The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for April 2010

[Tony Nuspl]

Truth in Recruiting- "Don't Believe the Hype!"
The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for April 2010

Lead Story: Reality Check
U.S. Military Repeatedly Fails to Meet Recruiting Goals (But DoD Cleverly Cooks the Books and Claims
Success)
--Veterans for Commons Sense deems U.S. recruiting claims laughable
--rash of recruiter suicides reveals outlandish pressure on them to enlist unwilling
teenagers
--success of counter-recruitment efforts attributed to sobering effects of Iraq & Afghanistan imperial follies

quote:
"Let us put a stake through the heart of the media / military myth claiming the military has met recruiting goals: the military has been short at least 700,000 new recruits the
past decade, a minimum of 70,000 per year, by cooking
the books just like Ken Lay (remember Enron?)."
~Veterans for Common Sense (VCS), press release Jan 2010, in response to war
propaganda published in The Christian Science Monitor

page 1

featured radio interview: available on demand as streaming audio
You Too Can Be An Anti-Recruiter
Angela Keaton interviews Stan Hemry for antiwar radio

facts & figures:
Did you know Pat Tillman, killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, was an atheist?  The army nonetheless insisted on prayers at his
funeral. The army apparently also burned his uniform.  Gen.
McChrystal is accused of trying to cover up the circumstances of
Tilman's death/murder.

featured interview / film review:
Does Avatar Depict Modern American Wars Over Resources?
--David Swanson, war critic, compares Avatar film to U.S. invasion & occupation of
Iraq & Afghanistan
--on youtube

follow up:  What to teach our kids about invasion of Iraq?
Unanimous Vote De-Links Iraq War from Terrorism
--TPF sends a bouquet to The Oklahoma State
Board of Education which has agreed to a new standard for
teaching U.S. History and World History that will look at the causes
and consequences of the U.S.-led war in Iraq -- without describing a
linkage to terrorism.

quote:
"I'm proud of the members of our State Board. They listened intently to the comments of the public. Then, they voted unanimously to make the improvements. That's the way
government is supposed to work."
Bill Bryant, TPF Advisor, March 25th

featured op/ed
Rev. Lang: Christians must stop going to war
--missed this one when it came out for Thanksgiving, November 2009

quote:
"Ecclesiastically, the church should increase its therapeutic care for veterans even as it increases its commitment to counter-recruiting.
But on a deeper, more intimate level, the church must begin to
withdraw its support of the military through an insistence that
Christians no longer serve in the armed forces. We must insist that
it is not acceptable to offer bread and wine with one hand, while
killing for corporate profit with the other. That would be step
one."
~Rev. Rich Lang

New era for G.I. coffeehouses rooted in anti-war tradition
--“Support War Resistors” banner covering one wall attracts more customers

quote:
“I feel like I’ve definitely done some things that are pretty horrific and that I’ve got a debt to the world to work off,”
~Seth Manzel, manager at Coffee Strong

Drugged Up G.I.'s
--the government has spent $1 billion on “common pain and psychiatric medications” for shell-shocked soldiers from 2001 to
2009
--The American Conservative wonders: How far will the military go to keep PTSD victims perambulating in a warzone?

facts & figures:
Antiepileptic drugs, also known as anticonvulsants, were among the most commonly used psychiatric medications. Annual orders for these drugs increased about 70
percent, while spending more than doubled, from $16 million to $35
million
source: The Military Times

page 2

Civilians Among 17 Killed in Latest US Drone Strikes
--unmanned U.S. remote-control drone attacked an unarmed crowd of civilians rescuing victims of previous drone
--part of the Undeclared War against Pakistan,
and Obama's escalation of hostilities

sidebar: Geneva's Revenge
C.I.A. operators of U.S. Drone Strikes, in Langley, VA, may be guilty of War Crimes
--expert in international law assesses remote-controlled murder and deems it a capital
offense
--another expert says U.S. officials could be dragged in front of the Hague Court


backpage

German foreign minister pushing for disarmament in NATO
--FM seeks withdrawal of the last remaining nuclear weapons stationed in Germany

Japanese Anti-Nuke Movement Gears Up
--revelations that U.S. base was in violation of Japan's non-nuclear
constitutional law

file under: nuclear umbrella, or nuclear threat?
Japan & Australia Make Joint Diplomatic Effort to Curtail Nuclear First-Strike Policy of U.S.,
China, Britain, France and Russia
--protest by nonnuclear states at the upcoming Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty review
conference

---

The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for Jan 2010
lead story

Reality: Military Repeatedly Fails to Meet Recruiting Goals
(But DoD Cleverly Cooks the Books and Claims Success)

Written by VCS
02 Jan 2010

We progressives need to kill the myth of “successful” military recruiting dreamed up by
someone who must read military press releases and then regurgitate
them whole.

The national recruiting failure is so bad, and the pressure on recruiters so overwhelming, that Houston, Texas recently
saw a cluster of Army recruiter suicides, according to the Houston
Chronicle.

In reality, the military failed to reach new enlistment goals for the past decade.  The military accomplished
this by manipulating, and thereby significantly lowering, the number
of new recruits needed to fill the ranks.  The military
accomplished this voodoo bookkeeping by relying upon more than
500,000 individual National Guard and Reserve service members to fill
recruiting shortages. The true number is even higher because many
Guard and Reserve activated and deployed twice or more.

While Holmes claims “success” for military recruiting, the Pentagon’s
top leaders actually cheated and lied with statistics by using "stop
loss," the horrible policy that forcibly kept nearly 200,000
additional service members on active duty months after their
enlistment contract was over, thus temporarily inflating the number
of troops in the military, and reducing the number of new recruits
needed.

Furthermore, the military has spent billions of dollars on advertising and more recruiters to make the hard sell to
potential recruits to go to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. 
Billions more were spent on cash bonuses in a desperate attempt to
increase enlistment and re-enlistment.  In a time of the worst
economic collapse in 80 years, the financial incentives (cash,
healthcare, housing, college, and citizenship) are enormous for
low-income Americans as well as non-citizen residents.  The
military also raised the age limit and lowered standards to allow
more people to quality.

Therefore, let us put a stake through the heart of the media / military myth claiming the military has met
recruiting goals: the military has been short at least 700,000 new
recruits the past decade, a minimum of 70,000 per year, by cooking
the books just like Ken Lay (remember Enron?) and Bernie Madoff (and
how he stole $50 billion?).

The bottom line failure of the two current wars is that, after nine years, our government has no plan to
handle the 480,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans (out of 2.2
million deployed) who have flooded into Department of Veterans
Affairs (VA) hospitals and clinics.  Half of new VA patients
from the two wars are diagnosed with at least one mental health
condition.  The deployment of 30,000 new troops and tens of
thousands of contractors / mercenaries to Afghanistan will only
further exacerbate the problems.  The military personnel
shortage, along with poor planning for war, has forced the military
to deploy more than 800,000 troops twice or more, with many fighting
in combat for one year three or four times.

Yes, the situation is dire for our veterans.  Veterans for Common Sense expects up
to one million casualties from the two current wars, half of whom
will suffer from traumatic brain injury or post traumatic stress
disorder, by the end of 2013.  Over the next 40 years, the
estimated cost to taxpayers is up to $1 trillion. As “60 Minutes”
will report on Sunday, January 3, more than one million veterans are
now waiting for disability benefits from VA, a clear example of how
our Federal Government remains unable to meet the crushing demand for
assistance.

http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/index.php/national-security/1...

Also see related story, below: "G.I. Drugged" which explains how
the U.S. military is knowingly rotating mentally damaged / sick
soldiers into combat, to keep inflated numbers of troops in Iraq and
Afghanistan, for the prolonged occupations of those two countries

---

The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for April 2010
page 1

featured radio interview: available on demand as streaming audio
You Too Can Be An Anti-Recruiter
Angela Keaton interviews Stan Hemry for antiwar radio
March 27, 2010

Stan Hemry, member of the Arizona Counter-Recruitment Coalition, discusses the private information made available to military recruiters through the No
Child Left Behind Act, the best way to limit access to student
records and opt-out
of aggressive recruitment, the effective tactics of
counter-recruitment and the role Gen. Stanley McChrystal played in
the manipulation of Pat Tillman’s image and the coverup of his
death.

MP3 here. (27:33)

Stan Hemry works with The Arizona Counter-Recruitment Coalition, a group of students, teachers, parents, veterans, and workers from the Phoenix metro area who provide information and perspectives to
counter-balance the one-sidedness of military recruiters.

http://antiwar.com/radio/2010/03/27/stan-hemry/

featured interview / film review:
Does Avatar Depict Modern American Wars Over Resources?
--David Swanson, war critic, compares Avatar film to U.S. invasion & occupation of Iraq &
Afghanistan
--on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6lRHWV1BJM

(March,9,2010) The new Hollywood blockbuster Avatar is a story about American military
imperialism occupying foreign territory in order to get resources,
blogger and activist David Swanson argued to RT. He pointed out some
uncomfortable parallels with America's wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

There are people in the way and those people have to be moved or have to be killed, he said. It is stunning to watch
millions of Americans go and pack theaters and cheer for a movie in
which those foreigners, those resisters, those equivalents of the
American Indians or the Iraqi resistance or Afghan resistance, are
made into the heroes and the US mercenaries and the US soldiers are
made into the villains, Swanson said. It is an incredible
reversal.

For one thing, Iraqis are not 12 feet tall and blue with pointed ears, joked Swanson. But this is a story about American
military force at the bidding of a corporation interested in a
natural resource that is under someone elses ground, going and trying
to win the hearts and minds in a rather ham-handed manner and
failing, and trying to use brute force to drive people out.

We have killed hundreds of thousands, almost certainly over a million
Iraqis, he added. We have driven millions of Iraqis out of their
nation, and we have done this in a place very rich in natural
resources, which was among the motivations for going in there.



file under: What to teach our kids about invasion of Iraq?
Unanimous Vote De-Links Iraq War from Terrorism

The Oklahoma State Board of Education has agreed to a new standard for teaching U.S. History and World History that will look at the causes
and consequences of the U.S.-led war in Iraq -- without describing a
linkage to terrorism.

In summary, the board approved a revised statement of standards for the teaching of history in Oklahoma
schools. The original proposal -- which conflated globalization,
terrorism, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- was broken down
into component elements.

By treating each element separately, the board effectively backed away from making any prescribed
statements about the motives of those who launched the invasion of
Iraq.

It appears that the members of the State Board of Education are encouraging Oklahoma students to learn about history by
using their higher-order thinking skills -- evaluation, comparison,
analysis.

The dramatic decision came after the board heard from dozens of online petitioners, letter writers, and four speakers
who appeared at a public hearing on Thursday.

The revised standard will include an element requiring students to, "Compare
and assess the causes, conduct, and consequences of the U.S.-led wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq." Omitted from the new standard is any
attempt to describe a reason for the Iraq War.

The proposed standard had drawn criticism because it characterized the war as a
response of the U.S. government to terrorism.

Myrtle Dill was one of the speakers who urged the board to make the change. In an
online statement, Ms. Dill wrote to the members of the board,
"History textbooks must be of the highest standards using
information that is factual, accurate, truthful and objective and
protected from political bias and propaganda." She traveled from
Weatherford to make a personal statement before the
board.

http://www.oklahomacitizen.org/2010/03/26/oklahoma-board-education-...


Rev. Lang: Christians must stop going to war
by: Rev. Rich Lang
November 18, 2009
Vol: 16 No: 50

As the long war continues, I become more convinced that all who claim to follow the
way of Jesus must increasingly confront the empty morality of the
military establishment.

But we no longer live in a world where we are even pretending to abide by the constraints of a
just war tradition, or where we offer the pretense of defending
ourselves or our neighbors against imminent danger. Our invasions of
Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan are no different than any other
imperial quest for dominance. We are there for the oil, gas and
water. We are there for the same reason that we now have well over
800 military franchises spread throughout the earth. Our military is
the muscle behind the immorality of corporate pillage. It’s plain
and simple. Our wars are market wars. Those who participate in the
military are now servants of no greater cause than the financial
benefit of a sliver-like, snake infested, tiny elite of
stratospherically wealthy whores of hell. The nobility of being over
there for the advance of democracy, liberty and justice, the nobility
of standing up for those who cannot stand up for themselves,
themselves:  these are simply the puffs of publicly spun
propaganda. Follow the money and the dots get connected. I say this
not out of cynicism but as a religious observation. The god of our
nation, the only thing holding us together, is our allegiance to the
almighty dollar. Our troops serve the interest and fight under the
banner of this god.

It is in this context of religious symbols, loyalty to the God of Jesus versus loyalty to the Almighty
Dollar, that I have come to the growing conviction that the church
has a moral responsibility to confront the deceptions of our military
expansion. Politically, what this means is advocacy for military
budget reductions along with the dismantling of our global bases.
Ecclesiastically, the church should increase its therapeutic care for
veterans even as it increases its commitment to counter-recruiting.
But on a deeper, more intimate level, the church must begin to
withdraw its support of the military through an insistence that
Christians no longer serve in the armed forces. We must insist that
it is not acceptable to offer bread and wine with one hand, while
killing for corporate profit with the other. That would be step
one.

http://www.realchangenews.org/index.php/site/archives/3459/


New Era for Coffeehouses Rooted in Anti-War Tradition
By Jon R. Anderson - Army Times
Mar 7, 2010

LAKEWOOD, Wash. — Seth Manzel is an Iraq veteran with an ash-black crucifix tattoo on
his forearm; he wears his hair short, as if he were still an infantry
squad leader. At home, he has a safe full of guns. At work, he’s
the strong-arm night guard for a rough-and-tumble motel.

But by day, he helps run a coffee shop just outside Fort Lewis, where war
fighters mingle with anti-war activists over hot brew and heated
discussion.

Manzel soldiered on but with increasing remorse.

“I feel like I’ve definitely done some things that are pretty horrific and that I’ve got a debt to the world to
work off,” he said.

Coffeehouse strong

Part of his penance, Manzel said, is paid by serving free coffee to GIs and
helping those who might have second thoughts about their role in the
military.

Dubbed Coffee Strong, Manzel’s java joint is one of a handful of military-friendly — but decidedly anti-war —
outposts that have popped up over the past few years, with varying
degrees of success. In many respects, they are the spiritual — if
less radical — heirs of the coffeehouses that were common near
military bases in the tumultuous Vietnam era.

Among the new breed:

• Under the Hood Café: Cynthia Thomas, an 18-year Army wife, launched this café just outside Fort
Hood, Texas, about a year ago, when her husband was sent on his third
deployment.

It’s “a place for soldiers to gather, relax and speak freely about the wars and the military,” according to the
café’s Web site. “Support services for soldiers include
referrals for counseling, legal advice and information on GI
rights.”

• Norfolk OffBase: “Our model, rather than a full-bore coffeehouse, is more of a resource and organizing
center,” director and former soldier Tom Palumbo said. Located in a
converted warehouse in Virginia’s Hampton Roads area, OffBase
offers referrals to a volunteer network of legal, mental health,
housing and financial assistance.

• A Different Drummer Café: This café, considered the first modern GI
coffeehouse to set up shop, opened outside Fort Drum, N.Y., in
November 2006. Although it shut down about a year ago, its Web site,
run by Vietnam veterans, remains an active voice in the Fort Drum
community.
Peace-loving tradition

Percolating up as part of the late 1960s peace movement, a slew of coffeehouses served up brew
and small pamphlets outside military bases during most of the Vietnam
War.

Only one from that era remains on active duty: the Quaker House outside Fort Bragg, N.C., which opened on a quiet
residential street in 1969. Its motto now: “40 years of front-line
peace witness — and just getting started.”

“It’s been quite a ride,” said Chris McCallum, author of “Yes to the Troops
— No to the War,” which chronicles the Quaker House story. “Jane
Fonda came and went. So did ’60s radicalism. The house was spied on
and firebombed. But since Sept. 11, it’s been more active than
ever.”

The modern variety of GI coffeehouse is not nearly as strident as those of bygone days.

Norfolk OffBase is often misunderstood, Palumbo said.

“We’re not all the crazed radicals some would paint us as,” he said. “You don’t have to
be disagreeable to disagree.”

You also don’t have to be a pacifist to oppose fighting, he
said,

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/03/offduty_coffeehouses_030110w/


G.I. Drugged
March 23rd, 2010 by Kelley Vlahos

When The Washington Post revealed in 2007 the disgusting conditions endured by
injured soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital, the right wing
blogosphere raced to blame the messenger and throw water on the
outrage. Then, silence. There have been similar right wing blackouts
on veteran/soldier suicides, health impacts from the burn pits
overseas, and the overwhelming 1.1 million backlogged veterans’
claims at the VA, a system which one senior official recently
admitted, “cannot be fixed.”

It’s amazing how a political faction, so steeped in sanctimony about “honoring our
troops,” can turn heel and sprint away at the first sight of war’s
true devastation. Let me amend that — at the first of sight of
anything politically inconvenient to their aggressive interventionist
worldview. What indeed are they afraid of? That their distortions,
manipulations and embellishments about the glories of war will be
revealed so achingly in the soldier hanging by a noose in his
parents’ modest middle American home?

If so, there is bound to be another blackout on this most recent report. Good thing it’s
coming from the Military Times, so as to at least ensure that the
story itself will be circulated well within the military and beyond
on both sides of the spectrum. And it will be that much harder for
the right wing talkers to trash on its face.

Turns out the government has spent upwards of $1 billion on “common pain and
psychiatric medications” for soldiers from 2001 to 2009. The
military is drugging up soldiers more than ever –  76 percent
more than at the start of the two-front war — and in doing so, keep
them in the ranks, in the field, behind .50-caliber machine guns and
engaging in patrols, despite physical and emotional pain, depression
and post traumatic stress likely held-over from previous tours
in-country.

One wonders how far the military will go to keep warm bodies in the warzone.

According to results from a survey taken of some 28,000 active duty soldiers and Marines and published
in December 2009 by the Pentagon, one in four troops admitted to
abusing prescription medication — mostly painkillers — in a
one-year period; as many as 20 percent of Marines said they too, had
abused pills. Two percent of those surveyed said they had thoughts of
suicide, and 60 percent of Marines said they had engaged in binge
drinking over the course of the year.

There is so much to absorb here. The Military Times report indicates more than a few
sordid things — that the military is knowingly rotating sick
soldiers into combat under the influence of powerful painkillers,
anti-depressants and other psychotropic drugs, some of which have
been negligently prescribed and/or are being used as part of a
mindblowing cocktail of other drugs. Second, the pharmaceutical
companies are really cleaning up, just like they do in the civilian
world. Thirdly, if all goes as planned, we will have some 100,000
troops in Afghanistan and at least (if draw-downs go as planned),
another 50,000 in Iraq by the end of the summer. So the military wins
another round at faking out the “Army is broken” meme. But one
wonders how many of these soldiers and Marines are on their second,
third, fourth tours, or how many pills it takes them to get through
the day. Seems as though they are the real losers in this equation.
But how long can it all
last?

http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2010/03/23/g-i-drugged/

---

The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for April 2010
page 2


Civilians Among 17 Killed in Latest US Drone Strikes
Drone Attacked Crowd of Civilians Rescuing Victims of Previous Drone, in Remote Pakistan
by Jason Ditz, March 10, 2010

In Pakistan’s North Waziristan, US drones launched a pair of attacks on a site which left at least 17
people killed and several wounded.

The first drone strike targeted a vehicle which Pakistani officials say was “carrying some
miscreants.” The attack killed at least eight people and collapsed
a nearby home, which is what precipitated the second attack.

A crowd of civilians gathered around the collapsed building, trying to
pull people from the rubble, when a second drone fired missiles into
the crowd, killing at least nine people and wounding several
others.

“Miscreants” aside, it was unclear if any of those killed were militants of any significant faction, and Pakistani
officials say there was no evidence any high-value target at the
site. The area is controlled by a nominally “Taliban” militant
faction which currently has a peace deal with the Pakistani
government.

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/03/10/civilians-among-17-killed-in-lat...


C.I.A. operators of U.S. Drone Strikes are Guilty of War Crimes
Expert in international law assesses remote-controlled murder and deems it a
capital offense

A top antagonising factor in Afghanistan are the missile strikes from drones that often
accidentally kill civilians. Gary Solis, a Georgetown University
professor specialising in the law of war, writes that the drone
strikes have a little-noticed legal consequence for the specialists
who direct them:

Every day, CIA agents and CIA contractors arm and pilot armed unmanned drones over combat zones in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including Pakistani tribal areas, to search out and kill Taliban and
al-Qaeda fighters. In terms of international armed conflict, those
CIA agents are, unlike their military counterparts but like the
fighters they target, unlawful combatants. No less than their
insurgent targets, they are fighters without uniforms or insignia,
directly participating in hostilities, employing armed force contrary
to the laws and customs of war. Even if they are sitting in Langley,
the CIA pilots are civilians violating the requirement of
distinction, a core concept of armed conflict, as they directly
participate in hostilities.

The drone pilots, Mr Solis writes, may be vulnerable to prosecution for war crimes.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/03/afghanistan

more coverage:
Drone Wars May Lead Top U.S. Officials to the Hague for War Crimes Trial

03-24-10, The Huffington Post

The CIA's extensive use of unmanned drones to kill alleged terrorists in Pakistan and elsewhere is arguably against
international law and raises the possibility that top U.S. officials
will someday be tried at the Hague for war crimes, a law professor
told a congressional oversight panel on Tuesday.

Despite the rapidly increasing use of drones in warfare and anti-terrorism -- and
the legal and ethical issues their use raises -- the U.S. government
has never publicly advanced a legal justification for sending its
drones on targeted killing runs overseas; up until Tuesday, Congress
hadn't even held a single hearing into the question.

Kenneth Anderson, an American University law professor, told the panel
government lawyers "have not settled on what the rationales are,
and I believe that at some point that ill serves an administration
which is embracing this. Now, maybe the answer is: This is really
terrible and illegal and anybody that does it should go off to the
Hague."

But many questions about drones aren't just unresolved, they've never even been asked. Rep. John F. Tierney
(D-Mass.), chairman of the House oversight committee's national
security subcommittee, mentioned some of them in his opening
statement:

[I]f the United States uses unmanned weapons systems, does that require an official declaration of war or an authorization for the use of force?

Do the Geneva Conventions -- written in 1949 -- govern the prosecution of an unmanned war?

Who is considered a lawful combatant in unmanned war -- the Air Force pilot
flying a Predator from thousands of miles away in Nevada, or the
civilian contractor servicing it in on an airstrip in Afghanistan?

Then there are questions about the civilian casualty rate.

Edward Barrett, an ethicist and the director of research for the Stockdale Center, the U.S. Naval Academy's ethics and military policy think
tank, worried that drones make war too easy. "Favorable
alterations to pre-war proportionality calculations," he said,
could "reduce the rigor with which non-violent alternatives are
pursued, and thus encourage unnecessary -- and therefore unjust --
wars," he
said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/24/drone-wars-without-any-ru_...

---

The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for April 2010
backpage

German foreign minister pushing for disarmament in NATO
--FM seeks withdrawal of the last remaining nuclear weapons stationed in
Germany

Mar 2, 2010

Berlin - German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Tuesday that US-signalled
intentions to significantly reduce nuclear stockpiles echoed his
demand for US nuclear weapons to be removed from German soil.

'It encourages me to continue pushing for disarmament in NATO, and in
particular to work towards the withdrawal of the last remaining
nuclear weapons stationed in Germany,' Westerwelle said in
Berlin.

The comments came after US President Barack Obama was to discuss a new nuclear strategy at the White House on
Monday.

Some officials, who were not authorized to talk, told the Times that the administration has
been exploring with European allies the withdrawal of US tactical
nuclear weapons from Europe.

Westerwelle said disarmament was an important element of maintaining a peaceful world without nuclear
proliferation.

The foreign minister had raised the issue with his US counterpart, Hillary Rodham Clinton, when he took office last
year.

Read more: http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1537840....


related news:
Japanese Anti-Nuke Movement Gears Up
--revelations that U.S. helped previous ruling LDP party in Japan violate the
country's non-nuclear constitutional law

by Jason Ditz, March 09, 2010 for antiwar.com

Following through on a pledged investigation into “secret agreements” made by the previous
government, Japan today issued a report revealing that the Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP) governments violated the nation’s official
bans and allowed the United States to transport and even store
nuclear weapons on Japanese soil.

Not long after taking power last year, the Democratic Party of Japan revealed that they had found
documents proving that their predecessors, the LDP, had signed secret
deals with the United States as early as 1960 regarding nuclear
weapons. The announcement came with the pledge of a full
report.

Rumors of the deal, a flagrant violation of Japan’s non-nuclear stance since it was attacked with nuclear weapons in
1945, have been long-standing, but the LDP governments had repeatedly
denied that any such deal existed. It is unclear what, if any, legal
ramifications those who were in power at the time might face, but the
current government is likely to gain big from uncovering
it.

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/03/09/japan-report-private-agreements-...


Joint effort to curtail first-strike policy
Kyodo News
March 25, 2010

Japan and Australia will jointly seek to reinforce assurances against the use of nuclear weapons on nonnuclear
states at the upcoming Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty review
conference, according to Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada.

Under a package of proposals on disarmament and nonproliferation,
nuclear-armed states are called on to take, as soon as possible, such
measures as providing "stronger negative security assurances"
of not using atomic weapons against nonnuclear states that comply
with the NPT.

"We will have discussions with other partner countries and do our utmost so that this package will be
reflected in the final document of the NPT review conference,"
Okada said Tuesday, referring to the key meeting in May in New
York.

The NPT designates the U.S., Britain, China, France and Russia as nuclear-weapons states. They made statements in 1995 that
they would give security assurances against the use of nuclear
weapons to nonnuclear weapon states that are parties to the
NPT.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100325a5.html


Epitaph for this edition of "Truth in Recruiting"
--from the archives

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world: and that is an idea whose time has come.
~Victor Hugo

---

The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for April 2010
masthead

The Tulsa Peace Fellowship is the activist wing of the
peace movement in Eastern Oklahoma.  TPF offers citizens and
community groups tools and resources to participate personally in our
democracy, to help shape federal budget and policy priorities, and to
promote peace, social and economic justice, and human rights.  
TPF is a registered non-profit organization and a non-partisan
civic-sector organization, loosely affiliated with the Unitarian
Universalist Church of the Restoration, north side of Tulsa.

"Waging Peace One Person at a Time".

Through its counter-recruitment task force, TPF is a member of the National Network in Opposition to the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY) representing some
188 counter-recruitment groups in cities and towns across the
country.

If you have not already done so, please join the new social networking tool for TPF on Ning, in lieu of TPFtalks on yahoogroups, which has fallen into disuse  Thank
you!  You can check out our new tool here:
https://tulsapeacefellowship.ning.com/
(new for 2009)  Also still going strong:  our announcement
list on yahoo!  [e-mail]
(since 2002)  Go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/
and search for "tulsapeace"

If you enjoyed this news digest and/or found this update useful, please
consider making a donation of time, money, or effort to the Tulsa
Peace Fellowship.   Details on tax status available.

The next monthly anti-war demo in Tulsa
is scheduled for
Saturday April 3rd 2010, 12noon to 2pm, with the theme: "U.S. Out of
Afghanistan Now!"
Details online:
https://tulsapeacefellowship.ning.com/events

The next regularly scheduled business meeting of the Fellowship will be
held
 on Thursday, April 8th 2010, 6:15 PM – 7:30 PM @ the UU Church of the Restoration, in
Tulsa, just north of downtown

Come join us!

The information provided in this digest/update herein is for non-profit
use only, according to "fair use" doctrine.  Copyright
and all commercial exploitation rights remain with the various
authors/publishers cited above. The Tulsa Peace Fellowship
does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in the articles
appearing herein.

THE 10 REASONS why you should NOT enlist

Ten excellent reasons not to join the military:
a.. You May Be Killed, Even By Mistake
b.. You May Kill Others Who Do Not Deserve to Die
c.. You May Be Injured
d.. You May Not Receive Proper Medical Care
e.. You May Suffer Long-term Health Problems
f.. You May Be Lied To
g.. You May Face Discrimination
h.. You May Be Asked to Do Things Against Your Beliefs
i.. You May Find It Difficult to Leave the Military
j.. You Have Other Choices, including the Choice to Learn a Marketable Skill