From Whence Comes the Money?
Unanswered questions that I've had for a while regarding IVAW. . .
Whence comes the money? IVAW offers to cover funding for veterans to fly to Colorado for the new "Winter Soldier" hearings. Not chump change, really. There's money floating around here somewhere.
Let's play Connect The Dots. I like that game.
IVAW is VFP. From their website,
"Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) was founded by Iraq war veterans in July 2004 at the annual convention of Veterans for Peace (VFP) in Boston." They have their tax-exempt status through VFP, so to me, it's a daughter organization.
IVAW is also The Action Mill, since The Action Mill seems to provide a majority of the staff at the national level for IVAW. I can't find much more about The Action Mill, except some amusing shots of their founder being arrested for protesting some planned casinos and a reference to his former job at Resource Generation. Resource Generation is a socialist organization that uses the rhetoric of class warfare to guilt young rich kids into donating money to progressive causes. I think there is more to it than that They seem to have a penchant for the theatrical, as does IVAW.
Back to Veterans for Peace.
What does VFP believe? A list of causes they have supported answers this question.
"closing of the Army's infamous School of the Americas,"
"Today we continue to work for an end to that conflict through our Korea Peace Campaign."
"VFP sent fact-finding delegations to this violence-torn land and educated U.S. citizens to the US military involvement, the murder of union leaders by para-militaries and other human rights abuses,"
"we opposed US sponsored wars and continue to support people struggling for their rights and dignity. We regularly send election observers to Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador in support of justice and peace."
Translation for the Progressive-Speak Impaired:
"We support the DPRK, FARC, the FSLN and FMLN."
Sexy.
Look, good old-fashioned communists. . .
How 1969.
VVAW is currently a smokescreen, since VVAW's National Coordinator is ALSO the President of Veterans for Peace. Same leadership means same ideology. But VVAW is also heavily involved in Communist organizations, and was at one point more or less controlled by Maoists.
You find IVAW, VVAW, and VFP hanging out with Front Organizations such as United For Peace and Justice, which is a Front Organization founded because folks with access to the internet were starting to connect the dots and realize that anti-war organizations are largely run by Communist retreads from the 1960s. They kind of screwed themselves by installing Leslie Cagan as the co-chair, since she was a no-kidding member of the CPUSA. WTF? Couldn't they find someone else to serve as a figurehead? Doesn't slow them down much.
Well, I haven't quite gotten the answers I was looking for. I can speculate about where some of these organizations get their money, and other folks have done so in more detail than I can. But the question continues to bother me.
Either way, I actually wish the IVAW luck in their Winter Soldier hearings. If they vet those giving testimony carefully, and if they put enough detail into making credible allegations, maybe some of those guilty could be prosecuted. I'm sure that after being burned again and again by liars and fakers, IVAW's vetting procedures have been tightened up considerably. Hopefully there will be something better than the silliness quoted in lgf about some MP allegedly putting MRE heater stuff in cigarettes to kill detainees. Because seriously, even the stupidest Iraqi is going to notice the smell and appearance, and either way, the amount of stuff you can stuff into a cigarette isn't going to kill anyone.
Whence comes the money? IVAW offers to cover funding for veterans to fly to Colorado for the new "Winter Soldier" hearings. Not chump change, really. There's money floating around here somewhere.
Let's play Connect The Dots. I like that game.
IVAW is VFP. From their website,
"Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) was founded by Iraq war veterans in July 2004 at the annual convention of Veterans for Peace (VFP) in Boston." They have their tax-exempt status through VFP, so to me, it's a daughter organization.
IVAW is also The Action Mill, since The Action Mill seems to provide a majority of the staff at the national level for IVAW. I can't find much more about The Action Mill, except some amusing shots of their founder being arrested for protesting some planned casinos and a reference to his former job at Resource Generation. Resource Generation is a socialist organization that uses the rhetoric of class warfare to guilt young rich kids into donating money to progressive causes. I think there is more to it than that They seem to have a penchant for the theatrical, as does IVAW.
Back to Veterans for Peace.
What does VFP believe? A list of causes they have supported answers this question.
"closing of the Army's infamous School of the Americas,"
"Today we continue to work for an end to that conflict through our Korea Peace Campaign."
"VFP sent fact-finding delegations to this violence-torn land and educated U.S. citizens to the US military involvement, the murder of union leaders by para-militaries and other human rights abuses,"
"we opposed US sponsored wars and continue to support people struggling for their rights and dignity. We regularly send election observers to Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador in support of justice and peace."
Translation for the Progressive-Speak Impaired:
"We support the DPRK, FARC, the FSLN and FMLN."
Sexy.
Look, good old-fashioned communists. . .
How 1969.
VVAW is currently a smokescreen, since VVAW's National Coordinator is ALSO the President of Veterans for Peace. Same leadership means same ideology. But VVAW is also heavily involved in Communist organizations, and was at one point more or less controlled by Maoists.
You find IVAW, VVAW, and VFP hanging out with Front Organizations such as United For Peace and Justice, which is a Front Organization founded because folks with access to the internet were starting to connect the dots and realize that anti-war organizations are largely run by Communist retreads from the 1960s. They kind of screwed themselves by installing Leslie Cagan as the co-chair, since she was a no-kidding member of the CPUSA. WTF? Couldn't they find someone else to serve as a figurehead? Doesn't slow them down much.
Well, I haven't quite gotten the answers I was looking for. I can speculate about where some of these organizations get their money, and other folks have done so in more detail than I can. But the question continues to bother me.
Either way, I actually wish the IVAW luck in their Winter Soldier hearings. If they vet those giving testimony carefully, and if they put enough detail into making credible allegations, maybe some of those guilty could be prosecuted. I'm sure that after being burned again and again by liars and fakers, IVAW's vetting procedures have been tightened up considerably. Hopefully there will be something better than the silliness quoted in lgf about some MP allegedly putting MRE heater stuff in cigarettes to kill detainees. Because seriously, even the stupidest Iraqi is going to notice the smell and appearance, and either way, the amount of stuff you can stuff into a cigarette isn't going to kill anyone.
posted by Just A Decurion at 3/09/2008 07:06:00 PM
2 Comments:
As for where the money comes from? A lot of it comes from donations. My chapter just raised $1000 at a fundraiser last night, for example. That's enough to get everyone in the chapter that didn't have money themselves, to Winter Soldier. And that's just one event.
We bust our metaphorical asses sometimes to get money together. It's not a lot, and it comes in bit by bit. But we make it work, because we know that getting people out is important. Sometimes we don't have enough money. We wanted to offer free transportation to any active duty who wanted to come. We had to nix that idea, because we just didn't have the money for the amount of people who expressed interest. So it goes.
"Sometimes we don't have enough money. We wanted to offer free transportation to any active duty who wanted to come."
Try looking at the big picture, 'winter soldiers' are props used in the theatrical extravaganza 'Winter Soldier Soldier II'- tales of an evil imperialistic, capitalistic empire. The producers have the money however, like all good socialist do they spend it on advertising and administrative needs.
Think of it as serving the greater good of the collective whole.
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