Helping Refugees

CRP is one of my favorite charities.

Statement on Bolivia

U.S. Peace Council Statement

Mobilize to Stop the Imperialistic Coup and Intervention

in Bolivia and the Latin America!

The U.S. Peace Council (USPC) strongly condemns the U.S.-backed military coup against the democratically elected president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, and stands in solidarity with Bolivia’s first indigenous president and the people of Bolivia. The violence unleashed by the military and members of the right-wing opposition forced the resignation of Evo Morales and his vice-president in the hope of putting an end to the foreign-induced violence and destruction in their country.

This is a coup against a president who has lifted three million Bolivians out of poverty (42% drop in the poverty rate and 60% drop in the extreme poverty rate). He had also dared to close U.S. military bases in Bolivia and had paid to combat fires in the Amazon, actions which have undoubtedly angered the U.S. ruling circles.

This action in Bolivia is in keeping with U.S. efforts to destabilize democratically elected governments in Central and South America — Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and now Bolivia — and brutalizing and suppressing people’s movements in countries like Colombia. The orchestrated protests and violent acts of reactionary forces in the city of La Paz; the threats and attacks on politicians, the media and social movements; and the threats against embassies of Venezuela, Cuba and Mexico in La Paz, are further evidence for the true intentions of the U.S.-backed coup plotters. Since 2001, the USAID has been financing the right-wing opposition to Evo Morales and the U.S. Government has been working closely with them.

It is clear that the U.S. government is deeply concerned with the rise of the left and independent popular movements and governments in Latin America. It has been using every weapon in its arsenal — sabotages, political subversions, imposing trade blockades and killer economic sanctions, expanding the NATO presence in Latin America, and establishing new military bases — to stem the tide. The coup attempt in Bolivia is just the last imperialistic attempt in this direction.

The U.S. Peace Council vehemently opposes the U.S. imperialism’s efforts to re-establish its hegemonic domination of the Latin America. We call for an end to NATO presence and closure of all U.S. military bases in Latin America, an end to the unilaterally imposed sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, U.S. commitment to the Colombian Peace Accords and an end to U.S. regime change efforts in Latin America and throughout the world.

We call upon all peace-loving people of the United States to condemn these imperialist acts of the U.S. Government and mobilize mass protests against the coup in Bolivia and all other U.S. efforts to undermine the national sovereignty of the peoples of Latin America and the world.

Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council 

November 11, 2019

Holiday Parade in Asheville

The local chapter of Veterans for Peace participated in the very wet parade in Asheville on November 23, 2019. Photo by Gerry Werhan.

Water

For Banks and Corporations

And now, they are trying to impeach a president for threatening to stop giving weapons to Ukraine to use on it's eastern border (next to Russia) and digging up political dirt on a opposition candidate.

While the fact that he joined the presidents above in murdering innocent people means nothing to the opposition party in power.

Ironically, Obama had a permanent ban on selling the some weapons to Ukraine. But he was a Democrat so the Democrats did not care. Obama did the correct thing in this case. More weapons to Ukraine mean more dead innocent people.

How do we elect such trash over and over and over and over?

Yes, just ordinary people

And today, it is ordinary people herding people into concentration camps and separating children from their parents. And ordinary people who allow this to happen on our southern border.

They are really monsters.

Armistice Day

Celebrate Armistice Day, Not Veterans Day

By David Swanson for The Humanist

Do not celebrate Veterans Day. Celebrate Armistice Day instead.

Do not celebrate Veterans Day — because of what it has become, and even more so because of what it replaced and erased from U.S. culture.

Former American Humanist Association President Kurt Vonnegut once wrote: “Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not. So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.” Vonnegut meant by “sacred” wonderful, valuable, worth treasuring. He listed Romeo and Juliet and music as “sacred” things.

Exactly at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, in 1918, 100 years ago this coming November 11th, people across Europe suddenly stopped shooting guns at each other. Up until that moment, they were killing and taking bullets, falling and screaming, moaning and dying, from bullets and from poison gas. And then they stopped, at 11:00 in the morning, one century ago. They stopped, on schedule. It wasn’t that they’d gotten tired or come to their senses. Both before and after 11 o’clock they were simply following orders. The Armistice agreement that ended World War I had set 11 o’clock as quitting time, a decision that allowed 11,000 more men to be killed in the 6 hours between the agreement and the appointed hour.

But that hour in subsequent years, that moment of an ending of a war that was supposed to end all war, that moment that had kicked off a world-wide celebration of joy and of the restoration of some semblance of sanity, became a time of silence, of bell ringing, of remembering, and of dedicating oneself to actually ending all war. That was what Armistice Day was. It was not a celebration of war or of those who participate in war, but of the moment a war had ended.

Congress passed an Armistice Day resolution in 1926 calling for “exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding … inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.” Later, Congress added that November 11th was to be “a day dedicated to the cause of world peace.”

The rest of the article is here.

Free Assange

To Stop Climate Chaos, Stop the US Military

School of the Americas Watch

End of the Trial

Mark Colville

HERE’S WHAT I THINK:

[Closing summation by Mark Colville at the trial of the Kings Bay Plowshares Seven, October 24, 2019]

I think the evidence has shown that you are being asked to sit in judgement over seven people who are clearly caught between a rock and a hard place. The rock is our faith in Jesus Christ, His command to love our enemies and to lay down our own lives rather than take the life of another. The hard place is Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, where, as we have come to understand, the government is hiding the most poisonous and murderous weapons ever known to human civilization, and requiring us to live under their protection. In other words, in light of our faith, we are being forced to live a lie.

I think the evidence has shown that we were motivated, not by malice, but by a sincere belief that those weapons are blasphemous, idolatrous and mortally sinful. As such, we felt compelled to unmask them, to take our names off them, and to remove them from our lives.

The evidence has further shown that we brought with us an indictment, which it is our legal right as U.S. citizens to do, an indictment charging the government with criminal behavior. That indictment has been ignored, both by the government and by this court. Instead, we’ve been charged with multiple crimes, charged to a degree that can only be described as “over the top”. But make no mistake: the indictment we brought to Kings Bay is evidence. It need not be ignored by you.

In fact, when you go into that jury room in a few minutes, if you truly commit yourselves to practicing real discernment- which, of course, is your duty as jurors- I think what you’ve heard and seen during the past few days might lead you to an uncomfortable conclusion. You might conclude that the reason we stand accused under the law today is because the government has willfully, and even criminally, placed nuclear weapons beyond the reach of the law.

Despite our clear and honest testimony, the government has tried hard to portray us as people who don’t respect the law. They even went so far as to use the ridiculous analogy of running red lights. [Note: In cross examination, the government had tried to advance the notion that, by our logic, obedience to traffic laws should be optional.] You should remember that interaction yesterday, and consider it. In fact, maybe that analogy is a perfect illustration of the point we’ve been trying to make: when the law is obeyed without conscience; when the law is applied without common sense; when the law is administered without respect for human life- that is when the law itself becomes an idol. That is when the law becomes something that we are enslaved to, rather than the instrument of freedom and liberation it is meant to be. And I think the evidence has shown that this is the unfortunate place we have arrived at when it comes to nuclear weapons and the law. 

But the beautiful and hopeful thing about our legal system is that it gives you, a jury, as representatives of the human community- which does not consent to the existence of nuclear weapons- the power to change that. 

And so, when you go into that deliberation room and take up the evidence that you’ve been presented, maybe you should think about what was considered legal and illegal in this country fifty years ago. Maybe you should think about what was not even allowed to be questioned in a courtroom one hundred years ago. Maybe you should think about what was legal, in this very state of Georgia, a hundred and fifty years ago. And then, maybe you should consider what your decision here today might look like fifty years from now- if, in fact, we have that much time left. Thank you.

[Photo above is of the Plowshares Seven. It came from an email from Voices for Creative Nonviolence. No indication of who took the photo. - dancewater]

Indigenous People's Day

Keep Space For Peace Week

Photo of Ken Jones with his sign. He will be on the streets of Asheville this week.

Birmingham Bombings

I remember this day. I was 8 years old and appalled that little girls were killed by bombs in CHURCH! What a horrible loss this was. And what a sad reflection on the evil that lives in some people's heart. May they Rest in Peace.

Remembrance of 9/11

Fear and anger.

I remember that many of us said do not treat our cries of grief as a cry for war.

Seek justice. Treat it as a criminal act.

Use it to build peace, not war.

I remember the words of Phyllis and Orlando Rodriguez, whose son died at the World Trade Center: “We see our hurt and anger reflected among everybody we meet. We fear that many want our country to head in the direction of violent revenge.  It is not the way to go. It will not avenge our son’s death.”

I remember the gay rugby player who was among several who jumped to fight for the control of the plane in Pennsylvania.

I remember all the first responders, the firemen and police officers who rushed in to help. And died.

But our politicians and the media rushed to war.

They launched a war on terror.

Mission Accomplished.

I remember.

It is time to declare the War on Terror over. To seek peace.

I remember all who died in the Middle East due to our invasion of Iraq, a bad actor – like many tyrants we have supported and still support – but which had nothing to do with 9/11.

I remember that our national leaders lied to us and the world.

They used their lies to suppress civil liberties at home and abroad.

I remember that Afghanistan is our longest war – and counting. People still die. Especially innocent civilians.

I remember far too many acts of terrorism since 9/11.

So many lives lost and harmed.

The War on Terror has not brought us peace. Or Justice.

I don’t remember a time when the US was not at war with someone. War is the wrong path.

I remember the 4,000 who died a year ago in Puerto Rico. Of Houston and Florida.

The millions fleeing war in Syria that was stoked by climate change and massive drought.

The wildfires in California, everywhere, floods, extreme rain, people drowning in the ocean to escape from being burnt to death in Greece. 

Hurricanes Sandy and Irene, Katrina – with more coming. The arctic circle on fire.

The hundreds of thousands who already die annually from climate impact.

The sixth great extinction of species.

I remember.

I certainly cannot remember peace in the Middle East. We need peace and justice for Palestinians and Israelis, starting with ending the inhumane conditions in the occupied territories.

I remember that it is the poor of the world who suffer for the greed and sins of the rich.

It is long past time to slash our military budget and imperial world power – and divert the vast majority of those resources to solving climate change before it is too late.

We know how to transition from fossil fuels to clean renewable energy. To make a better world. To live sustainably.

We just lack the political will. To say no to fossil fuel companies and their campaign contributions.

Climate change poses the threat of a near-term social collapse and species extinction. The NY Times Magazine recently reported that we have waited too long; we are paralyzed with partisan gridlock. We’re doomed.

We need to prove the NY Times wrong.

That requires full-scale mobilization of all of society. Top priority for everyone.

The future of life on our planet depends on it.

Trump must go. As does most of the other so-called elected leaders.

I want future generations to remember us as those who said enough is enough, save humanity, save the planet.

Cooperate for the common good.

I remember.

Written by Mark Dunlea. He is author of Madame President: The Unauthorized Biography of the First Green Party President, which may have been the first novel on 9/11. 

Here is a link to the original. 

Keep Space For Peace - say NO TO NATO!

Canton Labor Day Parade 2019

Veterans for Peace, Chapter 099, walked in the Labor Day Parade today. It was a lot of fun.

Photos by Susan Oehler

"Summer's End" by John Prine

Happy July 4th!

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses

yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless,

tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

- Emma Lazarus’ sonnet "New Colossus"

inscribed on a plaque at The Statue of Liberty

Above came from an ACLU email. 

Global Day of Listening June 21, 2019

Relationships and Peace

At a time when there are deteriorating political relations across the world, and weak or non-existent relationships among ordinary people, the Afghan Peace Volunteers are dedicated to building bridges among different cultures, and across the world.

Some APVs are reaching out to their University friends  in India, the different Provinces of Afghanistan, Spain, and other countries.  Relational Learning Circles, where three to ten persons converse online, provide the APVs another opportunity to be "Borderfree."  Each of these groups, like Global Days of Listening calls,  address climate change, inequality and violence with its nuclear-risk wars, under the three general themes of ‘Green, Equal and Nonviolent’ (#Earth! #GEN).
Over the years, the APVs and their global friends have found that when they connect personally with others from different parts of the world, it energizes them. The conversations in the Relational Learning Circles, during the monthly Global Days of Listening calls, and through expanding APV circles throughout Afghanistan and other countries, we can learn more than we do from books, ‘un-learn’ manufactured media narratives and move one another to positive actions.

Relationships can change our lives, and help us all to move ever closer to Peace, together!
We hope you will join the Afghan Peace Volunteers for this vital and timely conversation.