Tag: Vietnam War

Looking for inspiration?

Posted on by kathiemm
The logo of the US Peace Memorial Foundation. See www.uspeacememorial.org and/or “World Peace: A First Step” at www.uspeacememorial.org/WorldPeace.htm. Reprinted with permission

In our country right now, frustration, anger, and fear are running rampant, along with the scapegoating that inevitably accompanies those emotions.

But know what?  If you are alive, you can make a difference.  Millions of people are striving actively on behalf of human rights, animal rights, environmental rights, and the bedrock that supports all of them—peace. You can join them if you have not done so already.

To see some examples of what extraordinary ordinary people can do, visit the US Peace Registry of the US Peace Memorial Foundation.

Here are just a few exemplars:

Philip D. Anderson of Maple, WI, is a retired public servant and military reservist (U.S. Army, Wisconsin Army National Guard, and Naval Reserve, 1975-2002) who is an activist for environmental, labor, social justice, and peace issues. Recent articles: Nation overspends our tax money on military, shortchanges us on essentials, 04/09/2015; Is a nuclear-free world still possible?, 08/08/2015; and All victims of war need our help, 11/08/2015.

David O. H. Barrows, born in Boston, MA in 1947, has been an activist with a variety of social justice groups including the ACLU, Amnesty International, Gray Panthers, American Indian Movement, The Catholic Worker, and Free DC. Dressed in Guantanamo Bay prisoner of war garb (orange jumpsuit and black hoods), he joined Witness Against Torture in protests including a march to White House where he chained himself to the White House fence, January 2007; fasted for 12 days, and was arrested at the U.S. Capitol steps and charged with trespassing, January 2010.

Charles F. Clark, MD, MPH served as a captain in the Medical Corps during the Vietnam War, a lieutenant colonel with NATO, and currently practices psychiatry and addiction medicine in Denver, CO. E-mails to congressmen opposing war, 2003-2011.Letters to the editor opposing invasions, war, torture, drone strikes, and prison camps, including “Media only cares about oil, money”, Boulder Daily Camera, 2002-2014.

Scotty N. Bruer of Los Angeles, CA, a veteran of the United States Marine Corps, is an author, public speaker, father, grandfather, entrepreneur, and graduate of Purdue University with a degree in forest management.Founded, PeaceNow, 05/2013.Organized the successful effort to have the City of Los Angeles become an International City of Peace, 09/2014.Executive Director, PeaceNow, 2014-2016.

Stephen D. Clemens, Minneapolis, MN, peace and justice activist, member of the Ecumenical Community of St. Martin, has been active in Koinonia Community in Americus, GA, Habitat for Humanity, racial reconciliation, abolition of death penalty, and immigration justice issues. steveclemens@gmail.com. Founding Board Member of IARP (Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project), 2006-2014.

If you have enough to eat and adequate shelter, consider yourself not just as fortunate but as having a moral obligation to pay back and pay ahead. Join the ranks of the nonviolent protestors and peace advocates.

To learn more about the U.S. Peace Memorial project,  click here.

And please remember to contribute to engaging peace by submitting comments on posts as well as supporting us financially.

THE UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA, Part 3

Posted on by kathiemm
“September 11, 1973″ by Carlos Latuff; depicts the U.S.-backed attack on democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.”

by Stefan Schindler

Disturbing facts from American history, continued:

11 – The first 9/11 occurred on September 11th, 1973, when Nixon and Kissinger overthrew the elected government in Chile, the longest running democracy in South America, beginning’s America’s subsequent support of the 16-year Pinochet dictatorship and slaughter of liberal activists.

12 – The Carter administration launched a terror campaign against the newly elected social democratic government of Afghanistan in 1979, leading to the Russian counter-intervention in 1980, which led to Reagan’s eight-year creation, arming and financing of Al Queda to fight “the godless communists” occupying Afghan territory and preventing the installation of American pipelines for the transport of Iraqi oil.

13 – In the first five years of his administration, Ronald Reagan transformed America from the largest creditor nation in the world to the largest debtor nation in the world.

14 – Ronald Reagan conducted an eight-year terror campaign against the social democratic government of Nicaragua, which had finally overthrown 40 years of American supported dictatorship.

15 – The Bush-Cheney wars against Iraq and Afghanistan were an updated repeat of the lies that led to America’s Indochina Holocaust (euphemistically called The Vietnam War to obliterate memory of U.S. devastation of Laos and Cambodia).

16 – The Bush-Cheney Administration’s continuation of Reagan’s attempt to unravel Roosevelt’s New Deal for the American people, with its regulatory safeguards, led directly to the all too predictable economic meltdown of 2008: the largest stock market crash since 1929, from which millions of Americans, and many people around the globe, are still suffering.

17 – The single greatest factor leading to the outbreak of World War Two was the U.S. stock market crash of 1929.  That crash had ripple effects around the globe, including the implosion of Germany’s already impoverished economy.  In desperation, the German people elected a charismatic lunatic named Hitler.

18 – America’s neutrality during the so-called Spanish Civil War (actually a coup d’état) from1936 to1939 – the only place in Europe where ordinary citizens were actively fighting the rise of fascism – led to the overthrow of Spanish democracy by a cabal of Hitler-supported bankers, bishops and generals, and persuaded Hitler that he could continue Nazi expansion into other parts of Europe, including Czechoslovakia and Poland.

19 – American banks and corporations (including Ford and General Motors) helped Hitler build his war machine, and sanctioned Hitler’s persecution of German socialists (hoping that Hitler would invade Russia and put an end to the Soviet experiment in communism).

20 – Japan was begging to surrender in late 1945, asking only that their emperor, Hirohito, be left in place as the nation’s nominal leader.  Truman refused to accept Japanese surrender because of that single condition.  No American troop invasion of Japan was necessary to end the war.  Truman dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki primarily as a warning to the Soviets.  After Japan’s surrender, Hirohito was allowed to maintain his nominal political title.

21 – During World War Two, the American air force was ordered not to bomb Nazi war-making factories owned by Ford and General Motors.  After the war, the CEOs of Ford and General Motors were awarded millions of taxpayer dollars in compensation for “collateral damage,” instead of being tried and convicted for treason.

Co-founder of The National Registry for Conscientious Objection, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a recipient of The Boston Baha’i Peace Award, and a Trustee of The Life Experience School and Peace Abbey Foundation, Dr. Schindler received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston College, worked one summer in a nature preserve, lived in a Zen temple for a year, did the pilot’s voice in a claymation video of St. Exupery’s The Little Prince, acted in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” and performed as a musical poet in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City.  He also wrote The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Awards for Howard Zinn and John Lennon.  He is now semi-retired and living in Salem, Massachusetts.

Walt Whitman Returns . . .

Posted on by kathiemm

This is what you shall do: by Anthony J. Marsella, channeling Walt Whitman

 

This is what you shall do:

Love the earth and sun and the animals,

Despise riches,

Give alms to everyone that asks.“

 

 I.

 Again! Again!

Hate’s fiery cauldron overflows?

No lessons learned.

Battlefield tolls unheeded:

Gettysburg, Manassas, Chancellorsville, Vicksburg?

More than places!

Sacred lands, defiled!

Unshaven old men, pimpled-scarred youth,

Blue or grey, now red!

Bodies lying in heaps . . . or alone,

Limbless, moaning, seared souls,

Dead!

Posterity captured:

Rifles in hand, pistols gripped, swords unsheathed,

Bloodstained rocks, smoldering earth, shattered trees.

Flies gathering to feast,

Buzzing amid charnel,

Reflexively choosing choice sites!

 

II.

 Brave soldiers march to cadenced drums.

Flags wave,

Artillery towed,

Medaled-generals salute,

Parades!

“Charades” . . . I say!

Battles forgotten,

Triumph’s costs denied.

Music and verse:

“Mine eyes have seen the glory . . .”

 “Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton …

                     “Onward Christian soldiers . . .”

      

And in the background,

Still in shadows,

Time unchanged:

“Steal away, steal away; Steal away to . . .

                    “Deeeppp river, Lawd! My home is over Jordan.

 “Illusions . . . delusions,” I say!

Podium, stage, pulpit,

Platforms for death and destruction;

Foundations for domination!

How inadequate Periclean words,

Unfit for all times.

Preserving lies!

Inspiring myths!

Nurturing cultures of war,

Cults of nations,

Food for empire!

 

III.

 Did you not see what I saw?

Endless rows of blood-stained sheets,

Gaunt nurses placating life,

Tears streaming from bedside widows,

Hollow-eyed children begging for bread!

Charred houses,

Broken bridges,

Shattered trees,

Smoldering carcasses,

Stench like no other!

Damn the cannon makers!

Damn the smelters making them!

Damn the voices cheering their firing!

Guiltless;

Blind to their sullied metal fruit,

Deaf to cries,

Distant from shot to crater,

Buffering conscience!

Make them walk brimstone,

Breathe fumes of seared flesh,

Beg for mercy,

Ask respite from hot metal,

Seek relief from scorched earth.

Make them know pain, suffering, death –

Avoided – escaped – denied

Hidden amidst comforts of

Gilded rooms,

Leather chairs,

Polished tables,

Sycophants:

“Sir!”

“No, Sir!”

“Yes, Sir!”

“More, Sir?”

Sherry, Sir?

 

IV.

 What use conscience?

What value brain?

What function heart?

What glory courage . . .

If ignored, denied, separated

From a silent human face.

A face, once admired and prized,

Bursting forth from a mother urging

Her swollen womb;

Grunting . . . screaming

Unfathomable mysteries,

Birthing life!

A face emerges!

Its future inscribed.

 Tear down your crosses, crescents, and angled stars.

You ignore their precepts.

Excuses for madness,

Salve for betrayal,

Gloves for stained hands

Veils for truth!

                          

Fall upon your knees,

Beg forgiveness,

Judas!

Failed prophets!

Flawed angels!

God pretenders!

Stainers of time!

 Mortal art thou, Man!

Blood, bone, sinew!

Seeker!

Mind!

Spirit essence!

V.

Sing the song of life!

Cast seeds upon the land,

Plant trees in barren hills,

Water fallow fields!

 Look to mountains,

Forested woods,

Desert sands,

Mirrored lakes,

Gaze in wonder!

 Inhale air,

Sip water,

Break bread,

Behold skies;

All else is vanity!

                  

Go now!

Walk tortoise paths,

Follow hare tracks,

Eat berries,

Urinate,

Create streams – droplets!

Erase scars of war!

 

All is sacred!

Behold grandeur,

Fill senses with awe –

Failing this,

Know you never lived!

 

At end of day,

Earth will accept your

Crumbled remains,

And . . . try again!

And you will have no choice!

 

and here are the words from Walt Whitman’s Preface to Leaves of Grass (1855):

 “This is what you shall do:

 Stand up for the stupid and crazy,

Devote your income and labor to others,

Hate tyrants, argue not concerning god,

Have patience and indulgence toward the people,

 

Re-examine all you have been told

At school or church or in any book,

Dismiss whatever insults your own soul;

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.”   

 

Comment by Anthony Marsella:

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) is my favorite poet – and in many ways, my favorite humanist. He witnessed the horrors of the American Civil War — its sights, sounds, and smells inspired his commitment to peace. But long before the War, his special senses gave voice and word to the changing world about him.  He captured time and times!

I find life in his every word — each line and verse, a sacred-clarion call to life!  In his words – their pace, stridency, boldness – spring passionate observations, accusations, and visions of hope revealing uncommon and uncompromising courage and wisdom.

I wonder what Walt Whitman would say if he appeared in our time?  I know he would recognize the betrayal of history’s lessons – humanity’s continued infatuation with violence and war.  He would scold us!  Reprimand us!  Remind us solutions are to be found in compassion and connection — not metal.

I wrote a draft of this poem in hours the next morning and early day.  I waited a few days, overwhelmed by my efforts to hear his voice, to channel his presence.  It is best to rest when you awaken the dead.  My words lack the power and grace of Walt Whitman; but I am consoled by the fact, my intention is his!

 

Anthony Marsella, Ph.D., a  member of the TRANSCEND Network, is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii, and past director of the World Health Organization Psychiatric Research Center in Honolulu. He is known nationally and internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry. In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 15 edited books, and more than 250 articles, chapters, book reviews, and popular pieces. He can be reached at marsella@hawaii.edu.