Tuesday, April 22, 2014

ANGELS FOR PEACE–ZILLIONS OF EARTH'S VOICES


Dears Ones,

International peace versus war is the universal cry to stop Earth's demise.  Also see my blog, Voices of  Harmony–world singer and musician pleas for harmony among nations. When you speak of war, drop the "L" for glory.

Mame
www.macdonaldsward@yahoo;com
helenesmith1.blogspot.com
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An old man slowly walked down the center aisle of a church and requested to speak from the podium in front of the holy alter. The stranger said: “O Lord our God, help us to go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved fireplaces to smite the foe . . . help us to tear their soldiers to shreds with our shells; help us cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us drown the thunder of guns with shrieks of their wounded writhing in pain; help us to waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows in grief; help us to turn them out, rootless with little  children to wander unfriended the waste of their desolated  land in rags, hunger and thirst, sports of the sun’s flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail.” No one can beat Mark Twain for his satire–all of the above.

Men masquerading behind the face of war calling evil–glory– have never faced its gore. Governments commit treason and betrayal by ignoring the will and voices of its constituents crying for peace versus illegal treacherous war as the United States defies its Constitution and the 1973 War Power Resolution. Government exists for the people and their children, not the reverse.  “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” Out of the poem Invictus comes the wisdom of William Ernest Henley. But torturous wars destroy the very marrow of human dignity as sanity becomes a bone pile of madness. Man’s fate is at stake when masters of aggression erode the human spirit.  For centuries Earth’s war-weary nations have cried out for honest democracy and education instead of bombs. Listen to their voices.
Through Democracy Now! Free Speech, courtesy of courageous broadcast journalists such as Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez. Thom Hartmann and Al Jazeera the truth is told about the tragedy of war. Great Soul Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi finally united all India’s Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims as he sacrificed himself instead of soldiers. Why does anyone say they are proud to sacrifice young people as scapegoats in war? Through fasting as a well-esteemed leader, Gandhi knew expensive wars would end when people craved honey over vinegar. Regarding wisdom about war revenge and King Hammurabi’s law, he said, “An eye for an eye eventually makes us all blind.” When Gandhi died, even the three fighting Semitic Abrahamic religions, all related to one another, mourned him while praising his non-violent love of humanity and equality for all.  Yet before the flowers had withered on their stems fighting forces were brandishing their swords again, the sad irony of war.
America’s Julia Ward Howe from New England and Ann Jarvis from West Virginia share the honor of being first to celebrate America’s Mother’s Day for world peace. These women founded this special day on behalf of non-violence–two nurturing women. Howe, who is credited for founding mother’s day in 1870, publicly proclaimed: “From the bosom of devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.  The voice of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out murder nor violence indicate possession, as men have often forsaken the plow for the sword of murder at the summons of war.” The masses so concerned about life in the womb forget the born–brave youths fighting wars that cowards commit. Anyone can champ at the bit for aggression, but it takes great courage to stand up for non-violence, especially in a war-economy world. Every nation and every era can list its own historic hero advocates for non-violence versus fickle wars.  Listen, and listen again.
Sophocles, born in 496 BCE, the great Greek playwright of tragedies, wrote, “War loves to seek its victims in the young.”
“In peace children inter their parents, but in war parents inter their children.”–Herodotus, born in 484 BCE, ancient father of Greek history
“Government exists for the people’s security.”–Cicero, Roman orator imbued in Greek philosophy, born in 107 BCE
“There is no safety in war.”–Virgil, a philosopher, born in 70 CE during the Roman Empire
Oscar Hammerstein said it takes organization to bring international peace.  Former USSR Supreme Soviet wrote in his book, A Time for Peace, "We must give up the enemy image."
In the 21st century Dennis Kucinich, U.S. Representative wrote,  “May the Goddess of Peace encircle her arms around all the children of the world.” Sanctions, blockades, embargoes and unpiloted drones cause untold tragedies every day as blue skies are forever blasted in endless war. How can we tolerate world leaders in supremacist “white” nations torturing and killing war-torn children, maimed and hungry. Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone Magazine and Men's Journal wrote, “Why must we starve any child in war.” For god’s sake, men, stop picking on defenseless kids in bully wars.                                                         Robert Oppenheimer, Director of the Manhattan Project for nuclear bomb invention during WWII compared its usage to “two scorpions in a bottle assuring each other’s deaths”–a strong metaphor for deaths by the millions, mostly civilians and little children nuked in a holocaust against humanity and Earth.  “The world in arms . . . spends the hope of children,” said President (WWII general) Dwight D. Eisenhower, as Mother Teresa of Macedonia stated, “Children of the world are the most precious gifts.” Missionaries acting like storm-troopers abused and killed indigenous children in the United States and Africa as they exploited them and arrogantly forced their own absolutist, dogma on them–the very words documented through courage of one man, Dr. Wole Soyinka, Nobel Prize-winner, who wrote Of Africa.





 Aggressive war–lock, stock and barrel–is the world’s worst serial crime with children suffering the most. On go the pleas for peace. “We can chase down all our enemies, bring them to their knees.  We can bomb the world to pieces, but we can’t bomb it into peace.”–musician Michael Franti, “Spearhead.”

“War is not healthy for children and other living things.”–Lorraine Schneider, a mother and artist devoted to non-violence
“We must remain hopeful of our children and children’s children that we are not of a warring nation.”–Jessica Lange, actress
“I look into the heavens that the cruelty will end and that peace will return again,”–Anne Frank, diary of a young Jewish girl hiding from Nazis during WWII
“I don’t want to put any more children in the hands of warmongers and the war machine.”–Cindy Sheehan, activist whose son was killed in the Iraqi War.
“No child should be a soldier.”–“Nonviolent Peaceforce” representing over 20 nations
“We really don’t care about children as a society, and television reflects that indifference to children as human beings.”–Bill Moyers, PBS Journal
Ernest Hemingway in Farewell to Arms, wrote, “There is nothing worse than war. Why don’t we stop fighting?” In his book with deep emotion this novelist, war-correspondent exposed the uselessness of killing fields as he voiced man’s futile struggle against his fellow man. King Pyrrhus had discovered centuries before war has no victory, never worth its cost. Hemingway described massacred soldiers vividly in scenes of demonizing brutality. E. M. Remarque in his book All’s Quiet on the Western Front, through eyes of an 18-year old soldier, said, “The world we loved we shook to pieces.”  From a foxhole he sadly looked for the first time into the closed eyes of the soldier he shot. Trembling, he saw the dead warrior as a “poor fool like himself.”  He apologized to the youth, “You are not my enemy! . . . The world we loved we shook to pieces. We lie under the breathe and suspense of uncertainty”–from bombardment of artillery shells, hand-grenades, flaming red-hot curtain-fire, the rat-a-tat of machine guns, monstrous tanks and deadly shrapnel invented in 1784, today’s bunker, cluster buster bombs and mines that kill children and farmers in war’s toxic aftermath.
In 1936 Professor Julius Pratt of the University of Buffalo in New York wrote “the business community–industrialists and financiers–are inescapably the cause of war and expansionism, particularly in the War with Spain. Professor Harold Faulkner in his “standard American Economic History” states the stupendous cause for that war was a nation “advanced for financial imperialism.” Sound familiar? Meanwhile, Wall Street stocks soar during peacetime and fall during U.S. killer wars, with corporations reaping benefits as families suffer from a witch’s-brew of mutating chemicals including nerve gases, pesticides and carbon emissions from high explosions. Comedian Bob Hope brought 50 years of hope to soldiers by entertaining them over seas.  He said, “As soon as the war ended in Vietnam, we looked for one spot on Earth untouched by war, and blew it up!” Fracturing Earth and cracking out oil and gas to harness dinosaurs that taint ground-water with cancer-causing chemicals, funds wars that are the world’s largest gas-guzzlers. This violent disruption also causes earthquakes, hurricanes and more toxic fuel spillage in our seas, the extinction of sea animals as well as wild life.  Song writer Eric Bogle in his “Wilderness” album sings out for Earth, trees, sky and peace.” If only international nations would unite to harness renewable energy without deceitfully dumping nuclear waste and surplus agents (orange, etc.) onto other nations’ lands and shores sprayed over Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Resultant suffering and death are all part of our Earth, spelled with a capital “E” for respect. In the interim, the world scratches its head wondering what causes breast-cancer and cow’s milk to be cancerous from war fallout. Echoes from the voice of song writer John Denver, anti-war protestor having produced 300 recordings of his music, continue to be sung about peace and saving the environment, wetlands and nature. Remember his song, “Let This be a Voice.”
Nurturing women opposed the attitude of war-driven men long before breast-cancer became prominent. It turns them off, as were the women of Athens in the story of Lysistrata with loved ones refusing sex to men until they stopped fighting in the Peloponnesian Wars, 431-404 BCE. This drama’s Greek playwright, Aristophanes, took pity on war widows with advice to men, “Make love, not war.” Warrior politicians are fixated on revenge, the radical-gushing gutter of war. Demonize aggression instead of honoring warmongering leaders with ticker tape as rival flags against enemies are burned with the mentality of primitive savages. Elect those interested in the arts and fine aspects of life more so than rambo war hawks.  Run the film again, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, to refresh memories of more peaceful times.
Bill Moyers through his PBS Journal says “War, except for self-defense, is a failure of moral imagination.”  In regard to security and defense, Hans Bliz and Scott Ritter, United Nations expert nuclear inspection investigators, proved the United States president and Britain’s Prime Minister in 2003 lied about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. Ritter said, “I didn’t promote war as a weapons inspector.” These chemical and other weapons of massive devastation originally came from the U.S. arsenal, by proxy, and already had killed millions before the attack and occupation of Iraq, a needless atrocity. Novelist and master essayist Gore Vidal exposed US perpetual war with 200 aggressive military incursions documented since 1945. Other war expose’s come form Howard Zinn and Noam Chompsky. Investigative journalism Greg Palast, Jeremy Skahill and consumer advocate Ralph Nadar are still active against war aggression.
Matt Damon narrated on BBC tolls of rape crimes against women in wars where they suffer the most according to world history. Actor Johnny Depp of Cherokee heritage supports, among others, the Canadian War Child Network about orphans from aggression. Paul Newman, who won awards as a war veteran, joined ranks of activists against militarism. Robert Redford, frustrated by democratic and republican parties’ lassitude, called Washington “a war zone” with no compromise, essential in solving problems through diplomacy, negotiation  and rhetoric instead of wars that are one and the same in sorrow. Soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan say, “What in hell are we fighting for,” as many veterans organize to protest wars today. Again listen to the masters of peace.
Ben Aflect, Susan Sarandon, Dustin Hoffman, Ed Asner, Jane Fonda, Danny Glover and Sean Penn  along with countless world-wide voices objected to  the 2003 unjustified attack of Earth’s ancient “Cradle of Civilization.”  Bombing to smithereens with uncivilized nuclear nose-cone missiles kills zillions of people and their wore-torn children–a heated chorus– “Blood money for oil, not in my name!”  Penn reasoned that funds spent on levees in New Orleans and health care for veterans and those in need would be more productive than the war of 2003. Alex Baldwin, also against the Iraqi War, supports the troops–a badge of honor for those entrapped in an illegal war. Richard Gere said, “I’m very sorry about what was done in Iraq. This war has been a tragedy for everyone.  I hope that the people can rebuilt their country.” Peace activist Woody Harrelson, in war movie The Messenger, relays his own feeling about U. S. aggression for capital oil gain and control. TV entertainer/satirists John Stewart, Stephen Corbert and Bill Maher tell the  “gospel” truth about vulgar war through witty humor.
Social responsible politicians and citizens, such as “Code Pink” members and its founder Medea Benjamin, diligently stand up for non-violent blood versus bloody hands. Cynthia McKinney, who ran for president, deplores U.S. waste on taxpayers’ money and military bases for death and destruction instead of education for children. She said, “The United States has more to offer than our bombs, missiles and military technology.” McKinney demands American corporations remove troops and bases from Iraq, just as the U.S. should demand research for renewable, alternative energy instead of wars that use most of the world’s oil. Jill Stein, another presidential candidate interested in preserving Earth from war emissions, is a physician concerned about mercury deaths in children.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Wars create millionaires.” Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandies (from 1916-1939) wrote, “You may have wealth concentrated in the hands of the few, or democracy, but you can’t have them both.”  Democracy is killed when it is the premise for war.
According to Aristotle,"It is more difficult to organize a peace than to win a war; but  the fruits of victory will be lost if peace is not organized."