Talk about a real bad coincidence.

The American people have been subdued by corporate media, a technological BEAST. This is new to our generation, as no one has ever fought two wars that so usurped their Liberties at once without paying a price at home.

I think you are right to call out wars… Wars of Intellect… Wars of Liberty… Wars that Never Turn Violent…

Outside of those ‘wars’ I listed in the above three items, I don’t ever see any so-called ‘need’ for any kind of war.

It’s time We, the American People sat down and had a chat… Place the Constitution in front of them and have a ‘chat’. A National Endeavor to understand that Liberty is at stake!

“”130,000,000 Declarations of Independence and 130,000,000 US Constitutions… Read All About US”"

“”130,000,000 Declarations of Independence and 130,000,000 US Constitutions… Read All About US”"

HOWARD ZINN: Well, we thought bombing missions were over. The war was about to come to an end. This was in April of 1945, and remember the war ended in early May 1945. This was a few weeks before the war was going to be over, and everybody knew it was going to be over, and our armies were past France into Germany, but there was a little pocket of German soldiers hanging around this little town of Royan on the Atlantic coast of France, and the Air Force decided to bomb them. Twelve hundred heavy bombers, and I was in one of them, flew over this little town of Royan and dropped napalm—first use of napalm in the European theater.

And we don’t know how many people were killed or how many people were terribly burned as a result of what we did. But I did it like most soldiers do, unthinkingly, mechanically, thinking we’re on the right side, they’re on the wrong side, and therefore we can do whatever we want, and it’s OK. And only afterward, only really after the war when I was reading about Hiroshima from John Hersey and reading the stories of the survivors of Hiroshima and what they went through, only then did I begin to think about the human effects of bombing. Only then did I begin to think about what it meant to human beings on the ground when bombs were dropped on them, because as a bombardier, I was flying at 30,000 feet, six miles high, couldn’t hear screams, couldn’t see blood. And this is modern warfare.

In modern warfare, soldiers fire, they drop bombs, and they have no notion, really, of what is happening to the human beings that they’re firing on. Everything is done at a distance. This enables terrible atrocities to take place. And I think, reflecting back on that bombing raid and thinking of that in Hiroshima and all the other raids on civilian cities and the killing of huge numbers of civilians in German and Japanese cities, the killing of 100,000 people in Tokyo in one night of fire-bombing, all of that made me realize war, even so-called good wars against fascism like World War II, wars don’t solve any fundamental problems, and they always poison everybody on both sides. They poison the minds and souls of everybody on both sides. We’re seeing that now in Iraq, where the minds of our soldiers are being poisoned by being an occupying army in a land where they are not wanted. And the results are terrible.

# # #

The following url link is to where you can read the transcript, listen, or watch the program, broadcast January 28, 2010:

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/28/howard_zinn_1922_2010_a_tribute

The “largest lie,” wrote hisorian Howard Zinn who died yesterday at age 87, is that “everything the United States does is to be pardoned because we are engaged in a ‘war on terrorism.’”

“This ignores the fact that war is itself terrorism, that the barging into people’s homes and taking away family members and subjecting them to torture, that is terrorism, that invading and bombing other countries does not give us more security but less security.”

In an article published previously in “The Long Term View” magazine of the Massachusetts School of Law, Zinn said that in the Fallujah area of Iraq Knight Ridder reporters found there was no Ba’athist or Sunni conspiracy against the U.S., “only people ready to fight because their relatives had been hurt or killed, or they themselves had been humiliated by home searches and road stops.”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17272

g

Having is criminal record, a real criminal record classified didn’t work with everyone.

Nobody has their criminal record classified unless they have a criminal record.

Check.

g

“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of their leaders and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.”
http://www.mikeferner.org/what-else-can-we-do

thanks. Howard was a reader and supporter and critic of my syntax and spelling. more back channel.

g

Fine, fine piece not only on Howard but what it means to apply his work in the real world. That’s one of the things that endeared him to many millions of people–his research and writing were always meant to have relevance beyond academia. Now, if more of us would just apply it!

Here’s VFP’s salute to a longtime member and citizen of the world, Howard Zinn.

Mike Ferner
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/VFP_salutes_howard_zinn.vp.html

Many of those who have lived with harsh injustices
Know the value of truth and Justice and treasure their gifts.

Man has basic needs for air, shelter, water, food and the need to be accepted.

Until We, as a people, return to our roots and remember who we are as a people of a free nation and what that nation stands for….

Until more of those who have knowledge have the honor and courage to speak truth…

The needs of man will continue to be turned into weapons against fellow mankind for the personal gain of the few.

Free generations not truly understanding and taking the freedoms their forefathers lived and died for – for granted – are held and blinded by the bonds of comfort, apathy and complacency and shall not be a free people indefinitely.

Though our voices may not be as articulate, and clumsy as they may be,
May they continue to speak to Justice, Liberty and Freedom…
And not wander from the truth.

For it is the truths held within our Constitution that will lead us back to where we came from and where we need to go.

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