While BP oil continues to clog the Gulf, people's livelihoods and lives are being destroyed along with fish and birds.Our friends at Green For All bring us this story of one company, one small group of people, being impacted by the disaster. Green for All is initiating a Dirty Energy Hurts campaign to fight back against BP's PR millions, reminding us that drill, baby, drill is not an energy policy.
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If we really want to create a grassroots movement to stop these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan we must stop thinking that we can have it both ways when we say that we support our troops but we hate the wars. There exists such a cloying climate of nationalism in America today that the public just instinctively confers anyone in uniform with “hero” status. But just putting on a uniform and blindly following orders does not of itself make anyone a hero. There are as many serving in the military today who just need to have a job with benefits in a terrible economy as there are those who serve primarily out of a sense of patriotism. We must cease and desist with the warm and fuzzy feeling we like to have by saying how proud we are of our troops for defending our freedom. We need to let our voices be heard that these wars are senseless, imperialistic, murderous and injurious to the innocent inhabitants of those countries, and that anyone who willingly goes there to fight is not a defender of freedom but a mindless automaton whose actions will have deleterious effects for all concerned.
We as a nation are so awash with patriotic fervor today that, in retrospect, anyone who served in Vietnam is considered a hero and anyone who protested, burned his draft card, and refused to fight is considered a draft-dodging coward. But millions of innocent Vietnamese women, children, and men died at the hands of American soldiers during that conflict, and history has proven that war to have been needless, senseless,and a complete waste of innocent life. If it hadn’t been for the groundswell of people protesting and for the number of returning soldiers themselves who protested, who knows how many more years that insane and heinous war would have continued? Let the number of volunteers for our present-day wars shrivel up and thus force the current administration to re-institute the draft, and then I’m quite certain we would see people by the thousands and tens of thousands taking to the streets in protest. And then maybe, just maybe, we could help bring to an end these nonsensical wars.
By Rick on June 17th, 2010 at 9:16 pm