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.”
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."
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."
