Veterans For Peace Chapter 14

Tomgram: William Astore, Confessions of a Recovering Weapons Addict | TomDispatch

2012-01-25T22:33:00.001-05:00

Tomgram: William Astore, Confessions of a Recovering Weapons Addict | TomDispatch:

Perhaps you’ve heard of “Makin’ Thunderbirds,” a hard-bitten rock & roll song by Bob Seger that I listened to 30 years ago while in college. It’s about auto workers back in 1955 who were “young and proud” to be making Ford Thunderbirds. But in the early 1980s, Seger sings, “the plants have changed and you’re lucky if you work.” Seger caught the reality of an American manufacturing infrastructure that was seriously eroding as skilled and good-paying union jobs were cut or sent overseas, rarely to be seen again in these parts.

But today our manufacturing sector is famous for very different merchandise. Thunderbirds have become drones and predators and F14s and America supplies the world. Its our number one export.

Clearly, the U.S. has grabbed the brass ring of the global arms trade. When it comes to investing in militaries and weaponry, no country can match us. We are supreme. And despite talk of modest cuts to the Pentagon budget over the next decade, it will, according to President Obama, continue to grow, which means that in weapons terms the future remains bright. After all, Pentagon spending on research and development stands at $81.4 billion, accounting for an astonishing 55% of all federal spending on R&D and leaving plenty of opportunity to develop our next generation of wonder weapons.

But at what cost to ourselves and the rest of the world? We’ve become the suppliers of weaponry to the planet’s hotspots. And those weapons deliveries (and the training and support missions that go with them) tend to make those spots hotter still -- as in hot lead.

As a country, we seem to have a teenager’s fascination with military hardware, an addiction that’s driving us to bust our own national budgetary allowance. At the same time, we sell weapons the way teenage punks sell fireworks to younger kids: for profit and with little regard for how they might be used.

Sixty years ago, it was said that what’s good for General Motors is good for America. In 1955, as Bob Seger sang, we were young and strong and makin’ Thunderbirds. But today we’re playing a new tune with new lyrics: what’s good for Lockheed Martin or Boeing or [insert major-defense-contractor-of-your-choice here] is good for America.

How far we’ve come since the 1950s!

Stephen Colbert Super PAC Ads Spoof U.S. Election System and a possible solution from Larry Lessig

2012-01-24T15:09:00.002-05:00

Nine PAC Ads from Stephen Colbert Spoof U.S. Election System | Open Culture
If you have not seen Steven Colbert's brilliant Super Pac Ads here is one of them. Also on the serious side here is a proposal by Harvard professor and founder of the Creative Commons Lawrence Lessig to convene a constitutional convention to change our governmental processes connected with elections and lobbying. Its is something built into the constitution that we the people can do.

Warning: the Lessig video is long but well worth the time to watch.

10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free -

2012-01-15T22:07:00.002-05:00

10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free - The Washington Post:
Johnathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University. One more nail was put in the coffin for our Bill of Rights in December when Obama signed the National Defense act. Turley lists and explains 9 more "nails" including: Assassination of U.S. citizens, Indefinite detention, Arbitrary justice, Warrantless searches, Secret evidence, War crimes
Secret court, Immunity from judicial review, Continual monitoring of citizens, and Extraordinary renditions. his summary putting these changes in historical perspective is quoted below. Click the link above to read his description of the loss of our democracy as we slowly, security law by security law, become more like the totalitarian countries our government likes to criticize.

An authoritarian nation is defined not just by the use of authoritarian powers, but by the ability to use them. If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a discretionary grant subject to executive will.

The framers lived under autocratic rule and understood this danger better than we do. James Madison famously warned that we needed a system that did not depend on the good intentions or motivations of our rulers: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

Benjamin Franklin was more direct. In 1787, a Mrs. Powel confronted Franklin after the signing of the Constitution and asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got — a republic or a monarchy?” His response was a bit chilling: “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”

Since 9/11, we have created the very government the framers feared: a government with sweeping and largely unchecked powers resting on the hope that they will be used wisely.

The indefinite-detention provision in the defense authorization bill seemed to many civil libertarians like a betrayal by Obama. While the president had promised to veto the law over that provision, Levin, a sponsor of the bill, disclosed on the Senate floor that it was in fact the White House that approved the removal of any exception for citizens from indefinite detention.

Primary Relief: Paul ambushed by 'Vermin Supreme' who is also running for President!

2012-01-10T15:51:00.002-05:00

N.H. primary pranks: Paul ambushed by 'Vermin Supreme' - Washington Times

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Texas Rep. Ron Paul's final full day of campaigning in New Hampshire got off to a bizarre start Monday when he was met by a bullhorn-toting man with a rubber boot on his head who challenged him and President Obama to a "panty-wrestling match to decide it all."

My favorite part of this whole episode is that apparently Vermin Supreme's foreign policy consists of making Iraq and Afghanistan US States. It is a unique idea!

What Iraq can teach us about Iran |Going Forward in the middle East

2012-01-04T11:20:00.001-05:00

What Iraq can teach us about Iran | Stephen M. Walt:

Looking ahead and at US policy in the Middle East and our relationship with Iran:

Ali A. Allawi has an interesting op-ed in today's New York Times, where he outlines the main challenges in post-occupation Iraq and maps out a broad approach for dealing with them. he says: "Iraq must reimagine the Middle East, creating new economic, security and political structures that weave Middle Eastern countries closer together while peacefully accommodating the region's ethnic and religious diversity.

In the American-Iranian cold war, Iraq must resist being dragged into a confrontation. We have real interests on both sides and can play an important role in mediating and even defusing that conflict.

Wait says that American foreign policy going forward in the Middle East could follow this advice as well as Iraq.

In essence, Allawi is saying that Iraq should strive to play a balance of power game in the Middle East and Persian Gulf region, seeking good relations with all its neighbors, and adopt a creative and flexible approach to dealing with the diverse social and religious forces in the region. Such a strategy would not preclude Iraq tilting one way or the other as currents of power and interest shift, but it implies not allowing Iraq to get drawn into rigid alignments or permanent commitments that harden animosities or limit its diplomatic flexibility.

What struck me, however, was how Allawi's blueprint applies even more strongly to the United States. The United States is not a Persian Gulf state, and we have no interest in trying to run these countries. Instead, the United States has only three overriding strategic interests in the Gulf region: 1) make sure that Gulf oil and gas keeps flowing to world markets (even though the U.S. gets very little of its own energy from this region, a reduction in the global supply would send energy prices soaring), 2) discourage the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and 3) reduce the danger from anti-American terrorism. The best way to pursue these three objectives is to play balance-of-power politics ourselves: minimizing our military footprint in the region while striving to make sure that no single power dominates it and reducing incentives for anti-American terrorism or WMD proliferation.

Wait applies this general approach specifically to Iran:

It follows that the United States should be seeking to have good relations with as many states as possible -- so as to maximize its diplomatic options and resulting leverage -- and to do what it can to dampen regional tensions. (Note: this is also what Allawi advises Iraqis to do). From this perspective, a prolonged Cold War with Iran is in fact a policy failure (or at least not an achievement), even though avoiding one may be difficult given all that has already occurred. Our various "special relationships" in the region should be rethought as well, especially in light of the political upheavals that have been sweeping the region and rendering the future more difficult to forecast. In such circumstances, a smart great power would seek to maximize its options going forward, instead of being permanently and visibly committed to a status quo that is visibly shifting before our eyes.

Special relationships with Israel and confrontational relationships with Iran reduce our ability to reach the three objectives that are vital to our foreign interests. Of course this will require us to stop playing politics with our Middle East policy and possibly to consider having a a greater emphasis on diplomacy rather than brute force. Two recommendations from my side would be to get rid of the Drones and reexamine our investment in the State department. We should not have a Department of State whose total numbers of staff are less than you find in the Navy band.

Graphic Charts of Crony Capitalism Being Alive and Well in Fascist America « LewRockwell.com Blog

2012-01-02T09:15:00.003-05:00

Graphic Charts of Crony Capitalism Being Alive and Well in Fascist America « LewRockwell.com Blog

An amazing series of info-graphics that show the relationship between powerful business concerns and "our" government. Its obvious if you study these whose government it is.

for a better look go to the original page where the images are large and easy to read.

Coming Home!: Military Reunions with Man's Best Friend: Dogs Welcoming Home Their Owners

2011-12-31T12:24:00.000-05:00

Military Reunions with Man's Best Friend: Dogs Welcoming Home Their Owners from Deployment - YouTube

Some Good news to take us into the New Year. Our Troops are coming home! Enjoy the video and be ready to welcome them and offer them support.

Drone Wars Lead to Roving Death Squads in Pakistan

2011-12-29T11:02:00.001-05:00

Drone Wars Lead to Roving Death Squads in Pakistan | FDL News Desk: Here’s another unfortunate and completely predictable consequence of our drone wars: when they become unsustainable, and the CIA or JSOC have to leave the country which they carpet-bombed, the natives who helped them designate targets get marked for death.

Our new war in Pakistan is leading to more unintended consequences:

Those abducted tell stories of torture, and few of them live to tell those stories. So a villager in the Waziristan region has to avoid the drone strike and the band of marauders looking to assign blame. The CIA exploits desperate poverty in the region by offering large sums to informants. That clearly does not come with any personal safeguards. What’s more, the Khorasan Mujahedin doesn’t seem to care whether they kill someone innocent of informing or guilty of it. They want merely to send a message. So drone strikes that sometimes kill innocents perpetuate revenge killings that often kill innocents.

The Author concludes:

We’re not only terrorizing the countryside by the air, we aren’t stopping the continued terrorism on the ground. So villagers have a choice: side with the Americans, or against the forces leading to their destruction.

Remember the blow-back of 911? It came from the same region from groups of "terrorists" we created. Sound familiar?

Change For A Dollar and the Homeless Santa - Merry Christmas from VFP

2011-12-24T15:14:00.000-05:00

Change For A Dollar - YouTube

Remembering in these days our homeless vets and their friends not only as people with needs but also as people with gifts to give.

A Christmas Message From America's Rich | Common Dreams

2011-12-23T10:41:00.001-05:00

A Christmas Message From America's Rich | Common Dreams
Mat Tabbibi gives us a window into the machinations of the giant banking corporations that have Occupy on the streets. His analysis and expose revolves around the now infamous statement by private equity chief Stephen Schwarzman who said that the poor had no right to complain because they had no "skin in the game" meaning they paid no taxes. Here are some of Tabbibis comments on this statement which clarifies it greatly:

Schwarzman is factually wrong about lower-income people having no “skin in the game,” ignoring the fact that everyone pays sales taxes, and most everyone pays payroll taxes, and of course there are property taxes for even the lowliest subprime mortgage holders, and so on.

It’s not even because Schwarzman probably himself pays close to zero in income tax – as a private equity chief, he doesn’t pay income tax but tax on carried interest, which carries a maximum 15% tax rate, half the rate of a New York City firefighter.

But it goes further than these immediate "facts"

The real issue has to do with the context of Schwarzman’s quote. The Blackstone billionaire, remember, is one of the more uniquely abhorrent, self-congratulating jerks in the entire world – a man who famously symbolized the excesses of the crisis era when, just as the rest of America was heading into a recession, he threw himself a $5 million birthday party, featuring private performances by Rod Stewart and Patti Labelle, to celebrate an IPO that made him $677 million in a matter of days (within a year, incidentally, the investors who bought that stock would lose three-fourths of their investments).

But it gets much worse and the real skin in the game becomes more visible.

But it seems to me that if you’re broke enough that you’re not paying any income tax, you’ve got nothing but skin in the game. You've got it all riding on how well America works.

You can’t afford private security: you need to depend on the police. You can’t afford private health care: Medicare is all you have. You get arrested, you’re not hiring Davis, Polk to get you out of jail: you rely on a public defender to negotiate a court system you'd better pray deals with everyone from the same deck. And you can’t hire landscapers to manicure your lawn and trim your trees: you need the garbage man to come on time and you need the city to patch the potholes in your street.

And in the bigger picture, of course, you need the state and the private sector both to be functioning well enough to provide you with regular work, and a safe place to raise your children, and clean water and clean air.

Wall street on the other hand lives in a different world:

The entire ethos of modern Wall Street, on the other hand, is complete indifference to all of these matters. The very rich on today’s Wall Street are now so rich that they buy their own social infrastructure. They hire private security, they live on gated mansions on islands and other tax havens, and most notably, they buy their own justice and their own government.

So since government has no real value for them they use if for profit. Here are two examples that Tabbibi offers, one local and one international involving Jamie Dimon, Obama's favorite banker and chair of the NY Fed:

Dimon, incidentally, is another one of those bankers who’s complaining now about the unfair criticism. “Acting like everyone who’s been successful is bad and because you’re rich you’re bad, I don’t understand it,” he recently said, at an investor’s conference.

Hmm. Is Dimon right? Do people hate him just because he’s rich and successful? That really would be unfair. Maybe we should ask the people of Jefferson County, Alabama, what they think.

That particular locality is now in bankruptcy proceedings primarily because Dimon’s bank, Chase, used middlemen to bribe local officials – literally bribe, with cash and watches and new suits – to sign on to a series of onerous interest-rate swap deals that vastly expanded the county’s debt burden.

Essentially, Jamie Dimon handed Birmingham, Alabama a Chase credit card and then bribed its local officials to run up a gigantic balance, leaving future residents and those residents’ children with the bill. As a result, the citizens of Jefferson County will now be making payments to Chase until the end of time.

Do you think Jamie Dimon would have done that deal if he lived in Jefferson County? Put it this way: if he was trying to support two kids on $30,000 a year, and lived in a Birmingham neighborhood full of people in the same boat, would he sign off on a deal that jacked up everyone’s sewer bills 400% for the next thirty years?

And the international incident also compliments of Chase:

Having seen how well interest-rate swaps worked for Jefferson County, Alabama, Chase “helped” Greece mask its debt problem for years by selling a similar series of swaps to the Greek government. The bank then turned around and worked with banks like Goldman, Sachs to create a thing called the iTraxx SovX Western Europe index, which allowed investors to bet against Greek debt.

In other words, Chase knowingly larded up the nation of Greece with a crippling future debt burden, then turned around and helped the world bet against Greek debt.

Does a citizen of Greece do that deal? Forget that: does a human being do that deal?

So having skin in the game is about being part of a community. Here is a graphic example.

People like Dimon, and Schwarzman, and John Paulson, and all of the rest of them who think the “imbeciles” on the streets are simply full of reasonless class anger, they don’t get it. Nobody hates them for being successful. And not that this needs repeating, but nobody even minds that they are rich.

What makes people furious is that they have stopped being citizens.

Most of us 99-percenters couldn’t even let our dogs leave a dump on the sidewalk without feeling ashamed before our neighbors. It's called having a conscience: even though there are plenty of things most of us could get away with doing, we just don’t do them, because, well, we live here.

So everyone with skin in the game needs to support Occupy! Just show up and bring a friend.

Andrew Bacevich answers the question: Was the Iraq War Worth It? -

2011-12-21T08:03:00.001-05:00

Was the Iraq War Worth It? - Council on Foreign Relations

Here is part of Andrew Bacevich's answer,which can be summarized as "War is U.S."

in inviting a narrow cost-benefit analysis, the question-as-posed serves to understate the scope of the debacle engineered by the war's architects. The disastrous legacy of the Iraq War extends beyond treasure squandered and lives lost or shattered. Central to that legacy has been Washington's decisive and seemingly irrevocable abandonment of any semblance of self-restraint regarding the use of violence as an instrument of statecraft. With all remaining prudential, normative, and constitutional barriers to the use of force having now been set aside, war has become a normal condition, something that the great majority of Americans accept without complaint. War is U.S.

His complete text and the other three answers are available at the link above.
The other three responders are:
Max Boot, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
Michael Ignatieff, Professor, University of Toronto
Michael O'Hanlon, Senior Fellow for Foreign Policy Studies, Brookings Institution

American OccuPie - An Invitation

2011-12-19T23:28:00.000-05:00

American OccuPie - YouTube

Enjoy! and pick a day a week to occupy!

One People | Common Dreams

2011-12-19T07:25:00.000-05:00

One People | Common Dreams: Flash mob at Occupy SF & Oakland from Dance Without Borders. Youth and hope.

"Those Things In The Bill Of Rights Are Being Taken Away From ALL Of Us!" Congressman McDermott - Democratic Underground

2011-12-18T09:50:00.001-05:00

"Those Things In The Bill Of Rights Are Being Taken Away From ALL Of Us!" Congressman McDermott - Democratic Underground
The latest assault on liberty was passed and signed on Friday December 16th, the anniversary of the Bill of Rights.

Bradley Manning appears in US court - Americas - Al Jazeera English

2011-12-17T12:03:00.000-05:00

Bradley Manning appears in US court - Americas - Al Jazeera English

Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of giving massive troves of classified US documents to WikiLeaks, has appeared in a military court for the first time at a pre-trial hearing into his case.

Lieutenant Colonel Paul Almanza, the presiding officer, called an end to Friday's proceedings after advising Manning again of the charges and his rights and rejecting a defense request that he recuse himself from the case.

Watch the video which includes an interview with Lt Ehren Watada who was the first officer to refuse to deploy to Iraq.

Navy Gives Neck Injections A Shot At Curing PTSD | Danger Room | Wired.com

2011-12-13T10:55:00.000-05:00

Navy Gives Neck Injections A Shot At Curing PTSD | Danger Room | Wired.com:

“I think of SGB as being similar to re-starting a computer, only we’re talking about circuitry of the nervous system and chemical pathways,” says Capt. Anita Hickey. Hickey is the director of Integrative Pain Medicine at the Naval Medical Center San Diego, where she’s studied a variety of new approaches to PTSD diagnosis and treatment among military personnel, including brain scans and acupuncture. “We’re seeing very positive results.”

The study is the latest evidence of the Pentagon’s increasing desperation to get a handle on PTSD — a frequently debilitating condition that affects an estimated 250,000 soldiers just from this decade’s wars, and thousands more from earlier conflicts. Doctors across the country are getting Pentagon dollars to study ideas as far-out as dog therapy and “digital dreaming” software. Capt. Hickey says that the Navy alone is currently funding 82 different studies on potential PTSD treatments. So far, nothing’s proven to be a magic bullet.

Traffic in Frenetic HCMC, (formerly saigon) Vietnam on Vimeo

2011-12-10T10:28:00.001-05:00

Traffic in Frenetic HCMC, Vietnam on Vimeo: Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) is an amazing up and coming city.

This time lapse is a culmination of 10,000 RAW images and
multiple shoots capturing some of the cities relentless energy
and pace of change.

Traffic in Frenetic HCMC, Vietnam from Rob Whitworth on Vimeo.

Everyone who has visited Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon)
Vietnam knows part of the magic (love it or hate it) is in the traffic.

I will never forget my year in Vietnam and the amazing traffic patterns in Saigon. I see they still ride their scooters. And what a beautiful vibrant city it is today!

Are The Millennials Detached From War? - The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Beast

2011-12-02T09:47:00.002-05:00

Are The Millennials Detached From War? - The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Beast

Two posts from Andrew Sullivan on the future of public support for wars.

A Pew report ... finds that more than three-quarters (77%) of adults over 50 said they have an immediate family member who served in the military; among people between 18-29 years old, the number is only one-third.

The analysis he offers here postulates an increase in wars because of disengagement and desensitization of the public.

His second post goes in the opposite direction positing a combination of "the hard lessons of Iraq" and the anti-imperialist influence of Ron Paul on the younger generation producing less support and perhaps more opposition (less disengagement) by the younger generation.

So what do you think the trends are here?

Defying Police Blockade, Boston’s Occupy Builds a City | Threat Level | Wired.com

2011-12-01T11:11:00.001-05:00

Defying Police Blockade, Boston’s Occupy Builds a City | Threat Level | Wired.com

An article from inside Occupy Boston:

Between the 19th and the 21st of November, Occupy Boston had two teach-ins, a street-theater training, a reggae concert, and countless meetings — managing to use one of those as a cover to sneak a large weatherized tent past the ever-present Boston Police.

It was a member of the Occupy Boston’s Women’s caucus that told me they’d managed it, grinning widely, just as the tent was being set up as a dry, safe, and relatively warm place for women to shelter in the Occupy.
occupy
“It’s considered contraband,” she said, though she was gone before I could ask who considered it so. It was my introduction to the problems faced by these new residents of Dewey Square, in Boston’s Financial District, where it plays out its particular flavor of protest camp in the shadow of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Jose Wiley, 32, volunteers in Logistics and lives at the Occupy. He moved to Los Angeles to become a filmmaker, but returned frustrated and unable to find work.

“We’re all at that stage in our lives where we should be building our careers and it’s not been an option for a lot of us,” says Wiley. “I often say that’s why I think this movement popped up overnight and exploded, and it has so many deeply committed people…. I think maybe some of us are realizing that maybe what we’d hoped for in life isn’t going to happen.”

VFP Members Attacked as Over 100 protesters arrested at Occupy Boston, at least nine facing charges

2011-10-11T22:42:00.005-05:00

Daily Kos: Over 100 protesters arrested at Occupy Boston, at least nine facing charges

Chris Hedges:

Boston police moved in and began arresting scores of Occupy Boston protesters who refused to leave a large part of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway early this morning.

At 1:20 a.m., the first riot police officers lined up on Atlantic Avenue. Minutes later, dozens of sheriff vans and police wagons arrived and over 200 officers in uniforms and riot gear surrounded the Greenway.

Police Superintendent William Evans and Commissioner Edward F. Davis watched from across the street. Evans gave the crowd two minutes to disperse from the park, warning that they would be locked up if they did not comply.

The crowd of protesters, energized by the sudden appearance of the Boston and Transit police officers, chanted, ‘‘The people united will never be defeated,’’ “This is a peaceful protest,” and “the whole world is watching.’’

About 10 minutes later, the first officers entered the park and surrounded the group. Evans, using a loudspeaker, gave one more warning and then each protester was individually put on his or her stomach, cable-tied, and dragged off as others tore down tents and arrested and detained people on the fringe of the park.

Afghanistan and Iraq Wars Not Worth Fighting, say a Third of US Veterans | Common Dreams

2011-10-05T12:45:00.001-05:00

Afghanistan and Iraq Wars Not Worth Fighting, say a Third of US Veterans | Common Dreams: Poll results pose dilemma for Obama administration as it tries to bolster support for continued presence in Iraq and Afghanistan

Not worth fighting and in fact harmful to the well being of our military families and to everyone who is affected by the war economy (the 99%!)

One in three US veterans of the post-9/11 military believes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth fighting, and a majority think that, after 10 years of combat, America should be focusing less on foreign affairs and more on domestic problems, according to an opinion poll.

Protesters Greet Former Defense Secretary - Boston News Story - WCVB Boston

2011-09-27T18:38:00.000-05:00

Protesters Greet Former Defense Secretary - Boston News Story - WCVB Boston

Edited on Tue Sep-27-11 04:38 PM by Hissyspit
Source: Raw Story / WCVB-TV

Check out the video at the link above for some interviews of VFP members. Apparently this meeting house is known for its long history of citizen protest.

BOSTON -- Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld got a rude welcome in Boston Monday night as he promoted his new book.

Several protesters tried to disrupt a forum with Rumsfeld at the Old South Meeting House, shouting and holding up signs as most of the audience shouted and booed them down.

"I went down in front and looked Donald Rumsfeld in the eye and said, 'I'm making a citizen's arrest,' said protester Nate Goldschlag, a member of the group Veterans for Peace, who had to buy Rumsfeld's book to get into the event.

"He lied us into Iraq. He lied about weapons of mass destruction. He lied about Saddam Hussein being involved in 9/11," Goldschlag said.

Ike’s Grandson Reissues Famous Military-Industrial Complex Warning

2011-09-17T19:31:00.001-05:00

Ike’s Grandson Reissues Famous Military-Industrial Complex | Veterans Today

David Eisenhower, grandson of the president who warned Americans of a “military-industrial complex(MIC) 50 years ago, says in an essay this month that that coalition today “retains significant influence…” Yes, indeedy! In fact, when the Pentagon gets more than half of all taxes collected from the American people and spends more for war than all our 50 governors spend to run their states, his phrase “significant influence” may be a wee bit understated.

Is cutting military spending on the block along with other parts of the discretionary budget? Some deficit hawks are fearful of appearing soft on their proclaimed war on terror. But Eisenhower had no qualms about military spending.

Eisenhower writes that his grandfather meant every word of his famous warning. Proof: the popular (“I like”) Ike slashed military spending 27% during his eight years in office.

Twenty seven percent of the present day military budget would slash over a quarter of a trillion per year from the deficit or 2.5 plus trillion in a decade. But don't hold your breath and if they do cut get ready to fight like hell for veterans benefits. You wouldn't expect it to come out of contractors pockets!

War Economy Picket - Vets for Peace Chapter 14 Gainesville Chapter

2011-09-16T07:49:00.001-05:00

Vets for Peace and Allies
Every Tuesday through October
Second and Fourth Tuesdays
Corner of University avenue and 441
First and Third Tuesdays
Corner of Archer Road and 34th street
Join Us Between 4:30 and 6:30
Giant Banner on the military Budget and Cost of War Signs
Bring your own sign or choose from one of ours

Noam Chomsky on How the Military Is Bankrupting Us and Why Corporate Interests Want to Destroy Public Programs

2011-09-14T07:36:00.001-05:00

Noam Chomsky on How the Military Is Bankrupting Us and Why Corporate Interests Want to Destroy Public Programs | World | AlterNet:

Chomsky describes the problems affecting the US economy, including Military spending.

The healthcare system...the huge military spending, the very low taxes for the rich [and corporations]...those are fundamental problems that have to be dealt with if there’s going to be anything like successful economic and social development in the United States."

He comments on Ron Paul's statements about Al Qaeda and 911 and its successes in "bankrupting the US at home".

...he (Bin Laden) was pretty explicit about that. He wanted to draw the United States into what intelligence agencies called a trap, which would inflame and incite hostility in the Muslim world, he hoped, help mobilize people for his cause—I don’t think that happened—but also bankrupt the U.S. at home. I mean, current estimates—there was a recent estimate, a study at Brown University, estimated the cost just of the two wars at about $4 trillion. If you count in the costs of, you know, homeland security and so on, probably doubles that. That’s pretty serious. Between the wars, the housing bubble and Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, that—it creates the economic crisis that we’re now.

And finally why cut Social programs instead of Military spending. This is a dark view of the elites who now run our company through purchase of its democratic institutions:

Social Security is based on a principle. It’s based on the principle that you care about other people. You care whether the widow across town, a disabled widow, is going to be able to have food to eat. And that’s a notion you have to drive out of people’s heads. The idea of solidarity, sympathy, mutual support, that’s doctrinally dangerous. The preferred doctrines are just care about yourself, don’t care about anyone else. That’s a very good way to trap and control people. And the very idea that we’re in it together, that we care about each other, that we have responsibility for one another, that’s sort of frightening to those who want a society which is dominated by power, authority, wealth, in which people are passive and obedient.

But I think we all can recognize people exactly like this. They applauded someones death at the recent debates and their rhetoric is consistently "non-caring".

Vets for Peace is countering this rhetoric with the facts in our War Economy pickets on tuesdays from 4:30 to 6:30. Join us!

Cost of War: Caring for Our Wounded

2011-08-28T18:30:00.001-05:00

Ron Glasser: A Modest Proposal:

In Vietnam you were mainly shot and died; in Iraq and Afghanistan you are blown up and live. In Nam, there were 2.4 casualties to every death. In Iraq and Afghanistan the ratio has become an astonishing 16 to one. Unlike Vietnam, our troops are surviving but with terrible injuries that clearly would have been lethal in Nam or in any of our other wars. The legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan is no longer the graveyard, but the neurosurgical unit, the orthopedic ward, the neurology treatment center and the PTSD clinic.

Medicare for all vets needing long term care is the modest proposal of Vietnam military physician Ron Glassman:

The Veterans Administration is currently 400,000 disability claims behind, with that number growing each month. The lack of adequate and necessary medical care for those we have once again sent our to fight our wars is also increasing exponentially. The reality of Iraq and Afghanistan is that nobody expected so many survivors with so many terrible wounds.

Part of this tsunami of wounded has to do with the effectiveness of the new body armor that eliminated the penetrating chest wounds and abdominal injuries that led to our armies, in previous wars, literally bleeding to death. Part also has to do with the more effective battlefield medicine that keeps soldiers alive during that "Golden Hour" post-trauma by maintaining airways, stopping the bleeding, and quickly replacing fluid and blood losses. In Vietnam it was said that if you keep going back, you will be killed. In Iraq and Afghanistan they tell you that if you keep going back, you will lose a limb and be brain damaged.

Glassman illustrates our new medical world with some examples:

The story of Congresswoman Giffords is a bit of Afghanistan brought to Arizona. She survived a brain injury but will need long-term physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy and cognitive rehabilitation therapy. Brain injuries are like that -- they now account for 22 percent of overall casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan and 59 percent of all blast related injuries.

He praises the effectiveness of medicare as he recommends it as a solution.

There are some 50 million people on Medicare right now. Another seven hundred thousand of the most recent wartime casualties would increase enrollment less than one and a half percent. Despite what those few detractors might say, Medicare is a proven effective and efficient system that could easily absorb the VA patients without any substantial start-up or developmental costs that would be a part of any significant upgrading of VA programs or facilities.

The "Medicarization" of the VA would give female soldiers and marines -- 44% of the 300,000 female Iraq and Afghan Veterans are expected to receive on-going health care from the VA over the next decade -- the specialized care in women's health that is lacking in VA facilities geared to both male patients and male problems.

But perhaps the greatest benefit of Medicare to those wounded, and their caregivers tied to the need of follow up care, is the problem of distance. Traveling to a distant VA is no easy task and certainly not with gas hovering around four dollars a gallon. The VA does not give travel vouchers. Simply getting to a VA for multiple visits or routine care can be a financial burden if not an almost impossible physical task. It would clearly be easier on a wounded veteran to go to a physician or clinic or hospital close to home.

A reasonable sounding proposal. But I would not stop there. Lets put all of America on Medicare with its reduced costs and and eliminate the insurance companies in the middle who siphon off so much of the money that ought to be going to physicians and clinics and hospitals. We could then use the VA system for prescription drugs and vastly reduce those costs. Medicare with VA prescription drugs for All!

Empire Watch: How to Avoid Bush's Iraq Mistakes in Libya

2011-08-24T06:41:00.003-05:00

How to Avoid Bush's Iraq Mistakes in Libya | Informed Comment: How to Avoid Bush’s Iraq Mistakes in Libya

Posted on 08/24/2011 by Juan

The illegal American invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation was so epochal a catastrophe that it spawned a negative phrase in Arabic, “to Iraqize” or `arqana .Tonight I heard an Alarabiya anchor ask a spokesman for the new government in Libya whether there as a danger of the country being “Iraqized.” He was taken aback and asked her what she meant. Apparently she meant chaos, civil war, no services, etc. (Those Neoconservatives who trumpet their Iraq misadventure as a predecessor to the Arab Spring should take a lesson; no one cites Iraq among the youth movements except as an example of what must be avoided)

.

Juan goes on to list the mistakes in Iraq not to be repeated in Libya. Of course the basic assumption is that the US or NATO will run things or have a strong Imperial Presence and influence as Libya transitions and this is probably true considering the close relationship between the rebels (just who are they?) and those same imperial powers. But its still a good list for starters on how not to repeat some of the mistakes made in Iraq. Here are some examples:

1. No Western infantry or armored units should be stationed in the country. Their presence would risk inflaming the passions of the Muslim fundamentalists and of the remaining part of the population that is soft on Qaddafi.

2. As much as possible of the current bureaucracy, police and army should be retained. Only those with innocent blood on their hands or who were captured rather than surrendering or switching sides should be fired. The EU is doing the right thing in trying to ensure the bureaucrats get paid their salaries

There are ten points in all. you can read the article at the link above to see them all but I want to include one more as this is one of the first things done in Iraq. In the midst of the looting a insecurity Brennen was sent in to rewrite the constitution so privatization could begin and rebuilding contracts were inevitably handed to outside corporations leaving more Iraqis out of work or paying them a fraction of the money to do the whole job while the outside corporations kept the rest. This is what we have been calling "democratization".

5. Avoid a rush to privatize everything. Oil countries anyway inevitably have large public sectors. Impediments to entrepreneurship should be removed, but well-run state enterprises can have their place in a modern economy, as some of the Asian nations have demonstrated. Rajiv Chandrasekaran demonstrated in his Imperial Life in the Emerald City how the US fetish for privatization destroyed state factories that could otherwise have been revived and that could have supplied jobs.

Read the rest. Its a pretty good description of what we have been doing in Eastern Europe as well as Iraq as we follow our free market ideology and conflate it with Democracy.

PTSD Therapy: Restoring Honor to the Enemy

2011-08-03T08:51:00.002-05:00

PTSD Therapy: Restoring Honor to the Enemy - Miller-McCune

VFP members, I would be interested in your comments on this take on PTSD:

One side of post-traumatic stress that not many people talk about — maybe because it’s so hard to separate from waging a modern war — is the way a nation and its military tend to dehumanize the opposing side. Erich Maria Remarque’s novel about World War I, All Quiet on the Western Front, took dehumanization as its theme, and it still has a lot to say about war trauma even if Americans have cornered the market on clinical descriptions of PTSD.

Some interesting summer reading suggested in this second quote.

The psychologist Jonathan Shay, in his essential book on combat stress called Achilles in Vietnam, points out one difference between the Trojan War and America’s war in Southeast Asia: “The Iliad contains no derogatory nicknames for the enemy used by soldiers when talking among themselves; we hear no hint of ancient equivalents of ‘Gook,’ ‘Dink,’ ‘Zip,’ or ‘Slope,’ used so freely at all levels of the American military in Vietnam.”

Shay says honor for the enemy — for his fighting skills as well as his will to live — helps a soldier maintain common sense during a war and stay sane afterward. Officers who underestimate the Japanese fighting ability, he argues, may fail to predict something like Pearl Harbor (which really happened); and a soldier who comes home feeling he fought a war against subhuman vermin is in trouble whether his side loses or wins. “The veteran’s self-respect never fully recovers as long as he is unable to see the enemy as worthy,” Shay writes. “Restoring honor to the enemy is an essential step in recovery from PTSD.”

News of the Empire: U.S. Blocks Oversight of Its Mercenary Army in Iraq

2011-07-22T08:58:00.001-05:00

Exclusive: U.S. Blocks Oversight of Its Mercenary Army in Iraq | Danger Room | Wired.com
Remember Nisuor Square? Seventeen Iraqi civilians died at the hands of Blackwater security contractors under contract to the US State Department. You might think this kind of activity has stopped or at least decreased but in fact it has increased and the same companies(with different names) still serve there. In an effort to maintain our imperial presence in Iraq the US is is placing a record number of diplomats in our Fortresses around Iraq. To protect these bases including the worlds largest embassy in Baghdad the State Department has spent 10 billion dollars to deploy a heavy combat battalion sized force of 5,500 mercenaries to protect their bases and to guard the movement of State personnel as they move from place to place in the same kind of armed to the teeth convoys that were involved in the incident in Mansour Square. So State has gone to war and they are refusing to inform the Inspector General charged by Congress with ooversight of their plans for things like rules of engagement:

Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), is essentially in the dark about one of the most complex and dangerous endeavors the State Department has ever undertaken, one with huge implications for the future of the United States in Iraq. “Our audit of the program is making no progress,” Bowen tells Danger Room.

For months, Bowen’s team has tried to get basic information out of the State Department about how it will command its assembled army of about 5,500 private security contractors. How many State contracting officials will oversee how many hired guns? What are the rules of engagement for the guards? What’s the system for reporting a security danger, and for directing the guards’ response?

Anyone who says all our troops will be out in December is dead wrong. The mercenaries under whose watch many egregious abuses of human rights occurred will be there in combat brigade sized numbers and without Inspector General oversight.

‪War is Not the Answer, Never Was, Never Will‬‏ - VFP Video

2011-07-19T12:51:00.001-05:00

‪War is Not the Answer, Never Was, Never Will‬‏ - YouTube
From the Smedley Butler Chapter of Vets for Peace:

Cost of War Cartoon: Afghanistan versus space travel

2011-07-18T21:40:00.002-05:00

Decisions, decisions : Pharyngula

Cost of War: US war spending could top $4 trillion -

2011-07-01T10:26:00.001-05:00

Study: US war spending could top $4 trillion - Americas - Al Jazeera English

A new study from Brown University estimates the eventual cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could reach 4 billion dollars. This is a billion more than the predictions that Joseph Stiglitz of the National Priorities Project, that VFP uses on our cost of war signs, and his colleague Linda Bilmas predicted in their book The Three Trillion Dollar War. Their book factors in replacing equipment and medical care for returning veterans to arrive at their 3 trillion dollar figure.

The Brown study builds on this information and also uses a Congressional Research Service report that estimates war costs to date at 1.4 Billion. The study then adds the debt incurred so far (185bn) and the increase in the base Pentagon budget (625bn) which results in a doubling of that budget since 2001. They then project these combined costs out a decade or more to predict a debt that may range from 3.2 trillion on the conservative side to as much as 4 billion dollars.

In addition the Brown study attempts to measure the human cost both to the US and to the nations we occupied.

Casualty figures are well-documented: 6,051 US soldiers have been killed, along with roughly 2,300 contractors and 18,000 members of the Iraqi and Afghan security forces.

(for Afghanistan) The report also includes the number of Pakistani soldiers killed - 3,520 - fighting the Taliban over the last decade.

Civilians have suffered far more, with at least 137,000 of them killed since 2001 - a figure the report says is almost certainly an underestimate.

"Nearly every factor that is associated with premature death - poverty, malnutrition, poor sanitation, lack of access to health care, environmental degradation - is exacerbated by the current war," the report notes about Afghanistan.

It makes a similar statement about Iraq.

You can find more details of this new study at the cost of war site that we have used for many years. Two areas of interest are job creation that could be done with the savings and hidden costs not included in the estimates, including the Drone program and the budget of the National Intelligence Agency. The updates based on this new study are presented graphically"to spur public debate about America at war." So when we can get past the Mainstream media circuses, let the debate begin!

Rachel Maddow: Opposition to U.S. wars grows, diversifies

2011-06-19T15:01:00.000-05:00

Rachel Maddow: Opposition to U.S. wars grows, diversifies

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

U.S., Vietnam take ‘key first step’ to clean up Agent Orange - Checkpoint Washington - The Washington Post

2011-06-18T09:00:00.001-05:00

U.S., Vietnam take ‘key first step’ to clean up Agent Orange - Checkpoint Washington - The Washington Post
Thirty-six years after the end of the Vietnam War, the United States and Vietnam have taken a critical step toward cleaning up the environmental damage caused by Agent Orange.

That step, the detection and removal of unexploded ordnance in Danang, is part of a long and complex process to eliminate the painful legacy of dioxin, one of the chemicals used in Agent Orange and one of the world’s most toxic pollutants. The herbicide, which the U.S. military sprayed to defoliate areas where enemy troops had taken cover, has been blamed for health-related problems in millions of Vietnamese.

Although the U.S. and Vietnam have spent decades wrangling over who bears responsibility for cleaning up the damage, it wasn’t until 2001 that they agreed to begin working together to study the possible effects of dioxin contamination. Since then, the sides have had to determine the best method to clean it up.

In a statement, the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi on Friday called the removal of ordnance a “key first step.”

“The clearance of unexploded ordnance by the Ministry of National Defense is an excellent example of the strong collaborative relationship our two governments have built on the dioxin remediation project,” said Virginia Palmer, the U.S. charge d’affaires.

The project around the airport in Danang — one of three dixoin “hotspots” in Vietnam — will focus on an area of roughly 70 acres. After ordnance is removed, the soil will undergo a process known as “in situ thermal desorption,” in which the soil will be heated to extremely high temperatures to remove contaminants.

Memorial Day Tribute calls for Dedication and Reevaluation

2011-05-29T07:13:00.003-05:00

2010 slideshow of Memorial Mile Tribute

by Bill Salmon

It sometimes takes a while for the meaning of events to sink in. We need to have perspective over time to really understand how major events figure into our daily lives.
We find ourselves now, after many years, reassessing and reexamining the armed conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Some conclusions can be reached regardless of the sources of information one chooses to use.
There can be no question of the loss of our young women and men in uniform who daily are ordered to action that could result in the ultimate sacrifice. Not just on the battlefield but also as the result of the separation from family; delay of education and careers; life-threatening and lifelong physical and mental injuries and reestablishing their lives upon their return to civilian life.
For all of us there is the never-ending quest to grasp the huge costs and tradeoffs between claims for physical security and declining support for other programs: education, health care, our economy, our commitment to basic human rights and aid to others less fortunate. Those are the things our country is rightly dedicated to and which deserve recognition as a world leader. That status is slipping.
For a proper perspective from which to examine our current circumstances we need the facts regarding the costs and consequences of this county's actions over the last nine or ten years.

First, the costs. Over 59% of Mr. Obama's 2011 budget will be spent on military matters while a mere 6% will be applied to health and human services, 4% to education, just 3% to homeland security and 3% to necessary housing and urban development.

The $51.1 billion scheduled to be spent in Iraq in FY2011 could provide:
* 782,542 elementary school teachers for one year OR
* 894,529 firefighters for one year OR
* 6.7 million Head Start slots for children for one year OR
* 6.6 million military veterans receiving VA medical care for one year OR
* 774,095 police or sheriff's patrol officers for one year OR
* 6.5 million scholarships for university students for one year OR
* 9.2 million students receiving Pell Grants of $5,550

The $119.4 billion scheduled to be spent in Afghanistan in FY2011 could provide:
* 1.8 million elementary school teachers for one year OR
* 2.1 million firefighters for one year OR
* 15.7 million Head Start slots for children for one year OR
* 15.3 million military veterans receiving VA medical care for one year OR
* 1.8 million police or sheriff's patrol officers for one year OR
* 15.1 million scholarships for university students for one year OR
* 21.5 million students receiving Pell Grants of $5,550

Next, the consequences. No one can ignore the immense costs and sacrifices that have been expended over those years to install the governments of our choice in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We did not have the legal right to invade and occupy Afghanistan or Iraq. Respect we have had from the rest of the world we are in jeopardy of losing.
It must be remembered that there are just two legal and constitutional justifications for attacking a foreign country. One, if we are attacked on our shores, and two if the United Nations declares war. These are grounds we are committed to by signing the treaty. (A signed treaty is the second highest level of law, just below the Constitution itself.) Netiher of them have occurred in either Afghanistan or Iraq.
Is there evidence of progress, which has really never been defined, and allows Washington to continuously reinvent justifications for these conflicts, and what constitutes the mission and progress? After all these years, the answer to whether our continued commitment is justified seems to be, questionable. Actually that decision was made on October 27, 2007 when Barack Obama said, "I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out [of Iraq] by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do."
Those expenditures, at the cost of our own needs, must be examined and challenged by all dedicated citizens. Veterans are a key source for these efforts and there are many local organizations one can turn to. One particularly dedicated to pursuing peaceful solutions is Veterans for Peace. The chapter here in Gainesville has been tireless for years in its efforts to raise our awareness and educate us, Specifically:
* Veterans for Peace has honored and recognized the ultimate sacrifice of every citizen killed in Afghanistan and Iraq by erecting monuments every Memorial Day on Miracle Mile (NW 8th Avenue between NW 34th Street and NW 23rd Street.) The monuments include the particulars of every individual and are cataloged so as to allow a loved one to locate their Honoree's monument almost instantly. The Memorial is monitored 24 hours a day.
* For many, many years dedicated veterans and supporters have appeared with signs expressing the need for peace on Tuesdays at major intersections here in Gainesville.
* Veterans for Peace sponsors a Peace Poetry contest in all Alachua County schools. The purpose is to raise awareness and open a dialog on the subject of Peace. It is always enlightening to see and read what our children, our future, have to say about our current circumstances.
* Veterans for Peace provides booklets, pamphlets, videos and informed expert speakers, available at any time upon request.
* Scholarships are provided to deserving students striving towards new directions.
These are among the major priorities of Veterans for Peace, revealing not only a dedication to peaceful alternatives but more importantly that we as a community have a local, easily accessed means of learning, understanding and achieving a global impact when called upon to act.
Along with the Memorial Day monument walk is presented a telling, eye-opening explanation of where our immense resources go and what could be done alternatively for the betterment of not only the security of our own shores but also the vital interests of our health and well-being, fiscal responsibility, economic growth and adherence to fundamental precepts set out in our Constitution that make our country great.
For more information, contact Scott Camil at 375-2563 or visit VFP's website at www.afn.org/~vetpeace or email at gvlvfp@earthlink.net.

Superman renounces US Citizenship over Middle East Propaganda

2011-05-01T07:54:00.001-05:00

f | Weekend Edition: "Conservative commentators and bloggers react with disgust to the DC Comics superhero's decision

After years of declaring he stood for 'truth, justice and the American way,' Superman has provoked the ire of rightwingers by threatening to renounce his US citizenship.

In the latest issue of Action Comics, which went on sale on Wednesday, the Man of Steel decides to take the step after he intervenes in a protest against the Iranian government.

After the Islamic regime brands his non-violent protest as an act of war taken on behalf of the US president, the DC comic hero says he will renounce his citizenship before the United Nations.
"I'm tired of having my actions construed as instruments of US policy," he says."
read the comic online here

Cost of War - CBO analysis: Spending 'cut' deal doesn't actually cut spending

2011-04-13T21:10:00.001-05:00

Daily Kos: CBO analysis: Spending 'cut' deal doesn't actually cut spending: "The Congressional Budget Office estimate shows that compared with current spending rates the spending bill due for a House vote Thursday would pare just $352 million from the deficit through Sept. 30. About $8 billion in cuts to domestic programs and foreign aid are offset by nearly equal increases in defense spending.

When war funding is factored in the legislation would actually increase total federal outlays by $3.3 billion relative to current levels."

Daily Kos: Franken introduces 'Pay for War' resolution

2011-04-09T07:38:00.001-05:00

Daily Kos: Franken introduces 'Pay for War' resolution

The most serious policy-maker in Washington D.C. today is former comedian. Go figure.

The Pay for War Resolution gives Congress the option to finance war through budget cuts, creating new revenue or a combination of both budgetary means. Franken said the bill is meant to avoid a repeat of the $1.25 trillion that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have added to the national debt.

Cost of War: "You can't simultaneously fire teachers and Tomahawk missiles." (VIDEO) Jon Stewart:

2011-03-22T16:27:00.002-05:00

Jon Stewart: We're At War -- Again? (VIDEO) | TPM LiveWire
I thought we were out of money! Tomahawk missiles cost almost 900,000$$ each! That's a lot of potential teachers salaries we are lobbing into the desert in Libya!

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Daily Kos: Compiles news coverage of DC protests

2011-03-21T19:07:00.000-05:00

Daily Kos: Sanctimonious Sunday: Arrested: "Hundreds of protesters attended the rally and marched around the White House, but the crowd — which included many military veterans — thinned considerably as the U.S. Park Police warned that they'd be arrested if they didn't move. As officers moved in with handcuffs, one protester who clutched the gates outside the White House shouted, 'Don't arrest them! Arrest Obama!' and 'You're arresting veterans, not war criminals!'"

Here is a video of the march that includes some views of our own local vets:

Cost of War: Bombing people costs money - Ezra Klein - The Washington Post

2011-03-21T17:20:00.001-05:00

Bombing people costs money - Ezra Klein - The Washington Post: "A Tomahawk Missile cost $569,000 in FY99, so if my calculations are correct, they cost a little over $736,000 today assuming they are the same make and model. The United States fired 110 missiles yesterday, which adds up to a cost of around $81 million. That's twice the size of the annual budget of USIP, which the House of Representatives wants to de-fund, and is about 33 times the amount of money National Public Radio receives in grants each year from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which the House of Representatives also wants to de-fund in the name of austerity measures."

Veterans Demand Peace: 113 Arrested at White House - arrested in an action of nonviolent public civil resistance. // Current

2011-03-20T21:35:00.001-05:00

Veterans Demand Peace: 113 Arrested at White House - arrested in an action of nonviolent public civil resistance. // Current

Photos from White House Rally in Support of Bradley Manning | FDL Action

2011-03-20T16:24:00.001-05:00

Photos from White House Rally in Support of Bradley Manning | FDL Action

As of Sunday afternoon We are hearing reports of arrests at Quantico as well as at the white house with highly armed and armored guards to protect the base from peaceful protesters.

The photo is from Saturday in Washington where reports say about 100 people were arrested.

Cost of War: The Pentagon’s Biggest Boondoggles - Op-Chart - NYTimes.com

2011-03-13T19:11:00.005-05:00

Unworkable or unnecessary systems tend to have something in common: their costs are often uncontrollable. A 2009 Government Accountability Office study of 96 major defense acquisition programs found that almost two-thirds of them suffered major cost overruns — 40 percent above contract prices, over all — with average delays of nearly two years. Those overruns totaled close to $300 billion, about the amount of President Bill Clinton’s last full defense budget request a decade ago. Listed below is just a sampling of what systems could be ended without endangering America; indeed, abandoning some of them might actually enhance national security. These cuts would generate only small savings initially — perhaps just several billion this fiscal year, as contracts would have to be wound down. But savings would swiftly rise to more than $50 billion annually thereafter.

And there’s plenty more where these came from.
To see the full chart go to:
The Pentagon’s Biggest Boondoggles - Op-Chart - NYTimes.com

Economic Imperialism : Class warfare - Colonial Oppression is Coming Home America!

2011-03-11T18:44:00.001-05:00

Daily Kos: Class warfare, illustrated

The Brutalization Of Bradley Manning - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

2011-03-06T09:38:00.001-05:00

The Brutalization Of Bradley Manning - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan: "I find the military's explanation of why they strip Manning naked each night and then require him to stand naked outside his cell every morning ... er, unpersuasive. They've made his bedding suicide proof - why not find some clothing that could do the same - even though there's no evidence he's a real threat to himself. "

This article outlines a number of accounts of Manley's treatment and Andrew describes it somewhat kindly as Sadism. I would call it Torture.

From his lawyer:

The decision to strip PFC Manning of his clothing every night for an indefinite period of time is clearly punitive in nature. There is no mental health justification for the decision. There is no basis in logic for this decision. PFC Manning is under 24 hour surveillance, with guards never being more than a few feet away from his cell. PFC Manning is permitted to have his underwear and clothing during the day, with no apparent concern that he will harm himself during this time period. Moreover, if Brig officials were genuinely concerned about PFC Manning using either his underwear or flip-flops to harm himself (despite the recommendation of the Brig's psychiatrist) they could undoubtedly provide him with clothing that would not, in their view, present a risk of self-harm. Indeed, Brig officials have provided him other items such as tear-resistant blankets and a mattress with a built-in pillow due to their purported concerns.

More links in the article to Glen Greenwald's articles on this disgraceful subject. As Andrew states, Bush torture and lies continue under Obama.

Make Agent Orange History

2011-03-05T13:03:00.001-05:00

Make Agent Orange History

There is a petition to sign in support of this plan. Go to the website to access it.

Petition to Support Bradley Manning

2011-03-02T22:28:00.002-05:00

f | Latest:

"Ellsberg’s leak of the Pentagon Papers proved our government systematically lied about the war in Vietnam. The WikiLeaks dumps have proved that our government systematically lies about democracy."

Sign the petition: Tell Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to Drop Ridiculous “Aiding the Enemy” Charges Against Bradley Manning

A revolution against neoliberalism? - Understanding what we are fighting

2011-02-27T10:17:00.002-05:00

A revolution against neoliberalism? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

This article on Aljazeera focuses on Egypt but could just as well help explain what is happening to the middle class anywhere in the US.

Here is a simple explanation of where we are going in this country:

What is neoliberalism? In his Brief History of Neoliberalism, the eminent social geographer David Harvey outlined "a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterised by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade." Neoliberal states guarantee, by force if necessary, the "proper functioning" of markets; where markets do not exist (for example, in the use of land, water, education, health care, social security, or environmental pollution), then the state should create them.

Guaranteeing the sanctity of markets is supposed to be the limit of legitimate state functions, and state interventions should always be subordinate to markets. All human behavior, and not just the production of goods and services, can be reduced to market transactions.

And the application of utopian neoliberalism in the real world leads to deformed societies

In these societies the very rich have one foot in government and the other in big business so they are perfectly positioned to take of advantage of the privatization of government services.

Take this a step further to how Neoliberalism is implemented. The best example of this is Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine:

Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine — a searing indictment of neoliberalism which argues that the free-market fundamentalism promoted by economist Milton Friedman (and immensely influential in the United States) is predicated on restructuring economies in the wake of catastrophic disruptions because normally functioning societies and political systems would never vote for it. Disruptions can be natural or man-made, such as … revolutions.

The chapters in The Shock Doctrine on Poland, Russia, and South Africa make interesting reading in the context of Egypt’s revolution (and Wisconsin!). In each case when governments (communist or apartheid) collapsed, "technocrats" were brought in to help run countries that were suddenly without functional governments, and create the institutional infrastructure for their successors. The technocrats always seemed to have dispensed a form of what Klein calls "shock therapy" — the imposition of sweeping privatization programs before dazed populations could consider their options and potentially vote for less ideologically pure options that are in their own interests.

Our "Shock" has of course been the recent recession which is actually ongoing for Main Street and the working and middle classes. This opportunity to privatize is personified by the two Governor Scott's efforts to privatize and benefit their cronies (Koch and health care execs) as they proceed. It is so easy to think we are fighting against corrupt individuals or institutions when in reality we are fighting a whole ideology supported by a confluence of government and business including the media business. Its the System! We also need to realize that the Dems are also neoliberal including Clintons and Obama and this explains their disturbing positions on education and other public services.

Finally as Veterans we need to understand the Military's position. We can immediately see how the contractors fit into the picture but it goes further as you look at the huge sums invested in the Military that benefit private industry. The article addresses how the Egyptian military, now in charge, benefited from Neoliberalism under Mubarak:

Military spending itself was also lucrative because it included both a state budget and contracts with American companies that provided hardware and technical expertise. The United States provided much of the financing for this spending under rules that required a great deal of the money to be recycled to American corporations, but all such deals required middlemen. Who better to act as an intermediary for American foreign aid contracts than men from the very same military designated as the recipient of the services paid for by this aid? In this respect the Egyptian military-industrial complex was again stealing a page from the American playbook; indeed, to the extent that the Egyptian military benefited from American foreign aid, Egypt was part of the American military-industrial complex, which is famous for its revolving-door system of recycling retired military men as lobbyists and employees of defense contractors.

Again proximity to power translates into individual enrichment.

It may seem that the odds are totally against us (and they probably are). Our advantages are knowledge and numbers (and those numbers actually control our society with their work and services). So I see our strategy as being to get the word out of what is really happening. The media is part of the problem so we need to create our own media on the street corner and in print and online. As an educational institution this perfectly fits the VFP mission.

YouTube - Dropkick Murphys - Worker's Song (with lyrics)

2011-02-26T08:46:00.001-05:00

YouTube - Dropkick Murphys - Worker's Song (with lyrics)

In Solidarity with Wisconsin and Egypt!

Drone Attacks: Yet Again, Terror War "Vital Tool" Revealed as Security Theater Prop | MyFDL

2011-02-21T17:41:00.001-05:00

Drone Attacks: Yet Again, Terror War "Vital Tool" Revealed as Security Theater Prop | MyFDL:

From the Washington Post:

"CIA drone attacks in Pakistan killed at least 581 militants last year, according to independent estimates. The number of those militants noteworthy enough to appear on a U.S. list of most-wanted terrorists: two."

But these highly costly attacks (each missile launched, like its counterpart the cruise missile, costs a million dollars)are apparently not so essential after all:

Reports first started coming out on Sunday that there had been no drone attacks in northwest Pakistan since just a few days before Raymond Davis was captured in Lahore after killing two Pakistanis. Almost immediately after those reports came out, however, a new attack occurred Monday:

A U.S. drone strike killed at least seven people on Monday in a tribal region along Pakistan’s western border, local officials said, the first such attack in a month as a diplomatic feud strains U.S.-Pakistani ties.

/snip/

It is the first time since January 23 that intelligence officials have reported a U.S. drone attack, marking a resumption of a campaign that has become the centerpiece of U.S. efforts to halt militants launching attacks on its soldiers in Afghanistan.

Many analysts believe Washington halted the attacks for weeks to avoid further inflaming anti-American fury in Pakistan just as it pressures Islamabad to release Raymond Davis, a U.S.consulate employee imprisoned after shooting two Pakistanis last month in what he said was an attempted robbery.

The article probes further into how the drone program evolved from targeting high-level operatives to the current claim of “foot soldiers” being targeted:

Experts who track the strikes closely said a program that began with intermittent lethal attacks on al-Qaeda leaders has evolved into a campaign that seems primarily focused on lower-level fighters. Peter Bergen, a director at the New America Foundation, said data on the strikes indicate that 94 percent of those killed are lower-level militants.

“I think it’s hard to make the case that the 94 percent cohort threaten the United States in some way,” Bergen said. “There’s been very little focus on that question from a human rights perspective. Targeted killings are about leaders – it shouldn’t be a blanket dispensation.”

Bearing witness to the “all war, all the time” attitude of the Obama administration, the government responds to the accusation:

“This effort has evolved because our intelligence has improved greatly over the years, and we’re able to identify not just senior terrorists, but also al-Qaeda foot soldiers who are planning attacks on our homeland and our troops in Afghanistan,” said a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the classified program.

“We would be remiss if we didn’t go after people who have American blood on their hands,” the official said. “To use a military analogy, if you’re only going after the generals, you’re likely to be run over by tanks.”

During this month-long hiatus in killing foot soldiers, there doesn’t seem to have been a dramatic increase in attacks on US personnel near the Pakistan border in Afghanistan, so how can the drone attacks be as vital as the government claims? In the meantime, the military contractors certainly reap rewards from the program, as each of the drone strikes (now at over 100 per year) costs the government over $1 million.

So how do we decide who is killed by this "essential defense"?

How depraved has our government become when “analysts” in Pakistan and on US bases work together to sit in judgment on “foot soldiers” arbitrarily deemed guilty from afar and then execute them without detention and trial? Now, heaped on that offense is the realization that all of this is for show, because it can be switched on and off depending on how much political “heat” is on the program.

So the US continues its contortions as the "Leader of Democracy" and enforces its high ideals by illegal wars, detentions, torture and summary execution no longer reserved for high values leaders. The victims of these attack are now chosen by a judge and jury consisting of intelligence analysts who are no doubt advised by the military contractors who profit from the drone operation in the first place.

Dear Poor People, Thank You for Going Without Heat So We Can Buy Another Week of War | FDL Action

2011-02-16T08:31:00.000-05:00

Dear Poor People, Thank You for Going Without Heat So We Can Buy Another Week of War | FDL Action

Note the trade off here: After one of the coldest winters recorded and with climate models predicting more of the same we choose to fund war over heat for the poor. Here are the details. Do the Math! To help you I bold printed the information you will need.

Your president is planning to cut $2.6 billion from Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps people afford keeping their homes warm during the winter, despite the fact that due to the economic downturn the number of poor people needing help has increased significantly.

As a result of your going without heat next winter, we will be able to afford almost one whole week of fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which cost about $468 million a day. Although when you add in the many hidden costs like increased long-term veteran’s health care due to the conflicts, your sacrifice is probably only really going to cover maybe half a week.

Joining The Tea Party on civil liberties - Our last best hope? - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

2011-02-12T17:58:00.000-05:00

The Tea Party and civil liberties - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

It's long been clear that the best (and perhaps only) political hope for civil liberties in the U.S. is an alliance that transcends the standard Democrat v. GOP or left v. right dichotomies. Last night's surprising (and temporary) failure of the House to extend some of the most controversial powers of the Patriot Act -- an extension jointly championed by the House GOP leadership and the Obama White House -- perfectly illustrates why this is true.

or most civil liberties incursions over the last decade, there's been at least some glimmer of opposition on the Left -- exemplified by people like Russ Feingold in the Senate and the Congressional Black Caucus and Dennis Kucinich in the House. But they've been easily overwhelmed by the civil-liberties-hating mainstream of the Democratic Party, and particularly hampered by the lack of any meaningful partners on the Right (where Ron Paul has been a solitary voice on such matters).

on the very same day that the Obama White House demanded that Egypt repeal its 30-year-old "emergency law," it also demanded enactment of the House GOP's proposal to extend America's own emergency law -- the Patriot Act -- for three more years with no new oversight (the White House actually wants a longer extension than the House GOP is willing to support).

what happened last night highlights the potential to subvert the two-party stranglehold on these issues -- through a left-right alliance that opposes the Washington insiders who rule both parties. So confident was the House GOP leadership in commanding bipartisan support that they put the Patriot Act extension up for a vote using a fast-track procedure that prohibits debate and amendments and, in return, requires 2/3 approval. But 26 of the most conservative Republicans -- including several of the newly elected "Tea Party" members -- joined the majority of Democratic House members in voting against the extension, and it thus fell 7 votes short.

Rachel Maddow last night pointed out that there is a split on the Right -- at least a rhetorical one -- between what she called "authoritarian conservatives" and "libertarian conservatives." At some point, the dogmatic emphasis on limited state power, not trusting the Federal Government, and individual liberties -- all staples of right-wing political propaganda, especially Tea Party sloganeering -- has to conflict with things like oversight-free federal domestic surveillance, limitless government detention powers, and impenetrable secrecy (to say nothing of exploiting state power to advance culture war aims). Not even our political culture can sustain contradictions as egregious as (a) reading reverently from the Constitution and venerating limits on federal power, and then (b) voting to vest the Federal Government with extraordinary powers of oversight-free surveillance aimed at the American people. This was the contradiction which Dennis Kucinich smartly exploited when challenging the Tea Party to join him in opposing the Patriot Act's extension:

More on a left right alliance on Afghanistan with Rachel's show stringing together a series of breathtaking videos showing Republican congressmen opposing the Afghanistan War below:

What about it? Should we join forces here?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

VA & HUD Issue First-Ever Report on Homeless Veterans : Veterans Today

2011-02-10T20:18:00.001-05:00

VA & HUD Issue First-Ever Report on Homeless Veterans : Veterans Today: "For the first time, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development today published the most authoritative analysis of the extent and nature of homelessness among Veterans. According to HUD and VA’s assessment, nearly 76,000 Veterans were homeless on a given night in 2009 while roughly 136,000 Veterans spent at least one night in a shelter during that year."

Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness

* More than 3,000 cities and counties reported 75,609 homeless Veterans on a single night in January of 2009; 57 percent were staying in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program while the remaining 43 percent were unsheltered. Veterans represent approximately 12 percent of all homeless persons counted nationwide during the 2009 ‘point-in-time snapshot.’
* During a 12-month period in 2009, an estimated 136,000 Veterans—or about 1 in every 168 Veterans—spent at least one night in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program. The vast majority of sheltered homeless Veterans (96 percent) experienced homelessness alone while a much smaller share (four percent) was part of a family. Sheltered homeless Veterans are most often individual white men between the ages of 31 and 50 and living with a disability.
* Low-income Veterans are twice as likely to become homeless compared to all low-income adults. HUD and VA also examined the likelihood of becoming homeless among American Veterans with particular demographic characteristics. In 2009, twice as many poor Hispanic Veterans used a shelter at some point during the year compared with poor non-Hispanic Veterans. African American Veterans in poverty had similar rates of homelessness.
* Most Veterans who used emergency shelter stayed for only brief periods. One-third stayed in shelter for less than one week; 61 percent used a shelter for less than one month; and 84% stayed for less than three months. The report also concluded that Veterans remained in shelters longer than did non-Veterans. In 2009, the median length of stay for Veterans who were alone was 21 days in an emergency shelter and 117 days in transitional housing. By contrast, non-veteran individuals stayed in an emergency shelter for 17 days and 106 days in transitional housing.
* Nearly half of homeless Veterans were located in California, Texas, New York and Florida while only 28 percent of all Veterans were located in those same four States.
* The report studied the path homeless Veterans take into the shelter system and found most Veterans come from another homeless location and few entered the shelter system from their own housing or from housing provided by family or friends.
* Sheltered homeless Veterans are far more likely to be alone rather than part of a family household; 96 percent of Veterans are individuals compared to 63 percent in the overall homeless population.

For more information on VA’s efforts to end homelessness among Veterans, visit VA’s Web page at www.va.gov/homelessness.

The "Manufactured Safety" Of Egypt's Army - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

2011-02-07T22:36:00.001-05:00

The "Manufactured Safety" Of Egypt's Army - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Analysis of the position of the Egyptian Army describes the military elites as wanting before all else to "maintain its access to the treasury". And of course that treasury is well supplied by US Taxpayers to the tune of 1.5 Billion dollars a year in the form of US manufactured Arms. Public Radio did an interesting report this morning on the relationship between Egyptian paid lobbyists, US congress members and the Arms industry when the Egyptian Generals come shopping every year. Although there are threats by the US to cut this budget, what they would actually be doing is cutting the incomes of some of the giants of the military industrial complex such as General Electric and McDonnell Douglass whose influence is not to be trifled with in the Halls of Government. So where does this backdrop of unholy alliances leave the Egyptian people protesting in Cairo and the American taxpayer, largely preoccupied by the Superbowl back home? Not in a very hopeful place I fear.

Dozens rally against Mubarak in Gainesville Saturday | Gainesville.com

2011-02-06T10:20:00.002-05:00

Dozens rally against Mubarak in Gainesville Saturday | Gainesville.com

Activists delivering Bradley Manning petition held at Quantico | Raw Story

2011-01-23T15:21:00.003-05:00

Activists delivering Bradley Manning petition held at Quantico | Raw Story
Update from Firedog lake:

In December 2010, House came forward with testimony that he witnessed a deterioration in Manning’s physical and mental state due to the conditions of solitary confinement. House traveled to the Quantico brig to check up on Bradley’s well-being after a week in which Manning’s lawyer filed an Article 138 complaint over Manning’s mistreatment at Quantico. House and Hamsher also planned to deliver a 42,000 signature strong petition calling for an end to the inhumane conditions that Manning is being held. Upon arriving at the main entrance at Quantico, House and Hamsher were stopped and detained by military police who provided no explanation of detainment aside from a statement from one MP that his orders to detain had “come from the top.”

From 1:00 – 1:30 MPs took their IDs and made them sign a form that they could not deviate to the brig or else they would be trespassing. At this time, one of the MPs asked for Hamsher’s auto insurance card. Hamsher attempted to produce a digital copy of the card, at which point MP Gunnery Sgt. Foster informed Hamsher that her car would be towed. House and Hamsher offered to drive away off the base but were denied, despite being detained only ten feet inside the base’s perimeter. The MPs took the Social Security numbers, phone numbers and addresses of House and Hamsher.

Around 1:40 the tow truck arrived and MPs instructed House and Hamsher to leave their vehicle, informing them that their vehicle would be searched. At 2:00 pm House observed military officers arriving and entering the MP outpost which oversaw his detainment. House expressed concern that he would miss Manning’s visiting hours but was informed that he could neither exit nor move forward to the base. No explanation for House and Hamsher’s detainment was provided until at 2:50 when they were informed they could leave the base. They were detained for two hours up until Manning’s visitation time period was set to expire at 3:00.

In past visits, Hamsher and House have had no problem driving onto the base to visit Manning. This is the first time House has been denied access to Manning. House and Hamsher’s detainment comes on the heels of Amnesty International calling for an investigation into the conditions of Manning’s confinement. The UN rapporteur has also announced that the UN will be starting an investigation and Manning’s attorney has filed an article 138 complaint citing inhumane and overly harsh conditions on part of the Brig. Now House, Manning’s primary visitor outside of his attorney, who has provided public testimony about Manning’s deteriorating conditions as a result to his solitary confinement, has effectively been denied access to Manning.

These reporters are still being detained as we publish this. Check back for updates.
By Daniel Tencer
Sunday, January 23rd, 2011 -- 2:35 pm

Activist reporters who tried to deliver a petition protesting Bradley Manning's treatment by the US military were blocked from seeing Manning and held against their will at Quantico on Sunday, while their cars were towed on seemingly flimsy pretenses, the reporters say.

FireDogLake blogger Jane Hamsher told her Twitter followers that she was detained at the gate to the US Marine base at Quantico when she showed up to deliver a petition signed by 42,000 people, demanding that the US military take Bradley Manning -- the alleged source of the State Department cables released by WikiLeaks -- out of solitary confinement.

"Now been here at Quantico gate for 30 min.," Hamsher tweeted early Sunday afternoon. "Will not let us leave base, holding us."

David House, a FireDogLake blogger and computer programmer who is one of very few people authorized to see Manning, reported similar issues as he arrived at Quantico on Sunday to ask Manning about conditions in the prison.

A Time to Break Silence – By Rev. Martin Luther King‏ Jr. : Veterans Today

2011-01-17T11:21:00.000-05:00

A Time to Break Silence – By Rev. Martin Luther King‏ Jr. : Veterans Today
A rainy MLK day and his speech against the war in Vietnam which earned him much criticism from the MSM. Not much has changed.

Playing God in the Middle East: an Iraqi Reassessment

2011-01-09T23:05:00.003-05:00

Michael Brenner: Playing God in the Middle East:
A rarely seen assessment of the cost to the Iraqi people of the American invasion of that country.

"We are now in the 10th year of the first decade of the 'war on terror.' So the inevitable anniversary assessments are beginning to appear. Iraq reappraisals specifically are back in vogue. They favor the drawing of balance sheets."

Brenner then offers an alternative to "Cost Benefit Analysis" remote from the realities of War:
...

here are some too readily slighted facts. 100,000 - 150,000 Iraqis are dead as the consequence of our invasion and occupation. That is the conservative estimate. Untold thousands are maimed and orphaned. 2 million are uprooted refugees in neighboring lands. Another 2 million are displaced persons internally. The availability of potable water and electricity is somewhat less than it was in February 2003. The comparable numbers for the United States would be 1.1 - 1.6 million dead; an equal number infirmed; 22 million refugees eking out a precarious existence in Mexico and Canada; 22 million displaced persons within the country. We did not do all the killing and maiming; we did most of the destruction of infrastructure. To all these tragedies we are accessories before and during the fact.

let me suggest a couple of ways to approximate that experience.

Step one. Go to your nearest cemetery; read and count the tombstones up to ten. Do that ten times, then multiply by a thousand. Try visualizing only half that number since it is in the nature of all of us to diminish drastically the affect and identity with those who are not part of our community.

Step two: go to RFK stadium, imagine it full. Do that 3 times and then imagine them all -- men, women and children -- in their graves. Repeat the exercise -- this time imagine them hobbling on one leg, lying crippled or blind on a cot in a cinderblock house. Imagine them as Americans -- men, women and children -- who placed USA stickers on their cars, chanted USA! USA! watching the Olympics, eating hot dogs and drinking Coke. Imagine them now six feet under. Imagine them all as the victims of an invasion and occupation by Iraqi Muslims who were deceived by their lying leaders who hid their own dark purposes.

Does this imply that pacifism is the only ethically acceptable conduct? No -- but it does give us a better fix on the true meaning of our shameful adventure in Iraq. Moreover, keep in mind that the Iraqis never gave us permission to do those things to them. We willfully imposed ourselves on them, did so based on the accusation of a fabricated threat that never existed.

Will we learn anything this time around (other than controlling the media is effective)?

Cost of War: Teacher Layoffs and War

2010-12-31T09:27:00.001-05:00

Editorial: Teacher Layoffs and War

Just one more example of the Cost of War and of the priorities exposed by the choices our Government is making on how to spend money.

Our government’s perverse definition of “national security” was on display again this summer. By large majorities, the U.S. Congress approved a so-called emergency appropriation of $33.5 billion to escalate the war in Afghanistan—adding to the more than $1 trillion that the United States has already spent waging wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Meanwhile, as schools faced the potential layoff of an estimated 300,000 teachers across the country, Congress dawdled until the second week in August, finally approving $10 billion to save the jobs of about half that number. The catch was that Congress “found” the money by cutting $12 billion in spending on food stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)—a measure that the Food Research and Action Center says will hurt 40 million people, almost half of them children, when the cuts take effect in 2014. As Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who voted for the bill, said, “I cannot in good conscience condone what we have taken away. . . . The bill shamefully pits these priorities against each other.”

This juxtaposition of robust war spending and inadequate support for education highlights the moral bankruptcy of political and economic leaders who seem to find endless piles of money to kill people abroad but not much to educate them at home. And, of course, the relationship is plain: The more dollars spent on war, the fewer available for human needs—whether alternative energy, food stamps, in-home elder care, public libraries, or keeping teachers in their classrooms.

And the morally bankrupt pattern that emerges makes you wonder if there is not indeed a plan here:

It’s worth pausing to ask: Who stands to gain by the jobs crisis in our country’s schools?

As Naomi Klein argues so powerfully in The Shock Doctrine, the “shock” of a calamity—whether natural or human created—offers opportunities for powerful interests to push their privatization, market-oriented schemes even more forcefully. This neoliberal agenda in education includes weakening teacher unions and dampening worker expectations, expanding charter schools, shifting curricular authority away from teachers and school communities to corporations, and establishing a regime of accountability through standardized tests. Oh yes, and squeezing more work out of school district employees for less money.

It’s not hard to recognize how a layoff crisis furthers this agenda. States starving for education money fall all over themselves in the Race to the Top competition, abolishing caps on the number of charter schools, tying teacher compensation to test scores, adopting national standards, and agreeing to “reconstitute” struggling schools.

So as people become more aware of the injustice and greed on display both in congress and in the workplace what can be done? The article points out the stark contrasts on display and some of the responses.

One Pot of Money

Simultaneously debating war funding and money to stave off teacher layoffs, as Congress did this summer, inadvertently draws attention to the truth that there is one pot of federal revenue, and how it gets allocated is a matter of political choice. Every dollar spent for war is a dollar not spent on children or other human needs.

If there is a silver lining to this crisis, it’s the increased activism along these lines that we see throughout the country—and the willingness to connect grievances. For example, this summer the United Auto Workers and Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition launched a campaign to “rebuild America with jobs, and justice, and peace.” This UAW/Rainbow PUSH initiative links demands “to rebuild the nation’s cities, provide jobs and education, enact a moratorium on foreclosures, and end the wars in the Middle East.

”

Stop the profiteering! Stop the War!

The Atlantic Archives: The Power Of Protest - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

2010-12-23T21:33:00.000-05:00

The Atlantic Archives: The Power Of Protest - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Andrew gives an example of protest under the Nazis in which Aryan wives of German Jews held a street protest of their detention that let to the freeing of those Jews. He then applies it to injustice in the US today:

To be clear, I am in no way suggesting that the Nazis and their misdeeds are "morally equivalent" to the contemporary sins of the French or the British, or the torture carried out by the Bush Administration, or the prison rape that so routinely occurs in the United States, or the many innocent civilians who are inadvertently killed by our overseas bombing campaigns.

But these are serious transgressions against morality and the propositions declared self-evident in our founding documents. That our leaders are often well-intentioned, that our systems successfully guard against atrocities better than so many others, and that we’re free to protest without fear of being gunned down or disappeared would seem to increase rather than decrease our obligation to dissent.

The big question is why don't more people rise up? the majority of the American people are against the war in Afghanistan. Why are there not more of them out on the street corner protesting with VFP?

UN to investigate treatment of jailed leaks suspect Bradley Manning | World news | The Guardian

2010-12-22T20:35:00.001-05:00

UN to investigate treatment of jailed leaks suspect Bradley Manning | World news | The Guardian

The United Nations is investigating a complaint on behalf of Bradley Manning that he is being mistreated while held since May in US Marine Corps custody pending trial. The army private is charged with the unauthorised use and disclosure of classified information, material related to the WikiLeaks, and faces a court martial sometime in 2011.

The office of Manfred Nowak, special rapporteur on torture based in Geneva, received the complaint from a Manning supporter; his office confirmed that it was being looked into. Manning's supporters say that he is in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day; this could be construed as a form of torture. This month visitors reported that his mental and physical health was deteriorating.

The costs of war-"The nation we are failing to build in Afghanistan is our own". -Katrina vanden Heuvel

2010-12-22T11:34:00.000-05:00

Katrina vanden Heuvel - The costs of war

Another analysis of the review of "progress in Afghanistan" released this week.

Some highlights:

We're spending $100 billion a year on a country that had a gross domestic product of a little more than $2 billion when we invaded in 2001. We manage this feat only by helping to fund both sides of the conflict (much of the aid ends up in the hands of the Taliban as well as regional warlords who don't support the Karzai government). The military focus displaces attention that should be devoted to regional diplomacy and a political settlement within Afghanistan

She then focuses on how this multi-billion investment plays out at home:

Missing in the president's review are the actual costs of the war. That includes what economists call "opportunity costs," or what we miss by continuing this course. By 2014, this administration will have spent more than $700 billion on Afghanistan directly. Poverty is an unfashionable word in Washington, but it afflicts a record 43 million Americans. Childhood poverty is rising. Nationally, only one in seven black male teens held any type of job in the first quarter of this year. We should not fool ourselves: A generation of children raised on dangerous streets is being condemned to a life of misery - hunger, broken families, unemployment, drugs and crime. The nation we are failing to build in Afghanistan is our own.

If poverty is too liberal a concern, consider the costs of Afghanistan to our economic competitiveness. America is literally falling apart. Our aged and decrepit infrastructure is becoming a clear and present danger. Lives are lost when a bridge falls in Minneapolis or the levees collapse in New Orleans. SUVs are swallowed by collapsing sewage systems in New York. Children go to schools judged dangerous to their health. Hours are lost when aged train switches freeze, sewer systems collapse or traffic snarls. Even the basics of civilization, such as access to clean water, are increasingly at risk because of aging and leaky sewage systems. Our electric grid, our broadband system and our transportation system all lag behind those of global competitors. Combine the $700 billion spent in Afghanistan and the $700 billion to be squandered on tax breaks for the richest 1 percent of Americans over the next decade, and you have real money, even for Washington. Money that this increasingly challenged country can no longer afford to waste.

And finally the investment in human capital echos John Kerrys words about Vietnam.

Notably absent in the commentary about the president's review, too, are the war's human costs. The service of those in our volunteer army is routinely praised on all sides. The Democratic Congress under President George W. Bush and Obama committed itself to improving military pay, educational benefits and medical and psychological care. But celebrating servicemembers' courage ignores the basic question: How do you ask young men and women to give their life or limbs for a cause that you know is lost? Or worse, has no justifiable purpose?

To Sum it up: We ain't learned nothin yet and our war profits industries and their "Masters of War" do not want to learn about the consequences of their profits.

Why VFP tied themselves to the White House Fence or What's Missing in the Latest Afghanistan Review | Stephen M. Walt

2010-12-21T12:06:00.003-05:00

What's Missing in the Latest Afghanistan Review | Stephen M. Walt

We saw the heart felt demonstration against War by VFP members last week. Now look at this article analyzing the facts and consequences of the Afghanistan war which is becoming the Pakistan war with a little history thrown in to remind us that we have been this way before and it did not turn out well. by Stephen Walt:

The article begins with these two New York Times articles:
"U.S. Will Widen War on Militants Inside Pakistan" and "Germany Will Begin Afghan Exit Next Year."

Walt questions the Policy Review as being more politics than reality:

what's missing in all this role-playing was a clear and convincing statement of costs and benefits. For all the talk of defeating al Qaeda (which isn't in Afghanistan any more), or preventing "safe havens," the administration scrupulously avoided the question of whether the money spent, lives lost, and presidential time consumed is worth it in terms of advancing core American interests.

If you look at the first headline above it is clear that we are now fighting in Pakistan. Chapter 14 already has Memorial Day tombstones dedicated to US soldiers who died in Pakistan. Walt's more strategic take:

the news that the United States intends to expand the war even further into Pakistan is especially worrisome. On the one hand, it suggests that the administration has figured out that it cannot ever win in Afghanistan so long as the Taliban have a safe haven across the border (and the tacit or active support of some key elements in the Pakistani military). But as Anatol Lieven notes in The Nation, unleashing additional violence in Pakistan could have long-term destabilizing consequences that would be far more significant than whatever ultimately happens in Afghanistan.

He also brings in a chilling historical parallel here:

And it is hard not to see echoes of Nixon's decision to invade Cambodia in 1970, in a failed attempt to eradicate Viet Cong bases there. The two situations are hardly identical, but both illustrate the tendency for wars to expand in both the scope and extent of violence, especially when they aren't going well.

In any case it will mean for our chapter and for the American people that there will be more tombstones next year honoring the dead from Pakistan. I still hold im my memory an Army pilot friend from Vietnam who flew into Cambodia and whose plane went down in flames and remains MIA.

If history holds true the people of Pakistan will pay an even higher price. Walt remembers what the result of US intervention for the Cambodian people:

Let's not forget that the invasion of Cambodia in 1970 also helped destabilize that country, and helped usher in the brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge. I'm not predicting a similar outcome here, but that example is a cruel reminder that military force is a crude instrument whose ultimate effects are difficult to anticipate in advance.

And finally the long view:

Decades from now, historians will look back and wonder how the United States allowed itself to get bogged down in a long and costly war to determine the political fate of landlocked country whose entire gross national product is about a quarter the size of the New York city budget. And when they reflect on the fact that the United States did this even after a major financial collapse and in the face of persistent budget deficits and macroeconomic imbalances, they will shake their heads in amazement.

YouTube - Veterans for Peace White House Civil Disobedience to End War

2010-12-20T09:48:00.000-05:00

YouTube - Veterans for Peace White House Civil Disobedience to End War

Chris Hedges Message of Hope at the http://www.blogger.com/blog_this.pyra?&n=YouTube+-+Veterans+for+Peace+White+House+Civil+Disobedience+to+End+War&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DtOde31QYbI0%26feature%3Dplayer_embedded&t&pli=1

Thanks to Bill for sending this out on the listserve. Great video of an great speech about why we protest.

The U.S.S. Prius - NYTimes.com

2010-12-19T17:26:00.000-05:00

The U.S.S. Prius - NYTimes.com

Unlike the Congress, which can be bought off by Big Oil and Big Coal, it is not so easy to tell the Marines that they can’t buy the solar power that could save lives. I don’t know what the final outcome in Iraq or Afghanistan will be, but if we come out of these two wars with a Pentagon-led green revolution, I know they won’t be a total loss. Wars that were driven partly by our oil addiction end up forcing us to break our oil addiction? Wouldn’t that be interesting?

VIDEO: Veterans for Peace Take Demand to White House Fence - Democratic Underground

2010-12-16T17:23:00.000-05:00

VIDEO: Veterans for Peace Take Demand to White House Fence - Democratic Underground\

Ellsberg, VFP members and Other Anti-War Protesters To Chain Themselves To White House Fence

2010-12-15T20:59:00.002-05:00

Ellsberg, Other Anti-War Protesters To Chain Themselves To White House FenceDan Froomkin
Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and several dozen other anti-war protesters will be chaining themselves to the White House fence, inviting arrest in the name of peace.
"We are dedicated to exposing the true costs of war and militarism," explained Mike Ferner, the president of Veterans for Peace, the group organizing Thursday's Lafayette Square rally and civil disobedience.

"We've killed well over a million people. We've orphaned and displaced five times that number at least. And here in our own country, we've managed to throw millions of people of out work and out of their homes," Ferner told reporters at a press conference Wednesday. "There is a connection there. That connection is the true cost of war."

Citing information available for every city and state in America on the Cost of War website, the former Navy hospital corpsman noted that his hometown of Toledo alone has sent almost a billion dollars into the war effort.

Obama is expected to cite "progress" in the war as he releases a review of American strategy in Afghanistan. During his visit to Bagram Air Force Base earlier this month, the president telegraphed his position by telling the troops that "thanks to your service, we are making important progress. You are protecting your country."

Ellsberg, the former military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971 as an act of protest against the Vietnam War, took particular umbrage at Obama's claim that the troops in Afghanistan are keeping Americans safe.

"I regard that last assurance as a lie. As a big lie," he said. Ellsberg said Obama knew full well when he announced a major troop-escalation plan a year ago that the war was unwinnable, and that putting in more troops would actually bolster the Taliban -- and, by extension, al Qaeda -- by helping their recruiting efforts.
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"It is our military operations that are not only failing to protect Americans, they are endangering Americans," said Ellsberg, 79, for whom this will be the 80th civil disobedience arrest.

"There comes a time when you need to put your body in it," said former CIA analyst-turned-activist Ray McGovern, paraphrasing Martin Luther King, Jr. "If the making of peace means prison, that's where we need to be."

"We are hoping that our actions will spark resistance everywhere," said Veterans for Peace Vice President Leah Bolger. "We are hoping to make people question what the government is doing in our name."

A brief rally is scheduled for 10 a.m. across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House with remarks from Ellsberg, McGovern, Ferner, "Peace Mom" Cindy Sheehan, Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin, and others.

Protesters will then head for the White House, where organizers hope 100 or more people with chain themselves to the fence and get arrested.

The Reaction of Governments to Wikileaks Should Scare the Hell Out of You

2010-12-08T20:48:00.002-05:00

a Tweet that says it all:

The Reaction of Governments to Wikileaks Should Scare the Hell Out of You

A Marine's review of Wikileaks ongoing battle with government secrecy.

Roberto Arguedas is a public school teacher in Atlanta with a focus on diplomatic history. He served in the Marine infantry in Fallujah (post Phantom Fury) and Ramadi (during the surge). He blogs at Philistine Vulgarity about politics, games, and more.

His comments on the free speech aspects of this new kind of electronic conflict are especially relevant.

Finally, the reaction of governments to these leaks should scare the hell out of you. The seemingly inevitable arrest (via Reddit) of Julian Assange by British authorities on Swedish sexual assault charges as encouraged by the American government likely represents a 21st century remix of the classic honeypot, and the willingness to use it on such a high profile individual should be worrisome irrespective of the veracity of the charges. It's just the tip of the iceberg, though. Apart from Facebook's notably understated position, the ease and rapidity with which corporations across the US and the world were reminded of where the fishes sleep should be of tremendous concern. If Amazon, credit card companies, Paypal, and Swiss banks are the big stories with their reliance on technicalities to wriggle out of their responsibilities in obvious response to government pressure, it is EveryDNS being brazenly strongarmed into abdicating its role as a neutral gatekeeper that should set the tone for future conversations about net neutrality.

The potential for Comcast or Verizon abusing their place in the food chain pales in comparison to an overt example of governments colluding to silence what they can't defeat in court with intimidation and technological warfare. Naturally, some will point to the "hacktivist" response (apologies if that's your first exposure to that term) as an equal and opposite reaction: while possibly emotionally gratifying, in the end it has the same outcome of discouraging corporate work with transparency organizations since dealing with governments is not as easy to opt out of. As Senator Joseph Lieberman makes clear (via Cory), it's easy for unscrupulous advocates of censorship to view this as an opportunity, a watershed that brings together their traditional loathing of old media with contemporary technology.

Wikileaks and the New McCarthyism: Maybe we Just Need a More Open Government | Julian Assange Interviews

2010-12-05T09:48:00.004-05:00

Wikileaks and the New McCarthyism: Maybe we Just Need a More Open Government | Informed Comment

Juan Cole's take on Wikileaks:

A big issue in the Wikileaks controversy has to do with restrictions on freedom of speech in a democratic society, and the use of pressure tactics and of corporate policy to curb speech that is not shown to be illegal. That tendency is very troubling, and recalls the strong arm tactics of the House of Representatives, the FBI, and major corporations during the McCarthy era.

Wikileaks continues to be under political pressure (I say political rather than legal because as far as I can tell, the organization has not been indicted or formally charged with wrongdoing), and I found it impossible to get through to their new Swiss site this morning. But there are now lots of mirror sites up all over Europe. The documents are also being made available via torrents that can be picked up through peer to peer (p2p) networks. Presumably the more important cables are in the “insurance” file available at the various wikileaks mirror sites and also via torrents, and which founder Julian Assange says has been downloaded 100,000 times. An encryption key will be disseminated if anything happens to the organization.

He also comments on the effects of the document dumps form a historian's point of view and quotes Robert Gates:

On the other hand, I don’t see the leaks as the end of the world. Most of the authors of the cables have been rotated to another embassy by now, and leaders come and go. There is no evidence of anyone being killed because of the leaks, though one German spy for the US has been summarily fired. I saw Robert M. Gates on Aljazeera reacting to the leaks in Realist fashion. He said that countries interact with the US for three reasons. Some are friendly and interact on that basis. Others are enemies and seek engagement for that very reason. Still others think they need the US. Gates said he didn’t see in what way the leaked cables would change any of those three sorts of relationship. And he is right.

Open culture provides interviews with Julian Assange that may illuminate his position more fully:

A key passage explaining Assange’s world view appears below, and you can get the full profile right here. Next up, we have Chris Anderson, the head of TED, in conversation Assange. The interview, running 20 minutes, tells you essentially “Why the World Needs WikiLeaks.” And then why not add to the list Forbes’ lengthy interview with Assange, published earlier this week. (Thanks Avi for that.)

He had come to understand the defining human struggle not as left versus right, or faith versus reason, but as individual versus institution. As a student of Kafka, Koestler, and Solzhenitsyn, he believed that truth, creativity, love, and compassion are corrupted by institutional hierarchies, and by “patronage networks”—one of his favorite expressions—that contort the human spirit. He sketched out a manifesto of sorts, titled “Conspiracy as Governance,” which sought to apply graph theory to politics. Assange wrote that illegitimate governance was by definition conspiratorial—the product of functionaries in “collaborative secrecy, working to the detriment of a population.” He argued that, when a regime’s lines of internal communication are disrupted, the information flow among conspirators must dwindle, and that, as the flow approaches zero, the conspiracy dissolves. Leaks were an instrument of information warfare.

America's Two Faces | Republic or Empire

2010-12-04T11:05:00.002-05:00

America's Two Faces | Stephen M. Walt

Some perspective on this question by looking at History, specifically the history of Britain's bargain with Hitler before WWII and how that affected the British public's view of their society and its role int he world. I am presently reading Cleopatra by the historian Stacy Schiff and that history is set at the Transition for the Roman empire from Republic to Dictatorship. The picture of Roman politics with its anything to gain power impetus and the hurling of lies and epithets between political opponents (Marc Anthony and Octavian) show a disturbing parallel to present day American political life, from the lies and propaganda to the bread and circuses for the masses.

Stephen Waite comments on a essay called "Post Munich" in the Novel Two Cheers for Democracy by EM Forester: "The essay is called "Post-Munich," and it is a reflection, written in 1939, on the curious political psychology that gripped England after Chamberlain made his deal with Hitler. He describes the country as in a strange double-state: still deeply fearful, and yet simultaneously distractible by the routines of life promised through the deal. Here is what Forster writes:

'This state of being half-frightened and half-thinking about something else at the same time is the state of many English people today. It is worth examining, partly because it is interesting, partly because, like all mixed states, it can be improved by thought.'

Forster goes on to describe why it is so hard to break free and face what needs to be done:

'We are urged. . . to face facts, and we ought to. But we can only face them by being double-faced. The facts lie in opposite directions, and no exhortation will group them into a single field. No slogan works. All is lost if the totalitarians destroy us. But all is equally lost if we have nothing left to lose.'" If you just substitute terrorists for totalitarians and terrorism for fascism, you have a pretty good picture of our politics today. But here's the important question this raises in my mind:

Why, I ask myself, does the United States today seem like England after Munich? The Taliban are not Hitler. I think it is because we have indulged this same appeasement, but with ourselves. We are on both sides of the bargain: we are the world's threatening tyrant, and we are the world's best hope for freedom. And rather than fight out that battle, we have decided we can have it both ways. We have walked up to the fundamental choice that we face about our role in the world, and we have made a Munich pact with ourselves instead of choosing liberty and democracy for all. The point here is that it is as unstable and unholy a pact as Munich. It will come undone, and it should come undone. But then the real choice and the real peril will confront us."

My reaction: I reproduced his email because I think Chris is on to something (just as Forster was back in 1939). Americans think we ought to be managing the whole world, but we shouldn't have to pay taxes or sacrifice our way of life in order to do it. We use our military machine to kill literally tens of thousands of Muslims in different countries, and then we are surprised when a handful of them get mad and try (usually not every effectively) to hit us back. But then we docilely submit to all sorts of degrading and costly procedures at airports, because we demand to be protected from threats whose origins we've been refusing to talk about honestly for years. We are constantly warned about grave dangers, secret plots, impending confrontations, slow-motion crises, etc., and we are told that these often hypothetical scenarios justify compromising liberties here at home and engaging in practices (torture, targeted assassinations, preventive missile strikes at suspected terrorists, etc.) that we would roundly condemn if anyone else did them. We think it is an outrage when North Korea shells a South Korean island and kills four people, (correct), yet it is just "business as usual" when one of our drones hits some innocent civilians in Pakistan or Yemen. We have disdain for our politics and our politicians, but instead of questioning the institutions and practices that fuel this dysfunction, we indulge in fairy tales about so-called leaders who will somehow lead us out of the darkness."

Wait Concludes:
"...the lesson here is that the United States cannot be a republic and an empire, because the latter inevitably ends up corrupting the former. This is the central point raised by the late Chalmers Johnson (who passed away last week), by Andrew Bacevich, and by a number of other thoughtful people. It is an issue that gets raised in various corners of the blogosphere, but hardly ever in the mainstream press and certainly not at most of the think tanks and talk shops inside the Beltway, most of whom are devoted custodians of energetic international activism. And until that debate starts happening in a serious way, we will continue to stumble about, simultaneously bearing the weight of the world and being afraid of our own shadow. "

Only 48 hours Left for Vets to Claim Stop Loss Money - Heads Up!

2010-12-01T18:23:00.001-05:00

Only 48 hours Left for Vets to Claim Stop Loss Money -

Do you know someone who served in Iraq or Afghanistan and was stop-lossed?

IAVA fought hard in Washington D.C., and recently, Congress passed legislation that entitles veterans who were stop-lossed after September 11th, 2001 to additional pay. But time is running out, and there are just two more days for them to collect the pay they've earned.

Help us get the word out by forwarding this email to any eligible veteran you might know. They can learn more at IAVA’s Stop Loss HQ.

Eligible veterans can receive $500 for each month they were held under stop loss orders. Survivors of servicemembers who were killed in combat or died after their service are also entitled to compensation. The deadline to apply is this Friday, December 3rd.

Getting stop loss back pay is simple. Click here to visit the IAVA Stop Loss HQ and get all the details.

Please help us spread the word by forwarding this email to vets who might be eligible for this benefit. Let's make sure no one misses out.

Thanks for having our back.

Tom

Tom Tarantino
Senior Legislative Associate
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA)

A teacher's reflection upon words from Martin Luther King on The Path to War that American has chosen and the values that lead us down that path

2010-11-21T11:02:00.003-05:00

Daily Kos: A Sunday reflection upon words
A teacher whose ideas I greatly respect writes on Daily Kos about politics and education. He reminds us here of the prophetic words of Dr Martin Luther King spoken 40 years ago at Riverside Church in NYC: "A Time to Break Silence".

"A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood."

As a very few of us attend the Tillman film this weekend the message of the film is echoed in this 40 year old speech on War, Hate, and greed versus love wisdom and justice. Unfortunately nothing seems to have changed in 40 years.

Read the rest of the article on this speech at the link above.

Cost of War: The War Economy pits Social Security against Defense : Veterans Today

2010-11-14T15:27:00.002-05:00

The War Economy pits Social Security against Defense : Veterans Today

This is a new source on veterans news I found recently and they are responding to the VFP War Economy compaign with some cold hard facts from Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz who also has provided some of the data we have used for several years on the Gainesville chapter 14 Cost of War project.

Recently we posted two articles based on media releases from Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) and Veterans for Peace on how they propose launching a public awareness campaign to educate the American electorate on how to connect the dots between the Trillion Dollar Wars and meltdown of the U.S. Economy.

In fact the projected fiscal cost of the War on Terror has increase from one trillion in 2005 to over three trillion and growing by 2008. This is a fiscal conservative’s nightmare just THINKING about how much the 2011 price tag of the wars will be unless of course you are a fiscal conservative who benefits from the wars. Source: The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Veterans Day 2010: Honor the Consciences of Our Veterans? Bring them home!

2010-11-11T21:03:00.003-05:00

t r u t h o u t | Veterans Day 2010: Honor the Consciences of Our Veterans
This is a Veterans Day greeting that VFP can honor.

At my school today they held a Veterans Day breakfast. Four WWII vets were there from the local Veterans retirement home. We all stood and introduced ourselves. Every service was there but most of the participants were older, perhaps the experiences for us have faded and are less painful. I stood and identified my service and my Vietnam tour of duty and ended with "I am proud to be a member of Veterans for Peace". There were several affirming nods in the crowd from other veterans. It felt good.

On How War with Iran might Destroy the United States | Informed Comment

2010-11-02T17:01:00.000-05:00

On How War with Iran might Destroy the United States | Informed Comment:

"I can’t think of anything that would be worse for the US economy, or for Obama’s prospects for a second term, than going to a war footing with Iran. And, my own experience is that if you go to a war footing with a country, you have to be prepared for things spinning out of control and into actual war. Since Americans go running to their congressmen demanding a repeal of the Bill of Rights every time there is a little pipe bomb somewhere, anything that might cause terrorism on US soil is deadly to our over 200 year old Republic. My guess is that a third war right about now, for the reasons outlined above, would just about finish us off as a nation."

YouTube - Shalom Rav - Hebrew Prayer for Peace

2010-10-24T06:45:00.000-05:00

YouTube - Shalom Rav - Hebrew Prayer for Peace

A music video full of symbols of peace. VFP is in there!

Biggest Document Leak in History Exposes Real War and confirms the reports from Winter Soldier II

2010-10-23T18:27:00.001-05:00

t r u t h o u t | Biggest Document Leak in History Exposes Real War: "The data reveals how hundreds of civilians were killed by coalition forces in unreported events.

There are numerous claims of prison abuse by coalition forces even after the Abu Ghraib scandal. The files also paint a disturbing portrait of widespread torture in Iraqi detention facilities.

As the war progresses the documents record a descent into chaos and horror as the occupation sparked civil war. In case after case, the logs record thousands of bodies, many brutally tortured, dumped on the streets of Iraq.

Through these reports we see, in military snapshots, the full impact the war had on Iraqis – men, women and children. The sheer scale of the deaths, detentions and violence is laid bare for the first time."

Justice Through The Looking Glass - Blow back from Torture at Gitmo

2010-10-19T17:21:00.001-05:00

Justice Through The Looking Glass - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

"The system determining the guilt or innocence of many prisoners still detained at Gitmo has long been haphazard. One prosecution recently collapsed because the judge was honest enough not to admit testimony procured through torture"

However the US Government has fought back and perhpas the fight has not always been fair or even legal:

"It involves one Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman, whose release from custody was ordered earlier this year by Judge Henry Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy effectively demolished the credibility of many government witnesses and pointed out big discrepancies in its case. The ruling was published, then suddenly withdrawn, then re-published with vast amounts of the ruling stricken from public view. The redactions were not solely to prevent release of classified information, but to omit the key findings of the case against the government. "

read the link above for more details on how the "Facts" were changed when the Judge was forced to rewrite his opinion.

Ron Paul Was Right - About Imperialism!

2010-10-15T20:42:00.000-05:00

Ron Paul Was Right - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political science professor and former Air Force lecturer, will present findings on Capitol Hill on Tuesday that argue that the majority of suicide terrorism around the world since 1980 has had a common cause: military occupation.

Sign the Petition | Committee to Stop FBI Repression

2010-10-13T21:39:00.001-05:00

VFP IS APPALLED BY THE RECENT ACTIONS OF THE FBI

Like other peace advocates, Veterans For Peace is appalled by the heavy-handed actions of the FBI in raiding the homes of anti-war activists. We would also be astonished by those actions were it not for the FBI’s long history of harassing peaceful dissent. From the disgraced leadership of J. Edgar Hoover down to these 2010 raids in Minneapolis and Chicago, the Bureau has allowed itself to become the dark agent of stifling democratic opposition to America’s embarrassing military adventures abroad and its resistance to equality at home.

The idea that the victims of these home invasions are providing “material support of terrorism” by opposing brutal U.S. foreign occupations is ludicrous. It strikes at the very heart of the freedoms that VFP members thought they were donning the uniform to defend. For those of us who sought to protect democracy from alien forces it is particularly disheartening to watch that democracy now being eroded from within by our own government. Are we truly to believe that the FBI is all that stands between us and the terrorism of the Quakers, the Catholic Worker, Greenpeace, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals?

It is further more than a little ironic that these raids of harassment should occur only a week after the Justice Department Inspector General himself concluded that the FBI does indeed have a long sorry history of baseless intimidation of dissenters to American policy. Veterans For Peace members themselves were victims of these actions surrounding the infamous police violation of dissenter rights at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Republican Convention in 2008.

As veterans and as seekers of peace we stand in solidarity with our comrades in sister organizations who are victims of this sinister FBI action. Who knows who its next targets will be? Pressing our government to withdraw from aggressive and mindless wars should be viewed as heroic activity, not a hostile act subject to persecution.

PETITION LINK Sign the Petition | Committee to Stop FBI Repression

Cost of War Song: "End of the Ship" by Roy Zimmerman

2010-10-09T09:36:00.001-05:00

YouTube - "End of the Ship" by Roy Zimmerman

How is the War Economy Treating You?

Cost of War: More Than Half The World's Defense Spending - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

2010-10-05T17:02:00.000-05:00

More Than Half The World's Defense Spending - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Yesterday Arthur Brooks of AEI, Ed Feulner of Heritage, and Bill Kristol banded together to defend our bloated defense budget.

Some responses:
Gordon Adams responds

"Brooks-Feulner-Kristol fail to point out that it is economically impossible to get the deficit and debt under control unless all spending (and revenues) are on the table. Picking on the other parts of the problem, alone would mean gutting all domestic spending, eliminating much of Medicare and Social Security, or raising taxes into the 80% brackets. And, of course, what they (and, sadly, Secretary Gates) want to do – keep defense off the table – is political death to deficit reduction and debt control – everything will be on the table."

And Paul Waldman puts the debate in context:

"[T]oday, with the Soviet Union gone, we account for most of the world's defense spending -- 54 percent in 2009, according to a recent report. That's right: There are 195 countries on planet Earth, and if you added up the military spending of the 194 of them that aren't the United States, you'd still have less than what we are spending."

Veterans for Peace in Washington this weekend: War is the Obscenity | CommonDreams.org

2010-10-03T08:23:00.001-05:00

Veterans for Peace: War is the Obscenity | CommonDreams.org
National President of VFP Mike Ferner, 59, who served as a navy corpsman during Vietnam said:

"The American public should be shocked that we are still killing and crippling thousands of innocent people in these countries as well as our own soldiers -- that's what's truly obscene. Blowing people's arms and legs off, burning, paralyzing them, causing sewage to run through their streets, polluting the water that kills and sickens children, terrorizing and bombing people and their livestock with flying robots-- that defines obscenity. If this banner shocks and offends a single person who hasn't been shocked and offended by what's being done in our name, we've accomplished our mission."

Cost of War - Their Moon Shot and Ours - NYTimes.com

2010-10-03T06:41:00.003-05:00

Op-Ed Columnist - Their Moon Shot and Ours - NYTimes.com

"China is doing moon shots. Yes, that’s plural. When I say “moon shots” I mean big, multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing investments. China has at least four going now: one is building a network of ultramodern airports; another is building a web of high-speed trains connecting major cities; a third is in bioscience, where the Beijing Genomics Institute this year ordered 128 DNA sequencers — from America — giving China the largest number in the world in one institute to launch its own stem cell/genetic engineering industry; and, finally, Beijing just announced that it was providing $15 billion in seed money for the country’s leading auto and battery companies to create an electric car industry, starting in 20 pilot cities. In essence, China Inc. just named its dream team of 16-state-owned enterprises to move China off oil and into the next industrial growth engine: electric cars.

Not to worry. America today also has its own multi-billion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing moon shot: fixing Afghanistan."

Read the rest on how electric cars can restore American middle class or destroy it and how if we do we succeed we must work with China not against them for a win -win.

Taxpayers receipt: Notice military spending is close to the top!

2010-09-30T18:41:00.001-05:00

Ezra Klein - Shouldn't taxpayers get a receipt?

Her's an example:

Students for a Democratic Society protest at FBI office - The Independent Florida Alligator: Local & State

2010-09-28T20:22:00.001-05:00

Students for a Democratic Society protest at FBI office - The Independent Florida Alligator: Local & State

The protest which included members and associates of Vets for Peace was in response to the raids on anti war activists homes around the country under the Patriot Act.

Petty Politics While Gay Troops Fight On, Ctd - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

2010-09-22T19:50:00.001-05:00

Petty Politics While Gay Troops Fight On, Ctd - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Gainesville community shows peace and unity on September 11 anniversary | Gainesville.com

2010-09-12T19:22:00.005-05:00

Contrary to what the major media chose to cover, our local paper and my own personal experiences of the happenings in Gainesville Florida over the 9/11 weekend were full of positive loving meetings between the diverse Faiths and cultures that have coexisted in our town for many years. The weekend ended for me at my local Unitarian Fellowship where two Muslim families attended as guests and their children got to participate in our annual water play and the adults enjoyed our choir's performance of an Iraqi peace song and lullaby sung in Arabic. On Saturday night we attended the candle light vigil and listened to community leaders speak out in support of peace and love and community.

Community leaders at the downtown Plaza spoke for peace on Saturday evening.

Shaunita Wells holds Eli Wells as a member of Veterans for Peace lights his candle during a vigil at the Day for Peace and Unity event, sponsored by the Gainesville Muslim Initiative, at the Bo Diddley Community Plaza.

Gainesville community shows peace and unity on September 11 anniversary | Gainesville.com
By Cindy Swirko
Staff writers
"A week of drama that focused the world's eyes on Gainesville because of a preacher's plan to burn the Quran ended Saturday night with charity, fellowship and a candlelight memorial to those who perished in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."

Saturday afternoon many of our friends participated in a peaceful protest march lead by UF students to show public opposition of the hate speech our town has so sadly been associated with for the past several weeks.

About 300 people joined the Students for a Democratic Society to protest Dove World Outreach Center on Saturday.
Erica Brough/ Staff Photographer

On Friday evening I attended the Gathering for Peace, Understanding and Hope at Trinity Methodist just a block from the Dove compound

Gainesville Mayor Craig Lowe speaks during the “Gathering for Peace, Understanding and Hope” at Trinity United Methodist Church on Friday.

This Methodist church with over a thousand members hosted an interfaith event with food and children's crafts, music and speakers from all faiths. Many hundreds of people attended (when I was there the giant sanctuary was packed). Uf has a large Muslim community from the middle east, India and Africa and Asia and many showed up dressed in their native attire. I watched a young father, a professor at UF from Pakistan, in his native robe with his middle school aged daughter dressed in a beautiful long red gown leaning on his arm, as he was interviewed by a NY news outlet. I sat on the carpet with two young women in head scarves and talked to one of them about her work at UF to become an occupational therapist. A friend's' child sat with her as she talked of her love of children and desire to work with disabled students. The local Imam read from the Koran and translated into English the story of Jesus and Mary as it is related with great reverence in the Muslim holy book that Terry Jones wanted to burn and has admitted he has never read. Do these people sound like terrorists to you? we would never have had this event or the several others attended by hundreds more people without Mr Jones so I guess some good is coming from this in Gainesville. These are the kinds of events that need to happen all over our country. They are exactly what is needed to stop the spread of Islamaphobia which is casting over a billion people like the ones I met Friday night as terrorists. They aren't and its wrong and we all need to do something about it. Form an interfaith alliance or join the one already in your town and get to know your neighbors!

Mary Bahr, Gainesville Vets for Peace

on Saturday afternoon hundreds of UF students and local residents marched to the Dove compound and protested against their hate speech. A local t shirt factory has given away 2000 Love not Dove tshirts. They started with 200 and donations have kept them going, working nights so they could do their regular orders during the day. On Saturday evening hundreds more residents turned out at the local town plaza to feed the homeless, give blood and donate books for reading instead of burning. Dozens of community leaders of all faiths spoke for peace, love and community in America before our candle light vigil with Muslims, Christians and Jews standing shoulder to shoulder in a silent remembrance of 9/11. We are all amazed and delighted at the outpouring of love and solidarity in this community this weekend and we plan to continue what has begun with Muslim Christian dialogues sponsored by local churches and Quran 101 classes from Islam on Campus and a community open house at the local Mosque. For more fact based information about Muslims, 9/11 and war read Juan Cole's blog Informed Comment. He is an expert on the Middle East married to a Lebanese woman and write and professor at U of Michigan. A few facts from that article which focuses on how the 9/11 terrorism broke Islamic Law: The attack destroyed a Mosque located in the World trade center, dozens of Muslims were killed including some who were rescue personnel. Cole says: "By the laws of classical Islam and the instructions of the Qumran, then, the September 11 act of terrorism was illegal. It is not an affirmation of Islam but a departure from its laws of war. That is why, contrary to popular belief, Muslim authorities have roundly condemned al-Qaeda’s actions in no uncertain terms. "

Gainesville community shows peace and unity on September 11 anniversary | Gainesville.com

2010-09-12T19:21:00.000-05:00

Gainesville community shows peace and unity on September 11 anniversary | Gainesville.com:

"A week of drama that focused the world's eyes on Gainesville because of a preacher's plan to burn the Quran ended Saturday night with charity, fellowship and a candlelight memorial to those who perished in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."

Simpson to disabled vets: You cost too much

2010-08-31T17:43:00.000-05:00

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

RALEIGH, N.C.—The system that automatically awards disability benefits to some veterans because of concerns about Agent Orange seems contrary to efforts to control federal spending, the Republican co-chairman of President Barack Obama's deficit commission said Tuesday.

Former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson's comments came a day after The Associated Press reported that diabetes has become the most frequently compensated ailment among Vietnam veterans, even though decades of research has failed to find more than a possible link between the defoliant Agent Orange and diabetes.

"The irony (is) that the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess," said Simpson, an Army veteran who was once chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee....

"It's the kind of thing that's just driving us to this $1 trillion, $400 billion deficit this year," Simpson said. "It's not that I'm an uncaring person, but common sense is the most uncommon thing in Washington."

Just like the irony of millions of Americans paying into Social Security on the promise that they would receive benefits back, while the rich get off the hook for repaying the fund they "borrowed" from for their tax cuts and wars. Disabled vets are just like seniors--those "lesser people" of Simpson's, the ones who fought our wars. Those disabled vets that our own military poisoned while they were serving, can just shove it.

This comes right on the heels of an announcement from Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Eric K. Shinseki that the VA, with the "unwavering support of President Obama," is finally doing the right thing by those veterans exposed to Agent Orange. In announcing this, Shinseki said "the President and I are proud to finally provide this group of Veterans the care and benefits they have long deserved."

Maybe this attack from Simpson will be enough for President Obama to give Simpson the boot.

Our Only Existing Jobs Program Is the Military -- an Insane Way to Keep Americans employed | Economy | AlterNet

2010-08-12T16:30:00.001-05:00

Our Only Existing Jobs Program Is the Military -- an Insane Way to Keep Americans employed | Economy |
AlterNet:
Something w all know but with statistics to back it up:

"Over 1,400,000 Americans are now on active duty; another 833,000 are in the reserves, many full time. Another 1,600,000 Americans
work in companies that supply the military with everything from weapons to utensils. (I'm not even including all the foreign contractors employing non-US citizens.)"

"If we didn't have this giant military jobs program, the U.S. unemployment rate would be over 11.5 percent today instead of 9.5 percent.

And without our military jobs program personal incomes would be dropping faster. The Commerce Department reported Monday the only major metro areas where both net earnings and personal incomes rose last year were San Antonio, Texas, Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. -- because all three have high concentrations of military and federal jobs.

This isn't an argument for more military spending. Just the opposite. Having a giant undercover military jobs program is an insane way to keep Americans employed. It creates jobs we don't need but we keep anyway because there's no honest alternative. We don't have an overt jobs program based on what's really needed."

see the complete article at the link above

DC Circuit, Want to Rethink that Habeas Ruling for Afghan Detainees?

2010-08-10T08:20:00.001-05:00

DC Circuit, Want to Rethink that Habeas Ruling? | Emptywheel

Back in May, the DC Circuit decided that detainees at Bagram Air Force base were not entitled to habeas corpus because, since the base is in an active war zone, it would be unduly burdensome for the government to hold a real hearing.

I’m wondering if the DC Circuit would like to rethink that decision?

After all, in July, the Afghans proved themselves capable of holding a trial in the very same base in which Americans claim to be helpless to do the same, relying on assistance from US military lawyers who claim to be unable to hold their own meaningful hearings.

The chief judge asked God’s forgiveness if he had reached the wrong decision, and then he sentenced four members of an Afghan family charged with making bombs: two brothers to 10 years in prison and two other family members to time already served.

The courtroom, deep inside the American-run detention center in Parwan, erupted. The prosecutors complained that the sentences were too light, and the defense lawyers protested that they were too heavy; one of the defendants, Masri Gul, said he had not been allowed to examine the evidence; and the guards tried to quiet everyone.

[snip]

The American military made a great effort to showcase the bomb-making trial as a symbol of the transfer of authority, inviting Afghan and Western news media. However, the judges’ verdict seemed to depend in large part on crucial forensic work primarily from American technicians, and over all, Americans will continue to play a substantial role in decisions about the transfer of detainees. So far, Afghan and American officials have identified 110 cases for Afghan trials.

If a bunch of US military lawyers are already actively involved in hearings in Afghanistan (ones they’re proud enough to turn into a press spectacle), and if Afghans can pull a trial off, then doesn’t it follow the American military can muster some kind of real review of detainees?

Add in the fact that–as Spencer describes it–this base is looking more and more like an American exurb, down to the traffic jams and the road named Disney.

More notable than the overstuffed runways is the over-driven road. Disney Drive, the main thoroughfare that rings the eight-square-mile base, used to feature pedestrians with reflective sashes over their PT uniforms carrying Styrofoam boxes of leftovers out of the mess halls. And those guys are still there.

But now the western part of Disney is a two-lane parking lot of Humvees, flamboyant cargo big-rigs from Pakistan known as jingle trucks, yellow DHL shipping vans, contractor vehicles and mud-caked flatbeds. If the Navy could figure out a way to bring a littoral-combat ship to a landlocked country, it would idle on Disney.

Expect to wait an eternity if you want to pull out onto the road. Cross the street at your own risk.

Then there are all the new facilities. West Disney has a fresh coat of cement –- something that’s easy to come by, now that the Turkish firm Yukcel manufactures cement right inside Bagram’s walls.

There on the flightline: the skeletons of new hangars. New towers with particleboard for terraces. A skyline of cranes. The omnipresent plastic banner on a girder-and-cement seedling advertising a new project built by cut-rate labor paid by Inglett and Stubbs International.

If we’re going to build infrastructure for a permanent empire in Afghanistan, then we ought to build in all the things empires bring, like real judicial systems.

Seriously. With all this building and trialing and whatnot, the DC Circuit now looks like a collection of chumps buying a transparent government lie about the ability to hold hearings. Isn’t it time to rethink habeas in Afghanistan?

5,000 Years in 90 Seconds | Watch the Middle Eastern Empires rise and Fall

2010-06-29T07:49:00.001-05:00

5,000 Years in 90 Seconds | Open Culture:
Amazing!

"Great empires rise and fall, mostly in the Middle East. Watch history play itself out on dynamic maps and timeline."

Cilla McCain: Dying In Their Sleep: The Invisible Plague Attacking U.S. Soldiers

2010-06-25T11:04:00.000-05:00

Cilla McCain: Dying In Their Sleep: The Invisible Plague Attacking U.S. Soldiers
Head up to anyone who knows someone with PTSD taking these medications:

"When we first learned of the other West Virginia soldiers who died in their sleep," Stan says. "We thought it must be a reaction to biological warfare, we thought they must have been exposed to something in Iraq and now it is killing them."

"Indeed, if you conduct an internet search with the phrase "soldier found dead" the results are staggering. Narrow it down even further by including the phrase "unexplained" and you will begin to get a glimpse of what some would call an epidemic.

When the White's received Andrew's autopsy report, the official cause was listed as "accidental intoxication of Seroquel, Paxil, and pain medication." Andrew had not committed suicide, nor did he take his medication in a manner it was not prescribed. Death, as it turned out, is a potential side effect of Seroquel. The doctors and the pharmaceutical company knew that, however nobody told Andrew, despite the fact that he was experiencing many of Seroquel's most serious side effects.

In the 11-months Andrew was taking Seroquel, he gained 40 lbs., suffered from tremors, severe constipation and swelling of the mammary glands. Before his death, a VA doctor referred Andrew to an endocrinologist for tests to determine the cause of his symptoms, even though it is clearly stated in Seroquel's literature that all of this can be caused by using the drug.

Andrew passed away before the appointment.

Dr. Fred Baughman, a neurologist and outspoken critic on the use of anti-psychotic drugs has studied the West Virginia soldier deaths and has determined that "sudden cardiac death" is the cause. In a May 2010 press release, Dr. Baughman states:

"All were diagnosed with PTSD. All seemed "normal" when they went to bed. And, all were on Seroquel (an antipsychotic) Paxil (an antidepressant) and Klonopin (a benzodiazepine). They were not comatose and unarousable -- with pulse and respirations or pulse intact, responsive to CPR, surviving transport to a hospital, frequently surviving. These were sudden cardiac deaths."

Between the VA medical doctors and psychiatrists Andrew was going to for help, none tried to assess the effectiveness of these drugs on his PTSD symptoms. They just kept increasing the dosage as if he were a guinea pig in some twisted lab experiment. Whether sudden cardiac death, polypharmacy, or suicide, a prescription tracking system could be a major step toward preventing tragedy.

To that end, in March 2010, Senator Jim Webb of Virginia called on the Surgeons General from the Department of Defense to provide data regarding prescription drugs in the military. This vital information was never received despite repeated requests, so on June 9, 2010, Senator Webb released a public statement calling on the DOD to finally adhere to the request:

Three months ago in an Armed Services hearing, Army Surgeon General Schoomaker downplayed media reports of skyrocketing prescription drug use of those serving in the Army. I am still waiting to see existing data across services and a judgment of these findings.

Webb's statement went on to say:

A reporting requirement has been added to the FY 2011 National Defense Authorization Act requiring the DOD to keep health records that detail the prescription and administration of psychotropic medications.

There are many possible reasons why an avalanche of prescriptions are befalling our soldiers with no accountability even as those drugs kill. Financial gain by medical personnel of the DOD is one of the most serious allegations being examined and I will continue to follow this matter.

Let us hope the powers that be do not continue to stall and downplay the seriousness of this issue."

- $tay the Cour$e: Colbert on Afghnistan

2010-06-18T08:13:00.001-05:00

You can either laugh or Cry or watch Colbert

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

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www.colbertnation.com

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- "The Courage To Leave" Afghanistan by Bob Herbert

2010-06-13T22:25:00.000-05:00

sabrina 1's Journal - "The Courage To Leave" by Bob Herbert

By BOB HERBERT
Published: June 11, 2010

"There is no good news coming out of the depressing and endless war in Afghanistan. There once was merit to our incursion there, but that was long ago. Now we’re just going through the tragic motions, flailing at this and that, with no real strategy or decent end in sight.

The U.S. doesn’t win wars anymore. We just funnel the stressed and underpaid troops in and out of the combat zones, while all the while showering taxpayer billions on the contractors and giant corporations that view the horrors of war as a heaven-sent bonanza. BP, as we’ve been told repeatedly recently, is one of the largest suppliers of fuel to the wartime U.S. military.

Seven American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan on Monday but hardly anyone noticed. Far more concern is being expressed for the wildlife threatened by the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico than for the G.I.’s being blown up in the wilds of Afghanistan.

From the comment section one of the best comments ever. It could be a winning platform for anyone running for Congress in the next election:

6.
Phil in the mountains of Kyushu
Japan
June 12th, 2010
12:45 am
As you mention several other points today, you invite comprehensive coherence. So here I humbly offer my list to correspond with your key points today:

1) Withdraw from Iraq – and Afghanistan, Okinawa, and Germany.

2) Cut off all military aid to Israel – and Egypt.

3) End the war on drugs.

4) Start jobs program for nationwide high-speed rail, and light-rail transit in hub cities.

5) Start jobs program for retro-fitting public buildings and homes for energy efficiency.

6) Allow no public monies for any standardized testing.

7) Extend Medicare to all.

8) Cut off all Industrial Ag’s subsidies in corn, soy, rice, and cotton.

9) Allow no biz schools at any public institutions of higher ed.

10) Allow no M.F.A. programs at any public institutions of higher ed.

11) Pay no ed administrator any higher than that of lowest-paid teacher.

12) Restore Glass-Steagall

13) Tax the rich as in the Eisenhower era (up to 91%).

14) Have Supreme Court justices wear on their robes the logos of those corporations with which they’re invested.

15) End the Fulbright program’s subservience to the specialization slots of corporate academe, and have it send Americans abroad in some larger coherent strategy for connections among peoples and cultures. (Hint: one such strategy is at www.EssayingDifferences.com .)

Recommend Recommended by 1082 Readers"

World's Most Peaceful Countries: Global Peace Index (PHOTOS)

2010-06-12T10:44:00.000-05:00

World's Most Peaceful Countries: Global Peace Index (PHOTOS): "Prepared by the Sydney, Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace, the Global Peace Index (GPI) annually ranks 149 countries based on a range of variables, including corruption, crime rates, military spending and access to primary education.

The United States fared distinctly less well, coming in at 85th on the list, which placed us below both Cuba (72nd) and China (80th).

The GPI also lists the world's most violent country as Iraq, followed by Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan and Pakistan.

The report also estimates that world peace would save $7 trillion annually, and argues that the money now spent on security could be re-invested to make a given country more prosperous."

Panel commissioned by Barney Frank recommends nearly $1T in defense cuts - Democratic Underground

2010-06-11T14:57:00.000-05:00

Panel commissioned by Barney Frank recommends nearly $1T in defense cuts - Democratic Underground:

"Panel commissioned by Barney Frank recommends nearly $1T in defense cuts
By Roxana Tiron - 06/11/10 10:24 AM ET

A panel commissioned by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is recommending nearly $1 trillion in cuts to the Pentagon’s budget over the next 10 years.

The Sustainable Defense Task Force, a commission of scholars from a broad ideological spectrum appointed by Frank, the House Financial Services Committee chairman, laid out options the government could take that could save as much as $960 billion between 2011 and 2020.

Measures presented by the task force include significant reductions of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, which has strong support from Defense Secretary Robert Gates; delaying the procurement of a new mid-air refueling tanker which the Air Force has identified as one of its top acquisition priorities; and reducing the Navy’s fleet to 230 ships instead of the 313 eyed by the service."

Tom Hayden: Shocking Rise in US Casualties, Lack of Reporting

2010-06-08T20:30:00.000-05:00

Tom Hayden: Shocking Rise in US Casualties, Lack of Reporting: "S death tolls in Afghanistan have risen by 273 percent this spring in comparison to the same period in 2008."