Random Thoughts Memorial Day and Monsanto

Cue the background music here.

Plato said, "Only the dead have seen the end of war."

My thoughts today are a bit minimal and random but I felt the need to say a few words.

This Memorial Day the government is "celebrating" the official, authorized 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Vietnam War when 3,500 Marines arrived in DaNang in March of 1965. “Now the Pentagon is planning to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War by launching a $30 million program to rewrite and sanitize its history." ( Marjorie Cohn, Huffington Post 12/17/2014)

$30 million. A drop in the bucket of our tax dollars. Military propaganda isn't cheap. In 2009 the Defense Department ashed for $1 billion for it's overseas propaganda. Who knows what it asks for domestically.

In President George Herbert Walker Bush's Remarks to the American Legislative Exchange CouncilMarch1, 1991 just after his “victory” in the Persian Gulf War he said, "The specter of Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian Peninsula.... It’s a proud day for America. And, by God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all." It appears that this is one thing President Bush got right. Just a few years later in August of 1996, Osama bin Laden issued his first fatwa "Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places” spurred on by the fact that the U.S supplied weapons for Saudi Arabia to aim at Muslims in the 1979 attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca. U.S tanks in the Shadow of Mecca was too much for him as killing even a bird in Mecca or Medina is strictly forbidden. Saudi Arabia military weapons from the U.S.purchases continue today.  

My thoughts today are not for the dead but for the living. The vets out there that too often seem forgotten. The homeless vets and most especially the vets suffering with PTSD because of the horrors of war. On Thursday, May 24, 2012 Democracy Now! aired a show titled "Honor the Dead, Heal the Wounded, Stop the Wars." My hope is someday we create no more veterans of war.

Some random stats. Cost to make a Marine is $44,000 (MSNBC) - Number of veterans registered with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs 22,234,000 (VA) - Amount spent on disability benefits per year $57 Billion for 633,000 veterans ($90,047 per veteran) (VA) - Number of veterans receiving government subsidized benefits education 293,384 (VA) The budget seeks $495.6 billion in funding for the Department of Defense (DoD) in FY 2015, an amount consistent with the current discretionary budget caps. In addition, the budget for FY 2015 includes a fully paid-for Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative that totals $56 billion government wide. Roughly 60,000 veterans will be cut from food stamps next year. Vets get paid too little and need food stamps?? Hmmmm...

Howard Zinn addressing an anti-war rally on the student center steps at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 12, 1967 has not lost it's relevance.: "Memorial Day should be a day for putting flowers on graves and planting trees. Also, for destroying the weapons of death that endanger us more than they protect us, that waste our resources and threaten our children and grandchildren." -- Howard Zinn in the Memorial Day article that led The Boston Globe to cancel his column in 1976. Read in full here: 

One May 23, 2015 the March Against Monsanto http://www.march-against-monsanto.com/ is planed two days before Memorial Day. Kelly L. Derricks, founder of the Children Of Vietnam Veterans Health Alliance | Agent Orange Survivors ( Website > Facebook  ) has said “If we fail to realize that March Against Monsanto is not about GMOs alone, then we have already lost the battle.”

Agent Orange was manufactured for the U.S. Department of Defense primarily by Monsanto Corporation and Dow Chemical and used in "Operation Ranch Hand" which ran from 1961 to 1971. Vietnam estimates 400,000 people were killed or maimed, and 500,000 children born with birth defects as a result of its use. Some of the 2.5 million US veterans who passed through Vietnam got dosed too. Will anyone from Monsanto or the U.S Government ever be held to account for war crimes for the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam? Doubtful.

"Honor the Dead, Heal the Wounded, Stop the Wars." Honor the dead, covered. Heal the wounded, marginal. Stop the wars. Unfortunately not to likely. 

Extra: Agent Orange remained: Unfinished Business

I found this image interesting. A screenshot I took of Vietnam war footage. In the video the young soldiers appear so desensitized to it all and never flinch as the bombs are exploding around them. And there amidst it all soldiers carry children as they leave, knowing their families and friends are being incinerated behind them. Even in war humanity lives. What happened to those children? Only the gods know.