nuclear war – Engaging Peace

Stop the clock!

Posted on August 5, 2019August 5, 2019 by kathiemm

by Kathie MM

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has set the doomsday clock at two minutes to midnight—the hour of the death of life. (See more here ).

You, personally, have a number of options right now:1) Feel too terrified to do anything about the growing threat from nuclear arms development; 2) pretend the threat is not real and go about your business as if the threat of nuclear Armageddon is “fake news”; or 3) pay attention, assume responsibility for your own future and the future of life on the planet, and help stop the clock.

United for Peace and Justice tells us some really bad news: “As we approach the 74^th anniversaries of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, our world is facing numerous nuclear flashpoints within global conflicts and crises that could catastrophically escalate at any moment.

“The formal U.S. withdrawal on August 2 from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty is another sign of deepening crisis among the nuclear-armed states. Following the 2002 U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, this latest move imperils the entire structure of arms control and disarmament, including prospects for extension of the New START Treaty that expires in 2021. The dangers of nuclear war are real and growing.

“From the Korean Peninsula, to the South China Sea, to the Middle East and South Asia, all the nuclear-armed states are engaged in unpredictable conflicts that could catastrophically escalate out of control. Tensions between the U.S. and Russia have risen to levels not seen since the Cold War, with the two nuclear giants confronting each other in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and Syria and an accelerated tempo of military exercises and war games, both conventional and nuclear, on both sides. Risky close encounters between Russian and U.S./NATO forces have increased dramatically in the Baltic region and Syria.

“Under Trump, when inflation and the novel concepts in his Nuclear Posture Review are included, the U.S. is on a path to spend nearly $2,000,000,000,000 (trillion) over thirty years to upgrade its nuclear weapons complex, warheads and delivery systems. Russia, China, France, U.K., India, Israel and Pakistan have embarked on nuclear modernization programs of their own. While halting talks with North Korea have commenced, the Trump Administration scuttled the Iran nuclear deal and is escalating pressure on the Iranian regime.

“Today, nearly 14,000 nuclear weapons, most an order of magnitude more powerful than the U.S. atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki— 92% held by the United States and Russia – continue to pose an intolerable threat to humanity.”

The good news is that meetings, and protests, and demonstrations are being organized all over the country (and internationally) this month.

Here’s a link from Physicians for Social Responsibility listing many public events in August, Nuclear Free Month.

Pegean says, Please.

Join an event near you.

Help stop the clock.

Growing into The Spirit of The Sixties

Posted on December 10, 2018December 10, 2018 by kathiemm

Stefan Schindler with John Lennon collage

by Stefan Schindler

In my early childhood – born just north of San Francisco, and fresh from two years in England – I spent four years in Texas, then one in Alabama, unconsciously absorbing from both states a culture of racism and American superiority.

Then the family moved to Japan, where I spent three years absorbing a new culture, and, subconsciously, an alternative worldview. It changed my life, and I shall be forever grateful. When the family moved from Japan to Pennsylvania, I was shocked to discover fellow students who had never been out of their home state. I was like a visitor from the moon.

My formal education continued to be mostly ignoration, but the year was 1960, just in time for me to grow into The Spirit of The Sixties. As I watched The Beatles evolve into Peacemakers, coinciding with my college years, I began to realize just how brainwashed I had been.

My father, a bomber pilot in World War Two, was a career officer in the U.S. Air Force, rising through the ranks to become a Lieutenant Colonel. Hence our family’s many moves around the country and the world. Hence also my military upbringing.

When I entered Dickinson College in 1966, I joined ROTC (and its elite “Pershing Rifles” group). I quit after six weeks, having been ordered to do this and that my entire life, and now, in college, finally free from my father’s commanding influence, and joyfully participating more and more in the anti-establishment counter-culture revolution.

By my senior year at Dickinson, 1970, while President Nixon continued The Vietnam War, I was a member of S.D.S – Students for a Democratic Society – and with fellow peacemakers disrupting ROTC drill performances on the football field, and, more importantly, marching in peace demonstrations outside the gates of the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, just a few blocks from Dickinson.

After graduate school, post-1975, I embarked upon a self-education program, leading to my further political awakening, a new appreciation for Mark Twain and William James as members of The Anti-Imperialism League, and the writing of my book, America’s Indochina Holocaust: The History and Global Matrix of The Vietnam War.

Now, just about a year from 2020, I see The United States of Amnesia failing to learn the lessons of history, and increasingly becoming a high-tech version of Plato’s cave, governed by plutocracy, divided more and more by economic apartheid, and careening toward ecological apocalypse, nuclear war, and another Great Depression. John Lennon was right – “We are led by lunatics.”

Fortunately, the spirit of Emerson, James, and Twain lives on in the activism, writings and wisdom of people like H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, I. F. Stone, Martin Luther King, Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, John Pilger, John Prados, Dan Ellsberg, the Berrigan brothers, Molly Ivins, Howard Zinn, Bertrand Russell, Amy Goodman, Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Victor Wallis, Naomi Klein, Lewis Lapham, Thich Nhat Hann, Sulak Sivaraksa, the Dalai Lama, Vandana Shiva, and so many others.

Like Maya Angelou, I know “Why The Caged Bird Sings.” I know that the meaning of life is learning and service. And I give thanks for friends like Toni Snow and Lewis Randa, who help me keep the faith and keep on truckin’, as a Compassionate Peacemaker and global citizen, committed to Universal Brother-Sisterhood.

Note from Kathie MM: Please share with people on your email lists Stefan’s inspiring story of his journey to peace activism-and send us your own story for publication on engaging peace. Many families, many communities, include peace activists who go about the business of making the world a safer more just and human place. Share the stories.

Enlightenment and Social Hope, Part 4

Posted on April 18, 2018April 16, 2018 by kathiemm

For Enlightenment by Kathie Malley-Morrison

By Stefan Schindler

The recent triumph of anti-democratic Republican Party politics was made possible with the criminal complicity of the Democratic Party, the mainstream news media, and the rise to political power of Christian fundamentalism.

In the hotly contested 2000 presidential election, the Supreme Court halted the counting of votes, and then appointed George W. Bush the winner, in what was nothing less than a judicial coup d’état.

The Cheney-Bush Administration then launched a lie-based war against Iraq and Afghanistan, the cost of which now exceeds two trillion dollars, hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths in the Middle East, and widespread Muslim hatred of America. In 2008, the Cheney-Bush Administration climaxed its reign of deficit spending and global terror with a domestic economic meltdown which saw American citizens suffer the greatest recession since the Depression of the 1930s.

Meanwhile, America’s homegrown economic apartheid becomes more extreme with every passing week; the Pentagon budget blooms to finance more wars; fifty percent of university teachers are slave-wage adjuncts; more than fifty million Americans are deprived of healthcare; and the planet careens toward nuclear war and ecological apocalypse.

Hence we might conclude that Immanuel Kant implicitly points to a national motto that ought to read: “Treat all people always as ends in themselves, rather than merely as means” to personal gain.

Hence also – as Voltaire, Rousseau, David Hume, Mother Jones, Emma Goldman, Dorothy Day, Helen Keller, I. F. Stone, Buckminster Fuller, John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Maya Angelou, Dot Walsh, Kurt Vonnegut, Lewis and Meg Randa, Howard Zinn and John Lennon would applaud – we should revise America’s Pledge of Allegiance to read:

“I pledge allegiance to the planet, and to all the people and creatures on her; one ecosystem, universally sacred, with nourishment and beauty for all.”

Dear Chairman Kim Jung-un

Posted on October 5, 2017 by kathiemm

by Lewis Randa, Director, The Peace Abbey

What follows is a letter for President Donald Trump to consider sending to Chairman of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Kim Jung-un.

Please feel free to add, edit, or delete and submit your own letter to the White House.

Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness of war.

My “mind game” candle in the darkness is dedicated to Yoko Ono.

From The White House

Dear Chairman Kim Jung-un,

I am reaching out in an effort to de-escalate the hostility and aggression between our two governments. Our peoples, the millions of families, the loving parents and their children dream of a better life, both in North Korea and in North America, and are counting on us to be prudent as we seek solutions to what appears to be intractable distrust and animosity which could lead to war. Our histories reflect different paths of development and periods of conflict, yet our goals are not dissimilar. Both our nations want what is best for our country, our people, and the Earth.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to point out what you already know, and that is this: A nuclear confrontation would not only be catastrophic for both our nations, the blast damage would result in massive destruction and the death toll would be unimaginable. Most importantly, it would have an endless, negative impact on our planet’s ability to sustain the conditions for life.

Were either of us to preemptively launch a nuclear weapon or retaliate with one, the impact on the planet would be irreversible and condemn those who survive with the cancerous effects of millions of tons of radioactive pollutants in the atmosphere. The unprecedented infusion of contamination that would result from nuclear explosion would spread to form a stratospheric cloud layer that would block sunlight for years to come.

Extensive changes to the environment would affect our ability to sustain global food production and the massive damage to the ozone layer would allow dangerous levels of ultraviolet radiation to reach the Earth’s surface.

We must not allow this to happen.

To avoid a nuclear exchange, I wish to make official the new policy of the United States: The U.S. will not preemptively use a nuclear weapon against your nation or any sovereign state for any reason whatsoever. To do so would undermine millions of years of evolution of life on Earth.

And to demonstrate the sincerity of this commitment, I will order the end of all US – South Korean military exercises off the coast of North Korea. I will also end all flights over your country, realizing that such flights, while being aerial reconnaissance that our military deems necessary, only provokes additional fear and distrust toward the United States.

In addition, I will order the U.S. Treasury to transfer ten billion dollars in food commodities to the North Korean government as a gesture of goodwill.

In return, I would need assurances that your government will cease all future development of nuclear weaponry and testing and the launching of missiles over sovereign nations in the Pacific or elsewhere in the world. This would need to be verified by the United Nations Nuclear Weapons Inspectors. Henceforth, the United States will recognize the nuclear capability of North Korea.

This commitment offers a new start in circumventing a cataclysm that would leave the Earth uninhabitable.

Upon receipt of this letter, and your positive response, I will notify the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State of the above efforts to de-escalate the tension with Pyongyang.

May our next step be movement towards worldwide abolishment of nuclear weapons and the lifting of all sanctions on North Korea that are of a civilian nature.

Sincerely,

Donald J. Trump