Category: War and Peace

While recalling my father in WWII, I wonder what he would think of our lack of First Amendment rights today?

Today is the 70th anniversary of the attack at Pearl Harbor which pushed the U.S. into World War Two. The Japanese surprise dismantled a good part of the US Pacific Fleet. Whether FDR knew about the coming attack is not our concern today.

Our concern today – expressed by an Open Thread – is what it means for us so many decades later, when most of that generation have taken their leave from this world.

Editor: Please note this was written 2 years ago. It’s now the 50th anniversary and we are running a series of articles. Here’s the first one. The 2nd on CNN joining the cover-up, and the 3rd “The Big Lie”.

November 22, 1963, – 48 years ago today – was one of the most terrible days in US history. It was the day that John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

No one yet has been successfully prosecuted for his murder. Yes, Lee Harvey Oswald was caught and then killed by Jack Ruby – but to this day – no one besides Oswald has been punished for the most despicable act in our lifetime.

Plenty of us boomers remember those days. I was 15 when it happened and I vividly recall that day at Point Loma High when we heard about the shooting. I felt sick and literally tossed my lunch into the garbage can at school. And I was sitting with my father a day later in our Point Loma home when we both witnessed Jack Ruby assassinate Oswald live on national television.

Annual Conflict Resolution Conference Brought World Healers to Our Shores

Sister Pauline Acayo, is a large African woman. Large not merely in physical presence, but in the sense her heart is filled with love and compassion. George Gacharo is a young African man. Young not merely in the sense of age, but in the sense he is full of fire and energy for the work he does. Gidon Bromberg looks a bit like an Israeli Peter Sellers. And like Sellers’ comedic nature, his work is subtle and surreptitious in nature and he tells of it with a wry smile.

Here is a set of national news posts – articles you may have missed in the nation’s rush to commemorate 9-11:

Postal Workers: The Last Union

Obama Team Feared Coup If He Prosecuted War Crimes

Army Base on the Brink : At an Army base near Seattle, soldiers are committing suicide, murdering their families—and in one case, waterboarding their own kids.

(Go inside for the links)

Join with the San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice and San Diego Veterans for Peace on Sunday, September 11, 2011, 2-4 pm Park Blvd and President’s Way Balboa Park, San Diego.

On September 12th, 2001, hundreds of us gathered to develop our collective response to the tragedy in New York City. Together we formed the San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice – and we have met ever since.

On September 11th, 2011 we are calling on 100 organizations and hundreds more of us to gather to mark the day and to learn the lessons resulting from 10 years of war.

With the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks only a month away, former CIA Director George Tenet and two former top aides are fighting back hard against allegations that they engaged in a massive cover-up in 2000 and 2001 to hide intelligence from the White House and the FBI that might have prevented the attacks.

Two-Faced Washington : Lowering America’s War Ceiling? Imperial Psychosis on Display

By Tom Engelhardt / TomDispatch.com / August 2, 2011

By now, it seems as if everybody and his brother has joined the debt-ceiling imbroglio in Washington, perhaps the strangest homespun drama of our time. It’s as if Washington’s leading political players, aided and abetted by the media’s love of the horserace, had eaten LSD-laced brownies, then gone on stage before an audience of millions to enact a psychotic spectacle of American decline.

By Jane Fonda

I grew up during World War II. My childhood was influenced by the roles my father played in his movies. Whether Abraham Lincoln or Tom Joad in the Grapes of Wrath, his characters communicated certain values which I try to carry with me to this day. I remember saying goodbye to my father the night he left to join the Navy. He didn’t have to. He was older than other servicemen and had a family to support but he wanted to be a part of the fight against fascism, not just make movies about it. I admired this about him. I grew up with a deep belief that wherever our troops fought, they were on the side of the angels.

Theodore Roszak, who three weeks after the Woodstock Festival in 1969 not only published a pivotal book about a young generation’s drug-fueled revolt against authority but also gave it a name — “counterculture” — died on July 5 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 77.

His wife, Betty, in confirming the death, said he had been treated for liver cancer and other illnesses.

Dr. Roszak’s book “The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society” had gone to press months before the music festival was held in August that year, displaying the exuberance and excesses of a generation rebelling against war and seeking new ways to be and think. But in serendipitously timely fashion, the book provided what many regarded as a profound analysis of the youth movement, finding its roots in a sterile Western culture that had prompted young people to seek spiritual meaning in LSD, exotic religions and even comic books.

By Carolyn Kellogg / The LA Times / July 18, 2011

Jane Fonda writes that a planned Saturday appearance on QVC was canceled by the shopping network after viewers complained, citing Fonda’s political statements during the Vietnam War. Fonda was scheduled to promote her aging-with-spirit book “Prime Time: Making the Most of Your Life,” due out Aug. 9.

By Tom Hayden / The Nation / June 23, 2011

Two years ago I was on a Chicago panel with a just-retired military officer, Charles Tucker, a former top adviser to the US embassy in Iraq, general counsel to the Pentagon and a major general in the Air National Guard. During our debate, he made a statement worth remembering on this night of Barack Obama’s speech on Afghanistan. His words were these:

“The only relevant debate in the next two years will be counterinsurgency versus counterterrorism. After that, Obama will begin surrendering to the peace movement.”

By John Lawrence / Will Blog for Food / June 23, 2011

War is immensely profitable; that’s why there is so much of it. It’s the only domestic industry to speak of. All the rest have been outsourced.

War constitutes almost the entire GDP of Afghanistan while enriching the corrupt Karzai and his henchmen. War is immensely profitable to Pakistan too – $2 billion a year profitable.