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Poppy > Opioid > Addiction: Why I Don’t Wear One November 8, 2018

Posted by rogerhollander in Uncategorized, War.
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War is an addiction.  A most deadly addiction.

It pains me every year around this time to see so many of my fellow humans walking around sporting those red poppies, which to me represent a justification, if not a glorification of war.

I know that most of those who wear them would not see it that way, but, unfortunately, most of us don’t look beyond the surface of things.  How could you not wear a “Support your local police” button?  Don’t you support your local police (have you stopped beating your spouse?)?  How can you not support those who fought and gave their lives to defend freedom, democracy and the American way of life?

But that’s not really the question to ask here.  The question is: what do these ubiquitous red pieces of cheap material (made in China?) really represent?

We celebrate various holidays every year: we celebrate mothers, fathers, presidents, MLK, Christopher Columbus, the Easter Bunny, Spring Break, Thanksgiving, the questionable birth of a world religious leader, etc.  But on only one day do we remember the dead.  Veterans Day.  We remember soldiers and war dead (and only our own, not the ones we cause).

Does that in itself not say something?  Does that not elevate war above all else?  Do we have a day to remember those who have died of poverty?  hunger? illness and disease? automobile accidents? overdosing?  smoking? natural disasters?

No. Only WAR.

War is an addiction.  But, above all, war is a racket.  As it destroys en masse human lives and lays to waste entire cities, it creates unimaginable wealth for the very people who are responsible for war, who General Eisenhower referred to as the Military Industrial Complex.

No one said it better than another general (note that I am citing here generals, not Gandhian pacifists), the estimable General Smedley D. Butler, in his classic “War is a Racket.”

Which is my recommended reading for 11/11.

WuerkerComplex

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stand with Veterans For Peace on November 11 November 10, 2015

Posted by rogerhollander in Peace, War.
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Roger’s note: my annual November 11 “Glorify Way Day”contribution.

Veterans For Peace is calling on all our members to take a stand for peace this Armistice Day.  We are calling on all our friends and allies to join us at the barricades of peace on November 11. 

Over the last several years, Veterans For Peace chapters have taken the lead incelebrating Armistice Day on November 11.  We are reclaiming the original intention of that day – a worldwide call for peace that was spurred by universal revulsion at the huge slaughter of World War One.  In Canada and the United Kingdom, this day is known as Remembrance Day.

After World War II, the U.S. Congress decided to re-brand November 11 as Veterans Day.  Who could speak against that?  But honoring the warrior quickly morphed into honoring the military and glorifying war.  Armistice Day was flipped from a day for peace into a day for displays of militarism.

This November 11, it is as urgent as ever to ring the bells for peace.  Many Veterans For Peace chapters ring bells, and ask local churches to do the same, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, as was done at the end of World War One.

Visit the Armistice Day page for ways to get involved.

There are so many reasons we must press our government
to end reckless military interventions
that endanger the entire world.

  • In Syria, the U.S. has armed and supported rebelswho share its goal of overthrowing the Assad government. U.S. intervention in Syria has been a major factor in the ongoing tragedy that has made refugees of half of all Syrians, and has done irreparable destruction to the nation of Syria.  The U.S. government and military must end its support of the rebels and abandon its efforts at regime change.  It must join in sincere diplomatic efforts with the Syrian government and Syrian opposition forces, along with Russia, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.  All sides know that the solution to the Syrian war is political, not military.  It is time to stop the bloodshed and the exodus of refugees, and to start talks that respect the self-determination of the Syrian people.
  • In Afghanistan, the deliberate U.S. bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospitalwas followed by a weak apology from President Obama, and his announcement that he would break his promise to end that war, and keep thousands of U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond his presidency.  Fourteen years of deliberate and reckless killing of thousands of Afghanistan civilians has not brought Afghanistan peace or stability.

    All U.S. troops, planes, drones, contractors and NATO allies must leave Afghanistan.  Let the Afghan people find their own peace and determine their own future.

  • Don’t Tempt Nuclear War – End the U.S./NATO Confrontation with Russia.  With Russia and the U.S. bombing different rebel targets in Syria, and with the U.S. and NATO pressing Russia on its very borders, the threat of yet another World War looms.  The U.S. and Russia have thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at one another, with the capacity to kill many millions of people in each country.  Nuclear war between Russia and the United States, which was miraculously avoided during the tense standoff of the Cold War, has re-emerged as an all too real possibility.
  • In Ukraine, the U.S. poured in many millions of dollars to stir up opposition to the elected (if corrupt) government, even supporting fascist gangs who led a violent coup that brought a rightwing, western-friendly government to power. Russian speaking Ukrainians in the east were immediately targeted by fascist elements who took control of Ukrainian military and security forces.  The Russian speaking minority felt it necessary to organize armed self-defense. Russia facilitated a plebiscite in the Ukrainian province of Crimea, where Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet is based, leading to an overwhelming vote to rejoin the Russian federation.

    U.S. and NATO forces must pull back from Russia’s borders.  U.S. and NATO forces are stationed in Poland and the Baltic nations, encircling Russia on its own borders.  A coordinated international media campaign portrays Russian President Putin as the aggressor, while NATO carries out threatening war games and the U.S. beefs up its first strike nuclear capacity in Europe.

    NATO, originally organized to confront the Warsaw Pact forces of the Soviet Union, should be dismantled, instead of being used to intimidate Russia and morphing into an international intervention force serving the aims of those who believe in U.S. and Western global hegemony.

  • The U.S. should pull back from its so-called “Pivot to Asia,” where 60% of U.S. naval forces will be deployed, and where the U.S. is building regional military alliances to confront China.  In so doing, the U.S. has pressured the Japanese government to abandon its constitutional pledge not to deploy their military outside Japan’s borders, forced the South Korean government – against the will of its people – to build a naval base on Jeju Island, and continues to ignore the pleas of the Okinawan people to return a sense of sanity to their island by removing omnipresent military the U.S.
  • The United States, Russia and all nuclear powers must begin living up to their obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which requires them to negotiate in good faith to reduce and eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons. The Marshall Islands is suing the U.S. and all nuclear powers because they are doing just the opposite.  The U.S. government recently announced a thirty year program, estimated to cost One Trillion Dollars, to “modernize” its nuclear arsenal.  In other words, the U.S. is building new generations of nuclear bombs and missiles.  This cannot stand.
  • U.S. drone wars in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond must end.
  • The U.S. must begin dismantling its 900 military bases around the world.
  • War Abroad Mirrors Racism and Violence at Home.  The militarization of U.S. foreign policy and use of violence and war around the world is mirrored here at home by racist police killings, and the militarization of law enforcement and schools, where military recruiters often have total access to students. Racism and xenophobia are used to dehumanize Muslims and others in order to justify killing them in war in their own countries.  We in Veterans For Peace realize this is the same hatred used here at home to justify killing black, brown, and poor people. It is the same fearmongering used to criminalize honest, hard-working people and tear immigrant families apart through deportation.

    This Armistice Day Veterans For Peace calls for justice and peace at home and abroad. We call for the end to racist policies, and for equality for all people.

  • Stop the War on Mother Earth.  Veterans For Peace also sees the links between war and the destruction of the natural environment upon which all living creatures depend.  Stubborn reliance on fossil fuels, and wars for control of them, are primary causes of the perilous climate change into which the world is descending. The ongoing nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan reminds us that nuclear power is neither green nor safe.  Shortsighted energy policies threaten to make entire regions of the planet uninhabitable, turning millions of people into climate refugees. New and dangerous wars for water, land and other precious resources are almost certain to follow.
  • Between nuclear war and climate disaster, we are facing the possibility of Hell on Earth, UNLESS we create a united worldwide movement for peace, justice, equality and sustainability.

For all of these reasons, stand with Veterans For Peace on Armistice Day, November 11, 2015

Remember to visit the Armistice Day page for ways to get involved!

The Conservatives’ treatment of veterans is hypocritical November 24, 2013

Posted by rogerhollander in Canada, Iraq and Afghanistan, War.
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Roger’s note: Support Our Troops (by screwing them after they have killed, been shot at in a place they have not business being,  and come home)!

“Even more shockingly, Mr. Stogran stated, ‘I was told by a senior Treasury Board analyst… that it is in the government’s best interest to have soldiers killed overseas rather than wounded because the liability is shorter term.’”

As the doctor said to my father when he announced my gender to him on the day of my birth in 1941: “CANNON FODDER.”

Gerald Caplan

Special to The Globe and Mail

PublishedFriday, Nov. 22 2013, 12:50 PM EST

Last updatedFriday, Nov. 22 2013, 12:58 PM EST

If the politics of contempt is the hallmark of Stephen Harper’s governing style – for Parliament, for accountability, for critics, for science, for journalists – nothing is more shameful than its contempt for Canada’s veterans. It’s not merely that vets have won the right to so much better. It’s also the flat-out hypocrisy, the unbridgeable chasm between the Harper government’s rapturous rhetoric and its actual policies.

Besides the usual Remembrance Day platitudes, there was the PM at the recent Conservative Convention in Calgary shamelessly boasting that only his party cared about Canada’s “brave men and women in uniform.” Yet precisely one week earlier, Corporal David Hawkins from London, Ont., injured in the field and suffering from post-traumatic stress, was booted out of the military before he was eligible to collect an indexed pension – one of many wounded vets who are being treated so callously.

The ugly truth is that Mr. Hawkins is only one example of the many “brave men and women in uniform” who have been betrayed by the Harper government. And refusing veterans their rightful pensions is only one example of the many heartless ways it has actually treated so many of them.

Indeed, just in the weeks around Remembrance Day 2013, the media has been replete with examples of this absolutely inexplicable phenomenon. In the typical words of Corporal Shane Jones, who suffered a traumatic brain injury in Afghanistan, “We go overseas, we fight for our country, we do what we’re asked and when we come home it’s like we have to start another war all over again just to get the help we need.” That was three days after Mr. Harper’s Calgary speech and exactly one week before November 11.

And on Remembrance Day itself, in B.C., retired Air Force captain Claude Latulippe was among other vets who chose to turn their backs on their Conservative MP at the local cenotaph, “just like the Conservatives are turning their backs on veterans.” This attitude hardly surprises Veterans Ombudsman Guy Parent, appointed by the Harper government, who angrily points out that the Harper government’s New Veterans Charter will relegate hundreds of the most severely disabled vets to poverty in their old age.

But lest we forget, Remembrance Day 2013 was no aberration on this front. Remembrance Day 2010, for example, was marked by a farewell J’Accuse! from Patrick Stogran, a 30-year vet and Canada’s first Veterans Ombudsman, also appointed by Stephen Harper but pointedly not reappointed.

“What I am here to do,” Mr. Stogran said, “is to expose to Canadians what I perceive as a system that for a long time has denied veterans not just what they deserve, but what they earned with their blood and sacrifice.”

“It is beyond my comprehension,” he later added, “how the system could knowingly deny so many of our veterans the services and benefits that the people and the Government of Canada recognized a long, long time ago as being their obligation to provide.”

Even more shockingly, Mr. Stogran stated, “I was told by a senior Treasury Board analyst… that it is in the government’s best interest to have soldiers killed overseas rather than wounded because the liability is shorter term.”

Mr. Stogran’s cri de coeur did not come as a surprise to veterans. Over the 2010 Remembrance Day weekend they hit the streets in an unprecedented series of nation-wide demonstrations to publicize their long list of grievances against a government that has made a fetish of its devotion to Canada’s veterans.

Remembrance Day 2012 once again saw a series of public protests by vets against their own government. As reported by Canadian Press, disabled veterans and military widows assembled on Parliament Hill “to paint a stark picture of bureaucratic indifference and red tape that flies in the face of reassurances from the government, which says the care of military families is a top priority….Few of the government’s touted programs meant to help combat veterans find civilian jobs actually help the disabled.”

What does it take for the Harper government to be shamed into action? This Remembrance Day, 2013, many media finally gave the vets’ grievances significant coverage. Besides several news stories, The Globe, for example, published an editorial, two pieces by its own columnists and an editorial cartoon all harshly critical of the government.

There are some indications that the government is finally paying attention, though Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino insists, in quintessential Harperland style, that “a majority of Canada’s veterans receive the support and care they need.” At about the same time, 3,000 to 4,000 citizens took to the streets of Sydney, N.S., (population: 31,597) to support local veterans in protesting the government’s decision to close nine Veterans Affairs Department district offices across the country, including theirs.

Some Opposition MPs have been pressing the vets’ case for some time; Peter Stoffer has been an especially tireless advocate. But surely the Opposition must go further and make this just cause an absolute priority. Shaming Stephen Harper is not an easy task, as years of protest by vets have sadly proved. But surely his betrayal of Canada’s veterans cannot be allowed to continue.