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The American Sniper As Hero

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By FDRDemocrat/ Daily Kos

The controversy over the movie American Sniper has predictably reopened the divide among many Americans over the Iraq War.  What is more interesting is how the choice made by director Clint Eastwood to choose a sniper as a heroic archetype unravels classic notions of what is considered heroism.

The concept of heroism has been with humanity since the beginning.  At it’s heart it contains a common thread where the hero (or heroine) risks themselves for the sake of others.

How then to adapt the heroic archetype to the profession of sniper?  This is no easy task.   [Read more…]

Expanding the Veteran Sleeping Bag Distribution Program in San Diego

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The San Diego Chapter Veterans for Peace (SDVFP) has for the past several years been actively engaged in our signature charity the “Compassion Campaign.”

Some members had gotten together in 2010, before I became a member, and discussed the problem of homelessness in San Diego and what we might be able to do to help veterans who because of a variety of circumstances find themselves living on the street.

Out of this initial meeting and conversation was born our aggressive ongoing activity to try to improve the lives of those unfortunate people in some significant way. One member of SDVFP who had been homeless himself was asked what people on the street needed most. “Sleeping bags” was his response.   [Read more…]

The Christmas Truce, December 24, 1914

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What if we threw a war and nobody showed up?

By Arnold J. Oliver / Veterans for Peace

Editor Note: The longest war in US history, the thirteen year long combat mission in Afghanistan, officially ended on December 27. Over 10,000 troops remain there.

On the evening of December 24 a century ago, peace broke out in the most unlikely of places. In the blasted, putrid trenches of Belgium and France, soldiers fighting on the Western Front put aside their arms in what became known as the Christmas Truce. Although World War I was then only a few months old, there had already been a million combat deaths. Many soldiers were weary of the futility and horrific costs of the war, and thousands of them spontaneously stopped trying to kill each other.

The drama began on Christmas Eve, as German soldiers lit up their Tannenbaums (Christmas trees), put them on top of their trenches in view of the Allied troops, and began to sing carols. From there, full scale fraternization became widespread. Troops put down their weapons, climbed out of the trenches and met in no-mans-land to pray and sing and exchange greetings and gifts. The cease fire continued into Christmas Day during which the dead were buried, toasts were exchanged and soccer games played.   [Read more…]

SDPD: Tell Us About Your Stingray Cell Phone Spy System

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By Doug Porter

A lawsuit filed by the First Amendment Coalition aimed at getting the San Diego Police Department to disclose how it uses cell phone tower simulators to collect data has been covered by multiple local news outlets over the past two days.

Two things strike me in studying these accounts: a mostly blind eye towards how this latest news fits into a pattern of opaqueness by the SDPD and  a lack of understanding about the true nature of the technology in question.

Today I’ll provide some analysis and information on those two points.   [Read more…]

On Torture: Deeper into the American Heart of Darkness

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By Jim Miller

A couple of weeks ago I evoked Joseph Conrad’s classic critique of colonialism when discussing the disposability of black and brown lives in the wake of Ferguson and our collective ability to dehumanize or “thingify” black and brown people at home and abroad.

As I observed then, “in Conrad’s classic novel Heart of Darkness we are taken on a journey into the core of the European colonial enterprise. And while the naïve reader may expect an adventure in the ‘savage’ world of Africa, what one quickly discovers is that it is the ‘hollow men’ of Europe bent on the ruthless exploitation of the land and the people who are the real savages, whose moral emptiness and desire to ‘exterminate the brutes’ is the actual horror.”

Well, sadly, last week the Senate report on torture officially revealed that “we are the hollow men” to steal a line from T.S. Eliot, “the stuffed men” whose lips “form prayers to broken stone.”   [Read more…]

Readers Write: The High Cost of Torture

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By Richard Blankenburg/Quixotic Tales

Today, I am reading about the United States of America sadistically torturing their prisoners of war, during the Afghan and Iraqi Wars. These wars began without a Declaration of War by Congress during the administration of President George W. Bush 2001-2009.

These are two wars that as a patriotic American citizen I refused to support because neither sovereign nation, Afghanistan nor Iraq, was responsible for the terrorist bin Laden’s heinous attack on America, nor did either sovereign nation represent a threat to the United States of America and also because bin Laden was a citizen of Saudi Arabia.

Personally, I had two grandsons serving in combat in Afghanistan; I am proud of their service to their nation, despite my opposition to these wars.

That said, I was intrigued by this article regarding the American sadistic torture of prisoners of war since 2001, in violation of International Law that was approved as treaty by the U.S. Government and by the U.S. Congress.   [Read more…]

Torture Tuesday: A Study in Manufacturing Consent

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By Doug Porter

If you are unfortunate enough to be aware of the news today, you’ll be a witness to our country’s greatest exercise in what Walter Lippmann and subsequently Noam Chomsky called ‘manufactured consent.”

I’m referring to the release of the heavily redacted summary of the the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the use of torture. By the end of the day, via the conclusions of the chattering class, the American public will know three things:

  • US policy following the 2001 Al Qaeda attacks included broadly worded permissions to engage in torture.
  • There is controversy over whether torture was effective.
  • Oversight of the intelligence apparatus in the government is a danger to our national security.

  [Read more…]

The History of Neighborhood House in Logan Heights: Tortilla’s Army – Defending Logan Heights

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The Summer of ’42, patriotism and childhood’s end

By Maria E. Garcia

San Diego in the 1940’s was alive with military action. Newspapers were full of stories about defending the home front, men were training for military duty and bunkers were being built on Point Loma. If my source is correct there is a bunker by Chavez Parkway and Main Street. The men from Logan Heights had left for Europe and the Western Pacific during War War II.

In Logan Heights a favorite game became playing army. Visualize looking across the bay to Coronado. You see ships leaving and preparing to go across the ocean to defend our country. Newspapers and the radio had constant reminders of the dangers of living in a military town on the western side of our country. In this atmosphere Tortilla’s Army was born.   [Read more…]

Time to Learn the Lessons of Failed U.S. Wars

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By Gerry Condon, Vice President, Veterans For Peace / Veterans for Peace

As a Vietnam era veteran, I paid close attention to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s Veterans Day speech, delivered at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. Secretary Hagel, a Vietnam combat veteran, declared that we must learn the lessons of past wars, and not commit U.S. troops to unpopular, unwinnable conflicts. He purportedly referred to the Vietnam War, but he could just as easily have been describing the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. government and military apparently have misled themselves as they were misleading the American people, claiming that these occupations were necessary, had clear objectives and were winnable. As in Vietnam, they lied about their progress in Iraq and Afghanistan. There was light at the end of the tunnel, we were told, if only we allowed one more “surge.”   [Read more…]

‘Outrageous’: Ferguson Organizers say State of Emergency Violates Laws, Thwarts Civil Liberties

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Governor’s declaration ‘only threatens to stir up tensions and denigrate the peaceful efforts of countless non-violent activists’

By Nadia Prupis / Common Dreams

In the wake of Governor Jay Nixon’s Monday afternoon declaration of a state of emergency in Missouri, activists and civil rights groups are speaking out against a move they say threatens the civil rights of protesters on the ground in Ferguson.

Nixon’s announcement, which came ahead of the grand jury’s decision in the police shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, is “both premature in its application and presumptuous in [its] intention to the hundreds of peaceful demonstrators who have embraced their Constitutional right to protest,” said NAACP president William Brooks.   [Read more…]

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