Making Some Sense Of Memorial Day U.S.A.?

 Somehow to get beyond honoring personal acts of bravery

 and performing ones duties,  which must and will be done,

while knowing so much has been in vain.

Jailed veterans look for COVER behind bars

By Lilah Crews-Pless on May 16, 2011

Over the next two weeks, KALW News is bringing you stories from veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands are returning home every month, re-entering civilian life – and facing challenges and obstacles all along the way.

This first story takes us to a jail in San Bruno.

" It matters only that those of us... who find the organized sadism of war and militarism repugnant and who seek to protect the sanctity of life rise up. If we do not defend these virtues they will be extinguished. No one in power will defend them for us..."

NO OTHER WAY OUT
by Chris Hedges  Featured Writer  Dandelion Salad  Truthdig
February 28, 2011

I have watched mothers and fathers keening in grief over the frail corpses of their children in hospitals in Gaza and rural villages in El Salvador, Bosnia and Kosovo. The faces of these dead children, their bodies ripped apart by iron fragments or bullets tumbling end over end through their small, delicate frames, appear to me almost daily like faint and sadly familiar ghosts. The frailty and innocence of my own children make these images difficult to bear.

Bradley Manning is the U.S. soldier now in a US military prison in Kuwait who has been arrested and charged with two violations for releasing classified information (the Wikileaks "Collateral Murder" video) and facing 54 years in prison. He is being held in isolation from the outside world - with no contact with his civilian attorneys working to defend him.

If the allegations are true, Bradley Manning is a hero for bringing to light the realities of the crimes being committed in the U.S. occupation.

We call for his immediate release and that his attorneys be allowed to talk to him.

  Sign-On In Support of Bradley Manning & His Right to Counsel

Monday, June 14, 2010    By Joan Lowy, Associated Press
Washington (AP) - Unmanned aircraft have proved their usefulness and reliability in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the pressure's on to allow them in the skies over the United States.
 
The Federal Aviation Administration has been asked to issue flying rights for a range of pilotless planes to carry out civilian and law-enforcement functions but has been hesitant to act. Officials are worried that they might plow into airliners, cargo planes and corporate jets that zoom around at high altitudes, or helicopters and hot air balloons that fly as low as a few hundred feet off the ground.
 
On top of that, these pilotless aircraft come in a variety of sizes. Some are as big as a small airliner, others the size of a backpack. The tiniest are small enough to fly through a house window.