Friday, November 14, 2014

ARMISTICE DAY NOV. 11, 2014 (2ND NEWSLETTER)

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
Karin Kamp, Tomas Young, Paraplegic, War Opponent Vet
War Resisters League, Honor the Dead AND Support G.I.
    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).
     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.”

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


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
Vice President Joe Biden info@mail.whitehouse.gov via uark.edu 

to James


Mike Erwin saw tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. And when he got home, he kept on serving.
When he came home, he started a community service group. Because, despite everything that Mike had given to his country by serving overseas, he wanted to serve his country at home, as well. This morning on Veterans Day, I had the honor of welcoming Mike and a team of his fellow veterans to the White House -- where they presented a flag they had run across the United States in two months, starting on September 11, 2014.
I've met countless members of our armed forces like Mike over the years. And no matter where or when they served, I am always humbled by their selfless commitment to our country. Our veterans represent the absolute best we have to offer.  [I keep a folder labeled SERVICE.  Like the word DEFENSE used to replace WAR Department and bumfoozle the people, SERVICE attached to military “service” and repeated and repeated until, as in basic training, the trainee public thinks preparing and committing war mass killing morally superior to the true service of those in the helping professions.  Or at least those who organize pro-war propaganda would like you to think so.]  They are the heart and soul -- the very spine -- of this nation.
Today, there are still thousands of warriors serving in harm's way. [Well, Mr. Biden, bring them home.] I know them. I've been with them. I've seen the incredible sacrifices they make every day for all of us.  And just like the veterans of past wars, today's returning troops deserve our enduring gratitude.
As my wife Jill points out, less than 1 percent of America's population serves in uniform, but more than 99 percent of Americans owe that 1 percent much more than we could ever repay. We owe them, and we owe their sons and daughters, husbands and wives, too.
It's our sacred obligation to care for and equip those who we send to war, and care for them and their families when they come home.  [We sent them to war? Oh no Joe, not all us chickens.]
God bless America and may God protect our troops,
Vice President Joe Biden.  [If God is just, justice, and the wars are not just, then where does that leave the troops?  But of course the Joe Bidens will claim righteous wars, and will use God to back him up.]


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
Dennis J. Kucinich Headshot
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?
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


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
www.alternet.org
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.”

www.huffingtonpost.com
On September 17, 2014, Jacob George, just 32 years old, took his own life.

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
US Capitalism  10-18
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
   
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.


AND ARMISTICE DAY 2014 (2ND Newsletter)

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

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