These are unretouched photographs distributed by the US Department of Defense, as Christmas greetings.
Our Killer Santas fly F-16s
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Tag Archives: Department of Defense
I’ll see your Staff Sgt Robert Bales and raise you 15 death squad members
Everyone from the US Department of Defense to the School of the Americas knows it takes a village to raze a death squad, or vice versa. According to the manual, if you want to storm houses in the middle of the night, gather the male family members for execution, shoot everyone in the head, gather stray bodies into a pile, pour gasoline over them and burn them, then repeat the operation in a neighboring village, you need a death squad, possibly two, especially if everyone’s drunk. US forces have pulled off so many of these massacres in Iraq and Afghanistan, that it’s a wonder military analysts don’t recognize the Panjwayi raid as a textbook operation. If the official US spin is to be believed, and one drunken staff sergeant can do the work of 15-20, I’m thinking our entire NATO force in Afghanistan could be reduced by the same factor without jeopardizing US kill goals.
Ft Carson conducts pro forma town hall to clear way for environmental impact of proposed helicopter brigade
OCCUPIED COLORADO SPRINGS- Ft Carson’s environmental PR team held what’s called a “draft Environmental Assessment,” prerequisite to their addition of a Combat Aviation Brigade to America’s “Best Hometown in the Army”. Except for a car-dealer and realtor giving their attaboys, the citizens comment section weighed solidly AGAINST expansion of war-making and war-training. In true pro forma, Garrison Commander McLaughlin shrugged off the opposition, stating that public input would be answered while the army proceeded as planned. And that’s where Occupy will have something to say.
The fundamental message from OCCUPY WALL STREET, and from the global movement at large, is that it’s the people who are in charge. Whatever corrupted system may have wielded the power to bring the world to the brink of chaos, the authority must be returned to the people. OCCUPY makes clear the people do not have to sit idly by while their rulers make decisions against their interests. OCCUPY reminds us the people will have a say in their own destiny.
An army hearing, about what it plans to do, in defiance of public outcry, is nothing that self-respecting citizens have to take sitting down. They didn’t, citizens came from as far as the Southeastern plains to present their testimonials, but after the citizen comment period ended, the holders of the meeting made certain to conclude that the Ft Carson expansion was advancing regardless. This inhospitalty even after almost uninterrupted patriotic fawning over Ft Carson’s soldiers and the role they play defending our liberty.
While everyone falls all over themselves to THANK A SOLDIER, let’s not confuse respect for deference. America is not ruled by a military junta. The Department of Defense is not our governing body. For all his authority and swagger, this camp commander does not overrule us citizens. WE are the boss of the army. We are his CHAIN OF COMMAND. When the people of Colorado Springs, the people of Colorado, or the people of the United States express our will, it’s the army’s role to say “SIR, YES SIR.”
I’m deeply troubled by an officer of the military who pretends that his fellow citizens are but a temporary impediment to his military plans. When a room full of citizens tells this commander that they don’t want helicopters over their airspace, I expect him to take heed. To do otherwise is purely insubordination of his superiors. All this patriotic militarism may be going to his head. This is a soldier after all, sworn to protect our constitution and America, meaning its people. DO YOU HEAR ME SOLDIER?
If you think I sound disrespectful, let me inform you that I’m a veteran too, of ANTIWAR actions. One of which involved a soldier of higher rank than this one, running up to me as I silently held a sign, and attacking me with his fists, knocking me over. CSPD policemen had to pull him off. I did not press charges, but I could have. That was not only assault. An officer of his stature knows it was worse than that: it was an attack on his chain-of-command. What incalculable gall, to presume to treat me as a subordinate upon whom he could visit his accustomed violence. On a citizen!
And that’s what’s got me worried, about where all this soldier-worship leads. Only a couple weeks ago, at a weekly sidewalk peace bannering, a fellow activist was approached by a soldier and sucker-punched in the face, right out of the blue, while his wife cheered from their car. Are you kidding me? This deference to soldiers has got to stop.
These are soldiers, and we’re right to thank them. Theirs is a thankless task. Well not thankless, they ask, and are given unending thanks. But theirs is a task no one wants, to have to dehumanize yourself, be made to kill, maim, torture, rape, often it turns out, exactly under orders. We’ve learned that soldiers are sometimes commanded to kill everyone in a 360 degree radius. “Free Fire Zones” mean to kill every living thing in sight. We learn too that pissing on your dead victims is taught as a coping mechanism, to dehumanize your adversary so as to suffer less PTSD and less guilt. And we’ve learned that the military has no followup plan to reintegrate their soldier-monsters to a life post-service. Homeless vets from Vietnam onward are a testimony to the incompatibility of war service in horror zones to a return to normal civilian life. When the army creates killer-thugs, it means to dispose of them in further war zones, it means for them to re-up, or die prematurely from DU exposure. Yes, soldiers are to be thanked, but kept at arm’s length, like Fukushima heroes, radioactive. By design, their duty rendered them untouchable, to them eternal thanks and goodbye, unless you are prepared to weather the propensity to antisocial violence and domestic abuse the veterans of fragile countenance bring back with them. Certainly we cannot elevate the more hardened professional killers, who know only means foul and heartless, to positions of authority above citizens.
It irks me to no end to be goaded by this camp commander, who after hearing the public speak, admonished us in the end that our protestations will amount to nothing. How dare he, this insubordinate would-be coup leader?
Shall OCCUPY remind you, America is ruled by its people. This is a Democracy. WE THE PEOPLE are in charge!
Yes it may look right now like the suits are in charge, the men behind you, patting your back, the men with businesses who profit from war-making. In other cultures they are known as war profiteers, and in other periods of history they are executed. Who should profit by war? Well another aspect about OCCUPY is that these business vultures have been put on notice their time has come. No sustainable model of global democracy has room for predatory warmongers who keep wanting to pull their fortunes from war.
The people will be in charge of this nation, not the military or its business enablers. And when the people say enough, it’s going to be the military’s place to do the people’s will. If the people say no helicopters, or not in my airspace, or stop with your immoral wars, the army better stop its posturing, or find itself in the brig. Thank you soldier, but stand down. When the people tell you to stand down soldier, you had better do it, on the double.
For my part I will not decline to press charges a second time against military careerists who overstep their authority. And I will not again brook one iota of insubordination from someone sworn to serve this country. We American citizens are in charge of what’s done in our name. Do you hear me soldier? Sir, Yes Sir? Wise move soldier.
Wikileaked: US soldiers are babykillers
A document released last week by Wikileaks tells of a 2006 raid by US troops on a farmhouse near Balad, Iraq, where the American soldiers handcuffed a household of ten, and executed them with gunshots to the head. Killed: one male adult, three female relatives, an elderly woman, four children aged 3-5, and a 5 month-old infant. Then the raiding party called in an airstrike to cover the crime. Perhaps cross referenced with the Iraq War Logs, reporters will identify which outfit committed the murders, because that’s the only way light is being shed on US war crimes, via Wikileaks. Incidentally, the Ishaqi Incident was reported on in 2006 with the Pentagon dismissing accusations that its actions were anything but appropriate. But this recent cable reveals that the USG knew what they’d done. You’d think the Department of Defense would have an interest in cooperating, because until the killers of zip-tied babies are fingered, all American soldiers are babykillers.
The US Special Forces as a lily-white military career, a post-mortem survey
The US Department of Defense finally released the list of US soldiers killed on the NATO MH-47 Chinook helicopter downed in Afghanistan.
Median age was in high 30s, which is unsurprising for highly trained Special Ops, but isn’t it interesting that the usual disproportionate percentage of Americans of Color as cannon fodder (see casualty figures) doesn’t extend to the higher-paid military career jobs?
Huge props of course to African Americans who decide against being career hitmen. And let’s not neglect the exclusively white composition of the Abu Ghraib snap shot perps, and the docket, however sparse, of other US soldiers accused of war crimes.
ACLU and Shepard Fairey drape Lady Liberty in nationalism & jingo-freedom
Is “Freedom” the same thing as Liberty? Let’s see, ACFU? It has an unfriendly ring to it.
The American Civil Liberties Union commissioned this fundraising magnet from halftone-deaf one-note Obamartist Shepard Fairey, but somebody confused this for a Department Of Defense contract. “Leading Freedom Forward”? That’s USA’s imperialist catchphrase! Please note at the helm is Fairey’s first client: Obama.
Linguists have long lamented America’s abandonment of liberty for the nefariously vacuous “freedom.” Freedom is for Operations, Markets, CIA-funded Pro-Democracy [sic] ops, and O-wellian doublespeak. “The Price of Freedom” is the title of the Smithsonian’s military history exhibit. Now the ACLU jumps on the war-wagon? That’s the Statue of Liberty with a bullhorn, as a union organizer — you can tell by the clipboard, but they’ve draped her in a flag, literally. Can you imagine any national monument with less need to prove her patriotism? I would have preferred they had used blind Lady Justice in reference to nationalism, where her blindfolded could have been the Red, White and Blue. But that’s probably a too obvious fashion statement about fascism. Dear ACLU, where are you going with this?
Let me clarify my criticism of Shepard Fairey. He’s a brilliant artist. By “halftone-deaf one-note” I refer to the FANS of his Blue Period, circa 2008. My beef is that this work recalls Fairey’s iconic Obama poster, though obviously it wouldn’t be considered a “Shepard Fairey creation” if it hadn’t. But. Is it appropriate that the ACLU wants to promote itself and its vital uni-partisan cause, with a ubiquivisual trademark that screams Democratic Party? Thankfully ACLU’s legal team at least has not failed to recognize Obama’s DP as the current reigning champion of civil liberty oppression.
The man-purse for behind enemy lines
A staple of army surplus stores since the days Banana Republic was the Starbucks of olive drab, the Israeli Paratrooper Bag was marketed as the Swiss Army Knife of handbags. Beside the ludicrous notion that an airborne assault fighter would shoulder a single-strapped man-purse, the red logo of a winged parachute raises another incongruity. For what pretext does a nation’s defensive force have “paratroopers?” I know the US/UK imperial powers label their entire military as being for defense, but they’ve got client states to dominate. Every nation’s special forces are now synonymous with SWAT, basically unconstitutional deployment of paramilitary forces against their own populations. Even if we grant governments this tool of repression, they don’t use parachutes. Paratroopers are the advance team for an invading army, dropped behind enemy lines to demolish another’s defenses against the main assault. And that’s why Israel is so unsuccessful in defending itself, it’s attacking.
How many dead US soldiers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
It’s hard not to get excited when the Afghans are able to fell nine US soldiers with one stone. But am I glad about the US deaths? I am not. For one, the latest helicopter crash means “2010 is deadliest year of war in Afghanistan.” For US/NATO troops. No mention as usual about Afghan dead. Do we not embarrass ourselves with this insensitivity? I’m guessing the record high in occupier casualties means a several- fold deluge of victims too, but that isn’t marked by this milestone.
Our callous policy of not keeping count, means there can be no milestones for the innocent dead.
Opponents of the war are accused of gloating over US deaths, but what’s the point? Neither wounded, nor killed, funerals public or not, caskets shown or not, have swayed even the parents and military families from pumping their fists for continued war.
You wonder if the Department of Defense even has to try to disguise US casualties, calling them first NATO casualties, then US-led forces, and finally after the fact, American soldiers.
Will it take PTSD suffering vets killing their spouses, families and coworkers before America decides the war is taking too great a toll?
American deaths become simply as senseless as Afghan or Iraqi, tragic and lamentable. If there’s any silver lining, it’s the hope that America will run out of soldiers faster than it can ensnare more.
So how many dead US soldiers does it take to screw in a light bulb? I’m thinking metaphorically of the light bulb above the head which recognizes the profound error America has made in spreading war to Iraq and Afghanistan, the eureka moment when the average American decides enough is enough. The answer obviously, is not yet enough.
“Warrior” drops peacekeeping pretense
COLO. SPRINGS- Just down the street, all week, the Olympic Training Center hosts the Warrior Games,
a Special Olympics for wounded vets. And there it is.
Not injured peace- keepers, not disabled freedom-bringers, not usurpers of foreign lives and liberty taken down a notch, but Wounded fucking Warriors. I suppose it had a ring to it that trumped showing moral decorum. We’re soliciting slogans for a cross-the-street banner.
CLEAN CONSCIENCE: PRICELESS
If “warrior” is just a word, so is killer. Why not wounded paid-killers? Or wounded not-sorry death dealers?
Again, if disabled veterans need something to keep themselves busy and out of the halls of the VA, they can give back to Iraq or Afghanistan and stop feeding the Department of Defense propaganda machine. A four star general joined the Colorado governor to give props to their uniformed mercenaries. All volunteer, remember. Do they recognize the harm they did? Do they feel like they were duped into the deeds? They’ve got a lot more soul searching to do if they think salvation will come of rolling up and down a basketball court in a wheelchair. Community Service. Figure it out.
Support the troops? Of Course — Bring them home!
Proud of our boys? You’ve got to be kidding.
Gay, married, or in the military: pick 2
I admit to feeling less supportive than I ought to for gays pushing for their right to wed — in the midst of every American’s crumbling civil rights — while our country decimates foreign human rights and lives. Couldn’t gay marriage activists at least share the spotlight with peace, out of consideration for the suffering of others, proportionately? How about: Make Love (Marital), Not War. Now gay rights are being made a wedge issue with the dubious right to aspire to be a soldier. Is now the time for us to urge the military to leave no gay behind?
I object as always to the presumption of a professional soldier’s moral validity.
To be fair, it may be that the gays-in-the-military meme is being pressed upon the gay activists. These days, military enlistment has lost a great deal of its appeal. Who can the Army pretend wants to join but can’t? Who else but a demographic that’s been historically denied? I can’t say for certain that gay rights activists haven’t been rallying at recruiting offices, but reporters always seem to find someone to complain they’re being discriminated against. No doubt the war-monger message-shapers can always track down one lone homosexual or two who want to play soldier.
With today’s economy, I’m sure there are not a few gay men and women who will decry the unfairness of being denied the military career path. Being gay doesn’t mean you’re a born hairdresser or a saint. Belonging to a victimized minority doesn’t automatically imbue you with empathy or a higher social conscience to preclude wanting to be a soldier. Gays can hate and kill with the best of grunts I’m sure.
The purpose of circulating this meme, that gays want the right to serve their country in uniform, doesn’t mean the Department of Defense intends to consider granting the right. This is not about enhancing gaydom. This is about putting some spin on the department’s recruiting problems. Who says no one wants to enlist? Gays do! This pseudo-rights campaign is meant to push straight boys into military service while they think it’s their exclusive right. Not only that, the campaign theme serves to reinforce that the military will be your sanctuary from gays. And if any lurk in the barrack, at least they are prohibited from showing it. In everyday civilian life, gays were much more bearable before they held parades to shove it in your face.
American media has come to delight in gayness writ Big Gay Al. But South Park is the only showcase for gay characters who aren’t the stereotypical decorator or fashion nerd. The gay home makeover does not cease to be a novelty, but I’d say the focus group is still out on construction contractor bears, gay bar trolls, and United Court female impersonators.
Without saying gays not welcome, the move to reexamine Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is really just spiffing up the old brand. Army of One, still gay-free.
What was the announcement today? That after years of criticism for the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, the military has decided to put the question to further study. That is to say, to begin a year-long inquiry into the matter. The Army is still gay-free, in all certainty will remain so, now with a year’s warranty.
I have this message for my gay compatriots in activism. If this issue is being forced on you, and you abhor as I, the loaded nature of the media soundbite, the implication that people want to be in the military, it seems to me you have have a unique opportunity to make this message your own. Do you want to be in the business of soldiering? Tell them why.
Tell them why you want to go to war. Borrow a page from the testosterone-heavy war lovers. War crime, playing god, abuse of authority, yours for the taking.
Decry the stereotypes of gays as effete fops. Gays can kill, gays can have blood lust. Gays can shoot at women and children, maybe even with greater enthusiasm. I’ll bet gays could absolutely massacre women. And girls. With relish. If the Army is going to peddle stereotypes, answer in kind.
No telling what gays can do to boys. They can give boys equal time, the menace today’s soldiers reserve for girls. No one’s children will be safe. A gay-straight platoon will wreak havoc on all enemy’s progeny.
Imagine an inter-squad rivalry between the straights and the gays, who can out-debauch whom. Clearly an enhancement on America’s war of terror.
DoD tells court: you and whose army?
We know what happens if you and I are found In Contempt of Court. Well, maybe we only know from television. Defendants who defy the judge wind up with a time out in jail. Journalists who aren’t forthcoming famously sit in a cell until they decide to cooperate. What happens when the entity held in contempt is a government agency? For example, the biggest agency, protected by the world’s most powerful military? This week the US Department of Defense was held in contempt for blatantly ignoring a court directive. Now what?
What happens on the dark side of the moon, stays on the dark side of the…
What was NASA’s unmanned drone codenamed L-CROSS? A Cape Canaveral thrillcraft? A military space fighter? After the moon dust has cleared –the moon dust that didn’t plume as expected– LCROSS was all of the above. The US space program is administered by the Department of Defense. What happened yesterday on the Dark Side of the Moon depends on who you believe.
Next to the White House
While visiting Washington DC in March, I found it interesting to note the edifices closest to the White House.
EAST, WEST
The neighbor to the immediate East of the Obama’s White House is the Department of the Treasury. Is that any surprise? Of course not, but how bourgeois! I could imagine Scrooge McDuck sneaking across the White House garden twice a day to check his reserves. To the West is what we now call the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building. It’s the site of the suspicious office fires which may or may not have masked a recent vice-president’s misdeeds. The edifice looks straight out of A Series of Unfortunate Events, and check out the plaque which commemorates what the building used to be called:
Probably that should be no surprise as well: the White house sandwiched between Treasury and War. “State, War and Navy.” How so much less duplicitous than the “Department of Defense.”
SOUTHWEST
Behind the former War offices, to the Southwest of the White House, lies the war memorial to end all war memorials. It’s the WWI Memorial, of considerably diminutive size compared to those commemorations of subsequent wars which have spilled unto the Mall, but its form followed the convention of the typical Great War monuments erected throughout Europe among the nations who had participated.
Except the American version is dedicated to the “Expeditionary Forces” which I just love. That’s what WWI was about for the US. The trenches of Europe were no place Americans needed to defend their freedom. The troops we sent, to relieve France and England, represented a foreign expedition, exactly that. More precisely, our troops were an R&D expedition for our blustering capitalists.
(This may be no time or place to note that history books do not link America’s WWI experience with the Influenza outbreak of 1917-18, which began in the barracks of US soldiers being mobilized for war. American soldiers took their flu to Europe and ultimately killed 50 million people. Those were not the days before we knew better to stay home to prevent infecting others.)
The US entry into WWI was bitterly opposed by a peace movement which the war-opportunist-profiteers maligned as isolationist. Selfish globalization-denying isolationism has been the slander ever since, used against anyone who tries to block military interventions in all their guises.
Ultimately WWI was no affair of ours, had the Huns emerged victorious, American foreign affairs would hardly have changed. Our foreign trading partners would have numbered more Germans, that’s all. But it’s useless to compare alternative outcomes of WWI, all things staying constant, because America participated and profited wildly.
If American investors had not jumped in Over There, the greatest business opportunities of blossoming industrialism would have been missed. The opportunities offered by the Europeans fighting amongst themselves, proved to have been momentous.
And here was the monument to those lost American lives, sacrificed so that American industrial might, in particular the new banking monopolists, could seize the European spheres of influence throughout the world. Of course the lost lives of the American Expeditionary Force were remembered thus:
“…WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN THE WORLD WAR THAT LIBERTY AND THE IDEALS OF OUR COUNTRY MIGHT ENDURE”
It would take another World War for the US to appropriate the colonies and oil fields by means of contracts and loans, with the leverage of coming to their aid again, this time armed with lend-lease bills.
SOUTHEAST
To the Southeast of the White House, across the back lawn, lies the monument antecedent to the Great War. It’s the Civil War Memorial, atop which rides the triumphant General William Tecumseh Sherman. (Who, to be fair, presided over the War Department for a long stretch after the Civil War, actually this nation’s longest peacetime period.)
Curious that I chose to crop his personage from my pictures, but my eyes were drawn to the lesser figures around the base of the monument, in particular, a half naked woman.
The memorial seemed to include various uniformed Civil War participants. How egalitarian to include a woman. But this woman was no French Revolutionary with breast bared oblivious as she rallied her comrades to victory. This delicate woman was unarmed and stripped to the waist, her children in tattered rags at her feet.
Could this statue be offering another conceit to the reality of war, to Sherman’s March to the sea, to the burning of Atlanta, to the shameful destruction he visited on the secessionist South? Was this a nod to the real role given to Women in war, their sons and husbands taken from them, a non-combatant left helpless to defend her children or herself. Did the shirt torn from her body confess to the woman’s rape?
More probably the feminine likeness personified man’s attraction to war, a soldier’s predilection for her beauty. How many war monuments memorialize as they also beacon?
Much of the terrain around the White House grounds is blocked off by secondary and tertiary security perimeters. But for the arrival of bus unloadng its visitors to see it, the Civil War Monument is normally cordoned off. When I had passed it earlier, a balaclava-clad guard was blocking the only entrance.
SOUTH
The grassy expanse immediately South of the White House, permitting the First Family an uninterrupted view of the National Mall, has actually been given over to parking permits. The loop of asphalt across the lawn, with cars strewn diagonally along the edges, gives the unfortunate impression of overflow event parking. In any other neighborhood, the crowd of cars would be a dead giveaway that someone on the block was having a party.
Peace flows from the end of a gunboat
WASHINGTON DC- It’s not the “Department of Peace,” to contrast with the Department of Defense, although some detractors point out that we have the State Department for that, but visitors to DC will find in the NW corner of the National Mall, the US Navy has conceded a portion of its real estate adjacent the Lincoln Memorial for a US Institute of Peace. Dot org, not dot gov. And what do they mean by “Public Education Center?” It’s Pax Americana they’re institutionalizing, aka peacekeeping in the gunboat diplomacy sense of the word.
And sure enough, according to its website:
USIP has been operating on the ground in Iraq since 2004, working with Iraqis to reduce interethnic and interreligious violence, speed up stabilization and democratization, and reduce the need for a U.S. presence in Iraq.
Mark 6TH YEAR of Iraq Occupation with profiteers Boeing, Lockheed, GD and KBR
A.N.S.W.E.R.’s March 21 MARCH ON THE PENTAGON to mark the sixth year of the War in Iraq will be directed not only at the US Department of Defense, but at the war profiteers for whom 2007 was a record year, among them Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and KBR. In Colorado Springs the merchants of death can be visited on one corner.
On March 21, 2009,
March on the Pentagon and the Corporate War Profiteers
The March on the Pentagon on Saturday, March 21 is shaping up to be a dramatic and highly significant demonstration. Many thousands of people are coming to Washington, D.C. to make their voices heard.
March 21 will culminate in a dramatic direct action where hundreds of coffins—representing the multinational victims of militarism, Empire and corporate greed—will be carried and delivered to the headquarters of the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death.
From the Pentagon, we will march to the nearby giant corporate offices of Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin Corporation, General Dynamics and KBR (the former subsidiary of Halliburton).
The march will start close to the State Department in Washington, D.C. (assemble at 12 noon at 23rd St. and Constitution Ave. NW).
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These are the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death. They are the vultures who profit off the death and suffering of the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, and off of the thousands of U.S. soldiers and marines who have died or been wounded in these wars of aggression. They are anti-worker and anti-union.
The march will be led by a large contingent of veterans and family members of veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and from earlier conflicts.
Militarism and Corporate Capitalism
We will march on their slick-and-shiny corporate offices that are located less than a mile from the Pentagon. Their location in the very shadow of the Pentagon speaks volumes about the intimate connection between militarism and corporate capitalism.When the Pentagon brass retire, they rotate out of their Pentagon offices and directly into the Corporate boardrooms and office suites of the Death Merchants. It is a very cozy and very profitable relationship for the elites—in and out of uniform. They make the profits, others do the bleeding.
Last year was a great year for the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death. Profits soared even as the rest of the economy neared collapse. The CEOs of the four corporations that we will be visiting on March 21 received more than $319 million in compensation in 2007 alone (and remember, that’s just for four individuals). “We the People” paid the bill for the high tech weapons that were used against occupied people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. The Corporate Executives laughed all the way to the bank while grieving parents and children buried their loved ones from Baghdad to Kabul to Gaza to Detroit.
A quick examination shows that the CEOs of the Military-Industrial Complex contributed to both the Democratic and Republican Party candidates in almost equal amounts. They favor a system that ensures that politicians will come and go every four years but the military machine—that fusion of industry, banks and the Pentagon brass—will remain as is.
We Need Jobs & Schools – Not War!
The same banks that are being bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars even while they foreclose families who can’t pay their mortgage debts are double-dipping from the national treasury by making huge profits in their investments in Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and KBR.War is just good business for these corporate executives. Every F-16 bomber, attack helicopter, cruise missile and Drone bomber is a source of profit. If the wars stopped they would be out of business.
The people of this country are fed up with the status quo. They want decent-paying jobs, and affordable health care and housing for all. Students want to study rather than be driven out by soaring tuition rates. People want a complete—not partial—withdrawal of ALL troops from Iraq. They want the war in Afghanistan to end rather than escalate. They are increasingly opposed to sending $2.6 billion each year to Israel.
People are coming to Washington, D.C. on March 21 from college campuses, high schools, and cities and towns throughout the United States.
It is time for real change. Unless the movement for change stays in the streets, the powerful corporate and banking interests will certainly dominate the politics of this country. That is unacceptable. That is a path toward endless war and occupation abroad, and a massive transfer of wealth to the already rich at home.
All out for March 21! Jobs Not War! Schools Not War! Occupation is a Crime!
From pentagonmarch.org:
Meet the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death
W. James McNerney Jr.
CEO of Boeing.2007 Total Compensation: $19 million. Value of Boeing Stock Owned: $25.7 million
Facts about Boeing:
Boeing currently produces numerous jets and bombers, including the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber and the F/A-22 Raptor, as well as multiple surface-to-air missiles and various bombs. Boeing also produces the bolt-on JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) that turns gravity bombs into “smart” munitions.Boeing supplies Israel with various weapon systems, including the F-15 Eagle fighter jet and A-64 Apache attack helicopter, as well as numerous types of bombs and missiles. It was these weapons that helped to kill 1,017 Palestinians killed in the Israeli invasion of Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.
In 2008, Boeing made $2,225,947 in campaign contributions. 58 percent of these contributions were to Democrats, and 42 percent were to Republicans. In 2008, they spent $16,610,000 on lobbying.
Despite massive profits, Boeing opposed raises for plant employees, and attempted to outsource union jobs so that the company could be “more flexible.”
Robert J. Stevens
CEO of Lockheed Martin2007 Total Compensation: $37 million. Value of Lockheed Martin Stock Owned: $33.8 million
Facts about Lockheed Martin:
Lockheed Martin currently produces the F-117 Stealth Fighter that was used in the brutal “Shock and Awe” bombings of Iraq, as well as the F/A-22 Raptor fighter jet. They also produces various missile systems, including the Hellfire and Javelin, and various nuclear weapon designs. Lockheed supplies fighter jets and other weapon systems to Israel.Lockheed’s 2008 first-quarter revenue was $9.98 billion–an increase of $700 million from the year prior. By 2015, the F-35 program alone could represent more than $16 billion in annual revenue for the company.
Lockheed’s former vice-president, Bruce Jackson, headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.
In 2005, Lockheed received $65 million every single day of the year from the U.S. government. That year, Lockheed garnered $228 in federal tax money from every household in the United States.
In 2008, Lockheed made $2.6 million in political contributions—49 percent to the Democrats and 51 percent to the Republicans.
In 2004, Lockheed spent nearly $10 million on more than 100 lobbyists. From 2001-2005, only Philip Morris and GE spent more money lobbying Congress. By 2008, that number was $15.8 million.
Nicholas D. Chabraja
CEO of General Dynamics2007 Total Compensation: $60 million. Value of GD Stock Owned: $154.2 million
Facts about General Dynamics:
General Dynamics currently produces dozens of weapon systems, which include the Stryker Armored Combat Vehicle and the M-1 Abrams Main Battle Tank series, as well as other highly devastating artillery systems and the Trident Nuclear Submarine.General Dynamics has supplied Israel with various weapon systems, including the F-16 Falcon fighter jet.
In 2008, General Dynamics made $1,682,595 in campaign contributions—58 percent to the Democrats and 42 percent to the Republicans.
Also in 2008, General Dynamics spent $8,562,439 lobbying for government contracts.
Fueled by sales of business jets and military-combat equipment, General Dynamics reported a 32 percent jump in first-quarter profits for 2008, to $573 million. The backlog of work not completed far outpaced revenues, growing by 14 percent to nearly $50 billion.
Analysts think General Dynamics and Mr. Chabraja will do even better next year, noting the “upside potential” of the combat-systems group, which is benefiting from the U.S. Army’s restocking of equipment lost, damaged or worn by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, in addition to a $12 billion backlog of orders for corporate jets.
William P. Utt
CEO of Kellogg Brown & Root.2007 Total Compensation: $3.29 million. Value of KBR Stock Owned: $6.5 million
Facts about KBR:
There are roughly 14,000 KBR employees inside of Iraq that provide logistical support to the U.S. military. KBR has made billions off of “reconstruction” contracts within Iraq.KBR is the largest non-union construction company in the United States. It has won many contracts with the U.S. government, including $100 million to build a U.S. embassy in Afghanistan, as well as $216 million for the construction of several base camps and training foreign troops from the Republic of Georgia.
Despite at least a dozen former employees alleging they had been raped by co-workers in Iraq and other employees saying co-workers regularly stole gold, artwork, and weapons, KBR remains in the Pentagon’s good graces. In mid-April, it received a 10-year, $150 billion contract to support the military overseas.
CEO William Utt called 2008 an “outstanding year,” saying KBR posted record profitability.
Despite many scandals and controversies, KBR reported that its first quarter net profits for 2008 more than tripled, from $28 million the previous year to $98 million.
ANSWER Coalition Responds to President Obama’s Iraq Speech of Friday, February 27
With his speech today, President Obama has essentially agreed to continue the criminal occupation of Iraq indefinitely. He announced that there will be an occupation force of 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq for at least three more years. President Obama used carefully chosen words to avoid a firm commitment to remove the 50,000 occupation troops, even after 2011.
The war in Iraq was illegal. It was aggression. It was based on lies and false rationales. President Obama’s speech today made Bush’s invasion sound like a liberating act and congratulated the troops for “getting the job done.” More than a million Iraqis died and a cruel civil war was set into motion because of the foreign invasion. President Obama did not once criticize the invasion itself.
He has also requested an increase in war spending for Iraq and Afghanistan, and plans to double the number of U.S. troops sent to fight in Afghanistan.
President Obama has asked Congress to provide more than $200 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars over the next two years, in addition to increasing the Pentagon budget by four percent.
Based on President Obama’s new budget, the Pentagon would rank as the world’s 17th largest economy—if it were a country. This new budget increases war spending. Total spending in 2010 would roughly equate to an average of $21,000 a second.
This is not the end of the occupation of Iraq, but rather the continuation of the occupation.
There is only one reason that tens of thousands of troops will remain in Iraq: It is because this is a colonial-type occupation of a strategically important and oil-rich country located in the Middle East where two-thirds of the world’s oil reserve can be found.
Obama’s speech was a major disappointment for anyone who was hoping that Obama would renounce the illegal occupation of Iraq. Today, the U.S. government spends $480 million per day to fund the occupation of Iraq. Even if 100,000 troops are drawn out by August 2010, that means the indefinite occupation of Iraq will cost more than $100 million each day. The continued occupation of Iraq for two years or three years or more makes a complete mockery out of the idea that the Iraqi people control their own destiny. It is a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty and independence.
It is no wonder that John McCain came out to support President Obama’s announced plan on Iraq. McCain was an supporter of former President Bush’s and Vice President Cheney’s war and occupation in Iraq.
Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld—the architects of regime change in Iraq—never had the goal of indefinitely keeping 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. They wanted to subdue the Iraqi people and exercise control with a smaller force. The Iraqi armed resistance prolonged the stationing of 150,000 U.S. troops.
Bush’s goal was domination over Iraq and its oil supplies, and domination over the region. This continues to be the goal of the U.S. political and economic establishment, including that of the new administration.
President Obama decided not to challenge the fundamental strategic orientation. That explains why he kept the Bush team—Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and Generals Petraeus and Odierno—on the job to oversee and manage the Iraq occupation. They will also manage the widening U.S. war in Afghanistan and the aerial assaults on Pakistan. There have been over 30 U.S. bombing attacks in Pakistan in the last two months.
We are marching on Saturday, March 21 because the people of this country are fed up with the status quo. They want decent-paying jobs, and affordable health care and housing for all. Students want to study rather than be driven out by soaring tuition rates. The majority of people want a complete—not partial—withdrawal of ALL troops from Iraq. They want the war in Afghanistan to end rather than escalate. They are increasingly opposed to sending $2.6 billion each year to Israel and want an end to the colonial occupation of Palestine.
Sarah’s Demented Disciples, at it again…
Today, on the bicycle trail at the 8th St and Cimarron intersection, some Neo-Nazi punk wrote in orange chalk “NUKE OBOMA”.
I know it was one of Sarah and John’s supporters because the stupid coward bastard couldn’t even spell Obama right.
They’re getting their anti-Obama rhetoric, the accusations of “Terrorism” the racist use of “Muslim”, “Arab”, and “Half-rican American” directly from people like Rush Limbaugh and Corsi, people who DO pal around with Terrorists, StormFront to be exact.
Gunny Bob will probably object to that, but hey, Gunny, three words, Semper… Fi… Bitch…
Pal around with anti-American terrorists like StormFront and that’s what it comes down to, bum.
I started to write “Bubba” but typoed it, and Bum comes closer to the truth anyway.
StormFront is a host for the Nazis and the Klan, both parties who tried their damned worst to deliver America into being a tool of Adolf Hitler, and the Klan is the most prolific Domestic Terror Group in America, they’ve bombed America and Americans repeatedly and almost constantly since 1865.
They’ve killed more AMERICANS than the Viet-Cong, the Weathermen, AND al Qa’eiia COLLECTIVELY.
Now Sarah Palin and to a lesser degree her Ineffectual and doddering “Leader” John McCain are using the propaganda supplied from StormFront to condemn Barack Obama as an “Anti-American”.
How do they get away with it? Simply…
Simple Sarah is “Folksy”.
John McCain, despite going to Annapolis on his father’s dime and graduating therefrom on his daddy’s influence, (I previously misstated that McCain was a Communist Flying Ace with five American planes destroyed, but counting the one he ditched in the lake in North Viet-Nam, because he was a lousy pilot, the total is only 4) despite growing up in Georgetown, and unlike his snark in the second debate, his Daddy wasn’t constantly at sea, his daddy was essentially a high-powered Lobbyist for the Department of Defense and their partners in Murder, the so-called Defense Industry…
Yeah, THAT John McCain, who has expressed his contempt for lobbyists but is the Son of a Lobbyist and has over a hundred and forty of them managing his campaign…
Is “Folksy”
They’ll “aw, gee shucks heckfire you betcha” their slimy way out of taking responsibility for their Pathetic Cowardly Domestic Terrorist fan-club all the while egging them on in their “folksy” speeches.
And had the unmitigated gall to claim that they only campaign in parts of “the Real Pro-American America”
John, Sarah, I’ll try to be polite about this…
Screw it… Bitches, telling your Fan Club / Right Wing Lunatic Cult to KILL AMERICANS, well, hon, that’s Anti American.
You either call off your coward little pathetic Chihuahuas or we’ll call them off.
How’s that for “Folksy”?
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) spoke fluent “folksy”.
Held more extremely arduous, strenuous dangerous and every other kind of extremely “ous” jobs than either McCain or Palin have had ANY jobs.
The Right Wing like to adopt his writings as their own, but Tom Sawyer and Innocents Abroad and especially Huckleberry Finn, if they were to read the whole book any of them, would be seen today as they were then, Mocking the pretentiousness of the “Great American Society”.
Nowadays the excuse the Right Wing use to try to ban Huck Finn is because one of the characters is named Nigger Jim.
At the time the precursors of todays Right Wing used the notion that Nigger Jim was probably the smartest person in the whole book.
And was more of a father to young Huck than his own Pap.
Huck’s father was illiterate, and proud of it.
Jim was illiterate but kept there by law.
Huck’s father would put his boot-nails in the shape of a cross so the Devil wouldn’t reach up and grab his ankles.
Huck paid a counterfeit quarter for a counterfeit Psychic Reading where Jim channeled for a hairball from out of a cow’s stomach.
Huck and Tom had a conversation in the prior book where they described the use of a dead cat, a cemetery and a fresh grave as a cure for warts, that Huck had “got the idea from a Nigger, and they know all about superstitions”.
Those who didn’t miss the subtleties of those exchanges and concepts wanted to lynch Mark Twain.
I’m sure McCain and Palin both use the expressing “Pressing the flesh” when referring to their (certainly not elitist) Campaign without completing the phrase, “of the great unwashed”.
I bet they have staff members nearby with Handi-wipes to wash their hands with after shaking hands with Real Working People….
And mouthwash for after they kiss our babies.
That should have been “expression” but was instead a True Error in grammatic structure.
Rather than saying that people who want to go forth and Kill Barack Obama are “Real Americans” and those who don’t are “anti-america”.
That’s not a mistake, it’s a blatant LIE.
Election year 9/11 Kool-aid inoculation
Why is it that people who want to re-investigate the official 9/11 account are thought to be dragging their heels in the past, but publishing industry flag-wavers can trot out the orthodox 9/11 dogma every election cycle to repave America’s jack-boot stay-the-course resolve?
This week it’s Firefight, a book about the firefighting aspect of the still-veiled 9/11 attack on the Pentagon which destroyed Department of Defense offices which contained, of all darned things, their budget data. NPR’s Fresh Air featured an interview of the Firestorm co-authors, one of them a volunteer firefighter and Iraq veteran, with nary a question about the peculiarities of the Pentagon disaster, but plenty of evocative details. Jet fuel, plenty of it, spreading all over the roof, etc, etc. with nothing of bodies, aircraft parts, or unbroken glass, un-scorched lawns, no etcetera.
If I was a too-devious-for-my-own-good Neocon stink-tank thinkee at Presidio Press, I’d concentrate on a detail to make this story recall the audience’s own false-memory of the event. Being so clever I’d know that the most powerful memory trigger is smell. But how to reference a smell if everyone’s experience was primarily through television visuals -not even that, actually? Perhaps the suggestive power of radio could evoke the illusion of smell if enough radio land characters were to belabor its significance…
For the Pentagon story in Firefight, that detail would be “horse hair” in the ceiling insulation. Not only was this apparently a striking memory for the firefighters, but interviewer Terry Gross reaffirmed that America’s 2001 media audience had fixated on the curious detail as well. Had you?
Oddly today the subject didn’t lead to explanations about the use of horse hair insulation, or the impediment it might have created for firefighting. Nope, just the smell. On top, added the co-author, of the smell of all that jet-fuel don’t you know. Of course.
They’re hoping for our sense of smell-memory to kick in, because of course our sight-memory wasn’t there either. We have only print-news accounts to go by, the still photos themselves dispute the official story.
But there was video we didn’t see, and haven’t yet seen.
The book begins with a reference to the adjacent Citgo gas station, but not its cameras. Why did federal agents immediately confiscate all security camera video that had captured the incident and subsequently release only a couple seconds of footage that actually shows nothing? If an American readership is sought for this new book, by guys who’ve taken this long to do the research, would there be no interest in answering the predominant curiosity out there? Was it a jet that pierced the Pentagon?
The Firefight book is re-writing the emerging 9/11 narrative, re-branding, re-imprinting the 9/11 mythology for the election year John McCain Neocon reelection.
The reason for the timing of this coincidental to election year publication was that one of the authors was waylaid by a couple deployments to Iraq. Wonderful! An alibi AND a not-unsubtle tying of 9/11 to Iraq. Host Terry Gross preempted listener skepticism by asking what the soldier author thought of what’s been shown to be a debunked linking of Saddam Hussein to 9/11. His answer of course, a soldier’s duty to his nation’s call, regardless the leadership’s methods.
Throw in the author’s IED head-trauma injury that has left his memory impaired. Now he’s a wounded vet, deserving of our patronage, and his personally responsibility to these 9/11 untruths will be inoculated from the eventual debunking of this treasonous 9/11 lie.
What a thoroughly wrapped package! Unfortunately for the clever stinkers a not inconsiderable portion of the American public believe the Pentagon was hit by a missile, and their smell-memory is of fish.
Indonesians suspicious of Namru-2 Lab
Have you heard of NAMRU-2? It’s a US military laboratory set off limits on an Indonesian college campus in Jakarta. The lab’s stated purpose is to study tropical diseases coming from the region. But Indonesians have become suspicious about the application of what the US is learning, and why the lab workers need diplomatic immunity.
The secretive lab has yet to share information with Indonesian researchers. There has been no instance when the Navy Medical Research Unit 2 has assisted with Indonesia’s health system. Then there’s the specter of the lab being administrated under the authority of our Department of Defense. Indonesians point to the certainty that this also means the US intelligence community.
Might it be fair to wonder what Namru-2 is working on and for who?
As Indonesians are raising questions about the foreign lab’s legitimacy, their political representatives have succeeded in stalling negotiations for a new lease. Would “curious” describe the current sticking point: Americans are insisting on diplomatic immunity for the lab staff?
A soldier gets home, walks into a bar…
There’s a soldier’s witticism being attributed to General Tommy Franks, which goes like this: “When you men get home and face an anti-war protester, look him in the eyes and shake his hand. Then, wink at his girlfriend because she knows she’s dating a pussy.” Is it an old Vietnam era joke? It would surprise me if vets still laugh at it. This has the smell of gung-ho recruiting, pre-Iraq. Let’s see what ol’ Tommy left out:
When you men get home
-IF you get home. If it’s even YOU who gets home. Or if you even go HOME. Many vets linger at the bases, or become itinerants, too ashamed to return to their hometowns and face their families.
…and face an anti-war protester
-Unlikely. I’ve yet to be faced with a soldier who’s come back ready to stand tall for what he did.
…look him in the eyes
-if you can, if that faculty is unimpared, or if you can reach eye-level from your wheelchair.
…and shake his hand
-Requires hand. Will your anti-war compatriot touch your hand, bloody as it is with war crime, porn jism, and dumb-bastard cooties?
…Then, wink at his girlfriend
-Can she see you wink from behind your dark wraparound sunglasses which you wear because you think they obscure your guilty mug? You’re Joe Camel now, a cartoon sense of self, disconnected you hope, from the deeds you’ve perpetrated and the inhumanity you’ve witnessed.
…because she knows she’s dating a pussy
-She’s dating a pussy who isn’t contaminated with DU, Anthrax, PTSD; who won’t wake up in the night and kill her; who won’t give her a deformed baby; who won’t spread an STD contracted from your buddies with whom you gang-raped a fellow soldier; who won’t spend the next ten years in and out of veterans facilities. If you don’t kill yourself sooner or ride your motorcycle crotch-rocket into a truck.
When Good Ol’ Tommy Franks was wisecracking, he was asking you to visualize your pre-war self facing your fellow citizen, not your post-trauma broken self. And Franks knew full well which would be making it home. Don’t think that war guilt is unintentional. It’s great for the Department of Defense bottom line. Re-enlistments are more likely, and the mentally-disabled hinder their own recovery. As soon as you are of no good to the Army, soon enough your ailments will assure they won’t have to pay your pension for very long.
If they are not losing we are not winning
A Department of Defense spokesman was asked the other day if the insurgents in Iraq are winning. He has Donald Rumsfeld’s speech writer.
“If the insurgents are not losing, they are winning.
If we are not winning, we are losing.”
Is that statement deep or is it obtuse? Perhaps that’s our military complaining that the insurgents win if there’s a draw. Unless our victory is decisive, we don’t get credit for it. But that’s obfuscating the real answer because there can be no stalemate with counterinsurgency. Ask the British in Ireland. You’re splitting hairs on a toupee. In Iraq the insurgents are winning.
The news charade doesn’t involve asking real questions. In this case, for example, the reporter could have followed up by repeating the unanswered question. You’d do it if you wanted to know something and instead of an answer you’d received a riddle.
I cannot remember if this man was military or think tank. Does it matter really any more who he was? The military is taken at its word, even as previous proclamations are disproved. We don’t torture. Oh, well, we don’t use that word, but yes we do. We don’t use Napalm. Oh, did you say Napalm? Yes we do. Think tank specialists are consulted without questioning who is funding the particular opinion they are spinning.
Anymore, the interview format includes two media people, the one with questions and the one with answers, both of whom have the same agenda. This has replaced investigative reporting. Want to know how France feels? Rather, how someone wants us to think the nation of France is feeling? Consult a specialist, a PR spokesman to make the pitch. France is fine, thank you, and how are you?
Perhaps the next step will be just one news-person, a trusted father figure, who will convey intellect and wisdom enough to sooth us. He’ll be able to report the current events, ask whatever questions come to mind, and answer them himself because who needs a middleman? The way we are heading, he’ll also answer in riddles.
Spook Steve Recca wants us to feel safe
Commander Steve Recca, of the new DoD endowed UCCS Center for Homeland Security, told his Shove Chapel audience last night that Homeland Security is about being safe. That means everything to him from keeping his daughter safe at school to keeping the streets safe from excessive snow fall. Does the DHS want a crack at Climate Change?
Recca also explained that Homeland Security is about community. Yes, community: the local community and the global community. Whatever does he think “homeland” refers to? Manitou? Planet Earth? Before Bush and Ashcroft I’m pretty sure “Homeland” had only ever meant Nazi Germany, needing to be kept safe from Fascist-haters like socialists, anarchists, discontents and others who objected to Nazi land grabs. In the Soviet Bloc security would have been about community: the community of neighbors ready to rat on you.
Steve Recca kept Homeland Security affairs out of Greg Mortenson’s presentation until the end. Then, to cap off the questions from the audience, from the darkened anonymity of the public microphone, Recca asked for everyone’s patience while he read an “email from a Marine at an FOB (Forward Operating Base) in Afghanistan.”
In this “email” a soldier explained how protecting one of Mortenson’s schools was the most important goal of his mission, etc, etc.
The inattentive audience may have become too accustomed to visualizing boiler room letter writing sessions assigned to soldiers in the field, or soldiers laid up in VA hospitals with nothing else to do but hand-write form letters dictated to them by military PR specialists. Those Letters to the Editor sent to newspapers across the country, or emails to Dr Greg in this case, may be outsourced to India for all we know. In any case, the Colorado College audience was bored of it.
I’d like to see Recca explain what role propaganda or jingoism plays in Homeland Security.
Commander Steve Recca is a career spook, now pioneering the post-graduate studying of keeping white America safe. I can understand that DHS might require information sharing with the Intelligence Community. Does it have to be part of that community? Is that the “community” Recca was talking about?
Will Homeland Security be training its airport shoe-sniffers to conduct surveillance and torture too? Steve Recca doesn’t bring transportation or border guard experience to his job. His background is entirely about spying.
1983- graduate (with honors) of U.S. Naval Academy
1990- Master of Arts (with distinction) from Naval Postgraduate School
1990 to 1993- tours on USS YORKTOWN, USS TEXAS, USS AMERICA
1993- Staff, Commander Naval Forces Europe (CNE), in London
Intelligence Watch Officer, Head of the Current Intelligence Branch.
1994- Certificate in International Political Affairs
from University of Zurich
1995 to 1997- Special Assistant and Speechwriter
for the Secretary of the Navy
1997 to 1998- Office of the Director of Central Intelligence,
speech writer, member on Director’s Long-Term Planning Board
1998 to 2001-American Embassy in Oslo, Norway,
as Assistant Naval Attaché,
Joint Staff and Office of the Secretary of Defense
2001- Inman Intelligence Chair, Naval Postgraduate School,
Senior Intelligence Officer and Intelligence Programs Coordinator
2003- Department of Defense Chief Liaison
to the German Federal Intelligence Service.
2005- United States Northern Command’s Interagency Coordination
Directorate, policy planning and technology consultant
2007- UCCS Center for Homeland Security
Here is Steve Recca quoted in the August 24, 2007 Colorado Springs Business Journal about a newly formed COLORADO HOMELAND DEFENSE ALLIANCE:
“The whole point behind the alliance is creating partnerships, networking — collaboration with government, military, university and corporations in the aerospace, defense and security industries.”
Black Fire- Indigenous with an attitude
Black Fire is good music. Defeated Nations, Native American- Sacred Spirit.
Indigenous Protest, Resistance, and Dissent
The Totonacs, to better understand the Anglo population of Colorado by seeing it in another country. More about indigena and mestizos
They teach ‘Colorado Indians’ in grade school in District 11. But what do they really teach you, Safiyyah? We need to learn more.
“The Road To Hell” $500,000 in Department of Defense Funding to Kansas University for Mapping of Communally Held Indigenous Lands in La Huasteca and Oaxaca, Mexico.
Department of Defense and History
Bush is invoking the lessons of Vietnam as a reason to persevere in Iraq, highlighting opinions of historians apparently. The media describes them as heroic revisionist historians who are opposed by anti-war historians. Has academia betrayed history?
Who is historian Mark Moyar, author of Triumph Forsaken (how we could have won in Vietnam etc)? Associate professor at the U.S. Marine Corps University.
Who is historian Lewis Sorley, author of A Better War, Honorable Warrior (and other favorable accounts of Vietnam)? Civilian official of the Central Intelligence Agency, then Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Army Historical Foundation and Executive Director of the Association of Military Colleges and Schools of the United States.
Who are the anti-war historians? Everybody else.
Your dad is going to die of cancer
It’s just been reported that the children of soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are more likely to suffer child abuse. Is this finding not terrible enough for their parents to take heed and refuse to to be ordered there?
All soldiers going to Iraq and Afghanistan doom themselves to exposure to Depleted Uranium. Does it give anyone pause that they are dooming themselves and their families to certain ill-health? They’re not making a selfless sacrifice, they’re sacrificing their kids.
By the VA’s own report, over 11,600 Gulf War vets have died since 1991. A third of the soldiers involved in that 100 hour engagement are now on disability. The health problems have been called Gulf War Syndrome because the military won’t admit responsibility, like it long denied the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam. But doctors are now certain the many common symptoms are due to DU. Already we are seeing birth defects from Iraq War veterans.
Of course the media is not addressing the problem, but why aren’t soldiers figuring out the cause and effect for themselves? Do they still think the Department of Defense is looking out for them? After the Walter Reed scandals? After the failures to deal with PTSD?
Remember an unusual report early in the Iraq occupation when Dutch troops were to replace a US Marines encampment? The Dutch commanders instantly forbade their soldiers to inhabit the American barracks due to DU contamination. They deemed it better to bivouac outside the camp, exposed to attack outside the fortifications, than to suffer the certain DU exposure about which the American soldiers had been told nothing.
I have an idea of how to bring this message home to our soldiers. It involves the soldiers’ families because they are already impacted negatively, and stand to bear the brunt of losing their father or mother, of having to cope with a bitter, violent veteran, or having to care for the eventually terminally ill invalid. Here’s my plan:
I live in a neighborhood that houses the families of officers posted to Fort Carson. Usually they’re newcomers, usually just the families, the fathers being away in Iraq. Kids know these families from talking amongst each other at school.
The next time this or that house is pointed out to me, I’m going to tell the kids to be nice to those children because their father is dying of cancer. Never mind succumbing to IEDs, or to mental illness, the veteran will more likely than not, die a slow death of cancer or leukemia or whatever mysterious debilitating fate, owing to the DU he inhaled over there. Imagine the talk at the school reaching the soldier’s children. They’d bring their fears home. It’s a heartless rumor to spread to kids, but maybe their alarm could prompt an awakening and ultimately save their dad’s life.
This subversive message can be directed toward soldiers at other opportunities. Be it a panhandler with PTSD, or a proud veteran in a parade, treat them both with a sincere gentleness because of their pending struggle with cancer. Thank them for their service, apologize that their sacrifice will turn out to be so tragic.
Bring the message home.
Close Fort Carson, don’t expand it
When was the last time any of us heard a section of the ‘peace’ movement call for closing down military bases?
Even the Close the School of the Americas movement doesn’t call for closing down anything other than a part of one military base, but not all of it. We need to get rid of the nuclear warheads, plus the bases they are sitting on. We need to get rid of Fort Carson too, and not expand it.
Why do we have such a timid and pathetic ‘peace’ movement? We need to call for an end to all these cops and soldiers around us, since they will not just go away on their own. Planet Pentagon is an article that gives a snapshot picture of the problem. It’s time to abolish the War Department euphemistically called the Department of Defense. Or at least we should rename it the Department of Corporate Defense, which is what it really is.
Calling for an end to all this militarism is patriotic and defending it by waving the American flag is not. Reduce the military budget. Reduce the police budgets. We need to get rid of most of this apparatus, if not all of it??? They’re squeezing the life out of our planet.
And at the very least, a ‘peace’ movement that doesn’t demand sharply curtailing the military is not doing its job, but is cowering in fear of offending the ‘troops’ instead. And one that is seen hugging and smiling alongside the chief of police is repugnant. That’s the kindest words I can find about that, Chief ‘Liars’ Myers.
Yes, the Justice and Peace Coalition is sleep walking on the issues. And ahead, I see a national total meltdown of the ‘peace’ movement into getting a Democrat elected. Some things just never seem to change. All instead of actually mobilizing people to close the military and police of America down. They are currently a repressive apparatus that is more a danger to people than a protection for them.
Close Fort Carson down, don’t expand it.