Around a dozen Google employees are reported to have quit over Google’s decision to participate in a military drone program known as Project Maven. [Read more…]
What Life Is Like on Gaza’s Side of the Fence | Video Worth Watching
Most of the coverage on these events that I’ve seen have focused strictly on the border violence. Here’s something that attempts to provide a bit more context. From The New York Times YouTube site:
Palestinians in Gaza are taking part in mass protests, demanding an end to the 11-year blockade of the territory and a return to lands in what is now Israel. The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief reports from the region.
A Forgotten Massacre in Baghdad
By Kilian Colin
I was few years old. I only remember snapshots of the war on Iraq in 1991.
I remember my parents and other families in the shelter rushing out of the shelter after hearing another shelter was bombed by a U.S. airstrike. People were crying and yelling while fleeing for their life. When we left the shelter that night, the sky looked like there was a firework show with a strong bombing sounds.
As a child, I smiled while watching the fireworks and wished it will continue forever. It really wasn’t a fireworks show; it was the U.S. airstrike and the Iraqi defense shooting each other like in a Star Wars movie. I didn’t understand what was going on until a few years later. [Read more…]
Fifteen Years Later: Remembering the Invasion Of Baghdad | Readers Write
By Kilian Colin
On April 9, 2003, I woke up to the sounds of bombs.
My bed was shaking and my sister, who was sleeping in the bed next to me, was awake crying and shaking in her bed. It was like an earthquake with very scary sounds. Shards of glass from the windows covered my bed. My parents ran into the room. My father said let’s go downstairs.
We lived in a 1-bedroom apartment on the second floor. We went downstairs and knocked on our neighbor’s door. He neighbor opened the door and let us inside his apartment without saying a word. He was clad only in underwear and held a copy of Quran in his hand. His name was Abo-Allaa. [Read more…]
Privatizing the Veterans Administration: A Key Part of the Trump Agenda
By Mark Sumner / Daily Kos
The replacement of Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin has two narratives in the media—that Shulkin “embarrassed” Donald Trump with a trip to Europe that included days of sightseeing, and that Shulkin “clashed” with other officials at the VA.
Despite the amount of play the first item has received in the press, and despite some completely justified criticisms of Shulkin’s efforts both slip his wife’s travel costs onto the VA’s dime and indulgence in gifts he should never have accepted, the idea that he was pushed out over travel costs is clearly ludicrous. Scott Pruitt has engaged in far more lavish—and ridiculous—travel policies, hauling along a vast entourage on trips to Italy and Morocco, and the only thing his actions have earned from Trump is a suggestion that Pruitt may get a promotion to some other department ripe for wrecking. Besides, Trump isn’t capable of embarrassment.
And when the press reports that Shulkin butted heads with officials, what they really mean is that Shulkin was blocking appointees from Trump who were pushing to privatize the VA. Fast. The conflict was simple: Shulkin, the only hold-over in Trump’s cabinet from the Obama administration, was trying to maintain the VA as a viable system of health care for veterans. The Trump appointees that filled all the other VA slots, were actively working to do to the VA what Pruitt has done to the EPA—destroy it. [Read more…]
Readers Write: Violent American Culture, NC-17
By Dave Patterson, San Diego Veterans for Peace
How can we talk with our school children about the irrationality of violence when we happily take them to gun shows, military air shows and military museums where indiscriminate killing is portrayed as a fun activity for all?
Since the last school shooting, our educators are racing to prevent more violence by implementing depression screenings and Rachel’s Challenge non-violence program, while at the same time we promote our violent American culture. Now some are talking about banning sales of guns to those younger than 21, so wouldn’t it be logical to assign an NC-17 rating to the institutions that promote violence?
At the core of all this violence is the way we promote it in American culture. Selling someone an assault weapon that’s designed for killing people is clearly the promotion of violence against other people. In San Diego, we bus our school kids to the USS Midway where the ship was used to bomb Vietnam and helped kill 2 to 3 million people there. Yet everyone gets a thrill looking at the cool planes that deliver bombs on whomever. [Read more…]
A Nation Bamboozled: Invasion of Iraq 15 Years Later
By Bill in Portland Maine / Daily Kos
Today is the anniversary of one of the most avoidably-idiotic days in American history—the day Republicans shot our country in the face and expected a parade of sweets and flowers for it. It’s the 15th dumbstickiversary of the invasion of Iraq. As always, we mark the occasion with a reminder of some of the lying and/or moronic statements made by the band of Very Serious People who orchestrated and/or promoted the debacle. Feel free to hurl rotten tomatoes as you see fit…
“Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
—George W. Bush (10/7/02)
“I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?”
—Bill O’Reilly (1/29/03) [Read more…]
San Diego Vets for Peace Bring My Lai Memorial Exhibit to San Diego
Who Will Control the Narrative?
This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the civilian massacre of My Lai, the Vietnamese village that was destroyed by US forces during the Vietnam War. The Pentagon is spending $63 million dollars to glorify our unnecessary, unjust and immoral military actions in Vietnam and in our continuing wars today. The My Lai Memorial Exhibit honors the Vietnamese who died in what they refer to as the American War. It is a strong, anti-war response to the Pentagon’s campaign and is a way of assuring that the Vietnam War does not slip down the memory hole.
The exhibit, which is traveling the whole country and installed in San Diego this week, is a critical element in fulfilling the Veterans for Peace mission — to seek justice for veterans and the victims of war, expose the true costs of war and to work for peace. [Read more…]
My Lai Memorial Exhibit Program Comes to San Diego
By San Diego Veterans for Peace
Fifty years ago, American boys, most under 20 years of age, committed unspeakable acts against a civilian hamlet in Vietnam. Over 500 women, children (yes! there were babies!) and old men were slaughtered by American soldiers. Civilian “collateral damage” is a tragic cost of any war; the My Lai massacre only exemplified it at a highly public level.
The San Diego Chapter of Veterans For Peace is named after Hugh C. Thompson, the courageous US Army helicopter pilot who landed his chopper and, along with fellow crewmen, intervened against fellow American troops to end the carnage at My Lai. Thompson reported the “incident” up the chain of command but was met with indifference and ridicule by authorities.
Fifty years removed from My Lai, today we see American troops in more than 120 countries, with US bases in more than 80. We are embroiled in multiple wars and conflicts, and the “Doomsday Clock” has just been advanced 30 seconds closer to midnight, due to escalating tensions over possible nuclear war. Drone warfare is commonplace with mounting civilian casualties, as American warriors in Nevada routinely target and kill in places around the globe. [Read more…]
Does Trump Really Have a Nuclear Button On His Desk? | Video Worth Watching
Of course not. That’s just another Trump absurdist tweetism. But does he have the ability to launch nuclear weapons? Ah, that’s another story. And here’s the story, courtesy of Vox’s Danush Parvaneh. [Read more…]
Lennon and Ono – Happy Xmas (War Is Over) | Video Worth Watching
On this third day of Christmas, here’s John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Christmas Classic: Happy Xmas (War Is Over). We can dream, can’t we? And we need dreams in order to make them real. [Read more…]
Veterans For Peace Give Out 3200th Sleeping Bag Set in Downtown San Diego
By Gil Field / San Diego Veterans for Peace
Veteran members, associate members, and friends and supporters of the San Diego Veterans For Peace, Chapter 91, are proud to announce that in November 2017 the 3200th sleeping bag set was given out to the homeless in downtown San Diego!
It’s through the generous ongoing financial contributions of friends and the general public that our Compassion Campaign is able to indefinitely continue this humane, lifesaving program.
In December 2010 the San Diego chapter of the national Veterans For Peace organization began the Compassion Campaign — an outreach effort to help displaced homeless veterans. Ignited by conversations with many homeless veterans on the street in downtown San Diego, the chapter membership determined the lives of homeless veterans and non-veterans downtown could improve significantly if given basic equipment — like a sleeping bag, as many weren’t sleeping well on the hard pavement with only a light blanket, their jacket, or nothing. [Read more…]
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