The Ghosts of Jeju

THE PAST

Jeju Island is known as the "Island of World Peace," a name that does not begin to tell the story of the Island's extensive history of conflict, occupation, repression and genocide. The most horrific episode in this history began in 1948 when the South Korean military and national police hunted down and slaughtered approximately 30,000 people. The U.S., which was the occupying power at the time, was directly responsible what is now known as the April 3 massacre.

Why did the government do such a horrific thing? 1948 was a tumultuous time of establishing two governments in Korea. The people of Jeju Island rose up to protest the long-term division of the nation by boycotting the elections that were occurring in Seoul. For this they were branded as Communists, and the terror began.

For decades following the massacre, public discussion of the April 3 massacre was ruthlessly repressed. Following democratization, the slow and painful process of fact finding and truth telling began, and continues today. In 2003, South Korean President Noh Moo Hyun travelled to Jeju Island and officially apologized.

THE PRESENT

Now, over 60 years after the April 3 massacre the people of Jeju Island are once again protesting. This time they are protesting the U.S. Missile Defense System and a provocative new naval base being built on their island. Why??? If you look at a map of Jeju

Island, you can see that it lies about 500 kilometers East of the Chinese mainland. This military base is intended to project force towards China and to provide a forward operating installation in the event of a military conflict between the U.S. and China. Ironically, from a military strategic standpoint, this base is totally unnecessary and a tragic waste of money that should be spent on human needs.

For years, South Korean activists have been protesting the plans for the new naval base on Jeju Island. During that time the response by the South Korean police and military has become more heavy-handed and brutal. Col. Anne Wright (former United States Army colonel and retired official of the U.S. State Department) reported at one point that "police broke arms of activists who had locked arms inside PCV pipes, beat up activists and threw them from kayaks."

THE FUTURE???

The ghosts of Jeju cry out for recognition and righting of the wrongs perpetrated long ago.  Yet, the hubris of the National Security State (that was responsible for the original crimes) continues to create yet a new generation of crimes.  The difference is that today's crimes could lead to disaster not only for the people of Jeju Island, but for the entire region and the rest of the world.  The "Island of World Peace" could literally be reduced to a pile of ash and rubble in a major conflict.

TELLING THE STORY

Independent filmmaker Regis Tremblay has produced a powerful documentary about the struggle of the people of Jeju Island to stop the military madness that threatens to destroy their island. What is so powerful about this film is how it links the current struggle to the earlier atrocities in a compelling context.  Here is the what the filmmaker has to say:

A shocking documentary about the struggle of the people of Jeju Island, S. Korea. Set in the context of the American presence in Korea after World War II, the film reveals horrible atrocities at the hands of the U.S. Military Government of Korea. 

Using previously secret and classified photos, film and documents, this will be the first English-language documentary about the struggle of the brave people of Gangjeong Village who are opposing the military advance of the United States, just as their parents and relatives did in 1947. As then, they are being arrested, jailed, fined, and hospitalized for resisting the construction of a massive naval base that will accommodate America’s “pivot to Asia,” and will destroy their 400 year old village and their UNESCO protected environment. 

And yet, the indomitable spirit of the villagers and their supporters, who have not lost hope in spite of overwhelming odds, will inspire and motivate everyone who believes there is a better way to live together on this planet.

This is a story that must be told, must be heard... and its lessons applied to stop the madness that threatens the world with destruction.  There are no military solutions to our problems, and the naval base on Jeju Island is ground zero in the struggle to seek a new way.

SEE THE GHOSTS OF JEJU NOW!!!

Learn more about the documentary at the filmmaker's Website, where you can also watch the trailer. You can purchase a copy of the documentary (for just $20) and arrange screenings and subsequent conversations (and hopefully support for Jeju).

You can also learn more and support the struggle at http://savejejunow.org/ or connect via their Facebook page.

If you live around Puget Sound you will be able to see The Ghosts of Jeju and hear from the filmmaker this November.  Here are the current offerings.  Additional screenings will be posted on Puget Sound Nuclear Weapons Free Zone "EVENTS" page as they are confirmed.

Thursday, November 7, 6:00 to 8:00 PM, Seattle University 
Wyckoff Auditorium, Bannan Engineering Building East Entrance 
901 12th Avenue, Seattle
Click here for a campus map.
Sponsored by Seattle University's Asian Studies Program and Korean Student Union
This event is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

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

Friday, November 8, 2013, 7:00 to 9:30 PM at Friday Night at the Meaningful Movies
Keystone Congregational United Church of Christ 5019 Keystone Place N., Seattle
(…Please come at 6:30 and visit with your neighbors!)
WITH THE FILMMAKER, REGIS TREMBLAY!
And Co-Sponsored by VETERANS FOR PEACE
Light snacks.
Download the Flyer HERE.
FILM FOLLOWED BY A Q&A AND FACILITATED COMMUNITY DISCUSSION WITH THE FILMMAKER, REGIS TREMBLAY, AND REPRESENTATIVES FROM VETERANS FOR PEACE.
For more information on Veterans For Peace, go to: http://www.vfp92.org/
(Event is FREE and open to the public! ...but Donations are kindly accepted).

The Nonviolent Life - a new book on peacemaking

An announcement from Pace e Bene

The Nonviolent Life 
A new book on peacemaking
By John Dear

"In The Nonviolent Life, John Dear articulates a vision of the power, meaning and impact of the spiritually grounded nonviolent life—and invites us to put this into practice in both immediate and long-term ways." -Ken Butigan, author and activist

"How can we become people of nonviolence and help the world become more nonviolent? What does it mean to be a person of active nonviolence? How can we help build a global grassroots movement of nonviolence to disarm the world, relieve unjust human suffering, make a more just society and protect creation and all creatures? What is a nonviolent life?"

These are the questions John Dear—Nobel Peace Prize nominee, long time peace activist and Pace e Bene staff member—poses in this ground-breaking book. John Dear suggests that the life of nonviolence requires three simultaneous attributes: being nonviolent toward ourselves; being nonviolent to all people, all creatures, and all creation; and joining the global grassroots movement of nonviolence.

After thirty years of preaching the Gospel of nonviolence, John Dear offers a simple, original yet profound way to capture the crucial elements of nonviolent living, and the possibility of creating a new nonviolent world. According to John, “Most people pick one or two of these dimensions, but few do all three. To become a fully rounded, three dimensional person of nonviolence, we need to do all three simultaneously.” Perhaps then he suggests, we can join the pantheon of peacemakers from Jesus and Francis to Dorothy Day and Mahatma Gandhi.

In his new book, John Dear proposes a simple vision of nonviolence that everyone can aspire to. It will help everyone be healed of violence, and inspire us to transform our culture of violence into a new world of nonviolence!

John Dear is an internationally known voice for peace and nonviolence. He is a popular speaker, peacemaker, organizer, lecturer, retreat leader, and the author/editor of 30 books. He has organized and participated in nonviolent campaigns for over three decades; been arrested some 75 times in acts of civil disobedience against war and injustice; and spent nearly a year of his life in jail for peace. Recently, John was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. For further information, see www.johndear.org

To order The Nonviolent Life: Visit - www.paceebene.org P.O. Box 1891 Long Beach, CA 90801 510-268-8765 info@paceebene.org

War is Hell

Today's A picture is worth a thousand words offering...

LINKS:

Veterans for Peace: http://www.veteransforpeace.org/

National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth: http://www.nnomy.org/

NO War on Syria: Violence Begets Violence!!!

Dear Friends,

The Great Plague of violence keeps our nation on its (spiritual) death spiral as President, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Obama continues the push toward war against Syria.  And we should be clear that this would be WAR!  Call it by any other name, and it still emits the awful stench of war.

While in Oslo, Sweden on September 4th the President (aka Decider II) was asked by a Swedish reporter if he could "describe the dilemma to being a Nobel Peace Prize winner and preparing to make war on Syria?”

The President gave the expected answer - first invoking his Nobel acceptance speech, saying that "what I also described [in that speech is the challenge all of us face, when we believe in peace but we confront a world that is full of violence.” Among other things the President said that he has "made every effort to... strengthen our commitment to multilateral action, to promote diplomacy as a solution to problems."

Where are these commitments to multilateral action and diplomacy???  Where is the commitment to working with the United Nations (as is required by international law and the Constitution) in this case? Where is the diplomacy with Syria?  Above all, where is a commitment to serious nonviolent conflict resolution?

Speaking of international law, Howard Friel wrote in Common Dreams on September 5th that:

The same law—international and constitutional—that applied to the U.S. war in Vietnam and the U.S. invasion of Iraq would apply to any congressional authorization of force in Syria by the United States. 

Like Vietnam and Iraq, Syria has not engaged in an “armed attack” against the United States, and has no military capability to do so. 

As in Vietnam and Iraq, the UN Security Council has not authorized the United States to engage in any use of force in Syria. 

Thus, a congressional authorization of military force in Syria would violate the UN Charter, and thus, as above, the U.S. Constitution.  

This would be the case even if the Obama administration’s claims about the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government were accurate, although, like the Gulf of Tonkin incident and Iraqi WMD, there is no detailed or confirmed evidence to date about which entity in Syria used chemical weapons.

We The People of the United States of America must continue to say (and a vast majority of the people have said no to war on Syria) - NOT IN OUR NAME!!!  We must continue to pressure Congress (and the President) not to make war on Syria!  Let us continue to call, email, fax, get out in the streets and the offices of or members of Congress!  

Let us not rest until this madness is stopped. Let us stop the onslaught of the violence of war that will only unleash even more violence, much of which cannot be predicted (and much of it that can). Let us invoke NONVIOLENCE - the active nonviolent conflict resolution that has not even been discussed, let alone attempted, in the heat of the moment and its accusations and "red lines."

Violence will only beget more violence, and the blood of innocents will be on OUR hands.  This must not stand!  Towards peaceful, nonviolent conflict resolution.

Leonard 

Some Relevant Reading on the Syrian crisis:

• Another War Is Not the Answer (Op-Ed by David Krieger, in truth-out.org)
• Top 10 Unproven Claims for War Against Syria (by Dennis Kucinich, in Common Dreams)
• Syria: Six Alternatives to Military Strikes (by Sarah van Gelder in YES! Magazine)
• How Intelligence Was Twisted to Support an Attack on Syria (truth-out.org)
• A war the Pentagon doesn’t want (Op-Ed by Robert Scales in the Washington Post)
• US military intervention in Syria would create 'unintended consequences' (in The Guardian)
• Are Chemical Weapons Reason Enough to Go to War? (A good primer on chemical weapons in Mother Jones)
• For Syria's sake, end Iran's isolation: Iranian support to help the west bring an end to the civil war in Syria would be beyond price (The Guardian)
• Chemical Weapons in Syria (Federation of American Scientists):  
• Possible U.S. Intervention in Syria: Issues for Congress, September 3, 2013 (Congressional Research Service)
• Syria's Chemical Weapons: Issues for Congress, August 30, 2013 (Congressional Research Service)
• Syria: Overview of the Humanitarian Response, September 4, 2013

"Killer Nation": The saga continues with Syria

Dear Friends,

For the first time in (my) memory it seems that every remotely "progressive" organization under the sun is sending  emails asking people to call or email The White House and/or Congress or sign a petition calling on our government to not engage in military action against Syria.

In our age of electronic social media one would think that such an approach would have a real impact, particularly if it can engage a huge groundswell of support for diplomacy rather than war-making.  I think, however, that we are deluded if we think that this approach can have any real impact on the decision to attack Syria, a decision that (in a very real sense) has already been made long before there was talk of "chemical weapons."

Bruce Gagnon describes "war" as "the soul of our nation" in his essay published yesterday in Common Dreams (The Soul of Our Nation War).  Bruce describes our situation with direct honesty; I would only add that we must ask ourselves what has become of our nation's soul that we seem to have sold off over the course of recent decades in a Faustian bargain.

President Dwight Eisenhower said (in 1953) that "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."  When the Tomahawk missiles are launched by ships, already lining up for an attack on Syria, that theft will continue to feed the coffers of the weapons makers.

Gagnon puts it bluntly: "We have become a killer nation," addicted to war and the profits it reaps for corporations and the jobs that put food on the tables of our workers.  Even before one war ends we are already planning the next one.  We truly are losing our very soul.

I fear that petitions, calls and emails will not be nearly enough to stop the first salvos of Tomahawk missiles aimed at Syria, and the ensuing carnage.  Stopping this madness will require much more than a few keystrokes in the midst of our busy schedules.  It will require us to get out in the streets of our own communities (small or large) in mass, nonviolent protest.  

So let us call on all these same organizations (that are advocating for nonviolent conflict resolution) to organize local actions around the country to engage citizens in peaceful protests (and a general strike if necessary) to stop the machinations of war.

It is, indeed, a question of saving the very soul of our nation!

In Peace,

Leonard

###

Click here for the Veterans for Peace Action Alert on Syria!!!

URL for Bruce Gagnon's essay in Common Dreams:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/29-8

Thanks to Bruce Gagnon for sharing this political cartoon in his blog, Organizing Notes.

Bradley Manning Sentenced: A Guest Reflection on TRUTH

Editor's Note: This is a reflection on the sentencing of Bradley Manning from Mona Shaw.  It provides a deep insight into the nature of truth and the lies through which generations of people in this country have lived.  May TRUTH have the final word.  Mona's reflection appeared this morning on her Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/mona.shaw/posts/10151815963105129

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

Reflections on Bradley Manning's Sentence 

I have witnessed throughout my life one consistent truth about truth itself. The truth always comes out. Always. It's like a seedling put in the soil, no matter how deep you bury it or if you bury it upside down, the seedling will wind around until it finally finds the light of day.

One day all of the lies that are now being told by the U.S. government and the corporations who own the United States of America will be exposed. They will be exposed the same way the Small Pox blankets we wrapped around Native people were exposed, and the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments on Black Soldiers, the slave holdings of twelve American presidents, the fact that our third president was a rapist, the outrageous and unnecessary interment of Japanese American citizens in World War II, the unnecessary dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that there really is an Area 51 and on and on and on. They will know that the American Industrial Prison Complex is not about justice but about profit, places where trumped up charges are waged on the poor who cannot afford a proper defense to build America's fasting growing industry. They will know this nation was built on genocide, slavery, the abuse of working people, and imprisonment, not freedom.

People will finally know and have to face that most American wars have been waged to serve the purses of the wealthy. This has been wholly the case for the past 50 years. They will have to face that their loved ones lives were human sacrifices so the obscenely wealthy could become even wealthier, while those who struggle and work for a living earned less and less until most Americans became wage slaves barely eking out survival.

One day our great-children will know all the facts about our history. They will know who tried to speak out, and they will know what was done to those brave souls who tried to stop this endless march of tyranny. They will know about the Bradley Mannings, the Edward Snowdens, the Thomas Drakes, the William Binneys, the Kathryn Bolkovacs, the Karen Silkwoods, the Carol Dymonds, the Daniel Ellsbergs, the Frank Serpicos, the Mark Whitacres, the Coleen Rowleys, the Sherron Watkinses, the Jesselyn Radacks, the Katharine Guns, the Julia Davises, the John Kiriakous, along with hundreds, if not thousands, of others who have put their bodies on the line to expose corruption at local, state, national, and international levels. They will know what we did to these to silence them. They will know we crucified them on a cross we call Capitalism. They will know they were lied to about Capitalism itself. They will know it was a monstrous economic system created by the wealth and propagandized by the wealth to keep slavery, in one form or another, legal. They will know, and they will judge us accordingly.

They will walk to the graves of loved ones sacrificed in war and those who died from the complications of not being rich of lack of healthcare, housing, and adequate nutrition. They will know their loved ones didn't simply die. They were murdered by a plutocracy who used them like they were Kleenex.

They will know. And, all the seas over all the earth will boil out of their banks in agony when they know.

God have mercy on us all.

###

Source URL for Mona Shaw's original Facebook posting: https://www.facebook.com/mona.shaw/posts/10151815963105129