OMNI
ARMISTICE DAY/ WORLD
UNITY DAY (Veterans Day) NEWSLETTER #10, NOVEMBER 11, 2016
WE, THE PEOPLE BUILDING
A CULTURE OF PEACE AND JUSTICE FOR THE PLANET. Compiled by Dick Bennett
What’s at stake: seeking the end of wars, not celebrating wars and warriors and continuing
wars. Say NO to the US Culture of Chaos.
Contents:
Armistice Day Newsletter #10, Nov. 11, 2016
Sound Out
for Armistice Day!
OMNI’s
National Days Project: Celebrate the DAYS of Peace, Justice,
and Ecology, Reject the Days of Violence
and Ecology, Reject the Days of Violence
Rory Fanning. Peace in Our Times. From Armistice Day for Peace, to Veterans
Day for Wars and Warriors. Now let’s return to the Day for Peace.
Day for Wars and Warriors. Now let’s return to the Day for Peace.
VFP: Reclaiming Armistice Day
from Veterans Day
Bully Nation USA from Schoolyard to Invasions and 800 Bases Around the World
Militarized Arkansas Celebrates War and Warriors
Senator Tom
Cotton;
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville;
Monuments in Bella Vista and
Farmington;
Naming a Post Office;
LTE.
What to
Do
Sign Up for the Armistice Day Thunderclap!
Sign Up for the #ReclaimArmisticeDay
Thunderclap, which will go out on November 11th at 11am with a
message "#PeaceIsPossible - Celebrating peace, not war, is the best way to
honor veterans"
OMNI’S
NATIONAL DAYS PROJECT
WHY SHOULD PEACEMAKERS BE
INTERESTED IN THE NAMES AND PURPOSES OF NATIONAL HOLIDAYS? WHY SHOULD WE REJECT VETERANS DAY AND RETURN
TO ARMISTICE DAY? OMNI’S NATIONAL DAYS
PROJECT.
Behaviorism,
also known as behavioral psychology, is a
theory of learning based on the idea that all behaviors are
acquired through conditioning. Behaviorists believe that our responses to
environmental stimuli shape our actions.
Thus, as the officials knew when they changed Armistice Day to Veterans
Day, it makes an enormous difference, especially when Veterans Day is named and
celebrated each year with the full weight of the US Government behind it.
The UN called for the International
Culture of Peace Decade (2000-2010), attempted to define the Culture of War and
the Culture of Peace, and to move away from a war culture to a peace culture.
But we cannot make this change so long as
we celebrate the myths represented by the US official ceremonial Days, many of
which, such as Veterans Day, directly support wars and preparations for
wars. We are a militaristic and imperial
nation partly because the public is conditioned to accept violence and wars
through the many patriotic days.
George Orwell wrote in 1984:
"Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure
was forgotten, the lie became the truth”—for example, that wars are inevitable,
that our species is inherently violent, that the US makes mistakes but is
mainly benign, and that Veterans Day was originally Armistice Day. Much of the peace movement’s work in
building a Culture of Peace involves the struggle to reinforce peaceful values
despite the pervasive repetition of numerous nationalistic war myths. In behavioral psychology, we are what we
do. Most of the public accepts the
messages of special Days (Daze?) and holidays that promote the US Security
State, because they don’t see it (we’re not Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union),
and anyway overwhelming military force is necessary for our security, never
mind it was we who have attacked other nations, and since the War of 1812 have
been attacked by another nation only one more time, at Pearl Harbor December 7,
1941.
Why doesn't the US observe Armistice
Day? We're more comfortable with war than peace
Rory
Fanning (also Reprinted in Peace
in Our Times)
Tuesday
11 November 2014 07.45 ESTLast modified on Thursday 13
November 201413.57 EST
I
get angry and frustrated with each Veterans Day because it’s less about
celebrating veterans than easing the guilty conscience of warmongers
Staff Sgt Camilo Mejia sought to be declared
a conscientious objector in 2004 after he saw civilians killed in Iraq.
On Tuesday, the United
States should be celebrating its 95th Armistice Day, pausing as a nation to
think about the terrible costs of war – including the loss of so many lives.
Unfortunately, we replaced it with a very different holiday.
On 1 June 1954, less than a year after America
exited the Korean War in defeat, the US congress got
rid of Armistice Day, which was established in 1919, and started
Veterans Day. In place of what had been a celebration
of peace, Congress instituted an annual veneration of those who
fought in war. America would ever after celebrate not the beauty of peace, but
its purveyors of state violence in World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, the
Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Grenada, Kosovo, Somalia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan
and more.
Governments had meant to do the opposite in 1919: if you go back
and read the newspapers of the time closely enough, you can almost hear the collective
sigh of relief and jubilation on
the first Armistice Day. Millions celebrated peace and renounced war
on that November day, a year after the violence in Europe had ended: after the
mustard gas stopped burning off soldiers’ skin; after Gatling guns stopped
mowing down young boys from mostly poor and working class families; after
fighter planes stopped streaking the sky; and after bloody bayonets were wiped
clean. In the wake of so much carnage, it was then clear to millions of people
that wars were not about valour or romantic ideals, but about empire, which
benefits a few at the expense of many.
It took only two more wars fighting for empire before the
Americans buried that day’s history as a celebration of peace.
Kurt Vonnegut, a World War II veteran, wrote in
1973:
Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was
sacred. Veterans’ Day is not. So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder.
Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.
Armistice Day was sacred because it was intended to evoke memories of
fear, pain, suffering, military incompetence, greed and destruction on the
grandest scale for those who had participated in war, directly and indirectly.
Armistice Day was a hallowed anniversary because it was supposed to protect
future life from future wars.
Veterans Day, instead, celebrates “heroes” and encourages others to dream of playing
the hero themselves, covering themselves in valour. But becoming a “hero” means going off to kill and be killed in
a future war – or one of our government’s current, unending wars.
I am more angry and frustrated with each passing Veterans Day –
this is my tenth since leaving the US Army Rangers as a conscientious objector
– because it gets clearer and clearer that Veteran’s Day is less about
honouring veterans than it is about easing the guilty consciences of those who
have sent (and continue to send) others to kill and die for reasons that have very little to do with democracy or freedom. I
can’t seem to shake the feeling that the day is more of a slap in the face than
a pat on the back to those who served, despite the endless thank yous, parades, and concerts
supposedly held in our honour.
This might be the biggest Veterans Day yet: Metallica, Rihanna,
Eminem and Bruce Springsteen are headlining a huge Concert
for Valor on the
National Mall in Washington DC, sponsored by Chase Bank, Starbucks and HBO.
Hundreds of smaller parades, ceremonies, sporting events and concerts will
be held across the country in the shadow of the 14th year of the Global War on
Terror.
The Armistice-turned-Veterans Day celebrations will be held in a
country that has 668 military bases around the globe. They will be held in
a country that has conducted military operations in two-thirds of the world’s countries since 9/11.
They will be held in a county that spends three quarters of a trillion dollars each year on its military – more than
the next thirteen countries combined. They will be held in a
country that has taken hundreds of thousands of lives around the world these past
14-years, and which shows no sign of
slowing down.
What do the millions of people inAfghanistan, Iraq and many othercountries who have lost loved ones
to America’s wars think of these celebrations? What should veterans coping with
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, dealing with traumatic injuries or struggling
with chronicunemployment think
of these events? What do the families of those soldiers and veterans who have taken their own lives feel?
I suspect it’ll be difficult to even hear those questions in your
head while Metallica is shredding on stage – and maybe that’s the point.
Still, many soldiers are beginning to question America’s wars
and their tolls at home and abroad. According to journalist Matt Kennard, more than 40,000 US soldiers have declared their own personal
Armistice Days by becoming conscientious objectors since 9/11 – and I was one of
them.
Once I left the military as a conscientious objector and began
speaking about it, the personal “thank-yous” from strangers started to dry up –
apparently, it’s more heroic to kill people under orders than to demand that
you be allowed to stop. But there are many ways to cover yourself in valour and
act the hero, even if there’s only one way sanctioned by a federal holiday.
If we really wanted to honour veterans, we would abolish
Veterans Day and replace it with a day that celebrates peace, not war. Peace is
a better way to honour the sacrifice of veterans like me than a day designed to
recruit the next generation of soldiers we’ll have to thank for their service
in yet another war.
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Friday,
November 13, 2015
 A blossoming campaign to
reclaim Veterans Day, November 11, as Armistice Day, a day to end all wars,
could not have been timelier. The apparently deliberate U.S. bombing of a Doctors Without
Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan and worldwide demands for an
independent investigation have been met with stonewalling by the U.S.
military and a decision by President Obama to prolong the occupation of
Afghanistan beyond his presidency. The entrance of Russian warplanes
into the war in Syria has been met by Obama’s announcement that U.S. troops
(aka “advisers”) will be deployed on Syrian territory. The U.S. occupations of Iraq and
Afghanistan have created a disaster throughout the Middle East, turning
millions of people into homeless refugees desperately seeking a safe haven
for their families. <Full statement> |
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Nov 11 (1 day ago)
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Charles
Derber and Yale Magrass. Bully
Nation: How the American Establishment Creates a Bullying Society. 2016.
ARKANSAS MILITARISM : A
Sample. See the newsletter on the
subject.
Senator Tom Cotton;
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville; Monuments in Bella Vista and Farmington; Naming a Post Office; LTE.
A Veterans Day Message from Tom
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Nov 11 (1 day ago)
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Let’s go to the impressive
quotation from Mill. I was suspicious of
it immediately, not because I thought it fabricated, but because I have read
some Mill and know he usually qualifies assertions considerably. Here is Mill’s fuller statement highlighted
to show what had been omitted in his letter to constituents. I do not think Senator Cotton altered the
quotation or omitted its source to make his case more persuasive by deception,
but rather I suspect he found the quotation he employed where I did also—in the
online International Military
Forums. Someone there omitted three
out of five sentences from the essay first published in “The Contest in
America,” Fraser’s Magazine (Feb.
1862).
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of
things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which
thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for
firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish
purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human
beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas
of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose
by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man
who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more
about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has
no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men
than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not
terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs
of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the
one against the other. "The
Contest in America," Fraser’s Magazine (February 1862);
later published in Dissertations and Discussions (1868), vol.1
p. 26
One can see at once that Mill is talking
about Just War, and that any other war degrades the participants. The qualifying second and third sentences
require us to examine wars critically, for just wars are rare. The second sentence applies emphatically to
the Iraq War, which was based upon fabrications by a small group of officials
in the Bush administration who wished to control Middle Eastern oil; but the
motivations of other US wars since WWII deserve questioning. Mill clearly abhors any war in which the
people are used as killers in an unjust cause.
In the essay in which the full quotation
appears, Mill declares his support for a specific side in a specific war--for
the North during the US Civil War. In
contrast, Cotton’s letter with the truncated version of Mill’s statement
supports all US veterans and by implication all US wars, without considering
whether they had been used for the selfish purposes of a president and his
advisers for unjust wars, which degrades soldiers. The problem with the US wars since WWII is
not a decayed patriotism, not a reluctance but the jingoistic eagerness to go
to war, without thorough demonstration of their justice. But the justice of the wars promulgated by US
leaders of both Parties, the invasions and bombings and occupations, since WWII
will not stand close scrutiny as Just Wars.
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Opposition to
UofA conformity to US militarism is difficult given the power of the
Military-Corporate-Congressional-White House-Mainstream Media--Imperial
Complex, but if enough students spoke up we might oppose and win against our
university’s support of Pentagon disinformation. The announcement above contains two
egregious falsehoods about “Veterans Day.”
The Celebration Bell is rung throughout the world, and was rung in the
US until recently, for the 11th minute, of the 11th day, of the 11th
month of 1918 when WWI ended. The
Ringing of the Bell was and should be for ending war and embracing peace, not
for celebrating warriors. And
regardless of the color of some of the uniforms, green is an emphatically
inappropriate symbol for the military, which pulverizes and pollutes the
planet, runs over and bombs all species, more than any other single global
institution. Red is the appropriate
color for Veterans Day. Green is an
expected choice for all who wish to deceive by washing the red green.
“Wall Work.”
A photo of a repairman working on the Wall of Honor. NADG (Oct. 26, 2016).
In Bella Vista, you will find the Veterans
Wall of Honor, which cost the Veterans Council of Northwest Arkansas about $700,000
to construct. Now the Council is raising
$300,000 for a Veterans Park on land adjacent.
Arkansas may be a poor and religious state, but although its services
for homeless people or battered women are unequally distributed, for example,
it has ample funds for the patriotic honoring of warriors.
“Honoring Veterans.” NADG (Dec.
18, 2013). Photo with caption.
Farmington Senior Center will soon have a
memorial to honor veterans thanks to the Farmington Veterans Memorial Committee
with the City of Farmington, paid for through fundraisers and donations. I read once that after WWI every town and
city in France had a memorial for their killed listing their names. Eventually the US is likely to have the
same……and a federal cemetery not far away.
Frank Fellone. “Late SEAL’s Name Goes on Post Office.” NADG Oct. 25, 2016).
An admiring eulogy for Adam
Brown: “Determined. Spiritual. Redeemed. And Fearless.” Brown died in
combat in Afghanistan in 2010. Some 200
people gathered at the Hot Springs convention Center to honor Brown as a US
Post Office was renamed in his honor.
Redeemed? To have a PO named for
you, you must be redeemed? I don’t doubt his physical fearlessness,
but a social worker with fifty youth to nurture must surely be equally
courageous, or anyone who defies group conformity.
Letters to the Editor.
My box just for patriotic letters attesting
to the writer’s undying loyalty to the loyal brave freedom fighters, US troops,
who served to protect us from
invaders, is full. Here’s a sample:
“Worthy of Praise” by Phillip Rambin (6-25-13).
The letter ends: “To the duty and devotion of the past, present and
future generations of military personnel, I proudly salute you!” The writer is right in one thing: since
1941 the US has been engaged in a sequence of wars (Grenada, Guatemala,
Vietnam, Iraq, now bombing seven nations).
But the wars were not, are not now, in defense of the USA; only one was
needed or legal. Let us all hope our
leaders will cease invading and bombing, and not every town will have a
memorial to the troops and a burgeoning federal cemetery nearby.
WHAT SHOULD WE DO?
First, make Ms. Marple your model, who says
in every episode of Ms. Marple Mysteries,
“There’s something missing you know.”
Be a critical thinker. She
questioned everyone’s story. Let us
question the Veterans Day narrative and choose Armistice Day.
Spread OMNI’s NATIONAL DAYS Project. Trumpet the peace, justice, and ecology
DAYS. Say NO to the war, injustice,
destroy nature DAYS. Tuba the New
Days.
Carry a sign for 11-11-11!
Closely check every letter from your
congressional representative, and reply to disinformation.
The Pentagon has captured the word “service”
for its exclusive advantage. Stop using
the word to refer to warriors, and transfer it to teachers or park rangers or
nurses. What service were you in? Farming!
The next time someone overcome by patriotic
effusion starts to build another monument to war, try to replace it by a
monument to peacemakers, who are actually most people. But don’t call it a monument or build a
wall! Rather, locate a beautiful natural place for A
Remembrance of Real Protectors Life. Sing
for Peace.
On 11/11/11/ ring in bells for peace, justice,
life. “Ring Out Wild Bells.”
Contents: Armistice DAY Newsletter #9, Nov. 11, 2015
PRINCIPLES AND PLANS TO SUPPORT PEACE
AND PEACEMAKERS
Veterans for Peace VfP
War Resisters League WRL
Iraq Veterans Against War IVAW
Vietnam War Whitewash
Noam Chomsky, US History of Terrorism
Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich, the
Distortions Caused by 9/11
Dick, Support the Troops?
ARMISTICE
DAY—11/11/11-- NEWSLETTER 2016
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