Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for Feb 2011

[Tony Nuspl]

Truth in Recruiting - "Don't Believe the Hype!" -


Lead Story from the past month's news:

A decorated Army reserve officer and former clandestine intelligence agent quietly sues the Pentagon
--Lt. Col. Shaffer claims the Pentagon has tried to censor his story of the U.S. boondoggle in Afghanistan



Here’s a Fahrenheit 451 evocation for you – men in fatigues burning (or shredding) thousands of copies of a fellow soldiers’ memoirs.

quote:
"When I heard they were going to destroy copies of my book I said, ‘This doesn’t make sense, this is unheard of.’ I have never heard of this level of incidence in terms of them going after a book."
~Lt Col. Shaffer, author of Operation Dark Heart

page 1

featured op-ed
Women in Combat:  Equal Opportunity Meat Grinder
--Kelley B. Vlahos addresses the dark side of the shock integration that began 10 years ago

related story:  Think the Peace Corps is any better?
Peace Corps Gang Rape: Volunteer Says U.S. Agency Ignored Warnings
---ABC News Investigation Finds More Than 1,000 Rapes, Sexual Assaults Since 2000

featured song-of-the-month:
"Mrs Sullivan" by the band Caroline Spine
YouTube - Caroline Spine-Mrs Sullivan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi8wMWInVFs

facts & figures:
"We regret to inform you that the Navy will be keeping your sons away."  All five of them.

The Sullivan brothers were on the USS Juneau (CL-52) that was sunk during the battle of Guadalcanal

sidebar:
Spike in suicides for Army National Guard, Reserve
--twice as many self-inflicted deaths last year than the year before among the Army National Guard and Reserve

file under: blown to bits by fertilizer
Number of U.S. casualties from roadside bombs in Afghanistan skyrocketed from 2009 to 2010
--The number of U.S. troops killed by roadside bombs in Afghanistan soared by 60 percent last year, while the number of those wounded almost tripled, new U.S. military statistics show.

facts & figures:
US Orders Biggest Defense Cuts Since Before 9/11
--eventually, this should result in reductions of up to 47,000 troops from the Army and Marine Corps forces - roughly 6 percent shrinkage

featured video:  on the House floor
Ron Paul on the Fiscal Effects of Our Wars
-- file under: "A multitude of unintended consequences" including an insolvent country

file under:  Increasingly irrelevant
Could the Marines be Disbanded?
--Sec'y Gates makes deeps cuts in Marines, due to questions over its usefulness in 21st Century

facts & figures:
Gates has suggested cutting the U.S. Marines' numbers — not just their weapons. Gates wants to reduce the Corps by some 15,000 to 20,000 in the coming years.

sidebar:
Marines to train in mock city as big as San Diego

featured op/ed
I Don’t Like Ike : Fifty Years of the Military-Industrial Complex
Eisenhower vastly expanded the garrison state.
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
--from The American Conservative magazine

featured Game4Change:
Cool School - Where Peace Rules
-a conflict resolution game for ages 5 to 7, for an alternative curriculum

The game is totally free. You can download it online.

page 2

Army deploys  soldiers accused of felonies
--leaving victims, judges, to wait for court date

AWOL Fort Riley soldier seeks return to U.S.
--conscientious objector took refuge in Argentina, rather than serve in illegal wars and endless occupation of foreign lands

follow up:
US military investigates own 'death squad': U.S. soldiers accused of murdering Afghans
--Brigadier general to conduct review of 5th Stryker brigade as evidence emerges of widespread complicity in deaths

file under: S.N.A.F.U
'Stop loss' bonuses go unpaid to 35,000 soldiers
--forced against their will to remain in the military, but never paid for the extra time

file under: Laws not Men
Former Commander of Headquarters Company at Quantico Objects to Treatment of Bradley Manning
--Quantico VA commander bringing disgrace on the Marines, torturing man presumed innocent

follow up on TBI
DOD Fails to Cover Treatments for Injured Soldiers
--Senator sends letter asking for more reliable studies into therapy options for traumatic brain injuries

file under: hopped up and strung out
Report: 35% of Soldiers Face Addiction in Wounded-Care Battalions
--On the way to becoming ex-soldiers, many abuse drugs, both prescribed and illegal

file under: the extra expense of mercenaries, and private contractors
Army Gives 4,200 Jobs to Contractors that are Meant for Federal Employees
--positions granted to private contractors should have legally gone instead to U.S. government workers, either because the duties are inherently governmental or constitute “unauthorized personal services.”

facts & figures:
TPF query: Still looking for a cost breakdown explaining how much more these private contractors cost the U.S. taxpayer.  Do you have the figures?  Do you know whether the G.A.O. has them?

file under: those who live by the sword die by the sword
Plaintiffs against Blackwater/Xe Cannot Afford Arbitration Costs
--Blackwater Suit Tossed 7 Years After Deaths

file under: threat of friendly fire
Iraq Veteran Sentenced for Violent Threat against Fellow National Guardsmen
--An Iraq War veteran has been sentenced to three years and one month in prison for threatening over the Internet to shoot members of his Florida National Guard unit.


backpage

file under: games with guns gone bad
German soldier messing around with a gun shot and killed comrade in prank
--previously the Bundeswehr tried to pass of the death/murder as a suicide

also in German news:
Captain of German navy training ship dismissed by Defence Minister
--development on the tails of an alleged "mutiny" on board the German navy training ship Gorch Fock

file under: inquiry in U.K. into war of aggression waged by Prime Minister
Families reject Blair apology over Iraq dead
--former Prime Minister Tony Blair offered an emotional apology for the deaths of soldiers and civilians in Iraq, as he testified to Britain's inquiry into the war.
--Blair's administration has been repeatedly criticized for allegedly overstating the case for war.

quote:
"Your lies killed my son !"
~Rose Gentle, whose 19-year-old son Gordon Gentle was killed while serving in Basra, southern Iraq, in 2006, shouted as Blair completed about four hours of testimony.

file under: the cowardly war
Relatives of Pakistani Drone Victims to Sue CIA
--in Islamabad, Pakistan, accusations fly that the U.S. unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are creating more civilian casualties than anything

related story:
Mass Protests in North Waziristan Against US Drone Strikes
--Thousands of Tribesmen Protest Continued Killings

featured book review:
‘And No One Wants to Know’: Israeli Soldiers on the Occupation
--The publication in Jerusalem of Occupation of the Territories: Israeli Soldiers’ Testimonies 2000-2010— provides unprecedented first-hand accounts by over one hundred Israeli soldiers of their experiences while serving in the IDF.
--file under: An eye-for-an-eye makes the whole world blind

update on D.P. (displaced persons) due to U.S. invasion of Iraq
Iraq refugee returns fell in 2010: UNHCR
BAGHDAD — Fewer Iraqis displaced by war returned to their homes in 2010 than in the previous year

related event: Tulsa Peace Fellowship anti-war monthly vigil
epitaph for this edition of "Truth in Recruiting"

“Bombing a country at the same time you are offering it aid is as morally repulsive as beating up a kid in an alley and stopping to ask for a kiss.”
~Norman Mailer, d.2007

 

---

The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for Feb 2011
lead story

Lt. Col Shaffer vs. the Pentagon

An interview with the embattled author of Operation Dark Heart
by Kelley B. Vlahos, January 14, 2011

While the news and debate over government secrecy has been all but dominated by WikiLeaks, a decorated Army reserve officer and former clandestine intelligence agent has quietly sued the Pentagon, claiming it has tried to censor his story of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

As you may recall, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer’s personal accounts in Operation Dark Heart were supposed to blow the lid off what he charges were devastating mistakes and miscalculations by the Defense Intelligence Agency (he was an intelligence officer for 25 years) and the U.S. Army, before and after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. In fact, he’s said he can recall the "exact moment in time" where the war "went off the rails" and "into the ditch it’s in right now." 

That was before the Pentagon got involved in the eleventh hour, bought up most of the only copies of the first edition in print, destroyed them, then forced the publisher into redacting large, critical portions of the book before it could print the second edition in 2010.

In an interview with Antiwar.com, Shaffer explains how the Pentagon reacted "emotionally" to his book, and how the military has been retaliating against him. He also says he believes the military is trying desperately to control how Americans perceive the war – and using the interests of "national security" to do it.

"We can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, that one hundred percent of the redacting was done not to create a sense of security for the American public, but to obfuscate what is really going on (in the war)," Shaffer said. But by destroying the books and announcing it to the world, it brought more attention to what Shaffer has to say than ever, he charged.

"There is a thirst for knowledge, that is what is going on." 

Shaffer said that as an Army Reserve officer, he followed the rules of the Army Reserve and had his book thoroughly vetted and approved all the way up the chain of command. Furthermore his ghostwriter and researcher Jacqueline Salmon, a former Washington Post writer, combed the manuscript fully to ensure everything in it could be found in the public domain. The Army Reserve officers vetting the manuscript found no classified information in it either. 

Nevertheless, the Pentagon, unable to stop the scheduled release of the first edition, spent almost $50,000 to buy the remaining 9,500 copies in print and proceeded to destroy them.

It’s clear to that there were "incendiary bombs" in the first edition that would have made the military look pretty bad. Investigative journalist Peter Lance, author of Triple Cross, and Cover-up, has an excellent write up of the case in the September edition of Playboy (.pdf). 

Shaffer’s book rips the lid off several stories the bureaucrats wanted to suppress: the role of a program named Able Danger in yielding information that could have uncovered the 9/11 plot; Operation Dark Heart, which could have nabbed Al Qaeda’s number two leader; and early indications that Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, actively supported the Taliban. These are the incendiary bombs the censors tried to defuse. And this is the real story of Tony Shaffer’s book.

All three issues were explained in the first edition and removed [by the Pentagon's censors], said Lance. 

http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2011/01/13/lt-col-shaffer-vs-the...

---

The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for Feb 2011
page 1



featured op-ed
Women in Combat: Equal Opportunity Meat Grinder
by Kelley B. Vlahos, January 18, 2011

When asked a question Jan. 6 about finally letting women into combat assignments in the war zone, Army Chief of Staff George W. Casey Jr. said publicly that “we’re looking at revising the policy. … We’ve had some work going on for a while, and that’ll double back up to the secretary, I would think, in the next couple of months.”

This wasn’t just a one-off response, apparently. A week later, the Associated Press wrote that a key military panel was preparing a report that recommends women should be allowed to serve officially in combat duty.

Women now make up some 14 percent of the total Armed Forces and 255,000 of veterans who have served overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq. Truth is, without a draft, the military would not have been able to fight the Long War without them. Women have been flying combat aircraft and serving as military police, gunners, interrogators and prison guards – as close as it gets to the action.

No doubt women are missing out on valuable promotions and short changed in so many other areas. However, as the war zone has been going through a 10-year “shock integration” that they had themselves set into motion, feminists and many proponents of full combat equality for women have been rather quiet about all the bad things that have happened to women precisely because of their desire to be treated “just like men” in war.

It’s this dark side of shock integration that no one seems to want to acknowledge, and will likely get short-shrift in the looming debate over women in combat. For example, the number of sex assaults perpetuated against female soldiers by their male counterparts go up every year. According to a 2008 study, 15 percent – one in seven – of every female vet who sought medical VA medical care, had experienced some sort of sexual trauma in-theater. These women were 59 percent more at risk of a mental disorder, the study said, but mounting evidence indicates that women are getting less adequate treatment for their psychological problems when the get home from war.

Mothers – including an estimated 1,800 single mothers overseas – are pulling more than one tour of duty, and in many cases, they risk nasty custody battles and worse, losing their children to other people, including state foster care, when they are gone. Destructive relationships, adultery and the sexual dynamic among male and female members stationed together is yet another taboo subject. Data on the number of overseas pregnancies is elusive, but it seems to be enough of problem that one general tried to pass punitive measures last year to deter it.

Meanwhile, when female soldiers get pregnant stateside, they can be forced to deploy within four months of giving birth. They are at a greater risk of getting divorced. Then there is the institutional discrimination, which has never really been addressed as the Army has rushed into wartime roles with any warm body it could find without ensuring the male-dominated climate wouldn’t recoil and put women systematically, and culturally on constant defense.

[I]f we have had nearly 10 years of “shock integration” in which women have been serving in unofficial combat, cheek-to-jowl with their male counterparts, pulling multiple tours of duty, why don’t we have more comprehensive data and analysis on how it’s all working out?

Probably because, as described in part above, it’s not going to help anyone’s political cause to know. Especially the military.

http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2011/01/17/women-in-combat-equal...

Peace Corps Gang Rape: Volunteer Says U.S. Agency Ignored Warnings
ABC News Investigation Finds More Than 1,000 Rapes, Sexual Assaults Since 2000

By Anna Schecter and Brian Ross
Jan. 12, 2011

More than 1,000 young American women have been raped or sexually assaulted in the last decade while serving as Peace Corps volunteers in foreign countries, an ABC News 20/20 investigation has found.

In some cases, victims say, the Peace Corps has ignored safety concerns and later tried to blame the women who were raped for bringing on the attacks.

"I have two daughters now and I would never ever let them join the Peace Corps," said Adrianna Ault Nolan of New York, who was raped while serving in Haiti.

She is one of six rape and sexual assault victims who agreed to tell their stories, in hopes the Peace Corps will do a better job of volunteer training and victim counseling. The report will be broadcast Friday night on 20/20.

In the most brutal attack, Jess Smochek, 29, of Pennsylvania was gang raped in Bangladesh in 2004 by a group of young men after she says Peace Corps officials in the country ignored her pleas to re-locate her.

"They all took turns raping me," she told ABC News. "They raped me with their bodies,. They raped me with foreign objects."

Smochek says the group began to stalk her and tried to kiss her and touch her from the very first day she arrived at the city where she was assigned.

"Every day we felt unsafe. And we reported everything, we just kept reporting," she said in an interview with five other former volunteers who also were rape or sexual assault victims.

She says the gang rape took place just hours after a Peace Corps safety official filed a report with the local police but again ignored her pleas for re-assignment.

She says the young men knew she had complained to the police.

"They slammed me against the wall and just started threatening me, they're calling me a filthy American whore," she said. "'We told you to stop going to the police. And now we have to kill you,'" she said.

"I was in so much pain that I just told them, 'Just kill me. Please. Just do it.'" Smochek was left unconscious in a back alley.

According to the figures, there is a yearly average of 22 rapes in the Peace Corps.
 
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/peace-corps-gang-rape-volunteer-jess-...

featured song-of-the-month:
"Mrs Sullivan" by the band Caroline Spine
YouTube - Caroline Spine-Mrs Sullivan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi8wMWInVFs

facts & figures:
"We regret to inform you that the Navy will be keeping your sons away."  All five of them.

The Sullivan brothers were on the USS Juneau (CL-52) that was sunk during the battle of Guadalcanal

BIO: Thomas and Alleta Sullivan gave up their 5 sons in a WW2 tragedy that has never been forgotten. Sullivan, a freight conductor on the Illinois Central Railroad, and his wife were the proud parents of George-27, Francis-25, Joseph-23, Madison-22, and Albert-19, all of whom worked at Waterloo's Rath Packing Co. Only Al was married, with a son.When Pearl Harbor was bombed on 12/7/1941, and 1 of their pals died, the lads decided to enlist in the Navy. George and Frank had already served 1 hitch. Although it was Navy policy to separate brothers, the Sullivans enlisted on 1/3/1942, with the provision that they stay together. Their deaths came during a ferocious enemy attack off the Solomon Islands during the battle for Guadalcanal on 11/13/1942. A torpedo from a Japanese sub struck the USS Juneau and the ship exploded and sank quickly. Almost 700 men aboard died in the attack. 11 survived.Witnesses later said Frank, Joe, and Matt died instantly and that Albert drowned the 2nd day. A badly wounded George was able to climb aboard a life raft and survived 4-5days before slipping into shark-infested waters.

Lyrics:

It's not hard to reach back to the day
underneath an Iowa sun
Running to the tower of Waterloo, looking
for the Sullivan train to come
His five boys would run to the top
and salute him as he went by
First we'd wave hello
Then we'd wave goodbye

It's not hard to reach back to the days
after the attack on Pearl
Overnight my buddies turned into men,
running out of time for games and girls
The Sullivan boys were not overlooked
Uncle Sam calling each by name
The very next day they left on a mystery train

Say goodbye, bye, bye Mrs. Sullivan
Don't you cry, cry, cry
"We regret to inform you
the Navy is keeping your sons away"
All five, five, five
so keep your blue star in the window

It's not hard to reach back to her smile,
when she received their letter
The letters, they sounded generally the same
it said: "if they couldn't be home,
at least they were together on a
mighty fighting battleship,
somewhere in the South Pacific"
The letters never got much more specific

Say goodbye, bye, bye Mrs. Sullivan
And don't you cry, cry, cry
"We regret to inform you
the Navy is keeping you sons away"
All five, five, five
so keep your blue star in the window

It's not hard to reach back to the day
when the war finally came home
Uncle Sam he'll send you a telegram,
so he doesn't have to tell you over the phone
I heard she cracked up, when they found
out what the war had cost,
And all five of her boys were lost

Say goodbye Mrs. Sullivan
Go ahead and cry
"We regret to inform you that all your sons
have passed away"
All five
So change you blue star to gold

All the blue stars... change them to gold.

acoustic version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFoVjFd_two

sidebar:
Spike in suicides for Army National Guard, Reserve
--twice as many self-inflicted deaths last year than the year before among the Army National Guard and Reserve

Military officials are attempting to downplay the significance of the massive increase in suicides amongst Army National Guard and Reserve soldiers, insisting that the near doubling of the rate at which they make their lives has nothing to do with the military as such.

http://news.antiwar.com/2011/01/19/national-guard-reserve-suicides-...


Number of U.S. casualties from roadside bombs in Afghanistan skyrocketed from 2009 to 2010

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Staff Writer
January 25, 2011

The number of U.S. troops killed by roadside bombs in Afghanistan soared by 60 percent last year, while the number of those wounded almost tripled, new U.S. military statistics show.

All told, 268 U.S. troops were killed by the improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, in 2010, about as many as in the three previous years combined, according to the figures, obtained by The Washington Post. More than 3,360 troops were injured, an increase of 178 percent over the year before.

Military officials said an increase in attacks was expected, given the surge in U.S. and NATO troops, as well as the intensified combat. Even so, the spike comes despite a fresh wave of war-zone countermeasures, including mine-clearing machines, fertilizer-sniffing dogs and blimps with sophisticated spy cameras.

Afghan insurgents planted 14,661 IEDs last year, a 62 percent increase over 2009 and more than three times as many as the year before.

"The narrative has been that we're losing the IED fight in Afghanistan, and that's not accurate," said Army Col. George B. Shuplinkov, chief of counter-IED programs for U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. "The whole idea isn't to destroy the network. That's maybe impossible. It's to disrupt them."

The bomb attacks have risen steadily since 2005, when the Taliban began copying tactics used by insurgents in Iraq.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/25/AR2...

US Orders Biggest Defense Cuts Since Before 9/11

By Thom Shanker and Christopher Drew, The New York Times

06 January 11

The White House has ordered the Pentagon to squeeze almost all growth from its spending over the next five years, which will require eventually shrinking the Army and Marine Corps and seeking controversial increases in the fees paid by for retired, working-age veterans for their health insurance, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday.

The reductions of up to 47,000 troops from the Army and Marine Corps forces - roughly 6 percent shrinkage - would be the first since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, reversing the trend ever since. They will be made easier by the withdrawal under way from Iraq, and will only begin in 2015 - just as Afghan forces are to take over the security mission there according to agreements with NATO.

The Pentagon's proposed operating budget for 2012 is expected to be about $553 billion, which will still reflect real growth, even though it is $13 billion less than expected. But then the Pentagon budget will begin a decline in the rate of growth for two years, and then will stay flat - even with inflation - for fiscal years 2015 and 2016. Over five years the reductions would amount to $78 billion. (The Pentagon operating budget is separate from a contingency fund that pays for the military's combat and stability efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.)

The Army's current active-duty end strength is 569,600, and the Marine Corps, which like the Army has grown in numbers since 2001, has just over 202,000 in its active component.

A battle over increasing Tricare fees will pit the efforts of the Pentagon to contain the exploding cost of health care for eligible retirees against the pain and emotions of those who say they have already "paid up front" with service in uniform. Congress has been reluctant to raise those fees.

Total health care costs for the Pentagon, which is the nation's single largest employer, top $50 billion a year, a tenth of its budget and about the same amount that it is spending this year on the war in Iraq. Ten years ago, health care cost the Pentagon $19 billion; five years from now it is projected to cost $65 billion.

But Tricare fees have not increased since 1995. Mr. Gates was expected to press for increasing the cost of health insurance premiums and spot fees for retirees and their families, not for those on active duty or military retirees 65 and older.

http://www.readersupportednews.org/news-section2/323-95/4514-us-ord...

January 25, 2011
The Marine Corps is at a crossroads
by Tom Bowman, NPR

The "Soldiers of the Sea" have been fighting on land for a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan.The Corps' amphibious troop carrier has just been canceled; its new fighter jet was postponed.

And the Marine Corps itself is finishing up its own review, asking this basic question: What should the Marine Corps look like in the 21st Century?

Gates stopped the Marines from going ahead with their Joint Strike Fighter, a stealthy warplane. And he canceled the Marines' amphibious troop carrier, known as the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle or EFV.

"The EFV, originally conceived during the Reagan administration, has already consumed more than $3 billion to develop, and will cost another $12 billion to build, all for a fleet with the capacity to put 4,000 troops ashore," he said.

That's a lot of money to get a few thousand Marines on the beach. So the Marines will update their decades-old amphibious troop carrier instead.

The cuts and delays to the Marine Corps' budget are symbolic of a larger debate about the role of the Marine Corps in future warfare. Many potential adversaries have sophisticated long-range missiles that could strike the Marines in their landing craft long before they reach the shores.

So Gates already has said it's unlikely the Marines will be hitting the beaches like they did at Iwo Jima.

And defense analyst Loren Thompson says that raises questions about the relevance of the Marines.

"If the Marine Corps is no longer going to do opposed landing on enemy beaches in the face of hostile fire, then its role will be significantly diminished in the future," he says.

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/25/133209312/marine-corps-to-defense-sec...

sidebar:
Marines to train in mock city as big as San Diego
AP
Jan 25, 2011

TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. (AP) -- A 1,560-building mock city that's roughly the size of San Diego has risen in the Southern California desert.

The $170 million Marine Corps urban training center at the Twentynine Palms military base is some 130 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

http://ap.stripes.com/dynamic/stories/U/US_LARGE_MOCK_CITY?SITE=DCS...


featured op/ed
I Don’t Like Ike
He vastly expanded the garrison state.
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
--from The American Conservative magazine

[T]he entire Cold War ideology was invented by Harry Truman and his advisers in 1948 as: 1.) a political trick to keep from losing more congressional backing, 2.) a way to circumvent political pressure for postwar disarmament, and 3.) a method to maintain U.S. industrial dependence on government spending, particularly with regard to American corporations operating overseas.

It was an unprecedented form of peacetime socialism, designed to appeal to big business, and Eisenhower became its spokesman. Savvy libertarians knew exactly what was going on and supported Cold War opponent Robert Taft for the Republican nomination in 1952. But the nomination was effectively stolen by Eisenhower, with massive establishment backing. He repaid his backers with his support and expansion of Truman’s program.

It’s true that his farewell speech warned against “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” and this is the part that people remember. But Eisenhower himself entrenched this very machinery in American life, virtually inventing the peacetime armaments industry and imposing military regimentation on the country. His approach was fundamentally un-American; or, another way to put it, he redefined what it meant to be an American. Instead of a free people, he forged a program for the permanent militarization of the country.

The evidence for this militarization begins with massive increases in military spending. As a percent of total budget outlays, military spending went from 30 percent in 1950 to 70 percent in 1957. This was the largest peacetime buildup in American history. During a dramatic economic expansion, the president worked to maintain a high military spending level as a percentage of the rising GDP—establishing the modern precedent that military socialism is integral to the economic life of the country. Spending rose in absolute terms every year he was president, from $358 billion in 1952 to $585 billion in the last budget for which he bore responsibility in 1962, a whopping 63.4 percent increase during the Eisenhower years.

http://www.amconmag.com/blog/ikes-last-stand/i-dont-like-ike/


featured G4C (game for change):
Cool School - Where Peace Rules
Human Development Scientists and Computer Game Developers design a Video Game That Teaches Conflict Resolution To Kids
a game review, from Science Daily

December 1, 2008 — Human development scientists and computer game developers designed a video game that teaches kids how to resolve conflicts peacefully amongst themselves. Inanimate objects, such as pencils and erasers, come to life to lead players through a series of common scenarios in which arguments are about to occur. The player is prompted for the non-violent solution and is rewarded for choosing correctly.

Amid growing concern surrounding the effects violent video games have on children, a new computer game could be the alternative parents have been waiting for.

Kids who play together also argue together. Fights over games, toys and friendships are common, but when arguments heat up, it's time to solve them before things get out of hand. A new computer game teaches kids how to solve playground and classroom quarrels that kids face every day in a positive way -- without fists and fights.

"It helps them resolve conflicts by giving them a chance to think about what happens in the course of an actual conflict episode," said Melanie Killen, Ph.D., a human development expert at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md.

The game, called "Cool School: Where Peace Rules" -- designed by a team of human development scientists, teachers, government mediators, computer game developers and animators -- helps kids solve school violence and bullying while still having fun.

"You're learning things, but at the same time it's having fun with it," said student Ellen Yaffe.

Animated objects come to life and depict common conflicts. Kids experiment on how to settle each argument. Players have the option of threatening the peer, telling the teacher, forgetting about it or talking things through.

Players are rewarded for choosing positive solutions to resolve conflicts with letters they collect to win.

"What this game is doing is it's empowering children to make choices and decisions and to see what unfolds based on their own decisions," Dr. Killen said.

Parents and teachers praise the new game, and kids love it for their own reasons.

"I think they make it very realistic with like the names and how the school looks," student Jacob Tycko told Ivanhoe.

The best part is the game is totally free. You can download it online by visiting http://www.curriki.com and searching for "cool school."

ABOUT THE GAME: "Cool School: Where Peace Rules" came about when the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service asked a Human Development professor to help them design a videogame to help five to seven year old children deal with conflicts in a peaceful manner. The project relied on animators to create the visual environments, and for the professor to create scenarios that will help kids learn to resolve problems without resorting to violence. The game uses a wide variety of charactersýfrom erasers to desks to books and basketballsýto lead players through 52 different scenarios.To learn more about the game or to play it go to (http://www.rtassoc.com/gm_coolschool.html).

TIPS ON STOPPING BULLIES: This list is adapted from material on the website of the United States Health Resources and Services Administration. http://stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov/

DO:

    * Tell an adult
    * Join clubs and groups where you will meet other kids
    * Support someone else who is being bullied

DO NOT:

    * Think it's your fault.
    * Fight back or bully a person back.
    * Reply to online bullying

The American Sociological Association contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=103004

 

 

 
related upcoming event, in Tulsa:

Tulsa Peace Fellowship
Our next civic action is Saturday Feb 5th 2011, 12 noon, @ corner of 41st & Yale, in Tulsa.
Signs in keeping with "U.S. Out of Afghanistan" or "Support Bradley Manning" are welcome.

---

The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for Feb 2011
masthead

TPF needs your support.

You can donate online via PINC (pull down menu for US$ donations)
http://www.pincgiving.com/donate/organization/1202854

Or, please mail a check or money order made out to the"Tulsa Peace Fellowship" to :

The Tulsa Peace Fellowship
c/o UU Church of the Restoration,
1314 N. Greenwood Ave, Tulsa Oklahoma. 74106-4854
Find on a map: Google Maps link
Contributions to TPF are not tax deductible at the present time.

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.

You can find a list of our board members and advisors here:
https://tulsapeacefellowship.ning.com/forum/topics/the-membership-o...

"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... 

Tulsa Peace Fellowship is open to unaffiliated voters, members of third parties, Progressives, Libertarians, Green Party members, Democrats, Republicans, etc. 

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 regularly scheduled business meeting of the Fellowship will be held
 on Thursday, Febuary 10th 2011, 6:15 PM – 7:30 PM @ the UU Church of the Restoration, in Tulsa, just north of downtown
--including members from other local non-partisan groups such as TulsaTruth.org, the Center for Racial Justice in Tulsa, the Tulsa Interfaith Allliance, Pax Christi, and the Quakers

Come join us!   Especially parents, guardians, and students in the Tulsa Public Schools system who are interested in countering the presence of military recruiters on school grounds.

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.