The Mainstream Media

"My name is Cindy and Bush killed my son."

The Resista

Aug 07 |02:13

Wow a whole 50 people , and thousands of people last year. I wonder how many of those thousands were reporters? This is man made weather at it's best. This story breathlessly states that the war movement was reinvigorated by Cindy. What an ego maniac. Where is the million people march on the capital. That would be a sign of what they are talkiing about. 50 people follwing behind Cindy at Crawford is just her entorage. Who in the hell can take time off of work for that long?

This is why Coulter identifies her as a member of the Griefaratti. The untouchable ones who can not be questioned. She and her backers (people for the American way, George Soros, Al Franken, et al) have made her in to a media superstar. They have teams of people putting out press releases for her and arranging her travel doing her leagal work, and this land purchase they made for her in someone Else's name. They clearly state that 50 people show up and that is news.

Television Actress and Peace Mom

Normally 50 people showing up for any protest doesnt make national news but most normal people don't have a PR firm and millionaire backers. I am sure Casey would approve. I am also sure that her son who volunteered for military service would appreciate the work she has done with the president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez. I hope Castro gets better so she can vist and praise him too. Maybe she should visit Kim ill Jung and the president of Iran then she could cliam a Hat trick.

Can someone please tell me the significance of her showing her drivers licens and claiming to reside in Crawford? Seems like just a stunt. They got a new article or two out of it on a slow news day. So what? She doesn't get any special privledges because she is a land owner in Crawford Texas.

A year after her first war protest in President Bush's adopted hometown attracted thousands and reinvigorated the nation's peace movement, Cindy Sheehan resumed her vigil Sunday.

Under the blazing Texas sun, Sheehan and more than 50 demonstrators again marched a mile and a half toward Bush's ranch, stopping at a roadblock. As Secret Service agents stood silently, Sheehan held up her California driver's license and said she wanted to meet with the president.

"It doesn't say my new address, but I do live here now," said Sheehan, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., and recently bought land in Crawford for war protests. "My name is Cindy and Bush killed my son."

The group then chanted, "This is what democracy looks like! This is what democracy sounds like!" and a few people sang "This Land Is Your Land" while standing near the roadblock before returning to the protest site.

White House spokesman Tony Snow has said that neither Bush nor his staff plan to meet with Sheehan.

"I would advise her to bring water, Gatorade or both," Snow said when asked about Sheehan during a press briefing Friday. "Honestly, when you're talking about the kind of issues that we're talking about, Cindy Sheehan hasn't risen to the level of staff meetings at this point."

The Battle of Athens, Tennessee

Aug 01 |03:15

The Battle of Athens, Tennessee
As Recently As 1946, American Citizens Were
Forced To Take Up Arms As A Last Resort
Against Corrupt Government Officials.

Published in Guns & Ammo October 1995, pp. 50-51

On August 1-2, 1946, some Americans, brutalized by their county government, used armed force as a last resort to overturn it. These Americans wanted honest open elections. For years they had asked for state or federal election monitors to prevent vote fraud (forged ballots, secret ballot counts and intimidation by armed sheriff's deputies) by the local political boss. They got no help.

These Americans' absolute refusal to knuckle under had been hardened by service in World War II. Having fought to free other countries from murderous regimes, they rejected vicious abuse by their county government.

These Americans had a choice. Their state's Constitution -- Article 1, Section 26 -- recorded their right to keep and bear arms for the common defense. Few "gun control" laws had been enacted.

These Americans were residents of McMinn County, which is located between Chattanooga and Knoxville in Eastern Tennessee. The two main towns were Athens and Etowah. McMinn County residents had long been independent political thinkers. For a long time they also had: accepted bribe-taking by politicians and/or the sheriff to overlook illicit whiskey-making and ; financed the sheriff's department from fines-usually for speeding or public drunkenness which promoted false arrests; and put up with voting fraud by both Democrats and Republicans.

The wealthy Cantrell family, of Etowah, backed Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1932 election, hoping New Deal programs would revive the local economy and help Democrats to replace Republicans in the county government. So it proved.

Paul Cantrell was elected sheriff in the 1936,1938 and 1940 elections, but by slim margins. The sheriff was the key county official. Cantrell was elected to the state senate in 1942 and 1944; his chief deputy, Pat Mansfield, was elected sheriff. In 1946 Paul Cantrell again sought the sheriff's office.

At the end of 1945, some 3,000 battle-hardened veterans returned to McMinn County; the GIs held Cantrell politically responsible for Mansfield's doings. Early in 1946, some newly returned ex-GIs decided to challenge Cantrell politically by offering an all-ex-GI, non-partisan ticket. They promised a fraud-free election, stating in ads and speeches that there would be an honest ballot count and reform of county government.

At a rally, a GI speaker said, "The principles that we fought for in this past war do not exist in McMinn County. We fought for democracy because we believe in democracy but not the form we live under in this county" (Daily Post-Athenian, 17 June 1946, p.1 ). At the end of July 1946, 159 McMinn County GIs petitioned the FBI to send election monitors. There was no response. The Department of Justice had not responded to McMinn County residents' complaints of election fraud in 1940, 1942 and 1944.

FROM BALLOTS TO BULLETS

The primary election was held on August 1. To intimidate voters, Mansfield brought in some 200 armed "deputies." GI poll-watchers were beaten almost at once. At about 3 p.m., Tom Gillespie, an African- American voter was told by a sheriff's deputy that he could not vote. Despite being beaten, Gillespie persisted. The enraged deputy shot him. The gunshot drew a crowd. Rumors spread that Gillespie had been shot in the back; he later recovered (C. Stephen Byrum, The Battle of Athens, Paidia Productions, Chattanooga, TN, 1987; pp. 155-57).

Other deputies detained ex-GI poll-watchers in a polling place, as that made the ballot counting "Public" A crowd gathered. Sheriff Mansfield told his deputies to disperse the crowd. When the two ex-GIs smashed a big window and escaped, the crowd surged forward. The deputies, with guns drawn, formed a tight half-circle around the front of the polling place. One deputy, "his gun raised high...shouted: 'If you sons of bitches cross this street I'll kill you!'" (Byrum, p.165).

Mansfield took the ballot boxes to the jail for counting. The deputies seemed to fear immediate attack by the "people who had just liberated Europe and the South Pacific from two of the most powerful war machines in human history" (Byrum, pp. 168-69).

Short of firearms and ammunition, the GIs scoured the county to find them. By borrowing keys to the National Guard and State Guard armories, they got three M-1 rifles, five .45 semi-automatic pistols and 24 British Enfield rifles. The armories were nearly empty after the war's end. By 8 p.m. a group of GIs and "local boys" headed for the jail but left the back door unguarded to give the jail's defenders an easy way out.

Three GIs alerting passersby to danger were fired on from the jail. Two GIs were wounded. Other GIs returned fire.

Firing subsided after 30 minutes; ammunition ran low and night had fallen. Thick brick walls shielded those inside the jail. Absent radios, the GIs' rifle fire was uncoordinated. "From the hillside fire rose and fell in disorganized cascades. More than anything else, people were simply shooting at the jail" (Byrum, p.189).

Several who ventured into the street in front of the jail were wounded. One man inside the jail was badly hurt; he recovered. Most sheriff's deputies wanted to hunker down and await rescue. Governor McCord mobilized the State Guard, perhaps to scare the GIs into withdrawing. The State Guard never went to Athens. McCord may have feared that Guard units filled with ex-GIs might not fire on other ex-GIs.

At about 2 a.m. on August 2, the GIs forced the issue. Men from Meigs County threw dynamite sticks and damaged the jail's porch. The panicked deputies surrendered. GIs quickly secured the building. Paul Cantrell faded into the night, having almost been shot by a GI who knew him, but whose .45 pistol had jammed. Mansfield's deputies were kept overnight in jail for their own safety. Calm soon returned. The GIs posted guards. The rifles borrowed from the armory were cleaned and returned before sunup.

THE AFTERMATH: RESTORING DEMOCRACY

In five precincts free of vote fraud, the GI candidate for sheriff, Knox Henry, won 1,168 votes to Cantrell's 789. Other GI candidates won by similar margins.

The GI's did not hate Cantrell. They only wanted honest government. On August 2, a town meeting set up a three-man governing committee. The regular police having fled, six men were chosen to police Etowah. In addition, "Individual citizens were called upon to form patrols or guard groups, often led by a GI... To their credit, however, there is not a single mention of an abuse of power on their behalf" (Byrum, p. 220).

Once the GI candidates' victory had been certified, they cleaned up county government, the jail was fixed, newly elected officials accepted a $5,000 pay limit and Mansfield supporters who resigned were replaced.

The general election on November 5 passed quietly. McMinn County residents, having restored the rule of law, returned to their daily lives. Pat Mansfield moved back to Georgia. Paul Cantrell set up an auto dealership in Etowah. "Almost everyone who knew Cantrell in the years after the Battle' agree that he was not bitter about what had happened" (Byrum pp. 232-33; see also New York Times, 9 August 1946, p. 8).

The 79th Congress adjourned on August 2, 1946, when the Battle of Athens ended. However, Representative John Jennings Jr. from Tennessee decried McMinn County's sorry situation under Cantrell and Mansfield and the Justice Department's repeated failures to help the McMinn County residents. Jennings was delighted that "...at long last, decency and honesty, liberty and law have returned to the fine county of McMinn.. " (Congressional Record, House; U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1946; Appendix, Volume 92, Part 13, p. A4870).

THE LESSONS OF ATHENS

Those who took up arms in Athens, Tennessee, wanted honest elections, a cornerstone of our constitutional order. They had repeatedly tried to get federal or state election monitors and had used armed force so as to minimize harm to the law-breakers, showing little malice to the defeated law-breakers. They restored lawful government.

The Battle of Athens clearly shows how Americans can and should lawfully use armed force and also shows why the rule of law requires unrestricted access to firearms and how civilians with military-type firearms can beat the forces of government gone bad.

Dictators believe that public order is more important than the rule of law. However, Americans reject this idea. Brutal political repression is lethal to many. An individual criminal can harm a handful of people. Governments alone can brutalize thousands, or millions.

Law-abiding McMinn County residents won the Battle of Athens because they were not hamstrung by "gun control " They showed us when citizens can and should use armed force to support the rule of law.

Crossers burying border in garbage

The Resista

Jul 30 |13:02

Despite cleanups, trash along smuggling routes piles up faster than ever

After three years of cleanups, the federal government has achieved no better than a 1 percent solution for the problem of trash left in Southern Arizona by illegal border-crossers.

Cleanup crews from various agencies, volunteer groups and the Tohono O'odham Nation hauled about 250,000 pounds of trash from thousands of acres of federal, state and private land across Southern Arizona in 2002 to 2005, says the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

But that's only a fraction of the nearly 25 million pounds of trash thought to be out there.

Authorities estimate the 3.2 million-plus entrants caught by the Border Patrol dropped that much garbage in the Southern Arizona desert from July 1999 through June 2005. The figure assumes that each illegal entrant discards 8 pounds of trash, the weight of some abandoned backpacks found in the desert.

The trash is piling up faster than it can be cleaned up. Considering that the Border Patrol apprehended more than 577,000 entrants in 2004-05 alone, the BLM figures that those people left almost 4 million pounds of trash in that same year.

That's 16 times what was picked up in three years. And that doesn't include the unknown amounts of garbage left by border-crossers who don't get caught.

Diverse trash found all over

"We're keeping up with the trash only in certain locations, in areas that we've hit as many as three times," said Shela McFarlin, BLM's special assistant for international programs.

The trash includes water bottles, sweaters, jeans, razors, soap, medications, food, ropes, batteries, cell phones, radios, homemade weapons and human waste.

It has been found in large quantities as high as Miller Peak, towering more than 9,400 feet in the Huachuca Mountains, as well as in low desert such as Organ Pipe National Monument and Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.

It's even started turning up in smaller amounts in hiking areas

In the Buenos Aires National WildlifeRefuge near Arivaca, No More Deaths volunteer Mark Kelso picks his way through a trash-laden area that is a pickup site for illegal entrants, an illustration of the nearly 25 million pounds of garbage thought to have been dropped in Southern Arizona.

closer to Tucson, such as Josephine Saddle in the Santa Rita Mountains on the route to Mount Wrightson, says the Southern Arizona Hiking Club.

"In the Huachucas, you are almost wading through empty gallon water jugs," said Steve Singkofer, the Hiking Club's president. "There's literally thousands of water jugs, clothes, shoes. You could send 1,000 people out there and they could each pick up a dozen water jugs, and they couldn't get it all."

Cleanup not cheap, easy

While nobody has an exact cost estimate for removing all the garbage, it's clearly not cheap. But McFarlin agrees with several advocacy groups that without a tightening of controls on illegal immigration, a guest-worker program or other reform of federal border policy, the trash will just keep coming regardless of what's spent.

The financial details:

● In 2002, the U.S. estimated that removing all litter from lands just in Southeast Arizona — east of the Tohono Reservation — would cost about $4.5 million over five years. This count didn't include such trash hotbeds as Ironwood Forest National Monument, the Altar Valley, Organ Pipe and Cabeza Prieta.

● Since then, Congress appropriated about $3.4 million for a wide range of environmental remediation measures in all of Southern Arizona. This includes repairing roads, building fences and removing abandoned cars.

● The five-year tab is $62.9 million for all forms of environmental remediation for immigration-related damage across Southeast Arizona, including $23 million for the first year.

Waste unhealthy, unsightly

Most of the garbage is left at areas where entrants wait to be picked up by smugglers. The accumulation of disintegrating toilet paper, human feces and rotting food is a health and safety issue for residents of these areas and visitors to public lands, a new BLM report says.

"It's particularly serious in areas where there are livestock," said Robin Hoover, pastor of the First Christian Church in Tucson and president of Humane Borders, a group that puts water tanks in the desert for the entrants and coordinates monthly cleanups of Ironwood Monument and other sites.

"I've even found injectable drugs in the desert," he said. "It's rare when we find that kind of stuff, but there's tons of over-the-counter medication out there. If some cow comes along and eats a bunch of pills, that would be a real sick cow."

The trash also isn't good for wildlife, said Arizona Game and Fish spokesman Dana Yost. Birds and mammals can get tangled up in it or eat it, causing digestive problems, Yost said. It's not at all uncommon to find the trash in bears' stomachs, he said. Plastic bags, foil wrappers and certain foods are all problems.

Remote areas need more help

But clear inroads are being made into the trash problem, said BLM's McFarlin. Using the U.S. money, various local and federal agencies, the Tohono O'odham Tribe, the conservationist Malpais Borderlands Group and student youth corps remove trash from the most obvious and accessible areas, she said.

What needs tackling now are more remote areas such as wilderness, mountains and deserts far from major roads, she said. A couple of times, authorities have had to use helicopters or mules to haul stuff out of such areas.

This summer, with Border Patrol apprehensions of entrants down, the Tohono O'odham Tribe is seeing less trash on the ground than usual, said Gary Olson, the tribe's solid-waste administrator.

"I don't know whether they're hiding their trash or whether they are just not coming," Olson said.

But only six weeks ago, No More Deaths, an advocacy group that looks for injured, sick and lost entrants, came across a 10,000-square-foot area five miles west of Arivaca littered with hundreds and hundreds of backpacks.

"I've never seen anything that size. It's unbelievable," said Steve Johnston, who coordinates the group's camp near Arivaca.

Other activists from Derechos Humanos, Defenders of Wildlife and No More Deaths say the trash piles show what happens when the feds deliberately drive the entrants into the desert, by sealing the borders in cities.

"If you were going to cities, you wouldn't need to carry three days' worth of food," said Kat Rodriguez, a coordinator-organizer for Derechos.

But a Cochise County activist who has been photographing garbage and other signs of damage from illegal immigration for five years said she is appalled the federal government is spending tax dollars to pick this garbage up.

Illegal entrants should pick up the trash themselves, said Cindy Kolb, who helped found the group Civil Homeland Defense.

"Our mothers did not pay someone to pick up our trash," Kolb said. "We were taught to pick it up ourselves and to practice civic pride as law-abiding citizens."

Congressman fights gun confiscation

The Resista

Jul 28 |10:26

Rep. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) has introduced legislation to amend federal emergency statute laws to prevent local authorities from confiscating lawfully owned firearms during times of disaster. "Particularly during emergencies like those surrounding Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, when incidences of looting, violence and lawlessness were broadcast around the country, we must ensure that law-abiding gun owners are not deprived of their constitutionally protected right to bear arms," Rep. Jindal said. Thirty-three states have "emergency powers" laws giving the government permission to suspend or limit gun sales and to prohibit or restrict citizens from transporting or carrying firearms. In some states, authorities can seize guns outright from citizens who have committed no crime.

Female Arab American takes on Cleric

The Resista

Jul 28 |08:18

Check out this female Arab American take apart this Muslim Cleric on Arab TV. This is from the famous Arab TV translation site that I hope you all go to call MEMRI TV. This is the kind of thing we need to see everyday. This is one courageous women and we need more like her. She is an American Tiger. Click on the graphic, and get ready to say. Oh no she didn't!

The Mainstream Media

"My name is Cindy and Bush killed my son."

The Battle of Athens, Tennessee

Crossers burying border in garbage

Congressman fights gun confiscation

Female Arab American takes on Cleric

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