Category: War and Peace

The following was given at “A Conversation on Gaza-Israel War” program at the Olympia Center, in Olympia, Washington on October 17, 2023, and revised 10/30/2023.

By Peter Bohmer

I want to share how my background causes me to support the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli occupation of all of Palestine including Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Since 1967, I have actively opposed the U.S. military aid and ideological support for Israel, and in solidarity with Palestine.

I mourn the deaths of 9500 people murdered in southern Israel and Gaza over the last three weeks (as of October 29th) over 1400 in Israel, mainly Israeli civilians by Hamas and over 8000 Palestinians in Gaza and growing numbers in the West Bank by the Israeli military, the IDF. Let us take a moment to reflect on this death of human life and the injuries of many more.

My parents and grandparents were Jewish from Central Europe, my parents grew up in Vienna, Austria. The German military and Nazis were welcomed by much of the Austrian population when they invaded in spring 1938. Germany immediately annexed Austria. My dad was 22 when he was incarcerated in Vienna by the Austrian Nazis and frequently  beaten.

Disillusioned by the Vietnam War, he leaked a top-secret history of the conflict, leading to a landmark Supreme Court case

By Harrison Smith and Patricia Sullivan / Washington Post – Reader Supported News / June 19, 2023

Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the voluminous, top-secret history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers, a disclosure that led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling on press freedoms and enraged the Nixon administration,

By Frank Gormlie

For at least an entire generation of Americans, the day May 4, 1970, will always be associated with the shootings of unarmed students by National Guardsmen on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio. Four students were killed – two had nothing to do with the protests, one was an ROTC cadet – and nine others were wounded, including one permanently paralyzed. The shootings will be eternally remembered as a grim stain upon US history.

Remembering the Vietnamese Wars

The San Diego Hugh Thompson Chapter of Veterans for Peace will be participating in a wonderful program on “Remembering  the Vietnamese Wars.”

It will be held at the University of San Diego’s Copley Library on Thursday, April 27, 2023 from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., with doors opening at 6:30 p.m.

It is sponsored by the Department of History and Copley Library of the University of San Diego.

From Global Security

According to H.R. Haldeman, the President’s Assistant, Nixon intentionally planned to signal to Moscow and Hanoi that he was a “madman” capable of any irrational deed, up to and including using nuclear weapons, to end the stalemate at the negotiating table and bring about an end to the war.

The so-called “madman theory” was first suggested in Haldeman’s memoirs, published in 1978.

On Tuesday, September 20, the City of San Diego formally rescinded a 1942 resolution the city council had passed 80 years ago in support of the incarceration of Japanese Americans in prison camps during World War II.

City councilmembers made the rescission and called the camps and the council’s 1942 resolution supporting them racist, unjust and a form of hate.

By Frank Gormlie

Monday, May 4 – Introduction

For at least an entire generation of Americans, the day May 4, 1970, will always be associated with the shootings of unarmed students by National Guardsmen on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio. Four students were killed – two had nothing to do with the protests, one was an ROTC cadet – and nine others were wounded, including one permanently paralyzed. The shootings will be eternally remembered as a grim stain upon US history.

Early in February, perhaps a couple weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, well-known producer / director, Oliver Stone told journalist Robert Scheer: “The United States and its allies in NATO have been provoking Russia for, since two years now — actually three years – over the Ukraine…”

In the same interview, Stone decried “bloodthirsty” media coverage saying, “they have no proof that Russia intends to invade Ukraine; I doubt that they would. I think Russia is concerned only with the Donbass region.”

After the invasion, Stone — who had also criticized the media for using the term “invasion” to characterize Russia’s plans — came around. And here is the full text of Oliver Stone’s most recent Facebook post:

By David Ost / Common Dreams / April 2, 2022

It is tough for leftists to be on the same side as the mainstream.

We can easily feel at those times that we’re missing something, that we’re letting down the struggle, that by ganging up even on an admittedly bad actor we’re helping strengthen the nemesis at home, allowing it to appear as the good guy.

Ever since 1917, that has been the case with regards to the western Left and Russia. Before 1917, the Left saw the tsarist autocracy as the pinnacle of authoritarian reaction, an attitude that eased the path for the socialist parties of Russia’s enemies to embrace World War I. But ever since the Russian Revolution, the Left has been wary of joining with any western bourgeois condemnations of the country,

People showing support for Ukraine are coming together at Dog Beach in OB to form a Human Peace Sign on Sunday, March 6. At 2 pm.

The event is being organized by Rhonda June Blaine and Mike James is helping out.

By Craig Jones

Both things are true: The US military empire invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003, attempting to justify it with lies; and now the Russian military empire is invading and will occupy Ukraine, attempting to justify it with lies. In fact, both these atrocities are purely the outcomes of military-industrial-state complexes.

Military empires can be depended upon to perpetrate atrocities.

There is historic context to what is going on.

It has been clearly documented that the “West” with the US in the lead made promises via Glasnost that NATO would NOT expand further towards Russia; but those promises were demolished precisely by NATO expansion, with military forces, year after year moving ever on, right up to Russian borders.