Veterans Gather in Protest of 'Death by Remote Control'

(HOOD RIVER, Ore.) - Anti-war Veterans and other activists gathering for a special event Friday in Hood River, Oregon, say the new form of warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq involves death being delivered by remote control from thousands of miles away.

Gordon Sturrock, co-founder of VeteransAgainstTorture.com, believes this death-from-beyond concept removes all signs of humanity from the process. He says for the pro-war set, "it is a new form of justice, It's a trial by Hellfire missile, quick and cheap. No need for expensive time consuming trials. No risk at all to American lives."

"Being a 'suspect', or sitting next to one, is all the reason needed to murder anyone our government has designated as a terrorist." He says the killing will become as easy, "as a push button video game".

Sturrock says the current generation is already desensitized to violence by years of exposure to violent video games and obscenely violent TV shows. He believes that there is a plan to greatly escalate this new form of warfare and death by proxy.

"Our military shouldn't have any problem finding volunteers to 'serve' their county, and a large financial bonus offered by military recruiters for your child's commitment to military service will ensure a steady stream of young people," Sturrock said.

"It will be highly profitable for some Oregon businesses like InSitu who are gearing up to produce more surveillance drones. This is just a manufacturing hop, skip and a jump from producing the much larger armed versions which shoot a variety of extremely deadly weapons. Is it a stretch to think this could happen?"

Research shows that InSitu got it's start designing drones to track schools of fish. Now they are designing drones to track humans, Sturrock says. He and other peace advocates say they don't want to see this happen. They are calling on concerned citizens from all over the United States to become aware of this new trend of war referred to as, "death by remote control".

Sturrock says Oregonians will have a chance to voice their opinion about the new military strategy.

"Friday, in Hood River, Bruce Gagnon, one of our nation's experts on space weapons, will be speaking on these issues. His talk is titled, 'Military use of Drones, how will it change our world?'"

There will be an Armistice Day Vigil at 5:00 p.m. The public is invited to attend the event with Gagnon, who is scheduled to speak at 6:45 p.m. at St. Mark's Church, 11th & Eugene in Hood River, Oregon. There will be a movie showing afterward, "Rethinking Afghanistan" is scheduled to start at 8:00 p.m. Sturrock says everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend.

Recent article sent out by Hood River organizer Linda Short posted here, this article does well explaining the urgency of stopping drone production and use: veteransforjustice.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=5

Technical and background information regarding the "Reaper". This is a much larger and and armed variation of the surveilence drone being manufactured by Oregon InSitu, just to point out where this technology leads: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MQ-9_Reaper

The event will be attended and supported by the Squadron13 crew and the below listed Veterans from the region:

Jack Dresser: bus co-owner, co-founder of veteransagainsttorture.com and VeteransForJustice.com, VeteransForJustice.com, co-director of al-nakba-history.com/ , Vietnam era Army Captain.

Brian Willson: 1980's activist who lost both legs under a train during a civil disobedience action to stop arms shipments to Central America. Brian is an Environmental Sustainability activist and Vietnam era Air Force Captain. His personal website is: BrianWillson.com Here is a good video of Brian from our recent Ground Zero action: vimeo.com/6128641

Marion Ward: Vancouver/Portland activist, member VeteransForPeace Portland Chapter 72. vfpchapter72.org/

Jenika: Vietnam era Navy Veteran. Member of VeteransForPeace Portland Chapter 72.

Mike Hastie: poet/photographer activist. A small portion of Mike's prolific and powerful work is posted here in the "Mike Hastie Gallery": squadron13.com/MikeHastieGallery/ Mike is a member of VeteransForPeace Portland Chapter 72 and a Vietnam Veteran who served as an Army Medic.

Mark Robinowitz: Eugene based truthsayer, Peak Oil and Permaculture activist, oilempire.us/ and permatopia.com/

Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor.
Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 covering the war in Afghanistan, and he was in Iraq over the summer of 2008, reporting from the war while embedded with both the U.S. Army and the Marines. Tim holds numerous awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing, including the Oregon AP Award for Spot News Photographer of the Year (2004), the first place Electronic Media Award in Spot News, Las Vegas, (1998), Oregon AP Cooperation Award (1991); and several other awards including the 2005 Red Cross Good Neighborhood Award for reporting. Serving the community in very real terms, Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website, affiliated with Google News and several other major search engines and news aggregators.
You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com

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jimmy November 13, 2009 8:47 am (Pacific time)

Don't blame the tool! Are they proposing we go back to clubs and rocks? Weapons have evolved from a closed fist to some stuff we can only imagine of. I think the real point here is that that our kids are getting way too much exposure to this kind of stuff and IMNHO, that reflects a lot on the parents lack of responsibility in letting them watch or play whatever they want. All that “freedom” is really creating a generation of kids proficient at “one shot, one kill” and not even flinching when doing so. I remember a story a while back where a father would make his son read sections of the Geneva Convention before playing any type of graphic war game. Now that may be a bit extreme, and I am not at all advocating it (nobody really honors the Geneva convention anyway), but it is a small example of something that can be done. Think about this whole thing the next time you are being pressured to buy the next killing based game for junior, what are you really giving him?

gail November 13, 2009 6:14 am (Pacific time)

Go to Mike Hastie's site and hear him read his essay on violent video games. I sent the youtube link on to my sixteen year old grandson to watch with his friends. Mike had "blood on his hands and brains in his lap" to quote his memorable words about his experiences in Vietnam and he is a powerful voice for peace.

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Veterans Gather in Protest of 'Death by Remote Control'

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