I mentioned this presentation in yesterday’s Manning post, and thought I’d post it at the end. But when I actually saw it, I realized that as important as David Coombs was the presentation by Michael Ratner, longtime anchor of the Center for Constitutional Rights. When I met Ratner in 2004, was bemused when I toldContinue reading “Video: Michael Ratner tells Manning’s story, David Coombs explains”
Category Archives: book
we all have our secrets
I first saw the Manning video below last year, during the very FIRST of Manning’s pre-trial hearings. I was covering that week’s vigil outside Fort Meade, which also doubled as a Veterans for Peace convention. ( I’m the one in the beret in this photo, behind Dan Choi and Ray McGovern). Before he ever was a soldier, Manning was an out gay guy, one with a certain libertarian mindset that may sound familiar.
Status report
For those who might be wondering why this whole project is so overdue.and/or why you DIDN’T see it on the fall catalog for UCPress. When I started working on this book, its subtitle was Soldiers Who Dissent: From George Washington to John Murtha, the latter name because back then, in 2006, it wasn’t that longContinue reading “Status report”
“Canada! Canada! Canada!”
Canada’s long history as a refuge gave young people like Kimberly Rivera, like Joshua Key, like the estimated hundreds still underground, hope that they’d be welcome in the human family, with their struggles respected. Canada deserves its image as a haven, however clouded. And if it yet again embraced its role as a refuge from militarism, we would all be the richer for it, on both sides of the border.
the power and the glory
It’s Veterans Day. Read these smart commentaries, and consider all the ways they’ve served.
preview #3: wars over original sins
In many ways, the War of 1812 was the first of what was often to come: wars begun by men without military experience for ever-changing reasons, feeding the development of events that became clearer casi belli, fued by underlying economic rationales even as the deep economic and human costs became clearer.
Operation Recovery’s Oleo Strut
About a year ago, Iraq Veterans Against the Wars began a campaign that sounded almost conservative: Operation Recovery, against the deployment of traumatized troops. The celebrated Camilo Mejia, when he and I talked in Philadelphia, was skeptical : “Sounds like the VFW.” Actually, it’s a sign that IVAW gets it, in a very deep way. ByContinue reading “Operation Recovery’s Oleo Strut”
Update about the book
For so long it’s been a work-in-progress; this site, and its associated Facebook page, a way to keep up with current affairs and share my building page count. And it still is: it’s out to outside readers who are just getting back to me, and will be revised yet again before it goes to theContinue reading “Update about the book”
it sounds so much simpler when he says it
I know this blog has been silent for so many m0nths: more than six! How can it be? But I didn’t feel like I could keep writing here until I had the book actually delivered to the publisher. That has now happened, and I’ll say more about it later. But right now, I wanted toContinue reading “it sounds so much simpler when he says it”
Evan Thomas at Guernica: how he pushed the Iraq war like Citizen Cane
If I’d been nattering here as much as on Facebook, you’d have heard more than you care to about my interview with former Newsweek editor Evan Thomas. But I’m pretty happy with how it came out. At the bottom, click to read it at Guernica Magazine, and maybe throw in your two cents? Wolf inContinue reading “Evan Thomas at Guernica: how he pushed the Iraq war like Citizen Cane”
I Ain't Marching Anymore 