Subversive Peacemaking

Answers to the 2012 Social Justice Quiz

2012-02-02T10:44:00.000-08:00

Here are the answers to the 2012 Social Justice Quiz (posted here on Monday). Don't worry about how many answers you got right as much as working to understand the deeper implications of the issue(s) surrounding each question and what they mean for our society and the world.

Thanks again to Bill Quigley and Sam Schmitt for creating the Quiz. Bill teaches law at Loyola University New Orleans and works with the Center for Constitutional Rights. Sam is a law student at University of Montana School of Law. A version of this with full sources is available. You can reach Bill at quigley77@gmmail.com

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One. The combined pay of the top 299 CEOs is enough to support 102,325 average jobs. Source: Corporate Paywatch.

Two. The median net worth of white households in the US is $97,900. Source: Economic Policy Institute.

Three. Except for eleven counties in Illinois and another eight in Puerto Rico, there is no county in the US where a one bedroom fair market rate apartment is available to a person working full-time at the minimum wage. Source: The National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Four. The typical worker must earn $18.46 an hour to rent a two bedroom apartment. Source: National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Five. In the last numbers reported, the top 1 percent had net worth 225 times greater than the median or typical household’s net worth, the highest ever recorded. Source: Economic Policy Institute.

Six. The rate of incarceration per 100,000 people is: USA 730, Russian 534, Iran 334, China 122, Iraq 101, and Germany 86. Source: International Centre for Prison Studies, University of Essex.
Seven. $836 billion. Over $713 billion on military programs and another $123 for veterans affairs. Source: US Office of Management and Budget, Fiscal Year 2012.

Eight. The US spends $100 billion more on our military than the next highest 15 countries combined. More than China, UK, France, Russia, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Germany, India, Italy, Brazil, South Korea, Australia, Canada and Turkey combined. Source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2011 Yearbook.

Nine. 1.4 billion people live on less than $1.25 a day. Source: United National Development Program, Human Development Report 2010.

Ten. One and half billion people, more than one of every five people in the world, live without electricity. Source: United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report 2011.

Eleven. US government ranks 19th out of 23 countries in assistance to poor nations, giving about two-tenths of one percent of US gross national income to poor countries. Source: Global Issues: Foreign Aid for Development Assistance.

Twelve. US consumers spend $67 billion each year on pets, pet products and services. Source: US Census Bureau 2012 Statistical Abstract.

Thirteen. The US poverty rate among children ranks the US 26th among 30 nations in the rate of poverty among children. Source: Poverty among children. OECD.

The 2012 Social Justice Quiz

2012-01-30T19:17:00.000-08:00

Friends,

Bill Quigley's been at it again (along with Sam Schmitt)!!! They're asking the tough questions that have some really sobering answers should we be paying attention. These questions demand not only our attention, but our action. After all, that's what social justice is all about, isn't it??? So take the test class, and just so there won't be any cheating I'll give you the answers in the next post. You may begin NOW!

Peace,

Leonard

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Social Justice Quiz 2012: Thirteen Questions

By Bill Quigley and Sam Schmitt. Bill teaches law at Loyola University New Orleans and works with the Center for Constitutional Rights. Sam is a law student at University of Montana School of Law. A version of this with full sources is available. You can reach Bill at quigley77@gmmail.com

Question One. The combined pay of the 299 highest paid CEOs in the US is enough to support how many median salary jobs?

45,000? 83,000? 102,325?

Two. The median net worth of black households in the US is $2,200. What is the median net worth of white households in the US?

$4,400? $44,000? $97,000?

Three. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development issues a national survey every year listing fair market rents for every county in the US. HUD also suggests renters should pay no more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs. In how many of the USA’s 3068 counties can someone who works full-time and earns the federal minimum wage pay 30% of their income and find a one-bedroom apartment at the fair market rental amount?

19? 368? 1974?

Four. How much must the typical U.S. worker earn per hour to rent a two-bedroom apartment if that worker dedicates thirty percent of his income, as HUD suggests, to rent and utilities?

$9.39? $14.63? $18.46?

Five. The wealthiest 1 percent of the US has a net worth which is how many times greater than the median or typical household’s net worth?

50? 150? 225?

Six. Which of these countries puts the highest percentage of their people in jails and prisons?

China? Iran? Iraq? Germany? Russia? USA?

Seven. In 2012, the US will pay out about $620 million for old age Social Security benefits to 45 million families. How much is budgeted for military spending by the US in 2012?

$310 billion? $620 billion? $836 billion?

Eight. The US is number one in the world in military spending. How much more does the US spend compared to the top 15 countries in the world in military spending?

More than any 2 other countries combined? More than any 5 other countries combined? More than all the rest of the 15 top military spending countries combined?

Nine. How many people in the world live on less than $1.25 a day?

150 million? 500 million? Over 1 billion?

Ten. How many people in the world live without electricity?

500 million? One billion? One and half billion?

Eleven. The US government donates over $30 billion a year in official development assistance (foreign aid) to poor countries. Where does that rank the US government in percentage of giving among the richest 23 countries?

First? Tenth? Nineteenth?

Twelve. The US government donates over $30 billion a year to poor countries. How much do US consumers spend on pets and pet supplies each year?

$10 billion? $30 billion? $67 billion?

Thirteen. The poverty rate among children in the US is over 20 percent. How does US compare with the rest of the 30 nations surveyed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development?

First? Tenth? Twenty-sixth?

Ten Steps for Radical Revolution in USA

2012-01-23T16:21:00.000-08:00

By Bill Quigley. Bill is a human rights lawyer who teaches at Loyola University New Orleans and works with the Center for Constitutional Rights. You can reach him at quigley77@gmail.com

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1967

One. Human rights must be taken absolutely seriously. Every single person is entitled to dignity and human rights. No application needed. No exclusions at all. This is our highest priority.

Two. We must radically reinvent contemporary democracy. Current systems are deeply corrupt and not responsive to the needs of people.   Representatives chosen by money and influence govern by money and influence. This is unacceptable. Direct democracy by the people is now technologically possible and should be the rule. Communities must be protected whenever they advocate for self-determination, self-development and human rights. Dissent is essential to democracy; we pledge to help it flourish.

Three. Corporations are not people and are not entitled to human rights.   Amend the US Constitution so it is clear corporations do not have constitutional or human rights.   We the people must cut them down to size and so democracy can regulate their size, scope and actions.

Four. Leave the rest of the world alone. Cut US military spending by 75 percent and bring all troops outside the US home now. Defense of the US is a human right. Global offense and global police force by US military are not. Eliminate all nuclear and chemical and biological weapons. Stop allowing scare tactics to build up the national security forces at home. Stop the myth that the US is somehow special or exceptional and is entitled to act differently than all other nations. The US must re-join the global family of nations as a respectful partner. USA is one of many nations in the world. We must start acting like it.

Five. Property rights, privilege, and money-making are not as important as human rights. When current property and privilege arrangements are not just they must yield to the demands of human rights. Money-making can only be allowed when human rights are respected. Exploitation is unacceptable. There are national and global poverty lines. We must establish national and global excess lines so that people and businesses with extra houses, cars, luxuries, and incomes share much more to help everyone else be able to exercise their basic human rights to shelter, food, education and healthcare. If that disrupts current property, privilege and money-making, so be it.

Six. Defend our earth. Stop pollution, stop pipelines, stop new interstates, and stop destroying the land, sea, and air by extracting resources from them. Rebuild what we have destroyed. If corporations will not stop voluntarily, people must stop them. The very existence of life is at stake.

Seven. Dramatically expand public spaces and reverse the privatization of public services. Quality public education, health and safety for all must be provided by transparent accountable public systems. Starving the state is a recipe for destroying social and economic human rights for everyone but the rich.

Eight. Pull the criminal legal prison system up and out by its roots and start over. Cease the criminalization of drugs, immigrants, poor people and people of color. We are all entitled to be safe but the current system makes us less so and ruins millions of lives. Start over.

Nine. The US was created based on two original crimes that must be confessed and made right. Reparations are owed to Native Americans because their land was stolen and they were uprooted and slaughtered.   Reparations are owed to African Americans because they were kidnapped, enslaved and abused. The US has profited widely from these injustices and must make amends.

Ten. Everyone who wants to work should have the right to work and earn a living wage. Any workers who want to organize and advocate for change in solidarity with others must be absolutely protected from recriminations from their employer and from their government.

Finally, if those in government and those in power do not help the people do what is right, people seeking change must together exercise our human rights and bring about these changes directly. Dr. King and millions of others lived and worked for a radical revolution of values. We will as well. We respect the human rights and human dignity of others and work for a world where love and wisdom and solidarity and respect prevail. We expect those for whom the current unjust system works just fine will object and oppose and accuse people seeking dramatic change of being divisive and worse. That is to be expected because that is what happens to all groups which work for serious social change. Despite that, people will continue to go forward with determination and purpose to bring about a radical revolution of values in the USA.

2012: The Year of Police State USA

2012-01-01T18:17:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,

Not so Happy New Year!!!

While the nation was preoccupied with preparations for New Year's Eve festivities President Obama once again emulated his predecessor by signing a major piece of controversial legislation when he knew no one would be paying attention, least of all the mainstream, corporate news media. In fact it is safe to say that Obama has far surpassed former President George W. Bush - something I previously thought would be impossible - in consistently undermining the Constitution of the United States during his presidency.

With President Obama's signing of the “National Defense Authorization Act " H.R. 1540 on December 31, 2011 the United States has reached an extraordinary new high for the National Security State even as it plunges to the nadir of democracy. If you listen carefully you can hear the jack boots marching across America as the quest for global hegemony creates the associated increased militarization of the "Homeland."

The relentless pursuit of Draconian laws since September 11, 2001 has not abated during Obama's tenure. In fact it has increased at a dizzying pace as Congress and it's partners in the Military-Industrial Complex have done everything possible to ensure that a well oiled military machine continues to expand so that the sun never sets on the American Empire.

Some have warned of the similarities of our nation's current situation and that of Germany in the early 1930s. There are striking parallels between the steps leading up to the fate of the Weimar Republic and what we are experiencing in the U.S. today. We ignore the lessons of history at our own nation's peril!

Michael Chossudovsky The signing of NDAA (HR 1540) into law is tantamount to the militarization of law enforcement, the repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act and the Inauguration in 2012 of Police State USA.

Michael Chossudovsky has written a worthy analysis of the NDAA and the lessons of history associated with it in THE INAUGURATION OF POLICE STATE USA 2012. Obama Signs the “National Defense Authorization Act ". At the end of the article he sums things up pretty succinctly:
The signing of NDAA (HR 1540) into law is tantamount to the militarization of law enforcement, the repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act and the Inauguration in 2012 of Police State USA.
You can also read Obama's signing "Statement of the President on H.R. 1540" at the White House Website in which he makes a vain attempt at feigning his democratic intent. Rather than supporting an unconstitutional law while issuing a worthless Presidential signing statement, the President should have found what is left of his backbone and vetoed this unconscionable legislation.
Today I weep for my country. We must not, as citizens, let this stand. We must speak out against these unlawful actions on every street corner and in every hall of government!

Peace,

Leonard

URL for Michael Chossudovsky's article: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28441

URL for President Obama's signing statement on HR 1540: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/12/31/statement-president-hr-1540

News Flash! 3 wise men stopped at border

2011-12-27T13:18:00.000-08:00

Friends,

I hope you all survived the commercial onslaught that passes for Christmas every year. This offering from Rev. Jim Rigby is a funny (and tragic) parable for our time. Yes Virginia - One person's wise man is another's terrorist. Of course, giving Mary and Joseph a room at your inn these days would get you thrown in jail under the Patriot Act (and Heaven knows how many other obscure and Draconian laws of der Homeland).

Let us hope that the true meaning of Christmas touched (at least in some small way) those who serve the empire rather than humanity, and so continue the steady march to oblivion as the walls of the empire slowly crumble under their own weight.

Until the day we learn to live in peace with justice, and without fear,

Leonard

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Office of Homeland Security Cancels Christmas

by Jim Rigby

Ellis Island - The three wise men were arrested today attempting to enter the country. The Iraqi nationals were carrying massive amounts of flammable substances known as "frankincense" and "myrrh." While not explosives themselves, experts revealed that these two substances could be used as a fuse to detonate a larger bomb. The three alleged terrorists were also carrying gold, presumably to finance the rest of their mission.

Also implicated in the plot were two Palestinians named Joseph and Mary. An anonymous source close to the family overheard Mary bragging that her son would "bring down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly." In what appears to be a call to anarchy, the couple claims their son will someday "help prisoners escape captivity."

"These people match our terrorist profile perfectly," an official source reported.

All of the suspects claimed they heard angels singing of a new era of hope for the afflicted and poor. As one Wall Street official put it, "These one-world wackos are talking about overturning the entire economic and political hierarchy that holds the civilized world together. I don't care what some angel sang; God wants the status quo - by definition."

A somber White House press secretary announced that it might be prudent to cancel Christmas until others in the plot are rounded up. "I assure you that this measure is temporary. The president loves Christmas as much as anyone. People can still shop and give expensive gifts, but we're asking them not to think about world peace until after we have rid the world of evil people. For Americans to sing, 'Peace on earth, good will to all,' is just the wrong message to send to our enemies at this time."

The strongest opponents of the Christmas ban were the representatives of retail stores, movie chains and makers of porcelain Christmas figurines. "This is a tempest in a teapot," fumed one unnamed business owner. "No one thinks of the political meaning of Christmas any more. Christmas isn't about a savior who will bring hope to the outcasts of the world; it's about nativity scenes and beautiful lights. History has shown that mature people are perfectly capable of singing hymns about world peace while still supporting whatever war our leaders deem necessary. People long ago stopped tying religion to the real events in the world."

There has been no word on where the suspects are being kept, or when their trial might be held. Authorities are asking citizens who see other foreigners resembling nativity scene figures to contact the Office of Homeland Security.

Following the Ways of Peace (an offering by Kathy Kelly)

2011-12-23T11:17:00.000-08:00

Published on Friday, December 23, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Amid War, Following Yonder Star Towards Peace

by Kathy Kelly

Beneath our flat, here in Kabul, wedding guests crowded into a restaurant and celebrated throughout the night. Guests sounded joyful and the music, mostly disco, thumped loudly. When the regular call to prayer sounded out at 5:20 a.m., the sounds seemed to collide in an odd cacophony, making all music indistinguishable. I smiled, remembering the prayer call’s durable exhortation to live in peace, heard worldwide for centuries, and went back to sleep.

Through most of my life, I’ve found it easy to resonate with the ringing and beautiful Christmas narrative found in the Gospel of Luke, but less so with that jangling discord with which westerners are so familiar—the annual collision between (on the one hand) the orgy of gift-purchasing and gift-consumption surrounding the holiday and the the sweeter, simpler proclamations of peace on earth heralded by the newborn’s arrival. I've found myself quite surprisingly happy to spend many Christmases either in U.S. jails or among Muslims living in places like Bosnia, Iraq, Jordan and now Afghanistan. My hosts and friends in these places have been people who are enduring wars or fleeing wars, including, as in the case of U.S. jails, a war against the poor in the United States.

The Christmas narrative that imagines living beings coming together across divides, the houseless family with no room at the inn, the shepherds and the foreign royals arriving, all awakening to unimagined possibilities of peace, comes alive quite beautifully in the community with which I'm graced to find myself here in Kabul.

Five of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers are spending winter months in the apartment here which accommodates their group as well as visiting guests such as our small Voices delegation. In recent months, the place has evolved into a resource center for learning languages and exchanging ideas about nonviolent movements for social change. I am filled with fond and deep admiration for these young people as I watch them studying each other’s languages and preparing their own delegation to visit other provinces of this land on the brink of civil war, meeting with other young people wherever they can.

I’ve often described Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers as having bridged considerable ethnic gaps in their steadfast aspiration to someday live without wars. It’s quite impressive, during this trip, to learn from them about how close several of them came to becoming armed fighters.

One young friend recalls having spent three weeks, at age 12, as part of a Taliban group. He had no choice but to go with the Taliban as a conscript. He was given a rifle, as well as adequate food, and assigned to be a sentry. "I loaded the weapon and I fired warning shots," said our young friend, who is now 21 years of age, "but I didn’t feel good about it.” A village elder intervened, saying the new recruits were too young, and the Taliban released my friend and the other young teens.

We watched a film together in which another youngster, about seven years previously, had acted the role of the leader of a group of children imitating Talib fighters. Carrying sticks, the young actors had harassed a little girl over her determination that she would learn to read. Now we asked the young man, himself a Hazara, how he felt about playing a Taliban child. He acknowledged having grown up believing that anyone who was part of an ethnic group that had persecuted his people could never be trusted.

The father of another youngster had been killed by the Taliban. Still another describes how he watched in horror as Hazara fighters killed his brother.

Last week, the AYPVs welcomed a new friend who lives in a neighboring province and speaks a different language to join them and help them learn his language. Asked about NATO/ISAF night raids and other attacks that have occurred in his area, the new friend said that families who have suffered attacks feel intense anger, but even more so people say they want peace. "However, international forces have made people feel less secure," he added. "It’s unfortunate that internationals hear stories about Afghans being wild people and think that more civilized outsiders are trying to build the country. People here are suffering because of destruction caused by outsiders."

The air, the ground, the mountainsides, the water, and even the essential bonds of familial living have been ravaged by three decades of warfare here in Afghanistan. People living here have suffered the loss of an estimated two million people killed in the wars. 850 children die every day because of disease and hunger.

Amid excruciating sorrow and pain, it’s good to see people still find ways to gather for celebrations, even when the sounds seem curious and the dances seem, to some, forbiddingly exotic. Differences between insiders and outsiders become less relevant as people meet one another to celebrate.

Peace can surprise us when it comes, and that alone is abundantly sufficient cause for celebration in this season, wherever we are. Dr. King wrote that "the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice," and we should not be surprised as new and growing movements around us reveal an unquenchable and ineradicable longing for simple justice. The killing fields that scar our earth and sear the memories of survivors beckon us to look and listen for new ways of living together. Massacres of innocents call to us to reject the easy and familiar and go home by an other way.

The desires to live more simply, to share resources more radically, and to prefer service to dominance are not unique to any place, season, or religion. Such desires may yet herald unions previously unimagined and a better world for every newborn, each one bringing an astonishing potential - as we do if we strive to fulfill it - for peace.

Kathy Kelly, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Kathy Kelly's email is kathy@vcnv.org

more Kathy Kelly

Joseph, Mary & Jesus pitch at tent at Trinity Wall Street Church!!!

2011-12-15T10:20:00.000-08:00

WILL TRINITY CHURCH TEAR DOWN OWS NATIVITY SCENE?
Church and lay activists install guerrilla gift in front of Wall St. church

Today [Thursday, December 15, 2011] at 2pm, prominent New York religious figures along with Occupy Wall Street activists will erect a nativity scene outside Trinity Wall Street Church. The scene—which activists are calling a "peace offering" in advance of this Saturday's planned occupation of a sliver of unused Trinity land—will feature Joseph, Mary, and Jesus within an Occupy Wall Street tent adorned with relevant scripture.

"The story of Christmas starts with Mary and Joseph's search for a home," said Reverend Michael Ellick of Judson Church. "It's thus especially ironic, and tragic, that Trinity Church—one of the largest landowners in New York City—refuses even a tiny, unused piece of its vast land to OWS, which points to the same spirit of transformation that Jesus represented."

"This is truly a theological line in the sand," added Ellick. "The gospel is about real-world transformation, not cosmetic charity. How is it that Trinity's real estate is worth over 10 billion dollars, and all they can do for Occupy is hand out hot chocolate?"

Rev. Ellick and other participants will also deliver a petition from over 12,000 Faithful America members urging the church to offer sanctuary to the protesters. Faithful America is an online community of people of faith taking action for social justice.

"Trinity is faced with a choice: are they a church or are they a real estate company with a religious storefront?" said Andrew Huckins, one of the organizers of this Saturday's planned occupation. "We truly hope that Trinity moves beyond charity and joins the Occupy movement in its quest for social and economic justice."

According to Max Page, author of The Creative Destruction of Manhattan, in the early 20th century Trinity "offended the sensibilities of elite New Yorkers by ignoring the squalor over which it was landlord... and unjustly redistributing the wealth of the church to its uptown parishioners." In short, the book notes, Trinity acted "like a big business and not a religious institution."

"Trinity can use this opportunity to act according to the beliefs we all espouse," said Ellick. "We deeply hope that they do so."

Contact:
Rev. Michael Ellick (Judson Church): 646-734-0162
Andrew Huckins (OWS): 413-522-1129
Sean Devlin (Yes Lab): sean@yeslab.org

For more information: http://occupyfaithnyc.com/

Nativity,circa 2011

2011-12-12T22:39:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,

It is that time of year once again when Christians ponder the story of the birth of Jesus and all the events surrounding that miracle birth. As many times as I have seen the story of the Nativity I don't think I have ever seen anything more than a sanitized version, one that glosses over the ugly yet very real parts of the story.

It is much the same for so much of history, whether it be the story of Columbus (and just about every other story of colonization), or that of the genocide of Native Americans or Aboriginal Peoples of Canada. I am grateful to Gary Kohls for sharing the following story by Kevin Annett, called "Nativity." It is much more than a modern take on the Nativity; it is also a telling, between the lines, of the treatment of aboriginal peoples and of those who take Jesus' life and teachings seriously, and often suffer tremendously as a result.

In a modern world not unlike that of the time in which Herod ruled, one has to wonder how much (or how little) we have learned in roughly 2000 years. As many times as we hear (or see) the story of the Nativity, do we really get it? And if we do, as so many (who call themselves Christians) claim, then why do so we still turn away the stranger, the immigrant, the homeless...???

A former minister of the United Church of Canada, Kevin Annett has helped give voice to the long suffering First Nations Peoples of Canada. Here is Kevin's offering for yet another desperate Advent as we wait in the stillness of these dark days. Here is a link to Kevin's Website, Hidden from History: Canada's Holocaust, www.hiddenfromhistory.org.

In Peace,

Leonard

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Nativity

By Kevin D. Annett

The last Christmas we were all together hangs over memory like the fog did that year in the Alberni valley. It was a time of gathering, two years and more of labor summoning so many together where once there were but a few. And it was a time of ending.

The church stewards had warned me to expect an overflow crowd at the Christmas eve service, and like overgrown elves they had busied themselves around the building, stringing wires and sound systems in the cold auditorium kept that way to save money. The snows had come early, and our food bank was already depleted.

With my eldest daughter who was but five, I had walked to the church one morning in the week before yule, pondering the cold and the sermon, when I met the one who would pierce the fog that year for us. She stood patiently at the locked door, her brown eyes relaxing as we approached. Her bare hand gestured at me.

“You’re that minister, ain’t you?” she mumbled to me, as daughter Clare fell back and grabbed my hand.

Before I could answer, the stranger smiled and nodded, and uttered with noticeable pleasure at her double entendre, "They say you give it out seven days a week!”.

I smiled too, gripping Clare’s hand reassuringly and replying, “If you mean food, we’re a bit short, but you’re welcome to whatever’s left.”

She nodded again, and waited while I unlocked the door and picked up Clare, who was clinging to me by then. The basement was even more frigid than the outside, but the woman doffed her torn overcoat and sighed loudly as we approached the food bank locker.

“For all the good it’ll do …” she said, as I unlocked the pantry and surveyed the few cans and bags lying there.

I turned and really looked at her for the first time. She was younger than she had sounded, but a dark, cancerous growth marred her upper lip, and a deep scar ran down her face and neck. Her eyes were kindness, and in that way, very aboriginal.

“I’m sorry there’s not more …” I began, since back then I still saw things in terms of giving. But she shook her head, and instead of saying anything, she looked at Clare, and the two of them exchanged a smile for the first time.

I stared, confused, at the cupboard so bare, and heard her finally utter, “Them people in church, you know what they need?”

I set Clare down and shook my head.

“They need Him. They sing about Him, and pretend they know Him, but hell, they wouldn’t spot Him even if He came and bit ‘em on their ass.”

I smiled at that one, and even dared a mild chuckle.

“You doin’ a Christmas play for the kids?” she continued.

“Yeah”.

“I bet it’s the usual bullshit with angels and shepherds, right?”

I nodded.

“That don’t mean nuthin’ to those people. Why don’t you do a story about … well, like, if He came to Port Alberni to be born, right now.”

I finally laughed, feeling very happy. She smiled too, walked over to the cupboard and picked up a small bag of rice. Donning her coat, she nodded her thanks, and said, “My bet is Him and Mary and Joseph, they’d end up in the Petrocan garage, down River road. The owner there lets us sleep in the back sometimes.”

And then she was gone.

I didn’t try explaining the stranger to anyone, ever, or what her words had done to me. All I did was lock the food cupboard and lead Clare up to my office, where I cranked up the heat and set her to drawing. And then I sat at my desk and I wrote for the rest of the day.

The kids in church were no problem at all. They got it, immediately. The Indians who dared to mingle in the pews that night with all the ponderous white people also took to the amateur performance like they had composed it themselves, and laughed with familiarity as the holy family was turned away first by the local cops, and then hotel owners, and finally by church after church after church.

It was mostly the official Christians who were shocked into open-mouthed incredulity at the coming to life of something they thought they knew all about. As the children spoke their lines, I swear I saw parishioners jump and writhe like there were tacks scattered on the pews.

“Joe, I’m getting ready to have this kid. You’d better find us a place real friggin' quick.”

“I’m trying, Mary, but Jehovah! Nobody will answer their door! I guess it’s ‘cause we’re low lifes.”

“Look! There’s a church up ahead. I bet they’ll help us!”

If you believe the Bible, whoever He was loved to poke fun at his listeners and shock them out of their fog, and our play would have made him proud. As the eight-year old girl who played Mary pleaded fruitlessly for help from a kid adorned in oversized clerical garb, and was covered in scorn by the young “priest”, I heard a sad moan rise from the congregation.

But things took a turn when Mary and Joe came upon an Indian, played by one of the aboriginal kids.

“Sir, will you help us? My wife’s going to have a baby …”

“Sure!” replied the native kid with gusto. “I got a spot in a shed behind the gas station down the road. The owner lets us all sleep in there!”

And in a contrived scene of boxes and cans scattered where our communion table normally stood, Mary had her baby, as erstwhile homeless men with fake beards and a stray rez dog looked on, and one of the witnesses urged Mary to keep her newborn quiet lest the Mounties hear his cries and bust everyone for vagrancy.

Voices were subdued that night in the church hall over coffee, cookies and Christmas punch, and the normally dull gazes and banalities about the time of year were oddly absent. The Indians kept nodding and smiling at me, saying little, and not having to; and the kids were happy too, still in costume and playing with the local stray who had posed as the rez dog in the performance that would always be talked about. It was the white congregants who seemed most pregnant that night, but they couldn’t speak of it.

It was one of my last services with them, and somehow they all knew it, since we had all entered the story by then. For a churchly Herod had already heard a rumor, and dispatched assassins to stop a birth, and me, even though it was already too late.

My daughter Clare was not running and rolling with the other kids, but in her manner joined me quietly with her younger sister Elinor in tow. Our trio stood there, amidst the thoughtful looks and unspoken love, and person after person came to us and grasped our hands, or embraced us with glistening eyes. An aging Dutch woman named Omma van Beek struggled towards me in her walker and pressed her trembling lips on my cheek, and said something to me in her native tongue as the tears fell unashamedly from both of us.

Later, when we were scattered and lost, I would remember that moment like no other, as if something in Omma’s tears washed away all the filth and loss that were to follow. And perhaps that looming nightfall touched my heart just then, for I gave a shudder as I looked at my children, almost glimpsing the coming divorce, and I held my daughters close as if that would keep them safe and near to me forever.

The snow was falling again as we left the darkened building, kissing us gently like it had done years before when as a baby, Clare had struggled with me on a toboggan through the deep drifts of my first charge in Pierson, Manitoba, on another Christmas eve. The quiet flakes blessed us with memory, and settled in love on the whole of creation, even on the unmarked graves of children up at the old Indian residential school.

The old Byzantine icon depicts Jesus as a baby, hugging his worried mother while she stares ahead into his bloody future: her eyes turned in grief to the viewer, yet his loving eyes seeking her, past the moment, past even his own death.

The image may still hang in the basement of my church, where I left it.

.................................................................................

Kevin Annett
260 Kennedy St.
Nanaimo, BC Canada V9R 2H8
250-753-3345
www.hiddenfromhistory.org

Ed Note [from Gary Kohls]: Reverend Kevin Annett was fired, without cause, from his successfully rejuvenated United Church of Canada (UCC) parish in Port Alberni, British Columbia (the United Church of Canada has no connection to the United Church of Christ [UCC] in the United States) when he refused to stop his probing into his church’s role in the abusive Residential Schools for Aboriginal children in Canada, where as many as 50,000 children died. (The Residential School system in Canada was essentially the same as the racist church-operated Mission School system for American Indian children in the US).

Rev Annett’s persistence in this investigative work has resulted in two books and an award-winning documentary (entitled “Unrepentant”) about the sobering history of the Canadian government’s and the Canadian Christian church’s genocidal activities against First nation’s children. A feature film depicting Rev Annett’s powerful story has been produced but has yet to obtain a distributor.

Time to Occupy War Street - Here's Why!!!

2011-12-07T09:33:00.000-08:00

Friends,

The Occupy movement is facing a huge range of inequities in our world, among them the huge Military-Industrial Complex that sucks both the spiritual and economic life from the citizenry. Robert Greenwald has done an excellent job of succinctly presenting the GREED and dizzying influence of the corporate giants that dominate the killing industries. Read it and then OCCUPY WAR STREET!!!

Peace,

Leonard

*************

Meet the 0.01 Percent: War Profiteers

By Robert Greenwald

There’s the top 1% of wealthy Americans (bankers, oil tycoons, hedge fund managers) and there’s the top 0.01% of wealthy Americans: the military contractor CEOs.

If you’ve been following the War Costs campaign, you already know that these corporations are bad bosses, bad job creators and bad stewards of taxpayer dollars. What you may not know is that the huge amount of money these companies’ CEOs make off of war and your tax dollars places them squarely at the top of the gang of corrupt superrich choking our democracy. These CEOs want you to believe the massive war budget is about security — it’s not. The lobbying they’re doing to keep the war budget intact at the expense of the social safety net is purely about their greed.

In many areas, including yearly CEO salary and in dollars spent corrupting Congress, these companies are far greater offenders than even the big banks like JP Morgan Chase or Bank of America.

Egregious Military Contractor CEO pay

The top 0.01% of earners make at least $9.14 million per year, a rarefied strata of income that includes defense company CEOs and Wall Street bank chieftains alike. But a deeper dive demonstrates how defense companies outpace the big banks’ knack for enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else.

Military Contractor CEO Pay in 2010

Northrop Grumman CEO Wes Bush: $22.84 million.

Lockheed Martin CEO Robert Stevens: $21.89 million.

Boeing CEO James McNerney: $19.4 million.

Just to put that in context, consider how these annual payoffs compare to the people we’re used to thinking of as poster children for the top 1 percent:

Financial Sector CEO Pay in 2010

JP Morgan Chase CEO James Dimon: $20.81 million.

Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf: $18.97 million.

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan: $1.94 million.

Considering how they stack up to financial sector heads, war industry CEOs aren’t just members of the 1%; they’re the super-elite among them, the one-hundredth of a percent.

Lobbying Domination

Disgusted by the overwhelming corporate influence in Congress? Look no further than the big military contractor companies, whose flagship companies spend enough on lobbying to dwarf even financial sector titans.

War Industry Lobbying Expenditures for 2010

Lockheed Martin: $12.7 million.
Northrop Grumman: $15.7 million.
Boeing: $17.89 million.

Again, just to provide some context, here are the same lobbying totals for some of the most recognized names in the financial sector.

Financial Sector Lobbying in 2010

JP Morgan Chase:$7.41 million.

Wells Fargo: $5.43 million.

Bank of America: $3.98 million.

The war industry gets away with blowing our money on job-killing spending because it can bend Congress to its whim. In the process, the industry is like a vacuum sucking up brain power and engineering resources that could and would establish and grow entirely new wholesome industries. It’s no surprise that Americans confront a 9.1% unemployment rate and an under-employment rate flirting with 20 percent this year.

Want to know where all the money went that could be putting people back to work or keeping U.S. manufacturing industries competitive? The war industry CEOs dumped lobbying cash on Congress and diverted all that wealth to their private bank accounts.

Striking a blow for democracy

The war contractors’ iron grip on the wealth and politics of our country has caught the attention of our friends at Occupy Wall Street, who are targeting war profiteers in its draft list of demands with a call to bring home “all military personnel at all non-essential bases” and to end the “Military Industrial Complex’s goal of perpetual war for profit.”

We’re allies of the Occupy movement, which swells from the 99%’s disgust and dysfunction with our system. A democracy for and of the people that favors the 0.01% at the expense of the 99.99% of us is no democracy at all.

We here at Brave New Foundation and the War Costs campaign have been inspired by the incredible work of the Occupy movement, so we created our latest video to help push this critical piece of their message: war for profit has to end. We’re asking viewers to share our video with their local Occupy groups and organize a guerrilla screening at an Occupy protest in your city.

The Occupy protests have a lot to teach us, and the leaderless movement is at minimum an indictment of our political system. They’ve stopped whispering, and we’ve all started shouting.

Occupy your city and show this video to your community.

Article printed from speakeasy: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy

URL to article: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2011/10/27/meet-the-0-01-percent-war-profiteers/

A PASTORAL LAMENT FOR MY COUNTRY

2011-11-16T17:11:00.000-08:00

Editor'sNote: The following post, "A Pastoral Lament for my Country", was written by Rev. Rich Lang, a United Methodist minister who brings The Word to life, and who challenges the church to lift itself out of its collective "passivity and fear" and be in the world the way Jesus lived and taught. The church cannot serve both the empire and God. Rich's words are a prophetic call to nonviolent direct action.

Rich was pepper sprayed while engaged as a peacekeeper at a nonviolent protest by Occupy Seattle on November 15th along with 84 year old peace activist Dorli Rainey and many other protestors.

***************

America, America, my country ‘tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty
Of thee I sing
America, oh America
America the Beautiful has fallen.

You could feel the tension and raw energy crinkling throughout the air as the marchers once again began their journey into downtown Seattle. The Occupy Movement is the prophetic voice of God calling out to the nation to “repent” and turn from its ways of corruption. Those who camp are a rag-tag, motley crew made up of mostly young adults, mostly unemployed, almost all of whom are alienated and cast out of America’s promise of liberty and justice for all. They are our canaries, the first fruits being devoured by the Beast of Empire.

The police were once conceived to be a citizen force created to serve and protect the public. Today however, the police have been militarized and view the populace as enemy combatants, as threats to their well being. The police, like our Armed Forces, are well trained, disciplined and exceptionally talented. They follow a chain of command and are increasingly apprenticed into a culture of institutional conformity. Because America has always affirmed the right of dissent, the role of the police is to keep the peace. They are trained to enter the protesting arena as unfeeling protectors of property and people. What has changed in our time is that the police are entering the arena of protest as agents of provocation. They push and shove at will, they ride their bicycles up the backs of protesters, they engage in verbal abuse. Their commanders allow this breach of discipline. Their comrades silently condone the bullying. The police become the agitators encouraging violence. It is as if they are spoiling for a fight --- a fight mind you against the citizenry, against the youth, the unemployed, and those who are trying to return America back to its promise, and dare I say it, return America to its covenant with God, “we hold these truths to be self evident …”

On Tuesday night a small group of the rag-tag campers of Seattle’s Occupy Movement left their camp to protest the destruction inflicted upon the Wall Street Occupy site. Throughout the march I, as a Pastor in full clergy alb, stole and cross, acted as a peacekeeper placing myself between the police line and the Occupy Movement. On four occasions I stepped between verbal battles between the police and the protesters. The point being that it was evident to all who I was and what my role was in this non-violent march of the few escorted by the many.

The incident was minor in nature. A girl, dressed in Anarchist black waving the Anarchist black flag was plastered side by side with an officer on the bike. They were jawboning each other. At one point her flag was thrust in his direction --- a provocation yes – threatening?—no. The officer grabbed the flag and in the pulling, pulled down the girl. Her friends reacted jumping in to pull her away from the officer. It was at this point that the first wave of pepper spray went off.

Point --- one might think the officer acted within reason, that the officer was suddenly threatened. But with what? By whom? The friends of the offender were grabbing for the girl, they were not grabbing at the police. Basically the officer, and his comrades, were trigger happy as if they couldn’t wait for just this moment. And so the spray went forth.

I leapt to the front and tried to place myself between the parties --- with spray in the air the protesters were also fleeing. Separation between the police line and the protesters was clearly visible … there was certainly no threat of the “mob” suddenly rampaging into the well armed police. The separation had occurred (as can be clearly seen on the video captured by King 5 News). But the spray continued. I walked between the lines, I was alone, I was in full clergy dress, everyone knew who I was and what I was --- with the protesters fleeing and the police line holding --- with my back to the police and my hands waving the protesters to get back --- alone in full alb, stole and cross --- six officers turned their spray on me thoroughly soaking my alb and then one officer hit me full throttle in the face.

I praise the courage and compassion, the discipline and the decency of the Occupy Movement. Out of the rag-tag mob came help, grabbing my hands, leading me (I was blind by then) to the wall and administering care and concern for my well being. The protesters were assembled around all the wounded, and maintained the discipline of nonviolence (granted the nonviolence was in behavior but not language). And they were not afraid. The spraying had been a baptism sealing them into the security of knowing that their prophecy of repentance was indeed the Spirit-Word through them --- it is as if they did not prophecy their very bones would melt within them. Against the wall in increasing pain and burning I realized I was in the midst of church.

The police, on the other hand, were afraid. Their quick use of chemical warfare reveals how cowardly they are. The unwillingness of their commanders to maintain discipline reveals how incompetent they are becoming --- the only tool in their bag is brutality and like a drunken raging father beating wife and kids, the police have increasingly disgraced themselves. Step by step they are being shaped into the front face of fascism, the emerging police state that protects the property interests of the Marie Antionette’s who have seized control of our government, commerce, media, military and increasingly the Church itself.

My question to my clergy colleagues is this: Where are you? How much longer can you preach without practice? How dare you remain protected in your sanctuary while your people (the rag-tag mob of the least, last and lost whom Jesus loved) are slaughtered doing that which God has commissioned you to do (prophecy!). Where are you? Who have you become in this age of baptism by pepper spray? Do you not know how much power you have to stop our national descent into chaos? Don’t you realize that the world is your parish and right before your eyes the Spirit of God is doing a new thing? Can’t you hear that God’s judgment is upon the land? God is against the thieves that bankrupted our nation. God is against the armies of the Beast who pillage other lands in our name, and turn and destroy our people on our own soil. Are you blind? --- Perhaps you need a baptism of pepper spray in your eyes to restore your vision.

And to the police I say this --- there are always the brutal ones in our midst. As colleagues you have the moral responsibility to police your own. If your commanders order you to brutalize your people you have a Higher Command that says, “disarm yourself, turn away from your sin, renounce the orders of unrighteousness.” And in doing so, cross the line, come over and join us because we are the winning side of history. And we welcome your repentance and heal you of your shame.

And to the church, beloved church I say, you cannot sing the hymns of faith if you are too afraid to live that faith. In Amos it says to silence your sacred assemblies and let JUSTICE burst forth. Our nation, with the nations of the world, are under an assault of tyranny and treason of the 1% against creation itself. You may not worship God until and unless you care for the image of God living in those tents and prophesying on your behalf. Once the Powers sweep the Tents away, if you dare to lift your voice even a peep, you too will be swept away. But the destiny of the church, the Body of Christ, is not one of quiet passivity and fear, our destiny is to bear witness having no fear of the Cross because even now we have crossed over into resurrection.

Rev. Rich Lang
University Temple United Methodist Church
www.utemple.org
rich@utemple.org

Videos:
http://www.king5.com/video/featured-videos/Raw-Pepper-spray-released-on-Occupy-Seattle-march--133931238.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhl03fZ9Q2w&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Military Spending is NOT a Jobs Program!!!

2011-11-01T17:03:00.000-07:00

Friends,

While people are out occupying Wall Street the people on War Street, which is essentially the same entity, are busy maintaining War Street's Full Spectrum Dominance of the U.S. economy. As the Senate's Supercommittee meets to figure out just where to cut the war industry, that same industry is waging a slick campaign to derail any "defense" cuts.

Second to None, a slick Website funded by the Aerospace Industries Association, spells out, in no uncertain terms, the economic doom we face should Congress make deep cuts in defense-related spending (lions and tigers and bears, oh my!!!).

On the other hand, Heidi Garrett-Peltier, assistant research professor at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and co-author of the report “The U.S. Employment Effects of Military and Domestic Spending Priorities: An Updated Analysis,” Garrett-Peltier said on October 26th in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee, “My calculations show that the arms industry’s claims about increased unemployment are vastly exaggerated. A billion dollars spent on military production created about 11,000 jobs, compared to about 17,000 from clean energy, 19,000 from health care, and 29,000 from education.”

Data presented to House Armed Services Committee on October 26th

Miriam Pemberton, a research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, also testified at the same committee hearing: “This committee needs to get back to the task of figuring out how much we need to spend to keep our country safe, not pushing unlimited military spending as a jobs program.”

To whose voice will the Senate give greater weight - the academics or those who stand to reap huge profits while driving our economy to ruin through the inflationary effect of war spending? We need to keep sending a clear message to the Supercommittee, and indeed every member of Congress - Cut war spending, not human needs! Click here to send your suggestions to the Supercommittee.

Let's cut through the smoke and mirrors. Don't let the war profiteers pull the wool over everyone's eyes. Take action now.

Peace,

Leonard

Click here to read a brief Fact Sheet based on the study cited in this post: WHAT KINDS OF FEDERAL SPENDING CREATE THE MOST GOOD JOBS?

P.S. - Many thanks to the Institute for Public Accuracy for the news release presenting the data used in this blog post.

The War ISN'T Over by any Stretch!!!

2011-10-25T10:49:00.000-07:00

Friends,

As the corporate press falls all over itself as it rings the clarion of the end of the Iraq War the TRUTH is everywhere if only people take off their blinders. Mike Ferner's article (printed in its entirety here) provides a sobering and important perspective. Nothing is over in any sense of the word. And no matter what really does happen in Iraq, our nation will continue to bring war to country after country in an endless cycle of warmaking that only We The People can - and must - END!

Peace,

Leonard

**************

I WOKE UP ONE MORNING AND THE WAR WAS OVER

By Mike Ferner
http://warisacrime.org/content/i-woke-one-morning-and-war-was-over
America’s war in Iraq is over. The last U.S. troops will leave by year’s end, “with their heads held high, proud of their success and knowing that the American people stand united in our support for our troops.” So sayeth President Obama.

A “sham of a mockery of a sham,” is what Groucho would call Obama’s announcement and he would be right.
For several reasons Mr. Marx would be much closer to the truth than Mr. Obama.

1) Even with “all” troops pulled out…well…who knows about Special Forces since their presence in a country never seems to really equal a “troop presence.” But even if all the “non-combat” combat troops leave and even if we don’t count the Marine Corps’ standard complement of guards at the world’s largest embassy, 5,000 armed mercenaries will remain indefinitely. The State Department, not the War Department will be responsible for them, but a killer for hire is not likely to become a diplomat at the stroke of midnight on December 31.
2) Summing up nearly a decade of butchery, Obama chooses to hide behind the worn-out “support the troops” smokescreen by saying the last troops will hold their heads high, proud of their success and the American people will be “united in our support for our troops.” How many will question nine years of war and $800 billion, when placed in that context?

3) In truth, if the administration actually got its way, we would never have heard this news. Washington wanted to stay well beyond the end of this year but the people of Iraq, through their parliament, forced the U.S. to get (mostly) out of Iraq, by saying as of January 1, foreign troops will be prosecuted in Iraqi courts for crimes committed in their country. Given our lengthy criminal record in Iraq, the only viable choice for Obama was to get out.

Anybody who thinks the war will really be over has never been in one nor had a loved one in war. The American War in Iraq will never end for over 4,000 families of U.S. troops killed, tens of thousands of wounded and their families and the hundreds – yes, hundreds of thousands of young men and women who will suffer the terror of PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury for the rest of their lives.
Here is how one Iraq War vet, Matt Southworth puts it. Matt now works for the Friends Committee on National Legislation and is on the Veterans For Peace board of directors.

“I lost my first friend to the U.S. war in Iraq by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) in February 2004. I lost my most recent friend to the U.S. war in Iraq by suicide in September 2011. This war will never end for me. I will live with its scars and traumas from now until the end of my life whether I want to or not. This battle, for me and so many others, is life long.”

Tragic indeed, but not quite on the order of magnitude for the millions who lived under our sanctions for 12 years and our bombs for nine years after that. It is impossible to comprehend the suffering we bought in Iraq, so let’s not even guess at the number of killed, wounded and homeless Iraqis we’ve created.

Instead, let’s contemplate the scale of devastation that would occur in our country if a similar war had been visited on us. What would be the comparable impact? Based on reports from UNICEF, the UN and studies carried out by Johns HopkinsUniversity field researchers published in the British medical journal, Lancet, here are the figures as of five years ago.

If you’re not already sitting, you may want to take a seat.

In the former cities of Atlanta, Denver, Boston, Seattle, Milwaukee, Fort Worth, Baltimore, San Francisco, Dallas and Philadelphia every single person is dead.

In Vermont, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, Kansas, Mississippi, Iowa, Oregon, South Carolina and Colorado every single person is wounded.
The entirepopulations of Ohio and New Jersey are homeless, surviving with friends, relatives or under bridges as they can.

The entire populations of Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky have fled to Canada or Mexico.

Over the past three years, one in four U.S. doctors left the country. Last year alone 3,000 doctors were kidnapped and 800 killed.

In short, nobody “out there” can come to save us. We are in hell.

4) And finally, there is one way in which the U.S. peace movement must simply not allow this war to be over. It’s spelled r-e-p-a-r-a-t-i-o-n-s. We have to pay a full measure of reparations to repair what we have destroyed of Iraq’s agriculture and infrastructure and leave a sizable trust fund to at least partially deal with the deformities and childhood cancers caused by our depleted uranium munitions.

In so many places, like Nicaragua two decades ago for example, we terrorized whole populations, laid waste to their society, destroyed their currency…and then just walked away. “That war is over,” we joyfully repeat after the President. Another country has been given freedom and democracy. We brush off the misery and stride forward to the next and the next and the… We cannot let this happen again to our brothers and sisters in Iraq.

Maybe in Obama’s dreams; maybe in the minds of his spin doctors prattling on Sunday morning talk shows; maybe in the minds of pundits comfortably opining from New York and Washington. Perhaps for them the American War in Iraq is over. But not to the millions living it out in reality.

###

Mike Ferner is a former Navy corpsman, acting director of Veterans For Peace and author of “Inside the Red Zone: A Veteran For Peace Reports From Iraq.”

Who needs the UN???

2011-10-14T11:27:00.000-07:00

Friends,

Remember John Bolton?  As U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations he once said “There's no such thing as the United Nations. If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.” This from a lawyer who once boasted that he never took any international law classes while in law school! Some ambassador (not much of a lawyer either).

Well, the U.N. bashing continues, this time from (who else???) our very own Congress!

Just yesterday the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives voted 23-15 for the United Nations Transparency, Accountability and Reform Act (pretty much right down party lines).

The bill would require Washington to cut 50 percent of funding for the U.N. unless it converted to a voluntary contribution system permitting Washington to fund only those agencies and programmes "that advance U.S. interests and values" (hmmmm... wonder what those are???).

The bill would also require Washington to quit the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC); withhold contributions to any U.N. agency or programme that upgrades the current "observer" status of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO); and end U.S. contributions to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the U.N. body charged with aiding Palestinian refugees since 1949. (Hey, we don't need no stinking human rights, and surely the Palestinians don't need any - RIGHT?!?!?!?!)

Wow!!! This is something Bolton and all the rest of the neoconservatives (not to mention War Street) must be loving!  Let's face it - The U.S. is already doing whatever it wants to do around the world, and the U.N. just gets in the way.

Of course, if one looks at the U.S. track record of de facto weakening of the U.N. through various means, including withholding contributions for many years, it is obvious that the National Security State has trumped any desire to work in concert with other nations in the spirit of the intent of the U.N.

In 2008 President Obama attempted - and I suppose he's "attempted" many positive things in his tenure as President - to raise the status of the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. to a cabinet level position as it had been in the Clinton administration.  But alas, that got shot down.  The corporate media quoted Bolton (and no one else that I could find) in one story as saying it was unwise to elevate the position to the cabinet again. “One, it overstates the role and importance the U.N. should have in U.S. foreign policy.” In another story he questioned whether the U.N. — whose culture he said is “impervious to change” — should be so central to U.S. foreign policy.

Well, it certainly can't be "central" to a U.S. foreign policy awash in targeted assasination, torture, illegal detention, illegal wars, conducting covert operations inside the borders of sovereign nations, and that's barely a partial list of transgressions.

We really do live in what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as The World House, this huge dysfunctional family that has to learn to live together as brothers and sisters or perish together as fools, and with the horrendous tools of death that we have created (e.g. nuclear weapons) he was not understating the case. The statue at the U.N. that depicts the beating of swords to plowshares should be a reminder of why the United Nations was formed and of its mission.

You can read the propaganda at the Committee on Foreign Affairs Website about what they call "landmark legislation." Then click here to see if your member of Congress is on the committee, and let him/her know what you think we should do regarding the United Nations.

Working Together for Peace,

Leonard

P.S. - By the way, a recent poll by the UN Foundation and Better World Campaign shows strong support across the political spectrum in the U.S. for the United Nations. Click here to read more about it.

Haiti - The World Has Moved On...

2011-10-07T10:56:00.000-07:00

Report from Haiti: Where’s the Money?

By Bill Quigley. Bill is a law professor and human rights lawyer at Loyola University New Orleans and with the Center for Constitutional Rights. He volunteers with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and the Bureaux des Advocats in Port au Prince. You can reach him at quigley77@gmail.com.

Broken and collapsed buildings remain in every neighborhood. Men pull oxcarts by hand through the street. Women carry 5 gallon plastic jugs of water on their heads, dipped from manhole covers in the street. Hundreds of thousands remain in grey sheet and tarp covered shelters in big public parks, in between houses and in any small pocket of land. Most of the people are unemployed or selling mangoes or food on the side of every main street. This was Port au Prince during my visit with a human rights delegation of School of Americas Watch – more than a year and a half after the earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands and made two million homeless.

What I did not see this week were bulldozers scooping up the mountains of concrete remaining from last January’s earthquake. No cranes lifting metal beams up to create new buildings. No public works projects. No housing developments. No public food or public water distribution centers.

Everywhere I went, the people of Haiti asked, “Where is the money the world promised Haitians?”

The world has moved on. Witness the rows of padlocked public port o lets stand on the sidewalk outside Camp St. Anne. The displacement camp covers a public park hard by the still hollow skeleton of the still devastated St. Anne church. The place is crowded with babies, small children, women, men, and the elderly. It smells of charcoal smoke, dust and humans. Sixty hundred fifty families live there without electricity, running water or security.

I talked with several young women inside the camp of shelters, most about eight feet by eight feet made from old gray tarps, branches, leftover wood, and pieces of rusty tin. When it rains, they stand up inside their leaky shelters and wait for it to stop. In a path in front of one home, crisscrossed with clotheslines full of tiny children’s clothes, a group of women from the grassroots women’s group KOFAVIV told us Oxfam used to help administer the camp but quit in May. When Oxfam left, the company that had been emptying the port o lets stopped getting paid and abandoned the toilets. Some people padlocked them and now charge a couple of cents to use the toilets, money most residents don’t have. There is no work to earn the money for pay for toilets. The Red Cross has just visited the camp that morning telling them they would be evicted October 17. Where will they go, we ask? We have no idea they told us. Jesus will provide, they told us.

Where has the money raised for Haiti gone? What about the Red Cross? What about the US government? What about the money raised in France, Canada and across the world? What about the pledges to the UN? Where is the money? The people of Haiti continue to be plagued by the earthquake of more than 20 months ago. They are our sisters and brothers. They deserve answers. They deserve help.

****************

Editor's Note: Bill Quigley highly recommends the Institute for Justice and Decocracy in Haiti, an organization working hard for the human rights of Haiti's poor. Check out their Website where you can learn more and take action to make a positive difference in the lives of the Haitian people.

What Moves the Heart to Action???

2011-09-22T12:22:00.000-07:00

Greetings fellow Peacemakers,

I woke up this morning with many things on my mind. First and foremost was yesterday's execution of Troy Davis, another name in a litany of killings that has come to identify the U.S. retributive justice system. We have personally seen the machinations of what passes for a justice system in the trials of Disarm Now Plowshares, Y-12 resisters, and many, many more. We have seen (and continue to witenss) the dirty underbelly of the U.S. industrial-prison complex.

Of course there are tens of thousands, if not millions, of (mostly) nameless victims of our nation's retribution on a global scale as we continue to seek out those we call terrorists in every nook and cranny of the globe and hunt them down with our hunter-killer drones and wage senseless, endless wars that only serve to build up the very Military-Industrial Complex that is the only real benificiary of such madness.

Dennis Duvall, one of the Y-12 July 2010 Resistance Action defendants, said something in his elocution before the judge this morning during his sentencing hearing that stuck with me in this respect (and beyond): “I’ve done a lot of thinking over the past four months,” Dennis began, after thanking his supporters, “and I conclude that we get what we deserve. Not the Y12 defendants, but humanity..."

Last night in his talk at the World Peace Day event in Bellevue, Washington, Paul Chapell of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation referred to the less than one percent of the population that has always been engaged in movements that have brought about change - abolition of slavery, civil rights movement, etc. - and in reality it is probably far less than one percent. I don't know the exact numbers of people engaged in peacemaking locally, nationally or globally, and on a certain level I don't even care. I am grateful for each and every one person who is moved beyond words to action. We are the ones who will not sit back and wait for "what we deserve" because our hearts move us beyond apathy, beyond propaganda, beyond the the crushing weight of the other 99 percent.

David Perasso and Gunnel Clark put together a beautiful video about Joe Colgan's continuing Tuesday vigils in front of Seattle's Federal Building. Joe is another of those individuals whose heart moved (and continues to move) him to action. This is (for me) a video worth sharing; it is about action, compassion and communication - all keys to change.

In gratitude for each of (YOU) my fellow peacemakers,

Leonard

Nearing our goal to send Ashley Joppa-Hagemann to MIC at 50

2011-09-01T17:45:00.000-07:00

Friends,

I've already received many email pledges to help send Ashley Joppa-Hagemann to the MIC at 50 conference (see previous post for details). Thank you all!!! Thank you one and all. I've already gone ahead and purchased Ashley's tickets and the conference organizers have added her to the list of speakers, which includes Ret. Col. Ann Wright, Ray McGovern and Bruce Gagnon.

I'll update the thermometers below as we receive both pledges and as the money rolls in. Things are heating up. Thanks!!!

Peace,

Leonard

P.S. - The second half of Amy Goodman's 9/30 interview with Ashley on Democracy Now is now posted at the Democracy Now Blog. Watch Army Widow Calls for Recognition of Husband’s Service After He Commits Suicide Ahead of Redeployment. The interview includes Jorge Gonzalez, Executive Director of Coffee Strong, a veteran owned and operated coffeehouse across from Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

Note: Both thermometers updated 9/3 at 12:30 pm)
PLEDGES

DONATIONS RECEIVED

Help send Ashley Joppa-Hagemann to MIC-50

2011-08-31T12:53:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends and Fellow Peacemakers,

I am requesting your help to send Ashley Jopp-Hagemann, Staff Sgt. Jarod Hagemann's widow, to speak at the MIC at 50 conference in just over two weeks. This has all happened very quickly, so please read further to learn more.

The Short (but important) Story: Ashley Joppa-Hagemann's husband Jarod committed suicide after his seventh deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan, and before he was due to be deployed once again. Jarod was yet another victim of the lies and deceit that has sent countless men and women to fight immoral and unnecessary wars, only to have them return home physically and emotionally wounded.

Just over a week ago, on August 23rd, Ashley spoke at the State of the Soldier forum in Tacoma, and gave her testimony of her husband's struggle after multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan that led to him taking his life.

Just three days later Ashley confronted Donald Rumsfeld at his book signing event at Joint Base Lewis-McChord about his lies that led her husband to enlist in the Army. All he said was "Yeah, I heard about that." Ashley and Jorge Gonzalez (who had accompanied her) of Coffee Strong, a local GI coffee house, were forcibly removed from the book signing. Amy Goodman interviewed Ashley on Democracy Now yesterday about that experience and her husband's struggle.

The organizing committee for MIC at 50, a national conference on the Military Industrial Complex after 50 years, just invited Ashley to speak at the conference on September 17th. This is an important opportunity to hear the human side of war that the people who plan wars do not include in their calculations. She has accepted the invitation.

You can watch the video of Ashley speaking at State of the Soldier, and here is the video and transcript of her interview on Democracy Now.

The Urgent Request: The conference organizers can only provide for lodging and hospitality at the conference, but cannot pay for Ashley's transportation from the Seattle area to Virginia. It took courage for Ashley to do what she has done, and she is willing to continue to tell this important story.

I have offered to put the call out for financial help and put together enough pledges before the end of this week to pay for Ashley's transportation. If I can get even close to the goal of approximately $700 (estimated cost) by the end of this week I can notify the conference organizers that it is a GO! My family is making a contribution to get things rolling.

At such short notice I do not have an organizational resource available to accept contributions, so I am asking anyone willing to help financially to:

pledge whatever you are able (we welcome any level of contribution; no amount is too small),

email me (at subversivepeacemaking@gmail.com) and let me know how much you will contribute so I can predict our success.
make checks payable to Leonard Eiger; write "Ashley JH for MIC at 50" on the memo line,
and mail your check to Leonard Eiger, PO Box 1115, North Bend, WA 98045.

I will carefully account for every dollar contributed, and will send any amount over what we spend for Ashley's transportation to Coffee Strong to further its work supporting soldiers.

Coffee Strong is a veteran-owned, veteran-operated GI coffeehouse. Veterans provide a safe place for soldiers to share the effects of disastrous wars, within 300 meters of the gates at Ft Lewis. The unique coffeehouse welcomes soldiers with a free cup of coffee. There is access to the Internet, an informative library, and many referrals are available to community resources, including GI Rights counseling and Veterans Benefits. Free legal and educational resources are available.

Please contact me with any questions. I will respond quickly. And please - if you are able to contribute - follow the instructions 1 - 4 above. I will provide funding updates at the top of this Blog as we move toward our funding goal.

Many Thanks and Peace,

Leonard

The Inhumanity of Those Who Make Wars

2011-08-31T07:00:00.000-07:00

Friends,

It should come as no surprise that those in power who send men and women off to fight their wars think of them (and treat them) as no more than commodities. That they are human beings with feelings, families, and have faces means nothing in a very real sense. They cannot truly look them in the face, because then they would have to confront their own lack of humanity and question the morality of their actions.

Ashley Joppa-Hagemann, whose husband Jarod Hagemann recently committed suicide before what would have been his 8th or 9th deployment, confronted Donald Rumsfeld the other day about her husband's suicide and Rumsfeld showed that he is one of those cold, calculating scoundrels who are more than willing to treat those who serve our nation in the armed forces as mere commodities to be manipulated into serving their twisted purposes through carefully deception.

There is ample evidence that this is exactly what Rumsfeld and others in the Bush administration did in the days following 9/11 and in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. And now Rumdsfeld shows his true colors when a war widow hands him the memorial bulletin for her husband and confronts him about how her husband joined the Army because of the lies he told, and all he can say is, "Oh yeah, I heard about that." As Ashley say's in the following interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, Rumsfeld didn't say "him" or "Jared". No, he could only say "that," as if Jared was only a thing to him. He probably couldn't even (or didn't bother to) look at Jared's face on the bulletin. The heartless core of the warmaker.

Watch the Democracy Now video interview with Ashley or read the transcript following it . Besides the obvious issue of how we treat our men and women in the armed forces as they attempt to grapple with the psychological effects of war, there is a far deeper issue of how we allow people like Donald Rumsfeld to get away with sending them off to wars of deception in the first place. It is time for the people to speak out: "No More Wars!!!"

Peace,

Leonard

Army Ranger Widow Confronts Rumsfeld over His Lies that Convinced Her Husband to Join the Military (from Democracy Now, August 30, 2011)

We speak with the widow of a U.S. Army Ranger who confronted former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about her husband’s suicide on Saturday. Ashley Joppa-Hagemann introduced herself to Rumsfeld during a book signing by handing him a copy of her husband’s funeral program at a base south of Tacoma, Washington. She says Rumsfeld inspired her husband to join the Army after 9/11, but he later became disillusioned with the reasons for the war. Her husband, 25-year-old Staff Sergeant Jared Hagemann, killed himself ahead of what his wife says was his eighth deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. His body was found on June 28, 2011, at the Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State. More than 18,000 soldiers returned to the Joint Base Lewis-McChord from combat tours last year. And while the Army says it is trying to shore up mental health services there, Joppa-Hagemann questions its success. "I want to confront the man whose lies led my husband to join the military, and so many other soldiers," says Joppa-Hagemann. "That’s what I wanted to do, and that’s what I did." [includes rush transcript]

Guest:

Ashley Joppa-Hagemann, the widow of 25-year-old Staff Sgt. Jared Hagemann, who committed suicide on June 28, 2011, ahead of his eighth redeployment to Iraq & Afghanistan. She confronted former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Friday about his role in inspiring her husband to enlist after 9/11.

Jorge Gonzalez, executive director of Coffee Strong, a veteran-owned, veteran-operated GI coffeehouse just outside of Ft. Lewis, Washington. He’s a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Related Links:
•Coffee Strong: Veteran-owned and veteran-operated GI coffee houses
•Democracy Now!’s news archive of our reports on the Iraq War

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to the widow of a U.S. Army Ranger who on Saturday confronted former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about her husband’s suicide. Ashley Joppa-Hagemann introduced herself to Rumsfeld during a book signing by handing him a copy of her husband’s funeral program at a base south of Tacoma, Washington. She says Rumsfeld inspired her husband to join the Army after 9/11, but he later became disillusioned with the reason for the war.

Her husband was 25-year-old Staff Sergeant Jared Hagemann. He killed himself ahead of what his wife says was his ninth deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. His body was found June 28th at the Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State.

More than 18,000 soldiers returned to Fort Lewis from combat tours last year. And while the Army says it’s trying to shore up mental health services there, Ashley Joppa-Hagemann questions its success. She joins us now from Seattle, Washington, to talk about her husband, Jared.

We also called an official from the Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington to join us on the show, but they were unable to accommodate our request.

Ashley, our condolences on the death of your husband, first off. Thank you very much for being with us.

ASHLEY JOPPA-HAGEMANN: Thank you for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what you did with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld? Explain the scene this weekend.

ASHLEY JOPPA-HAGEMANN: I just had information that Donald would be here on Fort Lewis doing a book signing. And it was someone’s idea to actually go and see him at the book signing, and I was excited, and I agreed. I was like, "Yeah, let’s go. Let’s do this. I want to confront the man whose lies led my husband to join the military, and so many other soldiers." And that’s what I wanted to do, and that’s what I did. And for me, that was a really exciting moment, for me. For my husband, I know it was, too.

AMY GOODMAN: You handed him the funeral program of Jared, of your husband, Staff Sergeant Hagemann?

ASHLEY JOPPA-HAGEMANN: Yes, I did. I told him that I wanted him to see my husband, and so he would know—he could put a face with at least one of the soldiers that had lost their lives because of his lies from the 9/11.

AMY GOODMAN: And what was his response?

ASHLEY JOPPA-HAGEMANN: All I remember is him saying, "Oh, I heard about that." And after that, all I remember is being bombarded with security personnel and being pushed out and told not to return. It would have been maybe not so difficult, if maybe he had actually made my husband feel—or made it sound like my husband was an actual person. But to call him and say "that" rather, not "I heard about him" or "heard about, you know, Jared," that was a blow. That one really hurt. But it just proves that our soldiers don’t mean anything to anybody who’s in power.

AMY GOODMAN: Were you actually taken away from the former secretary of defense, from Rumsfeld?

ASHLEY JOPPA-HAGEMANN: Yes. They grabbed us by our arms and pushed us along. And on the way out, I had stopped, because Jorge had gone with me, and I had stopped to try and see where he was at, because I didn’t know where he was, because we had so much security around us, and they just kept, like, pushing me along. And he just said, "Keep moving." And we were peaceful, we were calm. And so, I just kept doing what he said.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about Jared. How many tours of duty did he serve in Iraq and Afghanistan? He was an Army Ranger, like Pat Tillman.

ASHLEY JOPPA-HAGEMANN: Yes. He was just an amazing person. He was so charming and so—he loved life. He loved—he had so much respect and love for everybody, and he put everyone before him. And he was just—he was an amazing person.

AMY GOODMAN: How many—

ASHLEY JOPPA-HAGEMANN: I mean, when I first met him—I’m sorry?

AMY GOODMAN: How many tours of duty did he serve?
ASHLEY JOPPA-HAGEMANN: Like I said before, possibly—you know, around eight or nine. I’m thinking it’s more around the eight mark, but it’s, yeah, eight or nine, this would have been.

AMY GOODMAN: And he was in Patrick—he was in Pat Tillman’s battalion?

ASHLEY JOPPA-HAGEMANN: Second of the 75th Ranger Regiment, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Did he know him?

ASHLEY JOPPA-HAGEMANN: No, I don’t believe so.

AMY GOODMAN: What was it about Donald Rumsfeld that inspired Jared to go into the military?

ASHLEY JOPPA-HAGEMANN: Pretty much the whole Bush administration and their lies about, you know, WMDs. And my husband was the kind of person who stood up for what he believed in, and he loved this country. And he thought he was doing what needed to be done. And over the years, he found out the truth. And it—every tour just ruined him. It took a part of him every time.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about whether Jared sought help? Talk about his suffering through the continued tours.

ASHLEY JOPPA-HAGEMANN: After the first few tours, he didn’t—he changed. He was cold. He didn’t want to talk. It was really rough. And I’d have to say, in '09, when he finally came back from maybe his fourth deployment—I'm not sure—he actually tried to tell—he told the Rangers that he quit. He didn’t want nothing to do with them. And he admitted himself to Five North, and they gave him counseling for his drinking. And after a while, they told him that he had to do it on his own time. It was interfering with his work. They put him in the S-5 shop in order to accommodate his counseling. And a few times, they had given him some antidepressants, some sleeping pills, which only made it worse, because it was like a 30-day supply. Then, as soon as it ran out, he had to go through the process all over again to get anything. So, it was just more of a hassle than anything.

AMY GOODMAN: Ashley, your husband was not alone. At Fort Lewis, July saw a peak of suicides—five in one month. There were nine in 2009, nine in 2010, five in just July alone. Yet the military is not calling your husband’s suicide a suicide, though they are saying it’s a self-inflicted wound?

ASHLEY JOPPA-HAGEMANN: There are suicides at JBLM every month. Whether or not they report them as suicides, I don’t—I can’t comment on that. I don’t know. So I wouldn’t say it spiked. I would say that it’s probably pretty—pretty high every month. It’s not anything new. And yes, it was self-inflicted. Whether or not that they had any—not thing, but any take or part in my husband taking his life, that’s what the investigation is investigating.

AMY GOODMAN: Ashley, we have to leave it there, but we’re going to do an interview and put it online at democracynow.org. Thanks so much for joining us.

Rumsfeld: War Criminal - Known or Unknown???

2011-08-27T18:55:00.000-07:00

Blogger's News Flash! Since writing the following post I've learned that Ashley Joppa-Hagemann, about whom the post was written, really did confront Donald Rumsfeld at his book signing event, and was forcibly removed by "security agents and military police officers." Read Ranger's widow ejected from Rumsfeld book signing in The News Tribune. Also see Veteran and Military Spouse Dragged from Rumsfeld Book Signing at the Coffee Strong Blog for another perspective from someone who was there. The executive director of Coffee Strong accompanied Ashley to the signing and was "ejected" with her. Coffee Strong is a veteran-owned, veteran-operated GI coffeehouse - veteran owned, Pro-GI and AntiWar. Learn more at CoffeeStrong.org.

Photo courtesy of The News Tribune

Friends,

Where's the International Criminal Court when you need it??? War criminal and one-time U.S. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld was at Joint Base Lewis-McChord to tout his new book "Known and Unknown," and meet with local soldiers and airmen, many of whom he sent off to wars that he and others (you know who) illegally manufactured.

What is known to many is that Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney and others should be held accountable for their conspiracy to engage in immoral and illegal actions while sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

What is unknown is how so many, especially so many of the men and women who have come back from Rumsfeld's endless wars damaged physically and psychologically, would even want to meet the man except perhaps to give him a piece of their minds. Said Rumsfeld about his upcoming visit, “One of the real enjoyable aspects of writing a book and then going to various places is that people come up who I’d met in Iraq or Afghanistan or around the world, and it gives me a chance to thank them again for their service for the country." (source: Seattle Times)

Perhaps Rummy would like to meet Ashley Joppa-Hagemann and thank her for her dead husband's service to his country. Her husband Jared, an Army Ranger, committed suicide in June after countless deployments to Afghanistan (the next would have been possibly his 9th!!!). Ashley told her husband's story at the State of the Soldier forum in Tacoma on August 23, 2011, and you can watch the video here (Thanks to Todd Boyle for documenting this testimony).

We must end these endless wars, take care of all who have been affected, and prosecute those who brought about (and profited from) all this suffering.

And by the way, the Seattle Times article said that "although Seattle is a favored stop of authors on book tours, Rumsfeld will not appear at any locations in the city." Hmmm... Maybe he thinks Seattle is a War Criminal-Free Zone.

Peace,

Leonard

Blogger's Note: Read more about Jared here: Army Ranger killed himself to avoid another tour, wife says at OregonLive.com. Rumsfeld to tout his book at Joint Base Lewis-McChord at the Seattle Times.

Solidarity with the people of Jeju Island - an URGENT PLEA!

2011-08-26T22:39:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends of Jeju Island – Island of WorldPeace,

Last week, we heard reports that 700 police from the South Korean mainland arrived at Jeju Harbor with buses and trucks bearing three large water cannons. The villagers have been vigilantly waiting for the police to strike.

They did the morning of August 24th. Retired U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright wrote to us from Gangjeong village, “The sirens are blaring for citizens to come to the main gate of the Naval Base where construction is about to begin in an area that will destroy pristine lava fields and endanger marine life. The siren sounds like a tsunami siren in Hawaii signaling an emergency. And that is what it is.”

At 2 pm that day, Gangjeong Village Mayor Kang Dong-kyun approached military contractors who started the operation of a 250-ton crane that had been smuggled into the village in the middle of the night years ago. In asking that the illegal crane be dismantled and removed, the Mayor was forcefully taken into a police vanalong with a villager, Mr. Kim Jong-Hwan, and other civil society activists.For 10 hard and long hours, 100 villagers and peace activists used their bodie sand cars to prevent the police from taking away the Mayor and others. While two activists have been released, the Mayor, Mr. Kim, Dongwan and Father Moon are still detained.

The villagers at Gangjeong know that orders have been sent from the top. Their resistance must be dealt with once and for all.

Why now? Because we’re starting to win the battle of public opinion. In one week, The New York Times published an Op Ed and the International Herald Tribune published another, both supporting the peaceful four-year resistance ofthe villagers with facts showing that this naval base would destroy unique environments, provoke China by surrounding it with a US anti-ballistic system, but would be incapable of protecting South Korea from North Korea.

One was by Gloria Steinem, a women’s movement organizer and peace activist. The other was by Christine Ahn of the Korea Policy Institute. Their factual pleas have set off more voices, including an Op Ed in the conservative-leaning KoreaTimes entitled, “Save Jeju Island – Island of Peace,” and an Open Letter from South Korean opposition leader Chung Dong-young, who not only opposed the naval base but once it is defeated, pledged to make its site into a peace park.

And with more voices has come greater coverage, from a feature article in The New York Times to CNN and Al-Jazeera’s coverage of recent protests.

As the world learns more and more about the danger to its treasure of global environment and culture, Jeju Island, and also more about the heroic efforts by ordinary farmers, fishermen, the legendary women sea divers and children to preserve their home and way of life, all are inspired and emboldened to believe that the side of peace, the environment and democracy does have a chance of prevailing.

But with more visibility comes fear and greater repression for those who are accustomed to dictating from above. That’s what we are now witnessing as hundreds of police join forces with the 1,000 already on Jeju.

In order to stay one step ahead, we need the support of friends far away, justas the military has friends in the Pentagon.

All of us—the nearly 5,000 people from 50 countries who have signed the petition to President Lee urging him to stop the naval base – are building global awareness of the danger to our global natural and cultural heritage on Jeju Island.

This takes regularly communicating with the world on what is happening in Gangjeong village, sowing seeds of peace in the media and among allies in the peace, environmental, human rights and women’s rights communities, and regularly updating the www.savejejuisland.orgwebsite with bilingual and multi-lingual bulletins.

We have an urgent appeal to all of you to join us in our effort to Save Jeju Island.

Please go to this website to get more informationon how you can act now:
http://savejejuisland.org/Save_Jeju_Island/Get_Involved.html

Just as no human being is an island, Jeju belongs to us all.

With hope,

Global Campaign to Save Jeju Island Advisory Board
Christine Ahn, Korea Policy Institute
Imok Cha, M.D.
Wooksik Cheong, Korea Peace Network
MacGregor Eddy, Women’s International League forPeace and Freedom (WILPF)
Bruce Gagnon, Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space
Matt Hoey, Save Jeju Island Campaign Coordinator
Gilchun Ko, Jeju artist
Iara Lee, filmmaker and founder of Cultures ofResistance
Regina Pyon, Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea (SPARK)
Gloria Steinem, author and co-founder of Women’s Media Center
Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army Colonel

Blogger's Note: Click here to see the Jeju Island Press Packet. To learn more and get involved, check out the SAVE JEJU ISLAND Website!

Jeju Island, or The Empire Strikes Back

2011-07-15T17:48:00.000-07:00

Friends,

In a January post I explained the plight of the gentle people of Jeju Island (a UNESCO World Heritage Stie), and made a plea to support their resistance to a new U.S. Naval base to be built there. Since then things have heated up dramatically; the bulldozers are rolling, and the peaceful Jeju Islanders are engaged in a desparate struggle to save their island from the crushing grip of militarism and empire.

The South Korean government, continues to move ahead with its plans for yet another military base that will be dominated by the U.S. Navy and Marines (Hey, who's gonna notice when the U.S.already has roughly 1000 military bases scattered all over the globe on other nations' soil). This base will further U.S. plans to encircle Russian and China (and don't forget teeny weeny North Korea) militarily.

It is time to stop the madness of the military machinery that continues to grind everything it touches into dust. If you are not yet engaged in the effort to support the people of Jeju Island - officially named an “Island of Peace” by the late President Roh Moo Hyun - and stop the destruction, please check out the new Website SAVE JEJU ISLAND. Sign the petition, call and write letters, donate to support the protesters.

It is time to put a stop to the stranglehold of the U.S. Empire on the rest of the world.

Peace and Hope for Jeju Island,

Leonard

WHAT IS THE PRESIDENT'S GREATEST RESPONSIBILITY?

2011-06-30T11:13:00.000-07:00

Editor's Note: Thanks to Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists for this provocative (and convincing) explanation of the President's responsibility to the Constitution. We're talking smoke and mirrors people! Anything to continue the ENDLESS War on Terror!

*******

According to President Obama, he has no higher duty than to protect the American people. But that's not what the Constitution says.

"As President, I have often said that I have no greater responsibility than protecting the American people," wrote President Obama in the new "National Strategy for Counterterrorism" (pdf) that was released by the White House yesterday. A similar sentiment appears in the Introduction to the new Strategy, which states that the President "bears no greater responsibility than ensuring the safety and security of the American people."

This seems like a fateful misunderstanding. As chief executive and commander in chief of the armed forces, the President obviously has responsibility for national security. But to claim that he has no greater responsibility than "protecting the American people" is a paternalistic invention that is historically unfounded and potentially damaging to the political heritage of the nation.

The presidential oath of office that is prescribed by the U.S. Constitution (Art. II, sect. 1) makes it clear that the President's supreme responsibility is to "...preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." There is no mention of public safety. It is the constitutional order that the President is sworn to protect, even if doing so entails risks to the safety and security of the American people.

The new Strategy document attempts to foreclose the possibility of any conflict between constitutional values and public security by asserting that the two always coincide. "We are committed to upholding our most cherished values as a nation not just because doing so is right but also because doing so enhances our security." It just so happens, the document says, that constitutional values are instrumentally useful in advancing security. "Adherence to those core values -- respecting human rights, fostering good governance, respecting privacy and civil liberties,committing to security and transparency, and upholding the rule of law --enables us to build broad international coalitions to act against thecommon threat posed by our adversaries while further delegitimizing, isolating, and weakening their efforts." (p.4).

But the idea that adherence to constitutional values always enhances security is wishful thinking. The Constitution imposes burdensome limits on government authority and guarantees various rights in order to advance individual freedom, not collective security. As a result, the interests of security and constitutional freedom are often in conflict, and it isnecessary to give priority to one or the other. One has to choose.

###
End Notes: This post originally appeared in SECRECY NEWS from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy, Volume 2011, Issue No.63, June 30, 2011, written by Steven Aftergood. Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/. To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, go to: http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/subscribe.html
Steven Aftergood
Project onGovernment Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood@fas.org
voice: (202)454-4691
twitter: @saftergood

"Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of Justice."

2011-05-08T20:44:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

Today is a day in which we tend to honor mothers; generally with cards, flowers and perhaps a nice meal. Mother's Day, like many holidays, has become a routine and, in a very real sense, diluted in terms of its original meaning. Yes, we need to honor our mothers, and all the women in our lives, who have nurtured us to fulfill our potential. Yet, the original Mother's Day was something far different than a day of cards and flowers; it was a day intended to recognize that women create and nurture life, while men have, for the better part of human existence, destroyed that very potential that we all wish to fulfill. It was meant to be a very real and powerful statement directed at those who perpetrated and perpetuated war.

When Julia Ward Howe wrote her Mother's Day Proclamation, she was responding to the horrible carnage of the U.S. Civil War, in which so many women lost their sons. Howe and so many other women were committed to abolishing war, and in 1872 Howe proposed the establishment of an annual Mother's Day for Peace. Long since that time (the commercialized version of) Mother's Day has, for the most part, been sanitized to remove any trace of women's civil, political activism. And - Men continue to perpetuate the horrific trans-national violence and war that consumes our young, our treasure, our future.

Fortunately for our world, today's women have not forgotten the message and intent of Howe and all the other uppity women who came before them trying to make the world a more peaceful place where all children can grow up and realize their potential. I am thankful for all those women who not only dream of a better world, but work to make it so.
Peace and Thanks to Nurturing Women Everywhere,

Leonard

*****************

Mothers' Day Proclamation: Julia Ward Howe, Boston, 1870

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

Julia Ward Howe
Boston
1870

A Prayer To Live Mercifully

2011-05-03T21:34:00.000-07:00

Friends,

I was reminded this morning of a prayer by Fr. Emmanual Charles McCarthy, and in light of the public Bacchanalia in response to the news of the killing of Osama Bin Ladin I find this prayer a most suitable meditation for our time.

Among many other things, Fr. McCarthy is one of the co-founders of Pax Christi-USA. May we all find peace deep within our hearts, and may each of us learn to live mercifully.

Peace,

Leonard

****************

Prayer To Live Mercifully

O God,
Teach me
Not to envy,
to hate,
to justify,
to imitate,
to support,
to ennoble,
or to kill for,
Those who take the food from the table of others and then teach contentment,
Those for whom the taxes are destined, who demand sacrifice,
Those who eat their fill, who speak to the hungry of good times to come,
Those who lead humanity into the abyss, calling
Hate, love,
Unfaithfulness, faithfulness,
Lies, truth,
Slavery, freedom,
Too much, not enough,
Homicide, heroism,
Evil, good.

And, O God,
Teach me
when I have food, to remember the hungry;
when I have work, to remember the jobless;
when I have a home, to remember the homeless;
when I am free, to remember the imprisoned;
when I am without pain, to remember the suffering;
when I am loved, to remember the unloved;
when I am living, to remember the dying;
when I am dead, to remember the living.

And remembering, help me to destroy
my complacency; bestir my compassion, and thereby
spend my time and my eternity
doing good upon earth, helping
by word and deed, by prayer and sacrifice of self
those who cry out
for what I take for granted.
Amen.

-- Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

U.S. rejects violence "under any circumstances" - REALLY???

2011-04-14T15:12:00.000-07:00

Friends,

It's official!!! Well, sort of official. Perhaps unofficially official or something like that. At any rate, The White House quite recently went on record (for whatever that might be worth) that the government of the United States rejects "the use of violence under any circumstances." You can read the statement in the context of the entire March 24th news release by the White House Press Secretary regarding the violence in Syria.

Don't you think, now that its on the record, that we should hold our government accountable for that statement??? At very least each of us should be holding ourselves, and the government that is supposed to represent us, "accountable," just as the Press Secretary says that we should hold those accountable for the Syrian violence.

Just what do we stand for as a nation as we consider our current actions around the world - Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya...???

We are ALL responsible for the violence perpetrated on our name!

Peace,

Leonard

********************

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release March 24, 2011

Statement by the Press Secretary on Violence in Syria

The United States strongly condemns the Syrian government’s brutal repression of demonstrations, in particular the violence and killings of civilians at the hands of security forces. We reject the use of violence under any circumstances. We are also deeply troubled by the arbitrary arrests of human rights activists and others. Those responsible for the violence must be held accountable. The United States stands for a set of universal rights, including the freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, and believes that governments must be responsive to the legitimate aspirations of their people. We call on the Syrian government to exercise restraint and respect the rights of its people and call on all citizens to exercise their rights peacefully.

Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/03/24/statement-press-secretary-violence-syria

$1.2 Trillion Spent on the Military While the Rest of Us Fight Over Crumbs

2011-03-09T09:27:00.000-08:00

Friends,

Once in a while someone tells the story so completely, so graphically and so succinctly that it is staggering!!! Laura Flanders has done just that in the following piece from AlterNet. It is, quite ironically, the ages old story (think back to the Caesars of Rome) of keeping the little people fighting over the crumbs while those in power continue to spend our treasure on the Empire's destructive bacchanalia.

Interestingly enough, many people are waking up and speaking out against the bloodletting of wasteful and immoral military spending. One such campaign is Western Washington Fellowship of Reconciliation's Bring Our Billions Home campaign. The only suggestion I have for them - having read Laura's article - is to make it Bring our Trillions Home!!! I know; it destroys the alliteration, but hey folks, this is a bloodletting - literally, figuratively and economically.

So read Laura's article, or watch her on the tube. Then, let's get to work bringing the TRILLIONS home!!!

Peace,

Leonard

***************

$1.2 Trillion Spent on the Military While the Rest of Us Fight Over Crumbs

By Laura Flanders, AlterNet.org, March 6, 2011

So after all that cash is gone, what are we left with? Not a whole heck of a lot for the rest of us.

There’s been a joke going around the labor protests. It goes something like this:
A union member, a CEO and a Tea Party member are sitting at a table with 12 cookies. The CEO grabs 11, turns to the Tea Partier and says “The Union’s out to take your cookie!”

I’ve been thinking that the joke applies pretty well to another situation. For instance, the military. Our military spending grabs 11 cookies and leaves us all battling over the 12th.

Christopher Hellman at TomDispatch added up all the military-related spending in the budget and came to a startling number: for fiscal year 2012, the actual military budget is something like $1.2 trillion dollars.

Trillion with a T.

Just to put that in perspective for a second, a million seconds is 12 days. A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.

So after all that cash is gone, what are we left with? Not a whole heck of a lot for the rest of us. “Discretionary” spending is nearly 40% of the budget, but if Hellman’s numbers are accurate, that $1.2 trillion eats up nearly 90% of discretionary funds, leaving just 10% for the rest of us. (That doesn’t include mandatory spending on things like Social Security and Medicare, which are separate.)

To be fair, Tea Partiers have called for military spending cuts, too. Rand Paul, hardly a progressive, pointed out that you could cut all of the non-military discretionary spending and not balance the budget—and Politifact rated it True.

The point behind the joke still holds, though. Instead of fighting over the last crumbs, maybe it’s time to team up and grab some of the cookies back from the people who’ve been hanging on to far more than their share.

Laura Flanders is the host of GRITtv, Mon-Thursday on Free Speech TV (Dish Network chn. 9315) and streaming at GRITtv.org.

(Source: http://www.alternet.org/news/150142/$1.2_trillion_spent_on_the_military_while_the_rest_of_us_fight_over_crumbs)

Pentagon $671 Billion; Peace $0

2011-03-01T15:58:00.000-08:00

Friends,

In February 2011 President Obama sent Congress a $671 Billion proposed military budget for Fiscal Year 2012. Where the numbers will finally land once this thing is done being batted about between those wishing to cut programs and those fighting to keep them is any one's guess, but it is a pretty sure thing that "defense" contractors don't have much to worry about. We always seem to be able to fund war.

On the other hand PEACE, that ever so elusive and priceless commodity, consistently gets the Rodney Dangerfield treatment (NO RESPECT), and with it ever decreasing funding for programs that can lead us to peace and away from war. Two such government programs are about to get the funding axe if some members of Congress have their way.

The just passed House continuing resolution, which is necessary to fund the government through September 30, 2011 eliminated the Complex Crises Fund and zeroed out all funding for the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). It would seem that far too many people don't seem to understand that it is far better to prevent violent conflict both from the human and economic perspectives than to jump in with guns-a-blazing.

According to Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) the Complex Crisis Fund "provides unprogrammed, flexible funding for civilian agencies such as the State Department and USAID to allow them to act quickly when conflicts escalate or to undertake rapid stabilization, prevention, and crisis response activities. After years of lobbying by FCNL and others, Congress finally appropriated $50 million to create the fund in 2010. Though small, this fund has already helped to address conflicts in countries such as Kenya and Kyrgyzstan. If the fund is eliminated now, it will be very hard to get it back."

Again from FCNL: "USIP is a Congressionally mandated, nonpartisan, independent institution that works to help prevent, end, and rebuild after wars. FCNL does not always agree one hundred percent with USIP, but defunding the institution would be a major setback for our common work to improve U.S. capacities for preventing deadly conflict."

Both of these institutions do something positive in contrast with the forces constantly poised to throw military solutions at every possible situation. It is laughable that members of Congress are trying to axe these programs when their economic impacts are barely measurable by any standards and which, if given adequate funding and direction, could save countless lives, prevent immeasurable human suffering, and save billions of dollars that should be spent on non-military programs to benefit humanity.

The Senate will soon consider its own version of the continuing resolution. Please ask your senators to fully fund both these programs. We need to constantly remind them of what should now be obvious: The are NO military solutions to the problems we face!!! CLICK HERE to send a message courtesy of FCNL!

PEACE IS THE ANSWER, NOT WAR!!! We need to reverse those numbers.

In Peace,

Leonard

Note: Photo of January 15, 2011 vigil and nonviolent direct action at Trident submarine base Bangor gate; by Leonard Eiger

Tell President Obama: Support Peace, NOT War!

2011-01-29T18:50:00.000-08:00

Friends,

WarIsACrime.org (formerly AfterDowningStreet) is asking people and organizations to sign its petition intended to pressure President Obama to stop supporting war, which he has done at every possible opportunity since the beginning of his presidency. The petition threatens to pull support for a second term should he not abide by the terms of the petition, which are extensive although absolutely necessary to end the our nation's current downward spiral into the violent abyss.

Here is the petition's first paragraph:

We the undersigned share with nearly two-thirds of our fellow Americans the conviction that our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should be ended and that overall military spending should be dramatically reduced. This has been our position for years and will continue to be, and we take it seriously. We vow not to support President Barack Obama for renomination for another term in office, and to actively seek to impede his war policies unless and until he reverses them.

And there is much more, which you can read and then sign by clicking here. The petition contains an extensive litany of the President's indefensible actions preparing for and prosecuting wars that make one question why he ever received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Please join me and add your name to the growing list of signers. Then share the petition with others. It will take a huge groundswell of citizen support and pressure to override the massive Military-Industrial Complex that influences President Obama. Help this petition go exponential!

Petitioning for Peace,

Leonard

Honoring King by Resisting Endless War

2011-01-19T18:37:00.000-08:00

Friends,

On the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday 10 people in Tucson, Arizona chose to honor his legacy with a peace vigil at Davis Monthan Air Force Base, which has played a central role in the use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq, and is also home of the Arizona Air National Guard's 214th Predator Unit.

If Dr. King was alive today I have no doubt that he would be one of the most vocal critics of the endless cycle of war perpetrated on the world by the United States. He would most likely be on the front lines of nonviolent civil resistance to the war machine. And so three of the ten, Dennis DuVall, John Heid, and Jean Boucher walked into the base carrying a letter to present to the base commander opposing depleted uranium munitions and armed drones.

They never made it past the front gate, and the military police called the Tucson Police to arrest the men. Here (below) are the resisters' Action Statement and the letter carried into the base on January 17th. If the base commander won't get it, at least others will have the chance to read it.

Thanks to all who participated in nonviolent civil resistance actions on or around Dr. King's birthday. As Dr. King said the night before he died in 1968, “For years now, we have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can we just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.” Indeed, we must learn that nonviolence IS the only way, and we as members of civil society must lead the way through nonviolent action.

Peace,

Leonard

*****************

Action Statement, January 17, 2011, Tucson, Arizona

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy· returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

An entire generation has grown up under the deep darkness of war. Across two decades thousands of U.S. and U.N. soldiers have been killed. Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. The wounded are innumerable. The cost immeasurable. The end nowhere in sight.

War is bipartisan. It knows no limits. And takes no sides. Everyone becomes its casualty. Its appetite insatiable. Its destruction total. War is perpetual. It cannot stop itself. "Only love can do that."

Today, our country commemorates the birth of Nobel Peace laureate Martin Luther King Jr. His words are as timely as the day they were first spoken. They echo across the decades. Clarion and compelling. Today, animated by Dr. King's words, we walk. Both on Tucson's public streets and where we are prohibited, at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. We walk under the midday sun, pursuing an end to "a night devoid of stars."

We are mindful too that January 17 marks the 50th anniversary of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell speech. We recall his indictment:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every missile fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense."

Davis-Monthan has played a central role in the use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq. Today we call upon General William M. Fraser III, Air Combat Command Leadership and Colonel John A. Cherry to comply with the recent United Nations mandate to reveal the sites where the U.S. has fired depleted uranium shells in Iraq. Today we redouble our twenty year long call for an end to the war. Disarm and disclose!

With a spirit of nonviolence, we carry the U.N. resolution along with our own resolve in seeking the ways of peace to Davis-Monthan, at once both symbol and substance of our nation's commitment to the use of armed force, spending the hopes of our children. And Iraq's.

One step at a time we can usher in the light, ending this decades long darkness devoid of stars.

Letter Carried into Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, January 17, 2011

Dear Col. Inman:

At a time when Tucson is mourning senseless violence in its own community, we must also mourn the victims of the U. S drone attacks 7,000 miles away.

Tucson's complicity in the drone air war is another Tucson tragedy. The tragedy is that Arizona Air National Guard's 214th Predator Unit here at Davis-Monthan AFB is helping to murder hundreds of innocent people by remote control in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. By guiding "Hellfire" missiles to their targets in homes and villages, ANG's Predator Unit will typically kill 10-50 innocent people for each targeted victim. Even more tragically for the people of Arizona and aircrews of the 214th Predator Unit, international killing is a war crime! No U. S. court has ever ruled on the legality of "targeted assassinations' by drones.

Col. Inman, I urge you to end the military operations for the 214th Predator Unit and stop bombing the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Blowing people apart with Hellfire missiles only unites people in outrage and incites more revenge, violence and retaliation. Drone air attack do not prevent or eliminate terrorism. They are terrorism! I implore you to ground the 214th Predator Unit and use diplomacy and other nonviolent means for opposing terrorism. As a veteran, and in the spirit of Martin Luther King, I would welcome the opportunity to enter into a dialog with you and your aircrews.

As President Obama said in Tucson just a few days ago, "Only an honest discourse and debate" can honor those who die in senseless acts of violence.

Toward peace and a nonviolent world,

Dennis DuVall
January 17, 2011

Messages from Dr. King and President Eisenhower

2011-01-17T20:08:00.000-08:00

Friends,

Today is not only the official holiday celebrating the memory of Martin Luther King Jr, but also the anniversary of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address. Dr. King warned us in 1967 that "a nation that year after year spends more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." President Eisenhower, in his farewell address of January 17, 1961, warned us of the dangers of the "military-industrial complex."

Today the monstrous military-industrial complex has a stranglehold on the nation, driving it into an economic hole as it drives U.S. foreign policy, pursuing military solutions across the board to maintain the empire.

I have extracted some of the key portions of Eisenhower's address that articulate not only his concerns about the military-industrial complex, but also our responsibilities as citizens:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together...

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we-you and I, and our government-must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose difference, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war-as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years-I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight...

You and I-my fellow citizens-need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation's great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:

We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

May we heed both King's and Eisenhower's words and do all we can to convince our government to pursue diplomacy and nonviolent conflict resolution over shortsighted military solutions. If we do not, we will be doomed to an endless cycle of wars and endless spending that will make the war profiteers richer while bankrupting our nation both spiritually and economically.

Peace,

Leonard

Click here to read President Eisenhower's entire farewell address.

Click here to read Dr. King's Beyond Vietnam speech.

Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.

2011-01-09T23:50:00.000-08:00

Friends,

Martin Luther King, Jr's Birthday is barely a week away, and next weekend many of us will come together in various acts honoring the memory of one of our nation's greatest leaders and one of the world's greatest proponents of nonviolence. Here is a poem by David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, which honors Dr. King's memory.

Peace,

Leonard

You Are Not One But Many, By David Krieger

Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.

Your deep voice still hangs in the air,

Melting the cowardly silence.

You are the one standing solidly there

Looking straight in the face of violence.

You are the one who dreams
That this nation will honor its creed.
You are the one who steps forward.
You are the one to bleed.

You are not one but many
Unwilling to cower or crawl.
You are the one who will take no less
Than a world that is just for all.

Merry Resistance To All

2010-12-20T15:31:00.001-08:00

Friends,

You haven't seen much activity on this Blog lately because I have been rather busy supporting the Disarm Now Plowshares 5 whose trial ended on December 13th with their convictions on all counts in the U.S. District Court's mock trial. I say mock trial because the Disarm Now Plowshares defendants were hamstrung by the government (both the court and the prosecution), which limited their ability to utilize valid defense arguments, among them the necessity defense and Nuremberg Principles.

The government would neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons at the Bangor Trident submarine base and Strategic Weapons Facility, Pacific (SWFPAC) that are known far and wide to be home to one of the largest concentrations of nuclear weapons in the world.

And yet, the efforts of the Disarm Now Plowshares are not in vain. Their actions are helping build public awareness and galvanize the nuclear abolition community. Many others also resist our government's illegal activities on many fronts.

Fr. Louis Vitale and others continue to engage in nonviolent resistance to the U.S. School of the Americas (SOA), now euphemistically termed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation by the U.S. government.

Fr. Vitale is once again in jail for trying to uphold the law at SOA just as the Disarm Now Plowshares 5 did at Bangor. Our government, which would rather not have a discussion surrounding the real issues, continues to reduce them to charges such as trespassing while it continues to feed masses of innocent victims to its war machinery.

What follows is Fr. Vitale's Dec. 8th message from jail. It is a fitting Christmas message as it calls on us to declare peace amidst the cacophony of war making; to move the world towards peace in the year.

May it be so. Peace,

Leonard

Photo Credit: Fr. Louie Vitale by Cindy Callahan

***************

by Fr. Louis Vitale, Dec. 8 2010

HERE WE ARE AGAIN

Two weeks have passed since David Omondi and I began our sojourn here
at Irwin County Detention Center in southern Georgia. Some may say, "Vitale has protested himself back into the pokey below the Mason-Dixon line" and "He has been jailed again in an effort to bring peace and social justice." SF Chronicle 11/28

Many ask, "Why do you keep doing this?" We try to respond: "Because the oppression goes on and our nation is a major participant in that oppression of the poor and of all creation." Specifically this manifestation of mourning focuses on the School of the Americas (WHINSEC) at Ft. Benning, Georgia, where U.S. military have taught counter-insurgency techniques, including torture and disappearance, to Latin American military. It still goes on, as recently observed with the outrageous coup in Honduras carried out by graduates of the School of the Americas. In fact, our involvement in oppressive militarism extends throughout the world!

But why so many times at Ft. Benning (my fourth arrest and incarceration, and so far from my home base)? The School of the Americas is an icon of our intrusion into developing countries over many years and the source of horrific massacres including religious leaders and thousands of peasants. Also Ft. Benning is a major military base feeding vast numbers into the war machine. Thousands gather annually to mourn the victims and to call for an end to our war machine that continues to grow into more bases, nuclear weapons manufacturing facilities, even into space war (and the new X-37B militarized version of the space shuttle).

Are we ready to declare peace and act in its presence? Let's call - with all our energy - for nonviolent solutions now, transforming many peoples' lives and our world. Our work is cut out for us as we must be vigilant and active with nonviolent resistance. May we move towards peace in the new year.
Vitale is serving a 6 month sentence for trespass at Ft. Benning. He is temporarily at Victorville until they move him to Lompoc Prison. Until then you can send notes of support to Fr. Louie c/o the Nuclear Resister, PO Box 43383, Tucson, AZ 85733.

RESTRAINT: What the World Needs Now!

2010-11-27T10:22:00.000-08:00

Friends,

The Korean War, which officially ended in 1953, never really ended at all. It continued to simmer, and although eclipsed by the Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Union, tensions have continued to build for roughly 57 years, and the situation now rivals the worst moments of the Cold War. The situation is as tense as it has ever been.

I have been busy supporting the Disarm Now Plowshares five who will soon face trial in U.S. District Court for their 2009 Plowshares action intended to bring to light the immoral and illegal nuclear weapons on which the U.S. government continues to not only maintain and deploy as a "deterrent", but focuses on building up the existing nuclear weapons infrastructure (which signals a focus on nuclear weapons far into the future).

All this focus on nuclear weapons provides me with a thorough understanding of the potential of these terrible, omnicidal weapons. Even a limited nuclear exchange between any two nations would have not only devastating effects on the immediate populations, but would also affect surrounding nations and quite probably regions around the globe, not only with the drifting radioactive clouds, but also due to dramatic effects on climate (at least one study documents the massive crop failures that would result).

The opening salvo from North Korea on November 23rd that now appears to be escalating into unknown territory, as the U.S. immediately sent a carrier task force to the aid of South Korea, is a sober and chilling reminder of how tenuous our existence is on this small planet we all share. The joint military exercises (U.S. and South Korea), particularly in a time of crisis, will only exacerbate tensions between South and North Korea, and the results could be catastrophic.

This is a time for serious international diplomatic intervention, diplomacy and negotiation; it is a time for (serious, nonviolent) TALK - NOT a time for saber rattling! There are no military solutions (that will not result in the North and South committing collective suicide, and dragging other nations into the maelstrom).

Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC) has issued a statement on "The Need for Talks to Avoid Escalation of the Crisis on the Korean Peninsula." (scroll down at the link for the English version) They call for the following:

1) An immediate cessation of hostilities to be declared.
2) A further investigation to be held into all aspects of
the artillery exchange before any judgment or action is made.
3) All sides to refrain from military provocation that
could lead to further escalation of tension or violence, including military
drills in the area.
4) An emphasis on dialogue, both bilaterally between the DPRK and ROK, and regionally,
including the resumption of the Six Party Talks as the only existing framework
for dialogue on peace and security in the Northeast Asian region.
5) Civil society participation in dialogue processes
related to this conflict.
6) World leaders to build bridges to calm the situation
rather than reenact the language and barriers of the past.

Do these 6 points make sense? Indeed, only a non-violent, non-military approach will resolve this crisis, and the only way to convince our (U.S.) government to change course (and send the carrier task force home) is through a massive involvement of civil society. We must call for immediate de-escalation and an immediate end to the U.S./South Korean war games!!!

Join the National Campaign to End the Korean War (www.endthekoreanwar.org)
in a coordinated "online demonstration"!!!

On Sunday, November 28, from 12 noon to 3 pm EST (9 am to 12 noon PST) and Wednesday, December 1 from 7 pm to 10 pm EST (4pm to 7 pm PST).

Barrage the White House and State Department with emails (and phone calls) and urge President Obama and State Secretary Clinton to immediately stop the joint U.S.-South Korean war maneuvers, and sign a Peace Treaty to end the state of war that has existed for sixty years on the Korean peninsula!

White House email White House switchboard: 202-456-1414

State Department email State Department phone: 202-647-4000

Click here for more details of the ONLINE DEMONSTRATION.

We can (and must) be voices for sanity in the midst of this madness. Please forward this on to as many people in your network as possible NOW.

Towards Peace,

Leonard

Resources:

National Campaign to End the Korean War

[Translation] Korean organizations' statement: Immediately cancel the joint ROK-US drill mobilized with an aircraft carrier in the West Sea!

Breaking Down Doors for National Security

2010-09-28T19:45:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

These are dark times. We fight wars in far flung reaches of the world, destroying those nations which we invade) for far less than noble purposes, while we morally and economically bankrupt our own nation. While most of this nation goes about its business as the military runs amok, some groups and individuals do their best to call on people to demand peace (with justice) rather than the current state of perpetual war.

While most (I hope) would agree that speaking out for peace and justice should be considered a sacred right in a "free" country, and a First Amendment right at that, it seems that many in our own government did not study the Constitution. I think that the Founding Fathers are rolling in their graves right now.

A recent study by the Justice Department's Inspector General, A Review of the FBI's Investigations of Certain Domestic Advocacy Groups, found that the FBI improperly investigated a number of peaceful "domestic advocacy groups". Brace yourselves; these are some DANGEROUS groups (and one individual) such as Greenpeace, PETA, The Merton Center, The Catholic Worker and "Quaker Peace Activist" Glen Milner.

Are you seeing terrifying visions of mushroom clouds yet??? Yes folks, we have gone completely nuts in this post 9/11 nation. Soon we will be seeing signs on every street corner - "Report suspicious Quaker activity at your nearest Homeland Security phone kiosk... report anyone resembling (or acting like) Dorothy Day to your local FBI office." But I digress...

In a September 20th ACLU news release about the Inspector General's report Michael German, ACLU Senior Policy Counsel and former FBI agent is quoted:
The FBI has a long history of abusing its national security surveillance powers, reaching back to the smear campaign waged by the American government against Dr. Martin Luther King. Americans peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights were able to become targets of FBI surveillance because spying guidelines that were established after the shameful abuses of the 60s and 70s were loosened in 2002. Unfortunately, they were loosened again in 2008, even after this abuse was uncovered.

Unless the rules regulating the FBI are strengthened to safeguard the privacy of innocent Americans, we are all in danger of being spied on and added to terrorist watch lists for doing nothing more than attending a rally or holding up a sign.
And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, IT DOES! As if it isn't bad enough for the FBI to be squandering our tax dollars on surveillance of peace activists exercising their first amendment rights, the FBI has been at it again, but this time it is much more serious!

The FBI gave the Inspector General the proverbial "finger" as agents raided homes and offices of antiwar activists in Chicago and Minneapolis Friday, September 24th. We aren't talking about "knock, knock, FBI, open up please!" No, we're talking SWAT teams breaking down doors, shoving warrants in people's faces and taking evidence without even a "thank you for your cooperation."

This is chilling folks. The FBI said that the searches were part of a joint task force probe of terrorism, and that they were “seeking evidence relating to activities concerning the material support of terrorism.” This is what happens when you get mired in an endless Global War on Terror in which laws have been successively weakened (by a weak and fearful Congress).

Here are the groups targeted in Friday's raids: Palestine Solidarity Group, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee, and Students for a Democratic Society. Perhaps your organization will be next??? Of course we should give the FBI the benefit of the doubt, right? Based on history, I don't think so!

People have already taken to the streets in many U.S. cities in protest of the FBI raids. More events will likely occur. Here are ways we can all act and speak out (Thanks to Fellowship of Reconciliation for these):

Call the Attorney General's office at 202-353-1555 and demand an end to political intimidation of peace activists.
Call or write the "newspapers of record" such as the New York Times and Washington Post, asking them to give full and prominent coverage to this story.
Write a letter to the editor of your local paper, explaining why this kind of intimidation is a danger to democracy.
Call your local members of Congress to demand that the FBI stop harassing peace activists.
Participate in any local actions to protest these raids. Click here for a list of protest events around the country.

You can also send an email to the Department of Justice courtesy of Veterans for Peace.

Historian and author Henry Steele Comager once said that, "Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive." Let us never stop being subversive so long as those in authority are not serving the people.

Peace,

Leonard

More Reading:

Here is a thorough summary of the Inspector General's report in The Atlantic: OIG: FBI Inappropriately Tracked Domestic Advocacy Groups

FBI searches homes as part of terrorism probe at CNN Justice.

It Is Official: The US Is A Police State at Countercurrents.org

Anti-War Activists Targeted by FBI Speak Out by the Associated Press

Everyone should read If An Agent Knocks from the Center for Constitutional Rights!

Peace = Future

2010-09-15T17:15:00.000-07:00

Friends,

September 21st is the United Nations International Day of Peace ("Peace Day"), a day on which individuals, organizations and nations are called upon to create practical acts of peace on a shared date. It was established by a United Nations resolution in 1981 to coincide with the opening of the General Assembly.

In this year's Peace Day message UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says that "this year's observance... focuses on youth and development, under the slogan, 'Peace = Future.'" Indeed, if we are to have a future we must create peace.

Moon acknowledges the crucial role that young people already play in peacemaking, while challenging them to do even more. He goes on to make a prophetic statement when he calls on young people to, "Expand on your work to build peace. Share your ideas with creativity and passion. The world's concerns will soon be in your hands."

Young people are a treasure; with knowledge and passion, prepared to venture out with conviction and courage to take on the world. They have much to offer even those of who have been at this thing for many years. We need to listen to their ideas and welcome them into our midst. We are all in this together.

As previous generations of peacemakers approach the end of their peacemaking days it will be up to the young people to take the torch and keep that bright light shining. I hope that young peacemakers will seek out the experienced elders of the movement and learn all you can. I also call on my fellow peacemakers, most of whom have had many more years of experience than me, to seek out young people with whom you can share your wealth of knowledge and experience.

It is my deepest hope that this year's Peace Day gatherings around the world will bring together the many generations of peacemakers to share our collective experience and learn from each other. May these gatherings be opportunities for us all to re-energize and redouble our efforts to build a world at peace with justice for all.

Click here to find an event happening near you on Peace Day.

Watch this video International Day of Peace message from UN S-G Ban Ki-moon.

Peace = Future,

Leonard

The Crushing COST of WAR!

2010-08-28T18:40:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

Guess how much the U.S. government spends in a year to send just one soldier to Afghanistan? Thanks to hard working number crunchers at the American Friends Service Committee we have some accurate figures. While you are thinking about it ponder the approximate total number of U.S. soldiers there - 78,430 (AFSC's estimate, although I've seen numbers as high as 100,000). That number doesn't include the number of private contractors (can you say "mercenaries"?) that seem to get a rare mention in the newspaper articles.

O.K. folks. Brace yourselves for this nice, large, round number - $1,000,000! That's right; $1 Million!!! That is the 2010 cost to maintain each soldier in Afghanistan. Now, aside from the moral and ethical implications of our colonial incursion into Afghanistan, if I were the CEO of this company, the shareholders would be at my door like the angry villagers in Mel Brooks movie, Young Frankenstein.

This is insane!

According to the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) here are just a few positive things our nation could be doing with all that money rather than squandering it on a futile mission (whatever that mission is; can anyone tell me???). Let's do the numbers; $1 Million could provide :

Renewable energy for 127,964,602 homes
Health care for 588 children

Salaries for 17 school teachers

Head Start for 132 children

School lunch for 1,602 children

Health care for 227 adults

Four-year Pell grants for 48 college students, or

Affordable homes for 9 families

Perhaps you can think of some other peaceful uses for $1 million. And if those statistics don't shake you up a little, don't forget to multiply that $1 million by at least 78,430!!! Of course I wouldn't dream of cutting back on body armour and all the important things our troops need. I'm talking about supporting them in a different way - BRING EM HOME!!!

Despite President Obama's pledge to begin withdrawing troops in July 2011, Pentagon plans are in the works for three $100 million air base expansions in Afghanistan that will ensure that U.S. troops will be entrenched there for years to come.

The House of Representatives has approved the money for these bases, but the Senate still must vote on it. It's time to say STOP!!! No more money for "enduring base" construction. Send your Senators a clear message to reject any such funding.

It is time to stop squandering both our human and financial treasure on senseless wars and start spending it on programs of social uplift, both at home and around the world. Why not start today???

Peace,

Leonard

Read Air base expansion plans reflect long-term investment in Afghanistan in the Washington Post.

Learn more about the U.S. quagmire in Afghanistan at AFSC.

Peace Fleet Meets War Fleet. Nonviolence IS the (ONLY) Answer!

2010-08-04T21:22:00.001-07:00

Friends,

Yesterday a small flotilla of hearty, seafairing folk gathered to express their displeasure with the arrival in Seattle's Elliott Bay of the U.S. Navy, a yearly ritual at Seattle's Seafair celebration (I personally prefer the arrival of the Seafair pirates over the Navy...Oooh Argh!!!). Longtime peace activist and salty dog Glen Milner calls the gathering a "water-based NONVIOLENT protest against the glorification of weapons of war."

As I gazed at the photos at the Seattle Post Intelligencer's Website I found the juxtaposition of the naval ship bristling with firepower and the two diminuitive protest vessels a powerful metaphor for U.S. projection of power around the globe. The parading of these "men-o-war" in front of the public is essentially a major (and extremely expensive) public relations and recruiting event.

Captioned photos from Seattle PI Website

With approximately "331,682 personnel on active duty and 124,000 in the Navy Reserve", the U.S. Navy has 284 ships in active service and more than 3,700 aircraft (Source: Wikipedia). It was once said that the sun never set on the British Empire, and although that empire has long since waned, the phrase is an apt one for the ever expanding U.S. Empire.

The U.S. has at least 1000 military bases overseas (roughly 700 if one subtracts bases in Iraq and Afghanistan) encircling the globe. Current plans for new (naval) bases include Guam and Jeju Island in South Korea. The globe's military waistline (courtesy of the U.S. military) is ever expanding.

The U.S. Navy brought four vessels to Seafair this year: a newer Arleigh Burke-class destroyer and three older vessels, all three commissioned in 1994 and 1995. Two of the older vessels have likely fired depleted uranium munitions in their 20 mm Phalanx guns, radioactive rounds which the Navy still stocks according to recent inventory reports. Mighty impressive stuff; the kids love it! The folks who live with the aftermath of depleted uranium are not so thrilled.

According to GlobalSecurity.org, one Arleigh Burke destroyer costs approximately $2.2 billion in 2009 dollars. The vessels cost approximately $25 million per year to operate. According to Global Security, there are currently 58 Arleigh Burke guided-missile destroyers in the U.S. fleet with 4 more ships scheduled for completion. Each Arleigh Burke destroyer is armed with 56 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

But hey - It's only money, right??? Of course it's a whole lot of money. The bottom line is that we are spending far more money on the military than everything else combined. "Military spending's share of discretionary spending was 50.5% in 2003, and has risen steadily ever since." Just think of how this is affecting you, your family, your neighbors and people all over the country of every socio-economic status. Even small shifts in military spending would reap huge benefits to other important domestic needs. Ben Cohen's short Oreo cookie video demonstrates this quite graphically:

President Obama said, during the 2008 presidential race, that, "I don't want to just end the [Iraq] war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place." All rhetoric aside (and his rhetoric is pretty good), the President's actions have essentially reinforced the deeply embedded mindset that there are military solutions to the global problems that we face, and he has continually increased overall military spending, while programs of social uplift have suffered.

Changing the mindset that continues to throw military solutions (which are not really solutions at all, at least from a long term standpoint) at every conflict we face requires huge changes in the way we see the world around us and those with whom we share this small planet. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. articulated this quite well in his concept of a "World House" in which a rather large and dysfunctional family is crowded together into this house that it has inherited. We are "a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace."

So there is our challenge - to learn to live together as brothers and sisters in this house of ours, to unlock the door to a peaceful world for our children. Nonviolence is one of the keys.

Peace,

Leonard

Note: Many thanks to Glen Milner for much of the information in this post. Glen has, for many years, put his heart and soul into his work for peace, including the yearly Peace Fleet event at Seafair. Thanks to Karol Milner for the photos in the following slide show.

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Read Dr. King's essay, The World House by clicking here.

See photos of the Peace Fleet and U.S. Navy's arrival at Seafair at the Seattle PI.

Are These People Crazy???

2010-07-25T18:03:00.000-07:00

Friends,

A madness has taken hold of the U.S. House of Representatives, so far just the Republicans. Republicans in the house have introduced a measure (HR 1553) that would throw the support of the U.S. Congress behind military strikes by Israel against Iran. A who's who of Neoconservatives from John Bolton to William Kristol are behind the bill that already has the support of "nearly a third of House Republicans." The bill essentially expresses:
...support for the State of Israel’s right to defend Israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, and to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel.

The Huffington Post reported the scary news on July 23rd. The article mentioned the obvious point that U.S. military experts have been stating (and which those pushing this bill ignore at all our peril) - that Israeli military action against Iran "could be catastrophic to US national security interests and could engulf the Middle East in a 'calamitous' regional war," and would most likely draw the U.S. into such a war.

You don't suppose that's just what these folks have in mind??? They are obviously unhappy that President Obama has chosen sanctions rather than the military option. Sanctions are causing enough friction as it is, but this is just nuts! The Middle East situation is unstable enough as it is, and now we have reports of Israeli submarines (loaded with nuclear Cruise missiles) patrolling off the coast of Iran. Great!!!

Well, right now the best thing the Israelis can do is keep their missiles in their pants. And if the recent attack on the humanitarian aid flotilla is any indication, no one should underestimate their potential actions, and absolutely NO ONE should be supporting military action against Iran.

Let's stop this madness before it gains any more momentum. CLICK HERE to send a message to demand that House Republic Leader John Boehner denounce this resolution and oppose another war in the Middle East.

Click here to read the full text of House Resolution 1553.

Pushing Peace,

Leonard

Deficit Doves vs. Deficit Hawks

2010-07-22T14:32:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

It is becoming more and more evident that endless wars are creating endless spending that is ever so surely leading us to bankruptcy, both economic and moral. War spending keeps taking a bigger slice of the budget (and therefore tax) pie, until one day the people are left with crumbs.

A few in Congress like Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma are calling for cuts in Pentagon spending, while Florida Congressman Alan Grayson has introduced the War Is Making You Poor Act (HR5353). Others in Congress are trying to cut every social program possible in order to fund continued warmaking.

Amy Goodman calls them "Deficit Hawks", and that is exactly what they are. The following article speaks to all you "Deficit Doves" out there, and calls on all of us to speak out, confront the lies of the Deficit Hawks, and show another way.

When you have read Amy's article, learn more about HR5353 and support the bill at Friends Committee on National Legislation.

Peace,

Leonard

***********

Originally published on Wednesday, July 21, 2010 by TruthDig.com

Deficit Doves
by Amy Goodman

Getting out of the red is the new black. Deficit hawks have swooped down on the U.S. budget. This week, they attacked unemployment benefits.

Ultimately, they are going after Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, the venerable programs once considered untouchable "third rails" of U.S. politics. These have been replaced by a new third rail, the defense budget. To really deal with annual deficits and a surging national debt, we are going to need to cut military spending.

We need some deficit doves.

First, let's call it what it is: the war budget. The government formed the Department of War in 1789, and only in 1949 renamed it the Department of Defense. The war budget President Barack Obama recently sent to Congress, for fiscal year 2011, is $548.9 billion, with an additional $33 billion, which is the 2010 supplemental that is currently being debated in Congress, and $159.3 billion more "to support ongoing overseas contingency operations, including funds to execute the President's new strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan." Recall, "overseas contingency operations" is how the Obama administration rebranded the "global war on terror."

This is just the publicly available war budget. There is also a "black budget," kept secret, for clandestine operations that former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair revealed was about $75 billion. As The Washington Post exposed this week, the post-9/11 security state has grown into a massive, unmanageable and largely privatized "enterprise."

Over 2,000 for-profit firms and over 850,000 people with top-secret clearance are engaged in military and intelligence activities, ostensibly for the U.S. government, with seemingly little or no oversight.

Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., has submitted a bill, H.R. 5353, called "The War Is Making You Poor Act." Grayson, with a few Republicans and a number of progressive Democratic co-sponsors, wants to force Commander in Chief Obama to run his two wars with "only" the $548.9 billion base budget. The $159.3 billion saved would be turned into a tax break, making the first $35,000 of income tax-free, and anything left over would be directed to paying down the national debt. The bill is in committee now and may generate genuine bipartisan support. Grayson, when introducing the bill, highlighted a fact worth repeating: The U.S. war budget is greater than the military spending of every other nation on Earth, combined.

Meanwhile, at the National Peace Conference to be held in Albany, N.Y., this weekend, people are targeting the military budget. Students are organizing around the connection between war expenditures and education budgets that are being slashed, sparking protests at campuses nationwide. Another effort, called "Bring Our War Dollars Home," promotes action at the city council and statehouse level, along with grass-roots campaigns to pressure members of Congress to stop funding war.

The cost of the Iraq war was estimated by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, with his colleague Linda Bilmes, at $3 trillion, calculating not only hard, current costs, but also the cost to society of caring for wounded veterans, and the long-term costs of having so many families disrupted by caring for their injured loved ones, or having a breadwinner killed in action. And that's just Iraq. As of May, the monthly cost of the war in Afghanistan surpassed, for the first time, the cost of war in Iraq.

Stiglitz was one of the many economists who said the economic stimulus package (at $787 billion) was too small. He argues that deficit spending, when done wisely, creates long-term returns for an economy.

Conversely, he wrote recently, "Deficits to finance wars or give-aways to the financial sector ... impos[e] a burden on future generations."

Economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research says President Obama's Deficit Commission, formally the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, is a major cause for concern. The co-chairs are former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles, who is on the board of Morgan Stanley, one of the bailed-out Wall Street firms. Baker told me: "Both are on record saying they want to cut Social Security. This should have people very, very worried. That isn't a balanced commission."

Cutting Social Security isn't the answer. Cutting war spending, and bringing the troops home, is. This is the job for the deficit doves.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

© 2010 Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 800 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.

For the Earth: A Great Urgency

2010-06-29T07:30:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

Chief Arvol Looking Horse, 19th generation keeper of the White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle and spiritual leader among the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota People, recently sent out an extremely important message, A Great Urgency: To All World Religious and Spiritual Leaders. It is a message in response to the terrible environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, but goes far beyond that and calls on religious and spiritual leaders to lead people in prayer in the hope that we will be changed, and learn to live in harmony with each other and our Mother Earth. He calls on people to "make a prayer for all life, for good decision making by our Nations, for our children¹s future and well-being, and the generations to come."

At a time when the world watches as millions of gallons of oil flow into the ocean from a single disaster, countless other environmental disasters - and though many are small in comparison, they are all at very least cumulative - unfold daily around the world. Whether oil production in Nigeria, gold mining in Peru or uranium mining in the U.S., the environment and the people who live on the affected land invariably suffer.

Chief Looking Horse asks us to look around us at the "bleeding of Grandmother Earth" and then deeply within and ask ourselves to find it within our hearts to work to stop our destructive path, to heal this bruised world and create wholeness for future generations. Therein lies the native wisdom - that we own nothing; that we hold all things in trust for future generations, and must therefore care for them. That is our task. May we understand and accept it.

Peace,

Leonard

May 12, 2010

A Great Urgency: To All World Religious and Spiritual Leaders

My Relatives,

Time has come to speak to the hearts of our Nations and their Leaders. I ask you this from the bottom of my heart, to come together from the Spirit of your Nations in prayer.

We, from the heart of Turtle Island, have a great message for the World; we are guided to speak from all the White Animals showing their sacred color, which have been signs for us to pray for the sacred life of all things. As I am sending this message to you, many Animal Nations are being threatened, those that swim, those that crawl, those that fly, and the plant Nations, eventually all will be affect from the oil disaster in the Gulf.

The dangers we are faced with at this time are not of spirit. The catastrophe that has happened with the oil spill which looks like the bleeding of Grandmother Earth, is made by human mistakes, mistakes that we cannot afford to continue to make.

I asked, as Spiritual Leaders, that we join together, united in prayer with the whole of our Global Communities. My concern is these serious issues will continue to worsen, as a domino effect that our Ancestors have warned us of in their Prophecies.

I know in my heart there are millions of people that feel our united prayers for the sake of our Grandmother Earth are long overdue. I believe we as Spiritual people must gather ourselves and focus our thoughts and prayers to allow the healing of the many wounds that have been inflicted on the Earth.

As we honor the Cycle of Life, let us call for Prayer circles globally to assist in healing Grandmother Earth (our Unc¹I Maka).

We ask for prayers that the oil spill, this bleeding, will stop. That the winds stay calm to assist in the work. Pray for the people to be guided in repairing this mistake, and that we may also seek to live in harmony, as we make the choice to change the destructive path we are on.

As we pray, we will fully understand that we are all connected. And that what we create can have lasting effects on all life.

So let us unite spiritually, All Nations, All Faiths, One Prayer. Along with this immediate effort, I also ask to please remember June 21st, World Peace and Prayer Day/Honoring Sacred Sites day. Whether it is a natural site, a temple, a church, a synagogue or just your own sacred space, let us make a prayer for all life, for good decision making by our Nations, for our children¹s future and well-being, and the generations to come.

Onipikte (that we shall live),

Chief Arvol Looking Horse

Click here to read a biography of Chief Arvol Looking Horse.

Click here to learn about the Wolakota Foundation.

Peace Poles: Planting Seeds of Peace

2010-06-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

Friends,

The recent (May 6, 2010) gathering at University of Washington, Tacoma was truly an auspicious occasion. Following the testimony of the Hibakusha (survivor of the atomic bombing) of Hiroshima, Ms. Tokie Mizuno, we moved outside to the site of the new Peace Pole for the dedication ceremony.

A Peace Pole is a hand-crafted monument that displays the message and prayer "May Peace Prevail on Earth" on each of its four or six sides, usually in different languages. There are tens of thousands of Peace Poles in countries all over the world dedicated as monuments to peace. They serve as constant reminders for us to visualize and pray for world peace.

This particular day was one of great remembrance and reconciliation. Besides remembering (and learning about) the horrors of the use of nuclear weapons on our fellow human beings, we also remembered the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II (Tacoma's Japanese Language School was used to process internees at the beginning of the war) and the fact that the University of Washington, Tacoma campus rests on land that was originally inhabited by (and by all rights still belongs to) the Puyallup Tribe.

The dedication ceremony was a beautiful sharing of many traditions, including Native American, Buddhist, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish and Protestant. The words and music were offered as prayers for peace and reconciliation, and at the end of the ceremony everyone "passed the peace" to each other. Watch a brief video of the ceremony by Rodney Herold:

The Peace Pole is like a tree in that people who pass by or sit by it and read those words, "May Peace Prevail on Earth," will eat the fruit, and it can nourish them on their journey. Who knows how many more seeds of peace they will continue to plant. Let us hope that many more Peace Poles will be planted, and may their message one day overwhelm the damaging messages of fear, hatred and violence so ubiquitous in our world. You can plant one anywhere - in your front yard, church or school, wherever people will see it.

May Peace Prevail on Earth,

Leonard

Click here to learn more about the Peace Pole Project.

Hear, Oh Israel: ENOUGH Already!!!

2010-05-31T16:41:00.000-07:00

Friends,

The best military U.S. money (also known as "security assistance") can buy went well beyond what any sane person would deem appropriate in its response to the approaching Gaza Freedom Flotilla early this morning. Under cover of darkness Israeli military commandos boarded the largest of the Flotilla's ships using Black hawk helicopters and small craft (we're talking "shock and awe" here folks) while the ship was still in international waters. At this point at least nine activists have been confirmed killed and dozens more were wounded. The Israelis seized all six boats and everyone on board (including human rights workers, diplomats, journalists and academics).

The State of Israel has, through this brazen and illegal action, demonstrated its complete and total disregard for international and humanitarian law; of course it has been doing this for years, but this morning's act was its most brazen action to date. Why could they have not pulled alongside during daylight hours and asked to come aboard for tea with the ship's captain to discuss the options for delivering the tons of humanitarian aid supplies weighing down the ships???

Speaking as a Jew I have had enough of this (I'm sure God had enough of this madness long ago) and must speak out against the atrocities that my people perpetrate against others. How little we have learned through centuries of oppression and atrocities against our own. The powerful pro-Israel lobbies (such as AIPAC) keep U.S. aid flowing in the form of money and weapons systems (President Obama has requested $3 billion in "security assistance" to Israel for fiscal year 2011). And to make matters worse the Christian Zionist cheering section fans the flames even higher (What's up with that? First they blame the Jews for that crucifixion incident ages ago, and now they're in love with Israel. Motive???).

The U.S.-Israel alliance is stronger than ever, and the Israelis know they can continue to get away with murder (quite literally; remember the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967!!). As everyone screams for sanctions against Iran, we continue to look the other way regarding Israel's nuclear program (as we have since the 1950s).

It is time to rise up and take to the streets and call on our government to hold Israel accountable for its actions. No more blank checks. It is time to call on our members of Congress to stop accepting blood money from pro-Israel lobbying groups and start being accountable to the American people (instead of the Israeli government).

Today many of us took to the streets around the United States; here in Seattle we stood (and marched) in solidarity with the Palestinian people and the people of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. The actions will continue, and we will continue to try to help people see this madness and understand why we all must work to stop it. Watch for actions in your area. If you are in the Seattle area come out tomorrow (Tuesday): 4:30 PM, meet at Westlake Plaza (4th Avenue and Pine Street). 5:00 PM, walk together to Federal Building (2nd and Marion).

Here is a brief slide show of today's protest rally in Seattle.

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Raise your voices for our common humanity!

Call for an end to the blockade!

Call The White House at (202) 456-1414 or click here to send President Obama an email.

Call or email your members of Congress. Find their contact information by clicking here.

Or lodge a protest with the U.S. State Department at (202) 647-4000.

And if you are in the writing mood, write a letter to the editor!

Peace,

Leonard

Read the latest editorial (and find more) at The Electronic Intifada.

Find out more about the Freedom Flotilla at WitnessGAZA.com.

Get news at ALJAZEERA.

Learn more at Voices of Palestine.

Updates since this post:

Read Dennis Kucinich's June 2nd Letter to President Obama regarding the incident.

War Is Making You Poor - No Kidding!!!

2010-05-28T15:57:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

For many years a number of organizations have highlighted (and attempted to engage in a public dialogue regarding) the cost of war. The rather indigestible pie shown below (courtesy of Women's Action for New Directions) is right out of Little Shop of Horrors; one can almost hear the man-eating plant screaming "Feed meeeeee!!!" as it devours everything in sight, including the U.S. Treasury (Your Tax Dollars).

Well, move over Tea Partyers! You've been dumping stuff off the wrong boat. You want to talk about taxation without representation??? Perhaps I should qualify that; defense contractors are definitely well (and overly) represented. For those of us who believe that this kind of military spending is unsustainable (besides making the world a far less stable place) it's like some guy just rode into town on a white horse. I'm rubbing my eyes, wondering if I'm dreaming folks.

Florida Congressman Alan Grayson has had enough of allocating tens of billions of dollars in endless defense spending without so much as a "Hey, can we talk about this???" in Congress. He has introduced legislation to change this sorry state of affairs. The War Is Making You Poor Act (HR 5353). Although he voted for the 2009-2010 Defense Appropriations, Grayson is now trying to make an important statement and begin a long-needed discussion about how we fund our global military machine and endless wars. Check out the video below where Congressman Grayson introduces HR 5353:

I find it hard to argue with Grayson's straightforward, simple math. Grayson's bill "demands that the Pentagon live within its budgeted means, cancels next year’s $159 billion budget allocation for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and gives everyone a $35,000 income tax credit (couples get $70,000)."

For those of us who want to bring the discussion and debate about military spending out into the open, here is our opportunity. If you agree, please support Grayson's bill. Click here to join the more than 29,000 people who have signed the petition supporting The War Is Making You Poor Act! Then share this with 10 more people; it's time to initiate a public debate. And don't forget to tell your Representative to support Grayson's bill.

War is bankrupting our nation! It is time to fund Peace (for real, sustainable returns).

Toward Peace,

Leonard

Note: Read more about HR 5353 (and take action) at Friends Committee on National Legislation.

"The hand not raised in protest..."

2010-05-19T17:07:00.000-07:00

Friends,

War is, indeed, hell. Here in the United States, the nation that has been making most of the war these days (in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan), we regularly see coverage in the newspapers and on TV of U.S. soldiers who have suffered injury and death - casualties of war. Yet we pay less attention to the civilian casualties, the "collateral damage" of war (especially modern warfare). It is not unlike the near daily front page coverage of the Gulf oil spill contrasted with the news vacuum surrounding (documented) massive oil spills in places like Africa's Niger Delta. Not our problem folks.

It seems that we have not paid attention as the percentage of civilian deaths in war has increased during the past century. At a recent international meeting on gender justice Sister Joan Chittister shared these sobering statistics*:

At the turn of the 20th century, 5% of war casualties were civilians
In World War I, 15% were civilians
In World War II, the figure leapt to a 65% civilian death toll, as whole cities were bombed
By the mid-nineties, 75% of war deaths were civilians
Today, 90% of the human war toll are civilians-the majority women and children

For all the U.S. investment in high tech weaponry and rules of engagement allegedly intended to reduce collateral damage, it just ain't so! And we wonder why people don't like us??? As we see the increased use of drones and other unmanned/robotic war machinery (and make the killing easier), so the most recent numbers cited by Sr. Joan are bound to seem paltry in years to come.

And yet most of us go about our daily business, untouched by war's violence, without so much as raising a hand in question or protest. Laura Carlsen, in an article titled Within the hell of war lies a private hell, stated that, "The hand not raised in protest appears genteel alongside the hand stained with the blood of the victim." Although Carlsen was speaking in a specific context of violence against women (and we must not forget that women and children are the disproportionately affected in violent conflicts), I believe this quote also speaks in a universal sense to all of us: If we feign ignorance and do not raise our hands in protest, those genteel hands are,indeed, stained with the blood of the victims.

As the U.S. Congress prepares to rubber stamp another $33 billion for Afghanistan (wonder why Karzai was in town last week?) we should be raising our hands (perhaps dipped in red paint for emphasis) in protest, writing letters to the editor and flooding Congress (and The White House) with phone calls and emails calling on our "leadership" in D.C. to stop this madness. Remind them that if they choose to continue on this murderous course, the blood on their hands will not wash off.

If you aren't already tied in to Peace Action, FCNL, Just Foreign Policy, United for Peace and Justice, or a host of other organizations working to change our nation's disastrous militaristic course, check out the list of "Actions You Can Take Right Now!" on this blog. Raise your hands for PEACE NOW!

Peace,

Leonard

* The statistics quoted from Joan Chittister are from Laura Carlsen's article titled Within the hell of war lies a private hell. Laura is the Director of the Americas Program of the Center for International Policy.

Photo: "The face of US 'collateral damage' in Iraq, 22 March 2003"; Source: Asia-Pacific Network

Nobody Wins in War!

2010-05-16T17:35:00.000-07:00

Friends,

I was fortunate to recently host a delegation from the Japan Council against Atomic & Hydrogen Bombs (Gensuikyo) which had come to the Seattle area to bring its message of peace and a nuclear weapons-free world. One of the high points was learning the word "Peace" in Japanese - "Heiwa". The delegation's message of peace and a world free of nuclear weapons was well received by everyone they met.

Meanwhile (and in stark contrast), the U.S. keeps fighting its endless War on Terror, which is currently manifested in its entrenched presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan as well. Of U.S. efforts in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal, who not long ago boasted of military success in, changed his tune last week when he said that, "nobody is winning".

Ironically, no one (except those who profit financially) has been "winning" all along (in any war). As for the U.S., we are sending our sons and daughters off to either die or return physically, psychologically and spiritually wounded. In addition we are bleeding the Treasury and squandering resources (including oil) that would be better used for peaceful purposes.

As for the countries we invade and occupy, their losses are incalculable. We have no idea how man men, women and children we have murdered (courtesy of General Tommy "We don't do body counts" Franks). From the human losses to the destruction of their infrastructure to the environmental damage, we have wrought an extreme tragedy on them.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues with its knee jerk (and impotent) responses to each new "terrorist" attack, trying out something new each time in a frenzy of retaliatory drone attacks and reductions of civil liberties back on the "homeland".

Of course, the worse casualty for the United States is the loss of our collective soul, our humanity. We ignore the pain and suffering of others so long as they are far out of sight (except for the sanitized media images and brief news bits). We are not much different, if any, from the world of Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" in which citizens watch news of their wars in neighboring lands on huge wall screens. Only in the end does war come home to roost.

Following the Gensuikyo delegation's presentation at First United Methodist Church of Seattle I had a delightful conversation with Tom Bruhns, the person who handled the sound system for us. Tom later shared a photo he took while in Scotland; in the email he said that:

There is a Writer’s Museum in Edinburgh, Scotland, just down from the castle. It’s a bit off the street on a pedestrian walkway, with a bit of a courtyard out front. In the courtyard are set some paving stones inscribed with writings of some Scots writers. One caught my attention, and I took a picture of it… The inscription: "Weird hou men maun aye be makin war insteid o things they need." -- Tom Scott (1918-1995) (Scots dialect: hou = how; maun = must)

Indeed, it is high time we start making things we need instead of making war. We can start by ending the absurd and self-defeating War on Terror. To that end we will need to change course and work on diplomatic rather than military solutions; killing lots of civilians with drone strikes and Special Forces raids tends to make more enemies than friends. Ending the occupation of Iraq and creating a comprehensive exit strategy for Afghanistan are necessary if we are to move in this more positive direction. If we succeed, the only losers will be the war profiteers. And as for us??? Perhaps we will win back our humanity.

TAKE ACTION!!! Learn more and get engaged at Just Foreign Policy's Website. Urge Congress to stop funding war, and create a just, lasting foreign policy.

Peace,

Leonard

A Brief Primer on Social Justice (In response to Glenn Beck)

2010-04-06T21:49:00.000-07:00

Friends

First - A confession. For quite a few years I ran a social justice ministry at a United Methodist Church. O.K. So you say, "What's the big deal with that?" Well, according to recent statements by Glenn Beck, that makes me either a Nazi or a communist. Since I'm (technically) a Jew, that rules out the Nazi thing (I hope). I'll go for one out of two. I can deal with being a communist if that means I'm hanging out at the intersection of justice and mercy.

According to Beck, al those years I was promoting social justice I was covertly promoting Nazism and communism. At least now I know why a few right wing, arch-conservative people in that church were constantly attacking my work. At any rate, all this made me think that some folks (and obviously a large percentage of Christians based on my own experience) need a primer on social justice. So here goes Leonard's One Minute Social Justice Lesson:

Just a little over 2000 years ago there was this guy named Jesus. He was born in a manger to poor parents; we're talking dirt poor. Things back then were not much different than they are now. There were some people at the very top living high, some in the middle doing reasonably well and doing the bidding of those on top, and finally there were a whole lot way down at the bottom slaving for crumbs and making those at the top filty rich (and keeping them in power). The trick was (and is) keeping enough people doing well enough to protect the people at the top. Sound familiar???

Jesus grows up, sees what's going on and says, "Whoa! This is not right. So he associates with anyone and everyone who is on the fringes (the least of these) as well as the occasional tax collector (hey, they were in a tough spot). He was the original social (and economic) justice radical. That really, really scared those rich, powerful guys (and they were men) running the show. And the rest is history. The End.

So - Was Jesus a Nazi??? Or a communist??? I think not. He was just trying to show us that we are all equal in the eyes of God, and therefore should be treated that way by each other. Yes really - We should see God in each other. Pretty radical stuff! When you get right down to it, labels do not do justice to anyone. In fact, labeling people merely demeans them; reduces them to something less than human. It's a slippery slope that (I would argue) leads to bigotry and racism and all sorts of other ugly things. It is a form of violence, and is in itself an injustice.

My experience in the church demonstrated that nearly everyone is happy to show mercy (charity) towards those who are less fortunate. It makes them feel good to put money in an envelope to help someone in need. But as soon as many of those same people are asked to take the next step and advocate to help change the conditions that create the need for charity in the first place they get fidgety. They become uncomfortable. After all; charity is easy, justice is hard. It was the Roman Catholic Archbishop Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara who once said:

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a Communist.

In defense of the church, there are many wonderful religious people who understand and walk the path that balances mercy and justice. And if I'm not mistaken, you could go through your Bible and find countless passages that refer to doing justice (in both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament). My favorite is Micah 6:8:

...and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with you God?
Perhaps Glenn missed that one.

Peace,

Leonard

P.S. - Check out this great Colbert Report video that gives a Jesuit perspective on the matter.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Glenn Beck Attacks Social Justice - James Martin

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Selma to Montgomery: Praying With Their Feet

2010-03-21T17:08:00.000-07:00

Friends,

On Sunday, March 7, 1965, approximately 600 people began a fifty-four mile march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama (the state capital). They marched to demonstrate for voting rights for African Americans. They were also marching in honor of Jimmie Lee Jackson, who had died three weeks earlier after being shot by a state trooper while trying to protect his mother during a civil rights demonstration. After crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the outskirts of Selma, the marchers were brutally assaulted by heavily armed state troopers and sheriff's deputies.

Footage of the violence in Selma was broadcast by ABC News, which (rather ironically) interrupted its broadcast of the Nazi war crimes documentary, Judgement in Nuremburg. In just two days demonstrations in support of the Selma to Montgomery marchers were held in eight cities, and thousands of religious and lay leaders, including Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. travelled to Selma where, on March 9 they once again travelled to the Edmund Pettus Bridge where they knelt and prayed. That night one of the ministers, who had travelled to Selma for the march, was killed by white vigilantes.

The uproar and response by the citizenry to events in Alabama was so great that President Lyndon Johnson addressed the nation before a joint session of Congress, saying,"There is no issue of States rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights…We have already waited a hundred years and more, and the time for waiting is gone…" Just two days later Johnson sent the Voting Rights bill to Congress.

On March 17 a Federal judge ruled that the demonstrators must be permitted to march, and ordered that the National Guard protect them. On March 21, the voting rights demonstrators once again left Selma under Federal protection, and arrived in Montgomery on March 25 with some 25,000 demonstrators flooding the state capital. The Voting Rights Act was signed into law on August 6, 1965. Among other things, the Act banned discriminatory literacy tests and expanded voting rights for non-English speaking citizens.

Today, 45 years later, people still commemorate the historic Selma to Montgomery march, and the struggle for the right to vote continues. One of the participants raised the issue of voting rights for felons. Monks from the Bainbridge Island Nipponzan Miyohoji Buddhist Temple were among those who made the trek this year. One of the monks, Gilberto Perez, sent me a few photos (see slide show below). For the monks, this is just one leg of a long journey, praying with their feet as they walk for peace, justice and the abolition of nuclear weapons. For them, every step is a prayer for peace, and they take countless steps on their long journey.

Los Angeles firefighter Tony Wright bandages the foot of Buddhist monk Gilberto Perez as Erica Fox watches at Fire Station No. 14 in Montgomery on Friday. (Alvin Benn)

After the Selma to Montgomery march, they will begin the next leg of their journey that will take them to New York City, where they will join with thousands of other peacemakers to call on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference to make good on the promises made in the NPT. In the continuing struggle for human rights, they will remind the nuclear-armed nations that the world's citizens have the right to be free of the fear of nuclear omnicide that still hangs over the world like a nuclear Sword of Damocles.

And so the monks and those who walk with them continue their journey, beating their drums and chanting with a nonviolent spirit like those who walked from Selma to Montgomery 45 years ago. May their nonviolent spirit touch everyone they meet along the way, disarming hearts and building a path to a world at peace with justice.

Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo.

Peace,

Leonard

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Photographic Credits: Panorama of marchers at top of post by James Karales (American, 1930–2002). Selma-to-Montgomery March for Voting Rights in 1965. Photographic print. Located in the James Karales Collection, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University. Photograph © Estate of James Karales. Thanks to Gilberto Perez for photos used in the slide show.

Waihopai ANZAC Ploughshares - INNOCENT!!!

2010-03-20T17:20:00.000-07:00

Friends,

Wonderful news for all plowshares activists and supporters! The Waihopai Ploughshares activists have been acquitted on all counts by trial jury on March 17th!

In April, 2008 the three Waihopai Ploughshares activists cut through three security fences at the Waihopai satellite monitoring facility in New Zealand, deflated one of the dome's covers using sickles, then knelt down beside it to pray "to remember the people killed by United States military activity." The Waihopai facility is part of the ECHELON spy network, and the Waihopai activists claimed that it "is an important part of the U.S. government's global spy network and we have come in the name of the Prince of Peace to close it down."

Tholus Deflationis (apologies to Latin scholars)

Plowshares Performance Art

Here is the statement posted on the Ploughshares Aotearoa blog on March 17 following their acquittal on all charges:

Adrian Leason, Father Peter Murnane and Sam Land – the three men who were
charged with intentional damage and unlawful entry at Waihopai spy base – have
today expressed their thanks to the jury, the judge, and the prosecution and
defence lawyers.

At the conclusion of the trial, Father Peter, Sam and Adrian said they feel privileged to have helped uncover the true nature of the spy base. “Our actions in disabling the spy base and stopping the flow of information helped save lives in Iraq”, added Adrian.

“What has been humbling for us to realise is how our witness has impacted on so many people around the world and at home”, said Sam.

“We did not try to avoid the consequences of our actions, because we respect the rule of law although we do believe we are ultimately accountable to a higher authority. We damaged property at the spy base in order to save victims of war and torture. It’s all about Jesus’ command for us to treat all people as our brothers and sisters”, said
Father Peter.

The jury heard that the Waihopai Echelon spy base is New Zealand’s largest contribution to the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. The ongoing war has resulted in horrific war crimes, including more than one million dead Iraqi civilians, torture, and permanent poisoning of parts of Iraq by the use of depleted uranium munitions.

The jury also heard evidence from a former British Echelon intelligence analyst, Katherine Gunn. She blew the whistle on secret Echelon spying operations when she was instructed by the US National Security Agency to spy on United Nations Security Council members leading up to the US invasion in 2003.

“Evidence presented in the court confirmed that the ongoing war in Iraq is illegal, and causing massive human suffering”, said Adrian. “As an outcome of this trial, we hope that New Zealanders will insist on an enquiry into the activities of the spy base and its links to US-led illegal wars”.

Father Peter, Sam and Adrian expressed gratitude for all the support they have received from family, friends and the New Zealand public.

Commenting at the conclusion of the trial, Graham Bidois Cameron, Waihopai Ploughshares media spokesperson, said this Ploughshares action is part of an ongoing tradition: “The practice of non-violent resistance and direct action in the cause of peace has a long history in this country – the peaceful resistance to the invasion of Parihaka, and non-violent direct action against nuclear armed warships entering our harbours being just two examples”, he said.

“The actions of Waihopai Ploughshares also need to be understood in relation to an international movement for disarmament and peace”, said lawyer Moana Cole, herself a Ploughshares activist. “Adrian, Sam and Father Peter are part of rich history of activism in support of those without a voice and the movement is certainly growing”.

Deflating the Waihopi dome was a powerful symbol of resistance to New Zealand's support of the U.S. in its endless War On Terror. Let us hope that this legal decision will be heard around the world by all who resist war (as well as those who make war). May it also strengthen our resolve to continue the good work of turning swords into plowshares.

Peace,

Leonard

Learn more about the Waihopai Ploughshares at http://ploughshares.org.nz/ as well as http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/plshares.htm.

Click here to read about the trial, including daily trial updates.

Click here to learn more about Peace Movement Aotearoa, the national networking organisation in Aotearoa New Zealand for people interested in peace, social justice and human rights.

Lead us from War to Peace

2010-03-08T07:42:00.000-08:00

Friends,

Last week a number of peace activists gathered in front of the U.S. District Courthouse in Tacoma, Washington before the trial of fellow activist Lynne Greenwald, to vigil, leaflet and encircle Lynne with our collective nonviolent spirit. Although Lynne's trial was a serious occasion, and one which none of us took lightly, we gathered with a sense of joy - a sense of joy that comes from the knowledge that our deep commitment to peace through the practice of nonviolence helps us move beyond the bondage of fear, hatred and violence that leads to despair.

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As we gathered in the ecumenical spirit to center ourselves before the trial, we read the International Prayer for Peace. As I reflected on it I found myself thinking how prayer is often a static process in which we ask for something and then wait for some miraculous intervention. Yet here I was, surrounded by people for whom the miracle of prayer is its self-transformative power. Here were people for whom prayer helps move them through the very transformations uttered in this peace prayer, and to transformative action in the world.

These are people who embody that Biblical admonition to put faith into action. So, I share with you here the prayer spoken by peacemakers on March 3rd. I hope you find it useful in your travels.

Lead me from death to life,

from falsehood to truth.

Lead me from despair to hope,

from fear to trust.

Lead me from hate to love,

from war to peace.

Let peace fill our heart,

our world,

our universe.

Peace,

Leonard

A Model of Speaking Truth to Power

2010-03-05T22:32:00.000-08:00

Greetings Friends,

My friend Mary Brown, a retired United Methodist Minister, recently received a political questionnaire from Michael Steele and the Republican National Committee. Mary is NOT a Republican. However, she decided to respond to Mr. Steele, and I thought her letter worthy of sharing as a model for how to reach out to those on "the other side of the aisle", and reach beyond "agendas". Mary IS a person of hope, and she translates her hope (and faith) into action towards a positive future. You can read Mary's letter at the end of this post.

Mary is as active in her retirement (working to build a better world) as she was as a minister. If her experience is any indicator of what retirement can be like, I can't wait! Here's to working for a just and peaceful world every day of our lives.

Peace,

Leonard

March 1, 2010

Dear Chairman Steele:

I don’t know why I received this questionnaire because I am not a Republican; however, my parents were. Unfortunately, I think they would be “turning over in their graves” if they were aware of the mean spirited rhetoric expressed by so many of the Republican leaders in Washington today. Many Republicans seem more intent on seeing the present administration fail rather than they do in truly trying to work towards what is in the best interests of the American people in these difficult days. I know that there are philosophical differences between Republicans and Democrats; however, I believe that the present rancor and stalemate in Congress is destructive of our democracy.

I recently heard you, Chairman Steele, interviewed on the Tavis Smiley show. Although I didn’t agree with all your comments, I felt like you seemed to be a reasonable person. For example, you expressed a desire to “speak truth to power,” wherever such expression was needed, even if that meant speaking “truth” to the members of your own party. I like that quality!

So I would like to speak “truth” to you, Mr. Steele, from my perspective. In this country, we sometimes speak of “failed states,” usually referring to such nations, as Somalia, or the Congo or possibly Yemen. However, I believe that this nation is on the verge of becoming “a failed democracy.” This nation has been on an “unsustainable course” for many years now, whether in terms of its use of resources, consumer spending, or predatory financial practices, etc. World-wide climate change, global warming, massive poverty with billions living on less than $1 or $2 a day, the coming of Peak Oil, the melting of glaciers potentially affecting the fresh water supply for billions, these are the real “national security” issues which affect people all over the world. The solution to these issues will determine whether or not my grandchildren grow up to live in a nurturing world or a world is no longer able to sustain its inhabitants.

Therefore, I am dismayed at the lack of visionary leadership in Washington. I am dismayed that 41 individuals out of this nation of over 300,000,000 people can obstruct legislation from even coming up for a vote! I believe most politicians do not offer visionary leadership because of their need to raise money for the next election cycle and because of the pressure of lobbyists. Doris “Granny D” Haddock walked from Pasadena to Washington, D.C. in 1999 at the age of 89 to raise public awareness about the need for finance reform for elections! It is ironic that just days before her 100th birthday on January 24th, the Supreme Court voted to allow unions and corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money in support of political candidates. Again, money is power!

I believe, Mr. Steele, that millions of Americans, including Independents, Republicans and
Democrats, believe that democracy as practiced these days in Washington, D.C. is failing us. That’s why millions of folks are devoting their efforts to restoring democracy through organizations and movements completely outside of The Beltway, organizations that have a worldwide scope.

For example, in my retirement, I have become a facilitator for a symposium entitled “Awakening the Dreamer: Changing the Dream.” This symposium, developed in 2005 by the Pachamama Alliance has been given in 70 cities in this country and 27 nations worldwide. Its purpose is to help people bring forth “an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just human presence on our planet.” Another worldwide movement is “Give Peace a Deadline,” or the P5Y (Peace in Five Years) movement. Its goal is to end war (not conflict) in five years. People in the Snoqualmie Valley, where I live here in Washington state, are exploring the TransitionMovement started by Rob Hopkins in England. The goal of this movement is to help local communities live more sustainably during this era of Peak Oil.

Perhaps, Mr. Steele, you have never heard of such movements or organizations. Well, that’s because they are completely off the “radar” of the mainstream media, which is controlled by large corporations. However, environmentalist and author, Paul Hawkens writes in his book Blessed Unrest that there are anywhere from 500,000 to 1,000,000 just organizations working worldwide. These organizations are primarily interested in issues of environmental sustainability, social justice and indigenous wisdom. According to Paul Hawkens, it is the efforts of such organizations and movements that will eventually save our planet.

As for this questionnaire, Mr. Steele, I find the same fault with it that I find with similar questionnaires I have received from the Democratic Party. The questions lack complexity and are slanted towards the agenda of the particular party, so it’s very difficult to answer them with a simple “Yes” or “No.”

I thank you, Mr. Steele, for allowing me to speak “my truth” to you, and I hope this gives you a different perspective on what’s happening outside of The Beltway. If my knowledge were only dependent on what’s happening in Washington, D.C. and what I might hear or see through most media, I would be completely despondent about the future. However, because my knowledge is not so limited, I am still hopeful. As playwright and former Czech Republic President, Vaclav Havel has written, “Either we have hope within us, or we don’t. It is a dimension of the soul…Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

Hopefully yours,

Rev. Mary Karen Brown
Retired United Methodist minister

You Can't Be Neutral On A Moving Train! Thank You Howard Zinn.

2010-01-30T15:15:00.000-08:00

Friends,

Judging by the State of the Union (as evidenced by current events and President Obama's recent address) the United States is indeed, as many claim, a Christian nation. This is evidenced by our devout leaders constantly calling on the protection of Our Lady of Perpetual War, the patron saint of the Military-Industrial Complex. For anyone who still harbored any hope that Obama might lead us to the Promised land, those hopes should have been soundly dashed as he uttered the words "national security" during his State of the Union address. He essentially sealed the coffin on people's hopes of "change we can believe in", if by that we think of reducing the role of the military (and its associated spending), increasing humanistic diplomacy and foreign assistance, and increasing spending on "entitlements" such as education, health care, social security and critical infrastructure.

Of course, it would be too easy to blame Obama for this entire mess, but he is really just another in a long line of Presidents, each of whom has continued building this house of cards for most of our nation's history. We should know that we cannot rely on Presidents to change a system over which even they now have little real control. Nearly every member of Congress is beholden to one or more corporate interests. Many, if not most, of those in other important positions in Washington got there through the revolving governmental-corporate doors. And now, the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, with which we bestow the ultimate care of those documents on which our nation's foundation rests, have given away the farm (or should I say "foundation" to corporate, moneyed interests.

It should be obvious to each of us now that the people's interests mean little to those in whom we have given far too much of our trust. It should be evident that we cannot trust our elected leaders to make sound decisions without our oversight and involvement. And it should be obvious that we cannot trust what our elected (and appointed) leaders tell us because, as journalist I.F Stone used to tell journalism students, "GOVERNMENTS LIE." These were, according to Stone, the only two words they needed to remember from their time with him.

Although Stone was speaking to students of journalism, those two words apply to every citizen. We must question everything presented by our government, and test it for truth. To do so requires more than just critical thinking skills; it requires a depth of knowledge of history, and not just the history that we are commonly taught in school (the history that is written by the victors) but the history beneath the thin veneer of the party line.

The recent death of historian Howard Zinn made me realize how few historians have dared to challenge (as did Zinn) the historical status quo that gives students a single, homogenous narrative that holds up a system that works to sustain itself rather than the spiritual, physical and economic well-being of its people. Of course, the writing of history is not a purely objective undertaking. As Zinn himself admits,

I knew that a historian (or a journalist, or anyone telling a story) was forced to choose, out of an infinite number of facts, what to present, what to omit. And that decision inevitably would reflect, whether consciously or not, the interests of the historian. (source: A People's History of the United States)

What is unique about Zinn is that he was much more than a mere historian; he believed that he could help people (particularly his history students) be:

not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This of course, was a recipe for trouble. (from: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train)

In testing what we are told, or what we read about historical or current events, we must hold them up to a strong, critical light and test them for truth, using all the tools at our disposal. And then, it is up to each of us to decide what we do with that information that we derive from such a critical analysis. It may seem daunting to even begin to stand up to a system dominated by military power, corporate wealth and an antiquated political system, but we should always remember that we have power, should we choose to exercise it. In his book, A People's History..., Zinn closes with the last lines from a poem by Shelley, written after the massacre carried out by the British government at Peterloo, Manchester in 1819. Even without rest of the poem (which is powerful) these word carry Zinn's message:

'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.'

Indeed - We are many, they are few. Let us (as Zinn said) not only be better informed, but use that knowledge to speak out against injustice and for a better world. There is strength in our numbers if we choose to be in solidarity. As Zinn's book says, "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train", particularly one that is heading for disaster. We can get this train on a different (and sustainable) track. Thank you Howard Zinn. We will miss you, but your works live on!

Peace,

Leonard

No More Military Bases, or Stop The Empire; I Want to Get Off!

2010-01-14T13:02:00.000-08:00

Friends,

As I contemplate the pending anniversary of the birth of one of the great peacemakers of our time, Martin Luther King Jr., I find myself replaying portions of his powerful speeches and sermons in my head. From racism to materialism to militarism (the three evils), Dr. King spoke truth to power in such a deep and compelling way that he raised the spirits of countless members of the downtrodden masses while simultaneously striking fear and hatred into the stony hearts of racists and militarists. He warned us of the folly of our actions, but gave us hope that we might conquer these three evils, if only we would not lose sight of the core value of love and its associated nonviolence. Of course, it was more complex than that, but that is the heart of it.

Today, nearly 42 years after Dr. King's death, we are still struggling to learn the hard lessons of love and nonviolence. If U.S. military spending is any indicator, we have certainly not learned any lessons. Based on government figures, the U.S. has (based fiscal year 2003) 6000 military bases in the U.S. and protectorates, and 702 bases overseas in roughly 130 countries. This doesn't even begin to count U.S. bases in Iraq, Afghanistan and a number of other countries; one well researched article cited the probable total of overseas bases as closer to 1000.

Perhaps 7000 military bases wouldn't be such a big deal if people in the U.S. weren't staggering under the crushing weight of a crippled economy, failing educational system, a health care system that is causing far more deaths each month than terrorists have wrought, and the list goes on... But we, the U.S. taxpayers, are shelling out well over 50% of our tax dollars to keep this military leviathan operating, even while our nation's infrastructure (both physical and human) crumbles.

But wait - What's this??? The U.S. wants to build another base??? The U.S. Navy is planning to build a base on Jeju Island (known as the Island of Peace), South Korea (roughly 500 miles south of the Korean Peninsula). According to Bruce Gagnon, the "US will be jointly using the Navy base with the South Korean Navy as a port to deploy Aegis ships that will be used to help surround the coast of China and to give the US the capability to choke off China's ability to import 80% of its oil through the Malaka Straight that flows right off Jeju Island." Hmm... Gunboats without the diplomacy?

Besides the serious environmental effects of construction and operation of the base on the island and surrounding waters (and sensitive coral reefs), Gagnon believes that the base would be a "provocative, dangerous base that makes Jeju Island a target. It makes the island of peace, not an island of peace, but an island of power projection for the US empire… Especially a place that sees itself as a tourist destination to have a military base that would clearly be a target for the Chinese."

Dr. King once said that, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom." It is time to stop the military madness that is dragging our nation towards economic and spiritual collapse. We cannot afford the (economic, diplomatic, and spiritual) costs of this ever expanding empire.

SAY NO to more military bases. SAY NO to the Navy's plan for Jeju Island. Bruce Gagnon has tirelessly worked to support the people of Jeju Island who are resisting the plan to build the new base.

Bruce Gagnon has written an APPEAL TO STOP NAVY BASE CONSTRUCTION ON JEJU ISLAND, SOUTH KOREA. Here is the text:

We, the undersigned global organizations and individuals, call upon the South Korean and US governments to cancel all plans to build a Navy base on Jeju Island. The base will destroy coral reefs that have been listed as world heritage environmental sites by the UNESCO and will destroy the fishing and way of life of the people.

The deployment of naval Aegis destroyers, outfitted with missile defense systems, will be used to surround and provoke China and will make Jeju Island a prime target.

Jeju is called the peace island and must remain free of provocative military bases.

Please send an email stating your support for the appeal - with your name, city, state, and organization (if any) - to globalnet@mindspring.com.

Get your family, friends and co-workers to sign on as well. What better way to honor Dr. King's memory and help the people of Jeju Island, than by resisting militarism. We choose PEACE.

Leonard

Real Faith... Real Action... Real Peacemakers

2010-01-12T21:51:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,

I have been at a loss for what to write to begin the new year. Everyone else has already looked back on 2009 as well as the entire past decade. No matter how one attempts to focus, it is all pretty nauseating. And so we approach a new year filled with extraordinary challenges. In the U.S. we face an ever growing Military Industrial Complex fueled by the continuing Global War on Terror, a cancerous Financial Predatory Complex fueled by supersized influxes of cash and superficial regulation, and an Energy/Corporate Industrial Complex that is still using resources (and spewing carbon dioxide) as if there is no tomorrow.

And of course, that's what it's all about - tomorrow. It's about how each of us can sleep at night knowing that we are preparing to leave future generations a legacy of endless war, bankruptcy (both moral and financial) and environmental degradation on a scale we can scarcely imagine. And therein lies the rub; we desparately need our imaginations to be able to envision something better for both ourselves and future generations. We need to ask ourselves the question, "Will our children one day thank us or curse us for having brought them into this world?"

This is a time for perserverance; forget the cynicism and pessimism. There is serious work to be done in the coming year; the words of theologian, philosopher, educator, civil rights leader and author, Howard Thurman come to mind:

When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and princes are home, When the shepherds are back with their flock, The work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among others, To make music in the heart.

I will leave it to each of you to dig deep within to find your place in this picture. For now, I will leave you with a story of a peacemaker I recently had the pleasure to meet.

If you drive (or walk) by the corner of Second Avenue and Madison in downtown Seattle, Washington on any tuesday between 11:00am and 1:00pm, you will see a group of people standing with signs conveying a variety of peace and justice messages. You will also see a display of photos of every U.S. soldier (from Washington State) who has been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. If you stop at the information table you can write postcards to your Senators asking them to stop funding both these wars. And if you stick around long enough you may have the pleasure of meeting Joe Colgan, the person behind (and in the middle of) this vigil.

Joe Colgan, and his wife Patricia are long-time peace activists. From vigils protesting the white trains delivering nuclear warheads to the local Trident nuclear submarine base in Kitsap County in the 1970s to peace and justice work with neighbors and Catholic parishes in South King County in subsequent years, the Colgans have a deep committment to peace and justice for all.

This is not, however, the whole story. Joe and Patricia have raised eight children. One of them, Ben, enlisted in the Army, became a First Lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, and was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on November 1, 2003, at age 30. And now, the Colgans "hold a much more personal vigil" (as my friend Jean Sundborg described it) every Tuesday in downtown Seattle. Joe pulls up a little before 11:00, and a few faithful regulars help unload all the gear. Besides the regulars, others show up from time to time to join in; everyone is welcome.

Joe Colgan faithfully stands on the corner of Second and Madison each week, both as a vigil to honor his son Ben and as a way to speak out for peace and justice. Both require strength and courage, which Joe has in abundance. Here is an excerpt from Joe's guest column in the Seattle Times, published November 21, 2007; it gives a glimpse into the deep, nonviolent roots of Joe's journey:

As a Catholic, am I wrong in my understanding that nonviolence, for Christians and all people of goodwill, is not merely tactical behavior but a person's way of being? It is the attitude and stance of one who is convinced of God's love and power and who is not afraid to confront evil with the weapons of love and truth alone.

Joe goes on to say that, "Those weapons of love and truth must be more than just words." And so, he puts his feet to the pavement - one might say putting his faith into action - and presents a model for us all. If you happen to be in the vicinity of Second and Madison some Tuesday, drop by and meet Joe and company. There are always extra signs in case you decide to join the vigil. And don't forget to sign a postcard.

Keeping the Faith in 2010,

Leonard

View all

Get your own

Click here to read the article about Joe, written by Jean Sundborg, in the July 2009 Ground Zero for Nonviolent Action Newsletter. Thanks to Jean's article for much of the material in this post.

PEACE ON EARTH

2009-12-24T20:06:00.000-08:00

Photograph by Zsolt Szigetvary/epa/ CORBIS; NationalGeographic.com: Some 2,000 antiwar protesters with torches form a peace symbol at Heroes Square in Budapest, Hungary, in 2005. The event marked the second anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Advent Meditation: Born into the Empire

2009-12-18T14:15:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,

These are dark days, both literally and figuratively; the days continue to shorten in the northern hemisphere as we near the winter solstice, and injustice continues to plague much of the world thanks to leaders with little foresight (or insight). At times like this I look for light, wherever I may find it, particularly fellow peacemakers both living and dead.

As President Barack Obama continues to wield the still mighty sword of the fading empire I find myself referring to Martin Luther King Jr's Beyond Vietnam speech as a meditation on the parallels of the U.S. of the 1960's with the U.S. of today; and the parallels are striking. They are so striking that one could easily take Dr. King's Beyond Vietnam speech, originally delivered at the Riverside Church, New York, NY, on April 4, 1967, and change key words like Vietnam with Afghanistan, and some of the dollar amounts when referring to the cost of the war, and the speech would resonate as if it had been written today.

One reason that the Beyond Vietnam speech resonates as clearly today as it did over 42 years ago is that it is a speech about empire, and we have been living through empires since Biblical times. Jesus, that revolutionary Jew, lived in the time of empire, and was one of its victims. Today, the victims of the empire are many, and are being decimated to feed the machinery of the massive, military-industrial complex that feeds on the blood of its victims.

Many of us now realize that those in positions of political power, for the most part, will not solve problems such as poverty, war and global warming. We have seen for far too long that powerful interests - financial, industrial and military - are far too deeply embedded in political structures to allow politicians to exercise the will or needs of the people.

And so today babies are being born into an empire just as a baby was born just over 2000 years ago, and each of those children will have the potential to grow into fully functioning human beings, and perhaps into nonviolent revolutionaries with prophetic voice, challenging the structures of power, and leading others to build a world where peace and justice reign.

Dr. King was one of those nonviolent revolutionaries and prophetic voices; he was one of the greatest human rights leaders of all time. By 1967 Dr. King had become one of the country’s most prominent opponents of the Vietnam War as well as a staunch critic of overall United States foreign policy. In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, Dr. King made a significant leap from fighting for civil rights for African-Americans to morally challenging U.S. dominion over the rest of the world. The “Beyond Vietnam” speech resonates as strongly today as it did then.

Here is a variation on that speech, in a rare audio recording, delivered sometime soon after he gave the full speech at the Riverside Church in New York City in 1967. It is worth a listen, and I hope you will agree that it is part of his beautiful legacy that beckons each of us to continue the long struggle for peace and justice and to "go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.” Is that not also the legacy of a child born into the empire 2000 years ago???

Peace,

Leonard

Read the full text of Dr. King's Beyond Vietnam speech at the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute.

Peace Is The (Only) Way!

2009-12-14T11:13:00.000-08:00

Friends,

It was painful listening to President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. His speech requires little, if any, comment; it speaks for itself, and speaks volumes as to the hubris of this man. Here is a brief perspective written on the eve of his speech (letter to the editor published in The Seattle Times online edition); this is the unedited version.

************

On the eve of President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech I find myself wondering to whom he will donate his prize money. He doesn’t need it, and there must be countless organizations vying for the 10 million Swedish kroner.

Perhaps in light of his commitment to sending another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, the President could create a fund to help the families of those (both U.S. troops and Afghans) who will lose their lives as a result of his actions.

Of course, no amount of money can truly compensate those who will die, either U.S. or Afghanis, as a result of the hubris of misguided politicians. We can only hope that the voices for peaceful means of addressing conflict will one day (soon) drown out the cacophony of militarism that has led us to this tragic state.

The President might take a lesson from a previous Nobel Peace Prize winner, Martin Luther King Jr. who (in 1964) was considered by the Nobel Committee to be, “the first person in the Western world to have shown us that a struggle can be waged without violence.”

As A.J. Muste once said, “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.”

May each of us continue to remind President Obama (and all who seek to justify war) of Muste's wisdom.

Peace,

Leonard

Note: Since writing this post, John Dear wrote a response to Obama's speech in his column On the Road to Peace titled, Obama's Nobel War Speech. It is well worth reading!

Nobel: Peace IS the Prize

2009-12-07T22:28:00.000-08:00

Friends,

On the eve of President Obama's trip to Oslo, Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, we would all do well to consider the context of the President's acceptance of this auspicious award. We (in the United States) are living an Orwellian nightmare (albeit a subtle one) that, much like Orwell's 1984, involves perpetual war, pervasive governmental surveillance, public mind control (propaganda), the voiding of the rights of citizens, and of course doublethink and doublespeak. Yes - war is peace and peace is war. Thank you Big Brother. And thank you, President Obama, for perpetuating the status quo of the previous eight years.

The Nobel Committee, in its infinite wisdom, awarded this year's prize to President Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." I have not yet ascertained what the committee was smoking when it made its decision, but as I listened to the President speak from West Point to convince the American people and the world that sometimes you have to destroy a village to save it, I was sickened by the falseness of his speech (and of his presidency so far).

Whatever Obama might one day become, he is a long way from becoming a peacemaker as he authorizes more soldiers to fight what has now become his war. I find myself thinking back to another African American who truly deserved his Nobel Peace Prize. Martin Luther King Jr. received the prize in 1964, and the only similarity between Dr. King and Barack Obama is the color of their skin. Dr. King was a peacemaker; he lived and breathed nonviolence in his words and actions. He moved mountains without firing a single shot, and definitely without hurting or killing a single human being.

Dr, King's Nobel acceptance speech, given on December 10, 1964 in Oslo, reflected his deep faith and life's work. Here are some highlights:

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history.

I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him.

I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.

I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow.

I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men.

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.

I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. "And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid."

I still believe that We Shall overcome!

Gunnar Jahn, Chairman of the Nobel Committee, in the 1964 presentation speech, said that Dr. King "is the first person in the Western world to have shown us that a struggle can be waged without violence... Today we pay tribute to Martin Luther King, the man who has never abandoned his faith in the unarmed struggle he is waging, who has suffered for his faith, who has been imprisoned on many occasions, whose home has been subject to bomb attacks, whose life and the lives of his family have been threatened, and who nevertheless has never faltered."

Perhaps that statement sums up the contrasts between the lives of these two people - one who faithfully lived out the life of gospel nonviolence, and one who lives the politically expedient (and astute) life; one a peacemaker, and the other a politician.

Let us hope that as President Obama stands in the Oslo City Hall, he will be humbled by the collective spirits of previous Nobel Peace Prize laureates, and will be moved to reconsider how, as recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and President of the United States, he can earn the right to the prize and move the world towards real peace. Wouldn't that be a greater goal than getting elected to a second term?

After all - Peace IS the Prize!

Peace,

Leonard

P.S. - You can read the Nobel Laureates' Final Conference Statement from this year's World Summit of Nobel Laureates in my November 30th Nuclear Abolitionist Blog post.

References:

Nobel Peace Prize 1964 (where you can read Dr. King's entire acceptance speech as well as his Nobel lecture.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University

Bhopal: 25 Years Later, and Still No Justice

2009-12-03T11:37:00.000-08:00

Friends,
Shortly after midnight on December 3rd, 1984, more than 40 tons of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from Union Carbide Corporation’s (UCC) pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. Between 8,000 and 10,000 people exposed to the deadly gas died that night, and at least 520,000 people (exposed to MIC from that release) suffered (and still suffer) significant illness and premature death. Even subsequent generations suffer due to continuing exposure to chemicals from the abandoned plant that have contaminated soil and groundwater.

UCC discontinued operation of its Bhopal plant following the disaster and essentially abandoned it. The plant continues to leak a variety of chemicals and heavy metals into the soil and local drinking (groundwater) water supplies. Recent samples of water and soil (in two separate studies) from inside the factory as well as water samples from up to 3 kilometers from the accident site showed elevated levels of a number of chemicals. One of those studies found a "chemical cocktail" in the local drinking water supply, in which the carcinogen, carbon tetrafluoride, was found at a concentration "2,400 times the World Health Organization's guidelines."

Although UCC still claims the accident was caused by sabotage, objective evidence shows that all the factors causing the accident demonstrate UCC’s negligence. The paper trail going back months before the disaster shows a blatant disregard for the safety and health of chemical plant workers and the surrounding community. The company had cut costs dramatically and laid off a third of its workforce (due to poor sales), and had shut down a number of critical plant safety features that would have prevented the disaster.

Through some very clever maneuvering, UCC’s shareholders and top executives reaped bountiful profits – UCC is now owned by Dow Chemical – while keeping a significant portion of UCC’s assets out of reach of the victims of the disaster. Now that's some clever corporate conniving$$$

It has been 25 years since the tragic accident at Bhopal, and because of corporate greed and arrogance, and inaction on the part of the Indian government, the people of Bhopal continue to suffer. Besides a variety of chronic ailments including "some of India's highest rates of gall bladder and esophageal cancers," babies born with serious birth defects are "10 times more common than the national average."

The accident at the UCC pesticide plant was a crime in and of itself. But the far greater crime was the utter contempt shown by the people running UCC, as well as Dow Chemical, which now owns UCC, by leaving the plant to rot and continue to destroy the lives of human beings who have no other place to go and no other source of drinking water. This is the story of the ultimate lack of humanity of the corporate machine. No matter what agreement is claimed between Dow and the Indian government, the chemical company is responsible to clean up its mess.

It is not too late to clean up the toxic legacy left behind by Union Carbide in Bhopal. We can call on Andrew Liveris, Chairman and CEO of Dow Chemical to demonstrate moral and corporate responsibility by fully decontaminating the site and surrounding groundwater, removing all remaining chemicals, cooperating fully with those assessing health and environmental effects, and making full reparations for health and environmental effects. Meanwhile, they could provide the residents with safe drinking water!!!

Click here to learn more and send an email to Mr. Liveris (courtesy of Amnesty International).

The people of Bhopal have endured this toxic legacy for 25 years and still there is no justice. We can advocate to help bring an end to their suffering so they can begin to rebuild their lives and their community.

Peace (and Justice),

Leonard
REFERENCES:

Bhopal: The victims are still being born, in The Independent, November 29, 2009.

Bhopal water still toxic 25 years after deadly gas leak, study finds, Guardian.co.uk, December 1, 2009

Bhopal’s Water Still Toxic 25 Years After Chemical Disaster, Circle of Blue WaterNews, December 1, 2009

MORE READING:

The Night Bhopal Was Poisoned In Its Sleep, Tehelka, April 5, 2008

Air, Water, Earth And The Sins Of The Powerful, Tehelka, April 5, 2008

A Tale of Laughter and Wickedness, Tehelka, September 27, 2007

Afghanistan: Everything's Coming Up Poppies

2009-12-02T14:18:00.000-08:00

Friends,

If you heard President Obama's speech yesterday, you may have had to ingest a massive quantity of antidepressants (as I might have had they been available). I cannot even begin, nor would I bother, to address the endless rhetoric of that speech. At any rate, I woke up this morning and realized that nothing had changed overnight, or over the past 8, or should I say nearly 48 years (since Eisenhower's farewell speech warning us of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. In the struggle between militarism and peace, militarism has bulldozed any hopes for a peacful solution to the intractable situation the U.S. has created in Afghanistan.

It would seem that the massive war machine has, like the creatures in some zombie movie, taken over the President's mind, and destroyed any ability to understand the folly of his actions. Aljazeera sums it up for us:

Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai, a former prime minister of Afghanistan, expressed disappointment with Obama's speech and his strategy. "Sending more troops is not the solution to the Afghan crisis," he said. "I was expecting Obama to announce the withdrawal of 30,000 troops within two months but unfortunately, he did the opposite which will increase killings of both Americans and Afghans." And reacting to Obama's announcement by email, a Taliban spokesman told Al Jazeera that they were pleased with the decision to send more US soldiers. "More troops just means a larger target for us to hit ... by increasing its forces in Afghanistan, Obama is just giving more power to the Mujahideen to recruit and receive the support of the civilian population." (Afghans react to Obama troop plan, Aljazeera, December 2, 2009)

But hey, the President has it all figured out, so don't worry. In honor of his speech, let's take a brief intermission and listen to his new theme song, Everything's Coming Up Roses (perhaps it can be re-written: Everything's Coming Up Poppies) by the legendary Rosemary Clooney.

Listen to Everything's Coming Up Roses

O.K. - Now we can get back to business, and the business of the day is putting a stop to this madness called escalation. It isn't over yet; Congress still has to approve the President's request. Of course many in Congress are ready to shout "AYE!!!" when it comes to a vote, but we the people still have a say in the matter (even if we don't have huge funding behind us like the defense industry lobby), and I hope we will all shout "NAY!!!" at the top of our collective lungs. Let's push this to the top of Congress' agenda and pressure them to debate the issue and put it to a vote.

CLICK HERE to learn more and email your representative at Just Foreign Policy. And then ask your family, friends and people on the street to do the same.

Just one tiny comment on the President's speech. Here is what he said towards the end: "But as we end the war in Iraq and transition to Afghan responsibility, we must rebuild our strength here at home. Our prosperity provides a foundation for our power. It pays for our military. It underwrites our diplomacy. It taps the potential of our people, and allows investment in new industry. And it will allow us to compete in this century as successfully as we did in the last." As the underpinnings of the U.S. economy continue to unravel, prosperity becomes a pipe dream. Even as over 50% of our tax dollars are spent on the military, that does not come close to the actual costs, and we drive ourselves (and future generations) deeper into debt. One of the experts on Public Radio this morning was asked about funding the escalation, and as he spoke of how we will just have to find the money, he also said that we will "have to cut some luxuries." I didn't know there were any luxuries left. Perhaps he was referring to "luxuries" like education, health care, diplomacy and the environment.

We will NEVER "rebuild our [economic or moral] strength here at home" until the day that we spend more on true diplomacy and foreign assistance (as well as programs of social uplift here in the U.S.) than we spend on the military.

Peace,

Leonard

Readings for Perspective:

Afghans react to Obama troop plan, Aljazeera, December 2, 2009

Face down the militarists and get out of Afghanistan. No strings attached, Guardian.co.uk, November 17, 2009 (opinion piece from a British point of view)

Afghanistan - Time to take to the streets!

2009-11-25T22:10:00.000-08:00

Friends,

If you were on a game show and were asked how many more troops are needed to "win" the war in Afghanistan, would you answer, a)20,000, b)40,000, c)80,000, or would you rephrase the question, providing an option of ending the war, gradually pulling out the troops, sending real humanitarian aid, and ending the corrupt rule of the warlords and druglords?

Based on the U.S. (and "allied") experience to date, it is evident that the past eight years in Afghanistan have been a miserable failure in every way. We have pillaged the U.S. Treasury to conduct an illegitimate occupation that has left Afghnanistan a mess, fed a corrupt government, created a strong insurgency (and Taliban), and thoroughly destabilized the region (e.g. Pakistan). So what's a president to do???

Go for the photo op! Stand up at the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) flanked by sharp, young cadets (a strong military symbol) and remind the nation of his promise the week before to "finish the job" someone else started eight years prior. Well, it was a lousy job to begin with (you can't build a house without a decent plan), and this house is destined to collapse before it's completed.

Increased military operations in Afghanistan will only serve to sell the ranks of the extremists, and fighters will continue to join up from not only inside the country, but also from countries like Kashmir, Uzbekistan, Chechnya and Turkey. We should heed the words of Canadian Major-General Andrew Leslie who said, "Every time you kill an angry young man overseas, you're creating fifteen more who will come after you."

It is time to stand up, take to the streets and make our voices heard over the drums of war.  Short of a national strike (don't count on that), there will be responses planned in many cities across the United States. Check the Veterans for Peace Website for their Call to Action Against Afghanistan Troop Increase.

Find an event, call as many friends as you can, and get out and protest (nonviolently of course).  Bring signs and banners. Get some musicians out there. Let's raise our voices for PEACE, because war is NOT the answer. And once we're done with that, we can get back to educating our members of Congress and the public about what we should be doing in Afghanistan (more on that in a subsequent post).

Peace (and Happy Thanksgiving),

Leonard

We still need to flood The White House (and Congress) with phone calls telling the President to NOT send any more troops to Afghanistan. The toll free number for The White House is 1-888-310-8637. You can find phone numbers for your Representatives by clicking here.

Afghanistan - Finding Our Humanity

2009-11-19T12:06:00.000-08:00

Friends,

Into the ninth year of the Afghanistan occupation, and the numbers of dead U.S. soldiers keep ticking off - 800, 801, 802... 850 (as of 11/19, source: icasualties.org). Each of these numbers has a face, and if you live in the U.S., you have very likely seen photos published in your local newspaper of soldiers from your state who died in Afghanistan (or Iraq). Each loss is tragic, and as Howard Zinn once said, "every one of them was a person who deserved to live a full and successful and happy life. You see what was lost." He was speaking of how, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, no effort was spared to put a human face on the story of those who died in those horrific attacks, not so much to remember each of the victims, but to stoke the fires of support for the Bush administration's plans to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. But that statement applies to the loss of Afghan lives no less than the victims of 9/11 or U.S. soldiers.

Instead of embracing our humanity and mourning the loss of lives, the faces (of 9/11 victims) were lost to us in a whirlpool of powerful symbols of U.S. dominance and power in which we were drawn into the blood lust for revenge. In that revenge we have caused the loss of lives of Afghans well beyond the numbers of U.S. and coalition lives lost. But we (the Pentagon) do not keep a count of Afghanis killed in our occupation of their country, and rarely do we see the faces of their dead (or wounded). The people of Afghanistan have faces too, and if we could see the faces of all the innocent men, women AND children killed, maimed or blinded, perhaps our own humanity would overwhelmingly take over, making us take to the streets to say, "ENOUGH KILLING!"

As President Obama prepares to announce his decision regarding the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, I hope that each of us will dig deep within to find our humanity, and choose to speak out and let the President know that it is time to stop the killing and create a just foreign policy related to Afghanistan (and the rest of the world). There are many voices screaming at the President, advising him on what he should do in Afghanistan; to whom will he listen??? Will he find his humanity???

Call the White House today (Toll Free 1-888-310-8637, courtesy of Peace Action) and tell the President - NO MORE TROOPS! Humanity can't wait! What are you waiting for? Get on the phone! It's much more powerful than an email (you may have to wait on the line just a bit). And tell everyone you know to call!

Be prepared, however, to be disappointed by the President's announcement. He may very well call for a surge of troops should he neglect to heed the lessons of history (of both Afghanistan and Vietnam). Be prepared to take to the streets. Check out Veterans for Peace CALL TO ACTION for more information.

Hoping (and Working) for PEACE,

Leonard

Photo Credit: A wounded Afghan boy lies on a hospital bed in Kandahar September 29, 2009.

(REUTERS/Stringer). Associated article: No Refuge For Afghan Victims of Violence, in CommonDreams.org, October 26, 2009

Read Howard Zinn's thought provoking article, The Others, in The Nation, January 24, 2002.

Malalai Joya - Speaking Truth to Power

2009-11-14T00:11:00.000-08:00

Friends,

When you sit down in a church to hear an author on a book tour, and her bodyguard, who served two tours in Iraq (that in itself is a story***), reminds everyone that there have been five attempts on the author's life and that if "anything happens", you should get down as low as possible, and by all means do not block the center aisle since that is where he will take her to get her out as fast as possible, you know you are in for an interesting evening. That was my introduction to Malalai Joya, who has been called (among other things) "the most dangerous woman in Afghanistan."

Malalai was in Seattle this week as part of her U.S. book tour, and my wife and I were fortunate to be able to hear her passionate plea on behalf of the Afghan people. Her book, A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice, co-written with Derrick O'Keefe, is much more than her story. It is the story of the plight of the Afghan people, a people who have engaged in a long struggle for autonomy in a world where nations with (too much) power far too often intervene in other less powerful nations' affairs and exert control over them. For the Afghans it has been (over the past couple centuries) the empires of the British, the Soviets and finally the United States (aided by its allies).

As Malalai says in the introduction to her book, "In Afghanistan, democratic-minded people have been struggling for human and women's rights for decades. Our history proves that these values cannot be imposed by foreign troops. As I never tire of telling my audiences, no nation can donate liberation to another nation. These values must be fought for and won by the people themselves. They can only grow and flourish when they are planted by the people in their own soil and watered by their own blood and tears."

As President Obama considers how many more troops to send to Afghanistan he would be wise to listen to Malalai. Those words from her introduction apply universally, and could just as easily have been referring to the American Revolution.  But we in the U.S. are poor students of history, and are easily manipulated by the massive, grinding machinery of greed, power and war.

The truth about Afghanistan (and the Afghan people) has been shrouded by smoke and mirrors, by the political doublespeak of our nation's leaders, and mostly parroted by the corporate press. That ugly truth is that since 9/11 and the initial toppling of the Taliban from power, there has been no justice, no democracy, and no women's rights.

You might wonder why there have been death threats and assassination attempts on Malalai's life. While in a near democracy like the U.S., we have constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech, in a nation ruled by warlords, drug lords, fundamentalists and the U.S.-backed puppet government of Hamid Karzai, it is more than dangerous to speak the truth; it is virtual suicide. And yet, this brave woman refuses to compromise. She speaks truth to power, and hopes that the world will listen (and act).

Malalai holds up the truth like a bright light we cannot avoid. She quoted an Afghan saying: "The truth is like the sun: when it comes up nobody can block it out or hide it," and as she said the other night, "No superpower can even block its light." Her hope is that her story will (and I paraphrase) keep that sun shining and inspire each of us to "work for peace, justice and democracy."

Malalai lays out what the outside World can do to help Afghanistan, and makes it clear that foreign governments (starting with the U.S.) "must be pressured by their people" to make these things happen. The key elements in what she calls "The Long Road Ahead" (Chapter 14) are "End the War, Send Real Humanitarian Aid, Put an End to the Rule of the Warlords," and "Withdraw All Foreign Troops." Her reasoning for each of these steps is compelling. You will have to (and should) read the book for the details. It is eye opening!

In the U.S. we must start by pressuring the President and Congress NOW to send no more troops, and create an exit strategy.  Take action at the links in the "Actions" section at the top of this blog, and if you are able, use the phone instead of emailing your messages. A phone call has a much greater impact than email.

Get out and protest. One major protest coming up (according to Malalai's coauthor, Derrick O'Keefe) will be on February 15, 2010 when there will be a huge protest in Vancouver during the Olympics against the war in Afghanistan. It will take place 30 years after the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics initiated by President Jimmy Carter targeting the 1979 Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.

Help the Afghan people directly$$$$$. Little of the $7 million a day (the U.S. spends $100 million a day for the war) in international aid for reconstruction reaches those in need; it lines the pockets of corrupt politicians, warlords and drug lords. We can help get money to small projects run by Afghans that actually benefit the people. The Afghan Women's Mission works with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) providing health, educational, and other programs for Afghan women. RAWA is the oldest political/social organization of Afghan women struggling for peace, freedom, democracy and women's rights in fundamentalism-blighted Afghanistan since 1977.

All of us engaged in the struggle for peace and justice know that it is our coming together in solidarity that makes us strong, and as Malalai says at the end of her book in referring to the struggle of justice for Afghanistan, "It will be a long struggle. A river is made drop by drop. But if we can unite for justice and democracy, our people will be like a flood that no one can stop."

May each of us contribute to that flood.

Peace,

Leonard

***More Than a Footnote: Malalai's bodyguard during her visit to Seattle, James Dahl, served two tours in Iraq, was shot, stabbed, and blown up.  The second roadside bomb sent him back to the U.S. where he spent a long recovery at Madigan Army Hospital, Fort Lewis. His head injury was so severe that the doctors did not believe he would ever even remotely approach normal functioning. He proved them wrong. He now provides security for people at the rate of $1000 per day. After spending one day with Malalai and hearing her speak, James was so moved that he provided security for her during her entire visit at no charge.
Further Reading: U.S. Is Doing No Good in Afghanistan, by Malalai Joya, published in San Jose Mercury News on Tuesday, November 10, 2009