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Counter Recruitment
No more veterans!: November 11 or Armistice Day Began as a Time to Contemplate Peace, Not to Celebrate War and Warriors
By Dave Lindorff
Militarism Run Amok: Russians and Americans Get Their Kids Ready for War
In 1915, a mother's protest against funneling children into war became the theme of a new American song, "I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier." Although the ballad attained great popularity, not everyone liked it. Theodore Roosevelt, a leading militarist of the era, retorted that the proper place for such women was "in a harem―and not in the United States."
Roosevelt would be happy to learn that, a century later, preparing children for war continues unabated.
Only thing that we did right was the day we refused to fight
By CJ Hinke, WorldBeyondWar.org
Excerpted from Free Radicals: War Resisters in Prison by CJ Hinke, forthcoming from Trine-Day in 2016.
The lines of resistance to war take many forms as these stories of resisters in prison in World Wars I ("the Great War", "the war to end all wars") and II ('the good war"), the Cold War, the undeclared Korean "conflict", the 'Red Scare' of the McCarthy period, the 1960s and, finally, the US war against Vietnam, demonstrate. There are as many reasons and methods to refuse war as there are refusers. The Department of Justice classified WWII resisters as religious, moral, economic, political, neurotic, naturalistic, professional pacifist, philosophical, sociological, internationalist, personal and Jehovah's Witness.
Why are some awake and aware, why do some feel their conscience so strongly they cannot ignore it? As A.J. Muste proclaimed, "If I can't love Hitler, I can't love at all." Why isn't that spirit inside all of us? Most of us have unconsciously shut up the voice of our troublesome conscience to make our lives easier. I assure you, however, the world would be immeasurably better if we all learned to listen to even its faintest of stirrings.
The reason The Resistance was so effective against the draft is that meetings listened to everybody. This stratagem was learned in vivo from Quakers, SNCC, and CNVA. The Resistance functioned because of its underlying commitment to principled consensus. Many of us—(does not play well with others)—went ahead to devise our own actions out of frustration with this long and often tedious performance. Sometimes others joined us seeing its value and sometimes they did not. If there were "leaders" of The Resistance, I never met any!
Desertion: A Long, Proud History
It's not a job, it's an adventure, or
wearing your own clothes is the new camo
By CJ Hinke
Excerpted from Free Radicals: War Resisters in Prison by CJ Hinke, forthcoming from Trine-Day in 2016.
There are as many reasons to desert military service as there are deserters. All countries' militaries like to snatch young men when they are uneducated, inexperienced, and unemployed. It takes a soldier far greater courage to throw down his weapon than to kill a stranger.
There are deserters in every country that has an armed forces. Armies demand blind obedience and human beings crave liberty.
Why do men desert? Certainly not from cowardice. It takes far more courage to break from the pack and its reliance upon rabid nationalism. 36% of men facing battle for the first time were more afraid of being labeled a coward than of being wounded or killed.
Memorial Day 2015: Antiwar Veterans Join the Conversation at the Vietnam Wall
By John Grant
Anthropologists have found that in traditional societies, memory becomes attached to places.
T.M. Luhrmann, New York Times Op-ed May 25, 2015
Lower Drinking Age, Raise Killing Age
The United States sends people to kill and die in war that it doesn't trust with a beer.
It trains police in war skills to assault young people it suspects of going near beer.
Here's an idea: Drink At 18, Don't Kill Till 21.
Alcohol prohibition is not working, and creates unsafe drinking by people old enough to vote, drive, and work. A case can be made, and is being made, for returning the drinking age to 18.
But allowing 18-year-olds to join the military has created illegal and immoral recruitment of minors, not to mention deep moral regret, post-traumatic stress, and suicide in young veterans.
Raising the age for war participation (for joining either the military or one of its contractors) to 21 would do more for education and informed career choices -- not to mention reducing drug and alcohol addiction, and suicide -- than banning alcohol does.
Make-Daiquiris-Not-War is a policy based on actual dangers. The problem with alcohol is not responsible drinking of it. Alcohol is not a satanic liquid to be counterproductively made into a forbidden fruit. The problems with alcohol are: drinking and driving, which should be addressed by avoiding the driving, not through an unenforceable ban on drinking; drinking to dangerous excess, which should be addressed through open discussion, not the secretive plotting of contemporary speakeasies; and addiction, which is driven not so much by the chemicals involved as by the life of the person who becomes addicted.
And what could we most easily do to assist young people in leading more fulfilling, less horrific, lives? We could put off the decision to join in a program of mass murder until age 21, thereby giving a young person a chance to consider all the options.
In many nations there is no drinking age. In others the drinking age is after you're dead (alcohol is prohibited). Among those with a drinking age between zero and forever, far and away the most common is 18. Exceptions are Egypt, Kazakhstan, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, United Arab Emirates, Cameroon, Indonesia, the United States, and various Pacific island colonies of the United States, all of which make the legal age to drink 21.
But how's that working out for them? In Egypt if you happen to witness the police murder someone, you'll face prison or worse, while the U.S. President chats with the Egyptian President promising him more weapons and money, but if you want to drink underage, apparently nobody really minds. The inevitable result of making it legal to sell alcohol to some but not all adults (taking adults to be 18 and up) seems to be either stiffer and stiffer penalties or routine violation. This of course creates both a disrespect for laws and drinking in secret without appropriate discussion of dangers and measures to prevent recklessness.
In Argentina enlistment in the military is allowed at 21, or at 18 with parental consent. In Bahrain and Kazakhstan military enlistment starts at 15. Who's right? Who's respecting the enlistees? Well, according to some brain scientists at MIT -- not that they should know anything:
"As a number of researchers have put it, 'the rental car companies have it right.' The brain isn't fully mature at 16, when we are allowed to drive, or at 18, when we are allowed to vote, or at 21, when we are allowed to drink, but closer to 25, when we are allowed to rent a car."
Scientists at Dartmouth agree. (But they would, wouldn't they?) Not to mention neuroscientists who write books and go on NPR.
So upping the killing age to 21 would be moving in the direction of the wisdom of the scientists and the rental car companies. Why lower the drinking age at the same time? Because alcohol needs to be treated principally not as a means of drunken escape, but as an enjoyable beverage with dinner. Nations with no drinking age at all tend to have less alcoholism than do puritanical nations. The point is not that 18 year olds are qualified to head off to parties at which they'll drink gallons of hard liquor (as some currently do, law or no law) but that alcohol, like other enjoyable and risky parts of life -- from dangerous sports to sex to other drugs to those televisions in airports blasting Fox News -- should be dealt with openly and calmly by parents and teachers and friends, with the actual dangers made crystal clear and imaginary dangers debunked.
The fact is that prohibiting alcohol leads to more reckless drinking, while prohibiting war participation leads to less reckless killing. We've got our priorities wrong. Let's rework them.
Addiction Is Not Addictive
Whether someone becomes addicted to drugs has much more to do with their childhood and their quality of life than with the drug they use or with anything in their genes. This is one of the more startling of the many revelations in the best book I've read yet this year: Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari.
We've all been handed a myth. The myth goes like this: Certain drugs are so powerful that if you use them enough they will take over. They will drive you to continue using them. It turns out this is mostly false. Only 17.7 percent of cigarette smokers can stop smoking using a nicotine patch that provides the same drug. Of people who have tried crack in their lives, only 3 percent have used it in the past month and only 20 percent were ever addicted. U.S. hospitals prescribe extremely powerful opiates for pain every day, and often for long periods of time, without producing addiction. When Vancouver blocked all heroin from entering the city so successfully that the "heroin" being sold had zero actual heroin in it, the addicts' behavior didn't change. Some 20 percent of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam were addicted to heroin, leading to terror among those anticipating their return home; but when they got home 95 percent of them within a year simply stopped. (So did the Vietnamese water buffalo population, which had started eating opium during the war.) The others soldiers had been addicts before they went and/or shared the trait most common to all addicts, including gambling addicts: an unstable or traumatic childhood.
Most people (90 percent according to the U.N.) who use drugs never get addicted, no matter what the drug, and most who do get addicted can lead normal lives if the drug is available to them; and if the drug is available to them, they will gradually stop using it.
But, wait just a minute. Scientists have proven that drugs are addictive, haven't they?
Well, a rat in a cage with absolutely nothing else in its life will choose to consume huge quantities of drugs. So if you can make your life resemble that of a rat in a cage, the scientists will be vindicated. But if you give a rat a natural place to live with other rats to do happy things with, the rat will ignore a tempting pile of "addictive" drugs.
And so will you. And so will most people. Or you'll use it in moderation. Before the War on Drugs began in 1914 (a U.S. substitute for World War I?), people bought bottles of morphine syrup, and wine and soft drinks laced with cocaine. Most never got addicted, and three-quarters of addicts held steady respectable jobs.
Is there a lesson here about not trusting scientists? Should we throw out all evidence of climate chaos? Should we dump all our vaccines into Boston Harbor? Actually, no. There's a lesson here as old as history: follow the money. Drug research is funded by a federal government that censors its own reports when they come to the same conclusions as Chasing the Scream, a government that funds only research that leaves its myths in place. Climate deniers and vaccine deniers should be listened to. We should always have open minds. But thus far they don't seem to be pushing better science that can't find funding. Rather, they're trying to replace current beliefs with beliefs that have less basis behind them. Reforming our thinking on addiction actually requires looking at the evidence being produced by dissident scientists and reformist governments, and it's pretty overwhelming.
So where does this leave our attitudes toward addicts? First we were supposed to condemn them. Then we were supposed to excuse them for having a bad gene. Now we're supposed to feel sorry for them because they have horrors they cannot face, and in most cases have had them since childhood? There's a tendency to view the "gene" explanation as the solider excuse. If 100 people drink alcohol and one of them has a gene that makes him unable to ever stop, it's hard to blame him for that. How could he have known? But what about this situation: Of 100 people, one of them has been suffering in agony for years, in part as a result of never having experienced love as a baby. That one person later becomes addicted to a drug, but that addiction is only a symptom of the real problem. Now, of course, it is utterly perverse to be inquiring into someone's brain chemistry or background before we determine whether or not to show them compassion. But I have a bit of compassion even for people who cannot resist such nonsense, and so I appeal to them now: Shouldn't we be kind to people who suffer from childhood trauma? Especially when prison makes their problem worse?
But what if we were to carry this beyond addiction to other undesirable behaviors? There are other books presenting similarly strong cases that violence, including sexual violence, and including suicide, have in very large part similar origins to those Hari finds for addiction. Of course violence must be prevented, not indulged. But it can best be reduced by improving people's lives, especially their young lives but importantly also their current lives. Bit by bit, as we have stopped discarding people of various races, gender, sexual orientation, and disabilities as worthless, as we begin to accept that addiction is a temporary and non-threatening behavior rather than the permanent state of a lesser creature known as "the addict," we may move on to discarding other theories of permanence and genetic determination, including those related to violent criminals. Someday we may even outgrow the idea that war or greed or the automobile is the inevitable outcome of our genes.
Somehow blaming everything on drugs, just like taking drugs, seems much easier.
Watch Johann Hari on Democracy Now.
He'll soon be on Talk Nation Radio, so send me questions I should ask him, but read the book first.
The 'Glory' of War
It is rare for someone of this writer's acquaintance to enlist in the military, although it has happened. When someone does so, his or her family usually speaks of how proud they are of them, as if the enlistee has done something to which great honor is attached. This attitude is also reflected in public opinion polls, in which much of the populace generally seems to agree that military service is good preparation for elected office.
Let us look at these two myths in a little more detail.
Hansel and Gretel at the Recruiter
By John LaForge
Military recruiters must feel like Hansel and Gretel's "wicked witch," fattening up the children to eat them. With sexual violence, endless wars of occupation, fatalities, brain trauma, permanent disabilities and an epidemic of suicides, what they're selling these days looks like a lot like a bad horror show.
With the chance of being sent into quagmires in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, etc. on one hand, the likelihood of being sexually assaulted on the other¾and the specter of suicide among vets of all stripes¾you have to wonder how recruiters get anyone in the door. Newbies must not be reading the papers; all four active-duty services and five out of six reserve components met their recruiting goals in 2014, according to the Pentagon.
Yet a Dept. of Veterans Affairs study released Feb. 1, 2013 found veterans killing themselves at a rate of 22 a day. After interviewing Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the Chief of Naval Operations, Stars and Stripes made this rosy conflation Dec. 15: "Suicides have not dropped off the radar, despite increased focus on combating sexual assault." Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, told the Washington Post last Nov. 7, "I don't think we've hit the top yet on suicides."
Among members of the Reserves and National Guard, suicides climbed eight percent between 2012 and 2013. Since 2001, more active-duty US troops have killed themselves than have been killed in Afghanistan, the Washington Post said. Last April, the AP reported that suicides in the Army National Guard and Reserve in 2013 "exceeded the number of active-duty soldiers who took their own lives, according to the Army."
Stars and Stripes said the suicide rate among Marines and soldiers was particularly high, with those on active-duty suffering about 23 deaths per 100,000 service members in 2013, compared with 12.5 suicides per 100,000 overall in the US public in 2012¾as calculated by the Centers for Disease Control. The suicide rate among sailors also has increased this year, the CDC found.
Even if you never saw combat
An Army study of almost a million soldiers published last March reported not only that suicides among soldiers who deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan more than doubled between 2004 and 2009, but that the rate for those who never spent time in war zones almost tripled over the same five years. While many expected military suicide to decline after deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan were cut back, it has not happened, the Washington Post found.
Sexual assault still growing
Meanwhile, the "increased focus on combating sexual assault" has been declared a short-term failure. A 1,100-page Pentagon report released Dec. 4 found that reports of sexual assault in the military increased some eight percent in 2014, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), responded to the news saying, "I think this report shows a failure by the chain of command." Sen. Gillibrand has fought to remove jurisdiction in sexual assault cases from commanding officers.
Spinning the findings as if increased reports of assault were positive, Sec. of Defense Chuck Hagel had trouble finding the words. He said, "After last year's unprecedented 50 percent increase in reports of sexual assault, the rate has continued to go up. That's actually good news." Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-MO, said the results showed "great progress," but admitted, "We still have work to do on curbing retaliation against victims."
The study found 62 percent of female survivors said they'd suffered retaliation, mostly from military colleagues or peers. Anu Bhagwati, a former Marine Corps Captain and director of the Service Women's Action Network, told the New York Times, "[T]he climate within the military is still a dangerous one for victims of sex crimes." SWAN.org notes, "A culture of victim-blaming, lack of accountability, and toxic command climates is pervasive throughout the U.S. Armed Forces, preventing survivors from reporting incidents and perpetrators from being properly disciplined."
One example is the light treatment given Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair last June after he pleaded guilty to maltreatment and adultery. As with most sexual assault cases, Sinclair's lawyers spent months retaliating, re-victimizing and attacking the credibility of the accuser, an Army captain. Sinclair was sentenced to a rank reduction, full retirement benefits and a $20,000 fine, although he faced a possible life sentence and registration as a sex offender. The captain alleged that Sinclair had threatened to kill her if she disclosed their relationship.
For help regarding sexual harassment or sexual violence in the military, contact Protect Our Defenders at <email@example.com>; the S.W.A.N., at 646-569-5200; or the Veteran's Crisis Line, at 1-800-273-8255. For help regarding though of self-harm or suicide call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 1-800-273-8255.
-- John LaForge works for Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog group in Wisconsin, edits its Quarterly newsletter, and is syndicated through PeaceVoice.
The Kill Team Movie: Show It in Schools
Kill Team is not just a video game anymore, not just the inevitable pairing of two of the most popular words in American English. "Kill Team" is now a movie, and against the odds it's not a celebration of killing, but a particular take on an actual series of events made widely known by Rolling Stone.
U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan developed the practice of killing civilians for sport, placing weapons beside the bodies or otherwise pretending to have been attacked, keeping body parts as trophies, and celebrating their "kills" in photographs with the corpses.
For months, according to Rolling Stone, the whole platoon knew what was going on. Officers dismissed complaints from the relatives of victims, accepted completely implausible accounts, and failed to help victims who might still be alive (instead ordering a soldier to "Make sure he's dead.")
A key instigator, Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, arrived in Afghanistan recounting a successful murder of a family in Iraq and bearing tattoos recording his kills. "Get me a kill" soldiers asked who wanted to participate in the kill team. Killers were treated as heroes, and the widespread understanding that they were killing civilians who'd never threatened them didn't seem to damage that treatment.
"Drop-weapon" has been a common term among vets returning to the United States from Afghanistan and Iraq for over a decade, referring to a weapon used to frame a victim. "We're just the ones who got caught," says Pfc. Justin Stoner in the film. He also raises an important question that the film does not seriously pursue, remarking: "We're training you from the day you join to the day you're out to kill. Your job is to kill. You're infantry. Your job is to kill everything that gets in your way. Well, then why the hell are you pissed off when we do it?"
Eleven soldiers have been convicted of crimes as part of the kill team, including Gibbs who has been sentenced to life in prison. Why were these kills crimes and others not, wonders Stoner. It's a question worthy of consideration. The cover stories for the kills, including claims that people made some threatening movement, don't seem enough to justify these murders even if they had been true. What were the soldiers doing in these people's villages to begin with?
That's the question the movie opens with the soldiers asking themselves. They'd been trained for exciting combat and then sent to Afghanistan to be bored, hungry for action, eager to test out their training. This is a point often missed by those who advocate turning the U.S. military into a force for good, an emergency rescue squad for natural disasters, or a humanitarian aid operation. You would have to train and equip people for those jobs first. These young men were trained to kill, armed to kill, prepped to kill, and left to kick sand around.
They began premeditating the worst sort of premeditated murder. They openly recount their conversations in the film. They had weapons to drop, grenades that weren't "tracked," they'd pretend someone had a grenade and kill him. Who? Anyone. They saw everyone as fair game.
And they did as planned. And they were welcomed back to the "FOB" as heroes. And they did it again. And again.
The film does not tell the whole story. It focuses on Spc. Adam Winfield, his parents, and his court proceedings back in the United States. Winfield told his father on a Facebook chat, early on, what was happening. Winfield was afraid to talk to anyone in his chain of command, and in fact the mere possibility that he might resulted in death threats to him. His father, however, tried every way he could to get anyone in the U.S. Army to listen. No one would.
And then Winfield was present for another set-up and murder. He says he fired his gun away from the victim. He says that if he had shot the two U.S. soldiers, Gibbs and Cpl. Jeremy Morlock, the Army would have shown him "no mercy."
Then Stoner (was it his name that tipped the balance?) turned in Gibbs and others for smoking hash in his room. So they beat him and threatened to kill him. Then he told about the body parts being passed around. The Army locked up Gibbs and Morlock. Stoner was labeled a whistleblower, which he says is worse than a murderer. If he had the chance again, he says, he would say nothing.
Winfield found he could breathe, after months of fearing murder from his own "side."
And then Winfield was, himself, charged with first-degree murder. We see his horror. We see his parents' heartbreak. We go back to see his childhood. He read history books about American war heroes, his dad says. The possibility of changing those books is not explicitly raised. He ends up with a plea bargain and a sentence of three years in prison, for supposedly having done nothing to stop a murder. At one point he's offered the option of pleading guilty to "cowardice," despite every other member of his unit and chain of command right up to the President having outdone him in that regard.
"War is dirty," says Winfield. "It's not how they portray it in movies." It is, however, more or less, from a certain angle, how they've portrayed it in this movie, which ought to be shown in U.S. schools as a warning.
But not by itself. This movie does not give us the stories of the murder victims and their families. Imagine the power of a movie that included what this one does plus that! The opportunity is repeatedly and intentionally lost by Western film makers over and over again. Nor does the film give us the stories of the victims and families of supposedly legitimate murders. Imagine the drama of trying to distinguish the suffering of those killed fighting a foreign occupation from the suffering of those killed not fighting a foreign occupation, and the power of the inevitable failure of that effort! Imagine a movie that accurately conveyed the immense scale of the killing in these one-sided slaughters of the poor by the most technologically advanced killing machine ever devised!
From the angle that this film takes, however, critical questions are thrust upon us, including: Why imprison the killers? Will it deter others? Will atrocity-free-war finally be created before we've destroyed the earth as a habitable place? Would it not be easier to shut down the military and end the wars? The deterrence I'm most interested in is that of people like Winfield's parents who allowed him to join the military before he was 18, to demonstrate their confidence in him. I think this movie might deter some parents from making that same choice.
War Stories: Bad Wars and the Voice of Disillusion
By John Grant
When lo! An angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad, . . .
Bergdahl, Desertion and Heroics
A lead article on CNN today reads as follows: 'Fellow soldiers call Bowe Bergdahl a deserter, not a hero.'
It seems that one is defining the term 'hero' in a rather odd way, if one can't consider a deserter a hero. Let's look first at what desertion from the U.S. military means, in terms of actions and possible consequences, and then more specifically at Mr. Bergdahl's particular situation, or at least what is currently known of it.
The US military is a terror organization: A Nation of Cowards Fears Freeing Taliban POWs
By Dave Lindorff
Army Makes Case Against Enlisting
Remarkably, the U.S. Army War College has published a report (PDF) that makes an overwhelming case against enlisting in the U.S. Army. The report, called "Civilian Organizational Inhibitors to U.S. Army Recruiting and the Road Ahead," identifies counter-recruitment organizations that effectively discourage young people from joining the military.
This is the highest honor the Army could give these groups, including Quaker House, the Mennonite Central Committee, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans For Peace, and Courage to Resist. Activists often disbelieve in the effectiveness of their own work until the government admits it explicitly. Well, here is that admission. And counter-recruitment activists really do seem to appreciate it.
No doubt someone quickly sent the report along to the NSA and the FBI. The report is, in fact, a few years old, and we have seen the government infiltrating at least some of the organizations named in it during the past few years.
But who really should be reading this excellent report is potential recruits. In laying out the arguments of the counter-recruitment groups and then trying to refute them, the report's author, Lieutenant Colonel Todd M. Jacobus, makes their case persuasively and his own weakly in the extreme. I'm not sure if this is intentional subterfuge, drug-induced self-parody, or just intellectual debility. Regardless, the government will have new appreciation for its standard disclaimer that says the views expressed are the author's alone.
Some highlights:
"Hundreds of organizations throughout our Country [sic] have a negative influence on our recruiting efforts, using techniques and strategies that frequently depict professional military recruiters in an ill light, disillusion influencers and dissuade potential applicants from looking into military service as a viable option."
The typical Army reaction to any such challenge is, Jacobus says, to cut and run:
"Too often, the tactic of our recruiting force when engaged by a hostile force, is to break contact, and re-focus efforts and resources where those hostile to military recruitment are less likely to be confronted, and therefore where success is more likely."
Jacobus calls the Army "all-volunteer" before noting the absurdity of that claim:
"The manner in which the Quaker House illustrates their support for their Quaker ideals is by endeavoring to hurt our Army's recruiting and retention efforts by: 1. providing reference material to potential Soldiers and centers of influence that negatively portrays the military recruiter and the enlistment process; 2. counseling enlistees in the delayed entry program on how they can terminate their enlistment; 3. counseling Soldiers on active duty on how to adjudicate their situation when they are in an unexcused absence or absent without leave status; 4. counseling to Soldiers on how they can quickly adjudicate a conscientious objector status with the Army; 5. providing expertise to Soldiers on discharge procedures and regulations."
Surely a volunteer service would not require such elaborate assistance for someone attempting to stop volunteering.
Jacobus presents the arguments of counter-recruiters at some length and never counters most of them in any way at all:
"Quaker House publishes and widely distributes a document entitled, 'Meet Sgt. Abe, the Honest Recruiter'. This pamphlet emphasizes that the applicant needs to thoroughly read and understand the enlistment contract before signing the document. The pamphlet draws attention to the fact that the Army can at will extend an enlistment indefinitely, that 'Recruiters make "sweet promises" that the Army is not required to deliver'. The pamphlet draws attention to the fact that serving in the Army is 'not a normal job', and that 'you can be sent to war'. The final few pages give our impressionable applicant some 'things to think about', included in this list is that 'much military training is NOT useful in civilian jobs'; that 'many Vets suffer LONG-TERM physical and psychological damage: PTSD, "Gulf War Syndrome"', that 'Women in the military face a HIGH RISK of sexual harassment and rape'; that 'military life is hard on families with higher rates of domestic abuse and divorce', that 'there are long delays in getting veterans benefits'; that 'dozens of Soldiers are killed and hundreds are wounded every month'. Finally, Sgt Abe warns the potential Soldier to, 'think HARD before you sign – your life could be at stake.'"
In addition, a Mennonite Central Committee flyer
"highlights the fact that most students enlist in order for education benefits, and suggests that a student will NOT get the amount of money promised by their recruiter. The flier emphasizes that these students will be trained and expected to kill on the field of battle, and that the guidance counselor should ensure that there is an understanding of this expectation. The Mennonite Central Committee highlights on their 'ask a veteran' web site link the very negative opinions of those who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces. All of the individuals highlighted regret having served in the U.S. Armed Forces, and provide a variety of reasons. These reasons include the following: serving in the military is incompatible with following Jesus; basic training is de-humanizing; the military trains soldiers to hate entire groups of people; soldiers do not show sadness in removing evil, but instead rejoice in the opportunity to kill; the military makes every effort to rob what is inside a person; people for whom we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan do not want us there; I came to the determination that love is stronger than fear, hate, suffering, and death. The veteran testimonials ranged from their description of the sincere sorrow that followed the death of a comrade to the frustrations of not being able to do more for a soldier in need. In all cases they describe how they eventually came to see our presence in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places as illegal, and against their convictions."
A Veterans For Peace video, the report helpfully tells us, (in reality the video is the work of a number of organizations):
"begins with video from the United States Army Recruiting Command, where a recruiter comments that, 'just because you get deployed doesn't mean you will end up in the Middle East or Iraq' – followed quickly by an applicant saying, 'if I were to get mobilized, it wouldn't be a whole big ordeal'. These comments are quickly retorted by a Soldier who had been severely injured in an improvised explosive device in Iraq, his mother providing an overview of her son's injuries. Next, a Marine veteran of Vietnam addresses the invincibility of being a Marine ending as soon as one engages in combat, and that 'all of the myths and lies' that a recruit has been told are 'over'. This is followed by a stepmother talking about her stepson being killed in Fallujah, and the fact that he was only 19 years old when he enlisted, and therefore he could not know what he would face in Iraq. Next, there is an excerpt from a U.S. Army Recruiting Command video of a recruit talking about joining for the educational benefits. Several veterans then discuss the smoking mirrors [sic] associated with educational benefits. There is a claim that 'on average the Montgomery GI Bill will only cover 1⁄2 the cost of a public college and 1/5 the cost of a private college'. Further, they communicate a message that Soldiers in the Reserve Components of the U.S. Army are prevented from using education benefits due to repeated deployments. And, by the time a Soldier completes two and three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are in no shape to go to college. A former Reservist says that because he cannot use GI Bill benefits after being discharged that the government is not fulfilling their obligation to him. The video transitions to a recruit saying that he is joining the U.S. Army because, 'service will help me in civilian life'. This transitions immediately to a young man who served in Iraq who says, 'I'm a great killer; I know how to blow up bridges and buildings, and people, and how to dismantle mines'; this same young man says that the Army prepared him to be a custodian. Another veteran commenting that she was absolutely lost after leaving the service, and worked menial jobs for many years, and still does not have a direction. The video then transitions to a Vietnam veteran talking about his transition from Southeast Asia to his life here in the United States, and his homeless lifestyle of panhandling for three years. The video shows a statistic that 'the VA estimates on any given night 200,000 veterans are homeless'. The video includes an interview of a former Recruiter, who indicates that he was trained to cover up one-time drug offenses, and to do what it takes to enlist applicants into the service. The video shows a statistic that 'the Government Accounting Office reports 6,600 complaints of recruiting wrongdoing during a one year period.' Cindy Sheehan, whose son, SPC Casey Sheehan, was killed in Iraq, said that her son's recruiter told her that 'even if there was a war, he would not see combat'. She clearly communicates on the video that Recruiters will tell a recruit anything in order to get their signature on a contract. Further, this contract binds the recruit, but not the United States government. There is a comment that 'since the start of the Iraq War the Army has extended the enlistment of more than 50,000 troops through "stop loss"'."
Of course you could just watch the above video, rather than reading the play-by-play produced on your dime, but I want to make clear that Jacobus recounts all of these claims without ever refuting them. "Counter-recruiting organizations," he writes, "present as evidence Youtube videos, web page links, and newspaper articles highlighting sexual misconduct and criminal activity by Army Recruiters. Their messages highlight our Recruiters lying to applicants, encouraging applicants to lie on their medical and criminal history, promises of bonus money that never come, promises of education benefits that are grossly exaggerated, and promises of state-side duty with no likelihood for service overseas." Jacobus follows this summary of well-documented charges, just as he does several others, with vague platitudes and generalized assertions about the mental states of all Army recruiters: "Our Army's Recruiters are interested in people, have had positive experiences in our Army, and want to share these experiences, and present the same opportunities to our next generation of Soldiers." Golly gee, no kidding? All of them? You wouldn't insult our intelligence, would you, Sir?
To counter extensive evidence that the military does not prepare a lot of people for jobs, Jacobus just asserts that the military makes people leaders (with no evidence that this finds them jobs).
In other cases, Jacobus summarizes the charges against recruiters and the military, and then immediately admits that they are true:
"Counter-recruiter groups' messages implore potential Soldiers to consider that they will be trained to kill, they will be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, they will live and serve in austere conditions, and they will see destruction and death of both friends and innocent people. They challenge potential Soldiers to visit a hospital and see those who suffer the effects of physical and psychological damage as a result of service in America's Army. Counter-recruiting organizations highlight the increasing domestic abuse and divorce rate present in Army families. Many of the issues raised by these counter-recruiting organizations are based on truths, although in a quite negative manner."
The truth is notoriously biased against positive depictions of mass-murder.
Similarly, on sexual assault, Jacobus recommends admitting it happens, but then asserting that every member of the U.S. military follows a code of ethics -- which apparently allows killing people and/or sexually assaulting your fellow ethical beings. Jacobus goes on to make a serious claim, namely that a college campus is the most dangerous place for sexual assaults, not the military. But clearly there are studies finding the opposite. And a separate question is the quality of the environment for recovering from (and seeking accountability for) sexual assault in the military versus on a college campus.
After writing as if we had limited intelligence for two-dozen pages, Jacobus present the "myth" that the military requires limited intelligence, in order to debunk it. But, of course, the military does not require limited intelligence; it requires limited independence of thought, which is only one particular type of intelligence.
Jacobus spends remarkably few words putting up an argument in favor of enlistment. He suggests that recruiters should counter nasty talk of dying with reassurances about medical support. Of course, that medical support is the reason so many troops are surviving without arms and legs and other, um, appendages. The author also suggests that recruiters claim (without any provided basis or explanation) that the military is defensive and that it defends "freedom." That's not what top members of the U.S. military say. It's also not what the people of the world say.
Moving on into the realm of self-parody, Jacobus recommends talking about 9-11 a lot, and then a bit more, and then maybe a little extra. And he proposes expanding on that theme by depicting the world as a permanent source of irrational terrorists out to attack the United States for no reason. Why there are no anti-Norwegian terrorist networks or anti-Anybody-Else terrorist networks is never explained. The Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 is presented as evidence of the permanent senseless presence of anti-U.S. terrorism in the world, with no reference to the 1953 U.S. overthrow of Iran's democracy and the imposition of a vicious U.S.-backed dictator from 1953 to 1979. Jacobus offers another dozen similar examples of terrorism and alleged terrorism, all completely context free. Of course, U.S. interference in people's countries cannot justify terrorism, but it goes a great distance toward explaining it. Only by pretending that militarism does not produce terrorism, can anyone continue promoting militarism as a supposed defense against terrorism.
Delving deeply into self-parody, Jacobus holds up Colin Powell (who took a laughable case for attacking Iraq to the U.N. which rejected it) as the absolute authority on honest straight talk about why the U.S. is not aggressive or imperialistic. He quotes Powell baselessly making that claim and then skipping back over 70 years of contrary evidence to claim that after World War II the United States did not "ask for dominion over a single nation in Europe." Well, except Germany. Oh, and the need for military bases in all the other countries. And let's not forget Japan and Korea.
Jacobus claims that members of the military are not disproportionately from poor backgrounds, and indeed some studies seem to back him up. And, indeed, most members of the military, when asked if they joined to "serve their country" answer yes. But three-quarters also say they joined for education benefits, which makes one wonder what the impact on recruitment would be if the United States made education free or affordable the way other nations do. And, if that happened, what would be the further effect on susceptibility to Pentagon propaganda of a populace with a higher education level?
The following, unlike Jacobus' report, is known with certainty to be a parody. I produced it.
Pentagon Data on Student Testing Program Rife with Errors and Contradictions
Student Privacy Compromised by Massive Program
By Pat Elder
In late December, 2013 the Department of Defense released a database on the military's controversial Student Testing Program in 11,700 high schools across the country. An examination of the complex and contradictory dataset raises serious issues regarding student privacy and the integrity of the Student Testing Program in America's schools.
The data was released after a protracted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
See the State ASVAB Databases and the National Database.
Lead contamination in the high schools from military marksmanship programs
By Pat Elder
The Guide to Lead Management for Air Gun Shooting produced by the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP), 2013, is a misleading publication that may seriously jeopardize the health of millions of high school children and staff across the nation who may come into contact with lead particulate matter as a result of inadequate supervision and maintenance of indoor firing ranges. The CMP provides mandatory training and curriculum to Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force JROTC Marksmanship Instructors. The course covers how to safely and properly conduct air rifle live firing in the nation's high schools.
This CMP publicationisbased on dated and questionable science. It minimizes the health risks associated with indoor firing ranges using air rifles and pistols.
HET exhibited gross technical incompetence
Technical aspects of the CMP guide rely on the findings of Health & Environmental Technology LLC (HET), an environmental testing firm from Colorado Springs, Colorado. The sole employee of HET is Mr. Robert Rodosevich. HET has come under scrutiny in Colorado for "gross technical incompetence in technical compliance."
HET was contracted last year by a listing Realtor to prepare a "Preliminary Assessment" of the degree of contamination of a house used as methamphetamine lab. HET came very close to giving the house a clean bill of health before properly licensed professionals were called in to conduct a thorough and legal evaluation of the highly contaminated residence.
A Colorado regulatory audit, resulting in findings of "noncompliance and regulatory misconduct" dated May 29, 2012, and performed by Forensics Applications Consulting Technologiesfound HET's work to be "fatally flawed". The audit reported, "The HET document was not prepared by an individual documented as being capable or authorized under regulation to perform such work. .The document prepared by HET exhibited gross technical incompetence in technical compliance.."
The state auditor continued, "Mr. Robert Rodosevich has violated state regulations by entirely failing to demonstrate that he has any kind of knowledge in performing the work at all." The auditor's report documented 35 violations of state regulations.
Rodosevich's message contained in the CMP's Guide may be similarly fraudulent:
From The Guide to Lead Management for Air Gun Shooting (page 7):
"The issue of whether air gun firing creates airborne lead was re- examined in 2007 tests conducted by Health & Environmental Technology (HET), a professional environmental testing firm from Colorado Springs, Colorado. These tests were conducted on an air gun range at the U. S. Olympic Shooting Center. For these tests, air samplers were placed in the breathing space of the air gun shooters while they fired and next to the target backstops. No measurable airborne lead was detected by any of these monitors during air gun firing."
Firing air rifles or air pistols at muzzle velocities prescribed for target shooting (<600 fps) does not generate any detectable air- borne lead. There is therefore no need for special ventilation systems on air gun ranges since there is no airborne lead to exhaust from the range. Normal ventilation achieved by modern HVAC systems provides more than adequate ventilation for air gun ranges."
Rodosevich says the air is safe to breathe in hundreds of high schools across the country with indoor firing ranges.
Is it?
Amazingly, there's little to substantiate or repudiate this claim regarding the air, but no one disputes the health risks associated with the accumulated lead particulate matter on the floor at the muzzle of the firearm and on the floor around the target area. For instance, many jurisdictions across the country have discontinued the use of lead ammunition at indoor police firing ranges. The high cost of non-lead ammunition is typically cited as a reason for continuing the use of lead ammunition.
In Montgomery County, Maryland, for instance, the police have switched to non-lead ammunition at the indoor firing range, but the local high schools have not. In a 2013 report, Sean Yarup, Environmental Team Leader of the Indoor Air Quality Office, Division of Maintenance of the Montgomery County Public Schools denies the possibility of elevated blood lead levels in firing range participants. The Montgomery County, Maryland report cites the study performed by HET.
The Montgomery report does cite a 2012 study by the National Research Council that found "overwhelming evidence" that 30-year-old federal standards governing lead exposure at Defense Department firing ranges and other sites aren't strict enough to protect workers from ailments associated with high blood lead levels. "In the summary section of the report, the National Research Council specifically states that the OSHA standard provides inadequate protection for DOD firing range personnel and for any other worker populations covered by the general industry standard. In other words, the study addresses occupational (worker) exposure as opposed to non-occupational exposure."
While denying the health effects on students, Montgomery officials admit the potential for worker exposure. They admit the janitors are at risk. (See the CMP guidelines on downrange cleanup below.)
Washing hands with soap and water isn't enough
After stating the air is safe to breathe, the CMP's guide states that high school children who fire lead pellet rifles in classrooms and gyms are safe from lead contamination if they wash their hands, keep open food and drink away from shooting activity, and refrain from chewing on the lead pellets.
From the CMP:
Even though all available medical evidence indicates that handling lead pellets during air gun firing does not create elevated lead levels, lead is still a toxic substance and ingesting lead into the body has a potential risk to one's health. For this reason it is important that all air gun shooters take certain precautions while handling lead pellets.
In 1988, William L. Marcus, PhD., a researcher at the National Institute of Health, examined the issue of lead exposure for air gun shooters. He concluded that if young target shooters follow a few simple precautions, their use of lead pellets during target shooting does not constitute a health hazard. Dr. Marcus worked with shooting sports leaders to develop two simple rules that are still the basis for health guidelines that are taught to shooting coaches and shooting sports participants. Those rules are:
1) Anyone who handles air gun pellets during shooting must wash hands their hands, with soap and water, after they finish shooting.
2) No food or open beverage containers may be taken into the range and no food may be consumed on air gun ranges. It also should go without saying that pellets should never be placed in a shooter's mouth."
The view in this 2013 document is based on 25 year-old research which has been discredited.
According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/
Lead fragments on the floor As stated, lead fragments are deposited on the gym or classroom floor in front of the gun muzzles and on the floor in the area around the backstops. The CMP recommends school personnel dispose of these fragments according to strict guidelines. "Lead residues on range floors can be very effectively cleaned and removed. If shooters do not move past the firing line to go downrange except as authorized, and if personnel who go downrange follow the Guidelines for Air- gun Range Design, Cleaning and Maintenance, there is no immediate health hazard to shooters or other person who remain behind the firing line." This is a big "if"and this is where people may be getting very sick. Can you imagine the janitorial staff at your high school following the procedures below every evening? (In some Maryland schools shooting ranges are set up in classrooms which are then re-converted to a normal instructional arrangement.) Last year, researchers commissioned by the Pentagon said that decades-old limits on lead exposure are inadequate to protect the health of workers on military firing ranges. Additionally, the National Academy of Science has reported that lead from ammunition fired on Army, Navy and Air Force ranges in the last five years has "frequently exceeded" those limits, "in some cases by several orders of magnitude." Sen. Ben Cardin expressed concern about the report's implications for workers at Maryland military installations with firing ranges. They're at risk," the Maryland Democrat said. "This report shows that exposure to lead from firing ranges is a health hazard, and we can do a better job of protecting the public health." Cardin, however, has not responded to concerns that several dozen firing ranges located within the state's high schools that are run by the military as part of the JROTC program, may also threaten public health. Here's a list of the necessary procedures in the CMP Guide designed to protect the health of children in high schools with shooting ranges. Can you imagine your local high school meticulously following these procedures? · Pellet traps designed to effectively contain the pellets and pellet fragments must be used. · Only authorized adult personnel who follow proper procedures should remove lead from pellet traps or target holders. · With this type of pellet trap, you must still ensure all residues fall behind the target line by carefully inspecting the areas behind and in front of the target line before establishing the range map. · Lead consisting of spent pellets or pellet fragments that is re- moved from the pellet traps is regarded as a recyclable material. After a quantity of this lead is accumulated, take it to a recycling center. · If you are working with an older range that does not have a smooth floor, consider replacing or covering the floor to achieve a smooth surface that is easier to clean. · In order to carry out recommended air gun range management procedures, range managers should have these supplies and materials available to them: · Shop or industrial vacuum cleaner and mops and disposable mop heads, · Container (bucket) with secure closure for spent pellets · Container (bucket) with secure closure for vacuum filters and mop heads · On ranges where the target system allows lead pellet residues to deposit on the floor forward of the targets, it is recommended that the range staff establish a lane (paint or tape a line) to provide a designated walking path for the coach or authorized athlete to follow while moving to the target line. · At the target line, it is recommended that the designated target changer put on disposable shoe covers before walking over any residues that may be in front of the targets. · Once targets are changed, the designated target changer should remove the disposable shoe covers before stepping onto the walking path and returning to the firing line. Shoe covers are disposable, elasticized paper · If the air gun range is in a multi-use facility where other activities will take place in the downrange area after air gun firing concludes, that area must be cleaned after every training or competition session. · After firing activities have ended, have the athletes remove shooting equipment from the firing line, ensuring that they do not step over the firing line. Using a shop vacuum, start from behind the firing line and move parallel to the firing line, carefully vacuuming from the firing line downrange for ten feet. Start again from ten feet in front of the target line and move parallel to the target line, vacuuming to the tar- get line (or beyond if there is lead pellet residue behind the target line. · Ensure that the shop vacuum's cord, wheels and hoses do NOT drag through un-vacuumed area. Always keep the vacuum and the vacuum operator in the clean area of the range. The operator should not step on or stand in a potentially contaminated area. · Range floors that are roughly textured or porous may require mopping with tri-sodium phosphate, a buffering solution that suspends particulates long enough to be picked up by the mop.
Lead fragments on the floor
As stated, lead fragments are deposited on the gym or classroom floor in front of the gun muzzles and on the floor in the area around the backstops. The CMP recommends school personnel dispose of these fragments according to strict guidelines. "Lead residues on range floors can be very effectively cleaned and removed. If shooters do not move past the firing line to go downrange except as authorized, and if personnel who go downrange follow the Guidelines for Air- gun Range Design, Cleaning and Maintenance, there is no immediate health hazard to shooters or other person who remain behind the firing line."
This is a big "if"and this is where people may be getting very sick. Can you imagine the janitorial staff at your high school following the procedures below every evening? (In some Maryland schools shooting ranges are set up in classrooms which are then re-converted to a normal instructional arrangement.)
Last year, researchers commissioned by the Pentagon said that decades-old limits on lead exposure are inadequate to protect the health of workers on military firing ranges. Additionally, the National Academy of Science has reported that lead from ammunition fired on Army, Navy and Air Force ranges in the last five years has "frequently exceeded" those limits, "in some cases by several orders of magnitude."
Sen. Ben Cardin expressed concern about the report's implications for workers at Maryland military installations with firing ranges. They're at risk," the Maryland Democrat said. "This report shows that exposure to lead from firing ranges is a health hazard, and we can do a better job of protecting the public health." Cardin, however, has not responded to concerns that several dozen firing ranges located within the state's high schools that are run by the military as part of the JROTC program, may also threaten public health.
Here's a list of the necessary procedures in the CMP Guide designed to protect the health of children in high schools with shooting ranges. Can you imagine your local high school meticulously following these procedures?
· Pellet traps designed to effectively contain the pellets and pellet fragments must be used.
· Only authorized adult personnel who follow proper procedures should remove lead from pellet traps or target holders.
· With this type of pellet trap, you must still ensure all residues fall behind the target line by carefully inspecting the areas behind and in front of the target line before establishing the range map.
· Lead consisting of spent pellets or pellet fragments that is re- moved from the pellet traps is regarded as a recyclable material. After a quantity of this lead is accumulated, take it to a recycling center.
· If you are working with an older range that does not have a smooth floor, consider replacing or covering the floor to achieve a smooth surface that is easier to clean.
· In order to carry out recommended air gun range management procedures, range managers should have these supplies and materials available to them:
· Shop or industrial vacuum cleaner and mops and disposable mop heads,
· Container (bucket) with secure closure for spent pellets
· Container (bucket) with secure closure for vacuum filters and mop heads
· On ranges where the target system allows lead pellet residues to deposit on the floor forward of the targets, it is recommended that the range staff establish a lane (paint or tape a line) to provide a designated walking path for the coach or authorized athlete to follow while moving to the target line.
· At the target line, it is recommended that the designated target changer put on disposable shoe covers before walking over any residues that may be in front of the targets.
· Once targets are changed, the designated target changer should remove the disposable shoe covers before stepping onto the walking path and returning to the firing line. Shoe covers are disposable, elasticized paper
· If the air gun range is in a multi-use facility where other activities will take place in the downrange area after air gun firing concludes, that area must be cleaned after every training or competition session.
· After firing activities have ended, have the athletes remove shooting equipment from the firing line, ensuring that they do not step over the firing line. Using a shop vacuum, start from behind the firing line and move parallel to the firing line, carefully vacuuming from the firing line downrange for ten feet. Start again from ten feet in front of the target line and move parallel to the target line, vacuuming to the tar- get line (or beyond if there is lead pellet residue behind the target line.
· Ensure that the shop vacuum's cord, wheels and hoses do NOT drag through un-vacuumed area. Always keep the vacuum and the vacuum operator in the clean area of the range. The operator should not step on or stand in a potentially contaminated area.
· Range floors that are roughly textured or porous may require mopping with tri-sodium phosphate, a buffering solution that suspends particulates long enough to be picked up by the mop.
Interview: Students, Faculty Protest Presence of David Petraeus at CUNY Honors College
Cross-Posted from FireDogLake
On September 9, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director David Petraeus -- who also formerly headed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) International Security Assistance Force for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and co-wrote the Counterinsurgency Field Manual -- began a new job as an adjunct professor at City University of New York (CUNY) Macaulay Honors College.
USDA Wants More Rural . . . Cannon Fodder
By Joel Salatin
Why do we need more farmers? What is the driving force behind USDA policy? In an infuriating epiphany
I have yet to metabolize, I found out Wednesday in a private policy-generation meeting with Virginia Democratic
gubernatorial candidate Terry McCauliffe. I did and still do consider it a distinct honor for his staff to invite me as
one of the 25 dignitaries in Virginia Agriculture for this think-tank session in Richmond.
It was a who's who of Virginia agriculture: Farm Bureau, Va. Agribusiness Council, Va. Forestry Association,
Va. Poultry Federation, Va. Cattlemen's Ass., deans from Virginia Tech and Virginia State--you get the picture.
It was the first meeting of this kind I've ever attended that offered no water. The only thing to drink were soft drinks.
Lunch was served in styrofoam clam shells--Lay's potato chips, sandwiches, potato salad and chocolate chip cookie.
It didn't look very safe to me, so I didn't partake. But I'd have liked a drink of water. In another circumstance, I might
eat this stuff, but with these folks, felt it important to make a point. Why do they all assume nobody wants water,
nobody cares about styrofoam, everybody wants potato chips and we all want industrial meat-like slabs on white bread?
But I digress. The big surprise occurred a few minutes into the meeting: US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack
walked in. He was in Terry McCauliffe love-in mode. And here is what he told us: for the first time--2012-- rural America
lost population in real numbers--not as a percentage but in real numbers. It's down to 16 percent of total population.
I'm sitting there thinking he's going to say that number needs to go up so we have more people to love and
steward the landscape. More people to care for earthworms. More people to grow food and fiber. Are you ready
for the shoe to drop? The epiphany? What could the US Secretary of Agriculture, at the highest strategic planning
sessions of our land, be challenged by other leaders to change this figure, to get more people in rural America, to
encourage farming and help more farms get started? What could be the driving reason to have more farmers?
Why does he go to bed at night trying to figure out how to increase farmers? How does the President and other
cabinet members view his role as the nation's farming czar? What could be the most important contribution that
increasing farmers could offer to the nation? Better food? Better soil development? Better care for animals?
Better care for plants?
Are you ready? Here's his answer: although rural America only has 16 percent of the population, it gives
40 percent of the personnel to the military. Say what? You mean when it's all said and done, at the end of the
day, the bottom line--you know all the cliches--the whole reason for increasing farms is to provide cannon
fodder for American imperial might. He said rural kids grow up with a sense of wanting to give something back,
and if we lose that value system, we'll lose our military might.
So folks, it all boils down to American military muscle. It's not about food, healing the land, stewarding
precious soil and resources; it's all about making sure we keep a steady stream of youngsters going into the
military. This puts an amazing twist on things. You see, I think we should have many more farmers, and have
spent a lifetime trying to encourage, empower, and educate young people to go into farming. It never occurred
to me that this agenda was the key to American military power.
Lest I be misread, I am not opposed to defending family. I am not opposed to fighting for sacred causes.
I am violently opposed to non-sacred fighting and meddling in foreign countries, and building empires. The
Romans already tried that and failed.
But to think that my agenda is key to building the American military--now that's a cause for pause. I will
redouble my efforts to help folks remember why we need more farmers. It's not to provide cannon fodder for
Wall Street imperialistic agendas. It's to grow food that nourishes, land that's aesthetically and aromatically
sensually romantic, build soil, hydrate raped landscapes, and convert more solar energy into biomass than
nature would in a static state. I can think of many, many righteous and noble reasons to have more farms.
Why couldn't he have mentioned any of these? Any?
No, the reason for more farms is to make sure we get people signing up at the recruitment office. That's
the way he sees me as a farmer. Not a food producer. When the president and his cabinet have their private
conflabs, they don't see farmers as food producers, as stewards of the landscape, as resource leveragers.
No, they view us as insurance for military muscle, for American empire building and soldier hubris. Is this
outrageous? Do I have a right to be angry? Like me, this raw and bold show of the government's farming
agenda should make us all feel betrayed, belittled, and our great nation besmirched.
Perhaps, just perhaps, really good farms don't feed this military personnel pipeline. I'd like to think our
kind of farming has more righteous goals and sacred objectives. Vilsack did not separate good farmers from
bad farmers. Since we have far more bad farmers than good ones, perhaps the statistic would not hold up
if we had more farmers who viewed the earth as something to heal instead of hurt, as a partner to caress
instead of rape. That America's farms are viewed by our leaders as just another artery leading into military
might is unspeakably demeaning and disheartening.
Tragically, I don't think this view would change with a different Democrat or Republican. It's entrenched
in the establishment fraternity. Thomas Jefferson, that iconic and quintessential agrarian intellectual, said
we should have a revolution about every half century just to keep the government on its toes. I'd say we're
long overdue.
Now when you see those great presidentially appointed cabinet members talking, I just want you to think
about how despicable it is that behind the facade, behind the hand shaking and white papers, in the private
by-invitation-only inner circles of our country, movers and shakers know axiomatically that farms are really
important to germinate more military personnel. That no one in that room with Terry McCauliffe, none of those
Virginia farm leaders, even blinked when he said that is still hard for me to grasp. They accepted it as truth,
probably saying "Amen, brother" in their hearts. True patriots, indeed.
It'll take me awhile to get over this, and believe me, I intend to shout this from the housetops. I'll incorporate
in as many public speeches as I can because I think it speaks to the heart of food and farming. It speaks to
the heart of strength and security; which according to our leaders comes from the end of a gun, not from the
alimentary canal of an earthworm. Here's to more healthy worms.
Army Teaches Wrong Lesson in Nation's High Schools
Historical evidence, statements by military leaders of the era
show JROTC version of Hiroshima is misleading
By Pat Elder
This summer the world will pause to commemorate the 68th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most Americans are still supportive of Truman's decision despite overwhelming historical evidence the bomb had "nothing to do with the end of the war," in the words of Major General Curtis E. LeMay.


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shoptroll said:Woo? My copy of Master Quest is going to be obsolete in 3 months and I still haven't played through it :(
ThroneofDravaris said:I kind of assumed they'd be doing more than just updating graphics. So, this is just going to be straight-up Ocarina of Time, 1998-quality game design and all? Ok then. Don't try too hard, Nintendo; you're only going to make a million bajillion dollars off this.
shoptroll said:it seems to be approximately the same approach they took with Super Mario 64's enhanced port.

subset: commoncrawl


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Knowledge Representation
Hybris-A1: Verification of Non-Terminating Action Programs
The action language GOLOG has been used, among other things, for the specification of the behaviour of mobile robots. Since the task of such autonomous systems is typically open-ended, their GOLOG programs are usually non-terminating. To ensure that the program will let the robot exhibit the intended behaviour, it is often desirable to be able to formally specify and then verify the desired properties, which are often of a temporal nature. This task has been studied within our preliminary work from two perspectives: On the one hand, the problem was tackled for very expressive specification and action program formalisms, but without the goal of achieving decidability, i.e. the developed verification methods were not guaranteed to terminate. On the other hand, the verification problem was studied for action formalisms based on decidable description logics and very limited means of specifying admissible sequences of actions, which allowed us to show decidability and complexity results for the verification problem. The purpose of this project is to combine the advantages of both approaches by, on one hand, developing verification methods for GOLOG programs that are effective and practically feasible and, on the other hand, going beyond the formalisms with very limited expressiveness to enhance their usefulness. Among other things, both qualitative and quantitative temporal program properties will be addressed.
Seminar Beliefs and Causality
In this seminar we will study papers from various subfields of Knowledge Representation. This includes belief revision; argumentation theory; planning; causality in general and the situation calculus in particular. All of these subfields of AI are related to each other. For example, one usually acts depending on what one believes, and actions in turn affect one's beliefs. In this seminar, we will study recent papers on these topics (particularly from the IJCAI-15 conference).
Submitted by Christoph Schwering on 2. August 2015 - 5:40 categories [
Bachelor's Thesis: Multi-Agent Simulation of the Water Quality in Megacities [assigned]
Humanity has crossed the line from being a rural to urban species since 2007. For the first time in history, more people live in cities and urban areas than in the countryside. Starting in the developed ations, where the urbanisation process has been significantly decelerated in the meantime, urbanisation has especially increased in Asia and South America as well as in Africa to a substantial extent in the second half of the last century. Processes of urbanisation have a negative influence on the availability and quality of water resources. Especially in developing and emerging countries, the hydrological and hydrogeological setting of each region is deteriorated through the growing urbanization processes. Often the hydrological and hydrogeological basis of an area is strongly affected by rocesses of urbanisation in these countries. Changes of the structure of urban development going along with the urbanisation will not be without consequences for the environment and water resources.
In frame of this background the Department of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology of the RWTH Aachen University analysis the interaction between high speed urbanisation/mega-urbanisation and water resources in China and India. In context to this we want to develop a knowledge-based planning and simulation framework.
Submitted by Martin Liebenberg on 12. January 2015 - 18:33 categories [
Lecture - Introduction to Knowledge Representation SS 2015
Submitted by Jens Claßen on 12. January 2015 - 11:57 categories [
Bachelor's Thesis: Efficient Default Reasoning in Golog with Answer Set Programming [completed]
The goal of this thesis was to integrate Answer Set Programming (ASP) into a Golog system in order to obtain an agent framework that is capable of efficient non-monotonic reasoning with introspection.
Submitted by Jens Claßen on 16. December 2014 - 19:00 categories [
Seminar Dynamics of Knowledge and Belief
In this seminar we will study several modeling and reasoning techniques for knowledge and belief in dynamic systems. Knowledge is an important aspect of intelligent programs: while most of today's systems assume a closed world, i.e., everything they don't know to be true is assumed to be false, an intelligent system needs to consider possible that there are truths not known to the system. In a dynamic environment, i.e., an environment where one or multiple agents (inter)act, the system will usually have to acquire new knowledge through sensing. Potentially it may even revise its beliefs when it realizes some beliefs were wrong. In this seminar we will study various aspects of action, knowledge, and belief.
We plan to implement a peer review process for this seminar. That is, every student will read some other students' term paper and provide feedback in form of a written review. This shall not only deepen your understanding of the other topics, but it also introduces you to the academic review process.
Submitted by Christoph Schwering on 6. January 2014 - 0:08 categories [
Diploma Thesis: Towards Decidable Verification of Non-Terminating Golog Programs [completed]
Claßen and Lakemeyer recently introduced algorithms for the verification of temporal properties of non-terminating Golog programs, based on the first-order modal Situation Calculus variant ES, and regression-based reasoning. However, while Golog's high expressiveness is a desirable feature, it also means that their verification procedures cannot be guaranteed to terminate in general. In this thesis, we address this problem by showing that, for a relevant subset, the verification of non-terminating Golog programs is indeed decidable, which is achieved by means of three restrictions. First, we use the ES variant of a decidable two-variable fragment of the Situation Calculus that was introduced by Gu and Soutchanski. Second, we have to restrict the Golog program to contain ground action only. Finally, we consider special classes of successor state axioms, namely the context-free ones and those that only admit local effects.
Submitted by Martin Liebenberg on 13. April 2013 - 19:45 categories [
Lecture - Introduction to Knowledge Representation SS 2013
Submitted by Jens Claßen on 1. February 2013 - 16:05 categories [
Lecture - Introduction to Knowledge Representation
Submitted by Daniel Beck on 3. April 2012 - 11:29 categories [
Seminar Robust Reliable Robotics
In this seminar we will study several aspects of robust and reliable robotics. Robots are machines created to fulfill particular tasks instead of or in cooperation with humans. In virtually all scenarios a failure is annoying or even catastrophic. Planetary rovers cannot be repaired easily or at all, broken factory robots can become vastly expensive not only due to the cost to repair the robot itself, but the problems they cause for the overall supply chain; and domestic service robots operate in close proximity to humans in their habitats and must take special precautions as not to harm a human or damage the interior. These considerations make it necessary to develop techniques and systems that enable a robot system to detect failures or unexpected behavior and at least stop, better even work around the problem.
The topics include recent papers on execution monitoring, robot system debugging, and fault detection.
Submitted by tim on 9. January 2012 - 13:10 categories [


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Two set to graduate from drug court in Barre
BARRE Two participants will graduate Monday from Adult Drug Treatment Court.
The Washington County criminal court said the graduation for the two, whose names have not been released, will be held at the court in Barre.
The treatment court enables people involved in the criminal justice system who have an identified substance abuse and/or mental health problem to go through an alternative program that includes intensive case management, treatment and support. The court is designed to help reduce recidivism and further involvement with the criminal justice system and has been proven to accomplish this goal nationwide. The process can take a year or more for participants to complete.
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This is a "machine-selection optional" part.Please choose a vehicle to see products specific to your machine, select a product below.
User Tip: If you're unsure of your vehicle type, you may skip the machine type selection box.
Tusk brings you fantastic quality tires for some of the best prices on the market. If you want a tire that is built to dominate any terrain it comes in contact with, then you will love the line up of Tusk ATV Tires that we have available.
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Opened 9 years ago
Closed 5 years ago
#65 closed enhancement (fixed)
Unify SuperIO code?
|Reported by:
|Owned by:
|Cosmetic fixes
|Patch Status:
|there is no patch
One thing I've been noticing in the current superio implementations: A lot of differences come from having the part names used in variable and macro names.
#define FDC37M60X_CONFIG_REG_CC 0x02
Maybe we should change that to some unique names
#define SUPERIO_CONFIG_REG_CC 0x02
- Those names are usually file local only, so name clashes wont be a problem
- They are the same for most (all?) SuperIOs?
Doing so (maybe with function names as well?) would unify the superio interface, or at least make diffing the code of different devices a bit easier..
Attachments (0)
Change History (4)
comment:1 Changed 8 years ago by uwe
Yes, the Super I/O code should definately be unified. Ideally one "driver" per Super I/O vendor should handle all the various chips of that vendor.
An example of how this can work is the 'smscsuperio' driver in v2, which should support almost all recent SMSC Super I/O chips. At least for v3 we should only accept this kind of generalized Super I/O drivers in the repository.
comment:2 Changed 8 years ago by uwe
- Priority changed from minor to major
- version v2 deleted
comment:3 Changed 8 years ago by stepan
- Owner changed from somebody to uwe
comment:4 Changed 5 years ago by stepan
- Resolution set to fixed
- Status changed from new to closed
As original reporter of the "issue" I am closing it now, since there is no clear description or issue that could be fixed in order to ever "succeed" in the goal of reducing code duplication. Also, what might seem like wasteful code duplication is sometimes two different pieces of hardware that happen to behave the same way without any systematic reason. Two chips might seem exactly the same, but need very different workarounds, and moving the distinction from the device tree model into the code just moves complexity, and in addition and much worse, the required testing overhead significantly.
So, if you recognize evil code duplication, it should be fixed. At all cost? No. Only if it makes sense.


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Mr. Christopher Amos
Mr. Amos attended Liberty University where he completed his Bachelor's degree in Sport Management with a minor in Coaching, graduating Summa cum Laude and was a member of the Alpha Lambda Delta Honor Society; and, his Master's degree in Sport Administration, graduating Summa cum Laude with Distinction. He is currently pursuing his Doctoral Degree in Sport Management through the United States Sports Academy in Daphene, Alabama.
"Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know." Jeremiah 33:3
M.S., Liberty University
B.S., Liberty University
Sport Marketing, Event Management, Equipment, Coaching and Communication in Sport.
|Career Highlights Mr. Christopher Amos
Mr. Amos has worked over 11 seasons for the Washington Redskins as an Equipment and Staff Assistant. Prior to his employment with Liberty University, Mr. Amos worked as an Athletic Director in Virginia, was on staff with the Washington Nationals, and Coached High School Football. In addition, he holds seven certifications from the Federal Emergency Management Institute (FEMA). Mr. Amos is from the Northern Virginia/Washington, D.C. area. He continues working with the Redskins and travels between Washington, D.C. and Lynchburg on his weekends.


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Anyone know what this means? It keeps showing on WP dashboard.
Ultimate Blogroll: Could not check for reciprocal website. Check if ports are open.
PS. I noticed when I placed the tag inside a page; I noticed nothing else showed, ie: any other text...how can I insert some Terms if it does not allow anything other then the tag? I should be able to place other text above or below the tag....


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(435) 986-8386
Cedar City, UT | Map
St. George law firm focusing in a broad range of areas. Full service boutique law firm. Very pers... Read More
(435) 674-2566
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With 23 years of experience in many of the areas of law, I have learned to do some things very we... Read More


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Hi everybody! It seems like yesterday that I developed my first BW roll (it was 1 year ago) and now I might be able to print my first picture in a few days .
A friend of mine has borrowed to me an old Meopta Opemus System enlarger and I am about to set it up in my bathroom to print some 35mm shots.
I need some advice from you guys: I need to shop for some paper and for a safe light. My idea was to start with a lot of 10x15cm graded paper (2 and 3 maybe) and a waste bin to start experimenting (I do not have filters for multicontrast paper) and buy a safe light which is "safe" for that paper.
Does it sound like a good plan? Which paper (and brand) would you choose if you were in my position?
Thanks for any advise you can give to me!


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All Items : Antiques : Decorative Art : Metals : Silver : Pre 1837 VR item #161749 (stock #302AAA)
Looking as sharp as the day it was made is this elegant sterling silver three-piece tea service from the workshop of veteran silversmith William Hall, first registered in London in 1795. Weighing a serious four pounds all in, the set features neo-Rococo designs of repousse flowers and foliage, with borders of interlaced stylized fronds, all expressing the work of a master craftsman and hall marked London, 1815 to 1826...
All Items : Estate Jewelry : Gold : Pre 1980 item #1054063
With heavy, solid links, this 14-karat gold bracelet weighs in at 1.5675 ounces. It has an excellent safety clasp with extra snap-lock. American, circa 1970.
All Items : Antiques : Regional Art : Ancient World : Near Eastern : Metalwork : Pre 1700 item #533520
This 26-inch tall Persian brass candlestick dates from the end of the Sixteenth Century to the beginning of the Seventeenth Century. It is in superb condition and color and has only a small drill hole at the base that allowed it to be mounted as a 46-inch tall lamp. It is approximately nine inches in diameter at the base.
All Items : Antiques : Instruments and Implements : Pre 1800 item #1209559
Remarkably well-preserved, this fine relic of the Napoleonic Wars was made by an imprisoned sailor on one of the prison ships (pontons) in Britain. It boasts a pair of under-glass (sous-verre) paintings of a Directoire dandy (un Incroyable) and a fashionable woman (une Merveilleuse) of the late Eighteenth Century on its sliding covers, which enclose the set of tiles. Bone with wooden secondary elements.Minor chips and one old corner repair...
All Items : Antiques : Regional Art : Ancient World : European Medieval : Pre 1700 item #817824
A very rare and well-preserved jug produced in late Sixteenth Century Faenza, just after the end of the elaborate "istoriate" period. Excellent condition, with a few rim chips and a small crack. Approximately 8-3/4 inches high and 6-1/2 inches in diameter.
All Items : Vintage Arts : Decorative Art : Folk Art : Pre 1930 item #1254322
In full sail on a bright, sunny day is portrayed the Norwegian clipper ship "Anna," originally "Anna of Bergen." Launched in 1868, she was dubbed the "Sailing Queen of Norway" and plied the seas in a long and distinguished career before being restored and retired to serving as the tall-ship training vessel she is today. Signed and dated "K Sorensen 1923," this fine diorama is in excellent condition and measures approximately 18-1/2 inches by 25-1/2 inches by 3-1/2 inches.
All Items : Antiques : Regional Art : Asian : Japanese : Porcelain : Pre 1700 item #14938 (stock #69AAA)
Here is a magnificent charger which balances bold authority with delicate detail. Around a central medallion of the Three Friends -- pine, prunus and bamboo -- in gilt-highlighted underglaze blue with red-touched border are panels of deep blue and lustrous gilding alternating with lively scenes of flowers and rocks visited by butterflies and phoenixes, symbolizing good fortune. The back is decorated with underglaze blue Buddhist horns and cloud-surrounded red and gilt cartouches...
All Items : Antiques : Decorative Art : Metals : Silver : Asia Trade : Pre 1920 item #1266713
I love the three-dimensional effect of this pure-silver ice bucket, a tribute to the genius of Japanese metal smiths...
This 11 by 15-1/4 inch sterling silver is in exceptionally fine condition and of massive weight, a bit over 3-1/2 pounds. It bears the London hallmarks of 1789-90, maker William Simons.
Fashioned from old select sections of luxurious and now extinct huanghuali (silver rosewood), this small table/stool is graceful and sturdily made. It is approximate 13 inches by 13-1/4 inches by 20-1/4 tall.
Elegant and dramatic, this lacquer shrine (butsudan) is easily dissembled put together by one person. It is in excellent condition and retains several hidden drawers and compartments, as well as its gates, doors and slides for offerings and flower arranging. Urushi lacquer and kinpaku gilding are employed in great detail. Meiji Period, late Nineteenth Century. Approximately 44 inches by 20 inches by 16 inches deep.
All Items : Antiques : Decorative Art : Metals : Silver : Sterling : Pre 1800 item #17333 (stock #107AAA)
This is a fine, heavyweight cast sterling silver tripod salver in elegant George II style, its gadrooned border in strongly detailed English rococo curves and shells. The central field is emblazoned with contemporary crested and festooned arms; the feet are in finely crafted Spanish style. Made in London in 1765 to 1766, and weighing approximately 17 ounces, it bears the hallmark of Thomas Hannam and John Crouch (or John Carter)...
This highly detailed painting of the Holy Family being visited by the Magi and others is rendered in oil on copper. Delicately applied gold details enliven the colorful costumes. Approximately 6-1/2 inches by 5-3/8 inches, Flanders, Seventeenth Century. Please note that the painting has recently been re-framed more appropriately.
Now retired from painting, Micheline Rodolphe Rousseau, was the nom- de-brosse of a witty and charming Frenchwoman who delighted us for years with her scenes of France of the Belle Epoch. It is almost as if she said, "Reality, don't enter here!" This is one of her best, the gathering of a group of fin-de-siecle "sportifs" at a cycle shop, a common sight before bikes and tires were made stronger...
All Items : Antiques : Regional Art : Asian : Chinese : Stoneware : Pre 1800 item #15976 (stock #87AAA)
This exceptional pair of figures depicts the Buddhist lions (shishi or foo dogs) that represent the male and female principle of balance and protect sacred places. In exceptionally hard black granite they are carved in fine detail, he with the brocade ball beneath his front paw, she with a puppy beneath hers. Similar pieces from the treasure junk Tek Sing were recently sold at auction. Chinese, late Eighteenth to early Nineteenth Centuries...
All Items : Antiques : Instruments and Implements : Timepieces : Pre 1900 item #830844
An item both subtle and ostentatious, this elegant novelty once graced the lapel of a 19th Century dandy. In fine running condition, the winder is set an extraordinary distance above the works to allow for easy display. The silver case is hallmarked Bern Switzerland, .935 purity.
All Items : Fine Art : Prints : Serigraphs : Pre 1970 item #1202480
One of the most iconographic creations by American master artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1967,) this brilliant Pop Art poster has been given quality attention: bleed-serigraphic printing on heavy glazed white stock by Chiron Press, New York, for Leo Castillo Gallery. It is in excellent condition and has never been framed. (Professional conservation is available.) 40 inches by 26 inches.
All Items : Antiques : Instruments and Implements : Maritime : Pre 1837 VR item #918859
Carved in fine detail and boasting elegantly turned ivory mounts, this nautical gem is in superb condition, with no cracks or repairs. An abbreviated American shield on the face is flanked by "NB" (New Bedford?) Approximately 13-3/4 inches long, the lustrous bowl is about four inches in diameter.


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CCCC-Harnett honors Career Readiness Certificate recipients
Continuing Education, Special Events, Students/Graduates
LILLINGTON - Elizabeth Covington, of Harnett County, has had to overcome a lot in her life: becoming a single parent at the age of 18, having brain surgery because of a seizure disorder, and now, at age 45, struggling to raise her nine-year-old twins while going through a divorce.
Instead of giving in to discouragement, Covington has faced these challenges by working harder. She is now earning her diploma through Central Carolina Community College's Adult High School program and just received her Career Readiness Certificate (CRC) through the college's Human Resources Development Program.
Covington told her story at the college's Career Readiness Certification Recognition Ceremony Sept. 25 at the college's Harnett County Campus. Twenty-two students were honored for earning their CRCs.
"I overcame a lot of things over the years," she said. "These circumstances just pushed me even further to better myself, so receiving my CRC at the Silver level is a great honor for me. This lets me know that I can accomplish just about anything."
Career Readiness Certificates are issued based upon the scores of three ACT WorkKeys(R) assessments: Reading for Information, Applied Mathematics, and Locating Information. Certificates are awarded at the Bronze, Silver or Gold levels. The assessments address three fundamental workforce skills: applying math to work-related problems, reading for information/comprehending work-related materials, and locating information from materials such as diagrams, floor plans, tables, forms, graphs, and charts.
The assessments are based on ACT Inc.'s WorkKeys national job skills assessment system. These three job skill areas have been identified by employers nationwide as being essential foundational skills for job placement, career advancement and the development of an overall qualified workforce.
Earning the certificate can enhance employability because employers use the certificate, along with other education, experience and background information, to make employment, training, and promotional decisions.
"The CRC program is something everyone should be aware of, as well as be a part of if they plan to obtain employment after graduation," said Suzannah Parker, who also received her Silver Certificate. "I do not want to be limited in my goals so, as long as I can, I will strive to obtain anything within my reach to be successful."
N. Carnell Robinson, City of Dunn Mayor pro tempore, was the guest speaker for the event. Patricia Stone-Hackett, CCCC's Career Readiness Certificate coordinator provided an overview of the program. Dr. Pamela Senegal, CCCC vice president of Economic and Community Development, and Phyllis Huff, dean of Continuing Education, also spoke during the recognition.
The following persons received N.C. Career Readiness Certifications:
Gold Level - Brandi Baker and Amanda Byrd; Silver Level - Sharon Bullock, Josh McCorquodale, Dominic Carucci, Renee Mendoza, Elizabeth Covington, Bobbie Novell, Michael Fike, Roger Parker, Ruby Guzman, Suzannah W. Parker, Aaron Keil, Marsha Sander, Lucinda Lagas, Douglas Stephenson, Ashley Locklear, and Kaella Mortenson; and Bronze Level - Mariaeyesa Barron, DeAndre Council, Beyonka Moore, and Nicole Thomas;
For more information about Career Readiness Certification, contact Patricia Stone-Hackett at email@example.com, 1-800-682-8353, or 919-777-7716.
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B. Susan Kirch has been promoted to vp, creative affairs for DisneyToon Studios, responsible for developing original scripts and stories as well as sequels to Disney¹s animated successes. Kirch will be working with filmmakers through all stages of production on films that will be distributed by Disneys Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Buena Vista Pictures Distribution¹s theatrical division.
Kirch reports jointly to Sharon Morrill, president of DisneyToon Studios and to Ellen Gurney, svp of creative affairs.
Susan exudes creativity in every facet of her life, said says Morrill. She brings to the table a wealth of experience in telling great stories in a variety of mediums. She is also quite skilled in strategic planning and can expertly take a film from concept to completion on all levels.
Kirch has written and produced film, video and interactive projects and owned an entertainment company. She joined Disney Interactive in 1995 as a senior producer, and moved to Disney Online in 1998, first as director of lifestyles content and then on to be vp. In 2001, she linked with Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Online as vp of creative development and production. In 2003, she joined DisneyToon Studios as a development producer.
We realized early on that Susans understanding of the aspects of storytelling at its core made her perfect as a vp of creative affairs, commented Gurney. Storytelling is what we are all about. We are thrilled to have her join our team.