Category: Veterans

by Jill Castellano & Brad Racino / inewsource / October 1, 2019

Congress will conduct a hearing to investigate a powerful healthcare office in the Department of Veterans Affairs following inewsource stories that exposed the office’s shoddy review of a dangerous San Diego liver study. A new inewsource analysis shows the agency under scrutiny — the VA’s Office of the Medical Inspector — has a long history of performing poor investigations into veterans’ medical care.

by Brad Racino & Jill Castellano / inewsource / May 30, 2019

Two prominent doctors associated with the University of California San Diego and the local VA used blood and stool samples taken from sick veterans to bolster a paper published this month in an academic research journal.

The specimens were not supposed to be used, according to the project’s lead researcher, because they were part of a study that unethically collected biological samples from living subjects without their consent, which investigators called “serious noncompliance.”

Are we helping those most in need?

By David Patterson

Kudos to the Alpha Project and Chelsea Investments for their success getting homeless Veterans into apartments as outlined by Gary Warth, UT San Diego, March 31 2019, “Homeless Vets have New home”.

Great work done by all, but now it’s time to prioritize to get an even more vulnerable population off the streets, women and children.

It may sound unbelievable that we have women and children on the streets but it’s true and frequently we at Veterans For Peace encounter these people while handing out sleeping bags.

Over a month’s time I have encountered dozens of unaccompanied women, 2 different women each with 4 young children including toddlers and a young teen aged couple, cold filthy and according to the female, pregnant. This goes on week after week, month after month with little change in my view. It’s time that we changed our priorities.

by Brad Racino & Jill Castellano / inewsource / February 26, 2019

An internal report from the San Diego VA obtained by inewsource reveals liver samples were taken from sick veterans without their permission for a study that provided no benefit to the patients. It’s the latest development in an ongoing inewsource investigation into a flawed human research study at the La Jolla facility.

The October report found “serious noncompliance occurred” when extra pieces of liver were removed from at least nine veterans. The patients weren’t told those samples would be taken or that it could increase the risk of bleeding.

I know that this restaurant is not in our Ocean Beach / Point Loma area. However, I think that a shout-out should go to them for what they did. What do you think?

My husband – before he passed on – was a member of Veteran’s for Peace. I have kept semi-active in the organization and I think they do some wonderful things.

Today I received this message from Kate Beckwith – a retired Veteran – that hands out sleeping bags with so many others. I think this might be appropriate to repost because it talks about a restaurant – one that should be given plaudits for what they did.

A feel good story about an amazing restaurant…

As my international students and I ate a “turkeyless” dinner on Thanksgiving, I was reminded of the years my family had to wait for my husband to arrive home because he, and other members of Veterans for Peace, were busy distributing sleeping bags, water, and sometimes candy to the homeless living on the streets.

As my students and I discussed the meaning of Thanksgiving, they asked why the vets’ group distributed sleeping bags, how they got them, and who financed them. The students see people sleeping on the streets every day, since their ESL school is downtown. Miki said there are very few homeless in Japan; Lea said that she has not seen any homeless in Switzerland.

By Gilbert Field / Veterans for Peace

Local veterans, friends and supporters from the San Diego Veterans For Peace are in their third year of a five year educational outreach encouraging the public to stay home and not attend the annual Miramar Air Show.

Veterans believe that the Miramar Air Show glorifies war with an exciting show of speed, power and noise. It celebrates the skills and machinery that exist to kill, maim and destroy. The show is very dangerous …. 10% of all Blue Angel pilots have been killed in shows or accidents.

Some local San Diego veterans and VA Hospital nurses will rally Friday against the proposed privatization of VA health care.

Members of the San Diego Veterans For Peace, accompanied by VA nurses and several veterans who receive VA health care at the La Jolla Veterans Hospital, will be holding a joint rally outside of the La Jolla Veterans Hospital, 3350 La Jolla Village Drive, SD, CA 92161 on Friday, April 13th, 2018 from Noon to 1:30 PM.

American Soldiers Killed 504 Vietnamese Civilians Including Many Children – It Could Have Been Worse If Helicopter Pilot Hugh Thompson Hadn’t Landed and Threatened to Shoot Other Americans

In today’s Los Angeles Times, progressive professor Jon Wiener wrote an amazing piece about not only the 50th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam on this day but of Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot who stopped it.

I met Wiener when I was canvasing members of the faculty at UC Irvine to join a union – I knew him as a prolific writer for The Nation magazine back in the Eighties – and I really expected he would be sympathetic and join. He didn’t – too much local politics on campus under the bridge – I think he said. And for years, I resented his decision not to throw his fate in with others on the campus. But today, from one lefty to another, I forgave him – because of this article. He began:

By Dave Patterson, San Diego Veterans for Peace

The San Diego Veterans For Peace is now in its second year of working to influence the public away from attending the MCAS Miramar Air Show. We view American militarism as a clear and present danger to our society and the world, and the most visible symbol of militarism in San Diego is the annual Miramar Air Show.

By Dave Patterson

Summer is around the corner in San Diego and many of us look forward to the annual traditions, like the Miramar Air Show.

This wildly popular event with perhaps 500,000 attendees brings people from all over the world to see the pilots demonstrate their precision flying and perhaps line up purchases of weapons.

Corporate chalets are available where the weapons vendors can “use their company logo and message to reach 500,000 Air Show Attendees, while the military people risk their lives to entertain the crowd.

More sinister is the promotion of war to our youth …

By Dave Patterson / Vets for Peace

On a cold night in January I joined Stan Levin and Gil Field delivering sleeping bags to the San Diego homeless, what we call the compassion campaign. Dealing directly with the homeless is painful because there they are in our faces with their cold, hunger and suffering laid bare.

What’s surprising is the number of people with just a thin blanket that will decline a sleeping bag because others nearby need it more. How ironic that people with nothing can have more compassion than those of us with plenty.