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Mystic Power
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 Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2005 7:54 am Post subject: Be All That You Can Be!!! |
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From: Jim Peron – New Zealand
Below is an article I just wrote from research I was doing on how the US military is dealing with their recruitment problems. I did not know this before I started reading newspaper articles from across the US and I hadn't seen this trend reported elsewhere except in bits and pieces. I would normally put this in the journal on our website but at the moment my only way to earn a living is my writing. So I can't post it publicly since I need to try to sell it.
This researched scared me. I had no idea that it gotten this bad in the US and that the US military would stoop to these tactics against students to try and intimidate them into joining the military. This is real Orwellian material.
By the way if anyone can suggest an outlet where I might sell this please pass that on to me. I very much need to find a way to earn some money at the moment. Read it and shudder.
Military recruitment in the US is dismal right now. The US Army missed it’s target for the fourth month in a row. While the Marines did reach their target in May it was the first time they had done so all year.
All the high pressure tactics the military can muster are being used on naive high school students. High schools are routinely visited by salesmen for the military. As columnist Bob Herbert noted: “Recruiters with the gift of gab go into the schools with a glamorous pitch, bags full of goodies for the kids (T-shirts, donuts, key chains) and a litany of promises they often can't keep. The kids don't hear much about their chances of being maimed or killed, or the trauma that often results from killing someone else.”
The military is offering massive financial bonus to the students and making promises that they have no intention of keeping. Students are told they can sign up for as short as 15 months. Yet other recruits already serving found that President Bush ordered their recruitment promises to be ignored and that they were to be retained for periods in excess of their signed contract.
What many people don’t realize is that when President Bush attacked local schools with his “No Child Left Behind” legislation that the law gave military recruiters access to data on every high school student in the country. As Dimitri Vassilaros, of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review wrote: “The only thing more disturbing than military recruiters being handed the names, addresses and telephone numbers of virtually every public high school student in America—thank the fine print in the No Child Left Behind law—is that the Department has no policy for handling the sensitive information about your children.”
Inserted into this legislation was a clause: “Each local educational agency receiving assistance under the Elementary and Secondary Education ACt of 1965 (1) shall provide to military recruiters the same access to secondary students as is provided generally to post secondary educational institutions or to prospective employers of those students; and (ii) shall, upon a request made by military recruiters for military recruiting purposes, provide access to second school student names, addresses and telephone listings...”
Vassillaros comments: “It gives a ghoulish new meaning to “no child left behind. Can you say ‘Iraq’?”
So what are military recruiters doing to fill the quotas. Body bags filled with young dead Americans are a big disincentive to enlisting. Whatever people may say about the conservative evolution of the Baby Boom generation the fact remains that the parents, many of them opponents of the Vietnam War, are now discouraging their children from enlisting. Bob Herbert noted “The parents of the kids being sought by recruiters to fight this unpopular war are creating a highly vocal and potentially very effective antiwar movement. In effect, they’re saying to their own children: hell no, you won’t go.”
Joan Vennochi of the Boston Globe wrote about her own 16-year-old son asking her about whether he should join the military when he graduates. She wrote:
“The children of the Greatest Generation who did not want to die in Vietnam do not want their children, the grandchildren of the Greatest Generation, to die in Iraq. The attitude is, not my son or daughter, not this war.”
“Yet understanding history means understanding that countries are born, survive, and flourish because individuals are willing to die for them.”
“A citizen honors the sacrifice of fellow citizens.”
“A parent whispers selfishly, please, not my child; not in this war, not in any war. The future beyond a driver's license is scary enough.”
Since under the Bush “No Child Left Behind” law every phone number of every public high school student has to be given to military recruiters it is possible for the recruiters to try and do an end run around the parents. For all his lip service to the sanctity of family and parental responsibility Bush and his administration is not adverse to undermining parental authority when war is the reason.
The Seattle Post-Intelligence reported on one such incident.
“Marine recruiters began a relentless barrage of calls to Axel [Cobb] as soon as the mellow, compliant Sedro-Woolley High School grad had cut his 17th birthday cake. And soon it was nearly impossible to get the seekers of a few good men off the line.”
“With early and late calls ringing in their ears, Marcia [his mother] tried using call blocking. And that's when she learned her first hard lesson. You can't block calls from the government, her server said. So, after pleas to ‘Please stop calling’ went unanswered, the family's ‘do not answer’" order ensued.”
Recruiters refused to stop. Once Axel answered the phone and was soon down at a recruitment centre. He describes himself as “kind of passive” and it didn’t take a lot to get to him. His mother and sister realized what happened and got him out under a ruse before he signed anything. Later he was invited to a contest where the prize was a free Xbox. Only later did his mother discover that the late night, all night “contest” was sponsored by the Marines. She said they, “had him out all night, drilling him to join.” Family information was used to try to recruit Axel into signing up for the war. Axel’s father was a Vietnam veteran who had died when he was 4. He was raised by his now single mother. Recruiters told him “You don’t want to be a burden to your mom. Be a man. Make your father proud.”
One weekend when Axel’s mother had gone away for the weekend two recruiters showed up at his home and began to high pressure him. He asserted himself and said he wasn’t interested. The one said: “You’re making a big fucking mistake.” The reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligence, Susan Paynter, reports what happened next:
“Next thing Axel knew, the same sergeant and another recruiter showed up at the LaConner Brewing Co., the restaurant where Axel works. And before Axel, an older cousin and other co-workers knew or understood what was happening, Axel was whisked away in a car.”
"’They said we were going somewhere but I didn't know we were going all the way to Seattle,’ Axel said.”
“Just a few tests. And so many free opportunities, the recruiters told him.”
“He could pursue his love of chemistry. He could serve anywhere he chose and leave any time he wanted on an ‘apathy discharge’ if he didn't like it. And he wouldn't have to go to Iraq if he didn't want to.”
“At about 3:30 in the morning, Alex was awakened in the motel and fed a little something. Twelve hours later, without further sleep or food, he had taken a battery of tests and signed a lot of papers he hadn't gotten a chance to read. "Just formalities," he was told. ‘Sign here. And here. Nothing to worry about.’”
Axel’s mother, Marcia, was frantic. She was sure the recruiters had grabbed Axel. She tried calling his cell phone but the recruiters had taken it from him saying it would distract him when he took the tests. With her daughter she headed to the recruitment center where she told them that Axel’s grandfather was dying in hospital and wanted to see Axel immediately. It wasn’t true but she was desperate to get her son back. The recruiters said Axel would be brought out immediately but instead tried to shuffle him down a separate hallway. He was spotted by his sister who ran down the hall and grabbed him.
But it took the cost of an attorney to resolve the matter. Only after he called the recruiters did they consent to return Axel’s cellphone and the recruitment papers they “persuaded” him to sign.
Such strong arm tactics and intimidation don’t seem entirely isolated. One teen blogger mentioned that he and some friends were at their local mall when three casually dressed men approached them. They started up a conversation and asked where the boys were intending to go to college. When the boys answered the men started downplaying college and suddenly brochures materialized from somewhere pushing the idea of joining the military instead. These are minors without their parents present. But these days the military says parents are a major reason they are missing the numbers of bodies they have to recruit and send off to Iraq. So it’s best to approach young kids when the parents aren’t there.
When it was apparent the conversation was a ruse to pressure them into joining the military the blogger said told the recruiters that they were not interested. He wrote of what happened next:
“I ask the guy if it's for the Army, and he just smiles at me and says, ‘College isn't the only option out there, dudes.’ Ok, I'm done with this guy, I figure. I smile, say No thank you, sir, and motion to my friends. The head guy says he needs our names, phone numbers, and addresses, so we can be put into the ‘Not Interested Database.’ Yeah bloody right. Again, I say no thank you and move off. They block us again. The head guy says, ‘We're getting your names, kid.’ I turn around, and two more Army guys have materialized out of nowhere, undoubtedly having moved in while we were talking. It's the four of us being surrounded by five Army guys that look like they tear phonebooks in half for light exercise.”
“We stand there, surrounded and scared shitless, for about ten seconds that feel like hours. Then, one of my friends, a girl, screeches, ‘RAAAPE! GET YOUR GODDAMN HANDS OFF OF ME!,’ and screams so loud that I'm certain glass cracked somewhere nearby. This distracted the Army guys long enough for me to break between two of them with my shoulder, and we ran through the hole like bats out of hell. We ran the ENTIRE length of the mall, through the parking lot, piled into my car, and peeled out of there in one minute flat. I don't even know if they were chasing us, but I think they didn't because there is NO way that I could have outran these guys.”
In the Houston, Texas military recruiter Sgt. Thomas Kelt called a young man and left the following message on his answering machine: “Hey Chris, this is Sgt. Kelt with the Army man. I think we got disconnected. Okay, I know you were on your cell probably and just had a bad connection of something like that. I know you didn’t hang up on me. Anyway, by federal law you got an appointment with me at 2 o’clock this afternoon at Greenspoint Mall, okay? That’s the Greenpoint Mall Army Recruiting Station at 2 o’clock. You fail to appear and we’ll have a warrant. Okay? So give me a call back.” The Sergeant was a liar. No federal law mandates that young men must have appointments with him or any other recruiter. The local TV station exposed this intimidation tactic but Kelt refused to answer any questions. But the voice mail message he left behind was published for anyone to hear. You can listen yourself here:
http://www.khou.com/images/0505/voicemail.wav
The New York Times exposed other illegal attempts by the military to find warm bodies for Iraq. One recruiter told the paper he had been “bending or breaking enlistment rules for months, he said, hiding police records and medical histories of potential recruits. His commanders have encouraged such deception, he said, because they know there is no other way to meet the Army’s stiff recruitment quotas.”
The recruiter said: “The problem is that no one wants to join. We have to play fast and loose with the rules just to get by.”
David McSwane, a high school student in Colorado put the cat amongst the pigeons when he went into a recruiting station to write an article for his school newspaper. McSwane said he saw military recruiters working students at the high school and wanted to know “how far the Army would go during a war to get one more soldier.” He enlisted the help of a 15 year old friend with a camcorder and his 11 year old sister using a still camera. McSwane then tried to “enlist” as a high school drop out with a fondness for illegal drugs. His local paper, “The Rocky Mountain News” reported: “No matter how stoned and stupid McSwane acted, a pair of recruiters wouldn’t let him go.”
As an alleged high-school drop-out McSwane was ineligible for the military. The recruiters urged him to take the high school equivalency diploma exam. McSwane did and purposely failed. They they encouraged him to order a fake diploma from a diploma mill on the internet. A recruiter was taped recorded saying “It can be like Faith Hill Baptist School or something -- whatever you choose.”
At the cost of $200 McSwane purchased a diploma bearing the name Faith Hill Baptist School precisely as the recruiter suggested. MsSwane told a local television reporter that while sitting in the recruitment office he was “looking at a poster that says ‘Integrity, Honor, Respect’ and he [the recruiter] is telling me to lie.”
Recruiters told McSwane what products he could purchase locally so that his urine would show no signs of illicit drugs during the physical that would be required. A recruiter offered to pay half the costs of the drug kit and actually drove him to the local head shop to purchase the item. McSwane’s friend with the video camera camera caught it all on tape. MsSwane recorded the recruiter telling him that he had advised two other recruits with drug problems to use the same detox kit. “The two times I had the guys use it, it has worked both times. We didn’t have to worry about anything,” the recruiter said.
Only at the last second, before he would have to sign recruitment documents, did McSwane end the charade. But he proved that the recruiters were willing to do about anything to find another one for the war. Television reports on the problem can be found here:
http://kcncimg.dayport.com/htm/investigatesplayer.htm?Art_ID=5540&tf=investigatesviewer.tpl
In Ohio a 21 year-old-man went into the recruiting station and enlisted. He had just gotten out of a mental hospital where he had been incarcerated as a threat to others and to himself. He had a criminal record as well. Either issue alone would normally disqualify him. But recruiters turned a blind eye to the situation. The man’s parents, upon learning of the enlistment, went to the recruiting station with court records to inform them that their son had just been released from the mental hospital only on the condition that he go into therapy. The recruiters said they never heard of the man and even said they didn’t recognize him from photos the parents showed. Only days before the man was to be shipped out to boot camp did the parents finally get a top military officer to investigate the matter and put an end to the enlistment process for someone totally unqualified to join the military. The man’s father said: “The fact that they would recruit someone straight out of a psychiatric hospitalization -- give me a break. They were willing to put my son and other recruits at risk. It’s beyond my comprehension, and appalling.”
One recruiter told the Times, “The only people who want to join the Army now have issues. They’re troubled, with health, police or drug problems.”
In another report the Times reported: “The Army is having to turn to more high school dropouts and lower-achieving applicants to fill its ranks, accepting hundreds of recruits in recent months who would have been rejected a year ago, according to Army statistics.” But this doesn’t worry conservative Republicans. Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina when asked about the problem said the enlistment of dropouts and low achievers is “extending opportunities to minorities who wouldn’t have opportunities otherwise.” He told the paper: “I have faith in recruiters”.
These would be the same recruiters who enlist violent individuals with psychiatric problems and individuals they believe are drug users. These would be the recruiters who strong arm school children when their parents aren’t around in order to meet their quotas. |
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Echo
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| Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2005 8:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| ...In Ohio a 21 year-old-man went into the recruiting station and enlisted. He had just gotten out of a mental hospital where he had been incarcerated as a threat to others and to himself. He had a criminal record as well. Either issue alone would normally disqualify him... |
I guess they thought they had found the perfect person to victimize. An unstable person with a like for violence. It was not a mistake in my opinion, it was a well pondered choice.
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Mystic Power
admin THC-Ministry YahooGroup
Joined: 23 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2005 8:54 pm Post subject: |
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Yep. He'd fit a perfect military profile.
Good news is...if a recruit isn't that way to start with, they'll often end up thay way, in short order.
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"In Lak'ech"
~ Ancient Mayan: "I am another YOU." ~ |
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aeroplane
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| Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2005 10:47 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| Axel’s father was a Vietnam veteran who had died when he was 4. |
Maybe someone can explain the math here, because this doesn't make sense to me.
According to my recollection, the Vietnam War ended in 1974. If Axel's father died when Axel was 4, then Axel would be at least 25 now. But the article says that the Marines had begun to hound Axel immediately after his 17th birthday, which by my understanding of math, would have been during the Clinton era.
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Torkel
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Joined: 23 Nov 2004
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| Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2005 3:12 pm Post subject: |
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aero wrote:
| Quote: |
Quote:
Axel’s father was a Vietnam veteran who had died when he was 4.
Maybe someone can explain the math here, because this doesn't make sense to me.
According to my recollection, the Vietnam War ended in 1974. If Axel's father died when Axel was 4, then Axel would be at least 25 now. But the article says that the Marines had begun to hound Axel immediately after his 17th birthday, which by my understanding of math, would have been during the Clinton era. |
It didn't say Axel's father died in the vietnam war, just that he was a "veteran" of the war. 
I guess his father must have died in the early 1990's, if this is to make sense.
Peace,
Torkel
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Miller vs U.S. (230 F 2nd 486,489): "The claim and exercise of a Constitutional right cannot be converted into a crime."
Miranda vs Arizona (384 U.S. 436, 125): "Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule-making or legislation which would abrogate them."
HAGANS vs LAVINE (415 US 533 N-3,note 5): "Once JURISDICTION is challenged it must be proven by the Plaintiff." |
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aeroplane
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| Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2005 11:02 pm Post subject: |
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Okay, thanks for the help there. But the math is still... Ohhhh. Hash is pretty gooooood!  
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Rev. Steve
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| Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2005 2:34 pm Post subject: |
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Good points Aero!
Sniff sniff. Do I smell cowshit here? Please, things are bad enough without false testimonies intended to make things worse. If this fellow is in NZ, how could he have obtained these accounts? I'm as pissed at Jr. as anybody but please don't add lies to the fire. This is not about hate for America. Is it? This kind of thing is just as damaging to the truth as the ripofflican spin. |
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Mystic Power
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| Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2005 2:54 pm Post subject: |
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Yep. I'll bet it's all lies.
Why...this is AMERICA!
The free-est nation on earth.
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"In Lak'ech"
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Brother Adam
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| Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2005 3:06 am Post subject: |
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This doesn't sound anything like bullshit if you ask me. I've watched people go through it. I actually talked with a recruiter who was taking a yound fellow I knew to join the army. Thing is, he had to take him to a hotel over the weekend to detox the kid first. He spent the whole weekend flushing this kid out just so he could pass and go to the army. He even knew the kid was a daily smoker, and didn't care a bit.
We're talking about a pimply face 18 yr old kid that was 6' tall and only 105lbs soaking wet with boots on. He couldn't fight his way out of a wet paper bag with an axe! The rifle and ruck-sack weigh more than this kid. This was no soldier...it was a bean-pole and they were STILL going through alot of trouble to get the kid signed up.
Thier tactics have been devious for a long time. They will out-right lie to someone to get them to sign. I seriously doubt accusations like these are lies IMHO. |
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Mystic Power
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| Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2005 4:05 am Post subject: |
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| Rev. Adam wrote: |
| This doesn't sound anything like bullshit if you ask me. ... Thier tactics have been devious for a long time. They will out-right lie to someone to get them to sign. I seriously doubt accusations like these are lies IMHO. |
Agreed. I've seen it myself during my military service back in the Viet Nam era. Even with a draft (involuntary military conscription) going full force, recruiters could not meet their quotas.
This led to the enlistment of every character on the Group W Bench that Arlo Guthry mentioned in hs song, ALICE'S RESTAURANT. 
Not kidding. It was a zoo. And very scary. Schizophrenics, bi-polar, tri-polar, don't-have-a-name-for-it's...some were suicidal. Some were homocidal.
I grew up real f*ckin' fast, I'll tell you what!!! 
I have no reason to believe that the military has changed it's recruiting tactics. I believe these stories to be true.
And....family and friends back in Colorado confirm the David McSwane story that happened in Arvada, Co.
No, these stories are true as far as I'm concerned.
If people have a hard time believing this stuff, it's because they're basically good people who cannot imagine the realities behind their America.
I think a lot of folks are waking up. Pretty hard to sleepwalk through this.
Bliss,
Ben
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"We are the Ones we have been waiting for."
~Hopi Elder ~
"In Lak'ech"
~ Ancient Mayan: "I am another YOU." ~ |
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Rev. Steve
Cannabis Sacrament Minister
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| Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2005 8:52 pm Post subject: |
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| Come on people, America is a free nation. Free of justice, free of truth, free of equality, free of compassion for the sick and dying and most of all free of common sense. |
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aeroplane
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| Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2005 9:47 pm Post subject: |
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Whoops! Didn't mean to get an arguement going here about whether or not the Big G in the sky (Government) would try to steal our kids. That much I know is happening. What I meant was... I misinterpretted the time reference and I thought someone was making up a story about what is really happening. That, that is was what I was concerned about because I've heard enough real incidents about this that I didn't want to hear any b.s.
| Quote: |
This doesn't sound anything like bullshit if you ask me. I've watched people go through it. I actually talked with a recruiter who was taking a yound fellow I knew to join the army. Thing is, he had to take him to a hotel over the weekend to detox the kid first. He spent the whole weekend flushing this kid out just so he could pass and go to the army. He even knew the kid was a daily smoker, and didn't care a bit.
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I don't even want to go there. Just because MJ can get by with it, doesn't make it right for Army recruiters. Or any other man to take boys to hotels.
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than the drug itself."
US President Jimmy Carter |
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