Every war is a war against children.
Egalntyne Jebb, founder Save the Children a century ago.
Responding to the British post-war blockade of Germany and Eastern Europe, Jebb participated in a group attempting to deliver food and medical supplies to children who were starving.
In London's Trafalgar Square, she distributed a leaflet showing the emaciated children and declaring:
Our blockade has caused this, millions of children are starving to death.
She was arrested, tried, convicted, and fined. But the judge in the case was moved by her commitment to children and paid her fine. His generosity was Save the Children's first donation. Source: Kathy Kelly
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This vet for peace has made a life duty to a simple call to action Hands Off Venezuela. Imagine the same call in 1960 Hands Off Vietnam; or in 1970 Hands Off Chile; or in 1991 Hands Off Haiti; Hands Off Puerto Rico 140 years ago.
Those ham-fisted, Imperial-seeped and Monroe Doctrine-primed hands are ours, Uncle Sam's.
There are resisters to this global hyper power disease that we have been infected with in America that professes a USA-rules-the-world mentality. Dan Shea is that Vietnam Veteran for Peace. He puts his actions where his mouth is.
Rewind the tape 13 years, and we see Dan as a Veterans for Peace organizer working on the city of Portland becoming a sanctuary city for soldiers AWOL from the armed services who were inserted into Iraq and Afghanistan illegally.
"This is an opportunity for the citizens of Portland and the City Council to support the soldiers who are coming back and their right to speak out," said Dan Shea of Veterans for Peace, who first proposed the idea.
Shea told an interviewer in 2006 he had enlisted with the Marines and spent two months in Vietnam, where he was exposed to the herbicide Agent Orange. That resulted in his diabetes, he said.
"I didn't spend my whole time in Viet Nam,,he said. "I was there for two months because I was having trouble processing an operation, search and destroy mission, meaning kill anything or anybody that moves, an operation that continues to haunt my dreams and most of my waking days, and why I have PTSD therapy once a month."
He told me he was allowed to leave that Marine combat platoon, because his "little brother Mike" showed up in the same company and platoon.
Shea professes he never supported the Vietnam War, yet like many boys and men (girls and women) back then especially high school drop-outs he felt obligated to serve. However, when he came home, he felt betrayed by the country, saying the initial reasons for going to war were nothing but lies. The same thing is going on today, he said.
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