Sunday, July 31, 2011

Pentagon Lost Money

Poem "American Pride" - President Obama Can Balance Budget and Cut Down Debts By Tracing 2.3 Trillion Missing Pentagon Fund Since September 10, 2001!
 Global Teacher globallistener@yahoo.ca
[From the Author of “Poems by Kolki – Absolutely Humane” & “Real Path To 9 11”] On September 10, 2001, then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wanted to declare war against Pentagon Bureaucracy, saying “Money wasted by military poses a serious threat. In fact, it could be said it's a matter of life and death. According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions”! (Rumsfeld on CBS, Aleen Sirgany)   President Obama Can Balance Budget and Cut Down Debts By Tracing 2.3 Trillion Missing Pentagon Fund$$ Since The Day Before 9/11/2001, As Well As Stopping Billions Spent Around The World Including In Bribing Israel, Egypt, Pakistan To Buy Loyalties Which Mainly Empowering The Swiss-British Brain Child Israel and The NATO Constitutional Monarchy, Depriving Americans From Many Basic Needs and Services! Fellow Americans Must Also Ask Themselves, “What Is This Debt? To Whom? And Why?” Kolki[Reference: CBS, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml]  Let us make 9/11 "Day of Consciousness"Diplomacy                                                                                War CrimesAmerican Pride(Dedicated to true American Dream of Democracy without Slavery and Hegemony, Deepak Sarkar, http://www.kolki.com/) [Fellow Americans must rise as The NATO /European Union’s Monarchist loyal politicians and media alliances systematically destroying the “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave” letting war criminals run the country from behind building the largest Prison Industry (2.5 million+), converting caring military to brutal killing machine, destroying true free market economy for feudal monopoly, promoting a culture of war and pornography, and demeaning The American Values of Open Justice and Equal Rights which eventually endangering basic human rights and democracy! Kolki]  LINK TO POEM: “American Pride” => http://www.kolki.com/poems/American-Pride.htm  $$ The War On Waste      By Aleen Sirgany  (CBS)  On Sept. 10, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared war. Not on foreign terrorists, "the adversary's closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy," he said.
He said money wasted by the military poses a serious threat.
"In fact, it could be said it's a matter of life and death," he said.
Rumsfeld promised change but the next day – Sept. 11-- the world changed and in the rush to fund the war on terrorism, the war on waste seems to have been forgotten.
Just last week President Bush announced, "my 2003 budget calls for more than $48 billion in new defense spending."
More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends.
"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.
$2.3 trillion — that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.
"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.
Minnery, a former Marine turned whistle-blower, is risking his job by speaking out for the first time about the millions he noticed were missing from one defense agency's balance sheets. Minnery tried to follow the money trail, even crisscrossing the country looking for records.
"The director looked at me and said 'Why do you care about this stuff?' It took me aback, you know? My supervisor asking me why I care about doing a good job," said Minnery.
He was reassigned and says officials then covered up the problem by just writing it off.
"They have to cover it up," he said. "That's where the corruption comes in. They have to cover up the fact that they can't do the job."
The Pentagon's Inspector General "partially substantiated" several of Minnery's allegations but could not prove officials tried "to manipulate the financial statements."
Twenty years ago, Department of Defense Analyst Franklin C. Spinney made headlines exposing what he calls the "accounting games." He's still there, and although he does not speak for the Pentagon, he believes the problem has gotten worse.
"Those numbers are pie in the sky. The books are cooked routinely year after year," he said.
Another critic of Pentagon waste, Retired Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, commanded the Navy's 2nd Fleet the first time Donald Rumsfeld served as Defense Secretary, in 1976.
In his opinion, "With good financial oversight we could find $48 billion in loose change in that building, without having to hit the taxpayers."[Reference: CBS, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml]  Now imagine, why New York Times would review Harry Potter before publishing yet leave this most important American issue unattended? And why, Washington Post which is too occupied with the Virtual Islamic Terrorists would be so reluctant to be at the top of such an hot media issue, harming the country most? Well, then you must also read: Why Main Stream Media Is Silent? Now close your eyes and try to marginalize why and how Flight 77 (Boeing 757) would be programmed to hit Pentagon’s newly refurbished Budget and Personnel Office precisely making a spectacular last moment 360 degree turn! 9/11 Truth Smoking Guns  
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Nationalism, Patriotism

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Afghanistan Veterans for Peace: Prosecute Bush, Impeach Obama

  
 vfp-all@yahoogroups.com

Hello All,
Larry Pinkney, a legendary African-American activist, former member of the Black Panthers and current Editorial Board member of the Black Commentator in its July 21st issue is calling for the impeachment of President Obama for his prosecution of illegal wars and occupations abroad and numerous other high crimes here at home. Pinkney refers in his article, "Is it time to impeach Obama?", to the first national antiwar organization calling for the impeachment of Obama over the wars ... that being VFP ... as in Voters For Peace, not Veterans For Peace which in my opinion should have been leading the way a long time and many deaths and lives otherwise destroyed ago. Instead it was Voters For Peace that came out on July 18th with its own "5 Compelling Reasons to Impeach President Obama", which can be accessed by going to http://www.votersforpeace.org/.
Larry Pinkney's article "Is it time to impeach Obama?" can be accessed by going to http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/2645.
Our Central Florida chapter of Veterans For Peace has submitted to the national leadership of Veterans For Peace at its annual convention in 2009, 2010 and now 2011 a resolution to impeach the Democrat War Criminal President Obama for the same crimes we as a national organization cited in our adamant, public call for the impeachment of the Republican War Criminal President Bush. Each year the resolution has been voted down by the leadership, thus requiring a 2/3 majority vote from the general membership in attendance at the Veterans For Peace national convention whereas when the leadership voted in favor of a resolution then only a simple majority was required by the general membership in attendance to adopt the resolution at the national level.
In 2011, the rules have changed as far as voting on resolutions at the Veterans For Peace annual convention so that regardless of how the VFP national leadership votes on a resolution, pass or fail, if the general membership in attendance votes in favor of it with a simple majority then the resolution passes and is adopted at the national level. This year's vote by the national leadership of VFP will be on Thursday, August 4th, followed by a vote from the general membership in attendance at the convention on Saturday, August 6th.
As far as I know, the only one in VFP's national leadership who has voted in favor of the impeachment resolution in the past has told me that he too would be voting against it this year. The national leadership of VFP in 2011 for the most part is the same as it has been in the previous years, however they would need to be asked directly as to how they would vote on the impeachment resolution in 2011.
Once again, here is the link to an on-line version at ProsecuteThemNow.com of the Central Florida chapter of Veterans For Peace resolution calling for the impeachment of the Democrat War Criminal President Obama, as revised on March 19, 2011 for Obama's illegal war of aggression on Libya: http://www.impeachthem.com/files/ptn_resolution_to_impeach_obama19march2011.pdf
Also, here is a link to the article I put out last month entitled "Impeach now or forever hold up peace" as it was posted on InformationClearingHouse.info: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28405.htm. The article makes the case for the need for the national antiwar organizations to immediately call for the impeachment of President Obama for his wars of aggression and other war crimes, as well as criticizes them for still not doing so after 2 and 1/2 years of Obama being in office committing these crimes in the name of the American people.
We should also make note of the fact that earlier this year the newspaper War Crimes Times also added its own call for impeaching current President Obama over his illegal wars and occupations and numerous other war crimes to its call for the prosecution of former President Bush and members of his administration for the same crimes.
We are asking all of our fellow members of Veterans For Peace to carefully consider the above regarding the need for us as a national organization to call for the impeachment of President Obama, putting our loyalty to our Veterans For Peace Statement of Purpose before our individual loyalties to political parties and their representatives, and make your position known to our organization's national leadership as well as chapter members attending this year's VFP national convention next week before they cast their votes on impeachment.
Please forward this email post to your fellow chapter members as well as to others who may be interested in stopping the wars by the American people using our Constitutional remedy of calling for the impeachment of any out of control U.S. President prosecuting illegal wars of aggression, occupations, renditions, assassinations, torture, and other war crimes such as our current President Obama is and has been doing for 2 and 1/2 years in our name and while on our watch.

Peace everybody,
Phil Restino
Chapter Co-Chair, VFP Chapter 136
Central Florida Veterans For Peace
P.O. Box 9012
Daytona Beach, FL 32120-9012
ph/fax: (386) 788-2918
email: CentralFlaVFP@aol.com
website: http://www.cflveteransforpeace.org/
Want Peace? Demand Justice.
Want Justice? Demand the Truth.
Want the Truth? Ask Questions. Demand Answers.
War Crimes are War Crimes: PROSECUTE BUSH, IMPEACH OBAMA ! 

Hiroshima-Nagasaki Remembrance and All Victims of Air War

HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI REMEMBRANCE 2011


Contents
News Release for August Remembrance of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Victims of Air War Everywhere
Film: Grave of the Fireflies
Film:  White Light, Black Rain
Why We Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Why we Remember the Destruction of Kobe


NEWS RELEASE JULY 25, 2011
Contact:   Gladys Tiffany, 935-4422; Dick Bennett, 442-4600

Subject:  OMNI’S ANNUAL REMEMBRANCE OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI BOMBINGS (August 6 and August 9, 1945)

Events to take place at OMNI,
3274 Lee Avenue
, on August 6 and 7, starting at 6:30 pm each night. 

 Saturday, August 6 we will show, Grave of the Fireflies, a Japanese animated film on the firebombing of Kobe (88 min.).  This film won many awards.

Sunday, August 7, a film on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, White Light, Black Rain (86 min.).   An HBO production, the film won a Primetime Emmy and other awards.
OMNI’s Open Mic will follow the film.   Mark Prime will be our moderator.  Music, poems, and prose about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and air war are invited.    The names of victims will also be recited.   

Desserts and drinks will be available, and your contributions are welcome.

At OMNI: Center for Peace, Justice, and Ecology, August 6 and 7, 6:30 p.m.,
3274 Lee Ave. north of Office Depot.


Grave of the Fireflies

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This article is about the film. For the semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, see Grave of the Fireflies (novel).

Grave of the Fireflies火垂るの墓
North American DVD cover
Directed by
Produced by
Screenplay by
Based on
Starring
Cinematography
Editing by
Studio
Distributed by
Release date(s)
April 16, 1988 (1988-04-16)
Running time
88 min.
Country
Japan
Language

Grave of the Fireflies (火垂るの墓, Hotaru no Haka?) is a 1988 Japanese animated war drama film written and directed by Isao Takahata. This is the first film produced by Shinchosha, who hired Studio Ghibli to do the animation production work. It is an adaptation of the semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Akiyuki Nosaka, intended as a personal apology to the author's own sister.
Roger Ebert considers it to be one of the most powerful anti-war movies ever made. Animation historian Ernest Rister compares the film to Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List and says, "it is the most profoundly human animated film I've ever seen."[1]

Contents

·                    1 Plot
·                    2 Story origin and interpretations
·                    3 About the title
o                               3.1 Firefly symbolism
·                    4 Music
·                    5 Live-action version
·                    6 Releases
·                    7 English dub cast
·                    8 Reception
·                    9 See also
·                    10 References
·                    11 External links

[edit] Plot

Taking place toward the end of World War II in Japan, Grave of the Fireflies is the tale of the relationship between two orphaned children, pre-teen Seita (清太) and his young sister Setsuko (節子). The movie begins in Sannomiya Station and portrays Seita, in rags and dying of starvation. A janitor comes and digs through his possessions, and finds a candy tin containing ashes and bones. He throws it out, and from it springs the spirit of Setsuko, Seita, and a cloud of fireflies. The spirit of Seita continues to narrate their story, which is, in effect, an extended flashback to Japan near the end of World War II, during the Kobe firebombings.
The flashback begins with American B-29s flying overhead. Setsuko and Seita, the two siblings, are left to secure the house and their belongings, allowing their mother, who suffers from a heart condition, to move to a bomb shelter. They are caught off-guard by firebombs dropped in their neighborhood, and although they survive unscathed, their mother is caught in the air raid. She is taken to a hospital and later dies from her burns. Having nowhere else to go, Setsuko and Seita move in with a distant aunt, who allows them to stay but convinces Seita to sell his mother's kimonos for rice. While living with their relatives, Seita goes out to retrieve leftover supplies he had buried in the ground before the bombing. He gives all of it to his aunt, but hides a small tin of fruit drops, which becomes a recurrent icon throughout the film. Their aunt continues to shelter them but as they gradually begin to run out of food, she becomes increasingly resentful. She openly remarks on how they do nothing to earn the food she cooks.
Seita and Setsuko finally decide to leave and move into an abandoned bomb shelter. They fill it with fireflies for light, but Setsuko is horrified to find that the next day they are all dead. She digs them a grave and buries them all, asking why they have to die, and why her mother had to die. What begins as a new lease on life grows grim as they run out of rice, and Seita is forced to steal from local farmers and loot homes during air raids. When he is caught, he realizes his desperation and takes an increasingly ill Setsuko to a doctor, who informs him that Setsuko is suffering from malnutrition but offers no help. In a panic, Seita withdraws all the money remaining in their mother's bank account, but while at the bank he learns of Japan's unconditional surrender to the Allies and the probable death of his father, who was a sailor in the Imperial Navy. He returns to the shelter with large quantities of food, only to find a dying Setsuko hallucinating, sucking ohajiki (marbles) as if they were fruit drops. Setsuko offers Seita mud 'rice balls'. Seita gives her a bite of watermelon and hurries to cook, but she dies of starvation. Seita uses supplies donated to him by a farmer to cremate her, and puts her ashes in the fruit tin which he carries with his father's photograph until his own death in September 1945.
At the end, the spirits of Seita and Setsuko are seen, healthy and well-dressed, sitting side-by-side as they look down on the modern city of Kobe.

[edit] Story origin and interpretations

The story is based on the semi-autobiographic novel by the same name, whose author, Nosaka, lost his sister due to malnutrition in 1945 wartime Japan. He blamed himself for her death and wrote the story so as to make amends to her and help him accept the tragedy.
Some critics have viewed Grave of the Fireflies as an anti-war film due to the graphic and truly emotional depiction of the negative consequences of war on society, and the individuals therein. The film focuses its attention almost entirely on the personal tragedies that war gives rise to, rather than seeking to glamorize it as a heroic struggle between competing ideologies. It emphasizes that war is society's failure to perform its most important duty: protect its innocent.[2]
However, director Isao Takahata repeatedly denied that the film was an anti-war anime. In his own words, "[the film] is not at all an anti-war anime and contains absolutely no such message". Instead, Takahata had intended to convey an image of the brother and sister living a failed life due to isolation from the society and invoke sympathy particularly in people in their teens and twenties.[3


White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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Jump to: navigation, search

White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The film's poster.
Directed by
Produced by
Steven Okazaki
Written by
Steven Okazaki
Distributed by
Release date(s)
August 6, 2007 (2007-08-06)
Running time
86 minutes
Country
United States
Language

White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is an HBO documentary film that was directed and produced by Steven Okazaki and was released on August 6, 2007 on HBO, marking the 62nd anniversary of the first atomic bombing. The film features interviews with fourteen Japanese survivors and four Americans involved in the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Contents

·                    1 Interviews
o                               1.1 Japanese survivors
o                               1.2 American personnel
·                    2 Recognition
·                    3 See also
·                    4 References
·                    5 External links

[edit] Interviews

[edit] Japanese survivors

Main article: Hibakusha
In preparation for the film, Okazaki met with more than 500 Japanese survivors of the bombings and collected over 100 interviews before settling on the fourteen subjects featured in the film. They were, in order of appearance, including age at the time of the bombings:
·                    Shigeku Sasamori, 13 years old. Sasamori came to the United States in 1955 to undergo reconstructive plastic surgery as part of a group of women called the Hiroshima Maidens.
·                    Keiji Nakazawa, 6 years old. Nazakawa lost most of his family in the bombing and later recounted his story in the Barefoot Gen series of comic books.
·                    Yasuyo Tanaka and Chiemi Oka, 9 and 10 years old. Tanaka and Oka were the only survivors among 20 children housed at a Catholic orphanage in Nagasaki.
·                    Sakue Shimohira, 10 years old. Shimohira survived along with her sister, but lost her mother and brother to the bombing. Her sister later committed suicide.
·                    Kyoko Imori, 11 years old. Imori and her friend were the only survivors out of 620 students attending a Hiroshima school, although her friend died a week later from radiation poisoning.
·                    Katsuji Yoshida, 13 years old. Yoshida incurred several injuries in the blast, including the right side of his face, which was disfigured by a severe burn.
·                    Sunao Tsuboi, 20 years old. At the time of the bombing, Tsuboi majored in science at a Hiroshima University.
·                    Shuntaro Hida, 28 years old. Military doctor who treated Hiroshima survivors after the bombing.
·                    Satoru Fukahori, 11 years old. Orphaned
·                    Pan Yeon Kim, 8 years old. Prior to the bombing her family immigrated to Japan from Korea to escape starvation.
·                    Etsuko Nagano, 16 years old. Nagano lost her brother and sister to the bombing.
·                    Senji Yamaguchi, 14 years old. During his lengthy hospitalization Yamaguchi started a survivors' group to petition the Japanese government to provide medical care to victims of the bombings.
·                    Sumiteru Taniguchi, 16 years old. Taniguchi was a mail carrier and incurred heavy burns during the blast.

[edit] American personnel

Okazaki also interviewed four Americans for the film. Morris R. Jeppson, weapons test officer, and Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk, navigator, were on board of the Enola Gay during the bombing missions. Harold Agnew joined them as a scientific observer during the Hiroshima mission. Lawrence Johnston was a scientist at Los Alamos who claims to be the only person to have witnessed the Trinity test as well as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[edit] Recognition

White Light/Black Rain was named by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as one of 15 films considered for nomination as the Best Documentary Feature for the 80th Academy Awards. It was not included among the five nominees.[1] The film was also a nominee for the Motion Picture Producer of the Year Award at the 2008 Producers Guild Awards and the Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. It did win the 2008 "Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking" Primetime Emmy Award.

[edit] See also

·                    Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
·                    Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission
·                    Hibakusha
·                    Hiroshima Peace Memorial
·                    Hiroshima (BBC documentary)

[edit]



WHY REMEMBER HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI BOMBINGS?

The bombings were decided during a time of immense national fear, grief, anger, hatred, and patriotism over the attack on Pearl Harbor and the loss of US lives during the WWII Pacific campaign.   There seemed an urgent need to end the war before the planned land invasion of Japan occurred, which some people estimated would result in a million US casualties (later shown to be exaggerated).   Options to the bombings were available, but were not chosen; for example, bombing an uninhabited island.   Instead, heavily populated civilian cities were targeted.   We remember those innocent civilians and the lost opportunities to choose alternatives to this horrendous weapon of mass destruction.

The bombings were carelessly chosen also because they started the nuclear arms race which still, perhaps increasingly, threatens the planet.   Whereas on the one hand our leaders did not reflect upon the immediate immorality of bombing civilian cities, on the other hand they did not reflect about the long-range consequences.   They did not consider what the Soviet Union would do to counter US power, or believe they could do it, despite the manifest evidence of Soviet capacity and will for war-making in the defeat of the Nazi empire.  Soon the Soviets developed their Bomb.   Then the US made the hydrogen bomb, soon followed by the Soviet Union.  And the pattern continued—the US initiating, the Soviets imitating (with about two exceptions when the Soviet Union preceded the US in nuclear innovation).   And our leaders did not consider another certain consequence—that other countries would want the weapon too, as nations always had in the past.    Now eight countries have the nuclear weapon of doom.  We remember the lost opportunities of statesmanship and for negotiation to end the arms race, which eventually produced over 40,000 nuclear weapons each one exceeding exponentially the explosive power of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.

We remember neither to establish justice with this past, nor to console,  nor to inflame, for where is justice to be found in all that destruction, what can console us for all those killings, and why would be wish to repeat that violence of fire and ashes?  There will be no closing of those accounts.  We remember, rather, at each commemoration, the familiar message of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:   Never Again.    We resolve again individually and collectively to stand against killing.   Ahimsa declared Gandhi:  Do Not Kill, a-himsa: No killing.   That is our foundation.    Not passively, not out of fatigue or timidity, but because we have chosen to be different from those who kill, especially those who order the killings.  Another form of love in action.    Thus we remember to prevent violence with all of our resources; to reject vengeance and retaliation; to rescue the vulnerable people and animals; to build shelters and feed the refugees; to refuse defense as a ruse for war.   Out of these actions for peace, we will grow a nurturing world.

Finally, why for Hiroshima-Nagasaki Remembrance do we remember the fire-bombing destruction of Kobe?  The answer is simple.  The US decision to annihilate Hiroshima and Nagasaki was only part of the larger plan to destroy Japanese cities and to slaughter and terrorize their citizens.   The same policy prevailed in the hideous bombings and fire-bombings of German cities.   These bombings killed some 800,000 noncombatants in Germany and Japan, and injured hundreds of thousands of civilians.  We remember them all, swearing a vow of resistance to the war crimes of air war.




Dick's Wars and Warming KPSQ Radio Editorials (#1-48)

Dick's Wars and Warming KPSQ Radio Editorials (#1-48)