Military Resistance 12F3
[Thanks to SSG N (ret’d) who sent this in with caption. She writes: “More .like general disaster.”]
“Mr. Conroy Said He Always Gets Excellent Care At The VA”
“It’s Not The Doctors And Nurses, It’s The Damned Administrators”
“I Think A Lot Of People Are Going To Lose Their Jobs, And They Probably Should”
June 1, 2014 By Ben Kesling, Wall Street Journal [Excerpts]
CHICAGO—Despite the tempest in Washington over Friday’s resignation of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, it was a sleepy weekend as usual at the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center here.
A group of vets made their way—some limping or rolling in wheelchairs—through the corridors to have a smoke outside, too.
Most expressed respect for the departing secretary, but all said the extra attention could only help the agency.
“He’s a scapegoat, he can’t watch everything,” said Tom Conroy, a 71-year-old veteran of Korea and Vietnam who sat outside the Chicago VA Saturday in his wheelchair, shirt off and wearing shorts, smoking menthols in the sunshine.
“I feel kind of sad for the guy,” he said of Mr. Shinseki, a West Point graduate and former Army general with a 38-year military career who lost half of his right foot to a land mine in Vietnam.
Mr. Conroy, squinting in the sunshine, said the former general’s resignation “is probably the best thing that’s ever happened” to the VA because it will draw attention to problems.
“Get people to do their jobs. It’s not the doctors and nurses, it’s the damned administrators,” he said. “I think a lot of people are going to lose their jobs, and they probably should.”
After smoking a few cigarettes, Mr. Conroy made his way back to his fifth-floor room. A nurse met him when he rolled onto his floor and chided him for getting his knees sunburned. She then escorted him to his room, talking to him and checking on him all the way.
The floor was clean and bustling with nurses and orderlies. Mr. Conroy said he always gets excellent care at the VA.
“And I’ll tell you something else,” he said. “The food here is excellent.”
AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS
Foreign Occupation “Servicemember” Killed Somewhere Or Other In Afghanistan:
Nationality Not Announced
June 2, 2014 AP
A foreign servicemember died as a result of an enemy forces attack in eastern Afghanistan today.
POLITICIANS REFUSE TO HALT THE BLOODSHED
THE TROOPS HAVE THE POWER TO STOP THE WAR
Resistance Action
Jun 02 2014 By Ghanizada, Khaama Press & Pakistan Today
A group of bombers attacked a government compound in southern Helmand province of Afghanistan on Monday.
The attack took place in Greshk district after a group of bombers attacked the district compound.
The provincial governor spokesman, Omar Zwak confirmed that an attack place near the district compound which sparked heavy gun battle between the Afghan security forces and the assailant militants.
“Three Taliban armed with light and heavy weapons attacked our offices in Greshk city this morning,” said Greshk district governor Mohammad Akbar.
“As a result, three policemen were killed and three were wounded.”
Deputy district chief for Greshk, Fereoz Ahmad said clashes inside the district compound ended after all three assailant militants were shot dead by Afghan security forces.
*****************************************
Jun 02 2014 Pakistan Today
Three Turkish construction workers were killed on Monday when a bomber blew himself up near a police building in east Afghanistan.
Two more were wounded.
“Turkish engineers were entering the facility by car when the rickshaw loaded with explosives blew up,” said provincial police chief Fazel Ahmad Shirzad.
IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE RESISTANCE
END THE OCCUPATION
FORWARD OBSERVATIONS
“At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke.
“For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder.
“We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”
“The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.”
Frederick Douglass, 1852
People do not make revolutions eagerly any more than they do war. There is this difference, however, that in war compulsion plays the decisive role, in revolution there is no compulsion except that of circumstances.
A revolution takes place only when there is no other way out. And the insurrection, which rises above a revolution like a peak in the mountain chain of its events, can be no more evoked at will than the revolution as a whole. The masses advance and retreat several times before they make up their minds to the final assault.
-- Leon Trotsky; The History of the Russian Revolution
“Feeling The Futility Of Demonstrating And Of Working Within A Rigged Electoral System, The Movement And Its Press Turned Increasingly Toward The One Group Capable Of Ending The War With Direct Action: The People Forced To Fight It”
Excerpts from Vietnam And Other American Fantasies; H. Bruce Franklin; University Of Massachusetts Press; Amherst, 2000
Feeling the futility of demonstrating and of working within a rigged electoral system, the movement and its press turned increasingly toward the one group capable of ending the war with direct action: the people forced to fight it.
Liberation News Service’s “Special Issue on Soldiers” gave prominence to stories from Vietnam GI and The Bond.
And the summer of 1968 became the “Summer of Support” for the GI antiwar movement.
The main focus was on coffeehouses, which were already centers for active-duty and other resisters near major bases in Missouri, Texas, South Carolina, and Washington state, while new ones were being opened in California and New jersey.
When the manager of the Oleo Strut, the coffeehouse near Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, “stood up before the G.I.s and announced that the Oleo Strut was part of the Summer of Support,” LNS reported, the soldiers “responded with a standing ovation” because “this was their coffee-house, and, should trouble come, many of them will defy the army.”
Indeed, within weeks the Oleo Strut proved to be a center of the insurrection that led to dozens of soldiers refusing to go to Chicago to suppress the antiwar demonstrations taking place outside the Democratic convention.
Simultaneously there emerged at Fort Hood itself The Fatigue Press, an underground paper published by the GIs, whose editor was arrested by base authorities two weeks after the Chicago confrontation.
As the underground press threw itself into the Summer of Support, there was a noticeable shift away from civilians leading soldiers toward soldiers providing leadership for the entire antiwar movement.
Before long, this trend would dramatically change the form and content not just of opposition to the Vietnam War but of the war itself.
The reversal of roles was aptly symbolized by a teach-in held in Berkeley’s Provo Park on August 10, 1968, chaired by ex—Green Beret Donald Duncan. Students now came not to teach soldiers about the war, but to learn from them.
The Ally, a GI newspaper whose first issue in February had explained the profound significance of the Tet offensive, now reported the lessons brought to the teach-in by vets and active-duty GIs from the army, navy, coast guard, and marines.
The underground press, especially the rapidly proliferating papers published by military personnel, were filled with stories of the insurrections, mutinies, and fraggings that were crippling U.S. combat potential in Vietnam.
SDS criticized itself for not having taken previous work within the military seriously enough and emphasized that “showing that the Left supports the soldiers” is no less important than showing “that the soldiers support the left.”
Perhaps the most compressed fantasy projecting what America’s war against Vietnam was doing to America is a fourteen-line poem by Steve Hassett, who served as an infantryman and intelligence analyst in Vietnam:
And what would you do, ma,
if eight of your sons step
out of the TV and begin
killing chickens and burning
hooches in the living room,
stepping on booby traps
and dying in the kitchen;
beating your husband and
taking him and shooting
skag and forgetting in
the bathroom?
would you lock up your daughter?
would you stash the apple pie?
would you change the channels
CLASS WAR REPORTS
Thai Protests Baffle Military Dictatorship:
Hit And Run Tactics Close Down Center Of Bangkok
Protesters gathered in a shopping mall in Bangkok on Sunday, signaling their opposition to the coup. Reuters
June 1, 2014 By James Hookway and Newley Purnell, Wall Street Journal [Excerpts]
BANGKOK—A handful of users of Facebook and other social-media sites Sunday achieved mostly with online messages what it previously took tens of thousands of actual street protesters to do: Shut down the center of Thailand’s capital.
Thailand’s military rulers, who seized power in a coup last month, have imposed wide-ranging censorship, and have ordered more than 250 people to report to army camps since the coup was announced, though most have since been released. Cable television networks still don’t run international news channels such as CNN and BBC.
Still, the military has stopped short of blocking social-media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Instead they have warned users to be careful about what they say online and have deployed police and soldiers to potential protest sites in the heart of the capital.
The result is similar to that of mass protests against the ousted elected government earlier this year—but with only a few people actually turning out to criticize the army before quickly dispersing.
Shopping malls in central Bangkok closed for business Sunday morning while the city’s elevated train system suspended service at stations in the center of the city. Elsewhere in the capital, the army deployed troops at commercial centers to ward off any repeat of the sporadic protests that have popped up around the city since the coup.
At the central Rajaprasong shopping district, dozens of television journalists and other members of the media milled about in the hot sun while camouflage-clad troops eyed them. Patriotic songs blasted from loudspeakers set up by the army.
Outside one mall, a few dozen protesters stood in silent demonstration. Some wore masks resembling the faces of activist Sombat Boonngamanong, who called for protests Sunday, and outspoken Thai academic Pavin Chachavalpongpun. Some called for elections.
Mr. Sombat was nowhere to be seen Sunday.
He has defied an order to present himself to Thailand’s armed forces, issuing a challenge to the ruling junta via his Facebook page to “Catch Me If You Can!”
Nonetheless, his message calling for followers to stand by for an announcement regarding protests effectively helped shut down the center of the city.
In recent days, intermittent rumors about mass protests have quickly spread on social media, putting Thailand’s army chiefs on edge.
Their show of force partly reflects the junta’s quandary over how to handle social-media websites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Bangkok locations are consistently among the most photographed locations world-wide on photo-sharing application Instagram. In a Facebook post Sunday morning, Mr. Sombat finally named the location for the day’s protest—another shopping mall in central Bangkok.
“See you at Terminal 21,” he wrote, accompanied by a picture of himself pressing his hands to his cheeks in seemingly sarcastic gesture of panic.
Army chief Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha on Friday complained in a televised address to the nation about the way social media has been used to inflame the country’s political differences.
On Saturday, small groups of Thais silently read books such as George Orwell’s “1984” in what was widely interpreted here as a criticism of the May 22 coup, with their photos widely circulated online.
Not all the anticoup protesters are Red Shirts, however, and on Wednesday there was speculation that the army was clamping down on social-media sites where opposition to—as well as support for—the coup has flourished after Facebook was briefly inaccessible to most users in Thailand.
The army quickly denied having anything to do with the outage, blaming it on a technical problem. Gen. Prayuth said the junta, known as the National Council for Peace and Order, has no policy to shut down social media. Instead, he has launched a reconciliation drive to help heal the country’s deep political wounds.
In Phathum Thani, just north of Bangkok, soldiers Saturday offered free haircuts, snacks and medical services in an area that had voted heavily in favor of Ms. Yingluck’s party in 2011. In a Bangkok park, the army threw a “Bring Back the Happiness” party featuring military bands playing popular songs.
But while some of Mr. Thaksin’s supporters have said they are willing to wait to see what Gen. Prayuth delivers, Sunday’s cat-and-mouse chase cross Bangkok suggests that not everybody is ready to buy into his plans.
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Maidan Activists Refuse To Go Away:
They Defy The Mayor Of Kiev;
“I Don’t Listen Much To Klitschko. I Listen To The People.”
“Politicians Were Not The Ones To Start The Maidan,” They Wrote. “And They Will Not Be Ones To Disperse It!”
June 1, 2014 By Paul Sonne, Wall Street Journal [Excerpts]
KIEV—
Champion boxer and Kiev mayor-elect Vitali Klitschko took to the square that became the epicenter of Ukraine’s protest movement, seeking to placate restive demonstrators who have pushed back against suggestions their barricades come down.