Category: Military

The times are a – changin’. They certainly are. NASSCO – with 60% of its workcrew Latino, and located in Barrio Logan, a Mexican-American neighborhood of San Diego – is about to christen its latest Navy cargo ship after Cesar Chavez. The dedication ceremony will occur on Tuesday, May 17th, at NASSCO. The Chavez family will be flying into San Diego for it.

By Jeanette Steele / SignOnSanDiego / April 25, 2011

The Navy’s Third Fleet said it has halted use of time-delay underwater bombs for training in the waters off San Diego after a March 4 incident that killed at least three dolphins.

“Suddenly, a season of peace seems to be warming the world,” the New York Times exulted on the last day of July 1988. Protracted and bloody wars were ending in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia and Nicaragua, and between Iran and Iraq. But the most dramatic development was still to come.

In December 1988, the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, declared the cold war over. “The use or threat of force no longer can or must be an instrument of foreign policy,” he said. “This applies above all to nuclear arms.”

Accused Whistle-blower Now Charged With Capital Offense

By Kathleen Gilberd

Think of yourself as a soldier. Working at a desk job, you see shocking messages, reports and pictures about military activity that seems wrong and sometimes horrifying. And then, one day, you see a video recording of US soldiers laughing as they shoot unarmed civilians from a helicopter.

By David Swanson / opednews.com / February 15, 2011 Whether or not one recklessly and misleadingly includes Social Security and…

Why should we concerned about imperialism and militarism? It’s a suicide pact. That’s the way empires end… ~Chalmers Johnson.

Hat tip to Tanya Winter for the link to this video, Thanks!

by Michael Moore / OpenMike blog

So … it turns out President Eisenhower wasn’t making up all that stuff about the military-industrial complex.

That’s what you’ll conclude if you read Bob Woodward’s new book, Obama’s War.

In fact, after you read Woodward’s book, you’ll split a gut every time you hear a politician or a government teacher talk about “civilian control over the military.”

When I first heard the expression, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, I remember going: “What the hell? Is Clinton not feeling well?”

Now, of course, Bill must have wished for a little Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell back when he idealized out loud: “Is oral sex really sex?” – to which I felt like writing him a letter saying: “Check this out, Willie. If some liquid flies from your body like a rocket heading to lunar terrain and some of it becomes a news story around the world regarding a dress that it has stained and you are feeling no pain, wearing an expression on your face that’s both serene and insane – you have had sex, my man.”

Having experienced more than my share of discrimination, thanks to old Jim Crow, it’s the “less than” aspects of the deal that gnaws at your soul. It’s the everybody else can do it but you can’t and that quickly grows old and remains old.

CITY HEIGHTS, San Diego. In protest of President Obama’s Afghanistan war escalation, a small crowd gathered at the corner of Fairmont and University Avenue to wave signs, chant, and signify their opposition by their presence. Congresswoman Susan Davis, who has offices nearby, was the target of the protest for her pro-war stance.

The protest had been called by San Diego’s Peace and Justice Coalition as “The Day After” demonstration to Obama’s West Point speech where he declared he’s sending 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan.

By Mark Ames / AlterNet / November 6, 2009

It’s hard to pinpoint what’s the most shocking thing about Major Malik Nadal Hasan’s shooting rampage in Fort Hood, Texas. I’ll start with this: there’s nothing all that ground-breaking about it. Happens all the time, it’s just that we’re a nation of amnesiacs who forget all the unpleasantries, and refuse to learn the valuable lessons.

For starters, Fort Hood is located in Killeen, Texas — where one of the deadliest rampage shootings in American history took place in 1991, when an unemployed ex-Navy enlistee ….

In a study published in the Armed Forces Journal in 1971, it was reported that the U.S. military in Vietnam was at that moment at the edge of chaos.

In fact, statistics flowing back to Washington about the American war machine in Vietnam then pointed toward an unimaginable nightmare. Drug use was rampant; desertions stood at 70 per thousand, a modern high; small-scale mutinies or “combat refusals” were at critical, if untabulated, levels; incidents of racial conflict had soared; and strife between “lifers” and draftees was at unprecedented levels.

I am not 100% sure that Adam Lambert, presumed gay but not talking, lost the American Idol crown because of homophobia. I am however 100% sure that Lt. Dan Choi is getting the boot from the US military because he is gay and he is definitely talking.