Tag Archives: pacifists

Blackwater USA out of Sudan!

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Last night, some misguided peace activists in Colorado Springs got together at ‘Poor Richards’ to call for more US-UN-EU intervention into Sudan. They want to stop the bloodshed in Darfur but seem oblivious to the actual realities of US global interventionism. Their get together comes just days after Joseph Biden, a Democratic Party presidential candidate, called for US troops to be sent into Sudan.

So what in effect we have, are Colorado Springs pacifists calling for US military intervention into an African country! It is companies like Blackwater USA who will actually carry out this intervention, along with other outfits from the USA like the Louis Berger Group.

US Out of Africa, not further into it! Blackwater USA Out of Sudan!

Numb skulls awarding peace prizes

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Two weeks ago I wrote about a CIA funded Otpor spokesperson in town talking to local pacifists of Gandhi and nonviolence and how supposedly that had overthrown Milosevic in Yugoslavia instead of the US and NATO bombs rained down on his country. Then last week I wrote about a NM Department of Tourism run ‘peace’ festival in Albuquerque funded to the tune of $450,000. Sappy ‘peace’ rhetoric run by the Chamber of Commerce basically. This week I guess the focus has to be on the Australian ‘Sidney Peace Prize‘.

This one just blows me away, too! The prize was awarded to none other than Hans Blix, which is the most absurd award of a peace prize since Henry Kissinger was given the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1973! We truly live in an Orwellian world these days when initiators of wars are so often given prizes by people spouting pacifist ideology.

Hans Blix was the guy who set up all the lies about Saddam Hussein and Iraq having WOMD that Bush and his Democratic and Republican Party enablers used to launch the invasion and occupation of Iraq. No way he deserves a peace prize, and actually he might better be executed as a war criminal instead. Without his personal act as wrench-er up of the propaganda, hysteria, and panic, the world public would never have gone along much as they did with initially supporting the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

This is just one more example of how pacifist beliefs and desires by much of the public can often be distorted into its opposite by simplistic twists of illogic. Then we get numb skulls awarding peace prizes to war criminals like Hans Blix and Henry Kissinger.

PS- I am still trying to get over how the local ACLU cut off audience questioning of CS police chief Richard ‘Liars’ Myers last week. The ACLU organizers required that all questions be vetted and then read by one person alone to the audience. Because of this, the annual meeting of the ACLU turned into a hug and handshake fest with the cops. Shameful. If the city of Colorado Springs had tried to do this sort of stunt at the city council meeting we would all have gotten peeved off. But instead, the audience silently sat by while the police chief fed them a long sermon of crap. And then many of the crowd applauded just that! Sometimes some amongst the ‘peace’ crowd can make one wanna cry with their innocence and naivete.

What does ‘Otpor’ have to do with Colorado Springs?

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You probably missed the notice, but Otpor will be at Colorado College this week and next, ‘organizing non-violence’ oriented people. Otpor claims credit for itself for supposedly non-violently bringing down Milosevic in Yugoslavia, though the real credit for this feat had more to do with the violence of an illegal war against Yugoslavia organized by the US and its European allies than any local student movement in Belgrade.

And it had more to do with the funds the US government channelled into Yugoslavia to illegally influence the national elections there. Many of these funds went to Otpor.

These days, Otpor ideology acts in many other countries where the US channels funds to subvert local autonomy. It has changed its name to ‘Canvas’ and receives much aid not only directly from the US government, but also from many a rich American think tank. Essentially, it is a Right Wing imperialist US government pushed campaign masquerading as a form of international Leftism. It’s symbols are a clenched fist, even as it plays on the image of being Gandhi-ist and nonviolent, which has become a semi mystical religious cult amongst many US campuses harboring hordes of American middle class student types. Very attractive cover to keep help hide its hidden agenda of backing US government propaganda campaigns and interventions in nations around the world. Imperialists posing as non-violent pacifists recruiting relatively naive and innocent students who often believe in the sugar coated rhetoric being spread. What results is a ‘non-violence’ working side by side with US military and economic subversion of other countries.

The US government in the ’70s and ”80s at one time pushed another camouflaged Right Wing group inside the US disguised as Leftism. The leader of that cult effort was a man named Lyndon LaRouche, who still plies his wares from time to time. To the utter discredit of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, this group a few months ago accepted for its newspaper a full page advertisement from this fascist who has many connections with US government and military high officials. A split off of this group operates in Mexico where it postures as being Far Left in a similar manner to how it has operated in the US. OTPOR in a way, is an extension of this type of covert government operation in private politics that Lyndon LaRouche got quite well known for at one time.

Wikipedia has done an excellent job in its coverage of Otpor, whose connections to US funding remain shadowy and hidden though it operates across the planet. Since they will have 2 of their operatives as Colorado College doing their thing, hopefully some of us will be there to challenge them on their real record this week.

We lose they lose

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On the forbidden sidewalkProtesting at the side of the street does seem futile at times, it certainly seems so just thinking about it. But out there catching each others eyes, you’re reminded of its mysterious power, particularly when you’re shown to what extent those against you are willing to go to keep you from being there.

When we first turned up Monday at the Broadmoor Space Symposium Arms Bazaar, we were quickly moved from a section sidewalk declared off limits to us. The police could not explain exactly what ordinance or why, except that they had orders to keep us off the Lake Circle sidewalk. We complied the way reasonable people do, because the area to which we were confined seemed at first glance perfectly suitable. We occupied the corner of Lake and Lake Circle, where we could hand fliers to symposium attendees crossing to the Convention Center. But this gave us contact with only a fraction of the participants in attendance. The majority of the weapons dealers stayed inside the center, whose windows faced the sidewalk area forbidden to us.

We decided to accept the “free speech zone” given us until we could research the new restriction, mindful of the recent Appeals Court verdict which upheld the Broadmoor’s discretion to cordon off its entire neighborhood as a security zone for the NATO conference some years back. Citizens for Peace In Space lost that appeal.

It took Bill Sulzman until 10pm Wednesday to get someone at the CSPD to speak to the issue of the exclusive use permit granted to the Broadmoor. That representative, a Commander Overton, agreed to meet Bill the next morning to negotiate where protesters would or would not be restricted.

Was this a victory of discourse and civility? It certainly was a victory for the Space Arms Symposium. They effectively kept us off their turf until the last day, then thwarted a legal challenge by deciding to give in. We got to stand on the contested sidewalk for a snowy hour of the last day of the conference.

This is where less confrontational pacifists hinder their protest efforts. It might be well to resolve your differences by arbitration, meanwhile the bad guys hold the real estate. In the end our message does not get out, the war rages on, we are entangled in bureaucratic battles until our rights are upheld. This was the tactic used at the DNC, RNC, FTAA, WTO, and indeed our own St Patrick’s Day: detain the dissidents until their opportunity to be heard has passed. It’s an abridgment of our civil liberties, and the government factors into its budget the liability of likely legal judgments.

But what price lost free speech? What cost for every day the war goes on? We know that number. What cost for each further contract for more WMDs? If protest could stop that, that’s the price the government owes us. Could street protest have that effect? Somebody thinks so.

Last year at the Broadmoor, the reaction to our protest was very telling. The first day we were nearly arrested for trying to walk along the edge of a cordoned area, the same contested sidewalk. The head of Broadmoor security was screaming for officers to arrest us. The next day I was assaulted by an overwrought Marines commander in jogging shorts. He circled right to me and flung his hands around my throat, pushing me back until policemen pulled him off. The next day we rode a bicycle up and down the bike path adjacent the blocked sidewalk, to relentless harassment and endangerment by the security vehicle. Somebody doesn’t like to have to gaze upon our message. We could see military brass last year watching from the windows with arms crossed.

Our banners, then and now, quote Henry Ford “Take the profit out of war and you’ll have peace tomorrow” and President Eisenhower “Beware the military industrial complex.” We also have this haunting question: “will your children survive your work?”

The arms manufacturers in attendance at the Broadmoor are normally well buffeted from the real world. They work in industrial complexes and high rises out of reach of humanist and spiritual voices of conscience. They certainly don’t have to see the results of their work, the suffering or the poverty. They ride high on the war gravy train.

The Broadmoor gathering for me is the rare chance to look these people in the eye, to examine the war profiteers in their insular habitat. They might be bellicose, or proud, or defensive, and they may deride us. If it seems their consciences are not keeping score, the symposium organizers seem to have more faith in them than we do.

On this occasion the military industrial complex beat us, they kept us out of sight for most of their event. But we won too. No we didn’t get to challenge their method in court, but we did get to stand in the forbidden zone of their periphery, if but for a morning, a cold snowy morning. Though I believe the increasing snow fall lent our message the credibility of determination. We got to aim this banner right at them: “Will your children survive your work?”

Was Jesus really all that into nonviolence?

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Once again, I attended a ‘peace’ meeting dominated by liberal Christians extolling the virtues of nonviolence. The meeting started off with a film about how supposedly Gandhi and MLK, using only methods of nonviolence, had supposedly accomplished great miracles for people. Pretty sad stuff when one considers the situation of Indians and American Blacks today.

But this adulation of these two men by liberal Christians is really a stand in for their adulation of Jesus Christ, supposed human son of God, and their ideal model of what a human being should be. So it pays to take a brief look to see if Jesus in the Bible really was a model of nonviolence. We certainly know that neither Moses, nor the Christian God himself was, and that’s according to the Bible itself. But what about Jesus?

Jesus lived in a time of Roman imperialism. The fate of the Jews in his time was roughly equivalent to the fate of Iraqis and Afghans in our times. It was equivalent to that fate of Palestinian Arabs today under Jewish occupation and domination. The Jews back then, just like the Iraqis, Afghans, and Palestinians today, lived under the thumb of collaborators in their national and religious community who cooperated with the foreign emperor that ran their affairs. And like then, today’s imperial subjects direct much of their anger towards their own collaborators, and not so much always directly to the soldiers and officials of the Empire itself.

Jesus advocated a policy of no direct rebellion against the Roman Emperor who was viewed as much too strong to directly confront. But the collaborators were a different matter altogether. There, Jesus entered their temple with his followers and whip in hand, overturned their tables of money and goods, and chased them out of their places of commerce. Hardly nonviolent acts.

Since temples back then operated much as combination banks, pawnshops, pay day lenders, and currency exchanges all under one giant WalMart sized roof, when Jesus entered the ‘Temple’, in reality he entered the bank, too. His wrath was severe against the moneychangers (bankers) and collaborators, whom he accused of thievery against the common folk. If you or I were to enter a bank today and do as Jesus did, we would hardly be considered pacifists, now would we, Dear Liberal Christian? So why do you think of Jesus as being particularly into ‘nonviolent resistance’?

And what was Jesus’s punishment for his act of rather non pacifist rebellion? He was given the death penalty by a Roman official, who seemed to find the affair amongst the Jewish camp to be rather amusing. I rather think that any liberal Christian today trying to pull off such a stunt, would find themselves at least with life in prison, too. It’s much easier to push off a false image of how Jesus actually acted, and to copy that instead.

I tell this story in historical and Biblical perspective, simply because I am so fed up with American middle class, New Age liberal Christian pacifist idiocy, and their repetitive chants about the primacy of ‘nonviolence’ always recited like a totally broken record. Far from being nonviolent, Jesus actually was quite assaultive. And that is as the story goes from the Bible.

So let us now pray for liberal Christians to stop constantly reciting to us their turn-the-cheek fables. Amen. And now lets get going, Jesus-like, whips in hand, and turn over the banks and tables of today’s ‘moneylenders’ in the ‘temples’, and chase them out of their bank and church, The Pentagon. Hallelujah! Praise Jesus!

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.

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.

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.

US regionalizes Iraq Conflict, as antiwar movement snores

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Is the US antiwar community asleep? It seems like all the citizenry are completely hypnotized by our phoney elections coming up, where we will get a the ‘choice’ of voting for one of the two corporate pro-war parties, and their candidates. Many of our more delusional participants in the ‘peace movement’ are expecting big things afterwards, even as both US corporate parties have been engaging in slowly building up support for regionalizing the Iraq conflict. They call that regionalized war ‘The War on Terror’, and both the DP and RP are big fans of fighting it! For eternity! And it comes following the already regionalized, so-called “War on Drugs’. Of course we haven’t heard much on that front recently, as drug production from Afghanistan is now quite on the rise. Question- Could Sparta have ever been so addicted to warfare as America’s ruling elite is? Win or lose, must sell equipment and weaponry to government. Support the Troops.

The signs of the regionalization of this conflict are coming hard and fast, yet the ‘peace’ pacifists snore. It’s all Iraq, Iraq, Iraq! Things are not being done competently there. But surprise, Bush and Cheney are outflanking you guys, even as you pray. The war is now, Gaza, Lebanon, West Bank, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan. With Syria and Iran on the way! It’s a war not against just Arabs anymore, it’s a block party! How complicated. Hey liberal Democrats, you said you wanted to go kill Osama? We going to do it, even if we have to bomb Antartica, too. Blow up any penguins at their Madrasa we will. Just keep talking about Iraq, and we’ll get you your damn timetable.

And how sweet the press is to not interrupt the US citizenry as it snores. NATO does the killing in Afghanistan, so no need to highlight it for the sleeping giant, the American public. And Bush supported, Dictator Musharraf of Pakistan just did the last killing in that country, so we can sleep here, too. No need to examine the US involvement on that one. Duh! Everybody knows that Pakistan is a sovereign country, rolling on floor giggling. And shhhh….. Bush couldn’t possibly attack Syria and Iran. Not with the Democratic Party on guard! Giggling gets more intense. Stop tickling us, please. Let’s make the whole Middle East like we made SE Asia and Central America! Another success story for US governmental terrorism.

Yet the Democratic Party voting, Christian ‘peace’ people just snore on, firm in that their personal peacefulness is example enough. Please don’t so violently shake them. They’ll never wake up. Let them dream their pacifist dreams. But the rest of us need to stop ceding the organizing of a movement to stop US warmaking to these sweet Christian folk. That is if we want to save the penguins?

Eyes Wide Open Minus 279

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Why don’t we reflect on the 279 US soldiers who lost their lives in Afghanistan, too? I think it simply because the AFSC/ Quakers almost universally vote Democratic Party. They don’t want the public to ‘reflect on the true costs of the Afghan war’ while most liberal Democratic Party voters continue to support such. And because of that, the Eyes Wide Open has its eyes sewed wide shut regarding Afghanistan. The AFSC, it seems, will have us only reflect on US troops who died in Iraq.

I have not been much of a backer of this top down AFSC bringing of Eyes Wide Open to Denver and Colorado Springs anyway. How top down? I would say that the main impetus for bringing this exibition to Colorado came from outside the state, and not from within. Discussion was very limited and completely shut off once the honchos had their thing going.

PLUS,this fetishist AFSC focus on the boots of US GIs is a reflection of the constant US nationalist fetishism that focuses on ‘supporting our troops’. They are not OUR troops and we should not be just focusing on the dead GIs’ boots and tags while relegating to the minimalist side the consideration of the deaths of the victims of these US troops. These troops were paid for by our taxes stolen and misused by the government, but they are not my troops. Nor yours, for that matter. So why do we memorialize them as if they were something so very much more special than their victims? Why, AFSC?

And this controlling top down organizing by the Quakers has me peeved. Who do they think they are to try to limit other points of view other than their own pacifist ones at these Fall antiwar events? If the Afghans and Iraqis try to kick the US out of their countries using armed force, then so be it. One gets a little tired of the constant US pacifist Christian messaging, pontificating to other people to non-violently resist their own US government’s violence. These sanctimonious people would have had the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto turning the other cheek to the Nazis even! Defintiely, nobody should feel obligated to not bring their own materials and posters to Eyes Wide Open just because the AFSC tells them not to. They have some damn nerve trying to censor off views other than those parallel with their own. Yes they do.

As an atheist, I will help set up this nominally antiwar exhibit. At least, it will be seen by the press as such. But we sure need a more secular antiwar movement in the future, with the ability to reach out to more than just the liberal church goers. The thing about liberal Christian pacifists, is that they demand that others not just reject the US warmaking but that they do it only for the same reasons that liberal pacifists do. They keep the antiwar movement small, by excluding the majority of people that actually might want to oppose US militarism for reasons other than religiosity.

Anyway, I remember the 279 US troops who have lost their lives in Afghanista. And what’s more, I remember the country of Afghanistan we have torn to shreds. Reflect on that, AFSC.

Wrestling with Steve Irwin

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Nine lives of the curiousA young friend reminded me today. “You know, I’m still really sad about the Alligator Guy.”
 
Me too. Steve Irwin’s death is sad, and a great loss, but I also feel we may be dishonoring Irwin to feel sad for him.

I wouldn’t pretend to speak for Irwin, nor certainly would I imagine that he wouldn’t have rather avoided the stingray’s barb. I will postulate however that the Alligator Guy died doing what he loved. I will speculate that while Irwin’s dangerous antics appeared effortless to us, no doubt he had a precise understanding of the odds and the risk.

An article written after his death quoted Irwin as having once joked with his producer: if ever one of his stunts proved fatal, “at least it will be on film.” I really have to believe that Steve Irwin braved the odds, and just as bravely met his fate.

I make this point because I think our culture is too ready to drown spiritual identity under the weight of a social mean. We can marvel at Steve Irwin’s individuality but we’ll discount his strength of character as soon as he is not around to surprise us again.

I asked my young friend about another of his heroes, Anakin Skywalker. Why ever would Anakin -with the power of The Force- have turned to the Dark Side?” He informed me: “Because he wanted Padme to live.” Really. Would his princess have accepted being saved if she knew that Anakin would sacrifice his soul?

To read any of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey in George Lucas’ Star Wars tale is to be full of shit. I do so resent this typical reduction of the heroic character. Humanizing the protagonist these days seems to require diminishing the human potential. We’re not talking about a tragic flaw in the Greek sense, we’re talking about the consumer’s creed: I me mine.

In these capitalist times we love the dictum “everybody has his price.” It seems carved in stone like “absolute power corrupts.” I believe it’s not very far removed from the crippling Catholic indoctrination of guilt, that we are all born sinners. I reject that handicap. We each may have our weaknesses, our predilections, our tragic flaws, but we are also what we want to be, and we can be good.

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Muslims extremists, I believe, are similarly belittled. A suicide bomber willing to give his or her life for a cause is not by necessity brain-washed or waylaid. Selfless motives do not register with our Culture of Self. Insurgents rising in waves against American firepower, rise against our comprehension. The determination of the Vietcong porters along the Ho Chi Min trail was likewise not something we could easily fathom.

A pacifist friend of mine has a pact with his wife. Both like minded pacifists, they agreed never to resort to lethal force to protect one another. Neither wanted to be saved at the expense of the death of another human being. To act otherwise, while promising a less tragic outcome, would dishonor the path toward which both were committed.

Our culture does not want to honor people’s moral selves. It teaches that everyone, even Anakin, is turnable, as if there is no such thing as a moral compass. We preach morality but fear letting it inhabit individual peoples.

Steve Irwin was not perhaps a moral leader, but he was a hero. His heroism was his irrepressibly adventurous bravery. Now, it may be best for young minds to believe that Alligator Guy died instantaneously without suffering, but I read something more happened. Irwin’s companions say that after he was struck, they watched him pull the barb from his chest and look at it as he slowly lost consciousness. I don’t need to see the footage, but I’d like to face the reality of Steve Irwin’s death as he did. With curiosity and bravery.