QUOTES

PEACE:     “Everybody wants peace.  But we also want what we cannot have without war.”  Anon

Not Wanted  A rise of 1 percent in joblessness in the United States is accompanied by an increase of roughly 1 percent in the suicide rate.  In our world of increasing inequalities, suicide now claims more US lives than homicide and war combined.   Frances Moore Lappe            April 19, 2013   YES! Magazine

Dwight Eisenhower:   In 1953, as president of the country that spends the most on weapons, he acknowledged:  “Every gun that is made, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those  who are cold and are not clothed.”  Quoted by Eduardo Galeano in  ‘Children of the Days’.

Winston  Churchill:   “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas …  I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes …  The moral effect should be so good … and would spread a lively terror.”
              In 1919, when presiding over the British Air Council.

And in 1937, speaking before the Palestine Royal Commission:  “I do not admit that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia … by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race … has come in and taken their place.”    Quoted in  ‘Children of the Days’  by Eduardo  Galeano  P. 27

History     . “History can prove anything, provided that it is cut into the right lengths.”
                        Archibald  Robinson     New  Statesman  10/4/48

Ends and Means     “As soon as means which would assure an end are shown to be evil, the end will show itself as unrealizable.”     Milovan  Djikas

God          “God sits in the man opposite me… therefore to injure him is to injure God Himself.”
                   Gandhi

Ignoble  pacifism        “A pacifism which sprang from indolence, indifference, world-weariness, a sense merely of the futility of violence, were a mean and ignoble thing compared with the chivalries of war or the anger of a communist.”   Alan  Balding   in ‘No Other Foundation’   P.16

Paul  Oestriecher on War     “The demonisation of ‘the other’… is both the cause and the motor of war: In turn, war legitimises barbarity on a grand scale… Now in the global war on terror, no holds are barred.  The murderer and the torturer are back on the official payroll – both theirs and ours.”  From a speech on 28/1/2006

Colin Powell on Iraq War    By the Pentagon’s estimate, the six weeks of the Gulf War took the lives of 100,000 Iraqi people. “It’s really not a number I’m terribly interested in,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Colin Powell, said at the time.

Peter Ustinov on War   

“Terrorism is the war of the poor. War is the terrorism of the rich.”

“Credibility” is Obsolete

by Winslow Myers      Common Dreams     Sept. 1, 2013

Lord have mercy, a half-century beyond the Cuban Missile Crisis and almost as many years beyond Vietnam, our leaders are still mouthing stale clichés about “credibility.” Remember Rusk saying we went eyeball to eyeball with the Soviets and they blinked? Of course the world almost ended, but never mind. And some historians surmise that Truman dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki not to force Japanese surrender, but to make ourselves more threateningly credible to the expansionist Soviets.

Credibility was the main motif of Secretary of State Kerry’s statement rationalizing possible military action against Syria. If we’re going to kill a few thousand non-combatants in the next few days or weeks, could we not do it for some better reason than maintaining to the world that we are not a pitiful helpless giant?

John Kerry  began his political career with electrifyingly refreshing testimony opposing the Vietnam War, a war pursued on the basis that if we did not maintain a credible presence in Southeast Asia, country after country would fall to the Commies, ultimately the Chinese Commies.

Only a day before Secretary Kerry’s rationalizations, we listened to our first black president commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. The truth-force of Martin Luther King seemed to hover above Obama like a tired and angry ghost, because any person with half a brain could feel the cognitive dissonance between the president’s mealy-mouthed obeisance to the mythology of King’s non-violence, and the hellish violence soon to be visited upon Damascus from our cruise missiles. Mr. Obama, Mr. Kerry, surely you cannot have forgotten how steadfastly King stood against militarism and foreign adventures.

Our missiles will unleash stupid, unnecessary, hypocritical violence. Stupid violence because it extends yet further the hatred that so many in the Middle East feel for our crudely righteous meddling. Unnecessary violence, because the resolution of the civil war in Syria will not come one whit closer on account of our missiles. There are now too many conflicts folded into the Syrian tangle, the Shia-Sunni conflict, the Iran-Israeli conflict, even the proxy Russian-American conflict. Hypocritical violence, in view of the U.S. military’s own indiscriminate use of depleted uranium in the Iraq war—and our government’s eagerness to look the other way when Saddam, back when he was our ally, gassed Kurds and Iranians. Hypocritical violence also because It is not gas that is uniquely horrific. It is war itself.

When will my country begin to enhance its credibility for “living out the true meaning of its creed”? The worldwide equality of humans, their equal right to life and liberty and happiness, is threatened by political shibboleths like “credibility,” especially coming from a nation that possesses vast piles of weapons of mass destruction that could make death by Sarin gas look like a family picnic. This kind of credibility is incredible.

We have forgotten the kind of credibility slowly but steadily built up by Dag Hammarskjold, the second Secretary-General of the U.N., the first person to undertake endless, patient shuttle diplomacy as a better solution than war. Hammarskjold lived a consistent, impartial ethic bent upon steadfastly reconciling the interests of nations with the interests of the human family. Oh that my country could be led by stout hearts like King and Hammarskjold. They were giants of credibility.          [Abridged]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License 

Another Jolly Little War

by Eric Margolis,     Common Dreams       Aug. 31, 2013

If the US directly attacks Syria, the real cause will not be the recent chemical attacks. What are 300 or so dead in a 2-year old war fuelled by the western powers that has so far killed over 100,000? Chemical weapons are horrible. So are bullets, shells, bombs, cluster bombs,  white phosphorus, and napalm.

After Iraq, we can’t trust western intelligence and so-called evidence. This is not even the main issue at hand though it makes an excellent pretext for outside powers to intervene.  The Syrian conflict is a proxy war being waged against Iran by the United States, conservative Arab oil producers, and three former Mideast colonial powers, Britain, France and Turkey who are seeking to restore their domination in the region. Israel cheers from the sidelines. Syria and Hezbollah are Iran’s only Arab friends.

Back in 1990, I was in Baghdad covering the lead-up to the first US war against Iraq. I found four British scientific technicians who told me – and showed documents – that they had been sent by Her Majesty’s government to help Iraq’s biowarfare programs.

The four scientists were stationed at Salman Pak laboratories to manufacture four types of germ weapons for Iraq for use against Iran, including anthrax and q-fever. The feeder stocks for the germ weapons came from a US lab in Maryland; their export was ok’d by Washington. I repeatedly reported on this.  During the long, bloody Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), the US, Britain, Italy and Germany exported chemical weapons plants and raw material to Iraq that produced Sarin nerve gas and burning mustard gas. Many thousands of Iranian soldiers were killed, horribly burned or blinded by these western-supplied weapons.

So a little less western moral outrage, please, particularly from the Brits whose own sainted Winston Churchill authorized the use of poison gas against rebellious Iraqi and Afghan tribesmen. Let’s also recall how North Vietnam was drenched with the toxic Agent Orange, how the resisting Iraq city of Falluja was showered by white phosphorous, how Iraq was permanently contaminated by radioactive depleted uranium. These foul weapons also kill babies.

At least many Americans seem to have learned caution from the campaign of neocon lies that led them into the 2003 Iraq invasion, one of the biggest disasters and shames in US history. Even some usually bellicose Republicans are urging the Nobel Peace prize winner in the White House and his entourage of bloodthirsty liberals to slow his rush to war and consult Congress.

More tellingly, Gen. Colin Powell, who disgraced himself by parroting the Bush administration’s lies about Iraq also now urges caution over Syria. Powell is right. The US has lost its last two “crusades” in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US has no strategic interests in Syria beyond an obsession to overthrow Iran’s government.

Washington’s Syrian misadventure threatens to put the US on a very perilous collision course with Russia, Syria’s close ally. So far, Russia has sought a diplomatic solution, but it’s most unwise to push tough Vladimir Putin too hard. Syria is as close to Russia as northern Mexico is to the United States. Courting even the remote threat of a possible nuclear confrontation with Russia just to overthrow President Assad, a former US ally, is the height of irresponsibility.           [Abridged]             © 2013 Eric Margolis

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/31-1

Hiroshima's Legacy—The Obsolescence of War

by Robert Dodge                       Common  Dreams                        August 9, 2013

Doves fly over Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park during the ceremony to mark the 68th anniversary of the bombing, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2013. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)Our world changed forever 68 years ago this week. Tuesday marked the day that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, followed by the bombing of Nagasakithree days later.  The repercusions and lessons of these bombings at the end of World War II, which resulted in the deaths of more than 200,000 people in the months that followed, are still being realized today.

Most significantly, these events marked the end of war as a means of resolving conflict as man now controlled the fate of mankind and the planet itself. War had become obsolete. What was now needed was a new way of thinking. War was the old way of thinking. This was and is the new reality. Albert Einstein famously said, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”  He recognized that we must change our thinking or face possible extinction.

President John F. Kennedy also realized this fact and probably said it most presciently in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly in 1961: “Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.”  Yet, we still have approximately 17,000 nuclear weapons in the world today with more than 95 percent in the arsenals of the U.S.and Russia. The human and financial costs of these programs are real and devastating.  The U.S.alone has spent in excess of $5.5 trillion on nuclear weapons programs since 1940 and continues to spend in excess of $56 billion annually. Such expenditures rob our future of so much and provide nothing in return except unacceptable risk.

Recent scientific studies have demonstrated the devastating effects of even a small limited nuclear war using ~100 Hiroshima size weapons with catastrophic climate changes resulting in global famine and the deaths of up to 1 billion people.   There is no adequate medical or societal response or recovery from these types of attacks. As with any potential public health threat, prevention is the only response. There is no safe number of nuclear weapons. A complete ban and elimination of these weapons is the only response. A “nuclear weapons convention” analogous to the landmine convention and chemical weapons convention is needed.

The framework and steps to realize this have already been worked out. A majority of people around the world in poll after poll agree that abolition is the goal. What is needed is the political will.  Although there remains a shrinking group who feel that nuclear weapons and war play a role in resolving conflict they are, nevertheless, incorrect in their thinking. They cannot imagine a world without the institution of war. They are incorrect in their thinking just as those in the past who felt that slavery and apartheid would always be with us. They were wrong in their thinking as each of these institutions was abolished.

Today the idea of war prevention and resolving conflict without war has now moved to the mainstream as people from the grassroots to NGO’s, professional organizations, faith communities, academics, youth groups, civil society and elected take up the cause. Even Rotary International is taking on the cause in its Rotary Action Group for Peace and War Prevention Initiative (www.warpreventioninitiative.org). We are faced with tremendous opportunity and challenge.  — We all have a stake in a secure, prosperous, and peaceful world.

Yes, ultimately war will end or mankind will end. The choice is ours. We have the tools and we have the means.  We must persevere and work together until this challenge is met.  The Hibakusha survivors of the atomic bombings remind us daily of the responsibility each of us has to work for the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and war. We owe this to their legacy and to the future of our children.

Dr. Robert Dodge is a family practice physician in Ventura, California. 

Truth to Power

by Ian Harris           Otago  Daily  Times        August 9, 2013

“Speaking truth to power” has a resolute ring to it. Given the chance, it’s what many citizens would like to do to challenge policies and decisions they believe will prove harmful to New Zealand’s best interests.

Opposition parties claim pole position in speaking truth to power, but latterly the fourth estate has had the bit between its teeth. It rightly objects to a Defence Force manual implying that journalists are potentially subversive just for doing their job. It is also angry that a parliamentary journalist’s swipe-card, phone and email records were ferreted out in a bid to trace the source of a leaked report about state spying on New Zealand citizens.

Journalists live for scoops like that. The report would have been released a few days later anyway, but its early publication prevented the government’s spin doctors from first sprinkling it with lavender. The prime minister ordered an inquiry. Media anger is more than justified by the gross breaches of privacy that followed, the brushing aside of the obligation on journalists to protect their sources, and the methods used in trying to pinpoint the leaker.

Reporting on the way a government and its agencies are exercising power is a fundamental function of a free press. The right of journalists to go about their duties without being snooped on or accused of subversion is hugely important.  Ministers who demand transparency and accountability from everyone else (currently Fonterra) need sometimes to be dragged into the sunlight themselves, especially when their political interest lies in keeping everything under wraps.

Not all reporting speaks truth to power, but informed comment and analysis on matters of state can and do. The new awareness that emails and phone calls can so easily be divulged has to be inhibiting. The state has revealed it has the means to pounce if it wants to. The phrase “speaking truth to power” has an honourable history, appearing first in a Quaker document from the 1700s. But the concept goes back much further, as an incident in the reign of King David of Israel, about 1000 years before Christ, makes clear.

David was a successful military leader and competent ruler. However, power begets arrogance, and arrogance infects every government over time. It takes a prophet, or a courageous journalist, or a judge to expose it and rein it in.  So it was with David. Strolling on his palace rooftop one evening, he gazed around at other houses and spied a striking beauty taking a bath. He was smitten. The woman, Bathsheba, was married to one his officers, but David was aflame with desire, and people in power are accustomed to getting what they want. He sent a message: “Come over and see me some time.” Which she did, they made love, and she became pregnant.

This called for a cover-up. David instructed Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, to take time out for rest and recreation with his wife. If there was going to be a baby, it was as well for Uriah to think it was his. But Uriah didn’t go home. He dossed down with his troops at the palace.

Time for Plan B. David wrote ordering his general to pitch Uriah into the thick of a forthcoming battle, in the hope he would be killed. Uriah duly fell, David breathed a sigh of relief, and in due course added Bathsheba to his array of wives (at least eight) and concubines (at least ten).  Royalty, power, lust, deceit, betrayal, murder by proxy – what a tale for Hollywood one day to drool over (as it did)! Enter Nathan, a prophet of Israel – that is, someone who approaches life ethically and fearlessly, and insists that wrong-doing will have consequences. He came to David and told him a disturbing story.

A poor man, he said, bought a ewe lamb, which he loved and treated almost as a member of the family. It was the only lamb he owned.  Nearby lived a wealthy man who had many sheep and cattle. One day a traveller arrived on his doorstep. Obliged to show hospitality, he went out to kill a sheep for dinner. Too mean to slay one of his own animals, however, he took his neighbour’s ewe lamb and served that up instead.

David was furious at the arrogant heartlessness the rich man had shown. “As the Lord lives,” he said, “the man who has done this deserves to die.”   Nathan drew the parallel: “You are the man.”

That is speaking truth to power. It’s a model for journalists