Tag Archives: Pacifism

How well is the war in Iraq going?

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Finally there is unity! The war in Iraq is not going well for the United States so say the press, the politicians, Rumsfield, even. Oh the suffering amongst the British and Americans. They did not forsee the unfolding problems. If only the Iraqis would act normal!

It’s so bad they say, you think that the American government would be suing for peace? Cut in run, don’t cut and run? How do we get out of this unfolding disaster for our beloved country? So now we are awash in crocodile tears we are. Boohoohoo. Our poor suffering America. Yes, and the entire elite spectacle is so sickening it makes one want to vomit.

And, yes, this spectacle even includes our churchly ‘peace movement’. One group of kind people, the nuns. were rushing around Colorado last week to send canned goods to the soldiers and their families. And now, the CS pacifists are beginning a countdown. Tick-tock-tick-tock. Look what’s been done to our soldiers! We are nearing the magical 3,000 mark! Time to light some candles and pray.

Oh, and let’s not forget the Iraqis, too! Mention them at the press release for when the clock strikes 3. Don’t let it strike 4! We beg of you. One would open one’s mouth to say something to them about this sad approach, but for the fact that lighting a candle or two is a major ‘peace action’ for them. They’re in motion now! So better to remain mum so that at least the ten or fifteen of them get their pictures in The Gazette and Indy as concerned folk.

All this wailing and despair. Both Democrats and Republicans are creasing their brows with worry and cold sweat. We’ve lost Iraq they moan. It’s all going so wrong! It’s become like one big sorry soap opera. Oh the agony, and Oh the guilt. We tried to do good, but we failed. Why, oh why, oh why? Maybe it was them? Yes that’s it. The Arabs cannot be trained!

All this would be way comical if it weren’t so absolutely pathetic. First all, the start of wartime didn’t begin yesterday with Bush’s invasion of Iraq. It didn’t begin with 9/11. It didn’t even begin with Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. So where do all these stupid calculations begin? The liberal churchgoing peacenics would have it all start with the number ZERO, and would have our time of great despair calculated now at 3,000. It’s very Biblical to do it that way, but it is utter nonsense. US foreign policy effecting Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq have killed millions. ‘We’ lost less than 3,000 US soldiers in this time, and all America begins to cry like babies! Jesus H. Christ! Talk about being absolutely self-centered? YES, our society definitely takes the cake!

All this hysteria proceeds from the previous nonsense we have been spoon fed. Stuff about WOMD, protecting the sovereign country of Kuwait, helping establish democracy in the Middle East, and so on for ad nauseum. Can our elderly still remember all the nonsense about what a supposedly remarkable man was the Shah of iran? I date myself here, because I certainly can. Time Magazine, and all the usual rest of the pornographic US press, loved the guy! The Shah was the world master of running a state torture regime, like the one that America’s top criminals now copy so fanatically. Back then, it was claimed in the US that he was a man ahead of his time. Oh such a teacher that Donald and his ilk had! The Shah. Oh shit! Ask the British and they will show you how it started all way before even then.

And then, the unfortunate takedown. This modern day American hero, the Shah, fell. Tears. Where did ‘we’ go wrong? Where did this modern leader go wrong? We need to arm Osama and gang to the tune of multi-billions, and make the Soviets have their own Vietnam. Osama the freedom fighter! We need to cook up a war with Iran to show them we wouldn’t let them get away with thumping our patron saint, The Shah. So America and its buddies, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia armed Saddam Hussein. Killed a million plus.

Fast forward to now. Where did Bush go wrong, The chimp? Boohoohoo. It’s a bloodbath. And we get the ‘debate’ of the press corp buffoons. Stay the course, or cut and run? Yeah, but how ’bout we all just throw up? This is not a real debate our elites are engaging in, just a charade. A country that allowed its elites to destroy the lives of millions in this stretch of ME alone, deserves to go bankrupt. And we are! Boohoohoo. How we suffer they say! We approach 3,000 of our own dead, in the midst of this shower of blood we have constructed for others, and all the press propaganda brigade can talk about is American trauma! Nauseating. The real trauma for America will come when the bill arrives in the mail, Chumps.

Let’s face it. The war is going rather well. There have been 2 main goals for Exxon Mobil, Halliburton, Lockheed, and President Cheney. Max out the profits that can be financed from the public treasury. And control the oil. These pied pipers of the Democratic and Republican politician rats are not going to ‘cut and run’. From what? They’re looking to extend the war, are they not? And for good reason. The war in Iraq is going well for them. Why not take it further? Why not make it permanent war? After all these decades of killing, the local peacenics can’t even get it together enough to get 100 people out to pray and light candles. The Iraq War is going well for the war machine. Three thousand? Oh get real, please.

The war in Iraq is going well; there is no anger in the air. Only religious pacifist good will. Feliz Navidad. When people get angry, they will not light candles and meditate. And without real anger, the bloodbath will go on.

Resolve for justice and peace in 2007

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Peace sign Christmans wreaths prevailI’d like to see 2007 bring renewed optimism for being able to fight injustice around the world. We’re seeing unprecedented rebellions on every continent, citizen’s efforts to reform the traditional mechanisms of inequality and oppression. People are protesting rigged elections, usurious banking systems, phony environmental policies, authoritarianism and outright military aggression. People are laying their lives on the line for what they believe. I’d like the people of Colorado Springs to awaken to such a call.

Colorado Springs sits in the belly of the military industrial beast. While our neighbors may cheer militarism, a rising number have also been coming to see the effects of US corporate policies in a different light. We resist our nation’s bellicosity and refuse to allow its actions being done in our name.

We face an uphill battle against a fascist media and an undereducated populace, but it would be a far cry to conclude that we will not prevail. We will prevail because we must. There is no brotherhood of man without equality and mutual respect. There is no humanity without offering our most to those in need. A life lived upon the backs of others is not worth living. Pursuit of happiness without concern for the suffering of others leads us nowhere.

If we can lead by example our efforts will have already prevailed.

Oh, Lord, not Kumbaya!

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Campfire songsMy muse is upset because everyone is making fun of Kumbaya.
 
Relax, Kumbaya is safe. The story you read in the Gazette, Oh Lord, not Kumbaya, syndicated from the Dallas Morning Herald, is a rather underhanded loaded question. You know the classic example: “When did you stop beating your wife?” Whether you never stopped or never started, the load is delivered, you do. (But you don’t.)

The DMH article asked “How did Kumbaya become such a joke?” and then lists instances of the joke being made: A GOP ad, a Christian Science Monitor quip. They are able to find an early instance in an obscure 80’s comedy Volunteers spoofing the Peace Corps. It seems to me SNL has made fun of everything, that wouldn’t make the ridicule universal.

I was tipped off when my friend paraphrased the article as having said Kumbaya was an “international joke.” What international? The rest of the world isn’t making fun of our spirituals, certainly not our peaceniks. The lambast is purely English-speaking and it’s coming from corporate mouthpieces who want to ridicule any tools of grassroots community efforts.

Television has no interest in sing-a-long songs. People singing together and not looking at the TV doesn’t serve them at all. But for people communing together, a melody and lyric like Kumbaya is very powerful, especially because everybody knows it already. When protestors assembled with Cindy Sheehan last year in Crawford, we sang Kumbaya among others. We wound up singing all the patriotic songs too because they were the only ones we all knew.

And so the media is determined to keep the heat on hippies and idealists, religious or not, by making fun of them, and concluding that the derision is universal. The press laughs with each other’s jokes and then report the humor to be statistically unanimous.

The Dallas reporter asked several etymologists “why did Kumbaya become an idiom for idiocy?” And none of the etymologists knew. Maybe that’s a tip off it isn’t.

Hopefully one day the press will stop trying to paint people who hope for peace and goodwill to all mankind as idiots.

The Silent Death

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Malachi Ritscher 1954-2006, his own obituaryI have tried to write this commentary all day, yet each time I began, depression overtook me. On November 3, less than 3 weeks ago, a man set himself ablaze in Chicago to protest the US government’s wars. In effect, he was protesting against the American people too, for allowing these wars to be continued over and over again.
 
At age 52, Malachi Ritscher certainly had seen his country repeatedly ignore the suffering that its politicians and generals were inflicting on the other peoples of the world. He had been an antiwar protester for years, and yet the American people seemed little to have changed during his lifetime.

He hoped to help change all that with the dramatic sacrifice of his life. That decision and action, as gruesome and horrible as his death certainly was, is not alone what has me depressed though. It is simply that we have failed him once again, even though through his efforts he hardly could be said to have failed others, as he tried repeatedly to change the horrible society we live in through less dramatic means.

So why have we not hear about this courageous and totally desperate act? That is quite simple. The corporate media decided to keep it secret from us. Yet word begins to leak out, and IndyMedia is now helping inform people about what was done by Malachi to try to move us out of our pathetic cynicism and apathy. Word is being whispered here and there about what Malachi did, and the secret will come back to haunt those who kept it silent.

What was the media’s excuse to hide this man’s sacrifice away from us all? Simple. They treated his protest of our society’s war making and criminality, as if it was merely the action of a suicidal madman killing himself because of personal depression. No protest there, doesn’t mean anything what he did! How sorry are they, these assholes, to decide for us the meaning of this man’s actions! How much more does it say about their own motivations, than about Malachi Ritscher’s? How sick and controlled we have become for this silence and censorship to be let stand? How sad, that even this act of setting oneself on fire, fails to move us. Or at least to move those in the corporate world that control information flow and news.

It makes me yet more ill to think that the decision to keep this man’s protest hidden from us, was made principally to not effect the US mid-term elections that were to be happening a couple of days later. How petty, how disgraceful, the real reasons and real motivation of the US media to not broadcast news of what Malachi had done to himself. Malachi took his final action out of self sacrifice, and his drive to make a statement, simply in order to try to move our country into action to stop the Iraqi madness. Keep it local, keep the meaning of it distorted, all so that Bush and his minions might fare better at the polls! That was the counter response from the media. Make Malachi look sick and deranged, instead of a very decent human being. That’s what makes me so very depressed. I’m depressed because the US seems so hopeless, and this sad event just goes to underline our societal decay, yet once again.

Malachi Ritscher posterHis friends have organized a campaign to get news of his death out to the press. Write to the local rags and see if it helps since all we can do is keep trying? It is a shame that with Malachi Ritscher gone, we have one activist less. We have one genuine human being less. We have one less person who cares about others. He tried to change things, and many of us do care. It’s just that neither our press, nor our politicians, nor our economic elites care. It is common folk like Malachi Ritscher that actually do concern themselves most often about others in the world and not just themselves. And they desperately try to find ways to make a change possible. They are the true patriots, not the war mongers.

Neighborhood fox

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Red fox chasing a mouseFox in the plural.
 
It seems almost overnight in Colorado Springs now whenever you cross the street you see red fox. As much downtown as in the foothills.
 
The first night at Camp Casey fox stole two pairs of sandals, actually the equivalent, one of each. But not before comingling everyone’s shoes in what must have been quite an indecisive dance. I woke and thought I’d missed a party.

When Eyes Wide Open visited Colorado College, it involved a geometric arrangement of nearly three thousand army boots and an equal number of civilian shoes on the green of Armstrong Quad. I was among those who stayed up to watch for vandals. But through the night the only activity we observed was that of several pairs of young red fox, making off with boots until the scent of another pair drew their interest. We’d go out every couple hours and rearrange the memorial footware, losing in the end not one.

The fox are getting rather friendly. Colorado College students report one which comes to watch the soccer games regularly. A friend of mine pet a fox, having mistaken it in the dark for something domestic until the feel of the coarse fur tempered the vigor of her stroke. Another friend thought a cat was poking its head out of a canopy and he gave it a friendly pat. They both looked at each other in surprise.

The fox are beautiful to behold running with a cadence like they are swimming on the wind, probably their fluffy tails cannot do but otherwise. If it runs like a dog, then you’ve spotted a coyote. Not even felines have such grace. To see two fox siblings running together multiplies the impression. They may be hunting along opposite sides of the street but you sense it’s the same stream. No doubt it’s a haunting sense too if you are a small rodent.

I particularly like to watch a fox negotiate traffic. He may wait for cars to pass, but more often he’ll weave through, skirting the cars, not the least bit panicked, more intent it seems on keeping in motion.

I have a pacifism problem

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Mahatma Gandhi Ghandi GandiIf a pacifist falls in the forest, does he save anybody? I do not mean in the metaphysical sense.
 
If a hundred thousand pacifists fall, out of sight from anyone to witnesses their deaths, struck down every last one by anti-pacifists, do they increase pacifism or simply deliver their own extinction? What if it’s a half a million in East Timor? Or several million in a Turkish desert? If there are no witnesses to report it, no writers to remember it, no masses to empathize, there is no outrage, no call to common humanity.

Gandhi had the accruing outrage of the British people built on a century of brutal massacres of unarmed Indians. He also benefited from an honorable free press. Both ensured that Gandhi’s non-violent actions could spark an outcry and tip the scales of social justice. The Native Americans had no such good fortune, quietly annihilated far from civilization’s eyes. The Palestinians are not faring any better, interned by the Jews, suffering the steady attrition designed into concentration camps and Indian reservations.

My problem with pacifists such as the Dalai Lama is that their goals lay in another world, the next. Their escape for the Dark Ages would have been to proceed further into darkness. The answer to getting Tibet back from the Chinese lies not in relinquishing it. Pacifism may soothe the soul and calm our anger only that it allows us a serene death. Pacifism resolves the conflicted feelings we have about losing a homestead. It will not win it back.

As the barbarians breach the gates, religious leaders always call for non-violent acquiescence. The purpose may be to die with dignity, or else it’s the hopeful belief that “they can’t kill us all.” But history has shown, from prehistory to the present, they most certainly can. Look up barbarian in the dictionary. Their savagery extends beyond the scope of human beings to imagine it. Had that feeling lately about today’s unspeakable acts? Is it beyond your comprehension that elements of mankind might be immovably barbaric?

Perhaps you are of the mind that if barbarous cockroach man dominates the earth, it will be a world in which you no longer choose to live. But be square in such case about your call to pacifism. Others may not share your abdication of responsibility to this life.

Close the School of the Americas

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Click for more pictures on SOA press conferenceDennis Apuan and Genie and Bill Durland, pictured at right, head to Fort Benning Georgia to make an annual plea to close the S. O. A. aka School of Assassins, where Central and South American military death squads are known to receive their training.

Here is the address which Dennis Apuan delivered:

Friends in the struggle,
For almost 60 years, the School of the Americas has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in tactics that are used to wage war against their own people. Courses taught at the school include counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for human rights.

Despite this targeting, large social movements throughout Latin America fight for justice and have successfully brought popular change to their countries. For 15 years, tens of thousands of people in the United States have worked in solidarity to close the SOA through a variety of means.

On November 17-19, 2006, at least three Colorado Springs residents will converge with tens of thousands on Fort Benning – one of the largest military bases in the world and home to the notorious School of the Americas – to confront injustice, to speak out for peace and to change oppressive U.S. foreign policy. This is a time of great change in our world, and justice is within our reach when we stand up in numbers too big to be ignored.

We will close this school that has created so much death and suffering.

History is made by movements – mass movements of people who organize themselves to struggle collectively for a better world. An increasing number of people have realized that U.S. government policy is out of alignment with their values. The movement for justice and against war and exploitation is growing stronger.

So many around the world continue the struggles for justice and human rights: peasants, indigenous and black communities, trade unionists and students are taking to the streets. By standing up and standing together, we can overturn any injustice. By standing up and standing together, we can change the world.

The movement to close the School of the Americas is a nonviolent force to change oppressive U.S. foreign policy as represented by institutions like the SOA. It is made up of people from many backgrounds who work towards a positive and fundamentally different alternative to the racist system of violence and domination.

We at the peace movement have been tremendously successful. The SOA issue has educated thousands about the reality of U.S. intervention in Latin America and U.S. foreign policy in general. Thousands have mobilized and engaged in nonviolent direct action. Because, as Arundhati Roy writes, “the trouble is that once you see it, you cannot unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.”

SOA Watch made history on June 9, 2006 when the House of Representatives voted on our amendment to cut funding for the SOA. Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Rep. John Lewis of Georgia introduced an amendment to the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill that would have cut funding for the notorious school.

While the amendment failed by a vote of 188 to 218, this vote was a major victory for our movement. After 6 years without a vote in Congress, we gained ground with bipartisan support for opposing the school despite the vote occurring in one of the most conservative Congresses in recent memories. Some more of our victories include:

Securing support of 29 Republican Members of Congress.

Attracting the interest of powerful members of Congress to speak in favor of our amendment including Rep. Lee (CA), Meehan (MA), Lowey (NY), Kucinich (OH), and Schakowsky (IL).

Forcing the opposition to win by only 218 votes; the bare minimum to win the majority of the House.

Gaining the support of many new members of the House, as well as retaining previous supporters.

Surprising the opposition with the amendment, and forcing them to concede time in the House floor debate due to a lack of support on their side

These victories have undoubtedly energized our movement. We are grateful to our sisters and brothers in Latin America for their inspiration and the invitation to join them in their struggle for justice. The Americas have a strong legacy of resistance. As activists and organizers in North America, we have a lot to learn from our companeras in Latin America who have been fighting oppression for the past 514 years. To do so, we must come to grips with our own privilege and recognize how it shapes our assumptions about struggle and the future.

-Dennis Apuan, Colorado Springs, November 14, 2006

Oaxaca and Iraq- The people have a right to self defense

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Oaxaca and Iraq demonstrate that the people have a right to self defense against state terrorism. Today, the Mexican police were assaulting the students holding a radio station use in their self defense against the governmental death squads that have been terrorizing the population of Oaxaca. When captured and jailed, the protesters have been severely tortured. What would the mealy mouthed, American Christian pacifist communkity have them do during the military assault on them? Turn the other cheek? Not throw rocks to stave off the capture of the one piece of media available to the Oaxacan community; the university radio station? Not to set fire to barricades to hold the government thugs back from capturing the protesters, and then jailing and torturing them? The American ‘peace’ pacifists would lecture them about the supposed lessons of Gandhi and non-violence, no doubt, as if self defense was some sort of violence itself! The US pacifist community certainly live with a surreal mindset lacking in clarity and reality. And what would they have the Iraqis do as the Pentagon terrorizes that nation? Sit down in the streets and pray? With their constant prattle about the need to be ‘non-violent’ martyrs, the pacifist community tries to deny that people under attack have the right to resist, by any means necessary, as Malcolm X would have stated it.

The resistance of the Iraqi and Oaxacan communities are two examples of the need to RESIST oppression with self defense, and not just the silly pacifism of overly religious folk. It is not just church mice that bring about justice, but real people using real tactics to defend their rights, and not just always spouting Jesus-Gandhi talk. All the ‘peace and justice’ pacifism that bogs down our Left activism in the US, is a denial of solidarity with those folks under the gun. They are also our heros, and not just US Quakers and US Catholic nuns who might accept arrest here at home. Peace with justice can only come about through united resistance of all types, including armed resistance of some type or other.

I am not advocating picking up the gun and going after ‘them’. But what I am saying is that the message and tone of pacifism is a bunch of religious babble, in general. It does not help in building a US antiwar movement to only talk about Jesus, ‘nonviolence’, and Gandhi. The religious message is not our only one, and should not even be our dominant one. It hinders our ability to communicate with the US community at large to always emphasize only this liberal religious sermonizing about ‘peace’. An antiwar community is about much more than just ‘peace’.

I am overjoyed that there are peoples around the globe that are defending themselves against our government violence, and the violence of their death squad allies around the globe. They are doing it with rocks, molotov cocktails, guns, and bombs. They are doing it peacefully if they can, and not peacefully if that avenue is cut off to them. One just gets sick of Englsih speaking (principally) pacifists saying that that is wrong. Let’s tell the truth here. Much of Anglo pacifist sermonzing is pure bullshit. The people have a right to resist and defend themselves no matter what the pacifists in imperialist countries might say.

Let’s say it straight. We want this government organized, US imperialist army defeated. And it is because the US army is wrong in their battle on behalf of the imperial Super Rich in this PARTICULAR war, not just because all battles and all warfare is wrong to fight. It is not just pacifists that are anti US war making. Non-pacifists also hate this US governmental war making, too. Let’s open up the US antiwar community to those of our population that are not religiously motivated by pacifism and spouting non-violence all the time. A ‘peace’ movement that is only trying to convert folk to liberal religous faith is self limiting. There has got to be more message than that.

May the people of Iraq and Mexico push the forces of US hegemony aside, and build themselves a better world.

Space Symposium protest 2006 part 3

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Tennis courts in the shadow of golf balls
Day 3: Wednesday
Was it because I hadn’t had any non-violence training? Is that why everyone jumped in to enforce a stand down from my assailant?

Our protest was just getting started, I was holding half of a banner in one hand and passing out fliers with the other when a very angry man zeroed right in. Maybe it was the bright green peace sign. He was jogging along Lake Circle and he had not even passed us. He shouted “I know people who died for you” and before I could answer, though I must not have looked sufficiently repentent, he repeated himself while leaping to clutch my collar and push against me to I don’t know where. I had time only to ask him if he knew that he was committing assault before the Police officers peeled him off and led him away for a discussion.

I regret not having requested that he be allowed to state his piece, minus the physical aggression, but instead we simply instructed the officers that there would be no need to press charges. I didn’t see it but eventually he must have jogged off. Our banner read BEWARE THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous warning.

I am a non-violent person, even a pacifist, though perhaps I am not much of a verbal pacifist. I had no intention of matching this guy’s blows, but I had every intention to stand up to being pushed.

I would have liked to call him on his much mistaken, sentimentalist, flag-hugging, bullying world view. Jogging in the Broadmoor area, this red-shorted, military-coifed assailant had probably commanded some soldiers who had been killed. I do mourn their loss. But it sounds like he should have thrown his life into the ring instead of beating his breast about the sacrifice made by others. Who knows how voluntarily their lives were offered? It always amazes me to hear military commanders brag about the casualty rate faced by their units. When ships sink, we expect captains to go down with the ship. Why? Because we expect them to save the men for which they were responsible or die trying.

Am I being harsh? I didn’t try to knock him down. That’s what we’re protesting: people who are knocking others down, and calling it “defending our freedom.”

Day 4: Thursday.
The Broadmoor had the police explain that we would not be permitted to walk in the bicycle path as we had tried two days before. So this time we brought bikes. I got to the protest late, at nine am instead of eight, just as several of our participants had to be shuttled to the airport. So I was left to peddle my bike up and down Lake Circle alone. If ever I have felt like a big dweeb, this was it. And it got on the news.

There was too much wind to trail a banner. I had selected WILL YOUR CHILDREN SURVIVE YOUR WORK? Instead I waved a large peace pirate flag. The peace sign with crossbones beneath it. A peace sign Jolly Roger. Or symbol for poison. Either way it’s a message the war makers do not want to hear. If there was a symbol for what sunshine represents to vampires, maybe that would be appropriate too.

Our protest of the SPACE SYMPOSIUM had everything to do with the fact that space is being militarized out of sight of the American public. How can there be oversight in a democracy if the citizens aren’t told what is going on?

Each day we would see schoolbus-loads of kids parading through the symposium. The event is billed as something much more benign. But did we see any scientists? I doubt it. We only saw men with military haircuts, in uniform and out. I should say that I did see the odd Brit, and they often gave us a closely held thumbs up!

The flag I waved today was to demonstrate that the message of peace has been relegated to renegades. What a perfect example at the Broadmoor! The hotel had closed its sidewalks to keep our protest from being seen from the Convention Center windows. We had to use the bike paths in order to give our message visibility.

So I pedaled up the designated bike lane on one side and down the bike lane on the other. I had to navigate past hotel employees and delegates who were sometimes skirting the security cordons themselves. I had to steer around the security chief’s pickup as he alternated between following me around, or parking and calling out to me each time I would pass. He was counting my laps, starting at zero arbitrarily. At one point, having reached to ten, he held both hands out the window as if to signal to someone that he’d counted ten. I looked but couldn’t see who was supposed to be watching him. Every so often policemen would appear to loiter near to where I would pass, but they would only nod in greeting.

I stayed until past the lunch hour surge out of the center. A friend has informed me that the bicycle act was on the local KKTV news. “Broadmoor protester nearly arrested,” but I didn’t see their camera. Perhaps they were filming through a window in the center. I was busy catching the eye of the conventiongoers on the street. There were smiles and thumbs up, but mostly the attendees rushed past. There was also a “enjoy your freedom there buddy.” As if these very-well-paid guys in suits want to be paid credit for our freedom too. “Freedom can be hard work, actually” I told them.

CPT captives released

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CPT memorials on postThe three remaining CPT captives, held hostage since Novemember 27 have been freed.
 
On DAY 119 of their captivity, on DAY 106 or so of the vigil which we’ve kept every day at noon, the BBC has just reported that the three CPT hostages, English Norman Kember and Canadians Jim Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden, have been freed.

The news so far reports that they were liberated from their captors by a join military mission, the details and repercussions of which remain to be revealed. But it’s a happy day, the three CPT members are safe.

A little over a week ago, we learned that the fourth captive, American Tom Fox, had been killed. This was a fate which seemed improbable considering the mission of the Christian Peacemaker Team. They had been working without protection in Iraq to help families there negotiate for the release of their loved ones detained without due process in American prisons.

The memorial post we had erected for the CPT members will remain to shine the light on persons all over the world who are held in unlawful detainment. The post is still draped in black because of the death of Tom Fox, but soon we will raise another backdrop which will read: HUMAN RIGHTS FOR ALL CAPTIVES.

The noon vigil has proved itself to be an excellent touch stone for organizing our myriad other actions. It’s been an opportunity to stay apprised of the latest developments and strategies, and we’ve had occasion to be interviewed for three separate documentaries: one about American conscientious objectors who’ve removed themselves to Canada, another about the concept of Constantine’s Sword, and another about grassroots activism.

Tired of milquetoast advice

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Blue Lady in Manitou Carnivale
A conglomeration of peace activists took part in the Manitou Carnival Parade this year. We had fire-breathers, our Blue Lady, and a banner which read TIME TO REBUILD: A NEW WORLD IS POSSIBLE -THE PIKES PEAK JUSTICE AND PEACE COMMISSION.
 
We encountered someone along the parade route who objected to our bringing politics into the parade. Peace, justice, that’s politics?

We had followed advice not to be overtly anti-war. But where is that going to get this country? There was a politician a little further up the way whose red-white-and-blue entourage marched behind a large American flag. It wasn’t dripping with blood, so may I say that I think that was too much politics.

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I’m getting so much advice about how to go about things diplomatically, talk to influential people, find an elegant compromise, something to suit their interests which might encompass a portion of mine. It sounds worth a shot, but I’m wondering if altogether I’m losing sight of the bigger goal. The closer you get to people in positions of power, the more everyone’s principles seem to be mired in molasses.

I don’t want to sit down and with all politeness ask somebody to do the right thing. What kind of conversation will that be?

It’s not my responsibility to figure out how a radio station can afford a particular change, or how to shore up donations from conservative sources. Why should it be my place to figure out how they can find a face-saving resolution?

No. I want to pull the entire debate into the public realm. Make them do the right thing or keep flogging them until they do. It’s not my problem that they’ve done the community a disservice thus far. If they’ve driven us to such a point where so many of us have to put so much energy into righting their wrongs, then by god we’re going to be merciless in our castigation!

Do the damn right thing!

The Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission

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PPJPCYesterday I attended the annual members meeting of the Justice and Peace Commission and felt like there was an inertia of inactivity, or let’s say activity of lesser consequence, which was not to be overcome. As if perhaps the PPJPC were not going to let this war disrupt their good efforts toward promoting sustainable living, fair trade and mass transportation.

The overriding issue this year? Finding a permanent home for PPJPC, instead of renting. That is a very nice goal, but it is my belief that circumstances have not dealt that hand. Our times have been dealt the specter of fascism in the form of undeniable crimes against humanity and the exacerbation of some very cruel domestic policies. Barbarians inside the gates so to speak. Now is not a time for starting a knitting club. At least not for the PEACE AND JUSTICE club!

Perhaps I’m being too harsh. I honor each of PPJPC’s goals, but I have to point to the limited resources. PPJPC has only so much money, so many members and so much energy. To put it another way, we have so many members, and so much energy, let’s direct everybody toward where we can make the most difference!

While I’m being an alarmist, why not look at global warming, which some experts are saying we can no longer reverse, and bird flu, which is spreading faster than you can Google for updates. I certainly do not have any remedies other than what seems to be obvious. Now is not the time to have a moron in charge of our country, particularly such a spectacularly ungifted dauphin whose regents are only motivated to protect and enrich themselves. That’s where we have to start.

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Another great concern I have about the direction of the PPJPC is its focus on propagating non-violent communication. This is the quite honorable idea that consensus can always be achieved through non-confrontational discussion.

If teaching non-violent communication should indeed be PPJPC’s mission, then the results become largely internal. Wouldn’t the membership of PPJPC have to increase by hundreds or thousands every month to justify such a meek objective? It can’t be enough to take donations from people who would like to see reform in our prisons for example, only to camp outside the prison walls and teach each other proper prison code of conduct.

To my mind, the pacifism which PPJPC is trying to teach, looks more like passive-ism. If the PPJPC board members want to be Buddhists, to accept whatever comes, to rise above earthly conflict, that is fine. But I would think it is hardly what its members are expecting the PPJPC to do. We can each of us choose the path of passivism, of acceptance, of transcendence, without need of a Pikes Peace Justice and Peace Commission.

Tookie and the myth of non-violent protest

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A police beatingTonight the state of California is scheduled to execute Stanley Tookie Williams, co founder of the Crypts, after Governor Schwarzenegger made the determination that Williams was not sufficiently redeemed to merit clemency.
 
All sorts of state and local organizations were abuzz about the possibility of riots should Williams be executed. The consensus was to urge every riot minded person to remember that the reformed Williams stood for non-violence.

Now isn’t that just like an authoritarian state to honor Stanley Williams with non-violence in word, while perpetrating institutional violence in deed against his defenseless body?

I’m not sure what could be accomplished by public violence in this case, but the threat of violence from the masses has always played a significant role in holding off the authoritarian ambitions of greedy bastards.

These days of protest against the war have raised profound anti-violence issues, extending from transcending human nature to the more applied martyrdom for the purpose of igniting support. But the immediate result and absolute result seems to be that the bullies get to keep all the marbles.

We are told to respect Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, and now Tookie Williams for their seasoned non-violent teachings.

No one is prepared to point to Castro, Mao or Chavez as examples of rebels who resorted to violence and who brought their people to greater prosperity as a result.

I saw a documentary about Tibet recently, in which the Dalai Lama was praised for leading his people in non-violent opposition to the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

The Dalai Lama can be respected for governing his people in exile, for maintaining in them a sense of hope that their kingdom will be regained. That sense of hope is perhaps the most important motivation they have for keeping their language and cultural heritage alive. The other alternative is to face that they will be a displaced people forever. Each then might better embrace assimilation into their host cultures and prosper.

The reality is that even should Tibet be regained, the westernized and worldly Tibetans would probably not return to their feudal heritage. And the other reality is that Tibet will never be regained.

Holding firm to a policy of non-violence has certainly saved lives, but it has lost principles. The real wisdom of the Dalai Lama might have been the assessment that the Chinese forces would have proven insurmountable and that too many more Tibetans would have perished with the kingdom lost none the less.

Will non-violence prevail over the Chinese occupation? There is no precedence to offer that hope.

We like to credit Gandhi for having proven the efficacy of non-violence, but that is sorely inaccurate. Gandhi sat on the back of the dying elephant of British colonialism, until it collapsed. And it may have collapsed by his sitting on it, but it had been weakened and battered by a century of violent rebellions. British colonial rule in India ended because the elephant had been driven to its knees by many countless uprisings and massacres which the British public could no longer countenance. It took over one hundred years of struggle against oppressive rule to drive the British out, and Gandhi was fortunate enough to deal the death blow by sitting down.

Nelson Mandela too is credited with leading a non-violent takeover of South Africa. Anyone who has read Mandela’s auto-biography knows that this is a misrepresentation. Mandela’s struggle began with violence and then he was incarcerated. Involuntary non-violence.

Martin Luther King provides an example of non-violent martyrdom affecting the conscience of a democratic population. King would be the best model for non-violent protest were we to inhabit a similar circumstance. It is doubtful today that our media possesses a conscience to report about oppression and inhumanity. Likewise it is doubtful that we have retained any meaningful democracy. It remains our horror to discover that public opinion or outrage will affect our governance not one bit.

Isn’t it just like a bully to admonish the rest of the schoolyard to uphold principles of pacifism? The only thing that will bring down a bully is a collective agreement to take him down. Pacifism works against the bully because he knows that if he makes a martyr of somebody, the others will rise up like a mob. Behind non-violent protest lies a looming urgency of violence.