VFOR: Veterans Need To Support and Visit the Occupy Wall Street Sites...
The ‘Occupy Wall Street’ is a legitimate wake-up call to all Americans regarding the systematic theft of our futures – the 99%. I want to discuss my area of highest concern. I’m a veteran, part of the VA system, that knows that the war I participated in was about controlling natural resources of another country, trying out new weapons systems and shifting public funds to the amoral leadership in the ‘war industries’. We are doing it again in Iraq. Our selected man, Saddam Hussein, nationalized Iraqi oil just like the democratically elected Mossadegh did in Iran, just like we knew Ho Chi Minh would nationalize Vietnam’s natural resources. Oil companies are drawing oil out of the South China Sea. We have allowed our corporate-run government to kill thousands of our young soldiers in these wars and millions of civilians in these other countries.
Who are the chief lobbyists of these war-corporations? Most likely they are retired military men or former politicians. I realize that the current cause of the American economic crisis is the deregulation of banks, large corporate mortgage brokers, and investment firms (Wall Street). Let us not forget the economic cost of war. How could we use the $2 trillion dollars spent on the actual fighting, the R&D of weapons systems and the private contractors?
What are the other costs of war? The destruction of other cultures and our culture, the moral costs hidden in the blank stares of our veterans are just two of many. I know that the Conservatives are planning to privatize treatment for veterans so the war-medical-corporations can suck the life out our single-payer VA Health System. Issa and Coburn head up this corporate-directed offensive for 2012. It is easy to project that the medical costs due to injury and PTSD will be in the neighborhood of $2 trillion. That’s a nice piece of change for ‘Wall Street’.
Locally what can veterans do? We can take our money out of Bank of America, CitiBank et.al. and invest in local banks and credit unions. We can tell Bank of America to stop foreclosing on the homes of young men and women deployed in Iraq/Afghanistan, to refinance veterans’ mortgages instead of throwing veterans into the street and to try to develop the sense of INTEGRITY required of being part of our community.
The latest hidden slick trick: “Bank of America, et.al., charged hidden, illegal fees to military veterans trying to refinance their homes. The lenders, unable to charge certain fees under U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs rules, simply increased another created set of fees without making it clear to veterans that they were doing so, the suit alleges. The result was hundreds of thousands of cases where veterans trying to refinance their homes ended up paying between $300 and $1,000 more than they were supposed to, according to the suit.”
Think before you judge the people, young and old, that are at the various Occupy sites, stop by and talk.
