Something has gone very wrong

Participants at vigil, Sherborn, MA, August 6, 2019, commemorating Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and latest mass shootings in the USA. Photo courtesy of Lewis Randa, the Peace Abbey

by Dot Walsh

In the years from 1982 to the present, there have been 110 mass shootings in the United States;  according to statistics,  107 of these have been perpetrated by young to older men.

As I reflect on the carnage and suffering engulfing our country, I am bewildered and angered by how our Congress has resisted passing a simple law banning assault weapons and requiring a background check for all gun buyers, including those who buy guns online. Something has gone very wrong in this country when we cannot see clearly what is happening or gather the courage to stand up for the values that will promote peace and love.

Some men and women do show that courage. Among them are a group of people who have been standing up and speaking out, holding vigils, and praying for many years, remembering the people who bear the suffering that comes with the loss of their loved ones to violence.

The Life Experience School and friends gathered Tuesday, August 6, 2019, at the Peace Memorial in Sherborn, Massachusetts, to honor those who were killed in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. The group gathered at the Stone that memorializes all victims of violence, both past and present.

To promote resistance to violence, I want to send a message to all the young men in our country who are being abused by corporate America and taught to hate. Social media, Hollywood, and others have gained power over you and led you down a path of ignorance and submission. But you have been gifted by a Higher Power with talents and energy as yet undiscovered. Stop for one minute and list in your mind two things you are grateful for. Then ask yourself how you can pay forward for the gifts you have received. We all have reasons to be thankful for living in this country. Maybe the problem facing the country today is not having enough positive role models and not absorbing enough LOVE in our hearts to take a stand to make things right. Can you become one of those role models? Can you find and share the love in your heart?

References: Washington Post Statista research department

Dot Walsh

Dot Walsh is a Peace Chaplain. Shi is also host of Oneness and Wellness, a cable TV show from Dedham, Mass.She is dedicated to changing the world with peace and love.

Note from Kathie MM: Pegean says, Now’s your chance to get it right. Be the candle, be the light. Be the beacon, be the dove. Be the voice of peace and love.

NUCLEAR WAR AND ME: Annihilation Inscribed Across Time and Place, Part 2

View inside Building 802, the “Escape Hatch” at the rear of the “Sleeping Quarters”, facing south. – Naval Air Station Fallon, 100-man Fallout Shelter, 800 Complex, off Carson Road near intersection of Pasture and Berney Roads, Fallon, Churchill County, NV. This file comes from the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) or Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS). These are programs of the National Park Service established for the purpose of documenting historic places. In the public domain.

by Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D.

Crouching Under School Desks as Warning Sirens Blared

By the latter days of the WWII, fear of nuclear bomb attacks gripped our nation. For children in elementary school, the shrill blaring sound of a siren meant you were immediately to stop what you were doing and crouch beneath your heavy wooden desk.

As l learned more of the atomic bomb’s total destruction in Japan, I wondered how a desk would protect us?  There was barely enough desk-top for coverage.

Was this the best our school, our city, our nation could offer for protection? Did they care? I believed neither I, nor any of my school mates, would survive. I was bewildered! Should we stand bravely and sing God Bless America?  Was this assertion of courage better than hiding beneath a desk, cowering, awaiting death? Should I assume leadership for the class: “Get up from your knees, if we are to die, then let it be as brave children, not hunkered victims? We don’t kneel to foes! John Wayne never did!”   

I awaited death for reasons I could not understand. We were told there was the possibility of another war. War! What do I have to do with war? I am just a kid living in a basement, trying to survive, caring for family and friends, hurting no one! I was confused, torn between passively awaiting death, and struggling for survival. Movies were socializing my mind! War movies, cowboy and Indian movies, cartoons imitating good and bad in life.     

I reflectively complied with the teacher’s orders: “Get under your desk! Stay there until I tell you to leave.” Where did the teacher go? Did she hide under her big desk?  That was protection!”  Her desk was an old-fashioned wooden four pedestal teacher desk. I remember she turned it away from the windows. Did she take off her high heel shoes?  No email or tweets at the time.

Was this a drill or the real thing? In the moment, we never knew. We relied on the teacher to tell us! What would she say? Some kids were frightened, I could see it on their faces.

I tried not to show any fear. My uncles, veterans of WWII, told me always be brave! Do not cry! That’s what a soldier would do. This was my foxhole. We stared at each other, smiles, fear, resignation on faces. Some classmates whispered: “Are we going to die?”

So be it! I would die with my buddies, and with some pretty girls dressed with ribbons and bows in their hair, crouching modestly protecting any stares at their panties from peaking boys who took advantage of the situation.  “Hey, Patti has pink panties! I saw them when she crossed her legs.”  Patti stuck her tongue out at Howard; Howard laughed!

The all-clear siren blared. We had survived the unimaginable. At least for the time. No annihilation!

1950s – 1960s New Wars, Threats, Villains, Words:

Childhood fears of war and nuclear annihilation were compounded when the end of WWII did not bring an end to war. Within years, the Korean War furthered my fears of injury and death.

        “Where the hell is Korea?” New battle fields! New terms and villains:       Communism, China, Russia, Stalin, North and South Korea.  Does it   ever end? These guys have atom bombs too; some American citizens         gave them the plans. Who did that? The bastards!”

Mid 1940s’ war movies added to my fears. For ten cents, I could sit in the Union Square Theater all day:  Back to Bataan, Wake Island, Guadalcanal Diary, Sands of Iwo Jima.  John Wayne could not protect us! Neither could William Bendix, Lloyd Nolan, Richard Jaeckle, Henry Fonda, Errol Flynn, Randolf Scott, Anthony Quinn.

Screen images were burned in my mind. I watched bayoneting, shooting, flame throwers, bombs, machine guns, and dead bodies. “Jesus, a soldier shoved flame throwers into a cave and pill box filled with people!”  

I recall a dream! A nightmare, returning today, usually prompted by some words or events I see on TV.  My recurring dream:

The Chinese Communist soldiers are running down a hill toward our position, screaming, firing guns. There are endless numbers. We wait for commands to fire. We are afraid, and know we cannot win!  I accept my fate! I         look at my rifle.  It’s my toy rifle, bought for me by my uncle in the 1940s. I have no weapon! I need a real rifle! How can I protect myself or others? I am going to die.  I wake up sweating, breathless,   afraid.

American Casualties of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Program, Part 1.

English: Nuclear weapon test Dakota (yield 1.1 Mt) on Enewetak Atoll, June 26, 1956. This image from the U.S. Department of Energy is in the public domain

 

by Guest Author Lawrence S. Wittner*

When Americans think about nuclear weapons, they comfort themselves with the thought that these weapons’ vast destruction of human life has not taken place since 1945—at least not yet. But, in reality, it has taken place, with shocking levels of U.S. casualties.

This point is borne out by a recently-published study by a team of investigative journalists at McClatchy News.  Drawing upon millions of government records and large numbers of interviews, they concluded that employment in the nation’s nuclear weapons plants since 1945 led to 107,394 American workers contracting cancer and other serious diseases.  Of these people, some 53,000 judged by government officials to have experienced excessive radiation on the job received $12 billion in compensation under the federal government’s Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program.  And 33,480 of these workers have died.

How could this happen? Let’s examine the case of Byron Vaigneur.  In October 1975, he saw a brownish sludge containing plutonium break through the wall of his office and start pooling near his desk at the Savannah River, South Carolina, nuclear weapons plant.  Subsequently, he contracted breast cancer, as well as chronic beryllium disease, a debilitating respiratory condition.  Vaigneur, who had a mastectomy to cut out the cancer, is today on oxygen, often unable to walk more than a hundred feet.  Declaring he’s ready to die, he has promised to donate his body to science in the hope that it will help save the lives of other people exposed to deadly radiation.

*Dr. Lawrence Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany.  His latest book is a satirical novel about university corporatization and rebellion, What’s Going On at UAardvark?

Systems so perfect

By guest author Mike Corgan

“dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”

Man frightened by specter of national spying.
Image by Carlos Latuff, copyright free. (FRA refers to Swedish wiretapping law).

C.S. Lewis wrote those words for his verse play The Rock, but they could just as well apply to U.S. foreign policy and security affairs. (Witness the current daily National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropping bombshells.)

We have always been dazzled by our technological prowess when it comes to security. In the American Revolution, the British had muskets, but we had rifles. The Civil War had aerial observation, repeating rifles, railroads, and steam-powered warships. In World War I, every machine gun on all sides had at least one American patent; in World War II, we had long-range bombers that could deliver the atomic bomb.

Nowadays we can listen to everyone everywhere.

Maybe we should take a lesson from our use of the atomic bomb. It took awhile, but many of us finally realized that this was something awesomely and terribly different. In spite of some impassioned calls to do so, neither the U.S. nor any other nation has used nuclear weapons since World War II ended in 1945. In my Navy days we used to deride “capabilities in search of a mission.”

Perhaps we can learn that our ability to eavesdrop on everyone, like our ability to deploy nuclear weapons, has a serious downside. We ought not to use this “system so perfect” everywhere without clear and agreed-upon restraints. Yes, terrorists do present a serious threat to our society–but so does the breakdown of trust between citizens and government and among those who should be our allies and partners in fighting this scourge.

We have incredibly effective, near-perfect systems, like “smart” weapons, drones, electronic intercept equipment, and so on. We humans need to be good and smart, too.