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Military Resistance 8L9

The Soldiers Truce: A Hidden History From The First

World War

German and British soldiers fraternize – Christmas 1914

[Thanks to Dennis Serdel, Vietnam 1967-68 (one tour) Light Infantry, Americal Div. 11th Brigade, purple heart, Veterans For Peace 50 Michigan, Vietnam Veterans Against The War, United Auto Workers GM Retiree, in Perry, Michigan] To many, the end of the war and the failure of the peace would validate the Christmas cease-fire as the only meaningful episode in the apocalypse. It belied the bellicose slogans and suggested that the men fighting and often dying were, as usual, proxies for governments and issues that had little to do with their everyday lives. A candle lit in the darkness of Flanders, the truce flickered briefly and survives only in memoirs, letters, song, drama and story. December 1, 2005 by John V. Denson, 2005 LewRockwell.com [Excerpts]

The Christmas Truce, which occurred primarily between the British and German soldiers along the Western Front in December 1914, is an event the official histories of the Great War leave out, and the Orwellian historians hide from the public. Stanley Weintraub has broken through this barrier of silence and written a moving account of this significant event by compiling letters sent home from the front, as well as diaries of the soldiers involved. His book is entitled Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce. The book contains many pictures of the actual events showing the opposing forces mixing and celebrating together that first Christmas of the war. This remarkable story begins to unfold, according to Weintraub, on the morning of December 19, 1914: Lieutenant Geoffrey Heinekey, new to the 2ND Queen’s Westminster Rifles, wrote to his mother, ‘A most extraordinary thing happened. . . Some Germans came out and held up their hands and began to take in some of their wounded and so we ourselves immediately got out of our trenches and began bringing in our wounded also. The Germans then beckoned to us and a lot of us went over and talked to them and they helped us to bury our dead. This lasted the whole morning and I talked to several of them and I must say they seemed extraordinarily fine men . . . . It seemed too ironical for words. There, the night before we had been having a terrific battle and the morning after, there we were smoking their cigarettes and they smoking ours. (p. 5) Weintraub reports that the French and Belgians reacted differently to the war and with more emotion than the British in the beginning. The war was occurring on their land and The French had lived in an atmosphere of revanche since 1870, when Alsace and Lorraine were seized by the Prussians in a war declared by the French. (p. 4). The British and German soldiers, however, saw little meaning in the war as to them, and, after all, the British King and the German Kaiser were both grandsons of Queen Victoria. Why should the Germans and British be at war, or hating each other, because a royal couple from Austria were killed by an assassin while they were visiting in Serbia? However, since August when the war started, hundreds of thousands of soldiers had been killed, wounded or missing by December 1914 (p. xvi). It is estimated that over eighty thousand young Germans had gone to England before the war to be employed in such jobs as waiters, cooks, and cab drivers and many spoke English very well. It appears that the Germans were the instigators of this move towards a truce. So much interchange had occurred across the lines by the time that Christmas Eve approached that Brigadier General G.T. Forrestier-Walker issued a directive forbidding fraternization: For it discourages initiative in commanders, and destroys offensive spirit in all ranks . . . Friendly intercourse with the enemy, unofficial armistices and exchange

of tobacco and other comforts, however tempting and occasionally amusing they may be, are absolutely prohibited. (p. 6–7). Later strict orders were issued that any fraternization would result in a court-martial. Most of the seasoned German soldiers had been sent to the Russian front while the youthful and somewhat untrained Germans, who were recruited first, or quickly volunteered, were sent to the Western Front at the beginning of the war. Likewise, in England young men rushed to join in the war for the personal glory they thought they might achieve and many were afraid the war might end before they could get to the front. They had no idea this war would become one of attrition and conscription or that it would set the trend for the whole 20TH century, the bloodiest in history which became known as the War and Welfare Century. As night fell on Christmas Eve the British soldiers noticed the Germans putting up small Christmas trees along with candles at the top of their trenches and many began to shout in English We no shoot if you no shoot.(p. 25). The firing stopped along the many miles of the trenches and the British began to notice that the Germans were coming out of the trenches toward the British who responded by coming out to meet them. They mixed and mingled in No Man’s Land and soon began to exchange chocolates for cigars and various newspaper accounts of the war which contained the propaganda from their respective homelands. Many of the officers on each side attempted to prevent the event from occurring but the soldiers ignored the risk of a court-martial or of being shot. Some of the meetings reported in diaries were between Anglo-Saxons and German Saxons and the Germans joked that they should join together and fight the Prussians. The massive amount of fraternization, or maybe just the Christmas spirit, deterred the officers from taking action and many of them began to go out into No Man’s Land and exchange Christmas greetings with their opposing officers. Each side helped bury their dead and remove the wounded so that by Christmas morning there was a large open area about as wide as the size of two football fields separating the opposing trenches. The soldiers emerged again on Christmas morning and began singing Christmas carols, especially Silent Night. They recited the 23RD Psalm together and played soccer and football. Again, Christmas gifts were exchanged and meals were prepared openly and attended by the opposing forces. Weintraub quotes one soldier’s observation of the event: Never . . . was I so keenly aware of the insanity of war. (p. 33).

The first official British history of the war came out in 1926 which indicated that the Christmas Truce was a very insignificant matter with only a few people involved. However, Weintraub states: During a House of Commons debate on March 31, 1930, Sir H. Kinglsey Wood, a Cabinet Minister during the next war, and a Major ‘In the front trenches’ at Christmas 1914, recalled that he ‘took part in what was well known at the time as a truce. We went over in front of the trenches and shook hands with many of our German enemies. A great number of people (now) think we did something that was degrading.’ Refusing to presume that, he went on, ‘The fact is that we did it, and I then came to the conclusion that I have held very firmly ever since, that if we had been left to ourselves there would never have been another shot fired. For a fortnight the truce went on. We were on the most friendly terms, and it was only the fact that we were being controlled by others that made it necessary for us to start trying to shoot one another again.’ He blamed the resumption of the war on ‘the grip of the political system which was bad, and I and others who were there at the time determined there and then never to rest . . . Until we had seen whether we could change it.’ But they could not. (p. 169–70) Two soldiers, one British and one German, both experienced the horrors of the trench warfare in the Great War and both wrote moving accounts which challenged the idea of the glory of a sacrifice of the individual to the nation in an unnecessary or unjust war. The British soldier, Wilfred Owen, wrote a famous poem before he was killed in the trenches seven days before the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918. He tells of the horror of the gas warfare which killed many in the trenches and ends with the following lines: If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues – My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. (The Latin phrase is translated roughly as It is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country, a line from the Roman poet Horace used to produce patriotic zeal for ancient Roman wars.)

The German soldier was Erich M. Remarque who wrote one of the best anti-war novels of all time, entitled All Quiet On The Western Front, which was later made into an American movie that won the Academy Awards in 1929 as the Best Movie of the year. He also attacked the idea of the nobility of dying for your country in a war and he describes the suffering in the trenches: We see men living with their skulls blown open; We see soldiers run with their two feet cut off; They stagger on their splintered stumps into the next shell-hole; A lance corporal crawls a mile and half on his hands dragging his smashed knee after him; Another goes to the dressing station and over his clasped hands bulge his intestines; We see men without mouths, without jaws, without faces; We find one man who has held the artery of his arm in his teeth for two hours in order not to bleed to death. I would imagine that the Christmas Truce probably inspired the English novelist and poet, Thomas Hardy, to write a poem about World War I entitled The Man He Killed, which reads as follows: Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet Right many a nipperkin! But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. I shot him dead because – Because he was my foe, Just so: my foe of course he was; That’s clear enough; although He thought he’d ‘list, perhaps, Off-hand like – just as I – Was out of work – had sold his traps – No other reason why. Yes, quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You’d treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown. Many leaders of the British Empire saw the new nationalistic Germany (since 1870–71) as a threat to their world trade, especially with Germany’s new navy. The idea that economics played a major role in bringing on the war was confirmed by President Woodrow Wilson after the war in a speech wherein he gave his assessment of the real cause of the war. He was campaigning in St. Louis, Missouri

in September of 1919 trying to get the U.S. Senate to approve the Versailles Treaty and he stated: Why, my fellow-citizens, is there (anyone) here who does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?. . . This war, in its inception, was a commercial and industrial war. It was not a political war. Weintraub alludes to a play by William Douglas Home entitled A Christmas Truce wherein he has characters representing British and German soldiers who just finished a soccer game in No Man’s Land on Christmas day and engaged in a conversation which very well could represent the feelings of the soldiers on that day. The German lieutenant concedes the impossibility of the war ending as the soccer game had just done, with no bad consequences – Because the Kaiser and the generals and the politicians in my country order us that we fight. So do ours, agrees Andrew Wilson (the British soldier) Then what can we do? The answer’s ‘nothing.’ But if we do nothing . . . . like we’re dong now, and go on doing it, there’ll be nothing they can do but send us home. Or shoot us. (p. 110) The Great War killed over ten million soldiers and Weintraub states, Following the final Armistice came an imposed peace in 1919 that created new instabilities ensuring another war, (p. 174). This next war killed more than fifty million people, over half of which were civilians. Weintruab writes: To many, the end of the war and the failure of the peace would validate the Christmas cease-fire as the only meaningful episode in the apocalypse. It belied the bellicose slogans and suggested that the men fighting and often dying were, as usual, proxies for governments and issues that had little to do with their everyday lives. A candle lit in the darkness of Flanders, the truce flickered briefly and survives only in memoirs, letters, song, drama and story. (p. xvi). He concludes his remarkable book with the following: A celebration of the human spirit, the Christmas Truce remains a moving manifestation of the absurdities of war. A very minor Scottish poet of Great War vintage, Frederick Niven, may have got it right in his ‘A Carol from Flanders,’ which closed, O ye who read this truthful rime From Flanders, kneel and say: God speed the time when every day Shall be as Christmas Day. (p. 175) MORE:

British And German Soldiers Arm-In-Arm

The Illustrated London News of January 9, 1915 [Thanks to June VI, who sent this in.]

BRITISH AND GERMAN SOLDIERS ARM-IN-ARM AND EXCHANGING HEADGEAR: A

CHRISTMAS TRUCE BETWEEN OPPOSING TRENCHES. DRAWN BY A. C. MICHAEL

SAXONS AND ANGLO-SAXONS FRATERNISING ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE AT

THE SEASON OF PEACE AND GOODWILL: OFFICERS AND MEN FROM THE GERMAN AND BRITISH TRENCHES MEET AND GREET ONE ANOTHER - A GERMAN OFFICER PHOTOGRAPHING A GROUP OF FOES AND FRIENDS.

The spirit of Christmas made itself felt in at least one section of the trenches at the front, where British and German soldiers fraternised, and for a brief while, during an informal and spontaneous truce, there was peace on earth and goodwill towards men among those who a few hours before had been seeking each other’s blood, and where bound to do so again after the truce was over. The part of the British lines where these incongruous scenes occurred, was, it is said, at a point where the enemy’s trenches, only about eighty yards away, were occupied by a Saxon regiment. Further along the line, where Prussian troops were said to be stationed, there was a certain amount of fighting. It was apparently towards the British left that the friendly truce was observed, while officers and men from both sides left their trenches and met in No Man’s Land between, where, as a rule, no man dares to show so much as the top of his head.

British and Germans met and shook hands, exchanged cigars and cigarettes, newspapers and addresses, and wished each other the compliments of the season, conversing as far as possible with the aid, as interpreter, of a German soldier who had lived in America. A group of British and German soldiers, arm-in-arm, some of whom had exchanged head-gear, were photographed by a German officer. The figure on the extreme left in our drawing, for instance, is a German soldier in a British service-cap, while the fourth figure from the left is a British soldier in his goat-skin coat wearing a Pickelhaube, or German helmet. Some of the British, it is said visited the German trenches and an Anglo-German football match was even played. The dead who lay in front of the trenches were buried, and a party of German brought back the body of a British officer.- [Drawing Copyrighted in United States and Canada.]

German and Russian soldiers fraternise on the Eastern Front

AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS

Foreign Occupation Servicemember Killed Somewhere Or Other In

Afghanistan: Nationality Not Announced

December 18 Reuters A foreign servicemember died following an improvised explosive device attack in southern Afghanistan today.

Odessa Family Remembers Fallen Hero

December 8, 2010 Meron Berkson, CBS 7 News Staff Sergeant Jason Reeves became the 4th soldier from Odessa to be killed overseas. He lived in Odessa for only 2 years, but made a lifetime of an impact on those who knew him. He was a real hard worker about doing his job, doing it right and in the army he obeyed and that’s the reason he excelled like he did in the service, said Earl Moize, Sgt. Reeves’ grandfather. Staff Sgt. Jason Reeves moved from Phoenix to Odessa at the age of 19 after dropping out of high school. He worked for his grandparents, Earl and Wuanell Moize at their cabinet shop in Odessa while getting his high school degree through correspondence. He always made sure to put a smile on his families’ faces. He had a real dry sense of humor, he would say things that would crack you up, said Wuanell Moize, Sgt. Reeves’ grandmother. Reeves enlisted in the army at the Music City Mall in Odessa following his father’s footsteps who had been in the Air Force for over 20 years. He served in Korea and Iraq before being deployed to Afghanistan three months ago. It was there where an improvised explosive device took his life, leaving his family stunned. It was sort of a shock. It took several hours before it sunk in to me. Our daughter had called and she told me over the cell phone, and it was still a shock. Of course when they’re over there you worry about them. When they’re anywhere you worry about them, the Moizes said Reeves’ remains were shipped to Delaware earlier today and his parents were there, waiting for him. But Jason’s name and legacy will still live on with his family. He has one sister in California and she had a new baby yesterday, a little boy and she named him after Jason, so we’re pleased with that too, said Wuanell Moize.

For An Unforgettable Experience, Visit Beautiful Nangahar

Taliban fighters in Nangarhar province December 13, 2010 picture. REUTERS/Stringer

ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT; ALL HOME NOW

US soldiers from First Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division patrol along a dried water channel in district Panjwai, Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, , Nov. 25, 2010. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

US troops patrol around Kop Ahmed camp near Kandahar city on November 28, 2010.

(AFP/Martin Bureau)

MILITARY NEWS

THIS IS HOW OBAMA BRINGS THEM HOME: ALL HOME NOW, ALIVE

The casket of Marine Mike Geary, a 2009 graduate of Pinkerton Academy, who was recently killed in Afghanistan, passes by Pinkerton Academy in Derry, N.H., Dec. 15, 2010. (AP Photos/Cheryl Senter)

The casket of Lance Cpl. Michael Geary of Derry, N.H., at the Veterans Cemetery, in

Boscawen, N.H., Dec. 17, 2010. (AP Photos/Jim Cole)

POLITICIANS CAN’T BE COUNTED ON TO HALT THE BLOODSHED

THE TROOPS HAVE THE POWER TO STOP THE

WARS

Retired Colonel Sues Pentagon Shitheads For First Approving,

Then Ripping Up His Book: Passages Were Removed From 250

Of The Book’s 320 Pages

Many Of The Asserted Redactions Are Objectively Absurd

December 14, 2010 By SCOTT SHANE, The New York Times WASHINGTON — A former Defense Intelligence Agency officer whose Afghan memoir was belatedly censored by the Pentagon filed a lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to have the book’s full text restored in future printings. In September, the Defense Department spent $47,300 to purchase and destroy the entire first printing of Operation Dark Heart by Anthony A. Shaffer, asserting that it contained classified information. The book was hastily reprinted with many passages blacked out and has become a best seller. But unredacted advance copies of the book, among a few dozen distributed by St. Martin’s Press before the Pentagon’s intervention, are still for sale on eBay for $1,995 to $4,995. The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court here, recounts how Mr. Shaffer, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, submitted his original manuscript to the Army to be checked for classified information and got official approval to publish it last January. But when the Defense Intelligence Agency saw the manuscript in May and showed it to the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, all three agencies asserted that the approved manuscript still contained secrets. After a second review was completed, passages were removed from 250 of the book’s 320 pages.

The lawsuit claims that little to none of the information blacked out of the second printing is actually classified and that the censorship violated Mr. Shaffer’s First Amendment rights. Many of the asserted redactions are objectively absurd, the lawsuit says. A paperback edition is scheduled for publication next year, and Mr. Shaffer is asking the court to order the Pentagon not to require the redactions in the new edition and not to pursue civil or criminal penalties against him for releasing it. A Defense Department spokesman, Col. Dave Lapan, said that by policy, he could not comment on pending litigation.

DO NOT BE DECEIVED! GATES SAYS DON’T ASK DON’T TELL IS STILL MILITARY LAW:

In The Meantime, The Current Law And Policy Will Remain In Effect

18 December 2010 By Faiz Shakir, ThinkProgress [Excerpt] In a statement released this evening, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, Once this legislation is signed into law by the President, the Department of Defense will immediately proceed with the planning necessary to carry out this change carefully and methodically, but purposefully. ... It is therefore important that our men and women in uniform understand that while today’s historic vote means that this policy will change, the implementation and certification process will take an additional period of time. In the meantime, the current law and policy will remain in effect.

DO YOU HAVE A FRIEND OR RELATIVE IN THE MILITARY?

Forward Military Resistance along, or send us the address if you wish and we’ll send it regularly. Whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or stuck on a base in the USA, this is extra important for your service friend, too often cut off from access to encouraging news of growing resistance to the wars, inside the armed services and at home. Send email requests to address up top or write to: The Military Resistance, Box 126, 2576 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10025-5657. Phone: 888.711.2550

FORWARD OBSERVATIONS

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.

Frederick Douglass, 1852 Hope for change doesn’t cut it when you’re still losing buddies. -- J.D. Englehart, Iraq Veterans Against The War What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. -- Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787 One day while I was in a bunker in Vietnam, a sniper round went over my head. The person who fired that weapon was not a terrorist, a rebel, an extremist, or a so-called insurgent. The Vietnamese individual who tried to kill me was a citizen of Vietnam, who did not want me in his country. This truth escapes millions. Mike Hastie U.S. Army Medic Vietnam 1970-71 December 13, 2004 The Social-Democrats ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression no matter where it appears no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; who is able to generalize all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; who is able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all his socialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat. -- V. I. Lenin; What Is To Be Done A revolution is always distinguished by impoliteness, probably because the ruling classes did not take the trouble in good season to teach the people fine manners. -- Leon Trotsky, History Of The Russian Revolution

The Nixon administration claimed and received great credit for withdrawing the Army from Vietnam, but it was the rebellion of low-ranking GIs that forced the government to abandon a hopeless suicidal policy -- David Cortright; Soldiers In Revolt It is a two class world and the wrong class is running it. -- Larry Christensen, Soldiers Of Solidarity & United Auto Workers

DANGER: POLITICIANS AT WORK

[By David Rees, New York Magazine, 12.6.2010]

The Emperor Gifts His Friends:

The Tax Deal Agreed To Between President Obama And The Republicans

Will Give Dimon An Extra $1,179,000 Next Year

Graphic: New Statesman

15 December 10 By Robert Reich, Robert Reich’s Blog Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., praises the President’s agreement with Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts. If we’re going to strengthen our economy and grow jobs, this type of outreach - and cooperation between the administration, Congress, and the private sector - are critical, says Dimon. Dimon met last week with the President. Thirty other CEOs are meeting with him today. Dimon’s compensation over the last three years has averaged $21,991,394 a year. The tax deal agreed to between President Obama and the Republicans will give Dimon an extra $1,179,000 next year, according to an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice. The bank Dimon heads was also the beneficiary of the giant Wall-Street bailout of 2007 and 2008. JPMorgan Chase & Co, along with other Wall Street banks, also poured millions of dollars into a lobbying campaign to water down the financial reforms Congress considered earlier this year.

261 Of The 535 Members Of Congress Were Millionaires For The Senate Alone, Median

Income Was An Astounding $2.38 Million

Politics Has Increasingly Been Turned Over To The Wealthy

You need only study income distribution over the last quarter of a century to see that the nation’s policies have been slanted overwhelmingly in favor of the rich. Between 1979 and 2004, the after-tax income for the top 1% skyrocketed 176%, according to the Congressional Budget Office. December 12, 2010 By Andrew Trees, Los Angeles Times [Excerpts] Swilling the planters with bumbo was what it was once called — the Colonial American tradition of treating voters with gifts during election campaigns, particularly plying them with rum (including a concoction known as bumbo). I was reminded of this phrase when a recent Center for Responsive Politics study of 2009 data found that 261 of the 535 members of Congress were millionaires (this probably understates the actual number because members of Congress aren’t required to report their homes as assets). When looking at both houses together, the legislators weighed in with a hefty median income of $911,000. For the Senate alone, median income was an astounding $2.38 million. This is not too shabby when the median household income in America is roughly $50,000. In other words, politics has increasingly been turned over to the wealthy. Meg Whitman spent more than $160 million — $140 million-plus of which was her own money — in a failed effort to seize the governorship of California, or roughly $50 per vote. Rick Scott lavished more than $70 million of his and his family’s fortune to snare the job as Florida’s governor. Both campaigns seem like a relative bargain compared with Michael Bloomberg, who spent $102 million to win a third term as mayor of New York, or roughly $174 per vote. This is not simply a local or state phenomenon. Mitt Romney spent more than $40 million in his losing bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Even Hillary Rodham

Clinton, who had a well-established fundraising machine, lent $13.2 million to her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. With the modern return of the practice of swilling the planters with bumbo, though, we now find ourselves in a new age of aristocratic despotism. You need only study income distribution over the last quarter of a century to see that the nation’s policies have been slanted overwhelmingly in favor of the rich. Between 1979 and 2004, the after-tax income for the top 1% skyrocketed 176%, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Arizona Death Panel Picks Which Severely Ill To Kill Off:

Other States Are Eager To Follow Arizona’s Example

Obama’s Fake Health Care Reform Not Even Mentioned In This Article

December 14, 2010 By Elizabeth Schulte, Socialist Worker [Excerpts] OCTOBER 1 should have been a great day for Mark Price, a father of six children who was battling leukemia. That day, his doctor found donor matches for the bone marrow transplant that Price needed to stay alive. But October 1 was the also the day that the state of Arizona changed its rules for transplant coverage under the state Medicaid program. Without the coverage, Price could no longer afford the operation. An anonymous donor came forward and offered the money to cover the procedure. But it was too late. Mark Price died before he could get the operation. In the name of cost-cutting, the Arizona agency that administers Medicaid at the state level--the bizarrely named Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System--has stopped covering several potentially lifesaving transplant operations, including certain transplants of the heart, liver, lung, pancreas and bone marrow. For low-wage workers and their families, who will now have to go without these procedures, this is nothing less than death by budget cut, as the New York Times’ Marc Lacy put it.

The most difficult discussions are those that involve patients who had been on the donor list for a year or more and now we have to tell them they’re not on the list anymore, Dr. Rainer Gruessner, a transplant specialist at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, told the Times. About 100 people have been cut from the list, and now can’t afford to get their transplants. Francisco Felix, who has hepatitis C, believed that the operation he needed was within arm’s reach when a dying family friend said that she wanted to donate her liver to him. When state funding for his operation was cut, his family tried to raise the $200,000 they needed in time for the operation, but couldn’t. The liver went to someone else on the transplant list. I know times are tight and cuts are needed, but you can’t cut human lives, said Felix’s wife, Flor. You just can’t do that. Patients and their families have stepped forward, turning out for a press conference to ask legislators to call a special session to reinstate transplant funding. But Arizona’s Republican Gov. Jan Brewer has responded with nothing but contempt. Bottom line is that the state only has so much money, and we can only provide so many optional kinds of care, and those are one of the options that we had to take, the governor said--after offering her condolences to Mark Price’s family. It’s interesting what Brewer considers optional spending. According to a press release from her office in 2009, the state could spare $20 million--including $1.7 million in federal stimulus funding--to renovate the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix. As Randy Sheperd, who needs a heart transplant, told reporters, It’s not an option for us; it’s a necessity. But if Brewer isn’t listening, just about everyone else is. According to the Arizona Republic, patients registered in the National Transplant Assistance Fund have seen a surge of donations since the news coverage of the story. As of December 4, Francisco Felix had raised $74,124, and heart transplant patient Randy Shepherd had raised $52,720. But both need hundreds of thousands more.

******************************************************* IN THE name of balancing the state budget, Arizona lawmakers claim that these kinds of deep and dangerous cuts are unavoidable. But even if you accept their heartless logic, the cutbacks related to transplants for state Medicaid patients won’t come close to filling the budget gap. Jennifer Carusetta, the legislative liaison for Arizona’s Medicaid agency, told the New York Times that the transplant cuts would save a mere $800,000 in the current fiscal year, and only $1.4 million for a full year. And this is supposed to close Arizona’s $2.6 billion shortfall?

Arizona is also cutting Medicaid coverage for emergency dental procedures, insulin pumps and orthotics. And Medicaid isn’t the only social program that’s feeling the attack. This year, state lawmakers decided to put a stop to the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which covers 47,000 children of working-class families. They had to backtrack though, when they found out it might keep Arizona from being eligible for federal funds. Jan Brewer--the same person who came to national prominence for her anti-immigrant scapegoating with the racial profiling law SB 1070--is also leading the way in mean-spirited cuts. But other states are eager to follow Arizona’s example. According to a September Kaiser Family Foundation report, 39 states cut provider payments and 20 cut optional benefits in their 2010 fiscal years, with similar numbers planning to do so in 2011. And the cuts will have a long-term effect on patients, because when state governments cut payments, some providers choose to opt out, leaving patients who use Medicaid to be refused by more health care providers down the line. Medicaid’s killing all of our state budgets, Gov.-elect Rick Scott told a conservative blog during a recent Republican Party meeting in his home state of Florida--a state that recently tried to cut costs with a pilot program that requires Medicaid patients in some counties to enroll in managed-care organizations, or HMOs. The theory is that competition for profits will make the HMOs perform better, and at lower costs. This is the backwards, upside-down and inside-out logic of state governments putting the priority on balancing their budgets during the worst recession in decades. In Idaho, the demand for food stamps is going up, but the state close nearly a third of the field offices of the state’s Department of Health and Welfare, the place where people go to apply for food stamps. And the state cuts are flowing down to the local level, where municipal governments are cutting such luxury items as fire stations. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the percentage of people who had employer-subsidized health insurance dropped three percentage points between 2008 and 2009, falling to 59 percent. Yet the state of Arizona feels like this is the perfect time to cut government health care subsidies. In a sense, states like Arizona are mimicking the model that’s kept the private sector profitable, even during the Great Recession--force workers and their families to make do with less. Only when it comes to someone like Mark Price, desperately in need of a bone marrow transplant, making do with less means a needless death.

Cowardly, Sadistic Freaks In Blue Murder Unarmed Man Whose Family

Won A Suit Against The Police, Resulting In The Firing Of Two

Officers: Then Oakland Police Told Michael Jones

‘We’ll Kill Your Whole Family’

Comment: T Instead of dying for the Empire in Afghanistan, our active duty and National Guard troops may be more usefully deployed to protect us at home and clean filth like the Oakland Police off the streets of our cities, once and for all. Cowardly sadistic freaks like the Oakland Police, who kill unarmed civilians and threaten to kill whole families, will find armed soldiers have sufficient training and experience to put them down permanently in the blink of an eye. Social crisi s has not yet deepened enough for that happy day to come now, but it will come, not as soon as we might wish, but sooner than the politicians and the police who defend them can possibly imagine.

*********************************** December 15, 2010 By Francois Hughes, Socialist Worker [Excerpts] OAKLAND, Calif.--Some 75 protesters gathered at a City Council meeting on December 14 to protest the killing of Derrick Jones and the inaction of the city government in the face of racist police murder. Derrick Jones was murdered on November 8 while running from police--he was shot eight times. It has been over a month since Derrick Jones was killed, but there has been no discipline or prosecution of Oakland police officers Omar Daza-Quiroz or Eriberto Perez-Angeles. The Oakland police department had allegedly harassed Derrick ever since his family won a suit against the police 20 years ago, which resulted in the firing of two officers. The rally was organized by the civil rights activist group By Any Means Necessary. Participants came from a number of groups, including many who have been organizing around the case of Oscar Grant, an unarmed man who was shot and killed by BART transit officer Johannes Mehserle in the early morning hours of January 1, 2009.

The protesters held a rally outside Oakland City Hall and then went inside for public comment. Inside, only 15 people were allowed to speak to the City Council--while the council allowed speaker after speaker from the Fruitvale Merchants’ Association to ask for more police patrols in their neighborhood. This was too much for those protesting Derrick’s murder. Many could not keep silent and interjected with shouts of No police! and Police don’t make me safer! After all of the merchants spoke, the council cut off public comment. Activists then raised fists and chanted Justice for Derrick Jones. We flooded up the aisles to the front of the room. The council would still not let the anyone from the crowd speak, but promised to have a meeting about Derrick Jones and police bias on December 16. The Council shut down discussion, saying that there wasn’t time. Then, councilors proceeded to what they thought was the more important business--singing Christmas songs. A local choir filed into the chamber and led the city officials in song, complete with audience and council members jangling keys like bells. Those fighting against police murder regrouped outside to the sound of merry caroling and put their names down again to comment on the next item. The council got an earful. Council member Desley Brooks and Jean Quan, the newly elected mayor of Oakland, couldn’t muster the courage to look anyone in the eye. Ronald Cruz, a lawyer representing Derrick Jones’ brother, Michael Jones, spoke to the Council about the case. According to Cruz, police picked up Michael after a recent rally for his brother and charged Michael with driving while intoxicated. According to Ronald Cruz, Then Oakland police told Michael Jones ‘We’ll kill your whole family,’ and called him the n-word. Oakland police allegedly used similar tactics in the Oscar Grant case, with police repeatedly arresting, threatening and harassing Oscar’s family and friends who witnessed his murder. Derrick’s family friend, Madison, also came to the stand. She talked about how well liked Jones was in his neighborhood. Jones ran a barbershop that was a community gathering point. Madison talked about Derrick’s barbecues, the way he was goofy and how he used to feed homeless folks. She compared the treatment of Derrick Jones to the treatment of a pit bull recently shot by Oakland police. The pit bull was shot in the leg and survived, while Jones was shot eight times. The Oakland police department is conducting it’s own internal affairs investigation, but internal review is a sham. Even an independent review board (like exists San Francisco) or a police auditor (like exists in Sacramento) frequently do not punish crooked cops. In San Francisco, police will often quit before being judged, and then are able to keep their pensions and avoid sanction.

But as the Oscar Grant struggle has shown, mass mobilization can force the state to grant us a small bit of justice. Oscar Grant’s murderer Johannes Mehserle received a sentence of two years in jail. This is, of course, not nearly enough. However, the fact that he was locked up at all is a rarity in police shootings. If we win any justice for Derrick Jones it will only come through the same protests and mobilizations. This will have to start with people getting the word out and mobilizing--in churches, in streets and in schools. It will come through not being afraid to stand up and speak out, even if we have to yell over carols at City Council meetings.

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Authorities Piss Pants Over Blinking Christmas Ornament

12/15/2010 msnbc.com WASHINGTON — Authorities shut down the subway station at the Pentagon and diverted hundreds of passengers in frigid temperatures early Wednesday while investigating a suspicious object that turned out to be a blinking Christmas ornament. Trains on the Washington area Metro system were forced to bypass the huge Defense Department headquarters after the object was discovered in the station at 7:15 a.m., said Chris Layman, spokesman for the Pentagon police force. Someone spotted some lights that were was blinking in a trash can, Layman said. We took it seriously, it was called a ‘suspicious object’ and they came and x-rayed and inspected the item. Trains were forced to pass through the station without stopping, meaning passengers had to get off at a different station and walk, or take a bus back, to the building. The Pentagon is also a major transit point for a number of area buses, and people lined up by the hundreds as police investigated. Some 16,000 commuters use the Pentagon station, which is part of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, Reuters reported.

We determined it was a battery-operated Christmas ornament, Layman said. An all clear was issued at 8:44 a.m.

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CLASS WAR REPORTS

Parents And Citizens Rally To Defend Teachers Striking Against Pay Cuts:

Most Dramatic Is The Level Of Parent Support For Teachers

Teachers in La Habra stood firm during their strike and the lockout that followed:

Socialist Worker photograph December 17, 2010, John Green and Sarah Knopp, Socialist Worker [Excerpts] TEACHERS IN an Orange County, Calif., school district were back on the job December 16 after a week on the picket line in a strike-turned-lockout. The teachers, members of the La Habra Education Association (LHEA), walked off the job December 8 to force the district to the negotiating table in an effort to stop a permanent 2 percent pay cut imposed by the school board in November. Teachers voted to go back to work December 14 because the district agreed to negotiations. Nothing had been settled, but for the first time in California history, teachers were locked out of their classrooms for two days after the return-to-work vote. LHEA pushed back by seeking--and winning--an injunction. A judge has ordered the La Habra school district to pay teachers for the two days that they were locked out. Everyone is still solid and strong, said Jim Rogers, a teacher at Imperial Middle School, who is also on the board of the California Teachers Association (CTA). The strike came after a year of negotiations. The school board ignored a fact finder’s report and took the unprecedented step of imposing a permanent 2 percent salary

reduction--which also reduces state retirement payouts--two mandatory furlough days and cuts in health benefits. The teachers say they would be willing to accept a 2 percent cut if it were temporary rather than a permanent reduction. But the school board’s aggressive move to impose the cuts left teachers seething. They pointed to the district’s $8.2 million reserve as they voted November 19 to authorize a strike. The district imposed an unfair contract that was extreme and unnecessary--and then they refused to negotiate, said Rogers. We had to strike. The La Habra School District is small, with only five elementary and two middle schools. Consequently, the 225 teachers are a tight-knight group. They picketed outside each school and held rallies to build solidarity. Some 93 percent of teachers actively supported the strike. Most dramatic is the level of parent support for teachers. At a meeting of the La Habra school board December 9, nearly 100 parents stood in line outside to pack the meeting--the boardroom only holds 140 people, showing how concerned with parent participation and democracy the school board really is. Teachers got out of line to let parents go ahead. Then, to pack more parents in, all the children were sent outside to the teachers, who organized impromptu child care outside the meeting. Every single parent spoke either in support of teachers or about the levels of chaos at the schools in their absence. The school district reported student attendance on the third day of strike at just 62 percent of the normal rate. The parent support is notable because 87 percent of children in the district qualify for subsidized lunches, and La Habra teachers are among the best-paid in Orange County. Still, parents seem to recognize that the relatively higher pay of their teachers explains a lot about the good quality of their schools. According to Bill Guy, a union staff member, approximately 35 businesses in downtown La Habra have posted signs that read, We Support La Habra Teachers! Settle the Contract! For now, the reduced pay for teachers remain in force, but the school board has been forced to return to the bargaining table. THE LA Habra strike and lockout highlights the latest wave of attack on teachers’ living standards, which has become a local expression of the austerity programs that leave working people from California to Ireland paying for the financial shenanigans of the elites.

In April, the Capistrano Unified Education Association struck for five days over a 10.1 percent pay cut, similarly imposed by the school board. San Juan Capistrano is on the opposite side of Orange County from La Habra. That strike failed to rescind the cuts, but won restorative language in the contract promising to undo the reductions as the economy improves. And a few days after the Capistrano Unified School District imposed its draconian cuts on teachers, the Oakland Unified School District ignored a fact finder’s recommendations and imposed a contract on its teachers that eliminated contractual class size caps (effectively, a speedup that results in a loss of teachers’ jobs). Oakland teachers responded with a one-day strike. The CTA was missing in action in those earlier fights. This time, however, the CTA has greatly ramped up its support. Calls for solidarity went out to CTA locals across the state, and they have begun pouring money into the La Habra strike fund. A Facebook group for La Habra teachers gathered hundreds of statements of solidarity, from as far away as Alaska and New York City. The struggle in La Habra isn’t over. But the strike shows how teachers can gain union solidarity and community support when they draw the line and fight back. Military Resistance distributes and posts to our website copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of the invasion and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law since it is being distributed without charge or profit for educational purposes to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for educational purposes, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. Military Resistance has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor is Military Resistance endorsed or sponsored by the originators. This attributed work is provided a non-profit basis to facilitate understanding, research, education, and the advancement of human rights and social justice. Go to: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml for more information. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. If printed out, a copy of this newsletter is your personal property and cannot legally be confiscated from you. Possession of unauthorized material may not be prohibited. DoD Directive 1325.6 Section 3.5.1.2.