WORLD UNITY DAY/ARMISTICE
DAY (Veterans
Day) NEWSLETTER
#7, NOVEMBER 11, 2014.
WE, THE PEOPLE BUILDING A CULTURE OF PEACE. Compiled by Dick
Bennett
11-11-11
For the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918: RING
THE BELLS
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.
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“It
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more
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is
the greased machinery of destruction”
RING
OUT THE BELLS AGAINST IT.
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AT END.
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.
Veterans Day 2014:
Military-Education Complex
“College Plans Veterans
Day Program.” Northwest Arkansas Newspapers (Nov. 2, 2014).
North-West
Arkansas Community College (NWACC) will host as main speaker State Sen. Jim
Hendren, R-Gravette, former F-15 fighter pilot and now a senior officer in the
Missouri Air National Guard. Other activities
include ”a tribute to faculty, staff, and students” who are currently in the military
or are veterans, and sessions of the “Veterans Human Library Project,” to
enable people to talk one-on-one with a veteran.
ARMISTICE
DAY 2014
Newsweek - 1
day ago
By
Ian Irvine / November 9, 2014 9:50 AM EST. War museum pic. By
1918, the .... I turned round: 'Armistice!'.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_Day
Wikipedia
Front
page of The New York Times on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918.
Armistice Armistice Day Events
in Ypres - Ieper - Great War 1914-1918
www.greatwar.co.uk/events/ypres-salient-events-armistice-day.htm
www.huffingtonpost.com/news/armistice-day/
The
Huffington Post
Warren
J. Blumenfeld | Posted 11.04.2014 | Politics ... Originally known
as "Armistice Day," November 11 was chosen to annually
memorialize the cessation of ...
VETERANS
FOR PEACE 2014
November
11th: Armistice Day, Ringing 11 Bells for Peace
Each year, Veterans for Peace chapters
across the nation meet in cities and towns to celebrate and remember the
original Armistice Day as was done at the end of World War I, when the world
came together in realization that war is so horrible we must end it
now.Please consider hosting your own local event, to remember the original purpose of this holiday. Many chapters ring bells, but other ceremonies include: marches, street theatre, poetry readings, or reading names of the fallen. Register your event here. If you would like some brochures, tabling materials, and button to give out at your event, emailcasey@veteransforpeace.org.
Ring
Those Bells
Reclaim
Armistice Day and Honor the Real Heroes by ARNOLD OLIVER
NOVEMBER
10, 2014 http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/10/reclaim-armistice-day-and-honor-the-real-heroes/
More
than a few veterans, Veterans For Peace among them, are troubled by the way
Americans observe Veterans Day on November 11th. It was originally called
Armistice Day, and established by Congress in 1926 to “perpetuate peace through
good will and mutual understanding between nations, (and later) a day dedicated
to the cause of world peace.” For years, many churches rang their bells on the
11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month – the time that the guns fell
silent on the Western Front by which time 16 million had died. [And then the Day was changed to Veterans
Day. --Dick]
[Armistice, Not Veterans, Day; Unheroic US
Wars.]
To put
it bluntly, in 1954 Armistice Day was hijacked by a militaristic congress, and
today few Americans understand the original purpose of the occasion, or even
remember it. The message of peace seeking has vanished. Now known as Veterans
Day, it has devolved into a hyper-nationalistic worship ceremony for war and
the putatively valiant warriors who wage it.
Here is a news
flash. Most of what goes on during wartime is decidedly unheroic, and heroes in
war are few and far between.
I have to tell
you that when I was in Vietnam, I was no hero, and I didn’t witness any heroism
during the year I spent there, first as a U.S. Army private and then as a
sergeant.
Yes, there was
heroism in the Vietnam War. On both sides of the conflict there were notable
acts of self-sacrifice and bravery. Troops in my unit wondered how the North
Vietnamese troops could persevere for years in the face of daunting U.S.
firepower. U.S. medical corpsmen performed incredible acts of valor rescuing
the wounded under fire.
But I also
witnessed a considerable amount of bad behavior, some of it my own. There were
widespread incidents of disrespect and abuse of Vietnamese civilians including
many war crimes. Further, all units had, and still have, their share of
criminals, con artists and thugs. Most unheroic of all were the U.S. military
and civilian leaders who planned, orchestrated, and profited greatly from that
utterly avoidable war.
The cold truth
is that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Vietnam had nothing to do with
protecting American peace and freedom. On the contrary, the Vietnam War
bitterly divided the United States, and was fought to forestall Vietnamese
independence, not defend it.
Unfortunately,
Vietnam wasn’t an isolated example. Many American wars — including the 1846
Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War in 1898, and the Iraq War (this
list is by no means exhaustive) — were waged under false pretexts against
countries that didn’t threaten the United States. It’s hard to see how, if a
war is unjust, it can be heroic to wage it.
[William Blum in Rogue State and
Killing Hope analyzes over 40
unnecessary, illegal, immoral US invasions and interventions since the end of
WWII. --Dick]
But if the vast majority of wars are not
fought for noble reasons, and few soldiers are heroic, have there been any
actual heroes out there defending peace and freedom? And if so, who are they?
[Peace Heroes]
Well, there are many, from Jesus down to the
present. I’d put Gandhi, Tolstoy, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the list
along with many Quakers and Mennonites. And don’t forget General Smedley
Butler, who wrote that “War is a Racket”, and even, sort of, Robert McNamara,
who came around in the very end.
In Vietnam, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson
stopped the My Lai massacre from being even worse.
Another candidate is former U.S. Army
specialist Josh Stieber who sent this message to the people of Iraq: “Our heavy
hearts still hold hope that we can restore inside our country the
acknowledgment of your humanity, that we were taught to deny.” Ponder a million
Iraqi deaths. Chelsea Manning sits behind bars for exposing those and other
truths.
The real heroes are those who resist war and
militarism, often at great personal cost.
Because militarism has been around for such a
long time, at least since Gilgamesh came up with his protection racket in
Sumeria going on 5,000 years ago, people argue that it will always be with us.
But many also thought that slavery and the subjugation of women would last forever, and they’re being proven wrong. We understand that while militarism will not disappear overnight, disappear it must if we are to avoid economic as well as moral bankruptcy.
But many also thought that slavery and the subjugation of women would last forever, and they’re being proven wrong. We understand that while militarism will not disappear overnight, disappear it must if we are to avoid economic as well as moral bankruptcy.
As Civil War General W.T. Sherman said at
West Point, “I confess without shame that I am tired and sick of war.” We’re
with you, bro.
This year on November 11th, Veterans For
Peace will bring back the original Armistice Day traditions. Join them and let
those bells ring out.
Arnold
“Skip” Oliver writes
for PeaceVoice and is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Heidelberg
University in Tiffin, Ohio. A Vietnam veteran, he belongs to Veterans For
Peace, and can be reached at soliver@heidelberg.edu.
Counterpunch
Tells the
Facts and Names the Names
Published since 1996 Copyright © CounterPunch All rights reserved. counterpunch@counterpunch.org |
[I
received the following from Tom about Sacco and by Hochschild on Nov. 10,
2013, after I had already posted my 2013 Armistice Day Newsletter. All of it remains as emphatically relevant
in 2014 to the 96th anniversary of the first day of battle,
WWI. –Dick]
|
November 10, 2013
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Ann Jones dedicates They Were Soldiers: How the
Wounded Return From America’s Wars -- The Untold Story, the first original offering from Dispatch Books,
to Lieutenant Oscar Trygve Slagsvol, her father, a decorated veteran of the
Western Front in World War I. She writes, “My father used to say that wars
are made by men who have never been to war, men who don’t know that war, once
started, never ends.” We tend to forget about the lineage of our wars. Today,
Veterans Day, TomDispatch offers a vivid reminder of where they come
from. I especially wanted to thank all of you who bought Jones’s book
the moment it was published last Thursday. It’s a deeply appreciated sign of
your support for our new publishing venture. Her book, on the journey
of America’s grievously war-wounded from the battlefield in Afghanistan to
other kinds of battlefields in this country, is as stunning an account as
it's possible to imagine of the true costs of the “little” wars that are
still, in many ways, the legacy of “the Great War.” If there is a day for you
to think about this subject and perhaps buy her book, this is certainly it.
Just a small reminder as well that, for any of you who want to support this
site with a donation of $100 (or more), the offer of a personalized, signed
copy of They Were Soldiers remains open this week while Jones is still close
at hand to sign them. Check out the offer at our donation page. Tom] Tomgram: Adam Hochschild, The War to Begin All Wars It was exactly 95 years ago: the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the moment when major hostilities in the charnel house that was World War I ended. In 1919, November 11th officially became “Armistice Day” in the Everyone knows how World War I was advertised. In retrospect, however, it could more accurately be thought of as the war that began all wars. Admittedly, trench warfare seems a thing of the past, last seen in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. But World War I launched the age of mass industrial warfare, with the marriage of science, academia, the corporation, and the military leading to everything from nuclear proliferation to drone warfare. Without it, a military-industrial complex would have been inconceivable. While the First World War soaked the earth in blood, as soldiers dug ever deeper into their trenches, it also prepared the way for future wars in which “collateral damage” moved ever closer to the center of any conflict, in which uprooted populations and dead civilians became the essence of war. And after all these years, it’s left one wonder behind: that, given all the blood and horror since World War I began, we somehow still manage to celebrate those wars, whatever we think of them, through those we like to call our “warriors” or “wounded warriors.” |
With yet another Veterans Day rolling around, and no armistice
in the perpetual war that Washington
Ninety-five years later, after so much has indeed been forgotten, denied, ignored, left in the dust, it seems almost wrong to say that we must never forget. But... Tom
Ninety-five years later, after so much has indeed been forgotten, denied, ignored, left in the dust, it seems almost wrong to say that we must never forget. But... Tom
Veterans Day, 95 Years On
The Enduring Folly of the Battle of the Somme
By Adam Hochschild
Illustrations by Joe Sacco
The Enduring Folly of the Battle of the Somme
By Adam Hochschild
Illustrations by Joe Sacco
[The illustrations in this piece come from Joe Sacco’s The Great War: July 1, 1916: The
First Day of the Battle of the Somme with the kind permission of
its publisher, W.W. Norton, and the slightly adapted text, which also appears
in that book, comes originally from Adam Hochschild’s To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty
and Rebellion, 1914-1918 and
is used with the kind permission of its publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.]
In a country that uses every possible occasion to celebrate its
“warriors,” many have forgotten that today’s holiday originally marked a peace
agreement. Veterans Day in the United States originally was called Armistice
Day and commemorated the ceasefire which, at 11 a.m. on
November 11, 1918, ended the First World War.
Up to that point, it had been the most destructive war in
history, with a total civilian and military death toll of roughly 20 million.
Millions more had been wounded, many of them missing arms, legs, eyes,
genitals; and because of an Allied naval blockade of the Central Powers,
millions more were near starvation: the average German civilian lost 20% of his
or her body weight during the war.
A stunned world had never experienced anything like this. In
some countries for years afterward, on November 11th, traffic, assembly lines, even underground
mining machinery came to a halt at 11 a.m. for two
minutes of silence, a silence often broken, witnesses from the 1920s reported,
by the sound of women sobbing.
Like most wars, the war of 1914-1918 was begun with the
expectation of quick victory, created more problems than it solved, and was
punctuated by moments of tragic folly. As the years have passed, one point that
has come to symbolize the illusions, the destructiveness, the hubris, the
needless deaths of the entire war -- and of other wars since then -- has been
the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
By Jerry Lembcke, CounterPunch.org, posted October 22
The author is a Vietnam veteran who teaches sociology at the College of the Holy Cross
Shrinking the Empire: A Session on the Imperial Couch
By Tom Engelhardt. Tomdispatch, Nov. 11, 2014.
Doctor: Would you like to tell me why you’re here?
American Empire: Well, Doc, I’m feeling a little off. To tell you the truth, I’m kind of confused, even a little dizzy some of the time.
Doctor: When did you first experience symptoms of dizziness?
AE: I think it was all the pivoting that did it. First I was pivoting out of Iraq. Then I was pivoting out of Afghanistan. Then I was pivoting to Asia. Then I was secretly pivoting to Africa. Then all of a sudden I was pivoting into Iraq again, and Syria, and Afghanistan, and... well, you get the picture.
Doctor: And this left you...?
AE: Depressed. But Doc, there’s a little background you need to know about the dizzying nature of my life. For almost 50 years -- this was in the last century -- I was in the marriage from hell. My partner, the Soviet Union, was a nightmare. . . .
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END ARMISTICE DAY, UNITY DAY, 2014
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