The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for May 2010 | Special Edition on Pentagon Scandals in Iraq & Afghanistan

[Tony Nuspl]

Truth in Recruiting - "Don't Believe the Hype!"
The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for May
2010
Special Edition on Pentagon Scandals in Iraq & Afghanistan

Lead Stories from the past month's news:

file under: damage control
NATO Admits Wantonly Killing Civilians in Raid on Afghan Birthday Party
--initially Western military forces tried to blame insurgents for the civilian
deaths of men, women and children at a baby shower
--will there be a prosecution of the guilty soldiers?  will the mainstream press
cover the story of this war crime?

quote:
"If it seems both horrible and likely that the troops mistook a birthday celebration for a gathering of militants, you've been keeping score."
~Jenn Kepka, for Salon.com

facts & figures:
"The force went to the compound in search of a Taliban insurgent. We now understand that the
men killed were only trying to protect their families."
~Brig Gen. Eric Tremblay, ISAF Spokesperson.

The two pregnant women who were killed by a U.S. sniper were
mothers of, between them, 16 children. There were at least a dozen
local witnesses to the war crime committed by U.S. forces.

There are 120,000 foreign troops in the country. Civilian deaths are highly
sensitive because they stir resentment against the West and drive
more Afghans into the arms of the Taliban insurgency against the
Western-supported government in Kabul.

Keeping a partial tally of wedding parties eradicated by American air power at
TomDispatch.com, there have been 7 such “incidents” between
December 2001 and July 2008. (e.g. In July 2002 in which possibly 40
Afghan wedding celebrants died and many more were wounded.) And keep
in mind that these are only the reported incidents in a rural land
where much undoubtedly goes unreported.
source: http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2010/04/13/gods-and-monsters/

in depth analysis:
Glenn Greenwald dissects the Pentagon's misinformation campaign
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/05-2

post mortem: independent video

Don't Let Them Get Away With Murder
by RethinkAfghanistan.com, video posted on facebook (5 minutes 50 secs)
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=614474106909

follow up:
US Special Forces apologise for botched night raid
--a story covered in the foreign press, by The Independent (UK), not in the American press

featured analysis:
Ignorance of Afghan Society Led to Botched Raids
--After eight years of operating there, the U.S. military still has no understanding of the personal, tribal, and
other local sociopolitical conflicts

quote:
""I don’t want to say we’re clueless, but we are."
~Gen. Michael Flynn, chief of (so-called) intelligence, in Afghanistan,
under Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal

sidebar: yet another atrocity, yet another apology
NATO Admits Four Killed Were Civilians, Not ‘Insurgents’
--Kids Were Driving Home From a Volleyball Game, Killed by Soldiers Firing
from a Long Distance

France Reports Yet More Civilian Killings in Afghanistan
--Five Civilians Were 'Behind a Tree' When Troops Fired Rocket
--file under: increasingly implausible excuses

page 1

Page One Dominated by One Story in April 2010
Wikileaks Releases 2007 Video Filmed from Apache Helicopter, as U.S. Massacres Unarmed Civilians, Reporters, in
Baghdad
--after killing Reuters reporter and photojournalist, and other non-belligerents, U.S. helicopter
sniper kills the Good Samaritan (unarmed civilian) who tried
to rescue the wounded
--trigger-happy snipers and their commanders are revealed to have ignored the
laws of armed combat and wantonly killed non-combatants in
Iraq
--rather than cover up the story, the Pentagon is trying to shut down Wikileaks

quote:
"It's their fault for bringing kids into a battle."
~unnamed sniper, rationalizing the murders he just committed, from video transcript of the war crime committed by U.S.
forces, after two children were shot by a U.S.
sniper, aboard a U.S. helicopter

facts & figures:
U.S. snipers are unable to tell the difference between a telephoto lens and an AK-47, or an RPG for that matter, as the video evidence reveals. 

more coverage:
Tables turned when WikiLeaks posted a video showing U.S. military committing war crimes in Iraq
--WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange accuses U.S. military of "the indiscriminate
slaying of over a dozen people"

quote:
"God has answered my prayer in revealing this tape to the world. I would have
sold my house and I all that I own in order to show this tape to the
world."
~the dead photographer's father, quoted in the April 7 New York Times

more coverage:
Reuters families demand US troops be tried over shooting in Baghdad
--The families of two Reuters news agency employees killed in a 2007 US helicopter attack in Baghdad
demand justice

quote:
"I want the American pilot who killed my father to be judged. Why did he do that? Were the victims not innocent? Were they not human beings?"
~Saeed Chmagh's grieving son Salwan, 20, after seeing the footage which was aired on
Arab television channels. The Wikileaks video has also beenseen by
more than 4 million people on the Internet.

analysis of media coverage:
Leaked video mostly ignored by corporate media
--Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) declaims against newscasters' rush to excuse the wanton killings,
media indifference

featured radio interview:
Scott Horton Interviews Dahr Jamail on Wikileaks scandal for the Pentagon
--an independent, un-embedded reporter speaks truth to power, on alternative radio

--also addresses the difficulty in turning off the boot camp-indoctrinated killer mentality (brainwashing)

quote:
"Of course, we have to hold these troops responsible for the slaughtering they're doing. These guys in this helicopter are war criminals.  If this is a just society, then
at the very least, they'll be spending the rest of their lives in
prison. At the very least. So they have to be held
accountable."
~Dahr Jamail, unembedded independent journalist, who has covered Iraq since 2003

facts & figures:
"Back in WWI only 1 in 10 American soldiers actually pulled the trigger to kill another human being.  Most
halfway-adjusted human beings don't want to kill another human
being.  Even in a situation like that, in WWI, your natural
tendency to preserve the lives of others prevailed.  Fast
forward to now, recent statistics show us that it's more than 9 in 10
who will actually shoot to kill.  So we've seen a complete
reversal in how effective the military has become in literally
turning people into killers, who are willing to follow orders without
questioning, and who don't think about the Geneva Conventions, who
don't think about the rules of engagement."
~Dahr Jamail, in the interview available on demand

commentary:
Boston Globe editorial: US shouldn’t fight leaked video
--whistleblowing is a price worth paying to have an informed citizenry, the bedrock of democracy

featured op/ed
The Danger of Standing Armies and Idle Soldiers Indoctrinated Not To
Question
--When not committing atrocities in Iraq or Afghanistan, U.S. soldiers are engaged in a "blatant program of
tyranny"
--We ignore their war crimes at our own risk, as these soldiers need deprogramming
in order to be reintegrated into civil society

featured op/ed
It’s war you can watch on video, much like a movie, except the victims really die and the killers really murder.
by Karen Kwiatkowski,  retired USAF lieutenant colonel

featured op/ed
Is It American Policy to Shoot the Wounded and Commit War Crimes?
Written by Thomas R. Eddlem

WikiLeaks Soldiers | An Open Letter of Reconciliation
Josh Stieber and Ethan McCord, Iraq veterans previously deployed to Baghdad with Bravo Company 2-16
--If you didn't feel connected by anything human to the WikiLeaks Video, Josh
Stieber and Ethan McCord's Letter of
Reconciliation & Responsibility
to the victims and the community
will do it.

Wikileaks Video : What Needs To Happen Now
--Huffington Post calls for holding a Congressional oversight hearing into the matter

page 2

file under: increasingly aerial occupation
WikiLeaks 2: Wrath of Farah (Afganistan 2009) : Another War Crime by U.S. Troops Documented
in Video
--Leaked classified video to show one of Afghanistan's largest air strikes
--The increasingly controversial site is poised to drop another video bombshell, this time on a much
more high profile attack.

more coverage: follow up on last year's civilian massacres committed by U.S. air force
Wikileaks 'to release video of US strike on Afghan civilians'
Wikileaks, the whistle-blower website, is reportedly preparing to release secret
video of a notorious US air strike said to have killed scores of
Afghan civilians.

Profile: Julian Assange, the man behind Wikileaks
--They seek him here, they seek him there, but the founder of the whistleblowing website Wikileaks is as elusive as a
modern-day pimpernel

file under: another massacre of civilians by U.S. troops
US Troops Attack Civilian Bus in Kandahar, Killing Five
--18 Others Injured as Troops Open Fire on Bus
--hundreds of Afghans protest the loss of civilian life, demand accountability
by Jason Ditz, April 12, 2010

featured analysis: retrospective on 2003 illegal invasion of Iraq
In the battle to destroy hearts and minds,
the reality contrasts starkly with the propagandistic claims made by
the Pentagon
--book review of Cultural Cleansing in Iraq: Why Museums Were Looted, Libraries Burned and Academics
Murdered
--The dismantling of Iraqi intellectual life may have been a deliberate strategy
--U.S. invasion & occupation of Iraq is compared to the ransacking of Baghdad in AD1258
by Mongol hordes

sidebar:
U.S. Imports Sand into Desert for Iraqi Occupation
--just when you thought maybe Army Engineers were sensible

ongoing scandal:
National Guard recruiters forged re-enlistment papers: report
--will the recruiters in question be held accountable? a couple of years in the
brig maybe?

quotable:
"How could anyone would possibly think they could get away with signing over a soldier's life?"
~Chris Ingalls, reporting for Seattle-based TV in Washington State

sidebar: 
One missing after US Navy plane crashes into Arabian Sea
file under:  SNAFU

backpage

file under: 'friendly fire'
Inquest: US Pilot Bombed British Soldiers, Assuming They Were Taliban

upcoming event:
On May 2, the "Disarm Now: For Peace and Human Needs" march
across 42nd St., New York City
--The War Resisters League, a secular pacifist organization founded
in 1923, invites everyone to Grand Central Station to declare NYC a
"nuclear weapons free zone," to emphasize the world’s
message of disarmament to the U.N.

perspective & analysis: Japan-America relations
Okinawa residents want to remove, not relocate the U.S. base
--If the Third Marine Expeditionary Force located on Okinawa is not needed to defend Japan,
then why not bring it home?

epitaph for this edition of "Truth in Recruiting" (from the archives)
Refusing to look reality in the face

---

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



file under: damage control
NATO Admits Killing Civilians in February Afghan Raid
U.S. Special Forces Finally Cop to Killings After Initially Blaming Insurgents
by Jason Ditz, April 04, 2010

Nearly two months after the high profile night raid in Afghanistan’s Paktia Province and after several official
denials, NATO has finally admitted to killing all five civilians,
including two Afghan government employees. Two of the women were
later revealed to be pregnant at the time.

NATO’s first official acknowledgement of the raid claimed they engaged in a “fire
fight” with insurgents. A month later, Rear Admiral Greg Smith
admitted they had no evidence the “firefight” involved a single
shot fired by anyone but the NATO forces, and all the arrested
“insurgents” were released. NATO also attempted to pay them
“compensation” for the slain civilians, but were rebuffed.

The US special forces responsible for the raid not only killed those
pregnant women, but bound and gagged their corpses to try to cover it
up (which is what the family claimed the day after it happened, to
the dismissal of everyone).

Incredibly, however, NATO is still insisting that they have no evidence that the soldiers acted
“inappropriately” in the slaughter, and even though Afghan
government officials confirmed that the troops were removing evidence
from the scene for seven hours before letting the Afghan security
forces in to inspect it they maintain that nothing resembling a
cover-up has
occurred.

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/04/04/nato-admits-killing-civilians-in...


More details, from the foreign press:

The London Times
US special forces 'tried to cover-up' botched Khataba raid in Afghanistan
5 April 2010
Jerome Starkey

US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath of a
botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying
to their superiors about what happened, Afghan investigators
have told The Times.

Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother were shot on February 12 when
US and Afghan special forces stormed their home in Khataba village,
outside Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. The precise composition of the
force has never been made public.

The claims were made as Nato admitted responsibility for all the deaths for the first time last
night. It had initially claimed that the women had been dead for
several hours when the assault force discovered their
bodies.

“Despite earlier reports we have determined that the women were accidentally killed as a result of the joint force firing
at the men,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Todd Breasseale, a Nato
spokesman.

The family had more than 25 guests on the night of the attack, as well as three musicians, to celebrate the naming of a
newborn
child.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7087...

Apr 5, 2010
U.S. forces' horrifying Afghanistan cover-up
Our troops killed five non-insurgents at a birthday party in Paktia. Could they at least give us an
explanation?
By Jenn Kepka

If it seems both horrible and likely that the troops mistook a birthday celebration for a gathering
of militants, you've been keeping score.

The ISAF released a statement claiming oops, they were wrong, no one was dead when they
got there -- they did that:

    A thorough joint investigation into the events that occurred in the Gardez district of Paktiya Province Feb. 12, has determined that international forces were responsible
for the deaths of three women who were in the same compound where two
men were killed by the joint Afghan-international patrol searching
for a Taliban insurgent.

    The two men, who were later determined not to be insurgents, were shot and killed by
the joint patrol after they showed what appeared to be hostile intent
by being armed. While investigators could not conclusively determine
how or when the women died, due to lack of forensic evidence, they
concluded that the women were accidentally killed as a result of the
joint force firing at the men.

    "We deeply regret the outcome of this operation, accept responsibility
for our actions that night, and know that this loss will be felt
forever by the families," said Brig Gen. Eric Tremblay, ISAF
Spokesperson. "The force went to the compound based on reliable
information in search of a Taliban insurgent and believed that the
two men posed a threat to their personal safety. We now understand
that the men killed were only trying to protect their families."

Jerome Starkey in the London Times reports that the lack of forensic evidence that's discussed above is because the team dug the bullets out of the compound walls and possibly out of the women's
bodies in an attempt to hide what had happened:

US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors
about what happened, Afghan investigators have told The Times.

It doesn't matter how many schools you build or community tea ceremonies you participate in; if the default position of any group of U.S. forces is not only to shoot first, ask questions later but
also to eliminate evidence, there's no one in Afghanistan who's going
to welcome the presence of any troops from any country. The two
pregnant women who were killed were mothers of, between them, 16
children. Do you think they'll grow up grateful for the U.S.
intervention into their country?

Beyond that, there were at least a dozen local witnesses to the crime -- those who were
attending the party inside the house. Did U.S. troops and their NATO
overseers (also mostly American) really believe that news of what
actually happened wouldn't spread?

I can't believe they didn't think the word would get out in Afghanistan. I also think they didn't
perhaps care that much -- that the real audience for NATO and for all
U.S.-led efforts remains the Western, not the Middle Eastern, world.
That's the strategic tragedy of this story: We have never
appropriately absorbed the lesson that our interests aren't superior
to Afghan interests. They are in fact one and the same, and the
continued, inexcusable, and unpunished killing of civilians is
exactly the fuel that Hamid Karzai needs to continue his "it's
all their fault!" campaign.

Because, this time, it is all our fault. Our troops did this; our troops tried to cover it up; and
now our troops have been caught doing exactly that. I hope we'll now
see General McChrystal make a statement, and I hope we'll see
investigation continue. Though a system has encouraged this kind of
killing, a person pulled the trigger, and
justice demands he be named and held accountable.

This post originally appeared on Jenn Kepka's Open Salon
blog.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/04/05/us_forces_afghanistan_...

follow up:
US Special Forces apologise for botched night raid
By Julius Cavendish in Khataba, for The Independent (UK)
Friday, 9 April 2010

The first time US Special Forces came to Haji Sharabuddin's house they killed five members of his family. Today,
almost two months later, they came to apologise.

Flanked by dozens of Afghan soldiers Vice Admiral William McRaven, one of
America's top Special Forces officers, spent an hour at the scene of
a botched night raid in south-eastern Afghanistan that saw a Special
Forces team gun down an Afghan police chief, a prosecutor and three
women.

"I am the commander of the men who accidentally killed your loved ones," Adm McRaven told Haji Sharabuddin. "I
came here today to send my condolences to you and to your family and
to your friends. I also came today to ask your forgiveness for these
terrible tragedies."

It was in the same room on the night of February 11th that 25 relatives had gathered to celebrate the
birth of a newborn child when the Special Forces raid took place.
Nato admitted responsibility for all five deaths for the first time
on Sunday night, paving the way for yesterday's visit.

Yesterday Nato paid the family compensation, which relatives said came to
$30,000.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/us-special-forces-apol...

featured analysis:
Ignorance of Afghan Society Led to Botched Raids
--After eight years of operating there, the U.S. military still has no understanding of
the personal, tribal, and other local sociopolitical conflicts
by Gareth Porter, April 13, 2010

In targeting the suspected Taliban in such raids, therefore, the U.S. military command has been
forced to rely on informants of unknown reliability – and
motives.

As a provincial council member from Gardez, near the scene of the botched raid, declared bitterly last week, U.S. Special
Forces "don’t know who is the enemy and who isn’t."

When the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, Adm. William
McRaven, went to the site of the raid to apologize, the head of the
extended family that lost five people to the SOF unit, Hajji
Sharibuddin, demanded that the U.S. military turn over "the spy
who gave the false information to the Americans."

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and his chief of intelligence, Gen. Michael
Flynn, have admitted the profound ignorance of the U.S. military
about Afghan society, while avoiding the implications of that
ignorance for the issue of false intelligence on the
Taliban.

McChrystal acknowledged in his "initial assessment" last August that his command had to "acquire a
far better understanding of Afghanistan and its people."

In an interview with National Public Radio Aug. 13, Flynn admitted,
"What we really have not done to the degree that we need to is
really truly understand the population: the tribal dynamics, the
tribal networks, the ethnicity…."

Such dynamics are different "from valley to valley," Flynn observed.

And in an unusual paper published by the Center for a New American
Security last October, Flynn was even more frank, saying, "I
don’t want to say we’re clueless, but we are. We’re no more
than fingernail deep in our understanding the environment."

Flynn avoided any suggestion that this profound ignorance of the society in
which U.S. troops are operating could affect targeting of suspected
Taliban. He asserted that the intelligence problem is not about the
Taliban but about the lack of knowledge about governance and
development issues.

But a foreign military force that is so fundamentally ignorant of the sociopolitical forces at play
inevitably allows local sources which have access to it to act in
their own self-interest.

More often than not, the U.S. and NATO have depended heavily on ties with Afghan tribal leaders and
warlords. That has proven disastrous over and over again.

In the most widely known instance of mass civilian casualties from a
U.S. attack, an air strike on the village of Azizabad in Heart
province in August 2008, Afghan officials expressed certainty that
U.S. commanders had been misled by a rival of clan leader Timor Shah,
who had died some months before.

An investigation of the incident by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission
(AIHRC) revealed that a former business partner of Timor’s who
still had personal enmity toward the family – and who had been
involved in various criminal activities – had passed false
information to Coalition Forces that there would be a big gathering
of Taliban fighters in Azizabad.

The U.S. command carried out a devastating bombing of what turned out to have been a memorial
ceremony for Timor Shah.

As many as 90 civilians, including 60 children, were killed by the
bombing.

http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2010/04/12/ignorance-of-afghan-s...

grassroots response, States-side:

"State-sponsored, institutionalized murder....it must STOP! These people come back to this country & walk our streets too.....What happens to the training...is there an "off"
button?"
~quote found on facebook, from user in Charlottesville, VA, on the wall of "Rethink Afghanistan"

more grassroots response, in Afghanistan:

The degree to which the population in the districts where McChrystal plans to send troops rejects military confrontation and believes in a peaceful negotiated settlement is suggested by a
revealing vignette recounted by Time magazine’s Joe Klein in
the April 15 issue.

Klein accompanied U.S. Army Capt. Jeremiah Ellis when he visited a 17-year-old boy in Zhari district whose house
Ellis wanted to use an observation post. When Ellis asked the boy how
he thought the war would end, he answered:

"Whenever you guys get out from here, things will get better. The elders will sit
down with the Taliban, and the Taliban will lay down their
arms."

http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2010/04/18/94-percent-of-kandaha...

---

The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for May 2010
page one story: video viewed by 4 million people in first week of April
alone


Tables Turned when WikiLeaks posted a video showing U.S. military committing

war crimes in Iraq
--WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange accuses U.S. military of "the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people"

By Mark Thompson / Washington   – Tue Apr 6, 2010

The Pentagon has for years allowed the world an occasional peek through
its keyhole as U.S. aircraft generated video while bombing their
targets. But the military was always able to cover that keyhole when
it wanted, allowing outsiders a look only when public viewing was
deemed to serve the Pentagon's interests. All of that apparently
changed on Monday, after at least one Pentagon insider leaked a
bloody video that appeared to show the killing of two reporters by a
U.S. helicopter gunship in Baghdad to WikiLeaks, an independent
website.

WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange said his organization got the videotape of "the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen
people" and verified its authenticity from "a number of
military whistle-blowers"; the videotape was ultimately
confirmed as genuine by U.S. military officials. There was as much
irritation inside the Pentagon at whoever leaked the videotape as
there was for WikiLeaks' posting of it.

It appears to show the pilots mistakenly identifying a man carrying a camera -
22-year-old Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, along with his
driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40 - as armed insurgents, and 10 others in July
2007.

After getting command approval to attack the armed group, an initial volley from an Apache's 30mm cannon blows some of
them apart. An Apache crewman says, "Ha, ha, ha - I hit 'em."
Another comment: "Look at those dead bastards." When a
wounded man is seen crawling for cover, an Apache crew member hopes
he reaches for a gun to justify shooting him again. "All you got
to do is pick up a weapon," he says.

Suddenly a van appears and Iraqis hop out to help the man. The helicopter crew seeks
and receives permission to fire on the vehicle. In the ensuing
barrage, two children inside the vehicle are apparently wounded, and
their father, a Good Samaritan who had stopped to take the wounded
man to the hospital, is allegedly killed. When U.S. ground troops
arrive later, they discover the youngsters. "Well, it's their
fault," a member of the Apache crew says, "for bringing
kids into a battle." Initially, the U.S. said the dead were all
insurgents and had been killed in battle, but the video as released
seems to offer no evidence of hostile intent by those on the
ground.

Assange said the attack was unjustified. "If those killings were lawful under the rules of engagement," he
told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington, "then
the rules of engagement are wrong."

WikiLeaks is a nonprofit organization that went online in 2006. Since then, it has
irritated governments and companies around the world by posting
information on its website. It generates the bulk of its $600,000
annual budget from contributions by individuals, human-rights groups,
assorted other nongovernmental watchdogs and press
organizations.

After decrypting the Apache video, WikiLeaks posted it on CollateralMurder.com, a site whose name indicates its
assessment of the attack. WikiLeaks appears to be far from done. The
group is http://spot.us/pitches/396">openly
soliciting donations to defray the expenses involved in the
upcoming release of another video that allegedly documents other
civilian deaths at the hands of the U.S. military, this time
in Afghanistan.

Reuters had been seeking to obtain internal Pentagon materials pertaining to the attack — including
the footage that went online yesterday — for the past three years,
using the Freedom of Information Act. The agency's efforts had so far
proved
fruitless.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100406/us_time/08599197801700
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100406/ts_ynews/ynews_ts1490

---

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

upcoming event:
"Disarm Now: For Peace and Human Needs" march across 42nd St., New York City
--The War Resisters League, a secular pacifist organization founded in
1923, invites everyone to Grand Central Station to declare NYC a
"nuclear weapons free zone," to emphasize the world’s
message of disarmament to the U.N.

International Day of Action – Sunday, May 2, 2010

Join people from around the world for a day of action!

The Day’s Events at a Glance

1:30 PM › Assembly (7th Ave +  South of 41st St)
2:00 – 3:30 PM › Rally
3:30 PM › March across 42nd Street to the United Nations
4:00 – 6:00 PM › International Peace & Music Festival in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza

Bring your posters, your drums, your children and your neighbors to say to
the world and the leaders who will come to the UN for the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty:

• We want a Nuclear Free Future!

• Fund Human Needs, Not War!

• End the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!

• Protect the planet instead of destroying it with war and nuclear proliferation!

We will begin at 2:00 with a dynamic rally of speakers and performers and greetings from the international delegations.  At 3:30, we will have a spirited march across town to the United Nations
ending with the International Peace & Music Festival where there
will be music from around the world as well as tents and tables that
will provide information and organizing resources so that we can
continue our work for a safe, nuclear-free, peaceful and just world
for all!

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to Address International Conference at Riverside Church

On the eve of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, United Nations
Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon will address the “For a Nuclear
Free, Peaceful, Just and Sustainable World” International
Conference at the Riverside Church.

The UN Secretary-General’s participation in the international conference reflects the urgency
and importance of the engagement of grassroots peace and disarmament
movements in the drive to eliminate nuclear weapons. Ban is urging
the nuclear powers to take immediate steps to fulfill their NPT
disarmament obligation, and has put forward a “Five Point Plan”
calling on them to begin their promised ‘good faith negotiations’
for nuclear weapons
abolition.

http://peaceandjusticenow.org/wordpress/

Sign the petition.


epitaph for this edition of "Truth in Recruiting"

"We've all tried very hard to escape what we have learned in Vietnam. I think Americans have worked extremely hard not to see the criminality that their officials and
their policy makers exhibited."

~US Vietnam veteran Randy Floyd, quoted in the award winning documentary "Hearts & Minds" (1974)

---

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

who we are:

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. On
the web:
http://www.nnomy.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=v... 


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info for TPF counter-recruitment-- contact by phone [phone]

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

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