Yemen: Recognizing responsibility

Photo by Mary Leno

by Deborah Belle

Saturday’s rally in Brattle Square Plaza, Cambridge, MA, to end the U.S.-Saudi blockade of Yemen, began just as the morning’s rain ended and pedestrians returned to Harvard Square.

Activists held signs and gave out leaflets urging an end to U.S. support for the Saudi blockade.

As the leaflet noted, “Yemen is a Massachusetts war. Raytheon is headquartered here in Massachusetts. It makes the bombs for Saudi Arabia and it makes the jet engines for the planes that drop the bombs. Let’s do all we can to end this connection between Massachusetts and this terrible humanitarian disaster.”

Further information is available at the Raytheon Antiwar Campaign (617-354-2169), and at info@masspeaceaction.org.

Pegean says: “If you’re concerned about the situation in Yemen, let your national and state legislators know.”

Why We saved Private Ryan

by Kathie MM

In our troubled times, where do you turn to escape from the depressing and frightening corporate media news? Many people turn to alcohol; increasing numbers turn to other deadly drugs. Indeed, problems of addiction are multiplying relentlessly. 

You probably know about the toll both legal and illegal drugs are taking on society but did you ever think about  one of the less obvious addictions readily available to anyone with a television?  I’m talking about an addiction that captures people across race, age, social class, and politics, the  addiction so readily provided by Hollywood—that is, violent films, including war films, wherein violence is glorified (despite pseudo-messages purporting to condemn it).  Along with military industrial profiteers, we have film profiteers, the ones who exploit the fact that for many people, engagement in violence—in person or by proxy– is one of the cheaper thrills they can obtain. And believe me, all those profiteers are in cahoots with each other.

Think of the “Blockbuster films” you’ve seen (if indeed you’re a movie-goer and have been seduced into going to a blockbuster). How many of them portrayed violence, glorified violence, in gory detail? In how many did the “good guys” use just as much violence as the “bad guys”? How often could you differentiate between good guys and bad guys based on how much violence they used? In how many was violence applauded as good, honorable, justified when done by the “right side”? And even if there were frightening scenes, how often did those scenes leave you feeling excited?  Let’s face it, many films awash in violence have “good guys” providing multiple justifications for their violence while revving up your endorphins and making you just itch to do something–all for big bucks to the producers.

Fortunately all tools, including words and images, can be used to promote peace as well as violence and to educate as well as anesthetize,  as illustrated in our fourth example today of one of Jonny Lewis’s short comedy antiwar films.

Note from Kathie MM: Pegean says,  Don’t miss the text at the end of the film.  Eat it up. Food for thought.

She also asks, Did you see Saving Private Ryan? If so, what did you feel and think about it? Please let us know your response to Spielberg’s movie as well as your response to Jonnie’s video here on this site.

In Joyful Act of Resistance, Pink Seesaws Installed at Border Fence

“We are all connected.” by Jenna McGuire, newsroom staff

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"The symbolism of the seesaw is just magical." (Photo: Twitter)

“The symbolism of the seesaw is just magical.” (Photo: Twitter/Channel 2 KWGN)

Two California professors built three pink seesaws on the U.S.-Mexico border to allow families to play together and to bring “joy, excitement, and togetherness” to both sides of the divide.

As The Guardian reported:

Installed along the steel border fence on the outskirts of El Paso in Texas and Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, the seesaws are the invention of Ronald Rael, a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and Virginia San Fratello, an associate professor of design at San José State University, who first came up with the concept 10 years ago.

The wall installation quickly garnered praise on Twitter.

Published on Common Dreams July 30, 2019.

Note from Kathie MM: Pegean says: Time for your R & R: Rejoice and Resist!

Kerala: The The graveyard of all war propaganda, Part II

Unidentified Vietnamese women and children before being killed in the My Lai Massacre.In the public domain. Author: Ronald L. Haeberle

by Ian Hansen, PhD

Pointless War #1: The War on Communism/Socialism/Equality/Human development

Consider the battle against communism.  Communism was supposed to be so evil that stopping it required slaughtering millions of people, developing expensive and expansive programs of government torture and mind control, and terroristically overthrowing multiple democratically-elected or otherwise popular governments throughout the world.  But Kerala is the most communist state in India.  Since 1957 it has regularly elected communists into governance.  These were and are free, contested elections by private ballot, with rights to assembly, protest and dissent constitutionally guaranteed.  And yet (or therefore, or “as luck would have it”) Kerala is also an Indian standout with regard to education and literacy, high life expectancy, low infant and maternal mortality, and high voter turnout.  Other regularly communist-electing states in India also stand out in these regards.  In regions outside India, even places like “totalitarian1” undemocratic communist Cuba and “totalitarian genocidal2” China (communist for four decades, and still ruled by The Party) stand out in human development terms: life expectancy, mortality, and literacy.  Of course questions of voter turnout are moot in both Cuba and China.

Pointless War #2: The War on Terror/Islam/Religion

And consider also religion, the bugaboo of contemporary War on Terror ideology.  The genocidal part of “totalitarian genocidal” China, mentioned above, reflects China’s dictatorial enthusiasm to one-up the US “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE) program by murdering and brainwashing Uighur Muslims.  Uighurs hail from Xinjiang, a Western Chinese province that is, not coincidentally, just north of Tibet.  The US CVE program is rooted in an Islam-impugning junk science that China has only been too happy to capitalize on, as part of their longstanding hostility to religion.  The US CVE program reflects the fact that in the post-9/11 political economy and propagandaverse, the US increasingly resembles China.  In our 21st century “War on Terror” culture, religion, especially Islam, is supposed to be so evil that we Americans must eviscerate all our own rights and freedoms, kill hundreds of thousands of people, and wantonly destroy cradles of civilization to stop it.

But in Kerala, religion-including-Islam doesn’t look so bad.  Kerala is about as religious as the rest of India (that is, very religious)—with approximately half of other Indian states being more religious than Kerala and half being less religious.  Kerala is about 52% Hindu, 20% Christian, and 28% Muslim.  This means Kerala has one of the largest proportions of Muslims among the Indian states.  Nevertheless (or therefore, or as luck would have it), in addition to enjoying the human development benefits listed in the previous paragraph, Kerala is also a standout in women’s equality, and the undisputed leader in India with regard to LGBTQ rights, particularly transgender rights.

And various lines of research, many of them cited in an article I co-authored for Religion, Brain and Behavior (“Religion and Oppression”), suggest that in general religion is okay.  Specifically, the core God-worshipping element of religion appears to attenuate oppression and oppression-related prejudices and inclinations to violence.  Religion does not, as War-on-Terror ideologists would claim, cause or exacerbate oppression.  As for the supposed perils of Muslim religiosity, supplementary analyses for the same article suggest that among Muslim majority countries, the more religious their populations are, the freer they are.

Footnotes

1. The word “totalitarian” evokes a sense of the impossibility of normal life due to a total, and often death-threatening, intrusion of the state into all aspects of life.  Cuba and China are more “lapsed totalitarian” in this regard, and their relics of totalitarianism blend into ordinary authoritarianism.  Near-constant fear of the state varies greatly individual by individual and group by group, and “normal life”—with humor, friendship, parties, intellectual discussions, social enjoyment, etc—abounds in both countries.  The ever-present menace of the state often registers as little more than a faint background hum.

2. The word “genocidal” evokes a sense of organized millions-killing mass murder on the scale of the Holocaust.  It can also refer, though, to attempts to exterminate a culture or religion by mostly cultural means like “education”, or sublethal/minimally lethal means like deportation and resettlement.  These attempts are often backed up with only a punctuated drip of state murder, rather than a roaring river thereof.  China is genocidal in this latter respect, though by no means unique—a “soft” genocidal zeitgeist is sweeping countries of various ideological histories in recent years, including India and the US.  The fires of war could turn these relatively soft genocides hard pretty quickly though.