True American Military Hero

[jimboloco]

here is the web page on democracy now about the segment with senyor watada, amigas y amigos
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl? ... ead&tid=25
on the day of the interview with this true american military hero.

[stilltrucking]

e-dog the picture is from Slate
http://www.slate.com/id/2064424/




jimboloco he was a medic. Do medics carry gunz? Maybe I should have spit on him?

[the flaming ace]

we need a wailing wall
no doubt

[stilltrucking]

I am wailing.

For some reason, maybe it was something Dav said, I get the impression he is pissing on it.

Georg Trakl's problem was not that his imagination was too great, but that his perception was too keen. he saw reality for what it was and is -- a horrible looming catastrophe,

I think he was an ambulance driver during world war 1 The catastrophe wasn't looming, it was in his face?

Assigned to a hospital in Poland in November 1914 in the wake of the Battle of Grodek, Trakl found himself required to care single-handedly for some 90 men, a task which broke him emotionally. He committed suicide via a cocaine overdose on 3/4 November 1914, shortly before Wittgenstein was due to pay him a visit of encouragement

.
http://www.firstworldwar.com/poetsandprose/trakl.htm

[Arcadia]

bad news: each point can be the center (specially the center of a megalomaniacal madhouse...). I doubt my genes were in these lands at that time (and I don't remember the boleadoras episode!)

[e_dog]

yeah -- obviously, WWI was the catastrophe that did him in. but Trakl was a mad poet before the war. we was a pharmacist by training, which is why they put him in the medical corp in the army. the story goes, they were short of doctors so they assigned him -- a pharmacist but not a physician -- to look after a ward full of ailing soldiers. he OD'd. but he had a history of substance abuse, indeed it is said that the reason he became of a pharmacist -- or apprentice thereto -- was precisely so that he could get drugs. why? because he was what the authorities these days would call mentally ill. this is what the perception of truth is, an illness. basically, Trakl was the beatist of the beats long before the BEAT generation. the poem Grodek is a masterpiece of modern poetry. but even before the war, he "knew" that catastophe was looming. Trakl was a prophet of the decadence of the West.

see http://www.studioeight.tv/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=3727

[jimboloco]

Oh proud sorrow! on the brass altars
the hot flame of spirit feeds
a tremendous pain,
the unborn grandsons.

jeez, it was st who brought up this trackl dude
an i had him confused with walter benjamon
in either case, i'da split fer swizzland

i can understand their dilemmaz,
with no way out, yet, it sems to me a failure,
the survival instinct is too strong in me,
mercy
in th book i got into, days of decision,

It's great to be a part of this book.
2001-06-29
I was in Shreveport, Louisiana, in the 1980's doing some painful rehabilitation work. My psyche was only a shadow of what it once was or what it became later with a renewal of my faith, insight, and energy. I was browsing through the library and saw an ad in the back of "Mother Jones" anout this book in the making. I contacted the author and was interviewed via telephone for a couple of hours. It was at a pay phone and I literally screamed my way through the interview. It was a return to the roots of my dissent. And a healing. <p>The author has captured a fragment of the in-service dissent during the Vietnam War. When I started my dissent action, I was alone, and endured lonliness. This book has cemented us together in a deepest solidarity. Now I am available for support to others in this dilemma, should the need arise. Heaven forbid. What a nightmare. What a journey. What hope!"To hope til hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates."Shelley (peace sisters and brothers)

like i waz sayin, in this book there's a snippett
about this medic conscientious objector, he gets to vietnam,
they assemble all the new medics,
John Lawrence, ,

I arrived at the 90th replacement Battalion at Bien Hoa in May, 1969. They had our planeload trucked over ta abuilding that had great big wooden slats along the side, and a door in front. There was a guy standing on a table with a stack of blank yellow sheets and a stack of pink sheets. As each guy approached him, he would say, "yellow." When I got to him, I said, "Pink," so he gave me the pink sheet, you know, like, "Who is this guy, a fairy?" But, I liked pink. We We all went inside this building and the slats in the sides came down. The doors slammed shut and there were guards around us once again. And I go, "Uh, oh, something big is coming." An NCO got up and he said, "All of you with yellow sheets are now members of the First Cavary Airborne Division; those of you with pink sheets are going to go to specialised units." Most of the guys, maybe eighty to ninety percent, were yellow sheets. You just heard this groan, like, "Oh gees" from the guys with the yellow sheets. I'm thinking, "Thank goodness for pink!"(p 107)

he goez on into a MASH unit, where Pat Nion comes to visit

Once Pat Nixon was to visit our area so they sent in a whole battalion of MPs to secure the place. As I recall, it was an extremely hot day and she was supposed to come for a fifteen minute visit. The whole area was under Military Police Guard, 2,000 of therse guys were around.
Then the helicopters came and dropped different colored smoke grenades, coded as to the degree of safety,. The Vietnamese were kept out of the area. Just about the time her helicopter was about to land, a box ambulance with two GI's pulled up. We're talking about 110 degrees outside so you can imagine how hot it was inside that box ambulance, it became an oven. We couldn't get to them. The MPswouldn't let us move from the emergency room to the box ambulance, which was only about twenty feet away. Theyy wouldn't let us move, I mean, we were frozen stiff, in place. She came, did her visit, and pulled out. Well, we opened up the door to that ambulance - one guy did survive - the other guy fried. you know, she didn't know, but that's the kind of mentality that goes on in war; that's how valuable you are, and make no mistake about it. It's that callous, and you have the internalized realisation that your life is worth nothing. It's only as valuable as your friends make it. (p110-111)

[e_dog]

Bring Back the Draft!

The U.S. of A. needs to have a draft. That way people will have an urgency to resist. No more watching on T.V. We need a draft so that then we can be anti-draft, draft resisters. But without any draft to begin with, its hopeless. So, Bring Back the Draft!

Drafts are evil. Long live the Draft!

[jimboloco]

mark sheilds has been writing advocating this for a while
tho nawt in such revolutionary terms
altho i agrees widya
he sayz if'n th elites had to sacrifice their kidz
they'd be less sa·la·cious about
imperial warz
as fer me
i say
fuck th draft
fuck imperialist wars fer th world bunk,
yet i agree
th draft boards of old were nasty old tyrannical homespun gothic white dickheads for sure!

[stilltrucking]

th draft boards of old were nasty old tyrannical homespun gothic white dickheads for sure!

Ten four that is why Vietnam was a blue-collar war.


The 4th of july parade going right by my back door. Tears in my eyes as I watch a hundred flag bedecked harley's go buy. Old farts wearing thecolors of The Alamo Chapter of a veterans org.

The rumble and roar was incredible, it moved me, just vibrated deep within my core.

Now a train passing.

[jimboloco]

th slumbering masses
awakened by th dim visage of nirvana
thru dusty whirlwind trackz
fourth of july
wave that flaggg
wave that red white n'blue
"i fell thru a hole in th flagg
i'm falling thru a hole in th flaggg
don putt itt downnn
best one aroundddd
crazy for th red white n'blue
crazy for th red white n'blue
if you look different
they think you're subversive
crazy for th red white n'blue
an yellow-greennnnnn"

[jimboloco]

Friday, July 7th, 2006
Army Charges Lieutenant With Contemptand Conduct Unbecoming an Officer for Refusing Iraq Deployment and Criticizing Bush, War

Thursday, July 6th, 2006
Vietnam-Era Veteran Arrested at VA Medical Center for Wearing Peace T-Shirt i mett this dude in columbus georgia in 1998, nov, he is also heavily featured in days of decision and continues to be an undaunted activist fer peace an justice, mike ferner.

[jimboloco]

Pfc. Chris Gorman: I refuse to go back to Iraq , because this war is illegal and unjust.

Interview with Christopher Gorman, a religious Conscientious Objector who is refusing to return to Iraq.

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/0 ... 287427.php

[jimboloco]

Democracy Now, Friday, August 11th, 2006 Broadcast Exclusive...AWOL Army Sgt. On the Run for a Year Speaks Out for the First Time

In June 2005, Sgt. Clousing sneaked out of Fort Bragg in the middle of the night. He left behind a quote from Martin Luther King. It read, "Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" But conscience asks the question, "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but because conscience tells one it is right."

Today Sgt. Ricky Clousing plans to go to Fort Lewis to turn himself in to military officials. First he is having a press conference in conjunction with the Vets for Peace National Convenion happening there in Seattle right now, then he will drive down to Ft. Lewis. He says that he is aat peace with himself, because he is following his conscience, against "the daily abuses of power in Iraq.".

[stilltrucking]

The flag has looked wrong to me for years.
That even field of forty eight stars was dear to me when I was a child
And they feel all funny now
cheap plastic
not cloth.

Nothing to do with your post e-dog I am just trying to remember when I lost my sentimentality for the stars and bars. I think if was the year they had the big celebration for the centennial of the Statue of Liberty. Reagunz was president. So many flags, so many fine words and songs but I felt like a stranger in my homeland. I just could not get into the spirit of it. So plastic.

True American Hero, Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper