Author: jimstaro

Marg Wrote:
 Alvin, TX does the same thing.  They use a blanket form.  If a parent uses the opt-out the district provides they opt out of EVERYTHING.  the district doesn’t follow their own policy tho.  They still have the kids remain in the yearbook BUT if they were to follow their own policy they would have to restrict participation in the yearbook and many other things…such as, pictures for the paper when given awards by the district.  I pointed this out to them at our board meeting.  

I was successful in presenting the military opt-out because i presented the Army recruiting manual at the same time highlighting the section where it specifically points out that the military can be separated from secondary institutions. i presented during the 3 minute open forum portion of the meeting and the board is not supposed to take action.  They made an exception and the board did act and decided they’d include the mil opt-out next year.  Knowing they were not to take action I was prepared and personally handed our Superintendent a separate letter opting each one of my children out and added this statement to it:  

This letter is to be kept in Katherine’s records for future reference.  

This Opt-Out request is consistent with our family’s history of Conscientious Objection to war.

…. i presented this letter formally at the board meeting and then followed up with a certified copy to the district and to our home~ for each of my children’s CO packets.

*Automatic enrollment in ROTC provokes protest at high school*

By MARK SOMMER
News Staff Reporter
10/6/2005

Andrew Norman/Buffalo News
Wendy Van Scoter, a Lovejoy area resident, says her 14-year-old daughter, Jennifer Brown, was placed in Junior ROTC without her knowledge. She said she never received a letter from the school.

Unless they opted out, freshmen at Hutchinson-Central Technical High School were automatically enrolled this fall in Junior ROTC.
About 300 parents of freshmen received letters in August, informing them their children would be enrolled in the daily, 42-minute program unless they objected before the start of school. About 190 students at the school on South Elmwood Avenue were in the program when classes began. The number dropped to 157 following objections by parents and students, who were reassigned to study hall.

Now, the New York Civil Liberties Union is demanding that the practice be stopped.

“The school has engaged in a blatant violation of students’ and parents’ rights under the state education law by auto-enrolling freshmen in Junior ROTC,” said Donna Lieberman, the NYCLU’s executive director. “Under the law the school has no authority to enroll a student in Junior ROTC without prior written parental consent.”

State education law says “enrollment and participation in [Junior ROTC] is voluntary on the part of the student, and written consent of a parent or guardian is [required].”

Principal David Greco, a strong supporter of Junior ROTC, said he believes the policy is legal and does not violate state education law.

“I don’t feel I have done anything wrong,” Greco said. “Any parent that didn’t comply in time with their child was processed out of the class in a reasonable manner.”

Greco said he was following a little-known provision of the federal No Child Left Behind law – and not the state law on Junior ROTC – that makes federal funding for schools contingent on providing the military with student contact lists. Also under the law, the schools are required to let students and/or their parents opt off such lists.

Wendy Van Scoter, a Lovejoy area resident, said her 14-year-old daughter, Jennifer Brown, had been placed in Junior ROTC without her knowledge. She said she never received a letter from the school.

“My daughter wanted to be in band. She didn’t want to be in [Junior ROTC],” Scoter said.

Van Scoter said she appealed to an assistant superintendent, who told her time had passed for changing her daughter’s schedule. Jennifer, who plays clarinet, wasn’t switched to band until Tuesday, after producing a note from her doctor.

“I feel I had the right to decide,” Van Scoter said.

Bruce Beyer, whose daughter, Elizabeth, is a friend of Jennifer’s, said he was angry over what he called a “renegade recruitment operation.”

“This is crazy. This isn’t the draft. . . . It’s high school,” said Beyer, who said he believes parents and students now enrolled in the program should be asked if their participation is voluntary.

Beyer, a longtime opponent of military activity on campus, was arrested in 1968 as one of the “ROTC 19,” which, during the Vietnam War era, helped remove the program from the University at Buffalo – one of many schools during that period that to drop it.

Yet Beyer said he has no objection to the high school offering Junior ROTC if it obtains written consent.

“As long as people don’t know their rights, a man like Mr. Greco can do pretty much what ever he wants,” Beyer said.

He also wondered about placing ROTC in Buffalo Public Schools.

“I would bet 10-to-1 that there is not much ROTC recruiting going on in Amherst, Williamsville or Clarence,” he said.

The Army program, which is not offered in Buffalo’s suburbs, also operates in McKinley and South Park high schools, where written consent is required, according to retired Lt. Col. James McNicholas, Junior ROTC’s project administrator for Buffalo Public Schools.

After being told of parental concerns, McNicholas said school system officials will have to re-
examine Hutch-Central Technical’s apparent conflict with state law.

“We need to have some type of legal advice as to whether or not what we have done is OK, or if we need to change the way we are approaching it,” McNicholas said.

Promising a review, James Keane, chief of staff for the Buffalo Public Schools, said, “We are looking into it and anticipate changes to the current practice.”

Lieberman, of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said a change must be made.

“It seems to me that the law is pretty clear here,” she said, “and it doesn’t allow schools to compel students to enroll in a military program.”

e-mail: msommer@buffnews.com

In February 1971, one month after the revelations of the My Lai massacre, a public inquiry into war crimes committed by American forces in Vietnam was held at a Howard Johnson motel in Detroit. Vietnam Veterans Against the War organized this event called the Winter Soldier Investigation with support from Jane Fonda and Mark Lane. More than 125 veterans spoke of atrocities they had witnessed and committed. “The major that I worked for had a fantastic capability of staking prisoners,” goes one piece of testimony, “utilizing a knife that was extremely sharp, and sort of fileting them like a fish. . . . Prisoners treated this way were executed at the end because there was no way that we could take them into any medical aide and say, ‘This dude fell down some steps.'”

Though the event was attended by press and television news crews almost nothing was reported to the American public. Yet, this unprecedented forum marked a turning point in the anti-war movement. It was a pivotal moment in the lives of young vets from around the country who participated, including the young John Kerry. The Winter Soldier Investigation changed him and his comrades forever. Their courage in testifying, their desire to prevent further atrocities and to regain their own humanity, provide a dramatic intensity that makes the film Winter Soldier an unforgettable experience.

Winter Soldier (4 out of 5 stars) Film is stark document of Vietnam War and the times>
Roger Moore
Sentinel Movie Critic

September 29, 2005

In February 1971, 125 Vietnam War veterans gathered in Detroit to talk about what they had seen and done in the war. News reporters and activist filmmakers descended on the Howard Johnson’s where they met.

The reporters — if you have a long TV-news memory, you’ll recognize some — didn’t do much with the tales they heard. But the filmmakers captured it all and made Winter Soldier, a wake-up call about just what “our boys” were doing over there.

This long-unseen documentary — it takes its title from Tom Paine’s 1776 patriotic pamphlet, “Common Sense” — earned renewed interest during last year’s presidential election. John Kerry was one of those Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Jane Fonda was also involved.

That’s all some needed to know.

But the film, opening today at Orlando’s Downtown Media Arts Center, is a stark document of that time, that organization and that war. Kerry is barely in it, a young Navy officer questioning the motives of his fellow veterans against the war, bearing witness about what he saw and was told.

And the stories these men tell will chill you if you’re capable of being chilled. “Villes” wiped out, “291 of them, women, children, everybody,” to “send a message.” Marines gunning down children who give them the finger. Officers “gutting” injured female civilians. Beheadings.

“We took ears from living people, sure,” one haunted soldier mutters.

Winter Soldier is an artlessly arty film, all simple, grainy black-and-white close-ups or press-conference testimonials and the odd color photograph of a scene of carnage. But that very lack of artifice adds to its power and authority. Nothing cute or fancy, just the unvarnished “what I saw,” no spin to it.

A lot of people spent a lot of money last election cycle telling American voters that these things never happened. But this film has photos. And it has witnesses. As one soldier says in the film, “They can’t deny the testimony of all the dudes in this room.”

The astonishing tales of savagery in this film, told by men who witnessed them or even took part in them, would silence any Vietnam revisionist, no matter how many Swift Boat Veterans ads he or she has seen. This was a war where helicopter pilots were told “not to count prisoners as they’re being loaded, but when they were unloaded” because who knew what “accidents” might happen on the flight back to base.

“It wasn’t like they were humans,” one soldier says.

It takes a dehumanizing sort of training to make effective soldiers, creating automatic responses in the troops, removing the humanity from “the enemy.”

But Vietnam exposed what this does to the men who follow through on that training. And the results weren’t going to win any “hearts and minds.” They were just upping the body count and turning draftees into monsters as they did.

Winter Soldier captures what many regard as a turning point in the protests against the war, when many of the men who fought it spoke out about what was being done in our name in the quagmire of Southeast Asia.

Dismiss it if you want. Treat it as just history, if you dare. Plainly, this couldn’t happen again. And we’re not five years into Iraq. Yet.

Roger Moore can be reached at rmoore@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5369.

MIAMI — Welcome to Florida, the Sunshine State. Please avoid unnecessary arguments with locals. Starting today, they may be more inclined to shoot you — at least that’s essentially the message from a national gun-control organization as a Florida law goes into effect empowering people who feel threatened to use force, including firearms, to protect themselves.

“It’s unlike any supposed self-defense statute in America,” said Peter Hamm, communications director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “It empowers people who are on edge and have violent tendencies to presume a situation is dangerous to them that may not be.”

Under a legal concept derived from English Common Law, known as the “Castle Doctrine,” it has been long held that people have the right to stand their ground if attacked in their home. Baxley, a Republican from Ocala, said the new legislation explicitly enshrined that principle in Florida statutes and extended the concept of a person’s “castle” to personal space in a car or anywhere else he or she is entitled to be.

Previously under Florida law, people acting in self-defense outside their home or workplace were supposed to use any reasonable means at hand to escape the danger, including retreat. The new law says they can “meet force with force.”

State Rep. Eleanor Sobel (D-Hollywood), one of the few lawmakers to vote against the bill, said she was worried it could turn the streets of Florida into a latter-day version of the Wild West.

“With this new law, people have an excuse to use guns and say it was in self-defense,” said Sobel. “If you get into an argument in traffic with somebody, you might assume he’s reaching for his gun, so I’ll get mine first.”

“That’s just not what good people do,” LaPierre said. “It’s been proven that good people can use rational decisions about what’s necessary to save their life.”

To alert visitors and potential visitors, the organization is placing advertisements in newspapers in Boston, Chicago, Detroit and Britain, all major markets for Florida’s tourism industry, and plans to begin handing out leaflets to arriving passengers at Miami International Airport on Monday.

“In Florida, avoid disputes,” recommends the newspaper ad. “Use special caution in arguing with motorists on Florida roads.

“If someone appears to be angry with you, maintain to the best of your ability a positive attitude, and do not shout or make threatening gestures,” says the flier.

His only concern, Colton said, is that some people might now wrongly interpret the law to mean that “if you bother me on the street, I can shoot you.”

Iraq’s protesters
Necessary and valid case for withdrawal

Last update: September 29, 2005

Perhaps it was a little unfair of organizers of last Saturday’s anti-war march in Washington to blame President Bush for being out of town. From 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. that day the president was tending to his latest hurricane-oriented photo-ops — at Air Force bases in Colorado Springs and San Antonio and at an Austin, Texas, emergency operations center, as Rita roiled up the Mississippi Valley. “I’m really here to let the folks in Texas know,” Bush said in Austin, “that the federal government knows we have a responsibility to support you in the mission of saving lives, first and foremost, and then help to rebuild their lives.”
The protesters in Washington and many cities across the nation were saying almost the same thing: It’s time to save the lives of GIs in Iraq, rather than keep letting them be churned up by an unwinnable war. And what energy the United States needs to pour into rebuilding lives needs to take place here, along and up the Gulf Coast. Iraq should begin relying on itself to do the same.
Whether it can isn’t a question the protesters were concerned with. At this stage in the war, they have a right not to be. The war is in its third year. More than 1,900 American soldiers have been killed. Not only has there been no progress toward creating a stable Iraq, to say nothing of creating a democratic Iraq; there’s been slow, certain degradation toward civil war. Even other leaders in the Middle East (like the Saudi foreign minister last week) are warning of a full-blown disintegration of Iraq.
With no equal rights for women, no provisions for religious pluralism (Islamic law reigns supreme) and no buy-in from the nation’s Sunnis, the proposed constitution the Iraqi assembly has written makes a mockery of the democratic ideals President Bush envisioned for the country. Yet Bush hails the constitution as “an historic milestone.” Shamelessly, he compares it to this country’s Constitution when it did not recognize women’s right to vote while sanctioning slavery, as if America’s defunct standards of bigotry of 200 years ago are good enough for Iraq. Are Iraqis not better off with a constitution, even an imperfect one, than with Saddam? Of course they are. But the starting point of that imperfect constitution should at least be a high standard to aspire to, rather than a surrender to existing prejudices. That may not be possible in Iraq, but only because the idea of imposing a western-style constitution on a Mideastern culture with no sense of constitutional law was catastrophically flawed from the start.
With or without a new constitution, therefore, Iraq’s march backward seems no less assured than it has been, with or without its democratically elected prime minister. Democracy in name makes no difference when the elected have no power.
The American occupation is now mayhem’s uninvited guest. Military operations like those against Tal Afar or Samarra are mounted again and again to rid some towns of insurgents. As soon as the operations are over, insurgents return. “We’ve taken Samarra four times, and we’ve lost it four times,” an intelligence officer told Time magazine last week. “We need a new strategy.”
The protesters were providing it: Time to leave. Immediate withdrawal would not be wise militarily or politically. But neither would extending the occupation indefinitely. A withdrawal based on a deadline and subject to conditional extensions is the best way out. It would be fairest to soldiers, giving their mission, finally, an end-point. It would be fairest to Iraqis, giving them time to prepare for the inevitable. It would also be fairest to America’s needs, which are urgently domestic. Taxpayers will have to rebuild Louisiana’s delta. They should not have to rebuild Iraq at the same time {I Part with Author here, we All are Responsible for the Death and Destruction Caused and should Pay for those Actions}.
The shame of it is that much of the disintegration and destruction of Iraq happened after Saddam’s fall, as a consequence of a botched American occupation that never figured out how to handle the country post-Saddam. Protesters had an idea why. For all the shrillness of their signs and their demands (“Bush lies,” “worst president ever,” “impeach Bush”) the writing on their placards only echoes the writing on Iraq’s walls, which Bush, to this day, refuses to read.

Army Reports Worst Recruiting in Decades
By ROBERT BURNS, AP
WASHINGTON (Sept. 30) – The Army closed the books Friday on one of the leanest recruiting years since it became an all-volunteer service, missing its enlistment target by the widest margin since 1979 and raising questions about its plans for growth.

Post Thoughts

Many in Congress believe the Army needs to get bigger – perhaps by 50,000 soldiers over its current 1 million – in order to meet its overseas commitments, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army is on a path to add 30,000 soldiers, but that will be hard to achieve if recruiters cannot persuade more to join.
Officials insist the slump is not a crisis, although they predict that 2006 will as tough as 2005, if not tougher.
“Combined with a good economy and continued negative news from the Middle East, that means recruiting in fiscal year 2006 will be challenging,” Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, an Army spokesman, said Friday.
Michael O’Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution think tank, said the recruiting shortfall this year does not matter greatly – for now.
“The bad news is that any shortfall shows how hard it would be to increase the Army’s size by 50,000 or more as many of us think appropriate,” O’Hanlon said. “We appear to have waited too long to try.”
The Army has not published official figures yet, but it apparently finished the 12-month counting period with about 73,000 recruits. Its goal was 80,000. A gap of 7,000 enlistees would be the largest – in absolute number as well as in percentage terms – since 1979.
The Army National Guard and the Army Reserve, which are smaller than the regular Army, had even worse results.
The active-duty Army had not missed its target since 1999, when it was 6,290 recruits short; in 1998 it fell short by 801, and in 1995 it was off by 33. Prior to that the last shortfall was in 1979 when the Army missed by 17,054 during a period when the Army was much bigger and its recruiting goals were double today’s.
The Army became an all-volunteer service in 1974.
Army officials knew at the outset that 2005 would be a tough year to snag new recruits. By May it was obvious that after four consecutive months of coming up short there was little chance of meeting the full-year goal.
A summertime surge of signups offered some hope the slump might be ending. Hilferty, the Army spokesman, said that despite the difficulties, recruiters were going full speed as the end of fiscal year 2005 arrived Friday.
“We have met the active Army’s monthly recruiting goals since June, and we expect to meet it for September, which sends us into fiscal year 2006 on a winning streak,” Hilferty said. He also noted that the Army has met its re-enlistment goals, even among units that have been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The outlook for reaching 80,000 recruits in 2006 is dimmed by several factors, including:
The daily reports of American deaths in Iraq and the uncertain nature of the struggle against the insurgency have put a damper on young people’s enthusiasm for joining the military, according to opinion surveys.
The Army has a smaller-then-usual reservoir of enlistees as it begins the new recruiting year on Saturday. This pool comes from what the Army calls its delayed-entry program in which recruits commit to join the Army and then ship to boot camp months later.
Normally that pool is large enough at the start of the recruiting year to fill at least one-quarter of the Army’s full-year need. As the new fiscal year begins Saturday, the figure apparently has dwindled to between 5 percent and 10 percent, although the official number has not been released. Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, has said it would be the smallest in history.
Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., said in an interview that the Army would attract more recruits if it could offer shorter enlistments than the current three-year norm.
As it stands, the Army faces a tough challenge for the foreseeable future.
“The future looks even grimmer. Recruiting is going to get harder and harder,” Moskos said.
09/30/05 14:18 EDT

The Relevance of Marching
By David Swanson
David Corn, www.davidcorn.com, published an article today on his site and on www.tompaine.com arguing that last weekend’s march on Washington to end the war was a waste of time and money and energy and won’t help end the war. I disagree, but think Corn makes some useful points.
Corn’s arguments include:
1-these marches always result in debates over how many people showed up
2-not enough people showed up
3-there’s nothing novel about marching anymore
4-more people watched “Desperate House Wives” than marched
5-the marchers are all from blue states, so the Republicans don’t care
6-only one national march in the past 20 years has accomplished anything
7-we’d be better off targeting vulnerable Senators and Members of Congress
1.-Yes, there are always debates over how many people showed up. Some among those organizing this march made proposals that I supported but which were not accepted or acted on, to either carefully estimate the crowd as the march began and passed through a marked off area, or to acquire a good enough satellite photo to estimate crowd size. But the media coverage – lousy and insufficient as it was – did not focus on the crowd size as much as organizers and activists have. Most of the stories in the corporate media communicated that there was a huge, diverse march of people from all over the country who wanted to end the war. If there’s also debate over the crowd size, what’s so bad about that? The issue is at least in the news, and those in search of harder numbers can refer to opinion polls, which all now support the anti-war movement.
2.-Corn says a million people would have meant something. But it would not have meant eliminating the debate over what the right number was. And it will not happen without smaller marches first and recognition of what they achieve. It certainly won’t happen if we write off marching as an outdated tool, the way the Bushies write off the labor movement.
3.-How many people really believe that the marches against the Vietnam War worked primarily because they were novel? In fact, was there anything novel then about marching? What works about marching, I think, is mostly not dependent on it being novel. For one thing, it puts an issue into the media and reaches more people. While a majority of Americans currently oppose the war, only a tiny minority knows that. Most people who oppose the war believe falsely that they hold a minority opinion. A march helps people learn that a mainstream opinion is mainstream. Each person at the march is understood to represent many more people who could not take off work, travel, physically march that distance, or risk arrest. And each person goes home and tells many other people about the inspiring experience of the march. The internet and activist networks are now a-fire with proposals and initiatives and hope. The bus tours and lobby visits and local protests and congressional hearings that preceded the march did not produce this.
Local energy is higher now, not depleted by the national march or any of the regional marches that took place the same day. This is not a zero-sum game. It’s closer to the reverse. The more we do, the more people come in with more energy to do more. And it’s not just Americans who are excited. National marches in DC excite people around the world, build alliances with them, and restore some credibility to our country in the eyes of others. What generated excitement this past weekend, though, was not just the march, but also the civil disobedience at the White House on Monday. On that day 384 people accepted arrest to demand that the war end now. They sacrificed, and that moved people. And we know the exact count (384) because the police know how many arrests were made. There was also a ton of lobbying done by hundreds of people, some of it very aggressively, on Monday; and that was useful, but it did not accomplish the same things the march did.
4.-Of course, more people watched television. Many people work long hours and can’t do much else. But of those supporting the war, all but a few hundred watch television. Of those opposing it, all but a few hundred thousand watch television. That’s the difference. And this argument seems to be one that Corn has invented. I haven’t seen it in the corporate media coverage of the march. Why invent arguments for the other side?
5.-The marchers were not all from blue states. Who said they were? And the supporters of the war in Congress are not all Republicans. In fact, Corn later asks why New Yorkers didn’t stay home and challenge their Democratic senators. Well, because they came to DC to do so, by marching and then by meeting with them. In the process, they built solidarity with others and helped build the movement.
6.-Most marches don’t result in immediate total victory. There is a dangerous tendency to expect that and then grow frustrated. But many of us never thought they would. We see marches as part of an ongoing movement. In this case, the march was combined with lobbying and civil disobedience and various other meetings and strategy sessions. I’d have thought this was a step in the direction Corn favored, but instead he didn’t mention it at all.
The idea that only one march in the past 20 years has had a noticeable effect is bizarre. Most marches I’ve been part of have resulted in positive change. The marches against this war have very likely helped prevent it being more of a slaughter than it’s been. A few years back, ACORN and others organized a march on the Department of Health and Human Services, protesting their new policy of eliminating the minimum wage for workfare jobs. Within 8 hours, the White House reversed that policy. Numerous other marches at the Capitol and White House, even under Bush, have immediately resulted in improvements in horrible legislation, if only very rarely reversals of plans.
7.-I agree that we should target vulnerable senators and House members, both Republicans and Democrats. In fact, there have been discussions about this among the organizers of the recent national march. But the MeetWithTheMothers.org campaign, among other groups, was doing this in the weeks leading up to the march, and it did some good, but no one noticed. No one even bothered to write dismissive articles about it. It did not, I expect, do as much to bring in new people as this march did. We need both types of actions if we are going to have an effective movement. For upcoming plans, watch www.afterdowningstreet.org.

September 2005, Volume 13 Nr. 10, Issue 178
What Noble Cause? Vietnam Combat Veteran
Not Welcome at Vietnam War Memorial
Jozef Hand-Boniakowski
I joined seven Vermont bus loads of concerned United States citizens in converging on the nation’s capital, Washington D.C. on Saturday, September 24, 2005. We endured twenty-two hours on a bus which afforded little opportunity for sleep and twelve hours on our feet in solidarity with the multitude protesting George W. Bush’s illegal war on Iraq. It was a tiring day, made so in large part by standing in place for two-and-a-half hours at the corner of Constitution Avenue and K Streets as the feeder marches converged on the rally site nearby. Wave after wave of people streamed by as we awaited our turn to step off into the march. We were standing at the corner where Camp Casey was established and the Veterans For Peace were gathering. More than one-quarter-million people had come to Mordor to say, “Stop the war! We’ve had enough”. I joined hundreds and hundreds of Veterans For Peace (VFP), Military Families Speak Out, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and the Gold Star Mothers for Peace in being the lead contingent of the march. We marched three-and-a-half miles through the streets of D.C. passing the institutions and their immense buildings that make war profitable. We passed in front of the White House where we expressed the people’s growing displeasure with this regime. In no uncertain terms we let the occupant of the People’s House know that impeachment is in the wind.
One of my veteran brothers from Vermont, a Vietnam combat veteran burdened with PTSD and unable to stay in one place for very long headed off to pay his respects at the Vietnam War Memorial. Upon arriving at the Vietnam Memorial he held his VFP flag with both hands and gazed at the black granite wall. Tears filled his eyes as he looked at the myriad of names while holding the dove-on-helmet VFP flag in his hands. No sooner had the tears flowed then he was ordered to put the flag down. Not being easily intimidated this former G.I. questioned the D.C. authority on the rationale for having to remove his flag. He was then told he had to leave or be arrested. This Vietnam combat veteran who was sent to kill others in Vietnam under the pretense of protecting the American way of life was now being threatened with incarceration for practicing it!
The U.S. system inculcates obedience to the State. It indoctrinates children from a very early age in the schools to parrot the Pledge of Allegiance. The words of the National Anthem sung at sporting events state that we are “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” However, the free are not those confined to paying their respects to fallen comrades within the narrow parameters as defined by the State. Telling my Vietnam combat veteran friend how he can mourn is not living in the land of the free. His resistance, however, is testament to our still being in the home of brave.
The Noble Cause of the People
George W. Bush says that one’s service to one’s country is a “noble cause”, with the sacrifice of one’s life being the highest offering. But why is one’s service to one’s country not noble enough to merit being able to pay homage to the war dead in one’s own chosen way? Why is dying in Bush’s war, the so-called noble cause, not worthy of visibility as the dead return home under secrecy and the cover of darkness? Why are the dead of Bush’s “noble cause” hidden from view the way that the executioner’s face is always well hidden? Bush’s “noble cause” perversely requires that the United States and Iraqi dead and maimed be hidden from public view. Why do the United States people allow this administration to callously use the dead for their own political purposes? How many names will there be on the yet-to-be-built Iraq war memorial? How many names on the Afghanistan war memorial? The future Iran war memorial? The future Syria war memorial? The next and ad-infinitum war memorial? Can the United States of America exist without waging some war, some place in the world, all of the time? Has perpetual war become a defining parameter of the United States? Is war a necessary component for neo-liberalism’s survival? Someday, the peoples of the world will put up a memorial to the fallen victims of United States imperialism. How many acres and acres of marble walls would that take? How many tens-of-millions of names would there be on this wall? How many native American names? How many African American names? How many Southeast Asian names? How many Central and South American names? How many names from Hiroshima, Nagasaki, My Lai, Fallujah, etc.?
Wrong Person Arrested
Cindy Sheehan, the Gold Star Mother for Peace, along with her sister and 370 others were arrested at the White House on Monday, September 26, 2005. After being refused a meeting with George W. Bush, Cindy Sheehan and others sat in front of the White House refusing to move until George W. Bush came out to met with them. George wasn’t coming out. They were arrested. Cindy wrote of her arrest on her website, www.afterdowningstreet.org,
We all know by now why George won’t meet with parents of the soldiers he has killed who disagree with him. First of all, he hates it when people disagree with him. I am not so sure he hates it as much as he is in denial that it even happens….he is a coward who arrogantly refuses to meet with the people who pay his salary… [The] reason why he won’t talk to us is that he knows there is no Noble Cause for the invasion and continued occupation of Iraq. It is a question that has no true answer.
Cindy Sheehan gets arrested for as she puts it, the “tragic and needless deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis and Americans (both in Iraq and here in America) who would be alive if it weren’t for the criminals who reside in and work in the White House”. A Vietnam War veteran gets threatened with arrest for crying at the Vietnam Wall with a Veterans For Peace flag in his hands. Shame on you George. You have brought the United States of America to a new low. Your noble cause is not the noble cause of the people, which is to end the war and have you removed from office.
A Crawford, Colorado man as he was being arrested at the White House said it was “an honor to be arrested with this group of people.” The crowd chanted, “Arrest Bush”. Yes, indeed, do arrest Bush. The tears of my Vietnam combat veteran friend and comrade, the arrest of Cindy Sheehan, and the collective exhaustion of the 300,000 plus gathered in Washington D.C. on September 24, 2005 will not be for naught. The time is approaching when their noble cause will be realized as the thugs and criminals in the White House are removed. The world’s second super-power, the People, are in the process of making certain this happens shortly. Impeach George W. Bush.
© 2005 Jozef Hand-Boniakowski

Polling

This campaign was launched on September 30, 2005. Our purpose is to collect donations and use them to pay mainstream respected pollsters to include in their public opinion surveys questions about impeaching President Bush and related matters. Does the public favor an investigation into grounds for impeachment? Does a majority of the public want impeachment right away? What are the most popular reasons for wanting Bush impeached? What does the public think about various other proposals to hold accountable the architects of this war?

We have no way of knowing, because the pollsters aren’t asking. One pollster did ask about impeachment in June. This Zogby Poll from June 30, 2005, found that a remarkable 42 percent of Americans favored impeachment if Bush lied about the reasons for the war. Various polls have found that a majority of Americans believe that Bush did so lie. That 42 percent is significantly higher than the percentage of the public that wanted Clinton impeached. Dan Froomkin of WashingtonPost.com reported on this in a July 6, 2005, article, and again in this Sept. 21, 2005, article. Bob Fertik, President of Democrats.com, has blogged about this here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here. RAW STORY has covered it.

Polling companies are unwilling to pursue the issue unless either (1) there is action on it in Congress, or (2) someone pays them to ask a question they wouldn’t otherwise ask. That’s where you come in. Donate by clicking the button below. Your money will be used to produce poll results on impeachment and related questions. The amount of money raised, how it is spent, and the poll results will be posted here.

We’ve named the fund you’re giving to “Marginalized Majority Polling” because too often in this country majority concerns and positions are left out of polls and treated in news stories as radical and marginal. Too often people hold majority opinions and believe falsely that they are part of a small minority. We want to change that situation, as regards the issue of impeachment and the alleged crimes of the Bush administration.

This campaign was born out of the concerns of After Downing Street, Democrats.com, and of Luke Ryland, an Australian based blogger who tracks U.S. politics. It was picked up and carried to the next level by an internet activist, donna.never.surrender of Aggressive Progressives, who requested AfterDowningStreet’s assistance to help assure success.

Please give any amount of money that you can: $5, $10, $50, $100, $1,000. Every penny, except the small fees taken out by PayPal, will be used to poll the public on impeachment and related questions.

Please tell us exactly what questions you would like to see asked. We will take into consideration all of your recommendations.

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Keeping Pressure on Congress
We need to build on the momentum of the the recent demonstrations by having each member of Congress hear personally from you, their direct constituents, to demand that Congress pass legislation to end the war now, refuse any additional funding for the war, prohibit the establishment of permanent military bases in Iraq, and investigate the claims of the Bush administration that were used to justify the war.  

Go to:
http://www.millionphonemarch.com

Go to Original

    Camp Casey Memorial Stolen

    By Deborah Mathews

    Lone Star Iconoclast

    Thursday 15 September 2005

Crawford – The Camp Casey Memorial on Prairie Chapel Road was removed by thieves earlier today. Not a single item is left at the memorial site.

    Crew members working for McLennan County said they witnessed items being removed by an unidentified individual and contacted their office to inform commissioners.

    Upon arrival at Camp Casey, honor guard members who had been at the Crawford Peace House immediately called McLennan County Sheriff’s Deputy R. Polansky to report the theft.

    Among the items stolen were numerous crosses, Casey Sheehan’s boots, tents, and other items.

    The 26-day vigil of Cindy Sheehan outside the Bush ranch ended with a cross-country tour to spread the anti-war message. Camp Casey became a semi-permanent memorial, to remain until the Veterans For Peace organization could establish a solemn removal ceremony.

    Items that remained at the Camp Casey Memorial following Sheehan’s departure were the three original tents under a pavilion, crosses of the war dead, signs, and personal items of the individuals involved. Members of the guard filed a report with the McLennan County Sheriff Office.

    The three honor guard volunteers diligently listed, item by item, the belongings that were stolen from the site. Tents, pillows, signs, books, a box of literature, sleeping bags, an air mattress, flowers, plants, tarps, memorial crosses – even Casey Sheehan’s boots that stood in front of the small wooden cross bearing his name. Virtually every item that was at Camp Casey is gone.

    Veterans For Peace member and honor guard volunteer Paul R. McDaniel said, “My role here was as caretaker. Now it’s gone.”

    Honor guard volunteer Linda Foley cried as she said, “Casey’s boots are gone! His boots are gone. You tell me that we’re not being respectful. Those crosses are probably in a trash can somewhere right now! His boots are gone. What kind of people would do that.”

    Honor guard member Sarah Oliver said, “His boots were one of the last things that Cindy had of Casey. I can’t believe that anyone would take something like that.”

    McLennan County Commissioners road workers were in the area to post the “No Parking” signs that had been approved by the Commissioners’ Court. Those signs were on a 26-mile stretch of several roads. According to a representative of the County Commissioners’ office, the act of removing items from the ditch had nothing to do with the Commissioners and that this was done by a “private individual.”

    Organizers of Camp Casey Memorial had been in contact with neighbors of the site and had informed them that the memorial was temporary and would be removed when a removal ceremony could be organized.

    McDaniels said, “We have tried to be as accommodating, peaceful, and graceful as we can. We wanted them to be aware of what was going on. We also took very good care of the area with the mowing and cleaning. We wanted to erect a permanent site at the Peace House, as soon as its garden was worked on. We were going to call it the Casey Sheehan Memorial Garden.”

    Following the tedious report given to the officer, honor guard members began to disassemble the poles of the pavilions tent that stood over the tent of Cindy Sheehan-the single item left at the site. One could walk through the area where the tents and crosses stood and see nothing. There was no evidence that Camp Casey had even existed.

    Loading the tent poles in the back of a pickup, the three guardsmen said that they would return to the Crawford Peace House, finish a few chores there, and pack up to go home. “Someone will be there part-time to take care of the information flow,” said McDaniels.

    Veterans For Peace members will continue their support of Cindy Sheehan and her efforts against the war in Iraq. There are actions planned on Sept. 24, the day that Sheehan will arrive in Washington for a protest there. Other demonstrations are planned by the group in Waco.

    The three members of the Camp Casey Honor Guard stood in a circle at the site of Casey Sheehan’s cross, held hands, and wept as McDaniels offered a prayer of peace, got into their vehicles, and left Camp Casey.

You Can’t Steal the Camp Casey Movement

    By Scott Galindez

    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Friday 16 September 2005

There was a song written about Camp Casey by a minister from Dallas, called “Prairie Chapel Road.” Eric Folkerth was his name, and one of his verses goes like this: “You can mow down the crosses but you can’t mow down our hope because the truth will always see the light of the day.”

    Larry Northern thought he would kill Camp Casey’s spirit when he mowed down the crosses with his pickup truck. Well, he was mistaken. The Spirit of Camp Casey was too strong, and the movement that was launched there cannot be stolen by another inconciderate individual who stole the memorial that remained there until yesterday.

    The person who stole the memorial took the crosses with the names of soldiers who died in Iraq, Casey Sheehan’s boots, photos of fallen soldiers, and the first tents set up at Camp Casey. All that physically remains on that plot of earth is the frame of the canopy that covered the tents and some of the crosses.

    What also remains there is the spirit of the movement launched by Cindy Sheehan and thousands of people who joined her on that land in Crawford during the month of August. That spirit has already spread around the world and cannot be crushed by a thief or a vandal.

    Hundreds of thousands of people will be converging in Washington DC on September 24th. They will be bringing the spirit of Camp Casey with them.

    Cindy will be there; former Diplomat Ann Wright, who spent the whole month at Camp Casey, will be there; Jeff Key, a marine who walked across the road and invited the counter-protesters to join Camp Casey in a candlelight vigil, will be there; Beatrice Saldovar, who regularly brought everyone to tears talking about her nephew who will never meet the baby his grieving wife is carrying, will be there; dozens of Iraq War Vets who inspired everyone at Camp Casey while sharing their experiences will be there; hundreds of family members of soldiers who died in Iraq, are there now or will be deployed to Iraq, who shared their pain at Camp Casey, will be there; thousands of people who took time out of their life to take a stand with Cindy in the sweltering heat of Crawford, Texas, will be in Washington.

    The Spirit that is in their hearts that they are spreading around the world can’t be loaded into the back of that pickup truck. Please don’t even think of wearing those boots – Casey’s boots are way too big for someone like you.

—————-

    Scott Galindez is the Managing Editor of truthout.org