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Work 4 Peace,Hold All Life Sacred,Eliminate Violence! I am on my mobile version of the door-to-door, going town-to-town holding readings/gatherings/discussions of my book "But What Can I Do?" This is my often neglected blog mostly about my travels since 9/11 as I engage in dialogue and actions. It is steaming with my opinions, insights, analyses toward that end of holding all life sacred, dismantling the empire and eliminating violence while creating the society we want ALL to thrive in

Monday, July 01, 2013

Counter-recruitment tips - to be continued

People seem to use the same uninformed, misinformed or downright lies to justify recruiting our vulnerable youth.

Freedom of Speech: I really love when some fool tries to claim that the military has the right of freedom of speech. They further show their ignorance when they smirk and say, they fought for your right of free speech, now you have to give them their right.

How stupid are some people? I try to hide my disdain when I inform people no, the 1st amendment did NOT give the military - nor corporations - the right of free speech. Of course, can you blame some not-paying-attention u.s.americans for their ignorant confusion?

After all, the supreme court decided last year money is speech, therefore corporations have free speech. So maybe these uninformed folks are truly confused.

But I tell them the 1st amendment is for the PEOPLE, NOT the military. It was put into the constitution for us, the people.

In fact, the military is the ONLY employer in this nation that is legally allowed to eliminate free speech - and all constitutional rights - of those who join.

So NO, the military does NOT have "free speech". In fact, when they set up their recruiting booths, they have highly paid speech - paid for by our tax dollars.

No draft, stop loss is over: the earnest, young, very clean cut in his spotless form-fitting tee-shirt and pressed jeans, very white, and very gay male tried to tell me stop loss was over - which of course meant that he knew that at some point we were 'drafting' soldiers in a way unique to this war against Iraq & Afghanistan - by forcing national guard and reserve folks to re-up, re-deploy, re-enter war zones.

I tried to tell him of course we no longer need stop loss - we have successfully undercut funding for education, undermined choices many young people used to have, and vastly increased entry-level soldier pay to entice, cajole, fool young people into thinking the military is their ONLY choice.

And in many cases, targeted young men are given the choice: jail or military; as soldiers deployed once or twice are given the choice: recruit or get re-deployed.



Set up your own table

Go to the politicians, the military is helpless, politicians make the wars:

Choice: