watch this channel normally on their televisions.

In reality, fact-finding by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and Al Jazeera English has found that the grainy white figures loading up a truck before being blown up in the video are themselves innocent civilians. One of individuals was a 14-year-old boy. The video below has been viewed less than 30,000 times on Youtube.

The Israeli military’s Youtube videos are together a first-hand view of the war on Gaza from the perspective of Israeli warplanes. But clearly their main function is as aggressive propaganda for the Israeli war. The video above disguises the bombing of a group of civilians as a precision strike against terrorists. What’s new is that this misinformation is being distributed without mediation by any filter and with great success through a top Web 2.0 website. Youtube has become the second most popular site on the planet because of the social networking and content-creation features it brought to the medium of video. The company describes itself as “empowering them [people] to become the broadcasters of tomorrow.”

I don’t think giving any government an outlet on Youtube for unabashed pro-war propaganda serves that mission. And I wonder if, say, the governments of Iran, Russia, or Hamas for that matter would be allowed to do the same thing. At least when President-Elect Barack Obama’s team posts videos, they allows comments and video responses which appear on the same page. Not the case with the IDF’s videos. There’s nothing Web 2.0 about this propaganda which makes it any better than the old.

(Not only that, but a bunch of folks at Reddit say a user-submitted video which shows the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in Gaza from the below on the ground has been censored.)

Not much posting last week because of intermittent internet access, sorry. I’ll be making up for it this week. I left the following comment on another blog – it covers a lot of what I’d like to say about Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza.

1. Hamas’ rocket fire into Israeli towns is wrong under any circumstances and must be condemned.

2. Israel broke the last ceasefire, by which Hamas was abiding at the time, when it launched a ground raid into the Gaza Strip on the day of the US election. It apparently violated another truce when it launched this latest assault. The question of proportionality aside, in this sense Israel has already broken rules by which it or any other international actor would be expected to abide.

3. We don’t know how many civilians have been killed/maimed, but there is no basis for claiming Israel has done a ‘stellar job’ at sparing civilians from harm. We do know that the IOF is dropping US-made bunker-busting bombs on one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. They have bombed a police graduation ceremony, several Islamic University buildings, a Hamas sports center, mosques, and several UN clinics and facilities. We know that dozens of women and children have already died and hundreds more are injured. This is on top of the collective punishment inflicted by Israel’s blockade on Gaza, which has seriously depleted medical, power, and food stocks.

4. Israel is not really in the same situation as other Western powers who have faced popular insurgencies. Hamas’ home-made rockets rarely hit their targets. But supposing the analogy is legit, those nations that reacted with reckless and overwhelming military assaults against popular insurgencies tended to be ineffective and deserving of moral condemnation for the wanton ‘collateral damage’ they caused. Nothing different in this case.

5. Americans cannot look at the attack on Gaza as disinterested observers from an outside party. We are directly complicit in the conflict so long as our taxes and government continue to be a major means of support for the Israeli military apparatus. People absolutely need to apply their morals to this issue and take the appropriate civic action.

For me, the best coverage of the conflict is at the Heathlander. Most of the claims above can be sourced from there.

Also see Lenin.

“From his statements during his election campaign, we don’t think that his position is different from the Bush administration’s.  It is a continuation of the Bush foreign policy.  Obama’s first message to our country is that of war.  So we cannot be hopeful about [him].”

Sonali Kolhatkar’s radio program broadcast a must-listen interview yesterday with Eman, an Afghan woman and member of RAWA, who speaks out against Obama’s pledge to send more troops to Afghanistan and expand the war there.  She asks for the support of the peace movement in this country, which to my knowledge has been silent in the face of continual killings by airstrike of Afghan civilians in recent weeks.  From Uprising Radio.

On that note, the Iraqi Freedom Congress has penned a letter to Barack Obama reminding him of the carnage wrought on Iraq not only by Bush’s occupation, but by the last Democratic administration under Clinton.  They ask him to fully withdraw troops from Iraq as soon as possible.  Via Infoshop News.

No matter what Iraq Veterans Against the War do, it seems they’re always invisible to the corporate media.

Whether it’s holding Winter Soldier hearings at which dozens of veterans testified to the atrocities they committed, re-enacting the occupation on the streets of American cities, or being nearly beaten and arrested by cops for peaceful protest outside the DNC, IVAW’s 1300-strong members and their actions have met with an all but total media blackout.   When they requested that Bob Schieffer of CBS let them submit two questions to the presidential candidates, they were ignored.  And when a group of vets showed up outside Hofstra University to protest, the police blocked and arrested them.  Nick Morgan, who served in Iraq for about one year, was trampled and bruised in the face by a cop on horseback (seen above).

A Google News search for the Wednesday’s IVAW protest yields zero results from the mainstream media.  Complete coverage at the Indypendent and Democracy Now, of course.  Why won’t the corporate media acknowledge the presence of anti-war veterans?  What do they have to do, beyond dogging politicians across the country, engaging in creative protest and getting beaten up, to catch the gaze of corporate journalists?

If they we were Plumbers Against the War, they might be getting the attention they deserve right now.  Google News finds over 8,000 stories, from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, for “Joe the Plumber.”  Because, you know, if a faltering candidate with no fresh ideas mentions a random plumber a bunch of times, it must be important.  I’m tempted to say that there’s no better illustration of corporate media disfunction than this one, but there are so many I can’t be sure.