I can only assume this is true because it came to me in an e-mail from a CodePink leader in Austin! Keep it kicked.
START SPREADING THE WORD!!!!!
Backed by Noam Chomsky and more than 100 other professors so far...a call
has been put out by a fabulous guy in OR for a student strike on Sept. 26 -
a damn fine birthday present to me, I might add! ;) And nicely
coordinated with the D.C. action so students can have more leeway to go to
DC that weekend.
The brainchild of this effort puts this in line with Cindy's efforts, but
seeks to begin to transfer the focus "from Texas to the nation's 300-plus
Pentagon-dependent universities." (see bottom--and I'm sure he isn't trying
to "transfer the focus" away from the military families so much as start to
give all these new people coming 'out' into the movement a target to focus
their loss and anger on, besides Bush)
GET THIS OUT TO UT CHANNELS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
------------------------------
September 26, 2005
President George W. Bush, The White House
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Department of Defense, The Pentagon
President Nils Hasselmo, Association of American Universities
Governor Ted Kulongoski, State of Oregon
President Dave Frohnmayer, University of Oregon
Dear Public Servants,
As University of Oregon’s first graduate student in the field of Peace
Studies, it is my responsibility to explore the role of the military in
society and those conditions that most promote peace and human welfare. In
so doing, I have come to understand the nature of America’s war industry,
and how that industry has flourished in the wake of the Cold War. I have
come to find that more than 300 of our universities are developing weapons
for the Department of Defense, and that these schools are increasingly
reliant on the industry of war to sustain their education programs. Indeed,
the Association of American Universities appears to be little more than a
lobby for such funding.
As a person of good conscience, I have learned too much about the business
of war to remain silent about its overwhelming encroachment in our schools,
communities, and global life systems. In promoting this encroachment, I do
not believe that you serve in the interest of prosperity and security for
the common people. By your consistent actions, in fact, it is abundantly
clear that you believe America’s top priority is profit from the business of
war, not the general welfare of its people.
When America was born a people-first country, the concept of freedom spread
rapidly throughout the world without military force. The vision of our
Founders was to advance the notion of people living in peace using the
freedom that nature provides upon birth. You may feel at peace with
yourselves, but I believe you are acting as businessmen instead of servants.
And in honoring our Founding principles, I must proclaim that to exploit
the fears and prejudices of the common people to maintain the flow of
profits from conflict—to perpetuate a state of war for personal gain—is
treasonous to our creed.
You say this is a peace-loving nation when you know it is not; America is by
far history’s greatest peddler of arms, and your business is making war
everyone else’s business. The people, under this set of priorities, are an
expendable resource, and on behalf of those who founded this country and
those whose lives stand in peril today—thus, on behalf of all Americans—I
reject the notion of our servants serving only themselves and war
profiteers.
Therefore, I feel compelled to strike in peaceful but vociferous opposition
to your priorities until our national policies reflect our priorities and
serve the rights and needs of the common people.
I am a dedicated scholar and University of Oregon alumnus. But I refuse to
study inside the classroom of any school that sells itself to the war
industry, and I will stand outside and speak my heart as strongly as
possible to highlight the obvious hypocrisy that you promote. For I fear
that if I do not, America and other countries are very likely to suffer and
fall as a result of your cold determination to saturate with weapons a world
that stands on the verge of resource depletion.
Developing weapons at our institutions of enlightenment contradicts the
inherent purpose of learning. How will we ever learn peace while making war
in our schools?
I hereby submit to you this petition for peaceful priorities.
Dutifully,
Brian D. Bogart bbogart@darkwing.uoregon.edu
Multicultural Studies Certificate, US-Japan Relations, Lewis and Clark
College, Portland 1995
International Studies Certificate, Waseda University, Tokyo 1996
B.A. Japanese History, University of Oregon 1997
M.A. Candidate, Peace Studies, University of Oregon
Sponsors of this action include:
Noam Chomsky
Institute Professor Emeritus of Linguistics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Franklin W. Stahl
Professor Emeritus of Biology
University of Oregon
Peter Phillips Ph.D.
Sociology Department/Project Censored
Sonoma State University
(names removed for space)
Here is a link to an article written by Mr. Bogart
Strike A Match for Cindy Sheehan
America Programmed for War: Cause and Solution
"What one generation perceives as repression, the next accepts as a
necessary part of a complex daily life."
By Brian Bogart
A single policy decision made in secluded chambers of the White House
shortly after World War II explains why our financial and intellectual
creativity focuses on lethal technologies, why 51% of our taxes go to
defense and less than 5% to education, why there are 6000 military bases in
the United States and 1000 US bases overseas, why comprehensive agendas
support warfighting and weak agendas address human services and the
environment, and why our top industry since 1950 remains the manufacture and
sale of weapons.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9831.htm
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