By Cindy Sheehan
If you watch any one of the cable news networks this weekend between doing holiday weekend things, you will be subjected to images of row upon row of white headstones of dead US military lined up in perfect formation in the afterlife as they were in life. Patriotic music will swell and we will be reminded in script font to "Remember our heroes," or some such BS as that.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article22701.htm
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Memorial Day: Let Us Not Overlook Those Wounded in Spirit
The Washington Post: "Today the country is supposed to honor the fallen of all its wars. But 'fallen' is a word for inscriptions and oratory - it doesn't really convey what happens to those caught up in the ghastly business of warfare and subject to all the horrors inflicted by flying metal, high explosives and machines made for destruction. Nor does it quite encompass what happened to many of those who served day after day in constant danger and surrounded by death. They lost something in the country's wars - but not a limb or eyesight or the ability to walk or any essential physical capability. What was lost was a view of life as having meaning, order, security, purpose."
http://www.truthout.org/052509B?n
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Memorial Day in the land of the weak and wussy
CounterPunch
by Dave Lindorff
05/25/09
Whatever we were, we have degenerated into a nation that finds glory in deploying the most advanced high-tech, high-explosive weaponry against some of the world’s poorest people, that justifies killing women and children, even by the dozens, even if by doing so it manages to kill one alleged ‘enemy’ fighter. A nation that exalts remote-controlled robot drone aircraft that can attack targets in order to avoid risking soldiers’ lives, even though by doing so, it is predictable that many, many innocent people will be killed. A nation that is proud to have developed weapons of mass slaughter, from shells laden with phosphorus that burns to death, indiscriminately, those who are contacted by the splattered chemical to elaborately baroque anti-personnel fragmentation bombs that spread cute little colored objects designed to look like everything from toys to food packages, but which upon contact explode, releasing whirling metal or plastic fleschettes which shred human flesh on contact...
http://counterpunch.org/lindorff05252009.html
Memorial Day 2009: How about a new meaning?
The Lbertarian Enterprise
by Russell D. Longcore
05/24/09
Memorial Day is meant to honor the men and women who died in military service to the United States of America. Formerly known as ‘Decoration Day,’ it was first established in 1868 to decorate the graves of the Civil War (War of Northern Aggression) dead. … This weekend, there will be memorial services and parades across America in town squares, churches and at cemeteries. Flowers will be strewn and American flags will be in grand display. Politicians will walk the route, and veterans will don old uniforms and walk with them. Twenty-one gun salutes and taps will echo among the headstones. Impassioned speeches will be delivered to patriotic crowds on the goodness of America and the honor and bravery of the fallen soldiers and sailors. And Americans will be remembering all the wrong things. How about a reality check?
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle520-20090524-03.html
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Memorial+Day
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=drone
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=mass+slaughter
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=phosphorus
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Dave+Lindorff
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Russell+D.+Longcore
