I know I haven’t posted one of these in a few days, but that’s not because there wasn’t much to note. Below is a full baker’s dozen, though some are echoes of stories already on our radar.
- The Toronto Star offers an elegant PTSD history, showing how “soldier’s heart” became “shell shock” became “combat fatigue” became “Vietnam syndrome and beyond.
- “Veterans for Peace” is the hed the Guardian gives to this video testimony from a former British soldier who found himself in Ireland during the Troubles.
- Nan Levinson embedded with IVAW and wrote War is Not a Game. Click here to hear her tell WBUR about the movement they built.
- Counterpunch explains in more detail why Andre Shepherd’s asylum case is important.
- After Petraeus brokered a deal with no jail time, the Daily Beast was among those pointing out that the info the general shared w.his girlfriend was just as classified as that released by whistleblowers behind bars. Others included Nonprofit Quarterly, which called Petraeus’ sentence “a sweetheart deal,” and our iconic Daniel Ellsberg, who stressed the obvious: that those whistleblowers were serving their country, not betraying it.
- Speaking of whistleblowers, Chelsea Manning was again all over the news: First, news that her attorneys have secured a major victory, with the DoD ordering that the pronouns used in all legal filings reflect her true gender. THEN, Chelsea’s own byline at the Guardian, on this piece urging international prosecution of U.S. architects of torture. “To let their horrific actions go unanswered,” she writes, “would send an awful message to the world: it is wrong to torture and mistreat people, except when those doing it have the supposed blessing of the law and with the permission of high-ranking supervisors and politicians.”
- It’s not just our friend Brandon Bryant: drone pilots are saying no by quitting. After the Air Force publishes the numbers, The Nation rounds up word from Bryant and other drone personnel, which makes those resignations less “perplexing” than inevitable.
- Also in the Hardly-Surprising Results Dept, military concussions are more damaging than those suffered by athletes.
- Speaking of combat injuries, Iraq vets may finally get redress for those burn pits that poured toxins into their lungs.
- This week’s Selma anniversary prompted this Slate piece about the riots in summer 1919, after which black veterans organized rather than accept second-class citizenship.
- And we close with the voice of Dave Cline, who until his 2007 death had been a bulwark for generations of soldier-dissent. Via the essential Vietnam Full Disclosure, here’s Cline addressing the powerful Canadian coalition Peace Has No Borders.
I Ain't Marching Anymore 