U.S. Army Tweet Backfires On Memorial Day

For Memorial Day I visited the family cemetery and removed the flags placed on my father's and brother's graves at the behest of the VFA (Veterans of Foreign Wars) in Skowhegan. I've asked them to stop doing this, but the cemetery manager says he has to do what the VFA says.

My brother never enlisted, but he bears a similar name to a Civil War vet ancestor of ours who died by his own hand. My father, who was in the Army in Korea post-combat, passed on what his WWI vet father taught him: "Don't believe them when they say the next war is a good one. There is no such thing." (My father enlisted after his father died of his war injuries, before I was born.) My little granddaughter wanted the flag because she loves the stars and stripes design.

It is marketing like this that keeps the Pentagon death cult churning out wars and victims.

But marketing can only take you so far into denying reality. Two of my favorite thinkers blogged about a now infamously ill-advised tweet by the U.S. Army last week, "How has serving impacted you?" The number of responses was only at 5,300+ when Bruce Gagnon, himself an Air Force veteran, weighed in with "Army: It's not a job, it's an adventure..."

• “My daughter was raped while in the army,” said one responder. “They took her to the hospital where an all male staff tried to convince her to give the guy a break because it would ruin his life. She persisted. Wouldn’t back down. Did a tour in Iraq. Now suffers from PTSD.”

• “I’ve had the same nightmare almost every night for the past 15 years,” said another.

• “Someone I loved joined right out of high school even though I begged him not to. Few months after his deployment ended, we reconnected. One night, he told me he loved me and then shot himself in the head. If you’re gonna prey on kids for imperialism, at least treat their PTSD.”

By now various authors have compiled some of the 10,ooo responses. Caitlin Johnstone all the way down in Australia posted "The US Army Asked Twitter How Service Has Impacted People. The Answers Were Gut Wrenching."

“My dad was drafted into war and was exposed to agent orange. I was born w multiple physical/neurological disabilities that are linked back to that chemical. And my dad became an alcoholic with ptsd and a side of bipolar disorder.” 

~ 

“i met this guy named christian who served in iraq. he was cool, had his own place with a pole in the living room. always had lit parties. my best friend at the time started dating him so we spent a weekend at his crib. after a party, 6am, he took out his laptop. he started showing us some pics of his time in the army. pics with a bunch of dudes. smiling, laughing. it was cool. i was drunk and didn’t care. he started showing us pics of some little kids. after a while, his eyes went completely fucking dark. i was like man, dude’s high af. he very calmly explained to us that all of those kids were dead ‘but that’s what war was. dead kids and nothing to show for it but a military discount’. christian killed himself 2 months later.”

George Marlowe writing for World Socialist Web Site, "Memorial Day 2019: US Army tweet prompts outpouring of antiwar sentiment," pointed out what I've been thinking since I saw the original thread on Twitter: "This outpouring of rage on Twitter highlights the latent but deep going antiwar sentiment in the American population[emphasis mine] that finds no expression in the current political system or the corporate media. "  

How can we antiwar activists do a better job of leveraging this?

I would love to hear your thoughts in comments.

Veterans Responsible For Recent Gun Massacres #ThousandOaks #TallahasseeShooting

Facebook photo posted by Scott Paul Beirle, the yoga class killer.

We already know that the face of mass violence in the gun-infested USA looks male and very, very white. This week, it's looking increasingly like a white male veteran of the empire's many wars.

Scott Paul Beierle, age 40, shot and killed two women and injured several other people at a yoga class in Tallahassee on November 2. Five months ago he was fired from his job as a substitute teacher on the grounds of "unprofessional conduct." Students complained that he would fixate on girl students and stare them down, describing him as giving off a "psychopath vibe." He had been arrested more than once for assault, and investigated for harassing women. He was resentful about being rejected by women, a self-styled "incel" who couldn't get a date. He made videos that included racist rants and praise for another gunman who killed women who wouldn't go out with him. After he shot up the yoga studio, he turned his weapon on himself.

In almost any other rich nation, Beierle would not have been allowed to own the gun he used to murder his victims before turning the weapon on himself.

Scott Bierle was a veteran. Little is known about his time in the Army during 2008-10. He joins the ranks of the 20 veterans who commit suicide each day in the USA.

Ian David Long was the 28 year old veteran who shot up a country music nightclub in Thousand Oaks, California on November 8. He killed 13 people -- if you include his own suicide --and wounded many others.

According to ABC News article, "Thousand Oaks shooter was part of 'new generation of veterans' psychologist says":

The U.S. Marine Corps confirmed Long served from 2008 to 2013, and was deployed to Afghanistan from November 16, 2010, to June 14, 2011...

"There's no front line. These wars have been fought primarily through improvised explosive devices," clinical psychologist Dr. Elena Klaw told ABC7 News. "So that means that every man, woman or child that you see could be an enemy."

Dr. Klaw is also the director of Veterans Embracing Transition at San Jose State University. She explained the combat experienced in the Iraq or Afghanistan wars could impact a veteran's transition to civilian life. 

"You can't tell who's an enemy, and who's a combatant and who isn't," she continued. "So that required an enormous amount of what we call hyper vigilance." 

"Veterans have told me that the hardest part of their service has been coming home," Klaw said.  

Long's neighbors told the media they suspect he suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.

Another mental health care provider did not agree. From CNN's story about the tragedy:

Thomas Burke, a pastor who served with Long in the same US Marine Corps regiment, said Long's battalion arrived during intense fighting in Helmand province.But Burke warned against too quickly blaming Long's actions on trauma experienced during war. 

"PTSD doesn't create homicidal ideation," Burke said. "We train a generation to be as violent as possible, then we expect them to come home and be OK. It's not mental illness. It's that we're doing something to a generation, and we're not responding to the needs they have."

A meme that's making the rounds: in the last 50 years, more people in the U.S. have died from gunshot wounds than ALL the people in the U.S. who died in all our wars.

Another angle on this story: the migrant waves from Central America and Mexico are made up of desperate people fleeing both poverty and epidemic gun violence. TeleSUR news reports that 2,000 guns made in the U.S. enter Mexico EVERY DAY.

Our endless (largely ignored) wars against people all over the planet, our fatally lax gun control, and our culture of  "entertainment" like video games where children are trained to kill for wins, have converged to create a perfect storm of violence.

From the VA:

From 2005 to 2016, Veteran and non-Veteran adult suicide rates increased 25.9 percent and 20.6 percent, respectively...

Veterans who are in crisis or having thoughts of suicide – and those who know a Veteran in crisis – can call the Veterans Crisis Line for confidential support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. Call 800-273-8255 and press 1, chat online at VeteransCrisisLine.net/Chat, or text to 838255.

Happy veterans day.

Close Ramstein Air Base In Germany, Or Just End Its Role As Drone Command Central?

A corporate fast food outlet at Ramstein Air Base was destroyed by fire
after an employee used a blowtorch to burn weeds.
(It is hard to write satire in an age brimming with this much irony.) Stars and Stripes

There's a difference of opinion among antiwar activists who focus on enormous Ramstein Air Base, located on the soil of another defeated enemy of the U.S. from WWII.

June, 2016 "Thousands of Germans surround Ramstein Air Base to protest the US's use of drones"
by Carolyn Copley, Business Insider  

Some, like the estimated 5,000 protesters above, want the base to stop serving as command central for the flying killer robots know as drones. Germans claim this use of their soil violates their post-WWII constitution. A full investigative article revealing this appeared in mainstream publication Der Spiegel in 2015.

The organization "Stop Ramstein -- No Drone War" will hold a weekend of action August 12-13 this year. From their website:

The US military base Ramstein is a central hub for the preparation and implementation of international attacks. The deadly operations of American combat drones, including in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria, are carried out through the satellite relay station at the US Air Base Ramstein resulting in tens of thousands of victims, the majority of whom were uninvolved civilians.

Other activists would like to close the base altogether as part of a campaign to close the estimated 800-1,000 military bases the U.S. maintains abroad. Details on that campaign may be found here.

As the Pentagon has moved ever more in the direction of contracting with corporations like Burger King to feed soldiers and airmen, the cost to taxpayers of maintaining these outposts of capitalist imperialism has likewise grown. That is, taxpayers in Germany, Japan and Korea.

Gone are the days when Beetle Bailey peeled potatoes on K.P. (kitchen patrol), a staple of my childhood funny papers. Now Beetle would be a joystick warrior killing remotely viewed people he would refer to as "bug splats" after murdering them; now Beetle would have PTSD from doing this kind of military "service" for my government.

And a German employee of a U.S. corporation can accidentally sets a fast food franchise outlet on fire while using a blow torch to burn unsightly weeds.

Not to worry. Burger King has announced it will rebuild.

"Nabila Rehman, 9, holds up a picture she drew depicting the US drone strike on her Pakistan village
which killed her grandmother. Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters" Guardian 2013

Anti-drone activists have long objected to the use of remote controlled technology to murder innocent victims. Organizer Elsa Rassbach told me recently that they believe banning drone operations from Ramstein AB is within the realm of possibility. Closing the base is probably not.

I have a lot of respect for Elsa's work (and, she may be correct) but I am going to cling to my idealistic notion that ALL U.S. military outposts around the planet can and should be closed, permanently -- for the environment, for the local community, and certainly not least for the victims.

Glorifying Drones And Recruiting New Operators Propaganda Effort Has Many Helpers

One of thousands of squares commemorating war victims in the Drone Quilt Project.
Art by Leeza Vinogradov

I'll admit here that I gave up on National "Public" Radio some years ago, around the time they began running promos for their agribusiness and other corporate sponsors. NPR's coverage of the Iraq war was so carefully tailored to show the view through approved windows that I began to lose respect for their journalistic integrity. More like the New York Times and The New Yorker magazine, really, puffing Obama while panning Republicans, signalling their fealty to the other corporate war party.

This week I invited others concerned about the rampant killing of civilians by flying killer robots to contact NPR objecting to their recent interview with drone contractor and author Brett Velicovich. 

Self-billed as a drone warrior, Velicovich continues to profit from using flying killer robots to attack others who couldn't possibly fight back as the "warrior" attacking them is remote and often thousands of miles away. Such courage! Such valor! (Such bullshit.)

The propaganda in favor of weaponized drones is pervasive and well funded. Veterans for Peace past president Leah Bolger posted this item to a no-drones listserv I'm on:

The Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum is having a huge 8 month exhibit on drones.  They asked to display the Drones Quilt Project and I had reserved 6 quilts for them, but at the last minute they said they didn't have any room.  I talked to the curator -- Nick Mottern talked to him, Chris Antal talked to him -- but they wouldn't change their minds.  They said they were just exhibiting the history of drones (all kinds) and that they only had a couple of pictures of Predators, and that they didn't glorify them.  But then I noticed that they had scheduled this: 

BOOK LAUNCH Drone Warrior: An Elite Soldier's Inside Account of the Hunt for America's Most Dangerous Enemies By Brett Velicovich and Christopher S. Stewart 

Tuesday, June 27 (during Members Night) Lutnick Theater, $10 general admission; Free for members 

For nearly a decade, Brett Velicovich used drones to take down the world’s deadliest terrorists. He shared his harrowing experiences with Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Christopher S. Stewart. Hear them discuss their captivating book.

The Drones Quilt Project expanded on their coverage of this propaganda effort in a post noting that the museum with no room to display an art project based on civilian victims of U.S. militarized drones did manage to find space for Lady Gaga's drone dress.

Lady Gaga flies onstage via drones

Would you be surprised to know that the New York Times review of the museum exhibit mentioned the victims of drones exactly once, in the headline? "Drones Kill, Yes, But They Also Rescue, Research, and Entertain" was their sanitizing contribution to the practically non-existent national debate on the ethics of endless warfare via remote control bombing by robots.

Data compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism

Currently, the corporate media would have us very, very scared that the demogogue with bad hair has his finger on the red button of nuclear destruction. News outlets like the NYT thought it was great when Obama ramped up the budget for nuclear weapon research and development, just as they thought it was great when he became the president with ten times more drone blood on his hands than his predecessor.

A tiny bit of corporate media attention is given to the PTSD that drone operators -- presumably operators less tough than warrior Velicovich -- suffer from after viewing the "bug splat" of civilians who died when they pushed their buttons.

This is how the manufactured consent for endless wars at taxpayer expense is maintained: by controlling the information available to the public.

Here's the museum's self-description to provide the flavor of this sort of propaganda effort:

New York City’s Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum Complex is an educational and cultural non-profit institution centered on the aircraft carrier Intrepid. The mission of the Museum is to promote the awareness and understanding of history, science and service through its collections, exhibitions and programming in order to honor our heroes, educate the public and inspire our youth. [emphasis mine] Join us for a dynamic, interactive and educational journey for all ages.

"Inspire our youth" is code for military recruiting. Or maybe it's code for recruiting youth in poverty, and inspiring youth in the upper classes to pursue higher education with an eye to contributing to the high tech killing. If successful, they could write a book and go on tour to display their courage.

Recruiting in Chicago got a big boost last week when Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama's former chief of staff, announced that no one would get their high school diploma until they were either signed up for a school or other program, employed -- or joined the military.

This strikes me as grounds for a whopping law suit and I expect the kickass Chicago Teachers Union will be one of those bringing legal action on behalf of the students. 

Managing information is one thing, but losing a relative to PTSD or suicide is another. The most fascinating actual news of the week was this article in Mondoweiss reporting on a study that linked combat deaths of U.S. military personnel to swing states that voted for the demagogue with bad hair in the last election. Because that candidate falsely represented himself as a non-interventionist, researchers Douglas Kriner and Francis Shen examined voting patterns and published "Battlefield Casualties and Ballot Box Defeat: Did the Bush-Obama Wars Cost Clinton the White House?"

In other words, running as a pro-war candidate may have alienated voters poor enough to actually know someone who came home in a box.

Now that the U.S. has robots to do some of the killing, the percentage of active duty military is extremely small, like 1% of the population. This helps corporate media and other propaganda organs to hype war as glorious. 

Source: PTSDInsight "The Veteran Suicide Crisis"

Tell that to the kids in my family whose veteran dad recently killed himself with a gun in their bathroom after suffering for years from combat-induced PTSD.

Military Suicide Epidemic: 16 Veterans, Every Day

This morning I am looking at a disturbing effort by military wives to write words on their bare skin and then share photographs of themselves in order to remove the stigma of seeking help for PTSD. I saw it on a creepy website called iVillage that has a lot of Michelle Obama in your face -- as in, you cannot get her pop-up ad to stop obscuring the bottom of the page you are trying to view.

Another example of the creepiness: if you click on the photo of the bare backed woman hoping to see more ("Related Photos") it insists on taking you to a photo essay called "Hottest Military Dads." :-p

But Battling Bare is attempting to address a real problem that affects us all, not just veterans, and not just veterans' loved ones. Their facebook page led me to this poster, which I shared:

Also to Rachel Maddow's story on a Veterans Administration building in danger of collapsing from the weight of a backlog of 37,000 file folders pertaining to unprocessed claims by about a million veterans. Claims that have been waiting for months or even years to be addressed.

I very seldom share, or even view, programs that contain ads for corporate sponsors (and these on MSNBC are truly odious -- Bank of America's credit card, BP on how great the Gulf is now) but I will make an exception in this case because the story is so important:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Remember, a soldier who dies by suicide is a soldier whose family will no longer be receiving payments from the Pentagon. Unless the family sues alleging that the government failed to respond to legitimate claims for care that was never received. Good luck with that.

A woman stopped Sunday at our ongoing vigil on the bridge in Skowhegan, Maine. Her partner had hollered out the window as he drove by, wanting to know who were we: independent? I nodded yes and his face brightened. Not for Obama? Nope. Romney either? No again.

The woman told us she was newly a grandmother. Her two week-old grandson's daddy had been deployed four times to Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Army had plans to send him back for the 5th deployment. "He doesn't want to go," she told me. "He used to be enthusiastic and he loved his country. But he doesn't believe in these wars anymore."

I'll end with an excellent Democracy Now! segment on the epidemic of soldier suicides -- more die by their own hand than are killed in combat, and that is the way of death for 16 veterans PER DAY. From suicide prevention educator Kevin Hines: "...sometimes you go to a base that has one psychiatrist per 5,000 to 10,000 servicemen and women."