To laud this tragic now banality, Fort Carson has a job fair today, but those most suffering under the neo liberal economy need not apply. To attend the event held on post, potential job applicants for the military industrial sector, need what voter disenfranchisement projects push for election restrictions, a federal or state ID, vehicle registration and proof of insurance, for entry level non-union contractor labor that will barely support that.
In protesting war, it’s not enough to say you “support the troops”, even as you advocate to “bring them home”. Soldiers see criticizing war as directed at them because it underminds the purity of spirit they want to go about their destructive missions. Don’t expect to get anywhere with trying to explain legal or moral issues. Their military indoctrination omits understanding war crimes like collective punishment, disproportionate force, massacre, murder, and by the looks of it, even rape of your fellow female soldiers. No, today’s soldiers want enablers to help them “embrace the carnage” so they can “do what they have to do” wherever they’re deployed. Even stationed stateside, they’re unencumbered by critical thought, they certainly don’t want to hear yours.
ONLY IN COLORADO SPRINGS! (SPOILER: OCCUDRAMA ALERT)–
Not satisfied with heckling the OCS antiwar rally on Saturday, some “berserkers” from Fort Carson’s 4/4 2/12 regiment thought they’d march on the Occupy events committee meeting Monday and vote to make OCS more like their occupation stints in Iraq and Afghanistan, more pro-killer and all. Or vote OCS out of existence. Cute, as they pretend to uphold everybody’s freedom, etc. Apparently the soldiers were following the directions of Right Wing Youtube slackupier Agent Snuffleupagus Doubt, who promised to reopen his faux-occupy website for their coup, as if maintaining the fake OCS Facebook group wasn’t anti-occupy enough. True to idiotic form, Doubt’s plan was to overwhelm the democratic nature of OCS, forgetting to caution his winged monkeys about embarrassing mechanisms which protect OWS groups from malicious disruptions, many of his troops face disciplinary probation, for starters. But for Agent Duh it’s enough to videotape a flash-blob declaring itself king of OCS, and it’s done. Emboldened by this virtual occupy, next Mastermind Duh will probably scheme to send Republican operatives to crash the Democratic Caucuses, vote them all Republican, and steal their delegates for Ron Paul! What a plan!
BTW Commander Dumbass, how can someone who hasn’t attended Occupy meetings in months, someone who has publicly declared himself on repeated occasions to have left Occupy, and someone who has often acted in league with public attackers of Occupy, PRETEND to tell people what are its bylaws? Critics of democracy movements accuse proponents of advocating mob rule, and so you’ve confused democracy for your own caricature? I suppose you think if the minister of First Prez wanted to convert Occupy, he could march enough of his flock down to Acacia and vote OCS into his denomination. That logic may wash with Ft Carson boys, and your Youtube viewership, but it’s not going to cut it with real people. Are you kidding me with your inanity?
Those readers following the Occupy! Movement in its many forms around the world and in Colorado Springs will be glad to hear that Tuesday culminated a difficult week for us here with a resolution of many contentious issues, and an overall commitment to unity.
The subject matter behind this particular post is closely associated with the Movement in general, but it’s more a humanity thing than an Occupy thing, overall. I hope i can get the associations to make sense, and that readers will restrain themselves from developing the erroneous notion that this is meant to be a pitch for some sort of religion. It’s not.
I went to the Municipal Court in Colorado Springs to enter a plea of “not guilty” to the charge of camping on public property because of actions executed as a part of Occupy! Actually, i was camping on public property, to put it quite plainly, and the idea behind the plea is that the action does not engender guilt even if it violates a silly and badly unAmerican, (read, “oppressive,” if we’ve become a little unrecognizable in this regard), statute. A couple dozen supporters made it to the courtroom with me, and raised enough ruckus to get Municipal Judge Spottswood W. H. Williams to threaten them all with contempt charges. The whole thing was kind of a lot of fun, really. Made me feel a little like Hoffman or Hayden, in a much smaller sense. There comes a first time for everything, and this was my first visit to a courtroom during which i was able to feel utterly unencumbered by the dark nature of my own action that had led me there. My deepest thanks to all the OCS members and especially Dennis Apuan, who put his political credibility on the line to stand with us, and brought a good deal of patriotic weight to the room as State Rep for the fine soldiers of Fort Carson.
The hearing was only that, after all, and after entering the plea, we scheduled a pre-trial conference with the City Attorney, for 22 Nov, at which a government lawyer will make me an offer i’ll most assuredly refuse and we’ll schedule a jury trial. I’ll keep you news hounds posted as things progress.
The point to this post, though, is an underlying root to the no-camping ordinance, as well as to most of the woes of the day: The Fear.
Most of us don’t acknowledge the Fear because, well, it’s scary. Instead we get angry, or attempt to maneuver ourselves into a position to control uncontrollable factors like society or competitive economies. We eschew cooperation because we’re afraid of our fellows. We make assumptions about others’ behavior and how it will effect us. We bewail the corruption of society, and begin looking over our shoulders for the punishment of God, or black-clad mercenaries coming over the horizon to herd us into frigid winter FEMA camps. We worry about hunger, poverty, inglorious death. We develop elaborate political systems and foment revolution in order to establish “security” of dubious credibility. Look around. These tactics have not ever worked after attempting repeated, redundant permutations, and there is no reasonable expectation that they ever will.
The Fear has driven all this cutthroat competition. It’s what motivates folks to be sure they have more, more, more. It’s what causes us to petulantly demand our right to burn as much gas in our Hummers as possible, and to constantly engage in useless commerce. It motivates the lowest guy competing for some crappy job at Taco Bell just as surely as it motivates conspiratorial Rothschild backroom bankers. It motivates us to enact stupid, oppressive no-camping ordinances when someone that scares us becomes visible, oh my! We’re all deathly afraid of some horrible outcome, like someone else getting our stuff, or scaring tourists away, or enjoying some habitual pleasure we find repugnant.
The Fear is irrational! What’s the very worst that can happen to us in this life? We die? We find ourselves incarcerated or tortured? Consider, if you will, that we live our little spans, maybe a hundred years or so at the outside limit, surrounded at both ends by an unfathomable mass of toroidally twisted, multi-dimentional Eternity that not one of us will ever grasp while we live. What possible fear can be valid under this circumstance other than that we fail to live according to our own perceived Truths? I say “perceived” since only those afflicted by the Fear are afraid to examine those truths for the errors all honest thinkers know to exist within our own perceptions. If I knew my own blind spots they wouldn’t exist, right? We don’t even know what we’re afraid of mostly, though we can usually list a few if we set ourselves to the task. No one is to blame for his or her own irrational fears, especially cultural fears such as seem to be more or less universal. Many have been established by the direct influence of media that may well have been designed by nefarious folk for exactly the purpose of invoking unfounded fears in various populations. OMG! Now i’m making myself afraid! Not really–but what to do about the Fear?
“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear,” reads a certain religious text, (1 Jn 4:18, for those with a source fetish like me). I won’t be digressing into a religious sermon here. The principle holds without the doctrinal baggage surrounding it in the context in which it nests. No matter how evil the Ideas we oppose as Occupiers, or as human beings in general, they can’t overwhelm a spirit of love. No matter the spiritual foundation or lack thereof, love can dissipate greed, fear, disappointment, embarrassment, and in fact any of the various bases for the secondary anger response we are all prone to manifesting in situations as apparently dire as the one we’re seeing now. As much as i can plainly see the bogus nature of the moves made in, say, the financial industry, (inseparable from other key industries at a certain level), applying some genuine empathy causes a mental process that can not end in hatred or vengefulness. Look guys like Greenspan or Geitner in the eyes next time you see them. They’re deeply miserable, and completely trapped in their own Fears. When it all collapses, i really hope they’re still available so we can feed them a plate of food, even if we can’t resist the temptation to ask, “What the fuck were you thinking!?”
We can’t fight fire with fire here. Battling greed with more greed, as some seeking to restore an “American Dream” involving bigger slices of a rotten pie seem to do. Revolution only spins us in circles: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” We always seem to find ourselves standing in the same spot we started, except standing in pools of blood with fewer resources after every revolution we’ve ever effected. We don’t have these options any longer. The planet is in a condition that will not permit us to continue on the deeply ingrained, competitive course we’ve followed for so long. Learning to love, to let go, to tolerate, to work together for our futures which are common whether we like it or not is the only way out of this. It’s not easy, only necessary.
I can’t tell anyone how to save anyone else, or how to convince the next guy that any of this is true. I can’t even describe the mental processes that led to these conclusions. All i seem able to do is to proceed in the direction the thoughts lead, as they come to me in a fashion that very often seems external. Examine the assertions that continue to spill out of me at 2 in the morning like this. Notice with joy that there seem to be many others reaching similar conclusions: Things are terminally fucked up and only Love can save us. If it turns out that we’re not saved, that the whole human experiment is doomed to fail, i’ll breathe my last breath in the knowledge that i walked the talk spoken by all my heroes in tongues long lost to history, or new today, or unspoken yet understood by common nature. I don’t think i’m alone. I don’t know how to be afraid of that.
COLORADO SPRINGS- We covered all corners and medians at the intersection of Nevada and Uintah for a Rush Hour Bannering against adding Apache helicopters to Ft Carson’s 4th Cav, organized by Bill Sulzman –Next week: Nevada Ave and I-25, Friday 4:30pm.
There’s a new yellow ribbon on our block. Anymore, yellow ribbon stickers on cars designate wives of servicemen, or realtors sucking up to the military because the only real estate sales here come from Fort Carson’s ever expanding war training. Actually, vehicles of military families are now often festooned wildly with ribbons designating service, regiment and very specific distinctions. Their tailgates mimic the colorful macaroni worn by soldiers on parade. Fine time too, to abandon the old yellow ribbon and the specialization it stood for.
“I’m coming home, I’ve done my time.”
You remember the lyric. He’s about to be released from prison, after three long years, so it wasn’t for littering. What has his homecoming to do with US killers overseas except the obvious?
Our soldiers at war are serving their time, and there’s an argument to be made that they too are war’s victims. Hasn’t it become fitting that the yellow ribbon of pop music lore forgave a felon?
But the song forgave a felon for the crime he’d done, a changed man, now repentant, returning to make a humble appeal for forgiveness.
American soldiers coming home offer no sign they are rehabilitated, nor even that they have an inkling of crimes commited, nor certainly that they bear any of the responsibility. Our soldiers coming home probably mirror a real life parolee’s likelihood to be a recidivist.
COLORADO SPRINGS- The complicit media accepts the Army’s characterization of the 1:30AM crash as a “hard landing” and neither the condition of the Apache Longbow aircraft nor its occupants is being revealed; even though emergency vehicles reached the downed Apache via Gold Camp Road and the crew were rushed to Memorial Hospital, civilian jurisdiction. The citizens of Colorado Springs are being kept on a need to know basis, as Fort Carson increases its flight training for choppers being deployed to Afghanistan, even as the training battleground becomes the skies about our neighborhoods.
COLORADO SPRINGS- At Rosamund Naylor’s CC lecture “Where’s the Beef?” about the basic unsustainability of beef, whether corn or grass fed, we discussed three facets of the sustainable equation: biophysical, economic and social. The Southern Colorado Sustainability Conference taking place today and tomorrow is more interested in a fourth: military sustainability, or how to sustain its mission. The PPSBN event is a green wash for area businesses, primarily weapons industry contractors, and Fort Carson, to claim for example, that setting aside land for a firing range will ameliorate urban growth. Their keynote speaker this year is Nancy Tuor of CH2M Hill, one of the top war profiteers in Iraq and Afghanistan, implicated among the disaster profiteers of Hurricane Katrina.
A sustainable army is a very, very small one. There is no sustainable offensive capability, nor even as deterrence. A big stick is only sustainable as a plowshare.
A blimp-neck military type’s concept of sustainability is fertilizing the status quo.
But a word about Rosamund Naylor’s lecture. Gates Common room was overflowing with students and locals who seemed already very much up to speed about the grass-fed versus industrialized beef agriculture. I was almost completely impressed by the caliber of the students, when a tangle-haired student seated in front of me posed this question: “Could developments with GMO grasses produce greater yields which in turn could make grass-fed beef more feasible?” Naylor answered that GMO development was unlikely for perennial grasses because where’s the profit for Cargill? But the boy defended his question, as if Naylor’s answer had come from a Luddite, and the little innocent reaped back slaps from his friends all around.
Where is the US Antiwar Movement? What Antiwar Movement? Do you see an Antiwar Movement? Hell No (I won’t go into the Streets)! No! I don’t see any Antiwar Movement. See First Black President Defeats U.S. Antiwar Movement– A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford. He did what Colin Powell and Condi Rice couldn’t do alone. Oh wait! Colin endorsed Barack, didn’t he?
Or more like it, the Democratic Party liberal voters just defeated themselves. They were simply looking for a way out that wasn’t out. They didn’t want to oppose majority sentiment too hard and… Ouch! Some folk might have called them unpatriotic if they had? It was much easier to just limit themselves too voting DP and calling Republicans ‘chickenhawks’ and ‘fascists’ on the internet instead.
Way too much trouble to actually go to any demonstrations! Why here in Colorado Springs the leaders of the local peace group on paid staff didn’t even show up to the majority of their own public activities! They might have been seen and gotten an impolite finger or two thrown their way! … lol… Safer to stay indoors and talk to Pentagon reps about ‘greening’ Fort Carson like they did. And they prayed some, too.
Think I’m being harsh? Then check out the US military planes over at the El Paso County Democrats’ site. I guess that they’re Air Force fans? Any truth to the rumor that the Falcons are changing their name to the Drones? It would be more appropriate if they did.
For several years now Colorado Springs has watched in incredulous dismay as the Pentagon has tried to represent its local terrorism training center, Fort Carson, as being some sort of Green Acres to Coloradans. Incredibly, the local group of Democrats at the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission have done their part in playing part of the game with the military in this regard, as they held joint meetings with the military and even printed up some of their propaganda about being ‘Green’ in their quarterly newsletter.
But what’s the real story about this supposedly lean, green, terrorist cell near by? Are they out to save Mother Earth through the military-industrial complex as they claim? If you are a True Believer in this Pentagon propaganda offensive, then take a look at this news item then… Fort Carson fire consumes 6,500 acres
It turns out, not surprisingly, that the military dropping bombs during heir ‘exercises’ is what started this fire out. These boy toys are noted for being just like that, but burning money off through weaponry is the American economy and so this Blood Red group must expand! Nothing green about it except for the American dollars being consumed so stupidly. It’s simply time to stop this bombs away, burn Mother Earth away machine. If you care about ecology, get out and show your concern by protesting the continuous and constant US military presence here in Colorado Springs.
It takes a lot of nerve to try to pass the pentagon off as Green, humane, and Earth loving, doesn’t it? But these Pentagon lairs get a humongous propaganda budget from American taxpayers to do just that. If your military backed job depends on it,t hen you might be the type of dunce to buy into this hogwash? If not, it’s just another reason to be sick of what the total militarization of America is doing to us.
*** Note that the fire pictured was a wildfire from last year at Fort Carson and not this year’s fire.
I went down to the City Council meeting today to speak out against all their coming proposed property tax increases, service cutbacks, and increases in utility bills and was met by the corporate interests pigs at the trough. I’m talking about the City Council members themselves. Actually the pigs at the trough in Colorado Springs run the trough… and mainly for themselves. For others they want to cutback everything but they hide that agenda in every way they can. Who runs the Colorado Springs City Council? Why is there no appealing to their possible good judgement?
The answer is that special interests run the city and I identified just who they were to the public when I addressed that public meeting for my 3 minutes worth today. It was rather obvious since they always herald and celebrate corporate interests for supposedly ‘helping’ out the city. Today they waxed on about how Walmart had ‘generously’ donated a whole $2,000 to the city’s Fire Department. Like , WOW! How impressive can you get? I asked them if Walmart had some left over change from their union busting campaigns and whether that is where their huge donation came from out of their hundreds of billions of dollars worth of profits? Their answer? I was then described as being ill informed about Walmart! Yeah? Go figure?
I told the public at this public charade of a meeting that they had no recourse to stop all these proposed cutbacks with Mayor Fort Carson Captain Lionel, Vice President Larry Lockheed Small, and Tom ‘Kill the Mouse’ Real Estate Industry Gallagher running the municipal show and trough. Response? Two other city councilmen spoke up saying that they were hurt that I had not correctly added them on as being solid military-industrial complex men in Pentagon pocket! They’re military, too! Case made as the Pentagon-military-industrial welfare guzzling machine self-identified themselves for the public here. Mayor Rivera then went on to claim that there wouldn’t be a Fire Department in the city if it weren’t for the military, so don’t blame any War Machine for cutbacks he implied. Huh? The US government military spending is bankrupting not only the US, but the whole planet as well!
I could go on, but you really have to attend these meetings in Wonderland… I mean Special Interests Land, Alice. They are always bizarre to the max. Until people start getting really angry and start drawing some connections, then we’re going to pay, pay, pay, and pay some more. The corporate interests pigs simply are running City Government in this city and all for themselves. Nobody holds them accountable and that’s a crying shame. Meanwhile Barack is out there occupying 2 whole countries, bombing them and more, and threatening the starving Palestinians with yet more violence. And all the while around the country there is no money to go around? Pretty stupid stuff, America, and you’re still playing along, aren’t you? The special interest pigs are going to bankrupt you but for good.
Former Gitmo prosecutor rips military trials, calling interrogators’ practices ‘despicable’ The 15 y/o taken as POW in Afghanistan was tortured, his torture obtained ‘confession’ video taped by his interrogators, and yet now ‘the confession’ is being entered in by the US government-military as supposed evidence against the juvenile POW at their military procedures. All this taking place at its own illegal US government sponsored Kangaroo Court trial for the young man, though the US military claims that they have actually lost the taped confession!
Even Kafka couldn’t have come up with this totalitarian scenario and yet this is the standard of ‘Military Justice’ that will be used to try yet more US soldiers being brought into Fort Carson for ‘trials’. They don’t seem to be planning to charge anybody for crimes of torturing POWs, Barack or no Barack? How is that the case in our alleged democracy?
Free the US GIs that have resisted taking part in these wars waged in such illegal manner. Mohamed was tortured repeatedly at Gitmo, post his Afghanistan taped ‘confession’ obtained from torture. What were they hoping to find from this kid POW? Some Americans that mistakenly entered into the US military don’t want to take part in this sort of illegalities. That’s a crime? They should be honored for helping chip away at this Pentagon torture machine.
IS THE US-ARMY-BEDMATE-GAZETTE GOING TO REPORT THIS STORY? Salon Magazine was leaked helmet-cam video showing the 2006 deaths of two US soldiers in Ramadi, by friendly fire, which the US Army is still attributing to Iraqi insurgents. Within hours of breaking the story, soldiers working in Fort Carson offices were ordered to shred the documents relating to the slain PFCs. Fortunately Salon was leaked this development as well.
Watch the video. Pay no heed to the warnings of graphic violence and profanity. What the tape reveals is the inanity of all the soldiers’ conduct. First, a very imprudent peek through a window at a US tank, which more than likely prompted the tank to fire. As a result, the helmet wearer is knocked to the floor, a soldier on the floor above is wounded (and dies), and another on the roof is killed. What followed was discussion about whether the tank had fired the single round, countered by the commanding officer repeating that the official attribution would be mortar fire until a report proved otherwise. Despite that fact that all the soldiers coming up to the commander are reporting that the tank had fired, and he tells them “I agree with you–.” Also, during the entire sequence no other shot is heard.
It will be interesting to see what Fort Carson intended to accomplish by shredding the records of PFCs Albert Nelson and Roger Suarez. In particular because some of the documents were spirited aside and sent to Salon. Was the Army intending to produce revised versions to support their official report of the soldiers deaths?
I received a well written letter yesterday from an American Soldier. It was addressed to me, but I thought I’d post his arguments for general comment.
Mr. Verlo,
I stumbled upon your website by a pure stroke of accidental misfortune while searching for current news on the Fort Carson Installation.. My wife, my son and I are from Colorado, and I am an American Soldier. I am college educated and studied Middle-Eastern history, and I am well versed as it pertains to Mesopotamia, global-terror and global insurgencies.
I have deployed to Iraq twice and Afghanistan once. In 2003-2004 I served in Al-Fallujah and Ar-Ramadi in the Al-Anbar province, and in 2005-2006 in Tal’afar in the western Ninewah province with the 3d Armored Cavalry from Fort Carson (maybe you heard about the letter that Najim Abdullah wrote to George Bush about my unit?).
I spent seven months in Afghanistan training Afghani Security Forces, and would go back again to either country to serve for one reason only: to support my Soldiers. Although I am career-military, I do not now, nor did I ever support the Bush Administration or the pretenses under which we invaded Iraq. But, unfortunately, our elected officials thrust us into this mess, and we (Americans and American Military alike) are essentially left to deal with it. I am writing to you to comment on a few articles that you have authored, and provide my own opinions and citations.
First, in your article titled: “It’s in the Percentages”, you note that “apparently” 30% of Soldiers don’t have a high school education, 30% are returning with PTSD and 25% percent of their children are considered “special needs”. These are very interesting statistics, yet, you provided no citations. You go on to state that (and I quote): “I find it an absolute nightmare to imagine soldiers in positions of authority, making life and death decisions over others, who don’t know right from wrong, history from high stakes poker, or intelligence from drunken stupor. How do you reason with someone whose only motivation is their next beer?” and “It’s a war crime to subject civilian populations to rule by incompetents”. Again, very interesting. Here are some solid statistics for you, as well as citations. I chose to contrast military service members to college students in this case, but the same could be applied to any demographic (i.e., individuals who were recently laid off nation-wide, or illegal immigrants).
– 40% of college students who come from middle to upper class families engage in binge drinking on a regular (weekly) basis, as opposed to 26% of military personnel who have recently returned from combat tours overseas, where they suffered some sort of physical and/or emotional trauma (ABC news poll, 2007/2008). In addition, over 22,000 service members have called suicide hotlines in an attempt to get help (VA poll, 2008).
– 20% of college students engage in heavy drug use, as opposed to less than 5% of military personnel (ABC News Poll, 2007).
Here’s my favorite one:
3% of all college women report sexual assault at some point in their college career. In 2007, there were 2,212 reported cases of sexual assault on military installations by service members. In a military that exceeds roughly 2,000,000 people, that’s less than 1%.
Second, in your article titled: “Turning out to support fewer Troops”, you allude to Soldiers “riding in on a black cloud”. Hmmm, I’m not quite sure I understand that one. Is this a reference to the environmental damage we do with our vehicles, or the perceived “evil” that we bring with us because we are all, in fact, rapists, murderers and psychopaths?
Third, in your article titled: “Colorado Springs Military Community”, you state that (and I quote) “FIVE MAJOR MILITARY INSTALLATIONS ALREADY AND THE CITY AND COUNTY ARE BROKE”. El Paso County is broke? Since when? I would love to see a citation in reference to this one, because I have “Googled” it to no end and have found nothing that would lead me to believe anything but the contrary. The Colorado Springs Economic Development Corporation reports that: “Colorado Springs has a 3.1 million labor force within an hour radius, a Fast track permitting and planning program (30-60 days), 27 Fortune 500 Companies and a quality of life which is 70% the cost of coastal communities” (CSEDC 2008).
Sir, I have read your opinions on the media (many of which I share with you, by the way), so I would presume that you think this is a fabrication. Here’s the bottom line; the military presence in Colorado (the big, scary war-machine that we are) boosts the economy of the area due to its service members buying cars, houses (and paying taxes on their properties), shopping at local businesses, applying for and receiving loans from local banks, etc. There is no doubt in my mind that if the military left Colorado Springs, the city would continue to thrive, but the economy would noticeably decline anywhere that 30,000 people leave, military or not.
Fourth and final, in your article titled: “On Jan 14 let us not expand Fort Carson”, you state that more military in the area would make (and I quote) “Colorado Springs even more dependent on poor paying jobs, predatory businesses, and skyrocketing social problems. Only developers, car-dealers, pawn shops, strip clubs, liquor stores, social workers, jails and mortuaries benefit from a higher soldier population”. Wow, seriously? These are only issues tied to the influx of more military in the area? So, if 3,000 recently released convicted felons chose Colorado Springs as their new home, it would have less of an impact? Or how about 3,000 illegal immigrants, or 3,000 pregnant teenagers?
Well, let’s go ahead and analyze this a bit further. Developers and car-dealers will benefit from ANY new arrivals to the area, not just military. In reference to pawn shops and strip clubs, the owners of these businesses know exactly what they are doing by placing them outside of military installations. Service members are targeted by these establishments. That’s why they are placed where they are in the community. The same can be said for pay-day loan houses and used car dealerships on Powers and Academy blvd. But if you placed strip clubs next to colleges, would it still be the military that held the higher attendance record? It’s all about business strategy my friend, not the assumption that all military service members are sex-crazed, alcoholic lunatics.
Social workers, jails and mortuaries benefit wherever there are people with problems, criminals and people who have died. I suppose that again, it’s only military who fall into these categories. Ah yes, and our children are even more screwed up than we are. The fact that you said (and I quote): “The rest of us suffer increased crime and their children’s behavioral problems in our schools” vividly displays your utter incompetence and lack of any compassionate notion. You realize that less than 30% of military children who have been separated from a parent experience behavioral issues (USA Today poll, 2008)? The percentage of non-military children who experience behavioral issues as a result of a parent’s incarceration, or divorce, or even domestic abuse is almost twice as high.
Sir, I will be the first to admit that military service members are not perfect. But we are human beings, who are susceptible to the same things that civilians are. We are an easy target, because so many of us are returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan with severe problems, after having served in a war that has lost most of it’s public support (and rightly so).
What I have a hard time understanding is why people such as you exercise your freedoms of speech, protest, religion, etc, and then malign the very people who provide, protect and preserve those liberties? I am as anti-Bush as the average American left-wing protestor, but to blame service members for the actions of their elected leadership is immoral. You are essentially grouping us with Nazi’s, which is absolutely ridiculous. The Nazis’ goal was global domination, and they had no clearly defined rule of engagement. They knew that what they were doing was wrong, and did it anyway.
Does the US Military have people who behave in this manner? Absolutely, and they are dealt with within the justice system for their actions. We are in fact “just following orders” with our presence in the Middle-East. As I realize that this was also the defense of Nazi war criminals at Nurnberg, allow me to elaborate. The US military has clearly defined Rules of Engagement, and our greater mission is to stabilize an unstable region, not global control as conspiracy theorists would have everyone believe. Unless you have a solid understanding of counter-terror and counterinsurgency doctrine, you are in no position to presume anything about the US Military in the Middle-East (unless YOU have been there) other than the fact that we invaded Iraq under false pretenses. I’ll give you that one, and take it for myself as well.
Sir, have you ever held a young Iraqi child in your arms, returning him to his parents as they kiss you and your Soldiers’ cheeks, after he had been treated at a US facility because terrorists sodomized him and cut out his tongue? Have you ever looked straight into the eyes of a terrorist, who swore allegiance to Zarqawi and proclaimed himself a “holy warrior”, and seen pure evil? And while your medical personnel treated him for burns (which were sustained when he poured kerosene on a child and his father and attempted to set them on fire publicly, only succeeding to set himself on fire) he spoke perfect English and vowed to remember your name and kill your family? I presume you would view this as our fault, correct?
But here’s the difference between the American Soldier and everyone else: when it is our fault, we acknowledge it, and DO something about it. We help people, good and bad, bottom line. Do bad things happen? Of course. Are all Soldiers and Marines upright citizens? Of course not.. That’s why one Marine out of 30,000 threw a puppy off of a cliff, and four Soldiers out of 121,000 raped a 14-year old girl and killed her family. These actions were inexcusable and tragic, and the individuals in question were/are being dealt with. To generalize every American service member based on these isolated incidents vividly shows your lack of any rational thought.
So in closing, allow me to say that whether you care to acknowledge it or not, it is the MILITARY who grant and preserve liberties and who TRULY make a difference, not politicians, protestors, or half-minded anti-war bloggers. And understand (or don’t) why we are involved in the Global War on Terror, it is because it doesn’t matter whether or not you are white, black, Canadian, American, gay, straight, blind, deaf, or how many anti-Bush websites you manage or protests you attend, there are fundamentalist extremists who want to murder you and your family because you represent western culture.
I want this war to be over so badly that it consumes me at times. I do not want my son to have to see what I have seen as a result of a failed administration. Sir, we are human beings also, and I gladly serve to protect the liberty and freedom of individuals like you who don’t support me at all. So at your next rally, or the next article you write which slanders US service members, take a moment to reflect on your freedoms, and understand who it is that truly grants them. I wish you all continued health and happiness.
Sincerely,
[D.]
COLORADO SPRINGS- Extradited desertion/political refugee Robin Long, spent several weeks jailed in Fort Carson after being refused political asylum in Canada. An army court let Long plead guilty to the charge of desertion based on a plea bargain agreement. The local PPJPC held vigils to publicize Long’s plight, and it turns out, did a little bit more.
In a just published letter to the Independent, indefatigably blow hardy local attorney Bill Durland was revealed to have been co-counsel. Durland assisted with arranging the guilty plea and as a result, Robin Long was sentenced to one and a quarter years in Leavenworth. Thanks a lot I’m sure.
Was Robin Long a war resister? Who would think he’d want to quit resisting being told by the Army what to do? Long fled to Canada because he wanted to be NOT GUILTY of war crimes. These have been his own arguments: Every soldier has a right to refuse illegal orders. The war in Iraq has been determined by international bodies to be an illegal war. Why is Robin Long pleading guilty?
Already reported was that Long’s first character witness was also someone from the PPJPC, whom Long had only just recently met, through three visitations. It was the mysteriously socially inept Pete Haney, the new-hire Dynamic Peace Director who’s presided over that organization’s declining participation. The Gazette reported Haney’s helpful testimony on behalf of Robin Long:
“I’ve observed Mr. Long in situations that would be trying to just about anyone,” Haney said. “He seemed to me to be extremely poised and lucid.”
In Colorado Springs it’s not enough that you find yourself up a creek without a paddle, you’ll find “friends” who’ll make sure to put holes in your canoe.
In a risky move, Pvt. Robin Long is going for a reduced sentence by essentially agreeing to a plea bargain from the US military Establishment. Soldier to plead guilty to lower desertion charge Soldier to plead guilty to reduced desertion charge at Colorado’s Fort Carson, his lawyer says. The question is, will the military honor any agreement they might have promised Pvt. Long in private? For more about Robin Long’s story, check out the info on him at the War Resister’s Support Campaign web site
Those that have paid the slightest attention to recent events in Afghanistan will have noted the lies of the US government where they claimed that their bombings had not this past week hit and killed any civilians at all. The reality is quite different though. We might note however that the BBC covers its report of these lies by putting the word civilians in parentheses! How indecent the press is in covering up for the liars of DC and London. US ‘killed 47 Afghan civilians’ They are part of the lying and pretense, too.
But let’s think for a second about who is making these accusations about killing civilians? It is the British and US puppet government in Afghanistan itself! So why put the word civilians in parentheses? This is shameful behavior by the servile press of the US and Britain, is it not? They just have to continue to lie on behalf of their own governments? It makes themselves look utterly stupid in doing so.
What does it say about our societies, where we have governments that torture poor countries like Afghanistan with occupation, war, and bloody mayhem? Look in the mirror, Public. Why have you not protested against these atrocities?
I especially find the role of the local ‘peace’ group the PPJPC repugnant in this regard. I am about the only member of this group that has ever even mentioned the word ‘Afghanistan’ in any of their banners and signs, activities and events. Instead they are out there hugging cops, ‘talking’ it over with Fort Carson Pentagon propaganda whores, etc. Meanwhile, the bloody assault on the people of Afghanistan goes on without any ‘peace’ group attention! Just pathetic!
We need to stop believing in the DC Pentagon lies about what they are doing in Afghanistan. This was is every bit as badly intentioned as the war against Iraq is. Just because the Democratic Party is so onboard in their Afghan adventure is no reason for supposed antiwar groups like the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission to sit on their butts about the issue of US atrocities there.
I just love the Gazette’s headline on their July 4th front page: POST IS KEEPING TABS ON ITS ‘BOOTPRINT’. Is it a cute eco play on words, or an ironic malapropism? About collateral damage, Rumsfeld famously said the US doesn’t do body counts. I am reminded of course of George’s Orwell’s foretelling: “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”
Certainly the PR crew at Fort Carson meant to imply the equivalent of an environmental footprint in Army lingo. But footprint is itself no longer the literal track left behind you as you walk. It has come to mean the space you occupy, or the resources you consume. Or that of your computer or the printer on your desk for example. The portion of surface resources which each item displaces.
There must be a semantic fallacy which applies here, a mixed semaphore perhaps? As if you could tell me “put a sock in it.” And the Army would add “Put a BOOT in it. HA HA.”
If the Fort Carson sustainability spin doctors want to call the Army eco impact a “bootprint” instead, it probably is more accurate. Their activities have devastation-unleashing consequences. And as the interviews in the article reveal, the warrior’s real passion is in the warfare, hybred-whatsits be damned.
On this Independence Day when we’re all wishing ourselves “Happy” Patriotism, let’s reflect on the full context of Orwell’s 1984 passage:
Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO- As previously announced, the Army is conduction a public scoping meeting on May 21 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Colorado Springs about their tentative Pinon Canyon takings. At 6:30pm they’ll outline their need to Grow-The-Army (GTA) on account of the GD-GWOT. Southeastern Colorado ranchers intend to voice their opposition at an early session 3-6pm and boycott the 6:30 public relations meeting. Here’s an invitation from Bill Sulzman:
What: Ranchers Coalition meeting.
When: Wednesday May 21, 3 – 6 PM.
Where: the Crowne Plaza Hotel (Circle and I-25)Why?
This is an extremely important meeting in the long term struggle to prevent the Army from seizing a huge chunk of ranch land in Southeast Colorado in the area adjacent to the current Pinon Canyon Maneuver site in Las Animas County. This is one of three meetings organized by the opposing ranchers and their coalition. The reason for this time and place is that it precedes an official Army scoping hearing on Fort Carson troop expansion at the same hotel starting at 6:30 PM on May 21.
The official scoping meeting is a charade (in my opinion) . The Environmental Impact Statement that is the end goal of this process is almost certainly a done deal. At least 95% of what will finally be written is already in place in a series of formulas that are always the same when the Army does an EIS. Those who take part in scoping hearings and later hearings on a draft EIS validate the process without any real effect on the final decision. For that reason the ranchers are asking us to boycott the official session and attend their meeting to get the latest information on what is really happening.
This is a very critical point in the campaign. The Army will almost certainly use this latest troop increase proposal, on top of those already mandated by the BRAC process. to add one more argument to their call for hundreds of thousands if not millions of acres of southeast Colorado grassland, evicting ranchers in the process.
It is our chance to show solidarity with folks we usually do not have much interaction with. I believe their cause is just and urge as many of you as possible to stop by at whatever time you can get there on the 21st whether that is at 3 or 4 or 5 o’clock or later.
I think we also know that a further huge increase in our city’s dependence on Pentagon dollars is a bad idea in its own right. City and county budgets are already in the red. Water and energy concerns and social service shortfalls are already dogging our community. When is enough enough? See official announcement below.
Hope to see you there.
Bill Sulzman
PUEBLO, COLORADO- The Pinon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition (PCMiSCRAP) folks are parking semi-trailer billboards along I-25 to make certain the US Army expansion team gets their message. The ranchers have also scheduled their own public meetings to preempt the Army “Public Scoping” PR presentations.
KIM, COLORADO- The Pinon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition will give the public an honest chance to comment on the proposed military expansion of the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site, on three consecutive nights, just prior to the Army’s scoping hearings which will exclude testimony on the subject.
PCEOC hearing times are:
Tuesday, May 20, in Trinidad
Trinidad State Jr College, Massari Auditorium from 4 to 6pWednesday, May 21, in Colorado Springs
Crowne Plaza Hotel, Salon C (Grand Ballroom) from 3 to 6pThursday, May 22, in La Junta
Otero Junior College, Mc Bride Hall #137 from 4 to 6pArmy officials announced scoping hearings to discuss bringing additional troops to Fort Carson but said the hearings have nothing to do with the proposed expansion of the PCMS. The communities of Southeastern Colorado know this is not true and that the two issues are undeniably linked.
“The Army knows that a majority of Coloradans, a majority of state lawmakers and a majority of federal lawmakers oppose the expansion,” said PCEOC President Lon Robertson. “By excluding any discussion of PCMS from the scoping hearings, Army officials are attempting to avoid a difficult subject and skirt federal law.”
In 2007, Congress passed and the President signed into law a military appropriations bill which outlawed all funding on the proposed expansion of the PCMS.
“If the Army held a hearing on expanding the site, they’d violate the law so instead, they are pretending that increasing the force at Fort Carson will have no impact,” Robertson said. “In reality, if they get more brigades at Fort Carson, we know they will turn around and demand more acreage on which to train them.
“And the real question is why won’t the Army take no for an answer?” Robertson said. “This has been dragging on too long and even the threat of expansion is having devastating effects on our communities and economy.”
The Army is behaving lawlessly and now it seems they don’t even follow their own guidelines set by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRACC). The additional troops cited in this latest effort completely exceed the numbers stated in the 2005 BRACC report.
The Pinon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition, or PCEOC, is a broad-based coalition representing communities across Southern Colorado in their opposition to the proposed military expansion. PCEOC members include business owners, teachers, students, elected officials, ranchers, environmentalists and many others.
The coalition is united in its opposition to any expansion of PCMS. No funding, no expansion.
May 8 PSA from the DECAM/NEPA coordinator at the FCPAO:
(Release 08-056)
FORT CARSON, COLO.– Part of GTA effort: USA issues NOI to prepare an EIS for bringing IBCT and CAB to USAFC and the PCMS, against the NAA. PUBLIC SCOPING MEETINGS (to hear NAA!) are May 20 in TAD, May 21 in COS (6:30PM Crowne Plaza Hotel) and May 22 in LHX.
Glossary:
PSA -Public Service Announcement
DECAM –Directorate of Environmental Compliance and Management
NEPA –National Environmental Policy Act
FCPAO -Fort Carson Public Affairs Office
GTA –“Grow the Army”
USA -United States Army
NOI -Notice of Intent
EIS -Environmental Impact Statement
IBCT -Infantry Brigade Combat Team (3,900 soldiers)
CAB -Combat Aviation Brigade (2,800 soldiers)
USAFC –United States Army Fort Carson
PCMS –Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site
NAA -No Action Alternative
TAD -Trinidad, Colorado
COS -Colorado Springs
LHX -La Junta (Airport codes)
Wikipedia explains this GWOT acronym:
AWR — (Alpha Whiskey Romeo) Allah’s Waiting Room. When engaged, insurgents have a tendency to flee to the same building (the AWR), at which point the troops radio in an air strike.
As the world moves toward recession/ depression, dragged down by the bursting US bubble economy, food riots are beginning to occur in multiple locales around the planet. The inflation rate in 2007 for food staple prices has been around 40%. See WFP food aid costs up “dramatically” in past weeks for the figure. The world population is currently growing at something less than 2% per year.
The annual world population growth rate reached its peak in the late 1960s, when it was at 2% and above. The rate of increase has therefore almost halved since its peak of 2.19 percent, which was reached in 1963, to the current 1.15%.
The annual population growth rate is currently declining and is projected to continue to decline in the coming years, but the pace of the future change is uncertain (1). Currently, it is estimated that it will become less than 1% by 2020 and less than 0.5% by 2050.
See world meter population information from where these percentage figures were copied.
So what is the historical capitalist economic rate of growth? That is the rate of growth needed for capitalism to not go into an economic down spin, and that necessary percent of growth is considered to be about 3% by most economists.
Note that this rate of growth needed in GDP is actually higher than the rate of population growth. In other words, even without a growth in world population capitalism needs to continually increase production to maintain the numbers of jobs given to the workers, or employment of them. However, it is this increasing production of goods (most of them quite unnecessary goods) that is decimating the ecology of the planet, and not mere population growth alone.
What we have is a world economy that is not feeding the world’s population adequately, is not maintaining the world’s ecological stability, not providing employment security, and yet is still expanding, which without that expansion in production of goods it would go into an economic crisis of increased world unemployment!
When rates of annual capitalist expansion of GDP go below the average annual rate of economic growth by capitalism, that is called an economic depression, and leads to world political instability, such as we had in the ’30s. That is the ebb in the capitalist business cycle, as opposed to the peak.
The increasing number of riots and upheaval around the world due to the rising world food prices, is simply the first signs that capitalist economic activity is not meeting major human needs once again.
Do you even feel secure right here in the US? Enough said then. The capitalist business has you in its clutches, and in fact, has us all in its clutches as it tears the planet’s ecology apart. It would be impossible to make this monster economically sustainable. It just isn’t. And that’s no matter how many solar panels Fort Carson might install, or ‘green’ companies you might invest in.
I just got a notice that some inert substance is trying to come to life! Something called the Green City Coalition has sprung forward from the Sustainable Living Working Group and that it is all coming to life like Frankenstein’s monster! Here is the stated purpose of the creature…
Draft Mission Statement: ‘The purpose of the Green City Coalition is to promote an ecologically, economically and socially healthy city and county, for the benefit of present and future residents of the Pikes Peak region. We envision healthy, equitable and sustainable communities, both human and natural.’
Wow! Has a committee ever put forward a prettier announcement of its coming to life from inanimate matter? Instead of a brown shirt city we are to visualize whirled green peas! Well, actually not even that, really. Maybe Fort Carson can help out some in the greening of CS? With our help, of course…
MORE INFO—The next meeting of the Green City Coalition Steering Committee will be 6:30-8:30 p.m. on April 9 at the City Hall Academy Room, 107 N. Nevada Ave. For more information, contact Steve at sustain@ppjpc.org or (719) 632-6189.
Yes, if you can mutter the word SUSTAINABILITY, be there, or be square! This is so exciting! It reminds me of Austin, Texas, and oh YES, it is so ever green in that city… NOT.
Does this sort of vacuous nonsense really have much meaning? Or is it just a silly pretense to being some sort of counterpoint to Gazette newspaper editorials claiming that we should not worried about environmental issues at all?
I love the color GREEN! So do the Irish. So do frogs and alligators. So does the CIA. Let’s get a plan to recycle The Gazette and save Mother Earth!
Apparently 30% of the most recent batch of Army recruits do not have a high school education. And by the Army’s own findings, 30% of soldiers returning from our occupations have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And a Colorado Springs school district has revealed that 25% of the children of the Fort Carson new arrivals are “Special Needs” students. Americans, and Colorado Springs in particular, have to live with these percentages. Are we 25% screwed or 30% screwed? At least we don’t have to look at these guys across the sights of their guns. Iraqis do, and over one million dead Iraqis it may now be deduced were 100% screwed.
I mean it, I find it an absolute nightmare to imagine soldiers in positions of authority, making life and death decisions over others, who don’t know right from wrong, history from high stakes poker, or intelligence from drunken stupor. How do you reason with someone whose only motivation is their next beer? Where they’d just as soon shoot you dead than worry about regretting not shooting you?
It’s a war crime to subject civilian populations to rule by incompetents. Just because Americans elect a certified idiot for president is no indication that anyone else, certainly not a more cultured society, would want their lives overseen by uneducated amoral brigands.
Unprincipled Colorado Springs businessmen salivate at the houses, cars, loans and strippers they can sell to uneducated soldiers. Colorado Springs residents better think hard about whether they make good neighbors.
I wonder what it is that happens to citizens as they move up the ladder of authority, that without fail they become protective of the powers that be. I have my ideas.
Colorado Springs should welcome the infusion of more Amy funds to be all that it can be.
Erstwhile populist Jan Martin went from community activist concerned about our city’s growth, to being a City Council member singing their tune. Addressing the PPJPC meeting today, Martin spoke in favor of bringing more soldiers to Fort Carson, and in favor of a megalithic development that promises to swallow a lot of our downtown flavor, both in the interest of “stimulating economic growth.” Pity.
Jan Martin will tell you that she now has the constituency of the city to think about. Don’t you like that about our representatives? They have to represent everyone else. We hear it from Skorman to Salazar, from Morris to Merrifield. You don’t get that from the stooges put into office by the real estate developers and business leaders. They serve the interests of those who brung them. We work hard to elect like-minded populist politicians and they wind up too moral to take sides. Well, that’s a theory.
I’m inclined to imagine that when someone rises to prominence in this or perhaps any city, they’re paid a visit by a waste management associate. You’ve seen the type, big hands, monosyllabic, with a simple message. If you do anything to rock this boat, anything, we’ll plow our truck into your daughter or granddaughter as she walks home from school. OTHERWISE, best wishes with your new vip status, enjoy yourself. We’re behind you all the way.