“Bannering” against upcoming airshow on August 18
By San Diego Veterans for Peace
Each year, San Diego hosts the giant Miramar Air Show, which is attended by up to 500,000 people.
This air show is typical of many other air shows around the country in that it attempts to glorify and glamorize war and militarism, as well as being an excellent opportunity for defense contractors and the overall military industrial complex to sell products which lead to the deaths and injuries of so many people on earth.
The San Diego Veterans For Peace, with veteran members of all five services, is opposed to these “war shows” and is asking the public to stay home and to provide more wholesome entertainment to their children and families than the Miramar Air Show provides.
The Miramar Air Show:
- Glorifies war with an exciting and colorful show of speed, power and noise.
- Celebrates the skills and machinery that exist to kill, maim and destroy.
- Misuses taxpayer’s money for entertainment and defense industry marketing and sales.
- Is dangerous – 10% of Blue Angel’s pilots have been killed in accidents. Miramar jets have already crashed in San Diego neighborhoods.
- Serves as a misleading recruiting tool for our unsuspecting youth.
Over the next 5 years San Diego Veterans for Peace intend to encourage the public to recognize their exposure to skillful propaganda and eventually lose interest in the Miramar Air Show.
We will work to steer the public to resist attending … in sufficient numbers to make the show not worth the time, effort, risk and expense.
Our goal is to effectively shut down the Miramar Air Show due to non-participation.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Great article, Dave. Bob would have agreed with you 100%.
What a great article. I never thought about the airshow in this way. Thank you San Diego Veterans for Peace. The Military industrial complex is something everyone should be concerned about. Too much money “Halliburton anyone?” flows to huge contractors from our tax dollars to make them rich by waging war.
Glorifies war? IF we are stopping things that glorify war there goes the news, movies, video games, politicians, and American Society in general.
Congratulations SD Veterans For Peace! This so-called show is so obsolete, so irrelevant, so unnecessary. There were recent calculations how many millions are spent on jet fuel during the 3 show days. For what exactly? So that the audience can say Oh and Ah in-between 2 bites of hot dogs? Who are they trying to impress? Residents between Kearny Mesa and Carmel Mountain go thru hell for 3 days of constant unbearable noise and downright fear that one of them will plunge on to their homes. Anyone remembers that clown in during his training flight over Universal City, had an awful training record, jetted out and let the plane crash into a house, killing a whole family of Korean immigrants – then City and DoD haggled over the compensation for the surviving husband who was at work. Is this what we’re waiting for every time this show of force, vanity and arrogance comes to town every year?
“Anyone remembers that clown in during his training flight over Universal City, had an awful training record, jetted out and let the plane crash into a house, killing a whole family of Korean immigrants ”
That “clown” was LT Neubauer. He was a student pilot at the time under the instruction of VMFAT 101. He was ORDERED to attempt to land the plane at MCAS Miramar as opposed to North Island. You know this already. You also know he was ORDERED to ditch his plane after the 2nd engine stopped.
As far as the residents going thought hell, they moved to that area knowing full well there’s a Marine air base and the existence of the annual air show. Whether or not it should continue is one thing but no one in that area should be surprised by its existence.
Also, you’re lying about saying he had an awful training record.
Truly, it is past time to put an end to this “show”. Ejaculating over window-shattering planes over our heads is the thing of the long-gone past. How much kerosene is exactly spent to impress the public? Who is this public anyway? The same ones who want to “make us great again”? We thank and salute our military for their service but this jurassic display of air-muscles is a waste and it is an imminent danger for all of North County. Recruiting few boys and girls over 3 days is not worth the millions spent and definitely worth the potential risk of crashing on people’s homes (as they already did in La Jolla recently!)
Way to go, SD Vets for Peace!
I thought statements/protests for peace were passe in these days of constant war, but this is a good one.
Over 50% of the federal budget goes for “defense”. No wonder “we” “can’t” have universal health care nor roads/infrastructure that aren’t falling down, let alone well-funded schools. Or, to mention yesterday’s articles, take care of our poor and homeless.
So, another military plane crashed, this time in Las Vegas, pilot ejected, the plane crashed 1 mile away from the air base…nobody knows yet if people on the ground were hurt or houses destroyed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-latest-pilot-ok-after-military-weapons-school-exercise/2016/08/18/502a54b2-6568-11e6-b4d8-33e931b5a26d_story.html