Peace
A new book by Kieran Finnane has the title “Peace Crimes.” It refers to acts of civil disobedience against war, or civil resistance to war. My hope is that the phrase continues to sound as absurd as it does now, and that someday the phrase “war crimes” joins it in sounding outrageously ridiculous. “Peace crimes” should sound ludicrous because acting peacefully for peace is the most anti-criminal action possible. “War crimes” should sound ludicrous because war is the most criminal action possible, not a legitimate enterprise to which small crimes can be attached — a situation that makes “war crimes” as redundant and nonsensical as “slavery crimes” or “rape crimes” or “robbery crimes” would be if such phrases existed.
It is difficult - and futile - to argue which American president has historically been more pro-Israel. While former President Barack Obama, for example, has pledged more money to Israel than any other US administration in history, Donald Trump has provided Israel with a blank check of seemingly endless political concessions.
Certainly, the unconditional backing and love declared for Israel is common among all US administrations. What they may differ on, however, is their overall motive, primarily their target audience during election time.
I will not be a part of the killing of any child no matter how lofty the reason.
Not my neighbor’s child. Not my child. Not the enemy’s child.
Not by bomb. Not by bullet. Not by looking the other way.
I will be the power that is peace.
“There’s something happening here/What it is ain't exactly clear . . .”
Or is it?
Day one of the Democratic National (virtual) Convention. Bernie Sanders had just told his supporters: “Together we have moved this country in a bold new direction,” pointing out that “all of us . . .yearn for a nation based on the principles of justice, love and compassion.”
Remarks at Peacestock 2020
Imagine you’re stranded on a barren rock in the middle of the ocean, nothing in sight but the endless sea. And you’ve got a basket of apples, nothing else. It’s a huge basket, a thousand apples. There are various things you could do.
You could allow yourself a few apples a day and try to make them last. You could work on creating a patch of soil where apple seeds could be planted. You could work on starting a fire in order to have some cooked apples for a change. You could think of other ideas; you’d have plenty of time.
What if you were to take 600 of your 1,000 apples and throw them as hard as you could into the water, one by one, in hopes of hitting a shark, or scaring all the sharks of the world so that they wouldn’t come near your island? And what if a voice in the back of your head were to whisper to you: “Psst. Hey, buddy, you’re losing your mind. You’re not scaring sharks. You’re more likely to attract some monster than to get a message out to all the monsters in the world. And you’re going to starve soon at this rate.”
Asia, Europe, Immorality, North America, South America
Nicholson Baker’s new book, Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act, is staggeringly good. If I point out any minor complaints with it, while ignoring, for example, the entirety of Trump’s latest press conference, this is because flaws stand out in a masterpiece while making up the uniform entirety of a Trumpandemic Talk.
Baker begins as if he has an unanswered and possibly unanswerable question: Did the U.S. government use biological weapons in the 1950s? Well, yes, of course it did, I want to reply. It used them in North Korea and (later) in Cuba; it tested them in U.S. cities. We know that the spread of Lyme disease came out of this. We can be pretty confident that Frank Olson was murdered for what he knew about U.S. biological warfare.
The Kateri Peace Conference, which has been held in upstate New York for 22 years, will be held online this year, allowing anyone in the world who can get online to attend and hear from and speak with such wonderful U.S. peace activists — (Hey, World, did you know the U.S. had peace activists?) — as Steve Breyman, John Amidon, Maureen Beillargeon Aumand, Medea Benjamin, Kristin Christman, Lawrence Davidson, Stephen Downs, James Jennings, Kathy Kelly, Jim Merkel, Ed Kinane, Nick Mottern, Rev. Felicia Parazaider, Bill Quigley, David Swanson, Ann Wright, and Chris Antal.
Yes, my name is in that list. No, I am not suggesting that I am wonderful. But I have had the privilege to speak at the Kateri Peace Conference in-person in 2012 and 2014, and was scheduled to be there again in 2020 until the Trumpandemic changed everyone’s routines.
There is apparently no limit to what the United States and Israel can get away with without any consequences. The United States has been waging devastating economic warfare against Iran and Venezuela while also blaming China for a global health crisis that it is unwilling to help address due to its withdrawal from the World Health Organization. Israel meanwhile is planning on illegally annexing significant parts of the Palestinian West Bank in July, with a green light from the Trump Administration, and no one in Europe or elsewhere is even interested in initiating serious sanctions that might lead to the postponing of that decision. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has even stated flatly that the remaining Palestinians who would be annexed will not become Israeli citizens – they will instead be “subjects” of the Jewish state with no guaranteed rights or privileges.