Beginning on Monday November 26, we had another very full and meaningful week of We Are Not Your Soldiers visits to NYC high schools and colleges – this time with Marine veteran Lyle Rubin who had been stationed in Afghanistan.  Lyle told the story of an important part of his life – how he came to enlist in the Marines, his time in boot camp and a particularly heartrending experience in Afghanistan – to over 300 students and engaged in deep discussion with them about his presentation.  The talk began by asking the students to think about whether we have an “enemy” and, if so, who that is and, if not, why are we told we do – and to think about how all this relates to morality, knowing the difference between right and wrong, both as an individual and as a society.

World Can't Wait | December 18, 2018

Nothing we could write could convey more effectively what it means for students vulnerable to joining the U.S. military to hear from veterans conscious of how they could lose their humanity by enlisting. And that’s only half of the story.

Most of the students whose classes we visit, whether in high school or college and despite having lived in a state of war for all or most of their lives, do not know about the seven wars being carried on in their names nor the realities of the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Lyle, John, Miles, Joe and Bruce, via the WeAreNotYourSoldiers project, each spoke to hundreds of students this year, sharing their hard-earned experiences.

This week, Lyle Rubin, a former Marine who was sent to Afghanistan, will visit high schools and college classes in New York City as part of World Can’t Wait’s  We Are Not Your Soldiers program.  In this small but important way, we are intervening with students who are in danger of signing up with the U.S. military.

We are grateful to those of you who have supported this project which brings veterans into high school and college classes to speak to students about their real experiences in the US military occupying other countries.  We look forward to your continued support and the support of others to bring this program to more students throughout New York City and to grow it  so that it can reach out to students around the country.

Please help us spread the word

• Like and share our Facebook page 
• Donate for advertising to reach educators in other states.  We are prepared to go anywhere, physically or virtually, to any school that invites us in to address its students.

World Can’t Wait’s We Are Not Your Soldiers project is starting its twelfth year of visits to high schools and college classes with recent veterans of U.S. wars of terror. We are now beginning to schedule our class visits for the fall semester.

With the Trump/Pence Regime envisioning and engaging in even more militaristic engagements and gearing up to expand those wars to additional countries via both traditional and drone warfare (as well as nuclear threats), it is more important than ever to go in to speak to students who are largely unaware of what’s happening internationally.

At the Left Forum in NYC on June 3, 2017 veterans with the We Are Not Your Soldiers project of World Can’t Wait present what they do in high school and college classrooms where students have grown up under continual wars, know very little about them and may be considering joining the U.S. military with no first-hand knowledge of what it really entails.

Joe Urgo and Lyle Rubin speaking March 20, 2017 to college students

Last week, We Are Not Your Soldiers visited classes in two colleges and three high schools in New York City.  One of those high schools was a traditional large school, one was an alternative school and the third serves a recently-arrived immigrant population.

Since 2008, the We Are Not Your Soldiers project has visited many high school and college campuses bringing the message that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken a deadly moral, psychological and physical toll on soldiers while bringing death, grievous injury, displacement and suffering to the people of those countries. The We Are Not Your Soldiers project is ready to visit your school or classroom in the Spring semester with Iraq/Afghanistan-era veterans to talk about their on-the-ground experience in occupying countries, where civilians pay the price.

An NPR story on Monday carried this headline: "Expansion Plans At Arlington National Cemetery Cause Environmental Concerns."  Only environmental concerns?  Are there any other concerns that anyone can think of?  I mean if, for example, "All Things" were going to be "Considered," would there be any other things worth considering?

By Glenn Greenwald

A new military-themed reality show from NBC, entitled “Stars Earn Stripes,” debuts tonight. The show “enthusiastically melds warfare and fame,” as a Washington Post review today put it. It features eight celebrities (using the loosest definition of that term) — such as husband-of-Sarah Todd Palin, former Superman Dean Cain, and former boy band member Nick Lachey — paired up with “military and law enforcement veterans, including a Green Beret, a SWAT officer, two Marine sergeants, a retired member of the Delta Force and two Navy SEALs”, whom NBC hails as the “Bad Ass Operatives.” They’re all under the “command” of Gen. Wesley Clark, who once actually thought he should be President, as he co-hosts this reality show with former Dancing with the Stars host Samantha Harris (subjecting oneself to the two preview videos below, one wonders how much NBC had to pay to purchase Gen. Clark’s dignity in full: probably more than the Terror group MEK paid him to become its loyal shill).

Read more...