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Not My War

© 2011 Pat Humphries, Moving Forward Music, BMI

"My father joined the Army when he was 15. His mother had died when he was a child and he signed up for the same reasons most young people do: to get an education, find a job, to do something that would make his family proud. US wars have always been waged on and fought by the poorest people in the world. I’ve never seen a recruiting billboard in a rich neighborhood. This is for the resisters. ivaw.org. veteransforpeace.org"

I will not fight
I will not take orders
My life is short and getting shorter
This is not my land
I don’t belong here
This is not my war
This is not my war

When I was young I would play the hero
My chance for real, next to zero
I grew up poor and I grew up empty
Recruiters came and tried to tempt me
They promised cars and they promised money
They showed my future bright and sunny
Though it sounded good, I did not believe them
I had a friend and they deceived him.

My buddy, Juan joined the army
He was convinced he would help his family
He tried his best to buy the story
But bloody lies betrayed the glory
Juan wrote to me from a bar in Baghdad
He helped me see the power that I had
There is no war without the warrior
Just silent tanks, guns and mortars

Juan came home to the dock at Dover
We laid him down in Kentucky clover
With his son and his wife beside me
I read his words. May they always guide me.

Note:  If you liked the lyrics to Not My War, you can go to the following website and read the lyrics to the other songs on Emma's Revolution new CD "Revolutions per Minute".  http://emmasrevolution.com/listen/album/revolutions-per-minute/occupy-usa/ 

 

Watch and listen to Liam Clancy singing "And the band played Waltzing Matilda"

Take a minute to hear Liam Clancy's touching rendition of Eric Bogle's "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda," about an Australian soldier in the WW1 butchery known as Gallipoli, says about all that needs to be said about Armistice Day.  Ponder.  Pass along.  Just click on this website:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFCekeoSTwg&feature=player_embedded 

 

 

Rogue Valley Chapter - Veterans For Peace Statement of Purpose

Having dutifully served our nation, we hereby affirm our greater responsibility to serve the cause of world peace. To this end we will work, with others:

(a) Toward increasing public awareness of all costs of war;

(b) To restrain our government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations;

(c) To end the arms race, and to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons;

(d) To seek justice for veterans and victims of war;

(e) To abolish war as an instrument of national policy.

To achieve these goals, members of Veterans For Peace pledge to use non-violent means and to maintain an organization that is both democratic and open with the understanding that all members are trusted to act in the best interests of the group for the larger purpose of world peace. We urge all people who share this vision to join us.

 

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Recently discovered quotes

Congress is not preparing to defend the people of the United States. It is planning to protect the capital of American speculators and investors.... Incidentally this preparation will benefit the manufacturers of munitions and war machines.... Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought! Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder! Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings! Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction!
— Helen Keller at Carnegie Hall January 5, 1916

During the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King called our government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” True then—and even more so today.

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?"
— Mohandas Gandhi, from Non-violence in Peace and War.

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."  — Howard Zinn.

"We must not conceal from ourselves that no improvement in the present situation is possible without a severe struggle; for the handful of those who are really determined to do something is minute in comparison with the mass of the lukewarm and the misguided." — Albert Einstein, 1934

"Violence causes trauma and unhealed trauma causes more violence." — Elaine Zook Barge

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” — George Orwell

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.  — Omar N. Bradley

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.  — Mohandas Gandhi

The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts. — Omar N. Bradley

I can promise you that women working together - linked, informed and educated - can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet.  — Isabel Allende

Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them, must share the guilt for the dead.  — Omar N. Bradley

I think it's naive to pray for world peace if we're not going to change the form in which we live.
  — Godfrey Reggio


I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.  — Dwight D. Eisenhower


If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.  — Mother Teresa


It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.  — Eleanor Roosevelt

Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.  — Mohandas Gandhi

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.  — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
  — Ralph Waldo Emerson


The pursuit of peace and progress cannot end in a few years in either victory or defeat. The pursuit of peace and progress, with its trials and its errors, its successes and its setbacks, can never be relaxed and never abandoned.  — Dag Hammarskjold


You don't have to have fought in a war to love peace.  — Geraldine Ferraro



Other quotes can be found on our More Quotes Page.

 

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Sources of news on the internet  

(E-newsletters)

Note:  This is a new section on our website and it's our hope to expand this list as we become aware of new websites with information that we feel have important things to say.  Also, you may want to review the groups listed on our Links Page.  Many of them publish newsletters.  If you would like to add to this list please contact us.

Truthout .  This organization publishes a daily e-mail newsletter.  I recommend that you subscribe to their newsletter and decide for yourself if this information is worth reading.  For more information go to http://www.truth-out.org/about 

 

.  A great source of news.  Get more information on:   http://www.nationofchange.org 

Check this one out too.  DemocracyIsForPeople.org or go to https://secure.citizen.org/t/10694/signUp.jsp?key=5059 to sign up.

 

World Can't Wait is a national movement formed to halt and reverse the terrible program of war, repression and theocracy that was initiated by the Bush / Cheney regime and the ongoing crimes that continue to this day. Founded in 2005, the original mission of The World Can't Wait - Drive Out the Bush Regime was to "create a political situation where the Bush administration's program is repudiated, where Bush himself is driven from office, and where the whole direction he has been taking U.S. society is reversed."  Go to:  http://www.worldcantwait.net/

 

 

The Military as a Jobs Program: There Are More Efficient Ways to Stimulate an Economy

Ellen Brown, Truthout: "The military is the nation's largest and most firmly entrenched entitlement program, one that takes half of every tax dollar. Even if 'national security' is considered our No. 1 priority (a dubious choice when the real unemployment rate is over 16 percent), estimates are that the military budget could be cut in half or more and we would still have the most powerful military machine in the world. Our enemies (if any) are now 'terrorists,' not countries; and what is needed to contain them (if anything) is local policing, not global warfare..... The military is not subject to ordinary market principles, but works on a 'cost-plus' basis, with producers reimbursed for whatever they have spent plus a guaranteed profit.  

Read this article, click here:  http://www.truth-out.org/military-jobs-program-there-are-more-efficient-ways-stimulate-economy/1308752213 

 

 

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