It was fun reading this little article about a showdown between a “gathering of eagles” type group led by local radio personality Melanie Morgan and Medea Benjamin’s Code Pink loons in beautiful downtown Berkeley:
Dozens of flag-waving military supporters squared off boisterously with peace activists Wednesday in the first major showdown over a U.S. Marine Corps recruiting station that until recently had been operating below the radar in downtown Berkeley.
Demonstrators led by conservative radio talk-show host Melanie Morgan shouted down members of Code Pink, a group created by Bay Area women, and other peace and social justice groups. The two sides stood on Shattuck Avenue near Addison Street just outside the recruiting station, which was closed Wednesday.
Shortly before noon, there was some pushing and shoving between at least two people, which prompted Berkeley police Sgt. Randy Files to bellow at the anti-war protesters to “move back,” forcing them to gather across the street.
Good guys win again, right? So far so good – but then comes this:
But David Santos, 15, of Oakland, said the conservative element was on the wrong side of the issue.
“They represent the social base that’s giving rise to this imperialistic war. Their so-called patriotic attitude,” he said, “just shows their blatant disregard for humanity and what the flag stands for. The very fact that they’re holding it up is enough for us to be out here.”
Which sort of speech tumbling from the lips of a 15-year old says something, I think, about the quality of public education these days, but that’s not the worst of it:
Graves yelled at another protester, Pablo Paredes, 26, of Oakland and mocked him for his long hair. “Are you a soldier? They wouldn’t let you looking like that,” he said.
Paredes said later that he had served five years in the Navy and that people of color like himself bore the brunt of military service.
“I think the color of my skin shouldn’t make me be on the front line,” Paredes said, adding that he left the Navy because he refused orders and opposed the war in Iraq.
No you don’t Pablo. You don’t get to flash the race card after having volunteered to serve your country. Nor do you get to seize the moral high ground: After having enjoyed peacetime service in Japan you deliberately missed ship’s movement and shirked your duty to avoid a very minimal risk in sailing to the Arabian Gulf. You don’t get to claim front line service when you bailed on your shipmates and forced someone else to cover your watch, to take your spot on the line. You don’t get to pander and trot out tired lies. You don’t get to be the hero – you passed on that chance.
And you didn’t leave the Navy. We kicked your chump ass out.
Coward. Oath breaker. Buddy f*cker.
[...] Pundit’s story yesterday about it. But Danny pointed me to Blackfive who pointed me to Neptunus Lex where I found the SFGate story on the protest; “None of us is pro-war! I’m [...]
Well back in my day spending all day in the bilges
or cleaning out the Black oil tanks or sitting in the hot sun in Subic Chipping rust off the anchor
chain…Any or all good for a grin..
[...] to shut down a Marine recruiting station in Berkley. I highly recommend that everyone read Neptunus Lex’s great posting on this leftist war hero. Share This Popularity: [...]
Sgt. Randy Files is a former Marine and a former Sergeant in the CA Army Nat’l Guard. I served w/ him in the Guard.
I’m pretty sure I know who’s side he was on in this, but I’m sure he did his job professionally while dealing with the communist Code Pinko’s.
Lex,
Padres is like the local quitter/buddy f*cker up here in the Pacific NW, LT. Ehren Watada. The Seattle Left wingers are all going nuts because his court-marital ended in a hung jury over he failure to miss-movement. So the 4th Inf is charging him again. They are claiming it isn’t fair. The really funny thing is that if this his defense of claiming that going to war is an illegal act was thrown out by the previous JAG and according to the press reports is still going to be thrown out for this court-martial whenever it starts up again. There is a man who should go to hard labor and have to pay back all the money he use from the government for his education.
@Lee,
The term “buddyf*cker” refers to the fact that all members of the armed forces are assumed to “Be in this sh*t together,” and only become “Buddyf*ckers” after showing they aren’t brothers at all.
It’s a double insult. You’re not worthy to be a part of the group AND you’re a double-dealing a-hole. Sailors, soliers, flyboys, coasties, and marines all work under the assumption that if you wear the colors, you are a part of the team. It takes effort to get yourself kicked off the team, and this boy earned it with the lack of sweat on his brow.
Pablo Paredes hasn’t the courage of his convictions. There are real pacifists in this nation, real conscientious objectors. This guy is looking for a legal way to shirk his signature.
From WikiPedia: During World War I, the pacifist Hutterites also suffered persecution in the United States. In the most famous case, four Hutterite men subjected to military draft who refused to comply were imprisoned and tortured. Ultimately, two died at Leavenworth Military Prison from mistreatment, after the Armistice had been signed ending the war.”
There is a premature baby from a Hutterite family next to my daughter’s room in the hospital. I see the mother, her mother and her sister on a daily basis. They are pacifists, communists in the strict sense of the term, in other words people I normally would disagree with. But darned if they don’t earn my respect by choosing their road and following it. To them I am an English-speaker, an outsider, one best ignored or at least not engaged as a familiar. We have an understanding — I treat them as I would any other, they acknowledge me with polite conversation while we scrub or share the elevator.
Their whole colony is paying $10K/day for this baby to live, or even to survive. And in 18 years they’re going to let that little boy enter the world to decide if he likes their life or the life of the rest of America. And they’ll welcome him back into the fold or let him go free. And they’re endangering the entire colony financially in order the mere hope this choice can be made.
Now how can you compare that to the actions of Pablo Paredes? Simple. Some have the courage of their convictions which are worth defending by others. The Hutterite child has hundreds who wish to help him. Pablo Paredes has only himself.
Maybe Pablo missed the lesson on how it’s not all about him?
– Max
We, the taxpayers of the free world, paid through the nose so you dogs could stand post – posts that were deliberately located a long, long way from Harvard, Beverley Hills and downtown Houston.
We do NOT continue to pay you so you can hold opinions and clog cyberspace with your laughable attempts at multisyllabic expression. Speaking of which..to paraphrase one Gene Hackman, you’re there to protect freedom of expression; doesn’t mean you get not to enjoy it.
Now, I understand how time-rich most of you are in the pensions you are leeching from us, but let me make suggestion; buy some bottles of Jack. You’re going to end up homeless anyway, and you might as well whoop it up before you end up in a group shelter that costs us less than your pensions.
jaybee (from the UK) – a taxpayer of the free world – executes a perfect demonstration of deadpan irony, channeling all those self-important twits who think that for the privilege of having better men protect them they’ve earned the right to control what those men think and say.
Well played, sir. Nearly flawless. Apart from that double negative trailing the second paragraph. Could happen to anyone.
Hard to say, Lex.
But maybe it was actually an attempt at a well-written paradoy. Except for the double-negative thingy.
You know, it’s amazing how so many of you have commented on me, that 15 year-old, yet you think I’m just stupid. If I were really THAT stupid, why would I be such a threat to the status quo? Why would Melanie Morgan and all these “Blue Star” moms and vets find me insulting?
The point is that I have substance to my argument. Otherwise, I wouldn’t keep coming out to these demonstrations. I wouldn’t keep fighting the power, and transforming the people, for revolution.
And, yes, I AM A COMMUNIST. What of it? I am on the side of humanity, while a lot of you are on the side of “America the beautiful”. I don’t believe the solution lies in this “Jeffersonian democracy”. I do think we need a communist revolution in the belly of this imperialist beast. And, on that note, are you really so narrow-minded and, frankly, blind to the FACT that the good ol’ USofA is an empire (the last remaining superpower on Earth, for that matter)? Just look at the invasion of Iraq as one perfect example. The very fact the rulers of the US were able to so EASILY overpower Saddam’s (yes, brutal, tyrannical, oppressing regime) is because of the imperialist nature of the US economy and its relation to the rest of the world. It starved the Iraqi people of basic resources (like food, water, medicine, etc.) for the decade before the invasion.
This is just ONE example of the imperialist nature of the US. There are numerous others (look now at the subprime mortgage crisis in the US and the tremendous and brutal ripple effect it has caused to the world economy; the cost of oil, pointing to the global dependency on oil that the US has been the leader in since the 1800s, leading to a DOUBLING OF BASIC FOOD STUFFS IN THE MATTER OF LESS THAN A WEEK).
All of these relations in the capitalist-imperialist economic mode of production give disgusting and brutal expressions that take shape in war for empire, torture, police brutality (which, by the way, the BPD was not passive as you make it seem; they beat and arrested a 13 year-old anti-war activist on Feb. 12, along with countless other acts of brutality committed by the police against demonstrators), white supremacy and American chauvinism (“America #1), etc., etc. All these things can be overcome with making communist revolution in THIS COUNTRY as a base area for the WORLD REVOLUTION!
So, now… isn’t that something from this “stupid little 15 year-old”. Take us serious, ya’ll. We’re young but we got substance. Whether you agree with us or not, you can’t be mistaken around the fact that we are strong, articulate and, yes, developing young people with strongly held beliefs.
I’m sure some of you know PRO-WAR YOUNG PEOPLE with the same type of fierceness and boldness in their approach to taking out their ideas. The only difference: my outlook (and that of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and its youth Bay Area Revolution Club) thoroughly corresponds with reality and the scientific outlook.
I refer the gentleman to the comments I made before.
I don’t find you the least bit threatening. Nor am I fully persuaded that you are stupid. Although if the “substance” that you’re so proud of in your argument is that, despite its manifest economic, material and moral failures, communism still represents a workable model for government I’ll be forced to a conclusion.
I am, however, quite certain that you’re deluded.
I blame the school system.
And the parents, for not helping their children see the difference between what they are taught at school and reality.
Just my 2 cents.
David,
Normally it is my policy not to feed trolls, especially when I am nothing more than an anonymous guest, but oh well. Here goes:
1. Caps Lock may be cruise control for cool, but you still have to steer.
2. Communism does not work on a large scale. I give you, as Exhibit A, Soviet Russia. If that isn’t enough, what happened to the precious revolution that occurred in the free-market FLAILEX now known as, and if it might please the court, Exhibit B, China?
3. You cite the “subprime mortgage mess” as causing a ripple effect in the world economy, and thereby dooming us all to another Great Depression, the WPA and TVA, until Franklin Delano Roosevelt (and wife Elanor too,) rise from the grave and save us all. Okay slick, explain why the markets in nearly every other country in the world are doing just fine? Perhaps you might want to listen to your own rhetoric and look outside the borders of the U.S. for specific information before regurgitating half-baked malarkey that will surely cause you to slap yourself in the forehead after you’ve matured a wee bit. Most of the economists outside this country are concerned about the crisis because their own countries hold so much U.S. debt. We are, however, incapable of causing the ruin you seem to so love, or there would be visible signs of it already.
4. We are not a superpower. We are a hyperpower. We’re the only one around that can do what we do in the way that it is being done. I believe this term was coined by someone who speaks French. Again, you may want to check your facts before posting. Do not believe everything you get out of Wikipedia.
5. Berkley police department beat a 13-year-old kid and numerous others? Pics or it didn’t happen. I believe someone, including you, would have photographed this with the cellular telephone / Imperialist Tracking Device you surely possess. (My question is, does it play Rage Against the Machine, Propaghandi, or Bob Marley when it rings?)
6. “Using this country as a base area for world revolution.” Oh wow. I’d like you to know my entire office laughed at this statement for fifteen minutes.
6.a. I’M IN UR BASE AREA REVOLTIN UR WORLDZ.
7. “Thoroughly corresponds with reality and scientific outlook.” Do you understand the words coming out of your own mouth? Really? What science might that be? Like a Thomas Dolby based approach, which might actually blind you? Or perhaps something weirder as proposed by R. and D. Elfman?
8. I’m glad you have strong beliefs. When I was six I strongly believed that Harvey the Pooka was real. In time, I was eventually dissuaded of that notion. I am sure you feel that Karl Marx was a very smart man. In time, well, you can figure out the rest.
Hat’s off to our emerged Drew! Play on, sir.
Am I the only one amused that *months* go by before some passing soul thinks they can contribute in a worthy fashion to the discussion, then feels obligated to do so?
David, you can’t afford to be a Communist. Given your age you’re going to be paying the social security for at least two, possibly three, retirees. That’s four folks to support on your single income, and you can’t very well tell them to spend less because they’ve two more votes than you and they collect their share of your paycheck with a gun pointed at you courtesy of the people they voted for.
I suggest you start now for a career in finance., and become exceedingly good at it. It’s the only way you’re going to be able to afford the taxes my generation will lay on you. And the generation before me. And given our life expectancy rate, the generation before them.
So yeah, we vote, and we vote in our self-interest. Our self-interest is to pass the bill on to you. The best part is, under Communism and Socialism we also get to tell you how you earn your money with the same vote.
Ain’t that a gas? You’re going to love it.
Oh, and you forgot to consider Fascism. It’s an interesting system which takes all the bad things from Socialism and all the bad things from Capitalism and combines them into a single self-imploding economic model.
Good luck kid — you’re going to need it.
– Max