Tag: VVAW

Back on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 I posted this VVAW Anniversary-Dec 26th 1971-Statue of Liberty, Liberation on my first blog, still in my infancy of blog posting but I had gotten better, like embedding links etc.. This action took place only months after I returned from Vietnam, my last year of my four, and getting discharged back into civilian life. I wasn’t with these brothers but I had already started down the path of activism against Wars of Choice and those that create them for profit and power. That post is below slightly refined and updated, had to find a link and embedded a document pdf player.

Over the past couple of months I have also moved my **IN HONOR TO THE FALLEN in Iraq and Afghanistan** posts from that original site to a stand alone site, this is a page listing each post on that site.

We had already started the planning and reserving the venue for the ‘teach in’, Saturday, and March of Wreaths on Sunday only weeks  before, not knowing the ‘shock and awe’ would start only a couple of days prior to.

‘Capture the Flag: A Political History of American Patriotism’

The flag is not powerful in spite of its ambiguity; it is powerful because of its ambiguity. It has stood, at different times, for radical democracy, opposition to immigration, the abolition of slavery, unregulated capitalism, segregation, integration, and a hawkish war policy, among many other things.

Back on December 26th 2006 I put together a post, for my site and a few others, in remembrance of an anniversary of a day my fellow Vietnam Veterans made a statement to our country, a statement of a Country in  Distress, Our Country!

A shoutout about not only our War of Choice but what our society was going through, Civil Rights Movement, care of the returning Vets, civil disobedience for the many failed policies, and more, the statement wasn’t really taken seriously except by the minority, as is usually the case, the country itself just dug deeper into it’s apathy and never came to terms with our War and Occupation and still hasn’t!

December 26, 1971

Two dozen members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War “liberated” the Statue of Liberty with a sit-in to protest resumed U.S. aerial bombings in Vietnam. They flew an inverted U.S. flag from the crown as a signal of distress.

On Sunday, 3-9-08, a fundraiser was held at the First Congregational Church of Long Beach for Iraq veterans eager to talk about the war they saw; a war rife with death, anger, courage and lies. The fundraisers intent was to help defray the costs needed to send the same vets to speak in Washington D.C. at Winter Soldier II, to be held from Thursday March 13 to Sunday March 16, prior to that  The District Weekly of Long Beach asked several of them to tell them their stories.

Below you will find some snips about each and what they had to say, with the link above taking you to the rest.

Greyhawk had this posted at ePluribus about the Military breaking ranks with the White House on the propaganda about the Successful Surge with only this one snippet

“Don’t let the quiet fool you,” a senior defense official says. “There’s still a huge chasm between how the White House views Iraq and how we [in the Pentagon] view Iraq. The White House would like to have you believe the ‘surge’ has worked, that we somehow defeated the insurgency. That’s just ludicrous. There’s increasing quiet in Iraq, but that’s happened because of our shift in strategy – the ‘surge’ had nothing to do with it.”

And just a few sentences, so I followed the link. Here’s abit more to hopefully get you to drop over to the Asia Times online and read the rest.