What will they say about us in 50 years?
"The locals had to know what was going on in there!"
I can't put a number on the many times I have heard this said in regard to the Polish people who lived near the worst of the worst of the concentration camps established by Nazi Germany. My suspicions and those of very well informed individuals who have meticulously researched the topic leads me to believe the very same sort of thing will be said about Americans, southern Arizonans to be specific, who now live parallel, consciously blindered, lives around Fort Huachuca.
Is it fair. Probably not. Most don't know. The dumbing down of America has distanced most of our citizens from critical thinking skills once taught in one room schools houses. Our working conditions/hours - among the worst in the "Developed World" keep most folks too tired and too busy to have time to contemplate issues in any depth. But those of us who have slipped through the cracks somehow have no excuse for allowing these attrocities -- albeit at a different networked level -- to be orchestrated from our backyards.
Uber-conservative fundamentalist Christians may not like to have monies go toward reproductive technologies that ultimately liberate women from the tyranny of biological accident -- well Uber-progressive inclusionist Gaiasts (Gaia-ists?) are just as adamant about refusing to allow genocide and radioactive poisoning of our earth and people. But Gaia isn't theological. It is cutting edge understanding of our worlds delicate balance. We have to stop allowing ignorance to be marketed and exported from the U.S. Words are far more powerful than bullets. That is why the words that come out of Fort Huachuca must be stopped.
"Fort Sneezy," some call it as the name spills out, "Waa-chew-kah" in same often mispronouned fashion that the noble saguaros that define the northern Sonoran Desert landscape that surrounds the Fort and its surrounding city of Sierra Vista. Sierra Vista is an Army town. The people there know what goes on inside the fences of the U.S. Army intelligence training post. They just don't like to think about it.
Read this article:
Priests Claim Torture; Arizona Army Post Says No and start thinking Tucson.
We have no excuse to feign ignorance.
The people in Tucson do know. I don't have permission to use her name, so I won't, but I can tell you about the swell of compassion that filled me when I heard a retired woman say in a local church gathering that she does all she can, but that she just cannot risk any political protest that could end up in arrest -- again. Her 6 months in a Federal Prison for protesting at the School of the Americas (renamed WHINSAC in an attempt to say that SOA has been closed) torture training was nothing she can stand to endure again.
I'm not going to compare my experience to hers, that would be ludicrous. My experience is milk sop compared to what she has known and survived. But the techniques that were used to attempt to silence her for her actions at Fort Benning, Georgia in and the techniques that are used to intimidate locals activists in Tucson are of the same ilk and probably carried out by folks responding to the same orders. See: Build Peace: It's Starting To Get Personal the blog post where I discuss the attacts on peaceful demonstrators by thugs who lauch their assaults from the private property that shields the local Armry recruiters from protests. Only Freepers and Republicans can protest or demonstrate on this private property. (Why is the Army allowed to hide behind private property restrictions, anyway? But that is best left for discussion in another post.)
SOA protesters are routinely arrested and jailed or imprisoned in an attempt to silence them. And some voices are more quiet after release, but the voice of their stories continue to loudly and clearly announce to an ever growing group of listeners.
Arrests of peaceful protestors in Tucson are getting to be fairly common place, but the voices will not stop. Reporting will continue through independent media and citizen journalism.
Peaceful marchers shot with "pepper" bullets.
Journalist arested on U of A campus.
Tucson Grannies among scores of "Grannies" across the nation arrested for attempt to enlist.
Christian Peacemakers Arrested
8 arrested in Tucson at Raytheon
To help you understand some of the overall climate in Arizona, we've been taught to turn our heads away from unpleasant governmental abuses for quite some time. This recent incident is a good summary.
"Here is another example of censorship. Louise Benally, Navajo, is resisting forced relocation on Navajo lands at Big Mountain, Ariz., where Peabody Coal attorneys orchestrated the so-called Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute. Louise compared the Long Walk and imprisonment at Bosque Redondo, N.M., in the 1860s to the war in Iraq and the U.S. treatment of women and children in Iraq. The article was censored. Louise's ancestors were among those who witnessed the rapes, murders and starvation of Navajos on the Long Walk and during imprisonment at Fort Sumner."
Okay, that is all I can write for now. Can't even proof this. I wish I had more time to make a smoother presentation and be a bit less in your face, but I am caring for my invalid 92 year old mother 24/7 -- and this even though I'm one of those folks accused of having no "family values." Yeah. Right.
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