GI Special Is Running On Empty

Internet service provider fees, monthly connection charges, ink for the printer to turn out copies for outreach to active duty troops and National Guard members, costs of computer security systems to keep out hackers and sneak peepers, reams of paper, computer repair costs, travel costs to respond to invitations to go to military base towns…

It never ends, but the money that comes from the pay checks of working people who help GI Special come out has gone as far as possible, and the unpaid bills are piling up.

You know we don’t hit you up often, but now we can’t not.

T

All proceeds are used for projects giving aid and comfort to members of the armed forces opposed to today’s Imperial wars.

Announcing The GI Special 2006 Fund Raising Raffle:
[Yeah, This Time You Could Win Some Good Shit For Your Money]

But First:
“Why Bother Shelling Out My Cash?”

#1:
“I’d Like To Thank You For GI Special. I Found It Last Year While I Was Still Serving In Iraq, And It Helped Keep Me Sane”

From: A [Excerpts from two emails]
To: GI Special
Sent: July 08, 2006 & July 9.06

I’d like to thank you for GI Special. I found it last year while I was still serving in Iraq, and it helped keep me sane.

The internet access we had at Summerall was not closely supervised.

We were warned against looking at porn, or passing on information that might be picked up by “the enemy” (I suppose the insurgents were intercepting our satellite signals), but I visited GI Special at least weekly, as well as other sites that better explained what I knew to be going on around me.

I didn’t have the ability to print anything, so mostly I just shared stories I read with other soldiers in the contexts of our talks.

I shared stories with a number of my buddies, and they went a long way in helping them try to make some sense out the insanity that is Iraq.

I joined IVAW while I was still there, and have been active ever since.

Opposing this war IS defending this country.

Thanks again, and keep up the fight!

“In the beginning of change…the patriot is a scarce man, who is brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him; for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.” ~Mark Twain

#2
“As A Viet Nam Vet I Turn To Your Email Every Day For An Energizing Blast Of Appropriate Fury”

From: GC
To: GI Special
Sent: August 29, 2006 12:50 PM
Subject: contributions?

As a Viet Nam vet I turn to your email every day for an energizing blast of appropriate fury. Your’s is the best antidote to the bullshit barrage I encounter everywhere else with the exception of Democracy Now.

Is there some way I can offer a contribution to help support your efforts?

Best of luck,
CG

25th I.D. Cu Chi, Viet Nam Nov. 68 – Nov 69.
“Think Short!”

OK, Here’s How It Works

Anybody who sends at least $5 is in the raffle. You got a choice of two prizes if your name is pulled, and two names will be pulled, so say which prize you want if you win. In case both winners want the same prize, we’ll do a coin toss. The drawing will be Sept. 30, 2006.

If you send a check or money order, make payable to: The Military Project.

If you send gold or silver bullion, diamonds, or large amounts of foreign or domestic currency, insure the package. [Yeah, fat chance.]

Send to:

G.I. Special
c/o
The Military Project
Box 126
2576 Broadway
New York, N.Y.
10025-5657

Repeat: If you send a check or money order, make payable to: The Military Project. The drawing will be Sept. 30, 2006.

Now For The Prizes:

#1:

Out of print. There are lots of photo books about the troops in Vietnam, but this one has photos of anti-war troops making it clear to the whole world they hate the war. A copy recently went from a rare book dealer for $80. Can’t photocopy anything from inside the book without cracking the spine.

#2:

Vietnam GI

The Military Project has copied complete sets of Vietnam GI. The originals were a bit rough, sometimes a line at the bottom gone, but every page is there. Over 100 pages, full 11x17 size.

Edited by Jeff Sharlet until his death (see below), this newspaper rocked the world, attracting attention even from Time Magazine, and extremely hostile attention from the chain of command. The pages and pages of letters troops in Vietnam wrote in, condemning the war, and praising Vietnam GI, are lost to history.

Full set Vietnam GI reprints are not available anywhere else. Just here.

VIETNAM GI
August 1969

Many good men never came back from Nam. Some came back disabled in mind. Jeff Sharlet came back a pretty together cat—and he came back angry. Jeff started VGI, and for almost two years poured his life into it, in an endless succession of 18-hour days trying to organize men to fight for their own rights.

On Monday, June 16th, at 2:45 pm, Jeff died in the Miami VA Hospital. He died of a sudden heart failure, brought on by the uncontrollable growth of the cancer that had earlier destroyed his kidney. There was no way to save him. He was only 27 years old.

Rather than wait for the draft, like so many others Jeff went RA. With dreams of seeing Europe, he applied for “translator-interpreter”, and found himself at the US Army Language School at Monterey, California. But instead of French, Czech or German, he was assigned a strange language called “Vietnamese”—. spoken in a country he couldn’t even find on the map. For eleven months in 1962 he was drilled in Vietnamese.

In 1963 he was assigned to Army Security Agency, and left for his first tour in Nam. Stationed in Saigon awhile, Jeff witnessed the ARVN coup that overthrew Saigon dictator Ngo Diem. On his second tour his ASA unit was stationed near Phu Bai. Engaged in top-secret work monitoring, decoding and translating North Vietnamese radio messages, they wore AF uniforms and worked at a small air base. But every time they went into the bars, every bargirl could reel off all the facts about their mission.

Speaking the language well, Jeff could talk to many Vietnamese about what was happening to their country. He spent long hours questioning ex-Foreign Legion men, who’d settled in Vietnam after the French left, peasants, ARVN officers, students, and even suspected VC agents. By the time he ETSed in July, 1964 he’d put a lot of pieces together.

Jeff went back to school, and got his college degree (with honors) from Indiana University in 1967. During his “GI Bill years” he joined the peace movement, and became chairman of his local chapter of Students for a Democratic Society. But he had become increasingly disillusioned about the student movement, and felt that its shallowness and snotty attitude towards other people made it ineffective.

That summer he went to New York City to work with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and it was there that he decided to try to organize other GIs to fight the brass. Jeff had won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship for graduate study at the University of Chicago. He enrolled and” picked up his check. From then on all his time and money were sunk into starting a newspaper for servicemen.

After two years of endless traveling, fund-raising and writing, Jeff’s drive started to fade. That restless energy that had brought him countless miles to base after base wasn’t there. After his last trip to Ft. Hood in the Fall of 1968, Jeff complained that he was really beat, burnt out. We all agreed that he should go “on leave” and take a rest.

It was while visiting friends in Boston that the first really severe pains started. Jeff flew home to Florida, and entered the hospital. From there it was steadily downhill all the way. The removal of his left kidney, massive radiation treatments, drugs—nothing stopped the growth of his cancer. At the end he was weak and emaciated, without enough breath in his lungs to speak for more than a few sentences. He said that he had many new ideas for our fight, but was just too exhausted to talk about them.

Jeff was a truly rare man. He was our friend and comrade, and those of us who came together in this fight will never forget him. VGI, the paper that so many readers called “the truth paper,” will go on fighting.

One day while I was in a bunker in Vietnam, a sniper round went over my head. The person who fired that weapon was not a terrorist, a rebel, an extremist, or a so-called insurgent. The Vietnamese individual who tried to kill me was a citizen of Vietnam, who did not want me in his country. This truth escapes millions.

Mike Hastie
U.S. Army Medic
Vietnam 1970-71
December 13, 2004

OCCUPATION ISN’T LIBERATION
BRING ALL THE TROOPS HOME NOW!

Telling the truth – about the occupation or the criminals running the government in Washington – is the first reason for Traveling Soldier. But we want to do more than tell the truth; we want to report on the resistance – whether it’s in the streets of Baghdad, New York, or inside the armed forces. Our goal is for Traveling Soldier to become the thread that ties working-class people inside the armed services together. We want this newsletter to be a weapon to help you organize resistance within the armed forces. If you like what you’ve read, we hope that you’ll join with us in building a network of active duty organizers.  www.traveling-soldier.org/  And join with Iraq War vets in the call to end the occupation and bring our troops home now! www.ivaw.net

All GI Special issues achieved at website
www.militaryproject.org/
The following have also posted issues; there may be others:

gi-special.iraq-news.de
www.notinourname.net/gi-special/
www.williambowles.info/gispecial
www.traprockpeace.org/gi_special/
www.albasrah.net/maqalat/english/gi-special.htm
www.uruknet.info/

GI Special distributes and posts to our website copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. We believe this constitutes a “fair use” of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law since it is being distributed without charge or profit for educational purposes to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for educational purposes, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.  GI Special has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor is GI Special endorsed or sponsored by the originators. This attributed work is provided a non-profit basis to facilitate understanding, research, education, and the advancement of human rights and social justice Go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml for more information. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. 

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