“Voices of Honor” Tour Challenges “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (tags)
O.K., so maybe you're a hard-core peacenik who wouldn't dream of joining the military or of supporting anyone who would. You should still care about the continued exclusion of open Queer people from the U.S. military under the so-called “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Not only is the policy unjust and discriminatory on its face, it's also disproportionately enforced against women and people of color — so in practice it's racist and sexist as well as homophobic. “Voices of Honor” was a national tour which wrapped up in San Diego September 30 that featured five military veterans talking about the personal strains of living under “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Blase Bonpane Denounces U.S. Support of Honduran Coup (tags)
Blase Bonpane, who's been fighing the good fight against U.S. militarism and imperialism for over 40 years, spoke at the First Unitarian-Universalist Church in San Diego September 8 and said the recent coup in Honduras couldn't have happened without the approval of the U.S. government and corporations. He reviewed America's long history of direct intervention in Latin America in general and Honduras in particular, and said the U.S. backed the Honduran coup now as an attack on the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), organized by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez as a network of Latin American countries with Leftist governments who want to be out from under the thumb of oligarchs, corporate elites, international bankers and local militaries trained at the infamous School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia.