Summer of Hell in Syria |

Read my post of Thursday, July 19 in the blog of CODEPINK: Women for Peace:

Summer of Hell in Syria | PINKtank


'via Blog this'

A Neighborhood Destroyed

I recently read the book, Crawfish Bottom: Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community by Douglas A. Boyd, portraying a "slum" neighborhood that was destroyed for and by urban renewal  in my small city of Frankfort, Kentucky.

Crawfish Bottom, later known as "Craw" or "The Bottom," was a low-lying swampy area next to the Kentucky River. It was inhabited by both African-Americans (the majority) and whites. It often flooded. Craw included institutions, such as churches and a school, for most of the black community of Frankfort.

Craw had a rough reputation, though. It did include and had a history of murders, bootlegging, and prostitution. As a middle-class white girl growing up in Frankfort, Craw, for me, was a place to not go.

When the powers that be of Frankfort decided that it was time for Craw to be gone, urban renewal commenced to destroy the neighborhood and replace it with a monumental governmental project (boondoggle?). From 1958 through the 1960's, Craw was destroyed and replaced with a huge concrete complex that included space for retail shops, a state office building, and a hotel. It was lovely and impressive to see. (A flood wall was added to help make all this viable.)

Trouble was the residents of Craw were not really taken into account. There were public discussions, but they were not really listened to. Some who owned their homes did not want to sell them. The residents were given promises of much better housing, but the promises were not kept. A real community was broken up. Neighbors and friends were separated by the destruction. They had lived in a place where people knew each other and helped each other.

The irony of all this is that the Capital Plaza never really worked as a public space. Retail did not last very long in its set-aside spaces and the concrete was too hot in the summer to really work well for events. The hotel has worked rather well, but the Capital Tower state office building is deteriorating. Most of the plaza is now deteriorating, crumbling, and may be on the way out to be replaced by something else.

Soon after I read the book Crawfish Bottom, I heard public radio's On Being, present its program, "Evolving a City." (The website with audio, transcript, and more is here.) In that program, host Krista Tippett interviewed evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson. Wilson was the author of a book entitled, The Neighborhood Project: Using  Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time, about his work with his own small city of Binghamton, New York.


In the book and interview Sloan described urban renewal in ways opposite from those used for Craw in my city. He especially spoke in terms of using and fostering "pro-social behavior." He even has 12 Steps to a Better Neighborhood.

I can relate all this to my American foreign policy concerns. I have been distressed by our empirical behavior and our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think of all the destruction we have caused and our killing and displacement of large swaths of population. I also think of our support of the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories with its accompanying conflict. The Israelis displace the Palestinians, destroy their homes, and take their lands. (They kill them and incarcerate them, too, even children.)

Currently, in Japan there are high-level peace talks going on regarding Afghanistan. There is a representative of Pres. Harmid Kazai's government, there is even a representative of the Taliban, but it seems there may not be a woman present. Women need to be at the table. Lisa Savage, CODEPINK local coordinator for Maine, has a great article on the status of Afghan women and why they need to be there.

At CODEPINK.org, readers can learn about and  take action regarding these foreign policy issues and concerns. While there, please also help prevent a future war with Iran.


It seems to me that the world is a neighborhood and we should look at it that way. Actually, it is a neighborhood of neighborhoods. I believe we need to take David Sloan Wilson's thinking into account. We certainly need a new way  of thinking.


I also think CODEPINK's mission statement fits in very well:

CODEPINK is a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement working to end U.S. funded wars and occupations, to challenge militarism globally, and to redirect our resources into health care, education, green jobs and other life-affirming activities.

David Sloan Wilson's 12 Steps Toward a Better Neighborhood include this:

   4) Be inclusive.

Ideally, a neighborhood group should include everyone in the neighborhood. If someone doesn’t want to participate, it should be their decision and not because they weren’t asked. Small steering committees might be necessary, but everyone should feel that they have an opportunity for input, as in a democracy. 

In this week of American independence, let us be thankful, but let us also do some thinking about our interdependence.

I Declare World Peace.
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Marching Disasters

On March 2, 2012 damaging tornadoes came to Kentucky. (See here and here.) Twenty-three people have died. More than 300 have been injured. More than 2,200 homes have sustained damages. Of those, more than 650 were destroyed.

The photo is of the small eastern Kentucky town of West Liberty. When Governor Steve Beshear visited the town, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported that he said  it looked like a bomb had been dropped in the middle of town. "It was a war zone," he said.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/03/04/2095081/officials-confirm-21st-death-from.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy

A year before--on March 3, 2011--an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster took place in northeastern Japan. At least, 15,854 people died. At least 26,992 were injured. The photo is from Iwaki, Fukushima. The recovery has been very slow. 

In the current war in Afghanistan, 1,913 U.S. military fatalities have occurred and 15,322 have been wounded. There have been 35 military fatalities from Kentucky. In the war in Iraq that began in "Shock and Awe" on March 19, 2003, there have been 4,486 U.S. military fatalities and 32,223 wounded. There have been 70 military fatalities from Kentucky. (The numbers are from icasualties.org.) Many, many Afghans, Iraqis, and others, militant and civilian, have died, been wounded, and/or displaced. Much damage has been done.

Natural disasters do occur. Climate change and human actions seem to be increasing and magnifying some of them. We need to accept that they happen and tend to them. Wars are disasters, too, but they do not happen naturally and probably are not inevitable. (See the article/interview: Why War Isn't Inevitable.)

I do not want to see a war with Iran--by either Israel or the United States. I do not believe that war is the answer. Iran has historical grievances with the U.S. and it knows that Israel  is nuclear. We need relationship building. We need to think of the Iranian people--human beings all. Let's take stock. Breathe. Think.

March 20 was the Persian feast of Norwuz, the celebration of Spring and the Persian New Year. You can read about it here. May Peace Prevail in Iran! 

I Declare World Peace.

WWJD?

In my early adulthood, I read books on Saint Francis of Assissi (1181/1182 -1226). I was especially impressed by his living his life in imitation of Christ (imitatio Christi) and that set me on a  certain path. Later, in the 1980's, I encountered the book, In His Steps by Charles Sheldon, that portrayed late nineteenth century imitatio Christi in light of the Social Gospel. In the late 1990's and early 2000's, I read books by Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan on the Historical Jesus that further widened my path.

The subtitle of In His Steps is What Would Jesus Do? In the 1990's this phrase became popular with Christian youth and they used the letters WWJD.

In the lead up to the Iraq War, this question, "What would Jesus do?", kept coming to my mind. I knew the answer in that regard and I became quite distressed when my local church and local churches in general would not stand up for Jesus as the old song said. The heads of the major denominations, though,  including my own, had come out in opposition to the war. I took to the street in protest.

Recently, I was interested in the remarks of President Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on February 2. I was impressed at how he spoke of the role that faith, his Christian faith, plays in his job as President. He spoke of not leaving our values at the door. He spoke of the importance of the Golden Rule, treating others as we wish to be treated. He spoke of the financial difficulties of many Americans today. He spoke of treating people fairly and providing opportunities for all. He even mentioned the most vulnerable among us. He did have some good words.

There is a question, though, that I would like to ask our President. I have posted previously on our use of drones in warfare. The President has spoken of how few civilian casualties have come from our drone attacks.  However, in August of 2011, the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism produced a study that said at least 385 civilians had been killed by our drones in Pakistan in the last seven years and that at least 168 of these were children. Now my question is: Who Would Jesus Drone?

____________
As a postcript, I would like to link to a  very recent blog post-sermon by the Rev. Chuck Queen that speaks to WWJD. I believe it is quite worth reading.

Grounding Drones

Visit CODEPINK.org to see CP's latest news on their actions against drones, to take action, to get involved, and to get the facts. Go here.

Terror by Drones

On December 28, the Lexington Herald-Leader published an article from The Washington Post on President Obama’s expansion of the U.S. drone war--targeted killings and surveillance of adversaries by unmanned aircraft systems.

The only adviser to President Obama who questioned the expansion of the drone war was Obama’s former Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, who was later fired. Pres. Obama himself seems to have been noncommittal.

The advantage of targeted drone killings is that not as many U.S. personnel are killed as would be in a conventional war. This manner of war-making treats war as a video game. The pilots are located outside the theater, often inside the United States, and operate the drones by a joystick . The remote pilots, however, can suffer psychological repercussions from their actions.


The drone attacks often end up killing civilians, even children. Neither the intelligence nor the targeting is always accurate.

On the same day that the Herald-Leader published The Washington Post article, the Los Angeles Times published an article telling of Pakistani death squads that were going after informants to the U.S. drone program. The drone program has increased hatred of the United States.

The legality of the drone attacks according to international law has been questioned. The group Human Rights Watch sent a letter to President Obama on December 16, 2011 declaring that the US government should clarify fully and publicly its legal rationale for conducting targeted drone killings and the legal limits on such strikes. The group especially questioned the drone killings by the Central Intelligence Agency and stated the strikes should be confined to the U.S. armed forces.

The targeted killings and surveillance by drones are especially heinous. They are a dehumanizing and distancing way of war-making that, thus, make war-making all that much easier. War is getting completely out of hand. Instead of expanding our war-making with drones, we should be ending our War of Terror on Terror.

Droning

Below is a slideshow by CODEPINK'er MacGregor Eddy depicting the unmanned aircraft systems known as drones and calling for an end to their use.

MLK for Today

Monday, January 16 is the official holiday celebrating the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Many of his speeches and sermons, regardless of the circumstances of his time, resonate very much for our own time, for today. In today's lingo, one can say that Dr. King worked on behalf of the 99%.

Here is a portion of his speech delivered on April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in New York City to the group called Clergy and Laity Concerned. The speech is entitled,  Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. (The full text may be found here.)

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. on the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

Bridges Not Bombs

www.usaction.org

The Beginning of ...

October 6 was the beginning of the Afghanistan War ten years ago. Do I hear the word revenge? It also marked the beginning of our demise.

The total cost of our “security” since 9-11has been $7.6 trillion, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,
homeland security, nuclear weapons, and the Pentagon base-budget.

According to costofwar.com, taxpayers in Kentucky's 6th Congressional District that includes my home  have paid $2.3 billion for total war spending (Iraq + Afghanistan) since FY01. For the same amount of money, the following could be provided:

• 991,000 Children Receiving Low-Income Healthcare for One Year OR
• 39,000 Elementary School Teachers for One Year OR
• 334,000 Head Start Slots for Children for One Year OR
• 287,000 Scholarships for University Students for One Year OR
• 420,000 Students receiving Pell Grants of $5550 OR
•  1.1 million One Year Worth of Groceries for an Individual OR
• 472,000 People Receiving Low-Income Healthcare for One Year OR
• 332,000 Fair Market Rent for One Bedroom Apartment for One Year OR
• 311,000 Military Veterans Receiving VA Medical Care for One Year.
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Regarding Afghanistan, its future depends on Afghans, not American soldiers. Immediately withdrawing all U.S. troops and contractors from Afghanistan will make Afghans, including its women safer by removing the funding source and legitimization of war lords and drug lords. The people of Afghanistan should determine their own future. 


Moreover, American national security depends on a less militarized foreign policy. It would not be naive and irresponsible to have a foreign policy based on what is called the Golden Rule. We should not do to others what we would not want done to ourselves. Violence begets violence.


“A decade of occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, expending thousands of our soldiers lives and trillions of our taxdollars, has left us bankrupt. It's time to stop occupying other nations and instead occupy our own city squares, demanding an end to these wars,” explained CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin. Said CODEPINK organizer C.J. Minster, “We are standing up and demanding an immediate end to war and the beginning of a sustainable, renewable economy.” 


By ending the wars and taxing the rich and corporations, the U.S. can afford to create jobs, fund education, support healthcare, and create a sustainable, renewable economy.


I support the Occupations--not of Afghanistan, Iraq, or the Palestinian Territories, but the ones of Wall Street and American public squares.

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Lost Connection

When human beings lose their connection to nature, to heaven and earth, then they do not know how to nurture their environment or how to rule their world--which is saying the same thing. Human beings destroy their ecology at the same time that they destroy one another. From that perspective, healing our society goes hand in hand with  healing our personal, elemental connection with the phenomenal world. (p. 125, Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior by Chogyam Trungpa, ed. by Carolyn Rose Gimian, Shambhala Publications, c1984)

Mountaintop Removal Mining

Picasso's Guernica

Mother's Day for Peace

Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)

Mother’s Day in the United States began as a peace day.

Following the Civil War groups of mothers of Confederate and Union soldiers met together for consolation. Anna Reeves Jarvis held a Mother’s Friendship Day to reunite families that had been divided during the war and she hoped that Mother’s Day would become an annual occurrence. Her daughter, Anna M. Jarvis, worked for a national Mother’s Day to honor both her mother and peace.

In 1870, Julia Ward Howe wrote the first Mother’s Day Proclamation. Earlier she had written the Battle Hymn of the Republic, but she became outraged at the carnage of both the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. She called for a summit of mothers for the promotion of peace.

She wrote in part:

We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace.

Julia Ward Howe was a writer, a social activist, and and an active Unitarian, including being a preacher in that denomination. Her Mother’s Day Proclamation is included in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition.

I urge mothers and those who have or have had mothers to give a thought to peace and the lack of peace. I urge the good people of this country to give a thought to peace in and for the United States and the world and to the policies of the United States toward that peace. Even more, I encourage people to live in and work for peace themselves. I do believe peace is possible if we aim for it knowing that peace itself is the way. I note that even Osama Bin Laden was a mother’s child.

Intervention in Libya

I have been quite concerned about the revolution/civil war that is going on in Libya. I am on the side of freedom and human rights for the people of that country who have been oppressed for forty years by their leader. I am, however, not happy with the military intervention by the coalition that includes the United States.  I believe along with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that peaceful means bring peaceful ends. I do not believe that war is the way to peace. I believe along with the Quakers that War Is Not the Answer.

I have seen some articles by others that seem to feel this way.

CODEPINK’s Medea Benjamin and journalist, Charles Davis have a piece entitled,  Instead of Bombing Dictators, Stop Selling Them Bombs. They write, “If the bitter lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan has taught us anything, though, it’s that wars of liberation exact a deadly toll on those they purportedly liberate – and that democracy doesn’t come on the back of a Tomahawk missile.” They tell us, the American taxpayers: “Instead of forking over $150 million a day to the weapons industry to attack Libya or selling $67 billion in weapons to the Saudis so they can repress not just their own people, but those of Bahrain, we – the ones being asked to forgo Social Security to help pay for empire – should demand those who purport to represent us in Washington stop arming dictators in our name.”

Richard Dawahare of Lexington wrote ‘Reality demands restraint’ for a blog on courier-journal.com. He concluded, “America should instead attend to the fallout of the continuing disaster in Japan, using our resources to help rebuild life, rather than reducing it in the sands of North Africa.” He also wrote a post on his own blog, The Peace Cow Field Journal, entitled, Attack on Libya seems right, is terribly wrong. “This smells like another neocon end-run using the veneer of humanitarianism as a smokescreen to hoodwink--ONCE AGAIN—an unwitting public,” he said there.

Alan J. Kuperman had a commentary,  5 things the U.S. should consider in Libya ,  in USA Today. Writing that intervening actually magnifies the threat to civilians in Libya and beyond, he wrote, “That is because armed uprisings, such as Libya's, typically provoke massive state retaliation that harms innocents.”  He listed five principles to guide humanitarian intervention, all of which apply to Libya.

An Atrocious Annivesary

March 19 marks the eighth anniversary of the uncalled for* U.S. invasion of the sovereign Middle Eastern nation of Iraq.

As a response, I post this of the The Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings of the Buddhist Order of Interbeing founded by the Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. The Mindfulness Trainings are also known as Political Precepts.

The Twelfth Mindfulness Training: Reverence for Life

 Aware that much suffering is caused by war and conflict, I am determined to cultivate non-violence, understanding and compassion in my daily life, to promote peace education, mindful mediation and reconciliation, within families, communities, nations and in the world. I am determined not to kill and not to let others kill. I will diligently practice deep looking with my Sangha [religious community] to discover better ways to protect life and prevent war.

This training or precept is not just for members of the Order of Interbeing but for every one of us who desires a more preaceful world and can enable us to say, "Never Again!"


______
*See the CODEPINK articles,  The U.S. War and Occupation of Iraq: What We Know, What We Don't Know and From 'Liberation' to Occupation: 10 Reasons Iraq Was No Cakewalk.

Peaceful Rhymes

There once was a girl from Kentucky
Who was really not very lucky.
“I Declare World Peace,”
She sneezed
And then she became not yucky.




I Declare World Peace,
A word spoken to please
The world all --
Really a call:
I Declare World Peace.




I Declare World Peace
In Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., so please --
No war,
No more.
I Declare World Peace.




For what’s up with these
And for others by authors free,
Click here
For mere
I Declare World Peace.

Bring Our War $$ Home

Thursday, October 7, is the ninth anniversary of the beginning of U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan. That makes nine years too long and too much money spent on both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.Retiring University of Kentucky President Lee Todd has often spoken of and tried to work against what he has called the “Kentucky uglies,” Kentucky's health and poverty issues.

According to CostofWar.com of the National Priorities Project, taxpayers in Kentucky will pay $1.3 billion for proposed total Iraq and Afghanistan war spending in the fiscal year of 2011.



That amount of money could provide much low-income health care for 216,000 people for one year or for 540,500 children for one year.



If we think of education as a way out of poverty, we can look, too, at those figures. The $1.3 billion would provide for 161,160 scholarships for university students for one year or 235,880 students receiving Pell Grants of $5550 or 187,400 Head Start slots for children for one year or 22,830 elementary school teachers for one year.



To help get rid of the Kentucky uglies we need to get rid of our ugly wars.

According to icasualities.org, Kentucky has now lost 70 military members in Iraq and 29 in Afghanistan.



It is time to end these wars and bring our money and our troops home.



Jesus said, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”



Please sign CODEPINK's petition to the members of Congress to Bring Our War $$ Home.