OMNI
ARMISTICE DAY/ WORLD
UNITY DAY (Veterans Day) NEWSLETTER #8, NOVEMBER 11, 2014 (2nd
Newsletter).
WE, THE PEOPLE BUILDING
A CULTURE OF PEACE AND JUSTICE. Compiled by Dick Bennett
The centennial
of the four-year period of the First World War, 1914-1918. 11-11-11: the
eleventh hour, of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918: RING THE BELLS.
But remember these
lines from Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth”:
“What
passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the
monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the
stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out
their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now
for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of
mourning save the choirs,--
The shrill,
demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles call
for them from sad shires.
What’s at
stake:
a world free of war and the threat of
war,
a society with
equity and justice for all,
a community
where every person’s potential may be fulfilled,
and an earth
restored.
OMNI NATIONAL
AND INTERNATIONAL DAYS PROJECT
:
War Department/Peace Department
Newsletters:
Index:
See: Armed
Forces Day May 21, Imperialism, Militarism, Pentagon, PTSD, Recruiting,
Suicides, (each) War, Whistleblowing, and more.
See OMNI’s
Library.
Contents Armistice Day Newsletter #8,
Nov. 11, 2015
Celebrating Veterans Day
Celebrating the
Veterans in NW Arkansas and Questions
Goldstein on
Springsteen and the Concert for Valor
Vice-president
Joe Biden’s Sympathy for the Troops
Celebrating Armistice Day
Dennis and
Elizabeth Kucinich
Alternet, Forced
Troop Worship and Compulsory Patriotism
Must End
Must End
Karin Kamp,
Tomas Young, Paraplegic, War Opponent Vet
War Resisters
League, Honor the Dead AND Support G.I.
Resistance
Resistance
Remembering
Jacob George
CELEBRATING
VETERANS DAY, Warriors, War in a Small Locality of USA 2014
OMNI’s National/International DAYS Project
is making headway…….sometimes. Columbus
Day is ending across the United States, and some variation of Indigenous
People’s Day is replacing it. An
increasing, and I think already the majority, number of citizens understand the
incalculable catastrophe that ensued Columbus’s spearhead of the European
invasion of the Western Hemisphere. That
we should not celebrate Columbus, while we should remember the victims and do
today all we can to stop the still ongoing consequences, are signal ethical
advances in our civilization.
Veterans Day, however, is a more difficult
DAY. Whereas Columbus Day’s constituency
is shrinking, Veterans Day’s is growing. Veterans of Columbus’s invasion died over 500
years ago; permanent invasions and occupations by the United States are
constantly enlarging the US patriotic constituency for war, providing more and
more vets and their children (the future vets), and federal cemeteries. At the heart of the popularity of Veterans
Day is the fact that this Day celebrates our own invasions and our own
Columbuses who need justification. The
nation’s leaders and their mainstream media exploit every means whereby to
reassure the nation our sons were not murderers and did not die in vain. Here is a sampling of patriotic enthusiasm for
Veterans Day 2014. It is an understating
sampling, because I did not systematically search for examples as I might have
for an academic report.
Pre-November. 11
November 5
Ad from Northwest Arkansas Veterans Day
Association, Inc., “Honoring Those Who Served,” inviting people to attend the
Veterans Day Parade November 9, 2014, Downtown Fayetteville. Parade to include local military units and
vehicles of all branches of the military, veteran organizations, ROTC and CAP,
civic groups, marching bands, and “the unique sound of the Ozark Highlander
Pipe Band.” Sponsored by two retirement businesses, two radio stations, two
funeral businesses, a bank, a building developer, a bank, and individuals: David Nixon, Bill and Rhonda Adams, Bobby Lee
Odom, Attorney, David B. Horne, Attorney, and Snively Law Firm.
Letter to the Editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (ADG)
Barbara Pence
thanked President George W. Bush “for keeping us safe, for appreciating and
giving credit to our military for their expertise and incredible courage, for
supporting Wounded Warriors, for being a patriot. . . .”
Monday, November 10
Front page story in Northwest Arkansas News with 2 photographs celebrating the
“Patriotic Parade” around the Fayetteville Square, Sunday, Nov. 9. The
University of Arkansas ROTC provided the flag honor guard and activities and
food for veterans and their families.
Paid Ad “Veterans Day Assembly Today!”
invites all vets and all who wish to celebrate them to Southwest Junior High,
Springdale, AR (town adjacent to Fayetteville).
Speakers to include the new Republican Governor-Elect, a Korea Pow, a
Navy Seal, a WWII Veteran, and a Vietnam,
“Desert Storm,” and “Iraqi Freedom” helicopter pilot. And the SWJH Band and Chorus will
perform.
The
University of Arkansas’ daily bulletin reported ”’For Whom the Bell Tolls: The
Arkansas Alumni Association Salutes Vets.’
In honor of Veterans Day the Bill and Jo Ella Toller Celebration Bell at
the Janelle Y. Hembree Alumni House will Peal for 11 minutes at 11a.m. Nov.
11.”
“Veterans
Day Program Planned Tuesday” reports invitation to attend the Fort Smith
National Cemetery’s Veterans Day Program on the 11th. (Ft. Smith is sixty miles from Fayetteville.)
The mayor will offer “introductory remarks.”
The keynote address will be by “Maj. J. Mike Akins, senior Army
instructor with the Van Buren High School Junior ROTC.” Several groups will perform “patriotic
music.”
November 11
On 11-11-14 I woke up to CNN interviewing
Senator John McCain, an airman who suffered greatly in a Vietnamese POW prison
for his horrific, unnecessary, unjustified, illegal bombings but who survived
to cheer our warriors some fifty years later:
“It’s wonderful the way Americans honor our veterans.” And CNN reported an estimate of 800,000
“Americans” hearts would patriotically swell at the Capitol Mall for the
“Concert for Valor,” with Springsteen and Metallica to give that perfect
glorification of U
S righteousness. (See below).
S righteousness. (See below).
On 11-ll-14 morning, the Public
Broadcasting Service’s “The Weather Channel” repeatedly advertised PBS’s main
“Celebrate the Troops” effusion for that night—the hunting down and murder of
Osama bin Laden--, a new film glorifying the Seal Execution Team. Interspersed
with those spurts of pride, The Weather Channel‘s “Wake Up with Al”-- thanked
the veterans again and again. And
“meteorologist” Al even interviewed one of the Seals. [This was no Day for the rule of law or for
any thinking, not a moment to ask why mass murderer bin Laden was not arrested
and tried, why they imitated the Argentinian tyrants by throwing his body out
of a plane into the ocean. Rather, the
CNN/PBS/Weather Channel/Pentagon sub-Complex regaled my waking moments with
patriotic gore. I turned off the tv.]
But this experience had been repeated for
several days prior to 11-11-11 (just a sampling remember: I did not keep notes
on Nov. 6-9 reports): Boeing “Serves to Protect Our Nation and Its Allies,” the
White House will present “A Salute to the Troops in Performance at the White
House.” The eleventh minute of the
eleventh hour of the eleventh day, nineteen-eighteen what were you? Armistice, obliterated by amnesia and urgent
nationalism, transformed into Support the Empire.
And
even then I was not fully prepared for this paean to militarized USA from a
local Democratic Party organization to which I belong and which I received on Nov.
11, 2014:
“Veteran's
Day Message
On this most solemn day, we want to express our unending gratitude to the men and women who have selflessly put on a uniform to represent their country. Many have made the ultimate sacrifice in that journey and we can only honor that sacrifice by living up to the values that they chose to defend and uphold. We must also honor them by ensuring we keep our promises to these amazing men and women and their families and fully fund their medical and educational programs that they may fully reap their just rewards for their service.
Thank you all for your service and dedication.”
On this most solemn day, we want to express our unending gratitude to the men and women who have selflessly put on a uniform to represent their country. Many have made the ultimate sacrifice in that journey and we can only honor that sacrifice by living up to the values that they chose to defend and uphold. We must also honor them by ensuring we keep our promises to these amazing men and women and their families and fully fund their medical and educational programs that they may fully reap their just rewards for their service.
Thank you all for your service and dedication.”
Yes, a “most
solemn day,” given massive evidence of continuing questionable wars, continuing
militarized economy, increasing war veterans and the possibly six trillion
dollars cost of the Afghan and Iraqi wars, and increasing war cemeteries.
But gratitude for all veterans? They selflessly joined up to express their
patriotism? Apparently the writer has
read only fitfully and feebly the studies of youth enlistment motivations and billions
spent on military recruiting.
We should honor those who died by living
the values they defended? What were those
values? Doing what one or both parent
had done—join the military? Fight for “freedom”? The Four Freedoms of WWII—of expression, of
religion, from fear, from want? The
U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights? Its
embrace of all US treaties as US law?
Their lifetime societal/parental prohibition of killing?
Rather, let us honor “all those who
understood the war’s madness enough not to take part.” (Hochschild, To End All Wars, 376).
Newpaper Reports November 12
But the
aggrandizement of militarism did not end with Veterans Day but continued, and
will continue all year. The Northwest Arkansas Times (Northwest
Arkansas Newspapers) reported 11-11 events at Springdale’s Har-Ber high
school on pp. 1-2.
Page 1:
Photo (“Standing at Attention”) of member of American Legion Post 100
Honor Guard saluting US Flag during the national anthem at Har-Ber High
School’s Hour with a Hero program. Caption: “Each period a group of students came
into the auditorium, watched a video, heard a speech from a veteran and gave a
certificate of recognition to any veterans in the audience.”
The article: “Veterans Impart Wisdom:
Bridges Hopes youth Grow up to Respect Military,” by Erin Spandorff. Students “crowded into” the Performing Arts
Center to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and listen to the national anthem. It
was the ninth year the school recognized Veterans Day, organized by the
“Environmental and Spatial Technology” program, facilitated by Debbie Lamb. Six
veterans spoke at the event; two were quoted by the reporter. Air Force veteran Cliff Jenkins “talked about
reasons to hug a veteran,” and about basic training. “’It has a sense of repetition to it, where it
becomes you and you become it.’ He said.
‘It was a complete transformation.’”
[This a remarkably frank and accurate epitome of basic training, where
men and women are stripped of individuality and instilled with obedience. The reporter apparently did not ask him about
the purpose of military obedience—to kill enemies.] Another Air Force vet, District Court judge Paul
Bridges, urged the importance of respecting the military. Twice Bridges is
reported to have referred to being “disrespected” during the Vietnam War. “’It
wasn’t cool to walk into an airport wearing a uniform.’” [This claim is likely to be as false as is the
legend of returning troops being spat upon.
–Dick] But, he reports, he gained
respect “during Desert Storm.” He listed
the many advantages to being in the military. A recent graduate of Har-Ber said
he had “worked on the hero event for three years while at the school, and said
“it inspired him to enlist in the military.”
He is now in the Army National Guard.
Ms. Lamb said “she has at least three former students who enlisted in the
military” because they were inspired by the Veterans Day events. And by the way, it “also inspired many of her
students to learn more about history.”
One student who worked on the event this year said “it increased her
respect for veterans and military members.”
[The students and teacher seem to reveal a high school devoted to
recruiting for the military.]
At 6a.m. ESPN devoted a long segment of ”American
Heroes” about veterans whose legs had been blown off and were learning to walk
again.
Veterans Day at Arvest Bank in downtown
Fayetteville, included (top photo) St. Joseph Catholic School children singing
“America the Beautiful” and a talk by Donnice Roberts, widow of a soldier
killed in Afghanistan in 2008 (photo 2).
The photo also shows the President of Arvest Fayetteville and the Exec.
Dir. Of Aspire: Surviving Military
Spouse Support, of which Ms. Roberts is a member. [The
military-financial-theological complex has an ancient history.]
An ad in the newspaper by Sisco Funeral
Chapel, Inc., combines the Flag, rows of military cemetery tombstones, and this
statement:
Unforgotten.
They were there
for us and for our country.
Some couldn’t
wait to come home to the families they loved…
Others gave the
ultimate sacrifice.
Today, as every
day, they remain unforgotten.
[Better had
those who loved them never encouraged or allowed them to go to wars unnecessary,
illegal, unethical. Better those now
safely remembering maybe only for a day (Sisco Chapel, Inc.!) had stood firm
against the wars, against the century of bloodshed before and, if they do not
protest and refuse, to come. Better they
had not taught patriotism to the bloody nation but “the world is our country.”]
SUGGESTIONS FOR
STUDY
1.
Make a thorough analysis of the militarization
of a school in NW Arkansas. Compare it
another. Then (research paper) the
number, size, and activities of the ROTC in Jr. High, High School, and
college. Then don’t rest until the study
receives widespread publicity. And then
keep awake until the militarization of our schools has been protested at school
board meetings and schools.
2
Starting with the student who exposed basic
training by admiring its power to transform autonomous individuals into
“repetitions,” compare Har-Ber with other high schools regarding their respect
for and education in critical thinking vs. regimentation.
3. Is
Har-Ber HS in Springdale typical with its all-day attention to Veterans
Day? Who organized the events
there? Did the events interrupt classes,
and if so who makes the decision, and was it permitted by state rules?
4. Obviously some people did a lot of work
organizing these military patriotic demonstrations. Discover who they are and
interview them. Who were the chief
organizers? What connects them?
5. Analyze all of the Letters to the Editor
during the Veterans Day period praising our militarized nation. Publicize the analysis and reply at least to
some of the letters.
6.
Are the mainstream media pro-war, pro-empire?
Gather enough evidence for a tentative generalization. What is the
proportion of pro-military/war to anti-war/nonviolence?
7.
Several times speakers refer to “service” as though the term applies only to military service. What about firemen, nurses, mail
delivery? Time we considered why killing
indicates greater service to the nation than saving lives. Organize an event to celebrate all those who
serve country and planet without training to kill and burn.
8. President Eisenhower in his Farewell Address
warned the nation of the “military-industrial complex.” Today he would have to say:
military-corporate-executive-congressional—mainstream
media-surveillance-imperial complex.
How many references to the US National Security State do you find in
these reports on one locality’s Veterans Day?
9. Does UAF offer courses on US militarism and
imperialism? Partial courses? What departments should but do not? Do any professors study the subject? Is UAF an extension of the US Empire?
Team
Springsteen: Why 'Fortunate Son' Belonged at the Concert for Valor
Jessica Goldstein, ThinkProgress. Reader Supported News, Nov. 13, 2014.
Goldstein reports: "Some people just don't understand but, then again, sometimes it is really hard to understand these songs. Sometimes it's hard to understand Bruce Springsteen, period."
READ MORE
Jessica Goldstein, ThinkProgress. Reader Supported News, Nov. 13, 2014.
Goldstein reports: "Some people just don't understand but, then again, sometimes it is really hard to understand these songs. Sometimes it's hard to understand Bruce Springsteen, period."
READ MORE
Here’s
another sample of the propaganda—from Vice-President Joe Biden. Do you think he believes all of this?
TROOP
WORSHIP COMES FROM THE TOP A Sacred
Obligation
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CELEBRATING ARMISTICE,
PEACE
DENNIS
AND ELIZABETH KUCINICH
American
Journey From Terror to Peace, 9/11 to 11/11.
Nov. 11, 2014.
Policy
Director, Center for Food Safety
Former 16-year
member of the U.S. Congress and two-time U.S. presidential candidate
American
Journey From Terror to Peace, 9/11 to 11/11
Posted: 11/11/2014
12:30 pm EST Updated: 3 hours ago
This day
commemorates both Veterans Day in the US and Armistice Day abroad, marking the
end of the First World War, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 1918. This
year of 2014 is particularly poignant as it also
commemorates the 100th anniversary of the beginning of WW1.
Originally,
Armistice Day was celebrated in the US, as an homage to peace and solidarity
with the nations of the world who paid a terrible price in WWI, including
116,576 Americans who died. In 1954, the day became Veterans Day in the US.
In Europe, the
centennial of the four-year period of the First World War, 1914-1918, is being
observed with solemn ceremony, remembering the bravery and courage of 10
million soldiers and nearly 7 million civilians who perished. One million
people died in a series of battles across the River Somme, France, in just four
months.
Remembered,
too, are the failures and foibles of the leaders of governments who
precipitated the war, a "march of folly" well-chronicled by historian
Barbara Tuchman in the Guns of August.
While Armistice Day signals a renewed
interest in Europe in the practicality of peace and reconciliation and unity,
here at home we observe Veterans Day still riveted to the narrative of deep
fear derived from September 11, 2001.
9/11 was that
searing day which was the genesis of the "War on Terror," a perpetual
war now in its 14th year, predicted by Washington insiders to last perhaps
another 30. We rightly honor those who answered the call of the nation and
recall our obligation "to care for those who have borne the battle."
How much better would the honor we accord the valorous be if it included
guarantees for physical and emotional security after one's service?
9/11 to 11/11 are now the parentheses of our national experience, from terror to war to tributes for those we send to fight. Is America fated to draw a straight line from 9/11 to 11/11, more veterans of more wars? Can we take an evolutionary journey away from terror and toward the peace and reconciliation implicit in Armistice Day?
9/11 to 11/11 are now the parentheses of our national experience, from terror to war to tributes for those we send to fight. Is America fated to draw a straight line from 9/11 to 11/11, more veterans of more wars? Can we take an evolutionary journey away from terror and toward the peace and reconciliation implicit in Armistice Day?
How do we break
the mind-forged bars of fear that presently keep us on the treadmill of war,
annihilating our Constitution, eliminating our civil liberties, and dismissing
any hope for a domestic economy in which everyone has an opportunity to
survive?
Since September
11, 2001, America has gone abroad in search of enemies to slay. Thousands of
our men and women have been killed, tens of thousands permanently injured. The
ensuing civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan number in the millions.
As America
exercises a titanic power of destructiveness we have unwittingly created more
enemies. Occupations fuel insurgencies and give legitimacy to those rebel
groups who would otherwise be shunned by the societies for which they allegedly
fight.
The Middle East
is being radicalized by the wars, strengthening resistance; nationalism,
sectarianism and jihadism are rising; retribution brings more violent
suppression, which in turn creates more enemies and more resistance.
And as if we do
not have our hands full in the Middle East, the US military looks west to the
South China Sea for relevance, i.e., future conflicts. If that fails, our aging
cold war apparatchiks, using NATO cat's paw, are renewing a cold war with
Russia.
This Veterans
Day, we are locked into a maddening, deadly cycle of perpetual war led on by
our home-grown sorcerers' apprentices of rigid ideologies, the flag-waving war
profiteers and shadowy foreign powers who are happy to stay behind the scenes.
As long as the US does the blood-letting and our taxpayers foot the bill, now
in trillions of dollars.
We return to
9/11. On the day of September 11, 2001, and the months that followed, the heart
of the world was open to the United States, including expressions of support
from Iran and Russia. Flowers adorned American embassies in all countries.
At our point of
greatest anguish and pain, the world was there for us. Calling for
reconciliation. Calling for a new approach to international relations. Hoping
for a moment of reflection and historical perspective.
Our leaders
took us in a very different direction. Eleven years ago, in 2003, millions of
Americans and citizens world-wide took to the streets to protest the onrushing
war against Iraq; a war that used 9/11 as a cover. A war against a nation with
absolutely no connection to the 9/11 attacks.
Washington
today is a convergence of civic celebration of veterans, and the anticipation
that Congress will soon vote to give the President new war-making authority and
approve more money for more War in Iraq and Syria.
The last
authorization for war against Iraq was obtained fraudulently. But with the
upcoming authorization and war appropriations, our civic narrative, deprived of
memory, requires no consequence, only the plodding towards more war.
This new
request rests not on fraud, but on hubris -- the vainglorious notion that we
will, at last, "stabilize" (remake) Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, that
US military might trumps culture, religion, history.
Outside the
beltway bubble, another America exists. Here people struggle with an economy
where wealth is accelerating upwards, where unemployment, underemployment, low
wages, limited opportunities for higher education, the high cost of housing and
health care and precarious retirement conditions daily impose physical
suffering and mental anguish.
Washington
needs a re-evaluate America's role in the world. What makes us safe and secure
at home?
In the past
month, we have held listening sessions with groups of people in Iowa, New York,
Oregon, Washington State, Northern and Southern California, and Colorado,
inquiring what "National Security" really means to them.
What we are
finding is that some Americans define national security not in terms of
military prowess or foreign invasions, but in terms of true human security for
America, including food security and economic security.
The recent
elections and polls reflected this too, with the state of the economy weighing
on people's minds, and foreign policy way down the list.
Washington,
D.C., on the other hand, has created a grim equation. National Security = more war. National Security = less freedom.
National Security = the hemorrhaging of taxpayer money to war in sacrifice of
the domestic economy.
We can report
from those meetings, there is another
America stirring.
Unlike Capitol
Hill, the other America has been shaken, but still holds fast to ideals and to
the Constitution. It is an America restless for change, keenly aware of
promises not delivered, and resentful of a system which profits the few while
keeping the many fearful and at war.
America's
future may well be described by whether we can successfully navigate the path
from terror to peace, a path from 9/11 to 11/11 and the spirit of Armistice. It is a path that requires truth,
reconciliation, commitment and courage. War-weary Americans are ready for a new
direction, whether official Washington is ready or not.
Let us take this four-year period, from
2014 to 2018, the 100th anniversaries of the global battle of WW1 to the
Armistice of November 11, 1918, to bring our own great transition from
entrenched commitment to perpetual war.
Join us on the journey from #911 to 1111 #From Terror to Peace. #911to1111 #FromTerrorToPeace
Join us on the journey from #911 to 1111 #From Terror to Peace. #911to1111 #FromTerrorToPeace
The following
2014 entry arrived after I had sent the Newsletter, and then I was unable to
read it, perhaps because I don’t use Facebook.
If you are able to read it, please copy to me. --Dick
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www.alternet.org
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Forced troop
worship and compulsory patriotism must end.
Biden and
Kucinich agree on one thing: wounded combat vets, whatever their motives for
joining up or whatever their valor or lack of, should be cared for. Tomas Young volunteered out of ignorance and conditioned
patriotic enthusiasm, ended up quadriplegic, and then opposed the war.
DW Focus
This Veteran’s Day,
Remembering Tomas Young
Tomas Young, a
“bright light” and a “talented young man”, recently died after his tour in Iraq
left him paralyzed. Let's remember Young by speaking out against “this massive
blunder that was the Iraq war.”
Published:
November 11, 2014 | Authors: Karin Kamp | Billmoyers.com | Op-Ed. NationofChange.
We’ve just
heard that Iraq war veteran Tomas Young, one of the first vets to publicly
oppose the war, has died at the age of 34.
Young was featured in Body of War, a documentary by Phil
Donahue and Ellen Spiro that was featured on Bill Moyers Journal in March 2008. The film focused on Tomas, who was shot
and paralyzed just days after beginning his tour of duty in Iraq.
Donahue, who
visited Young last month at his home in Seattle, said the world had lost a
“bright light” and a “talented young man” who was determined to speak out
against “this massive blunder that was the Iraq war.”
“He was a
political animal and he had a political statement that he wanted to make,”
Donahue told BillMoyers.com. “Tomas wanted people to know that this is the
drama being played out in houses across the country occupied by thousands of
young men and women who fought in the war,” he said, referring to injuries that
left Young in need of round-the-clock care.
The 24-year-old
Young enlisted in the Army after the 9/11 attacks because he wanted to fight
terrorists in Afghanistan, but instead was sent to Iraq. Five days after
arriving there in 2004, he was shot in the chest and severely wounded. He was
left paralyzed from the waist down and as the result of medical complications
later became a quadriplegic[DB1] .
http://www.nationofchange.org/2014/11/11/veterans-day-remembering-tomas-young/
WAR
RESISTERS LEAGUE 11-11-2014
On this Veteran's Day:
Let's Get Real
Honor the Dead and
Support G.I. Resistance
The same week
“on-the-ground” U.S. troop presence in Iraq doubled to 3,000, an inspiring
member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Ethan
Kruestzer, took his own life, closely following Jacob George, another IVAW member very active in anti-war and
global solidarity work, who took his life in late September. And now, last
night, yet another anti-war veteran, Tomas
Young, passed.
This comes
alongside the daily reality of massive loss of life in the wars of Iraq and
Syria, prompting young artist Ali Eyal in Baghdad to say that hearing
explosions has yet again become as common as hearing “Hello.”
Occupied people prevented from
self-determination due to mass violence and 22 U.S. veteran suicides per day
are the systematic and inevitable costs of militarism.
Events today,
such as the Concert for Valor where 800,000 are set to “honor the service and
sacrifice of veterans, active duty service members and their families”, attempt
to hide these sad realities of war. Let us instead recall the words of Jacob
George who sang: "because we support these troops we're gonna bring these
wars to an end."
One way we can
be led by those directly impacted by war is to read and share The
Fort Hood Report: essential research conducted on-base at Ft. Hood in
Killeen, Texas by members of IVAW and Civilian Soldier Alliance. The
testimonies in this report form a bedrock of veteran demands for the right to
heal, and reveal the folly of all military escalation. Spread it far and wide
today. (Images: Jacob George - above, Tomas Young - below)
JACOB
GEORGE
THREE
FROM THE OUTPOURING OF GRIEF
Sgt.
Jacob George moved to Fayetteville, AR after returning from his third tour in
Afghanistan. He began his Ride Till the
End bicycling for peace here. He wrote
and sang songs, participated in the wide range of peace work here. He seemed to have overcome what was
destructive in the “moral injury” he received from the war. But on Sept. 17, 2014, Jacob killed himself. --D
VFP NEWSLETTER (Fall
2014)
Full page about
Jacob with his photo and bio, photo of IVAW members at UN Climate Summit March
honoring Jacob, and text of his song, “Support the Troops.”
|
The martyr
of Danville Mountain
Jacob
George, 'moral injury' and one soldier's losing struggle against the
encroaching darkness of war [while living in Fayetteville]
From Larry W
10-24-14
Recent OMNI Newsletters
Vegetarian
Action 11-12
Armistice
Day 11-11
PTSD and US
Empire 11-11
US Capitalism
and Climate Change 11-4
UN Day 10-24
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UN Food and
Poverty Days 10-17
Indigenous
People of Americas Day 10-13
Vegetarian
Day 10-1
World War I
Centenary 9-28
Newsletters 2010-13
Contents of #3 2010
Veterans Day
World Unity DAY
US Exceptionalism?
We Are All
African
Contents of #4 November 11, 2011
World Unity Day
Veterans for
Peace: Armistice Day
IVAW Events
Cost of War
Sign
IVAW’ Operation
Recovery
Occupy Veterans
Day
John Cory: The
Perverted Normalcy of War USA
Contents of #5 November 11, 2012
Walk in
Veterans Parade, Eureka Springs
Dick: Walking for Peace
Ring Bells for
Armistice Day for Peace
Sign the People’s Charter for a Nonviolent World
Contents of #6 2013
Veterans for
Peace Armistice Day 2013: Ring the Bells!
Veterans for Peace,
Iowa
Dick, Northwest
Arkansas Times
Militarism 2012
Cretin, AFSC,
Barriers Between People in an Interdependent
World
World
Contents #7 November 11, 2014
Veterans Day
2014: Military-Education Complex
Armistice Day
2014
Veterans for Peace Events Nov. 2014
Arnold
Oliver, Reclaim Armistice Day and Honor the Real Heroes
Joe Sacco,
First Day WWI, July 1, 1916
Hochschild,
Battle of the Somme
From WWI Shell
Shock to Middle Eastern Wars PTSD
Engelhardt,
Miss Liberty Visits Her Psychiatrist
Koenigsberg,
Mass Murder
Forward to
Churches, Veterans Groups, Your Friends and Lists, Politicians
Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters:
http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/ For the foundation in knowledge necessary to
citizens ready for the struggle to change society.
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