Peace & Nonviolence
Veterans For Peace to Obama: 'You Will Find Us in the Streets'
Wed, 06/24/2009 - 10:09 — Dave CulverAt some point, Mr. President, you will decide to turn away from violence, to end these occupations. As we wrote before, we stand ready to assist you in any effort to find another way. Until then you will find us in the streets.
Mike Ferner, Veterans for Peace
Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Bob Heberle
Dear President Obama,
We write to you again, this time to say we are saddened to see that you now clearly believe in the tired, inhumane and unworkable assumption that violence will somehow work; that might makes right. But that is not the only thing we need to tell you.
We are not just saddened. We are angry. We are outraged by these actions, this practice of "death from above" you are ordering, causing the killing and wounding of hundreds of innocent people, as exemplified by the recent horrific attacks in Afghanistan.
Guns from America fuel Jamaica's gang wars
Mon, 06/22/2009 - 16:18 — Dave CulverAs the Obama administration cracks down on smuggling into Mexico, Jamaicans fear even more firearms will reach the gangs whose turf wars plague the island of 2.8 million people.
Mike Melia, Associated Press
Ships from Miami steam into Jamaica's main harbor loaded with TV sets and blue jeans. But some of the most popular U.S. imports never appear on the manifests: handguns, rifles and bullets that stoke one of the world's highest murder rates.
The volume is much less than the flow of U.S. guns into Mexico that end up in the hands of drug cartels - Jamaican authorities recover fewer than 1,000 firearms a year. But of those whose origin can be traced, 80 percent come from the U.S., Jamaican law enforcement officials have said in interviews with The Associated Press.
And as the Obama administration cracks down on smuggling into Mexico, Jamaicans fear even more firearms will reach the gangs whose turf wars plague the island of 2.8 million people.
Related:
How Fox News is Helping to Nationalize the GI Sanctuary Movement
Sat, 06/20/2009 - 16:07 — Dave Culver"We’ve got to figure out a way to show those AWOL soldiers some…some…compassion.”
Gene Marx, CounterPunch.org
You just never know how your day is gonna go; like last Monday (June 15), at o-dark-thirty, cruising down the interstate, straight into the belly of the beast. And that was just the start. It all started with a weekend (June 13-14) call from Fox News, asking if I’d take the liberal side in a debate on their morning show Fox and Friends. Innocent enough, except that the producer was looking to serve me up to their cave dwelling demographic as red meat, a Veterans for Peace member and co-sponsor of Bellingham, Washington’s GI Sanctuary City Movement.
It’s just good clean fun, you see, to gang up on a lefty over coffee. Taking the other side of the issue, our county GOP Chairwoman and Anne Coulter BFF – who ended up being a no-show, by the way.
Related:
Sanctuary City, Bellingham, WA
The people of Bellingham are calling for an ordinance that will provide legal sanctuary for member s of the military who exercise their duty to object to an illegal war. To that end, we hope to have grassroots community effort to urge City Council to pass resolutions to not waste public funds on the arrest or detention of service members who are absent without leave.
"I Hate Arabs More Than Anybody": Desperate Army Recruits Neo-Nazis
Thu, 06/18/2009 - 20:51 — Dave CulverWhy the U.S. military is ignoring its own regulations and permitting white supremacists to join.
Matt Kennard, Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, posted in AlterNet
On a muggy Florida evening in 2008, I meet Iraq War veteran Forrest Fogarty in the Winghouse, a little bar-restaurant on the outskirts of Tampa, his favorite hangout. He told me on the phone I would recognize him by his skinhead. Sure enough, when I spot a white guy at a table by the door with a shaved head, white tank top and bulging muscles, I know it can only be him.
Over a plate of chicken wings, he tells me about his path into the white-power movement. "I was 14 when I decided I wanted to be a Nazi," he says. At his first high school, near Los Angeles, he was bullied by black and Latino kids. That's when he first heard Skrewdriver, a band he calls "the godfather of the white power movement." "I became obsessed," he says. He had an image from one of Skrewdriver's album covers -- a Viking carrying a staff, an icon among white nationalists -- tattooed on his left forearm. Soon after he had a Celtic cross, an Irish symbol appropriated by neo-Nazis, emblazoned on his stomach.