As police continue to blatantly steal and destroy cameras from citizens without any legal authority whatsoever, it is essential to store our video footage online so it can accessed regardless of what happens to our cameras.
At this time, the most popular method to do this is through the Qik mobile phone application.
I personally have never used it because I tend not to use my phone for video recording, but I am going to download the app because it seems that police are getting bolder about stealing our cameras.
Just this week, we've had at least three incidents, including the one from Miami Beach on Monday, the one in Broward County on Thursday and one from this weekend in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Fortunately, the last victim was using the Qik app when police walked up to her and demanded her phone as "evidence," even though they had no legal right to do so.
The incident can be seen beginning at 12:30 in the above video where Antigone Darling is recording the aftermath of a protest against police in which eight activists were arrested.
She is actually walking away from police who chase her down and steal her phone.
The law states that police are required to obtain a subpoena or warrant before they can confiscate your camera unless your camera is being used in the commission of crime such as child pornography or upskirting.
I addressed this issue two years ago where I interviewed a couple of attorneys.
Sometimes police know the law but will lie to the citizen anyway as they tried to do to us in my first Metrorail incident (beginning at 2:08 in the video).
But many cops do not know the law as we learned in March when cops in New Haven, Connecticut had to go through special classes to learn how to deal with photographers.
The truth is, regardless if they know they are breaking the law or not, the worse that can happen to them is that prosecutors will force them to return the phone.
And that can take weeks.
Just ask Benjamin Bartholomew who was arrested with his brother in April in Northern California for protesting while wearing masks. They do it for political theater as I wrote about back in February.
Last time they did it, they were charged for wearing masks and for posting signs on state property. Police confiscated his phone because he was recording the entire interaction.
Even after prosecutors dropped the mask charge, they have yet to return his phone to him, which after five weeks, is a huge inconvenience.
But at least the footage was salvaged and has been online since his arrest. That video is below.
A number of the 779 Guantanamo prisoners came to the prison as children, including these four. (Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas/photos)
Fifteen juveniles spent time as prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp — three more than the U.S. State Department had publicly acknowledged, the UC Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas reported today on its website.
The finding is based on an analysis of military documents recently made public by the transparency organization WikiLeaks.
“This new report shows that even more children have been imprisoned at Guantánamo than our earlier research revealed,” said Almerindo Ojeda, director of the center and principal investigators for its Guantanamo Testimonials Project. “This is one more reason for a full, independent, and transparent inquiry into the policies and practices of detention we have engaged in since 9/11.”
A 2008 study by the Guantánamo Testimonials Project found that the U.S. Department of State had underreported by 50 percent the number of juveniles seized and sent to Guantanamo. The State Department subsequently adjusted the number of juvenile detainees from eight to 12.
“This is three more than the 12 the State Department acknowledged to the public after our earlier report on the subject, and seven more than the eight the State Department originally reported to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child,” Ojeda said.
More details about the latest WikiLeaks information can be found in a report on the center’s website: http://tinyurl.com/3oj528h.
Ojeda and other scholars at UC Davis and beyond, as well as human rights specialists, attorneys and retired military officers, have repeatedly called for investigation into post-9/11 U.S. detention policies and practices. Referred to as the Davis Group — as it was convened by the center and the law school — their 2009 work can be found at http://tinyurl.com/3hb999k.
Thirteen of the one-time juvenile detainees who were identified in the latest WikiLeaks documents have been released. Of the other two, one is the first child in history to have been convicted of war crimes, according to Ojeda. The other is reported to have killed himself in his Guantanamo cell at age 21. Photos of the individuals are also on the website.
WikiLeaks began to release classified documents for all 779 Guantanamo prisoners in April.
The volunteer-staffed Guantánamo Testimonials Project also gathers accounts of torture of Guantánamo Bay prisoners found in news media reports, e-mails, diaries and other sources worldwide. The project has published a book, "The Trauma of Psychological Torture," that contains the proceedings of a September 2006 conference sponsored by the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain, which drew psychologists, psychiatrists, neurobiologists, lawyers and historians from nine institutions in the U.S. and Germany.
About UC Davis
For more than 100 years, UC Davis has engaged in teaching, research and public service that matter to California and transform the world. Located close to the state capital, UC Davis has more than 32,000 students, more than 2,500 faculty and more than 21,000 staff, an annual research budget that exceeds $678 million, a comprehensive health system and 13 specialized research centers. The university offers interdisciplinary graduate study and more than 100 undergraduate majors in four colleges — Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Biological Sciences, Engineering, and Letters and Science. It also houses six professional schools — Education, Law, Management, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.
Media contact(s):
Almerindo Ojeda, Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas, aeojeda@ucdavis.edu
my moms baggy yellow shirt Mood: chatty Now Playing: The Yellow Sweatshirt and the story behind it Topic: SMILE SMILE SMILE
The baggy yellow shirt had long sleeves, four extra-large pockets trimmed in black thread and snaps up the front. It was faded from years of wear, but still in decent shape. I found it in 1963 when I was home from college on Christmas break, rummaging through bags of clothes Mom intended to give away. "You're not taking that old thing, are you?" Mom said when she saw me packing the yellow shirt. "I wore that when I was pregnant with your brother in 1954!"
"It's just the thing to wear over my clothes during art class,
Mom. Thanks!" I slipped it into my suitcase before she could object. The yellow shirt be came a part of my college wardrobe. I loved it. After graduation, I wore the shirt the day I moved into my new apartment and on Saturday mornings when I cleaned.
The next year, I married. When I became pregnant, I wore the yellow shirt during big-belly days. I missed Mom and the rest of my family, since we were in Colorado and they were in Illinois. But that shirt helped. I smiled, remembering that Mother had worn it when she was pregnant, 15 years earlier.
That Christmas, mindful of the warm feelings the shirt had given me, I patched one elbow, wrapped it in holiday paper and sent it to Mom. When Mom wrote to thank me for her "real" gifts, she said the yellow shirt was lovely. She never mentioned it again.
The next year, my husband, daughter and I stopped at Mom and Dad's to pick up some furniture. Days later, when we uncrated the kitchen table, I noticed something yellow taped to its bottom. The shirt!
And so the pattern was set.
On our next visit home, I secretly placed the shirt under Mom and Dad's mattress. I don't know how long it took for her to find it, but almost two years passed before I discovered it under the base of our living-room floor lamp. The yellow shirt was just what I needed now while refinishing furniture. The walnut stains added character.
In 1975 my husband and I divorced. With my three children, I prepared to move back to Illinois. As I packed, a deep depression overtook me. I wondered if I could make it on my own. I wondered if I would find a job. I paged through the Bible, looking for comfort. In Ephesians, I read, "So use every piece of God's armor to resist the enemy whenever he attacks, and when it is all over, you will be standing up."
I tried to picture myself wearing God's armor, but all I saw was the stained yellow shirt. Slowly, it dawned on me. Wasn't my mother's love a piece of God's armor? My courage was renewed.
Unpacking in our new home, I knew I had to get the shirt back to Mother. The next time I visited her, I tucked it in her bottom dresser drawer.
Meanwhile, I found a good job at a radio station. A year later I discovered the yellow shirt hidden in a rag bag in my cleaning closet. Something new had been added. Embroidered in bright green across the breast pocket were the words "I BELONG TO PAT."
Not to be outdone, I got out my own embroidery materials and added an apostrophe and seven more letters. Now the shirt proudly proclaimed, "I BELONG TO PAT'S MOTHER." But I didn't stop there. I zig-zagged all the frayed seams, then had a friend mail the shirt in a fancy box to Mom from Arlington, VA. We enclosed an official looking letter from "The Institute for the Destitute," announcing that she was the recipient of an award for good deeds. I would have given anything to see Mom's face when she opened the box. But, of course, she never mentioned it.
Two years later, in 1978, I remarried. The day of our wedding, Harold and I put our car in a friend's garage to avoid practical jokers. After the wedding, while my husband drove us to our honeymoon suite, I reached for a pillow in the car to rest my head. It felt lumpy. I unzipped the case and found, wrapped in wedding paper, the yellow shirt. Inside a pocket was a note: "Read John 14:27-29. I love you both, Mother."
That night I paged through the Bible in a hotel room and found the verses: "I am leaving you with a gift: peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give isn't fragile like the peace the world gives. So don't be troubled or afraid. Remember what I told you: I am going away, but I will come back to you again. If you really love me, you will be very happy for me, for now I can go to the Father, who is greater than I am. I have told you these things before they happen so that when they do, you will believe in me."
The shirt was Mother's final gift. She had known for three months that she had terminal Lou Gehrig's disease. Mother died the following year at age 57.
I was tempted to send the yellow shirt with her to her grave. But I'm glad I didn't, because it is a vivid reminder of the love-filled game she and I played for 16 years. Besides, my older daughter is in college now, majoring in art. And every art student needs a baggy yellow shirt with big pockets.
So is the US nearing the Anti - War tipping point ? Mood: celebratory Now Playing: The DC location: Freedom Plaza, is on Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., within marching distance of the Capitol and other federal offic Topic: WAR
Demonstrators with the Military Families Speak Out group in an anti-war march to mark the 6,000th death in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Tuesday April 26, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo)
With Tahrir Square in mind, activist groups and individuals, some of them well known, are planning ongoing, nonviolent protests in Washington, D.C., starting in October. Their goal is to end the war in Afghanistan and work for sharp change in domestic policies. The mainstream media are not seen as friends, exactly.
A plaza two blocks from the White House is being envisioned as a Tahrir Square or Madison, Wisconsin – a place for ongoing, nonviolent citizen protest – under plans by a coalition of activist organizations and prominent individuals. Their demand: withdrawal of all “U.S. troops, contractors or mercenaries” from Afghanistan.
Organizers have begun an online campaign to solicit endorsements from groups and pledges from at least 50,000 individuals to say they would be willing to come to the nation’s capital beginning Oct. 6 – a Thursday and the 10th anniversary of the start of the war in Afghanistan.
One of the organizers, single-payer healthcare advocate and pediatrician Dr. Margaret Flowers, told Nieman Watchdog that the group hopes for “a sustained occupation of the square beginning on the 6th of October.” The location, Freedom Plaza, is on Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., within marching distance of the Capitol and other federal offices.
“This will not be another rally and march on a Saturday, make home movies, pat ourselves on the back, and go home,” said best-selling author (“War Is a Lie”) and activist David Swanson, another of the organizers. “We are coming to Washington to stay.” Swanson said the organizers would get permits, “but not for the length of time we will probably be there.”
As it expands, Flowers said, the coalition will add to its demands beyond ending the Afghanistan war to include other issues relating to peace, and to social, economic and environmental justice. For now, though, “we are still early in the process and have not worked out our demand process,” she said. “We want broad input into this and to use a decentralized, bottom-up consensus model of decision-making.”
On the first day of the posting for the October action, she said, hundreds of people signed up. The number of organizations endorsing the event stands at 25 as of this writing, with many more expected as these groups go through their endorsement processes.
In announcing the call for the action, organizers said they believed a tipping point has been reached in the American people’s disgust with “the atrocities of U.S. foreign and military policy” and “a U.S. domestic policy that steals from the people to add to the already hideously bursting pockets of the wealthy.” The time is ripe, they said, for a Tahrir Square-style outpouring.
“When the tipping point is reached, it seems at once both unexpected and completely obvious. We are nearing that tipping point in the United States. We have witnessed the Arab Spring and the blossoming of the European Summer. We ask ourselves if now we will experience the American Autumn,” wrote organizers Flowers, Kevin Zeese (head of Come Home America and ItsOurEconomy.us), Tarak Kauff (Veterans for Peace) and Elaine Brower (a military mother and a leader of the antiwar group World Can’t Wait) in announcing the action.
Swanson told Nieman Watchdog he expected the mainstream media to continue to ignore antiwar activities until “we significantly prevent business as usual by nonviolently blocking doors, buildings, offices and streets. Then and only then will we rapidly transition from the ‘first they ignore you stage’, to the ‘then they mock you stage’, to be followed by the ‘then they attack you stage – only if and when some major success appears likely.”
Swanson said he would “be delighted to be proved wrong” about the mainstream media, but he said “the majority positions of Americans on ending wars, taxing corporations and billionaires, providing healthcare and safe retirement, investing in education and jobs and clean energy, and so forth, are routinely ignored and belittled” by major news organizations.
Kevin Zeese echoed Swanson’s critique, indicating activists’ general distrust of major news organizations and increasing reliance on online alternative media to spread and report their message.
“We have so little faith in the corporate media that we did not even emphasize sending an announcement of our plans to them,” Zeese told Nieman Watchdog. “We know they will either ignore or denigrate us, so why bother.”
Major news organizations do indeed ignore antiwar events. It’s understandable that the big media outlets can’t cover every protest, especially in Washington, D.C., where there are so many – but by ignoring antiwar protests almost totally, editors are treating opposition to the war much as they handled the run-up to the war in Iraq: they are missing an important story and contributing to the perception that there is no visible opposition to the Afghanistan war – even as polls show overwhelming support for a U.S. military withdrawal.
Exhibit A: Last Dec. 16, in a demonstration organized by Veterans for Peace, 500 or more people gathered outside the White House, as snow was falling, to protest the war and to support Wikileaks and accused leaker PFC Bradley Manning. There were 131 arrests – including a sizable number of veterans – for nonviolent acts of civil disobedience. One of the arrestees had chained himself to the White House fence and another to a lamppost. Additional newsworthy factors: Among those arrested were the nation’s most famous whistleblower (Daniel Ellsberg); a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter (Chris Hedges); a much-praised FBI whistleblower (Coleen Rowley); a former CIA analyst who used to prepare daily presidential briefings (Ray McGovern), among others. Additionally, the demonstration seemed newsworthy because it coincided with both the release of the Pentagon’s latest progress report on Afghanistan to President Obama and, as blogger David Lindorff noted, the results of a new ABC/Washington Post poll in which 60 percent of Americans responded that the Afghanistan war had not been “worth fighting.”
Our own research confirmed what Lindorff wrote at the time: “It was blacked out of the New York Times...the Philadelphia Inquirer...the Los Angeles Times..the Wall Street Journal...and even blacked out of the capital’s local daily, the Washington Post.” NPR gave it 143 words, and USA Today 74 words. Using videos and text, the protest – including the arrests, interviews of veterans as to why they were planning to be arrested, as well as excerpts from speeches by participants – was covered by nontraditional media: The Huffington Post , the Socialist Worker, OpEd News, Salem-News.com in Oregon, and...the Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald.
The Washington Post ran a wire service photo of Daniel Ellsberg inside the Metro section with the cutline that he and “several others” were arrested for not dispersing. When some readers complained to Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander about the lack of coverage, he checked with the U.S. Park Service and learned that the 131 arrests was the biggest mass arrest of the year for park police – another newsworthy factor. Alexander allowed as how 131 arrests “warrant more than an inaccurate cutline” but also revealingly stated what would seem to be a common newsroom attitude: “Staged events with mass arrests don’t necessarily have high news value.” As if other large rallies just break out spontaneously without any planning.
“Happily,” Zeese continued, “more and more Americans do not trust the media” and rely instead for news on “independent media sources telling the truth,” detracting from what he called “the corporate media’s credibility.” There is also the possibility that a successful action at Freedom Plaza could attract overseas media attention.
Flowers, a congressional fellow with Physicians for a National Health Program, told Nieman Watchdog that the October nonviolent action is “a very important project in furthering the cause about which I am so passionate – truly universal health care, a single payer health system in the United States, and creating a healthier society and environment.”
Flowers said that even given the “corporate domination of the political process and the media message...Our strength is in our numbers. The majority of people want to end corporate control, end the wars, have single payer health care, better jobs and education, stable climate.” The only chance to achieve this, she said, “is to unite and engage in nonviolent resistance to wrest this corporate control away and create a functional situation.”
The online pledge to attend the Freedom Plaza protest reads, in part: “I pledge that if any U.S. troops, contractors, or mercenaries remain in Afghanistan on Thursday, October 6, 2011, as that criminal occupation goes into its 11th year, I will commit to being in Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., with others on that day with the intention of making it our Tahrir Square, our Madison, Wisconsin, where we will nonviolently resist the corporate machine until our resources are invested in human needs and environmental protection instead of war and exploitation...” President Obama has indicated a goal of a 2014 full withdrawal date, if Afghan security forces are ready to take over from U.S. and NATO troops then.
Among the other initial signers in support of the pledge are Cornel West (author and professor of African American studies and religion, Princeton University); radio and television political show host Thom Hartmann; Rabbi Michael Lerner (editor, Tikkun Magazine); Glen Ford (executive editor, Black Agenda Report); former FBI agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley (a Time magazine co-person-of-the-year in 2002); noted civil rights and civil liberties attorney Bill Quigley; former New York Times war correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges; retired colonel, State Department diplomat and activist Ann Wright; Matthew Rothschild (editor, The Progressive magazine); former CIA analyst Ray McGovern; the antiwar group Code Pink cofounder Medea Benjamin; longtime peace activist Kathy Kelly (co-founder, Voices for Creative Nonviolence); military mother Elaine Brower (a leader of the antiwar group World Can’t Wait); and prominent Washington, D.C. activist and religious leader, the Rev. Graylan Hagler (Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ).
Initial organizations supporting the action include the major antiwar group the ANSWER Coalition, Veterans for Peace, United National Antiwar Committee, Single Payer Action, Code Pink, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, the Green Party, firedoglake, World Can’t Wait, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, Black Agenda Report, War Is A Crime, Network of Spiritual Progressives, Tikkun, and Pax Christi Metro DC-Baltimore, among others.
John Hanrahan is a former executive director of The Fund for Investigative Journalism and reporter for The Washington Post, The Washington Star, UPI, and other news organizations. He is now on special assignment for Nieman Watchdog. E-mail: hanrahan@niemanwatchdog.org
Fukushima and the Lessons we are not learning in the US Mood: blue Now Playing: Nukes and Mother Nature - The risks are not worth the price. Topic: ENVIRONMENTAL
When George Bush started bailing out corporations and Barack Obama continued we were told that those corporations were too big to fail. The dangers of massive corporations dragging down all of us were noted, they were bailed out, and were they then downsized? Nope. What is up with that?
Fukushima was out of the control of the Japanese government. It was big and the tsunami was bigger. It failed. So, put up your hand if you learned anything from that. Germany? Yes, we see you learned. Japan? We hope so! The US? No hand?
We have just been told today that the economy is tanking again in part because of Fukushima. A Japanese disaster is an American disaster these days. We have 110 nuclear reactors in the US. How many could suffer massive damage like Fukushima before we wreck our economy for many years to come? "Only" four of these plants are in similar earthquake and tsunami zones? Well, what else might surprise us? What if a nuclear power plant gets hit by a massive tornado? Lucky thing there was no nuke in Joplin, Missouri. How many 200 mph trucks flying through the air would it take to breach a reactor? What happens when floods overwhelm a nuke on the Mississippi River? Can't happen? Right. Neither could Fukushima. I've been to the Prairie Island nuclear power plants and on-site storage of massive amounts of high-level nuclear waste. They are smack in the floodplain of the biggest river in North America. The potential exists there to poison that river for generations. All it takes is one bad hand from Mother Nature, one demented terrorist in a small airplane loaded with explosives, one human operator error.
The reality is that nuclear power has always been for too risky, so it cannot exist without government exemption from liability. The risks are just plain stupid.
And, of course, the nuclear executives and p.r. people are quick to claim that it's 70 percent of the emissions-free base load. Well, it's 100 percent of the radioactive baseload. Baseload? Bonneville Power Administration literally cannot even give away electric power right now, the hydro base is so rampant. Shut down the nukes and buy it cheap from BPA! No hydro, wind or solar disasters can come close to a nuclear disaster. Insurance companies will happily handle solar and wind without government shields.
If our economy and our ecology--in the long run, they are the same--are too big to fail we should stop using nuclear power.
The Cure for Plutocracy: Strike! Mood: loud Now Playing: The Cure for Plutocracy: Strike!by DAVID SWANSON Topic: PROTEST!
·BY DAVID SWANSON: The Cure for Plutocracy: Strike!
The Cure for Plutocracy: Strike!by DAVID SWANSON
The central tool that must be revived is the strike that halts production and imposes a cost on an employer. A strike is not a public relations stunt, but a tool for shifting power from a few people to a great many. The era of the death of labor, the era we have been living in, is the era of the scab or replacement worker. Scabs were uncommon in the 1950s, spotted here and there in the 1960s and 1970s, and widespread from the 1980s forward.
In the absence of understanding the need to truly strike, the labor movement has tried everything else for the past 30 years: pretend strikes for publicity, working to the rule (slowing down in every permitted way), corporate campaigns pressuring employers from various angles, social unionism and coalition building outside of the house of labor, living wage campaigns, and organizing for the sake of organizing. These approaches have all had some defensive successes, but they all appear powerless to turn the ship around.
"[T]he idea that the labor movement can resolve its crisis simply by adding new members -- without a powerful strike in place," writes Burns, "actually constitutes one of the greatest theoretical impediments to union revival." From 1995 to 2008, with unions focused on organizing the unorganized, the U.S. labor movement shrank from 9.4 million to 8.2 million members. The Service Employee International Union (SEIU)'s famous organizing success is in large part the takeover of other unions, that is of people already unionized, and in large part the bribing of politicians (through "campaign contributions" and other pressure) to allow the organizing of public home health-care workers. What's left of the labor movement is, in fact, so concentrated in the public sphere, that unionized workers are being effectively attacked as living off the hard-earned pay of private tax-payers.
The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), so much a part of candidate Obama's campaign, and now long forgotten, might not fix anything if passed, in Burns' analysis. To succeed, the labor movement needs the sort of exponential growth it has had at certain moments in the past. Easier organizing alone would not persuade enough workers that joining a union is good for them. But persuading them that joining a union holds immediate advantages for them would revive labor with or without EFCA. And EFCA might make things worse. EFCA tries to legislate the right to quickly create new contracts, to avoid employer stalling. But it does this by subjecting workers to the decisions of arbitrators. Rather than empowering a class of arbitrators, the labor movement we had until 30 years ago would have considered the obvious solution to be empowering workers to compel the creation of contracts through the power of the production-halting strike.
Striking does not require a union or majority support but is itself a tool of organizing and radicalizing, with a minority of leaders moving others to join in what they would not choose to do alone. Solidarity is the process as well as the product of a labor movement. And it is by building strikes with the power to halt entire sectors of the economy, not through bribes and emails and marches, that ordinary people gain power over their so-called representatives in government. "Imagine telling Samuel Gompers or Mother Jones or the Reuther brothers or Jimmy Hoffa that trade unions could exist without a strike. However, in the name of pragmatism," Burns writes, "the 'progressive' trade unionists of today have fit themselves into a decaying structure. On a deeper level, they have abandoned the goal of creating the type of labor movement capable of transforming society."
To turn this around, Burns suggests, we will have to change the way we think about workplaces. According to our courts, a man or woman can work for decades in a business and nonetheless have no legal interest in it, the legal interest belonging entirely to the employer. The employer can move the business to another country without violating a labor contract. The employer can sell out to another employer and eliminate a labor contract in the process. The employer can break a strike with scabs. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935 might have looked good on paper, but its interpretation by courts and restriction by other legislation -- notably the Taft Hartley Act of 1947 -- have made clear its weaknesses. Labor has no choice left, Burns argues, but to repeal the NLRA by noncompliance.
Colonists wage and win a guerilla war for American independence from England
1798-1800: The Quasi-War
Along the U.S. Atlantic Coast and the West Indies, an undeclared war with France begins; the U.S. wins 9 of 10 naval encounters.
1801-1805: Tripolitan War
Tripoli (now Libya) declares war on the U.S.; the U.S. responds by blockading and then invading Tripoli.
1811: The "Indian Belt" Affair
Across Indiana and Michigan, U.S. forces, led by Tecumseh defeat Native Americans and burn a city, Prophetstown.
Library of Congress
U.S. Constitution and H.M.S. Java
1812-1815: The War of 1812
The U.S. wars with Great Britain over freedom of the seas, capture of seamen, and a blockade of U.S. ports. Battles were fought in and around Lake Erie; New Orleans, Louisiana; and the nation's capital.
1817-1818: First Seminole War
Following Native American raids in Florida, U.S. forces destroy Seminole villages and break tribal resistance.
1832: Assault on Sumatra
In the first U.S. armed intervention in Asia, the U.S. retaliates against an attack on a U.S. merchant vessel, killing 100 Sumatrans and burning the town of Quallah Battoo, located in what is now Indonesia.
1832: Black Hawk War
In Illinois and Wisconsin, Sac and Fox tribes under Sac leader Black Hawk attack white settlers, but are defeated at the Battle of Bad Axe.
1835-1836: Texas Revolution
Texas settlers revolt against Mexico.
1835-1842: Second Seminole War
In Florida, American troops clash with Native Americans led by Osceola; the Seminole people are reduced to 350 in number by 1842.
1838-1839: Aroostook War
The U.S. fights an undeclared war with England over Maine's boundaries. Approximately 10,000 troops camp along the Aroostook River in a conflict without casualties.
Library of Congress
Recruiting notice for the Mexican War
1846-1848: The Mexican War
The U.S. declares war against Mexico; the war ends with Mexico ceding all rights to Texas, and the U.S. purchase of New Mexico and California.
1847-1850: Cayuse War
In Washington state, Cayuse destroy the intrusive mission of Marcus Whitman, blaming the missionaries for a smallpox outbreak. In addition to Whitman, his wife, and their helpers, 14 Native Americans are killed. The U.S. military forces the Cayuse to surrender and hangs five people.
1855-1858: Third Seminole War
Brigadier General William S. Harney subdues Billy Bowlegs and other Seminole warriors in Florida.
1856: Bleeding Kansas
Conflict erupts in Kansas between pro- and anti-slavery forces, including John Brown; federal troops quell the fighting.
1857-1858: Mormon Expedition
The U.S. Army subdues Mormons who refuse to obey federal law in Utah.
LIbrary of Congress
Civil War Battle Scene
1861-1865: American Civil War
Americans go to war over slavery and the attempted secession of southern states from the United States.
1871: War with Korea
After merchants are killed in Korea, the U.S. kills 250 Koreans in battle; a treaty is secured in 1882.
1871-1876: Apache Wars
Apache leaders Geronimo and Victorio raid white settlers and soldiers in Arizona; Geronimo surrenders in 1886.
Colorado Historical Society
Captain Jack and his followers checking the advance of Union troops in the lava beds
1872-1873: Modoc War
In California and Oregon, U.S. cavalry fight to return the Modoc people and their leader, Kintpuash (known to whites as Captain Jack), to an Oregon reservation; Kintpuash is hanged and the Modoc are exiled to Oklahoma.
1876-1877: Black Hills War
Gold in South Dakota brings in whites to Sioux land. Colonel George A. Custer and 264 soldiers are killed at Little Bighorn; subsequently, the U.S. Army destroys Indian resistance.
Library of Congress
Nez Perce group known as "Chief Joseph's Band", Lapwai, Idaho, spring, 1877
1877: Nez Percé War
Across Idaho, Oregon, and the Washington border, the U.S. moves against the previously peaceful Nez Percé people in the Northwest; Chief Joseph leads a skillful retreat towards Canada, but is caught.
1878: Bannock War
Native Americans of the Bannock tribe attack white settlers in Idaho before they suffer heavy losses and are forced back to Fort Hall Reservation.
1890: Messiah War
The U.S. apprehends Sioux leader Sitting Bull, who is killed when followers try to free him. The Sioux surrender but are massacred at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, in this final fight between Native Americans and the U.S. Army.
1893: Coup in Hawaii
U.S. Marines land in the kingdom of Hawaii to aid the overthrow of Queen Lili'uokalani.
Colorado Historical Society
'Off to War' parade in Denver, CO
1898-1902: Spanish-American War
U.S. victories against Spain lead to the Treaty of Paris, which establishes the independence of Cuba, and cedes Puerto Rico and Guam to the U.S.. The U.S. also purchases the Philippines for $20 million.
1912: Occupation of Nicaragua
Marines arrive in Nicaragua to bolster the government of Adolfo Diaz; the last marines depart in 1934.
1914: Tampico Affair
After U.S. Marines are arrested at Tampico, U.S. forces bombard Veracruz, Mexico, and occupy the city.
1915: Invasion of Haiti
U.S. Marines occupy Haiti after a civil war; a treaty between the U.S. and the Haitian Senate makes the island nation a virtual U.S. protectorate. Troops withdraw in 1934.
1916-1917: Expedition Against Villa
The U.S. military invades Northern Mexico to capture Mexican Pancho Villa, who had raided New Mexico, killing 18; U.S. forces numbering 11,000 withdraw, unable to capture Villa.
Library of Congress
Corner of the battlefield near Arras
1917-1918: World War I
The U.S. ends three years of neutrality in the European conflict, declaring war on Germany. An armistice is declared November 11, 1918.
1918-1920: Siberian Expedition
The U.S. and other Allied troops invade Russia to protect war supplies during the Russian Revolution.
1927: Protection of Shanghai's International Settlement
One hundred Marines land in Shanghai to defend U.S. property during a civil war there.
Colorado Historical Society
7 GI's at a sandbag bunker in Italy
1941-1945: World War II
The U.S. enters World War II after Japanese planes attack Pearl Harbor in Hawaii; in 1945, Germany and Japan surrender to Allied forces
1950-1953: Korean War
The U.S. battles North Korean soldiers and then Chinese soldiers in Korea before an armistice is signed in 1953.
1955: Defense of Chinese Nationalists
The U.S. 7th Fleet helps Nationalist Chinese evacuate 25,000 troops and 17,000 civilians from China to Taiwan to escape victorious Communist forces.
Vietnam War Internet Project
Soldiers with a prisoner
1955-1973: Vietnam War
In 1955, U.S. advisers are sent to Vietnam; in 1964 Congress authorizes President Lyndon B. Johnson to "repel any armed attack" in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. A cease-fire is declared in 1973.
1961: Bay of Pigs Invasion
A CIA-backed invasion of Cuba fails.
1962: Anti-Communist Intervention
President John F. Kennedy orders 5,000 troops to Thailand to support the right-wing Laotian government.
1965: Dominican Crisis
Marines invade the Dominican Republic at the start of a civil war; troops withdraw in 1966.
1975: Mayaguez Incident
A U.S. merchant ship is rescued from Cambodians by U.S. Navy and Marines off the coast of Cambodia.
U.S. Marines and Rangers remove U.S. medical students from Grenada.
1986: Operation El Dorado Canyon
U.S. war planes strike Libya in retaliation for the Libyan bombing of a West Berlin disco.
1990-1991: Persian Gulf War
The U.S. leads a multi-nation coalition against Iraq after that country invades Kuwait; Iraq surrenders.
199-1993: Operation Restore Hope
U.S. troops go to Somalia to help restore order and deliver food during a period of unrest and famine.
1994-1995: Operation Uphold Democracy
The U.S. Army sends troops to Haiti in September 1994 to help restore a democratic government.
1994-1995: Bosnian War
The United States bombs Bosnia to prevent "ethnic cleansing" by Serbs in that region and then sends troops to Bosnia to join a NATO peacekeeping force there, as well as in other Balkan areas including Macedonia and Kosovo.
War ... what is good for? Absolutly Nothing!.. Say it again! Mood: accident prone Now Playing: May 21 updates from the Internet - whos that war going anyway? Topic: WAR
1. FARAH, May. 21 –Mujahideen detonated a remote-controlled roadside bomb on an American tank at 03:00 pm yesterday, instantly killing all 4 invaders onboard in Bakwa’s Ghaziabad area.
2. KANDAHAR, May. 21 – As many as 4 police minions lost their lives in Dand district’s Pazki area when their vehicle was blown to bits by a land mine at around 04:00 pm yesterday.
3. ZABUL, May. 21 – A US Special Forces military convoy travelling on Kabul-Kandahar main highway through Matizo area near Qalat city was hit by land mines, eliminating 2 Land Cruiser 4WD vehicles and killing all invaders inside.
4. KANDAHAR, May. 21 – At around 05:00 pm yesterday in Dand’s Pazki area, 3 police puppets including their commander were killed and 4 others seriously wounded in bombing which destroyed their vehicle.
5. ZABUL, May. 21 – An ebony skinned American terrorist who had come out of his outpost at 07:00 am local time was shot dead by Mujahideen of Islamic Emirate in Shomolzo’s Qala Rasheed area.
6. ZABUL, May. 21 – 5 innocent civilians were detained and taken back to their bases by barbaric US invaders in Shomolzo’s Pie Khelo area after raided their homes last night.
7. ZABUL, May. 21 – A border police vehicle in Shomolzo’s Haji Ajab Khan Nawrhi area was obliterated by an IED at around 05:00 pm yesterday, killing all 4 puppets onboard.
8. ZABUL, May. 21 – As many as 7 police minions lost their lives or were severely wounded when their vehicle was annihilated by an IED in Nawrak area located near Qalat city at 09:00 am this morning.
9. KABUL, May 21 – As many as 51 military doctors and other officials of the NATO and local puppets got killed and dozens more were wounded on Saturday noon local time in twin martyr attacks that rocked the Charsad Bestar (400-bed) hospital, the largest military hospital in the country located in the heart of Kabul city, the capital of the country, Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesman for Al-Emarah reported from.
Both Mujahids have embraced martyrdom with an interval of an hour after fighting bravely in the military section of the hospital before detonating their explosivs belts, Mujahid added.
10. HELMAND, May. 21 – At least 2 US invaders were killed and 3 fatally wounded in an IED attack on their foot patrol in Nad Ali’s Si Waik Gharbi area at 02:00 pm yesterday while walking in front of their outpost.
11. FARYAB, May. 21 – An ISAF tank in Khwaja Namusa district’s Ghra Taifa area was destroyed earlier this morning by a land mine, killing 2 invaders and seriously wounding 3 others onboard.
12. HELMAND, May. 21 – Heavy fighting is taking place in Nawa district since earlier this afternoon when Mujahideen of Islamic Emirate, as part of operation ‘Badar’ carried out an armed assault on the invaders outposts located in Tangano Godar area.
13. KANDAHAR, May. 21 – Mujahideen of Islamic Emirate from Zhiri district say that the US tank, which the invaders used to park in Sarkili area to ambush Mujahideen everyday, was shot this afternoon by 82mm canon round, destroying the tank and killing all enemy personnel inside.
14. ZABUL, May. 21 – An anti-tank mine planted by Mujahideen on the main road to Shomolzo near Shinki district center tore through an American armored tank at 09:00 am this morning, killing and wounding all invaders inside.
15. HELMAND, May. 21 – Latest reports arriving about the Helmand offensive which carried out by Mujahideen of Islamic Emirate in the entire district 2 days earlier as a part of ‘Operation Badar’ say that those 20 missiles which slammed into Shurab airfield, considered as the enemies largest base in the province had destroyed 6 US helicopters after hitting their shelter besides causing the enemy deadly casualties.
My Voice Doesn't Count "The Job Review" Mood: sad Now Playing: Carolyn Gregory's Poem on work and competencies Topic: ANYBODY * ANYDAY
The Job Review
Like a boil, my worry popped this morning when the managers took me in and updated my review : Competencies unmet. . .my sins too grievous to mention for polite folk, my hands sweaty, folded in my lap, incapable of prayer.When I woke today, Louis Armstrong sang Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, Nobody knows my sorrow. . . In my mind’s eye, New Orleans floated by on a bloody mattress.Once again, I’ve failed. Too tall, too left-handed, too disorganized, et cetera. It’s time for another public whipping –Bind my wrists, shoot little flaming arrows into my flesh and shut the door on my grievances. . .In the bigger scheme, my voice doesn’t count, just the ability to say Yes Sir, Yes Ma’am, type up a storm of spreadsheets and prop up a sagging floor plan.
A sales rep calls from Perceptive as someone pages Dr. Ivan Ho overhead. The transport gurney wheels patients for IV lines and contrasts of arteries and veins. Everywhere, there are screens full of ultrasounds.
In Radiology, it’s a regular archaeological dig! Phone calls fly on little wings, doctors analyze 3D films of abdomens, scanned for disaster.
Invisible, I sit behind my bunker shield, ducking facts and personalities. A doctor says 6,000 veins a week get billed. Another’s lost his pocket scheduler, cursing in Spanish. Another dictates upper case AORTA, upper case ANEURYSM. His report goes into the talk station.
My day is most peculiar and surreal. A nurse thanks me for being kind though I sounded gruff. Dr. S talks about the Ivory Tower to a pretty clerk smiling like Snow White as she counts down to lunch.
Current Occupation: Free lance classical music and theatre arts reviewer for STYLUS and community activist Former Occupation: Academic hospital administrator and grant writer Contact Information: Carolyn Gregory has published poems and music/theatre reviews in American Poetry Review, Seattle Review, Bellowing Ark, Main Street Rag, Wilderness House Literary Review and STYLUS. Her full length book, Open Letters, was published in Boston in 2009 and her next book, Scenario, is due for publication this year.
Eva Golinger speaks in Portland Oregon 5.6.11 Mood: lyrical Now Playing: From Caracas to Cascadia - Eva Golinger speaks in Portland Oregon Topic: VENEZUELA SOLIDARITY
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