The war on women is real and it is being waged on many fronts.
The Invisible War is a documentary exposing the systemic coverup of the rape of U.S. military women by U.S. service members.
There is something very, very wrong with our military. I suspect it is related to being “all volunteer” when it is actually a military maintained by an economic draft that feeds off of the ever increasingly institutionalized socio-economic inequality in the United States.
We have never been a society of equals. We have always had an underclass that has not been allowed to have self-determination, be allowed to vote, have equal access to resources, and so on. Slaves, original peoples, women, immigrants, and so on have made up the underclasses. Only landed men originally had a say in the colonies. It has been less than 100 years that women have had the vote. Our country changes. How? Either by allowing change to happen or by attempting to influence the change that happens.
I suggest you watch this trailer:
What kind of a society allows and, by refusing to address it, sanctions rape? We create society. We can change it. Your tax dollars support this. Please do not ignore this atrocity. There is a Facebook Group, check that out to find out more.
And you definitely NEED to sign on to the call for action and investigation by House Member Congressman Michael Turner.
To find out a little bit more you might watch Retired Colonel Ann Wright’s talk from a couple years ago about how individuals totalling one-third of women in the military are raped and about some of the culture of abuse within the military. She is someone whom I have met many times and for whom I have very much respect. She never makes a situation seem less complex than it is, but neither does she give up on attempting to change what she knows of that is not right. Her book, Dissent: Voices of Conscience, is a damn good, but disturbing read if you don’t know the back stories of what really goes on in the ruling of our nation. Her talk does cover some of the things you can do to get involved in ending this horrific practice, but please do also click the sign on link above for Turner’s call for immediate action.. You cannot do too much.
Note: Updated 26 June 2012 with the Congressman Turner info! And for those of you in Tucson, Director KIRBY DICK will participate in The Loft’s post-film Q&A’s at the 7:00 p.m. shows on Friday, July 20th and Saturday, July 21st!
Media Excises Deep and Murky Context in Pan Am Bomber Story.
Today’s ‘featured” news story is on the release of a man from Libya by the Scottish Government from a prison where he was sentenced to serve a life sentence. The man has cancer and is expected to die within 3 months. We know he was convicted for blowing up a transcontinental flight.
My problem with how the media is covering this is that story is being presented without context.
We/the U.S./Reagan blew up some boats off the coast of Libya. They retaliated and blew up a night club, La Belle Disco, killing two U.S. service men and a civilian and wounded many dozens of people. We attempted to assassinate Mumamar Qadaffi in a strike on Qadaffi’s home that did not kill him but did kill his infant daughter. Several Libyans then were then involved in the bombing of the flight that was exploded over Lockerbee, Scotland.
Read a recount of this tit for tat escalation that helped no one but killed hundreds. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1653848.stm
Reagan chose to engage in Israeli style “diplomacy” — i.e. assassination of a a country’s leader. The U.S. and most western govenments have chosen not to engage in assassination of leaders as it elevates the person in power to a symbolic level akin to that of a regal status where the person and the government or country are all the same.
If memory serves me, this was also the time the French did not allow overflight and an “errant” bomb fell on the lawn of the French embassy in Libya. This instance of neener, neener, neener with bombs illustrated a level of in your face immaturity that is intensely troubling and frightening beyond words.
This is akin to the problem implicit within the use of drones. It personalizes war to the level of assassination. To have to have no contact with the people you kill was a trajectory started with the use of aerial bombings. But this trend has expanded to the point that no support staff at all has to walk among the people who will be bombed. This is supremely arrogant. Our technological capability has evolved to a level where we cannot justify its use and maintain any sense of humanity. We must do things entirely differently.
My suggestion, train and disperse an educational militia primarily composed of women into areas of conflict and work with the women of the area to solve base level problems that percolate up through society to create international conflict. Raging Grannies and CodePink Women and Women in Black would be a good population from which to initially draw for the corps.
Women, wake up, we have to change all this.
Peace.
Visualization of the Scale of Death in Iraq
I happened to look up this morning as I was glancing over the smarmy chosen few purportedly “news” stories being touted by the corporate media and saw this accidental imagery on my husband’s computer screen. I asked him to do a screen capture and send it to me. It doesn’t show either composite picture in its entirety but it gives a chilling visualization of how far we’ve come — in the wrong direction — since the first portrait of bUsh (emphasis on U because you haven’t acted) created from the faces of our dead due to their handling and exploitation as corporate mercenaries circulated on the internet. Look how far we’ve come. All the way from one psycho bUsh to psycho wannabe Insane McCain. Yes, I’m pissed, outraged , grieving, and murderously agitated that we’ve reached tombstone (definitely not a milestone as milestones are supposed to mark achievements) publicly acknowledged number of 4000 U.S. military dead. And unfortunately this number doesn’t come anywhere close to showing the HORRIFIC numbers actually associated with this immolation of a people.
I’m going to go throw up.
Shame in Tucson
Louis Vitale, 75, a Franciscan priest, and Steve Kelly, 58, a Jesuit priest, were each sentenced on Wednesday, October 17th to five months in federal prison. Their crime? Attempting to deliver a letter opposing the teaching of torture at Fort Huachuca in Arizona. The priests are now in prison.
Common Dreams describes the offense thusly:
The priests were arrested while kneeling in prayer halfway up the driveway to Fort Huachuca in November 2006. Both priests were charged with trespass on a military base and resisting orders of an officer to stop.
In a pre-trial heating, the priests attempted to introduce evidence of torture, murder, and gross violations of human rights in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and at Guantanamo. The priests offered investigative reports from the FBI, the US Army, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Physicians for Social Responsibility documenting hundreds of incidents of human rights violations. Despite increasing evidence of the use of torture by U.S. forces sanctioned by President Bush and others, the federal court in Tucson refused to allow any evidence of torture, the legality of the invasion of Iraq, or international law to be a part of the trial.
Demonstrations against the teaching of torture at Fort Huachuca are scheduled for November 16 and 17 this year.
Despite the Disney-esque image that comes to mind with use of the Fort’s nickname, “Fort Sneezy,” the real nature of what goes on there is far more sinister. Fort Huachuca is Army Intelligence HQ. Oxymoronic but still dangerous.
In Friar Kelly’s words, ““We will keep trying to stop the teaching and practice of torture whether we are sent to jail or out. We have done our part for now. Now it is up to every woman and man of conscience to do their part to stop the injustice of torture.”
Every man and woman… that’s us folks. Shall we begin?