What is Presidents' Day?
Presidents Day (or Presidents' Day), is the common name for the federal holiday officially designated as Washington's Birthday. As the first federal holiday to honor an American citizen, the holiday was celebrated on Washington's actual birthday in 1796 (the last full year of his presidency) on February 22.
While the holiday is still officially known as Washington's Birthday, it has become popularly known as "President's Day", honoring both Washington and Lincoln, as well as all the other men who have served as president.
ALL the other presidents? We wish to honor all the presidents equally with Washington and Lincoln? I doubt if Washington and Lincoln would like that.
Would make an interesting book. But let’s focus just on President Bush. George Washington helped craft a Constitution notable for its balance of powers among executive, judicial, and congressional. If any imbalance were considered, the Founders believed the Congress should be the leading branch. But modern U.S. history is equally signalized by the steadily increasing executive power at the expense of the other two. “The separation of powers,” writes Chalmers Johnson in Nemesis, “that the Founders wrote into our Constitution as the main bulwark against dictatorship increasingly appears to be a dead letter.” “Congress [is] no longer capable of asserting itself against presidential attempts to monopolize power.”
Let us forget Presidents’ Day February 21 therefore and return to a joyful commemoration of Washington’s Birthday February 22, for Washington and our other Founders, “envisioned a supreme legislative branch as the heart and soul of America’s central government….America’s modern presidency, with all its trappings, would be unimaginable to men like Madison, Washington, and Franklin.” The intent of the Founders was to prevent a recurrence of the tyranny they had endured under Britain’s King George III. The result was the US Constitution with its sophisticated scheme to balance power in a republic.
References
Berkin, Carol. A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the Constitution. Johnson, Chalmers. Nemesis:The Last Days of the American Republic. 2006.
THOSE WHO KNOW
Gary Wills, Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State. Penguin, 2010. Wills reveals how the atomic bomb transformed our nation down to its deepest constitutional roots by dramtically increasing the power of the modern presidency and redefining the government as a National Security State. He draws a direct line from the Manhattan Project to the usurpations of future presidents and particularly to George W. Bush.
Joe Conason, It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush. Dunne/St. Marti's, 2007. Presidential power has expanded in the direction of dictatorship. Take Pres. Nixon: he and the Republican Party had perverted the electoral process, the law enforcement system, and government itself in a manner the nation had not seen before. He dismissed congressional authority: by impounding funds appropriated for purposes he didn't approve,reorganizing the government without consulting the Congress that had created those departments, and by circumventing Congress in his conduct of war in Vietnam and Cambodia. Add wiretapping, burglaries, infiltrations of antiwar groups, espionage against Democratic campaigns, misue of the IRS and Justice Dept., dirty tricks of every description, bribery, obstruction of justice, perjury, and all financed by illegal corporate slush funds. (pp. 168-69). And later generations of Republicans have sought to vindicate Nixon by further expanding his authoritarian vision of executive power. And they were often enable by the Democrats.
Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. Doubleday, 2008. President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, his adviser David Addington, and others used the post-9/11 crisis to further their long-held agenda to enhance presidential powers to a degree never known in U.S. history and to obliterate constitutional protections that define the very essence of the American experiment in constitutional government.
Jack Goldsmith, The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgement Inside the Bush Administration. Norton, 2007.
Chalmers Johnson, Blowback, Sorrows of Empire, Nemesis (the "Blowback" Trilogy).
Dick Bennett Papers
OMNI’S JULIA WARD HOWE’S MOTHER’S DAY FOR PEACE #1
MAY 8, 2011,
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace
Contents
OMNI’S Mother’s Days
Julia Ward Howe’s Proclamation
Julia’s Voice
Women’s Actions for New Directions
“Boys Into Men” by John Graham
Cindy Sheehan on General Smedley Butler
Sons into Soldiers by Dick
OMNI’s MOTHERS DAY LUNCHEONS Began in 2004
OMNI’S FIRST ANNUAL MOTHER’S DAY LUNCHEON, MAY 9, Sunday, 2004
Belvedeer’s, 12:30 noon. Bettie Lu Lancaster, Jo Bennett, Karen Clark, Diana Rivers, and others.
2010 the format changed to an all-May art show in OMNI’s Art Space on the subject of the Art of Mothering arranged by Julie Jeannine Rickard, and on Mother’s Day
art, music, poetry, desserts, beverages, and flowers for the first 50 MOMS that walk in the door. All coordinated by Donna Stjerna.
HOWE’S PROCLAMATION 1870
Julia Ward Howe made the first known suggestion for a Mother’s Day in the United States in 1872. She suggested that people observe a Mother’s Day as a day dedicated to peace, in protest against the carnage of the Civil War. For several years, she held an annual Mother’s Day meeting in Boston. Earlier in 1870 she wrote this Proclamation:
Mother's Day Proclamation
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!
Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We 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 our dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow 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 then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
Julia Ward Howe, Boston 1870
Julia's Voice
Julia's Voice is the modern voice of Julia Ward Howe. Stand for Peace is our Mothers Day Event.
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WAND - STATEMENT FROM WOMEN’S ACTION FOR NEW DIRECTIONS/WAND 2010
As happens every May, Mother's Day has recently come and gone. Many people took this day as a chance to let their mothers and other women in their life know how much they are appreciated.
This spring, WAND offers you the chance to help us achieve the goal of peace, and the continuing opportunity to honor the significant women in your life. Donations to the WAND Education Fund enable WAND to educate women legislators about critically important progressive issues….
Dear Friend:
“We will not have the important questions of the day decided by irrelevant agencies,” Julia Ward Howe declared in her 1872 proclamation, calling for a Mother’s Day of Peace.
In a rant against Nancy Pelosi, “the chick in charge,” Rush Limbaugh griped about the “chickification” of our culture. But in reality, very little “chickification” has occurred, either in government or the media. Women hold only 16% of the seats in Congress, and 23.5% of the seats in state legislatures. Four out of five of the guests on Sunday morning TV talk shows and nine out of ten radio program directors are men.
The most important question of our day is: How can we provide real security for our citizens? Do we spend more money on the military, even though the Pentagon’s budget is higher now than at the peak of the Cold War? Do we freeze non-essential domestic spending on education, health, jobs, transportation and clean energy? Do we wage an endless war on terror? Or do we work for the abolition of nuclear weapons and alternative ways of resolving conflict? If women are not part of this debate, our government and our media are the irrelevant agencies that Julia Ward Howe deplored.
This is why I’m asking you to celebrate Mother’s Day in the spirit of Julia Ward Howe, by helping WAND to provide the tools and resources needed for progressive women leaders to be effective advocates for real security.
Progressive women, even when they hold elected office, have an uphill battle. They may offer better options for dealing with deficits, military budgets and foreign policy than their male counterparts. But without good messaging and media skills, they’re dismissed as naïve, even un-American and pro-terrorist. In the minds of far too many voters, fear trumps facts.
WAND Education Fund provides the facts and offers training programs to teach women leaders the skills they need to take public stands on national security issues. With your help we will be closer to our goal of holding trainings in three different regions in 2010 for women state legislators, community leaders and local activists. Participants learn how to disarm their critics, understand their audiences, and use memorable narratives to make their point. WAND Education Fund then helps them find timely media opportunities in print, radio and television, and new media technologies….
http://johngrahamspeaker.org/boys-into-men
http://johngrahamspeaker.org/boys-into-men
“Boys Into Men” by John Graham
I went to a quiet meeting yesterday at the local Veterans Resource Center in the small rural county where I live. At the meeting were 25 vets, family members of vets and a few others. From that small group flowed gut-wrenching stories of suicides, addictions and shattered minds and bodies.
As a young man I’d gone to war in Vietnam for the adventure of it. What a fool I was. But I was hardly alone. Every war has recruited eager young men looking for adventure, seeking to prove their worth as men. And every war has left behind the wreckage that these young men did not foresee or chose to ignore.
I can imagine what it must be like to ride in a Humvee down a road in Falluja where the day before some eight-year-old has planted a bomb that killed your best friend. I went just once out near the A Shau valley, into triple-canopied jungle so thick that it was dark at noon on the forest floor. There could have been an entire regiment of North Vietnamese only 50 yards away and you would never know it until the first bullet sang past your ear or tore into your body. I didn’t know what fear was until I’d been in a place like that. Two years later I walked down the shadowed sides of streets in California to avoid sniper fire.
And on the other side of the gunsite, imagine nineteen year-olds just three months from their malls and video games looking through the crosshairs of their weapons at another human being they’ve never met and never will and pulling the trigger.
Nobody should have to experience these things. Which brings me to three thoughts:
I just finished reading The Palace Files by Jerry Schecter and Nguyen Hung, a carefully documented exposé of the Nixon/Kissinger strategy to prolong a lost war in Vietnam in a vain attempt to salvage American prestige and their own political careers. It cost of tens of thousands of lives. By all means, let us blame the old men in power who have forever created wars, especially those who have done so driven by their own ambitions, ideologies, ignorance and pathologies.
We can worry too about cultures--including ours--that are rapidly losing any capacity for settling disputes through honest and committed efforts to work for the common good. As the governance of our (and other) nations sours into partisan warfare at home, how can we expect to do any better abroad? Fearful of perceived enemies within and without, we stereotype, we hate, and by our example teach our children to fear, to stereotype and to hate.
Finally, we need to find ways to initiate our boys into manhood without sending them to war (young women go to war these days too but someone else must speak to them). I speak to the boys who want so much to become men but whose guidance comes mostly from videogames and peer pressures and the adrenaline and testosterone coursing in their veins.
Thank God there are many boys who have strong, positive male role models in their lives. But boys need to be initiated into manhood not just by their fathers and uncles, but by their society. Native Americans initiated boys through lengthy, significant and often dangerous trials at the end of which they were welcomed into the company of men and from that moment were expected to help take responsibility for the welfare of the tribe.
We don’t need to send our boys into the wilderness for a month with pocket knifes in order for them to become men, but we do need to pay much more attention to developing appropriate rites of passage, following periods of study and trial. Using models that are thousands of years old, those periods should focus on heroic values of courage and compassion. They should build the skills and experience of service, a sense of responsibility for the common good and a capacity for reflection that in time will lead to wisdom.
I wish someone had done this for me. http://johngrahamspeaker.org/boys-into-men
War is Still a Racket by Cindy Sheehan
WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
Major General Smedley Butler
For this Mother's Day, I am not going to write about Juliet Ward Howe's Mother's Day proclamation and how Mother's Day is a "Day for Peace."
By now, most of us are well aware of Ward's proclamation (if not, click here) that we Mother's should not send our sons (sic) to kill the sons of other mothers. We have strayed so far away from the original meaning of Mother's Day, that we might as well call it "Hallmark Hooray Day," and just let it be what it is. What I am going to write about, however, is the treatise of a military man that I think is profoundly and unfortunately still relevant.
Seventy-seven years ago, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, Marine Corps, gave a speech entitled, War is a Racket. What made this speech so credible, if not surprising, is the fact that Smedley Butler was the highest decorated Marine of all time. Marines all over still learn about him, but they aren't taught that he came from Quaker roots and began to castigate the U.S. and its wars of aggression.
General Butler is not too well known outside of military/peace circles. Indeed, even though I was a U.S. History major at University and most of what we learned about was war, I don't think I had ever heard of him until about a year after Casey's death.
I received an email from a person who had read one of my articles and he sent me a link to the treatise, War is a Racket. By the time I first read Butler's work, I didn't need any more convincing that Casey died for no reason but profit, but after I read it, I began to understand that the concept of "good war," was a bogus one. Indeed, Butler says this in the first chapter:
For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.
It seems like every generation, more or less, in the U.S. we have a significant war. My generations' "War on Terror" was Vietnam. Smedley Butler wrote War is a Racket between the "good wars" WWI and WWII.
What also makes this treatise so incredible is that in 77 years, nothing much has changed. If you just change some of the names to the current crop of culprits, it is eerily identical to today.
The rich always benefit during war and the poor always pay-always, no exception.
So as I spend my seventh Mother's Day without my oldest son on this planet, I want to close with words from Smedley:
Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly - his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters.
Listen to Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox this Sunday at 2pm Pacific Time for a dramatic reading of War is a Racket.
Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox wishes all mothers a very nice day and one wish Cindy has for all mothers is that we never allow our children to join the military to fight, perhaps die and even kill other children for the profit of the few.
FILM ON ISRAELI ATTACK ON JENIN, ONE MOTHER’S RESPONSE, AND US MOTHERS
I did see the devastating film about the Israeli occupation and attack on the Jenin refugee camp yesterday at UA, presented by Joel to his classes. One of the most effectively edited films I have ever seen, juxtaposing past and different stages of subsequent time, back and forth, to show how Israeli deadly force creates Palestinian "terrorists," i.e. resisters. But of course the Israelis said they were reacting to P. attacks.
A key story woven into the present-past structure of several people’s lives is that of Yousef and his mother. She fiercely supported her son’s resistance to Israeli tanks, considered him a hero, and preferred the destruction of her house and their deaths over cowardice by her son. Her house was destroyed and we see her at the end grieving over the body of Yousef.
Revenge had replaced her mother’s love for her son? But she loved him because he defended their home. And US mothers who allow their sons to go to wars to kill other mothers’ sons? No tanks are driving down US streets. Their sons don't go to defend their homes. But of course they think that. The government and its corporate media have instilled that propaganda of patriotic conformity. So shouldn’t we be outraged, not at the mothers, but at the Pentagon-White House-Congress warfare state that originates these wars? Dick Bennett
END OF MOTHER’S DAY NEWSLETTER 2011
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Dick Bennett
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Celebrate Presidents' Day February 21?
Robert Scheer, The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hjiacked 9/11 and Weakened America. Hachette, 2008. Esp. the final chapter, “Empire VS. Republic.”
February 17, 2011
“Democracy Uprising” in the U.S.A.?: Noam Chomsky on Wisconsin’s Resistance to Assault on Public Sector, the Obama-Sanctioned Crackdown on Activists, and the Distorted Legacy of Ronald Reagan. World-renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky discusses several domestic issues in the United States, including the protests in defense of public sector employees and unions in Wisconsin, how the U.S. deification of former President Ronald Reagan resembles North Korea, and the crackdown on political activists with anti-terror laws and FBI raids.
To watch this Conversation google Democracy Now, Feb. 17, 2011.
And see Dick's Post on Ronald Reagan.
A MESSAGE TO PRESIDENT OBAMA and the PUBLIC
So let us speak out against these unconstitutional usurpations of power by the executive branch, and speak up to President Obama not to repeat them, but to reverse them, and return our government to one of separation of powers as our Founders had intended. But if Roger Hodge in The Mendacity of Hope: Barack Obama and the Betrayal of American Liberalism is correct--that substantive reform was never on Obama's table, that behind Obama's election was a business-as-usual corporate machine, a bloc of political investors, campaign contributors, and lobbyists expecting big returns on their investments--then our only hope for reform is public revolt.
ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE TO PRESIDENTS' DAY February 21:
DAISY BATES DAY
Daisy Bates Holiday
Arkansas Honors a Remarkable Woman
Forty four years after Daisy Bates broke the color barrier by aiding nine Little Rock students in entering Central High, Governor Mike Huckabee honored her life by declaring the third Monday in February the Daisy Gatson Bates Holiday.
Daisy Bates was instrumental in organizing, inspiring and assisting the Little Rock nine in 1957 when Central High was integrated. Recently, the street that runs parallel to Central High was named in her honor.
On February 19, 2001, a state holiday was also named in her honor. The third Monday in February of every year (the same day as President's Day) will now also be Daisy Gatson Bates day in Arkansas.
Arkansas is the first state to honor an African American female with a state holiday. Daisy Bates would have been proud to again be the driving force behind one more small step for racial equality in Arkansas. However, as the Governor was quick to point out, we still have a long way to go.
On this day, the Governor also participated in the ceremonial ground breaking for the new Central High Commemorative Garden. This Garden will contain a monument to Central High. It is across the street from the Central High Museum & Central High.
ROBOT WARS Newsletter #1
December 29, 2010, Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace
“The Dead were Completely Unrecognisable”
Interview With Family Devastated by US Drone Attack By Asim Qureshi
September 24, 2010 "Information Clearing House"-- EXCLUSIVE - Cageprisoners interview with Haider whose brother-in-law Mohammed Asghar and his friends became the victims of an unlawful US drone attack.
CP (Cageprisoners) : Could you please introduce yourself?
Bismillahir Rahmaanir Raheem
Haider: My name is Haider. My brother-in-law, Mohammed Asghar, lived in Peshawar and worked as a money exchanger in the markets there.
CP: Where did the drone attack take place?
H: The attacks took place in North Waziristan, Miranshah in District Ahmadkheel. My brother-in-law had friends he was visiting in Waziristan. As he was a guest there - and as is the custom of the people - many of the locals gathered to welcome him into the area. He sat with a group of these people from the community when everybody gathered to pray the evening prayer (‘Isha) together. The drone attack happened in the middle of the prayers and the entire congregation was martyred.
CP: Were there any Taliban or Al Qaeda in the gathering or were they all civilians?
H: All the people gathered were locals from the community who had come to welcome the new guest to the area. The people are renowned for their hospitality and it is unthinkable for them that somebody would come to visit and they would not have a gathering to welcome them. In total, 31 people were killed. Drone attacks are so powerful nobody can escape them merely injured.
CP: How did you find out this happened?
H: Between our area and Waziristan is an 8 hour journey. The drone attack happened at night time and we all knew about it by the following morning. People who had witnessed the attack had come to tell us and described what they saw of the remnants and damage in the aftermath. They said the attack was so severe that they could not even distinguish the bodies from one another- even the bones of the people were completely blown apart. The dead were completely unrecognisable. My brother in law’s coffin was tightly sealed and we were not allowed to open it to view anything. We had the coffin with us for 30 minutes before it was taken away for burial.
CP: Why do you think the US/Pakistan government do this and what do you think they hope to gain?
H: We just don’t know. We don’t know how much authority Pakistan has given the US to attack our areas and we don’t know until when the US are given free license by the Pakistani government to carry out these drone attacks. So far between 1400-1600 people have died as a result of these attacks. Nobody takes responsibility for these civilian deaths. Ask the journalists or officials for the true statistics, we know that it is 1400-1600 civilians, women and children killed. In this, they would have been lucky to even have 11 or 12 ‘militants’ amongst them. These attacks are so widespread that even my brother in law who lives in Peshawar was made a victim of it. Who do I appeal to? Where can I go? I don’t even know who to hold responsible for his death and how I do it.
I am shocked that the US can come to attack Pakistan in this way and Pakistan does not even have the authority to question them on the deaths they are causing. The civilians in all these regions are extremely frightened and fearful. They can’t work in the day, nor can they sleep during the night. As soon as they hear the slightest sound of an aeroplane, they flee in panic from their homes and buildings trying to find a place for security. The whole community is in a state of fear and I just cannot explain to you how unbearable these calamities are for the people. Every household has at least half of its people martyred (i.e.: killed) as a result of these attacks. I simply do not understand what the understanding between Pakistan the US is on this matter.
CP: Haider, thank you for taking the time to speak with us and we are sorry for your loss. This item was first posted at http://www.cageprisoners.com
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Pakistani Opposition Politician Imran Khan on US Drone Attacks, the "Massive Human Catastrophe" in the Swat Valley and the Escalation of War in Afghanistan June 24, 2009
At least sixty people have reportedly died in the South Waziristan region of western Pakistan after a US drone attack Tuesday. The attack came as the Pakistani army and air force expanded their military operations from Swat into South Waziristan. We speak with Pakistani opposition figure and cricketing legend Imran Khan, the leader of the political party known as the Movement for Justice. Khan has been an outspoken critic of both US drone attacks as well as the Pakistani military’s offensive against the Taliban. [includes Democracy Now 9-24-10
CIA Drastically Increases Drone Campaign in Pakistan
The CIA has drastically increased its bombing campaign in the mountains of Pakistan in recent weeks. According to the New York Times, the CIA has launched at least twenty attacks with armed drone aircraft so far in September, the most ever during a single month. According to one Pakistani intelligence official, the recent drone attacks have not killed any senior Taliban or al-Qaeda leaders. Many senior operatives have already fled the region to escape the CIA drone campaign. Democracy Now (9-28-10)
US Attack Helicopters Strike Inside Pakistan
US Apache attack helicopters have carried out at least three air strikes inside Pakistan in recent days, killing more than seventy alleged militants. Pakistan criticized the NATO operation, saying the attack helicopters illegally entered Pakistani air space, but Pentagon officials said the strikes were done in self-defense. While the US regularly uses pilotless drone aircraft for missile strikes in Pakistan, manned military flights across the border have been rare up until now. Democracy Now (9-28-10) [Self-defense? A blatant example of US double-standards based upon the US myth of exceptionalism. D]
US Drone Attacks Are No Laughing Matter, Mr. Obama
Mehdi Hasan, Guardian UK
Intro: "The president's backing of indiscriminate slaughter in Pakistan can only encourage new waves of militancy."
READ MORE https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/12d30c31701a7aa5
http://www.readersupportednews.org/
COMMANDERS OF DRONES ON TRIAL
“Activists Go on Trial in Nevada for Protesting Obama Admin Drone Program” Democracy Now 9-13-10
This week marks the beginning of a trial for fourteen antiwar (the “Creech 14”)activists who held a ten-day vigil outside the Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs, Nevada last year. The base is one of several homes of the American military’s aerial drone program in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The activists were charged with criminal trespassing for entering the base with a letter describing their opposition to the drone program. Speaking out against US military drones
John Dear, SJ – “On the Road to Peace” National Catholic Reporter September 28, 2010
On Sept. 14, thirteen others and I -- known together as the "Creech 14" -- went on trial in Las Vegas, Nev., for an action we committed in April 2009 at Creech Air Force Base to protest the U.S. military's use of unmanned drones in combat abroad.
paste this link into your browser http://ncronline.org/node/20460
TESTIMONY BASED ON INTERNATIONAL LAWS
From Desert Voices: The Newsletter of the Nevada Desert Experience (Nov./Dec. 2010): Generally in such trials judges allow no to little defense testimony regarding motives, ethics, or international law, but this was an exception, putting drones themselves on trial under international laws. The judge allowed defendants to call three expert witnesses—former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, ret. Col. Ann Wright, and Bill Quigley of the Center for Constitutional Rights. They asserted:
Intentional killings—assassinations--is a war crime, as embodied in U.S. constitutional law.
Drone strikes kill a disproportionate number of civilians.
People have the right and duty to stop war crimes.
According to Nuremberg principles, individuals are required to disobey domestic orders that cause crimes against humanity.
Defendant Renee Espeland said: “I am bound by the law of our land that makes it my duty to stop the killing of civilians and to protect U.S. soldiers being ordered to perform illegal acts.”
WHY IS THERE GENERAL SILENCE? Contact OMNI to raise your voice.
Smarter Than You Think. War Machines: Recruiting Robots for Combat
FORT BENNING, Ga. — War would be a lot safer, the Army says, if only more of it were fought by robots.
Yet the idea that robots on wheels or legs, with sensors and guns, might someday replace or supplement human soldiers is still a source of extreme controversy. Because robots can stage attacks with little immediate risk to the people who operate them, opponents say that robot warriors lower the barriers to warfare, potentially making nations more trigger-happy and leading to a new technological arms race.
“Wars will be started very easily and with minimal costs” as automation increases, predicted Wendell Wallach, a scholar at the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and chairman of its technology and ethics study group.
Civilians will be at greater risk, people in Mr. Wallach’s camp argue, because of the challenges in distinguishing between fighters and innocent bystanders. That job is maddeningly difficult for human beings on the ground. It only becomes more difficult when a device is remotely operated.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/science/28robot.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
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OMNI PEARL HARBOR DAY NEWSLETTER #2,
DECEMBER 7, 2010.
Compiled by Dick Bennett.
Another in OMNI’s NATIONAL DAYS Series for a Culture of Peace.
OMNI needs a new coordinator of its National DAYS project. WE affirm DAYS that deserve praise, and reject those that promote wars, killing, violence, militarism. Contact Gladys.
This new book exposes the US machinations that led to Pearl Harbor and World War II in the Pacific.
WAR IS A LIE by David Swanson is a thorough refutation of every major argument used to justify US wars, with a focus on those wars that have been most widely defended as just and good. This is therefore a manual for critical thinking to be used in debunking future lies before future wars have a chance to begin.
“David Swanson despises war and lying, and unmasks them both with rare intelligence. I learn something new on every page.” — Jeff Cohen, founder of FAIR and author of Cable News Confidential.
Table of Contents
Introduction 7
1. Wars Are Not Fought Against Evil 15
2. Wars Are Not Launched in Defense 47
3. Wars Are Not Waged Out of Generosity 86
4. Wars Are Not Unavoidable 106
5. Warriors Are Not Heroes 131
6. War Makers Do Not Have Noble Motives 168
7. Wars Are Not Prolonged for the Good of Soldiers 196
8. Wars Are Not Fought on Battlefields 212
9. Wars Are Not Won, and Are Not Ended By Enlarging Them 235
10. War News Does Not Come From Disinterested Observers 250
11. War Does Not Bring Security and Is Not Sustainable 267
12. Wars Are Not Legal 291
13. Wars Cannot Be Both Planned and Avoided 312
14. War Is Over If You Want It 323
Notes 337
Index 352
Acknowledgments 369
About the Author 371
Here’s a summary of what Swanson argues about the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941, pp. 57-65. (Also read chapter 4 on whether the US should have entered WWII.)
The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, that famous “Day of Infamy,” illustrates another type of “defensive war,” “one that follows a successful provocation of aggression from the desired enemy.”
By a vote of 85 to 1 in 1928 the US Senate had ratified the Kellogg-Briand Pact “that bound—and still binds-our nation and many others never again to engage in war.” But President Roosevelt wished to assist Britain and its allies against the Nazis. By 1934 he had began to expand US military bases in the Pacific. In 1935 General Smedley Butler in War Is a Racket ridiculed the buildup and war games maneuvers in the western Pacific. By 1939 the US Navy had a plan for “an offensive war” against Japan. By 1940 the US was loaning China money and planning to send them bombers. By 1941 the US was training the Chinese air force and plans were prepared to bomb Japanese cities. On July 25, 1941 the US froze Japanese assets and with Britain cut off oil and scrap metal to Japan, all posing a potent threat to Japan’s existence. On November 15, 1941 Army Chief of Staff George Marshall briefed the media on preparations for “an offensive war against Japan.” On Dec. 1, a meeting in the Oval Office discussed likelihood of Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor within a few days. The attack on Pearl came Dec. 7. Only Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin (R., Mont) voted against (Read summary of her reasons pp. 64-65 that add to the evidence of provocation.) Swanson’s conclusion: WWII in the Pacific was not a defensive war; rather it was a colonial, imperial contest over control of resources, and Japan, direly threatened by embargoes, attacked the central US imperial base at Pearl Harbor.
Swanson covers all US wars, so we might not expect him to have read every relevant book on each of the wars. Yet it is odd that he does not cite the book that supports his case in several hundred thoroughly documented pages: Roland Worth, Jr., No Choice But War: The United States Embargo Against Japan and the Eruption of War in the Pacific (McFarland, 1995). Worth finds much to blame in both countries for causing World War II in the Pacific. He expresses no sympathy for Japanese militarism and aggression. But he also shows “the pivotal role of the U.S.-led economic embargo in pushing Japan over the edge into overt hostilities against the West. In other words the U.S. decision to embargo 90 percent of Japan’s petroleum and two-thirds or more of its trade led directly to the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.” “It was not just a matter of Japanese imperialism; the misjudged American response [of total embargo] sealed off the possibility of a peaceful solution or even of ‘hot cold war’” and pushed the Japanese “beyond the point of no return” (ix-x). (This book is in OMNI’s library.)
So on this December 7, 2010, let us grieve over yet another war of horrific slaughter and mass murder (read John Dower’s War Without Mercy). Let us not celebrate the so-called “victory” of WWII in the Pacific; rather let us celebrate with a loud and concerted voice the banning of war in the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928, the United Nations Charter of 1945, and the International Criminal Court’s decision to prosecute crimes of aggression in 2010.
Dick Bennett
Wars and Warming: Reducing the Footprints
My blog:
http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/
jbennet@uark.edu
(479) 442-4600, 2582 Jimmie Ave., Fayetteville, AR 72703
______________________________________
OMNI WORLD UNITY DAY NEWSLETTER #3,
NOVEMBER 11, 2010, WE, THE PEOPLE BUILDING A CULTURE OF PEACE, Compiled by Dick Bennett
CONTENTS of Newsletter #2
OMNI in Veterans’ Day Parade 2009
Message from Veterans for Peace
Greenwald Message on Afghanistan
Peace Action Message on Afghanistan
Support the Troops: Vets’ Health Care
Valor
Military Refusers
Zinn on Nationalism and War, Will Phillips on the Pledge
Recent Books on US Empire from OMNI Bibliographies
Contents of #3
Veterans Day
World Unity DAY
US Exceptionalism?
We Are All African
1
Veterans Day, formerly known as Armistice Day, was originally set as a US legal holiday to honor the end of World War I, which officially took place on ...
www.military.com/veterans-day/ - Cached - Similar
2. The History of Veterans Day - U.S. Army Center of Military History
A chronology of this observance's evolution in the US.
www.history.army.mil/faq/vetsday/vetshist.htm - Cached - Similar
1. Establish International "World Unity Day" Petition
Nov 3, 2007 ... We, the people of earth, members of one global family, declare our unity and seek to honor it by establishing an internationally recognized ...
www.gopetition.com/.../establish-international-world-unity-day.html - Cached - Similar
2. WORLD UNITY DAY, NOVEMBER 11 - "Celebrating The Diversity Of The ...
A group to support and spread the word about World Unity Day, November 11 and the Declaration of World Unity petition.
mypeace.tv/group/worldunityday - Cached - Similar
On 4 November 2007, the Peoples Congress voted the formalization of the March equinox as "World Citizens Day- World Unity Day". ...
www.recim.org/ascop/pr08-an.htm - Cached - Similar
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File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
World Unity Day. 22 August 2009. The language of NA transcends words and boundaries. Ours is a language of the heart. Join NA members from around the world ...
www.na.org/admin/include/spaw2/uploads/.../2009_Unity_Day.pdf - Similar
6. WORLD UNITY DAY, NOVEMBER 11 | Facebook
WORLD UNITY DAY, NOVEMBER 11 is on FacebookSign up for Facebook to connect with WORLD ... So it is an idea whose time has come to have a World Unity Day. ...
www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=61874251830 - Cached - Similar
7. September 11: World Unity Day Petition
457, 12:00 am PDT, Jun 29, Vanessa Rivera, Schenectady, United States, World Unity Day would be a great oppurtunity to reflect on all the heros and a way to ...
www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/608075279?ltl=1119242637 - Cached
8. World Unity Day Event at Sedona Creative Life Center
LLP Global is spearheading an initiative to establish an internationally recognized “World Unity Day” sponsored by the United Nations. On July 22, 2008, ...
www.sedonacreativelife.com/pre1052.html - Cached - Similar
9. Empower Others - We Are ONE: A World Anthem
On November 11, 2007, Kevin Reid announced an initiative to establish an internationally recognized “World Unity Day” - a day to "celebrate the diversity of ...
www.aworldanthem.org/worldunityday.html - Cached - Similar
10. World Unity Day | Education | Change.org
There are gay pride days and pagan pride days, how about a Humanity Pride Day? It is our goal to make September 11, 2010 the first annual World Unity Day.
education.change.org/petitions/view/world_unity_day - Cached
11. Join us in prayer. Together we can transform the world! | World ...
Seventeen years ago, Unity created World Day of Prayer—held the second Thursday in September—as a global effort to uplift ourselves … our loved ones … our ...
www.worlddayofprayer.org/ - Cached - Similar
US Exceptionalism?
“U.S. is not greatest country ever. Kinsley challenges exceptionalism” By MICHAEL KINSLEY 11/2/10
When foreign car companies started opening factories in the United States, back in the 1980s, it seemed like an act of obeisance. The plants didn’t make economic sense — Americans had to be paid so much more — but this was a tactful bit of tribute to Empire Central. America wants auto plants? America gets auto plants.
Last week, BMW announced it was opening a plant in South Carolina. No special explanation was required. People were lined up for jobs paying $15 an hour. Equivalent jobs in Germany pay $30 an hour. We’re now a bargain.
The theory that Americans are better than everybody else is endorsed by an overwhelming majority of U.S. voters and approximately 100 percent of all U.S. politicians, although there is less and less evidence to support it. A recent Yahoo poll (and I resist the obvious joke here) found that 75 percent of Americans believe that the United States is “the greatest country in the world.” Does any other electorate demand such constant reassurance about how wonderful it is — and how wise? Having spent a month to a couple of years and many millions of dollars trying to snooker voters, politicians awaiting poll results Tuesday will declare that they put their faith in “the fundamental wisdom of the American people.”
Not me. Democracy requires me to respect the results of the elections. It doesn’t require me to agree with them or to admire the process by which voters made up their minds.
read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44500.html#ixzz14QXU8QII (from Larry W)
WE ARE ALL AFRICAN
By Dick Bennett
Einstein taught us: Humans experience themselves as individuals “separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciouness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
The need for new ways of thinking about affections and loyalties is greater than ever before in history, because two relatively new dangers imperil the planet. The central question is: How should we relate to one another in the world? The overriding dangers of nuclear warfare and climate warming compel us to expand our understanding of citizenship and patriotism from the nation to the whole world. We need to become citizens of the world—ciudadanos del mundo, citoyens du monde. But the new ways of thinking require us also to expand our sense of personal responsibility from the self, family, clan, and locality to the family of humankind. We need to view ourselves as members of one human species, whose continued existence on this fragile and precious planet is in doubt. And Einstein asks us even to embrace in our family all species.
How do we change our ways of thinking from self-regarding to include all of nature in its evolving beauty?
Recent scholarship is affirming in extraordinary detail the unity of human kind suggested by Darwin in The Descent of Man. We are all African exclaims the title of a recent article. Scientists in many fields have compiled evidence of our African ancestry, that demonstrates the common lineage of all humans alive today. Because we descended from inhabitants of Africa who began migrating out of Africa around 60,000 years ago, we are all related.
With these words, “We are all African,” we find another powerful way to think about our relationship to others, a scientific parallel to the words, “We are all God’s children.” We gain humility; we are not the chosen either as individuals or as groups. We are not more privileged or superior. All human life has value.
When Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court became upset when he heard that his nephew in New Orleans had been punched and shocked by guards at hospital and suffered a seizure, he was behaving naturally we have always said. But that must change. The people of several dozen countries in the world are at risk of being punched and shocked by their police and military; a billion people don’t know where their next meal is coming from every day; a nuclear and warming holocaust threatens us all. As a result, if we are to survive as a species, now we must view all the children of the world as our nephews and nieces.
So let us celebrate November 11 not as US (us) Veterans Day, but as UNITY DAY.
References
diCarlo, Christopher. “We Are All African!” Free Inquiry (June/July 2010), 18-22. secularhumanism.org
Krieger, David. “Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament: Shifting the Mindset. A Briefing Booklet for the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.” February 2, 2010.
Shreeve, Jamie. “The Evolutionary Road.” National G
END OF UNITY DAY NEWSLETTER #3 11-11-10
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Dick Bennett
Wars and Warming: Reducing the Footprints
My blog:
http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/
jbennet@uark.edu
(479) 442-4600, 2582 Jimmie Ave., Fayetteville, AR 72703
http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/
jbennet@uark.edu
(479) 442-4600, 2582 Jimmie Ave., Fayetteville, AR 72703
Wars and Warming: Reducing the Footprints 9-21-2010
Corporations versus Climate Science
IRAQ CASUALTIES: 4000 US SOLDIERS KILLED BY MARCH 23, 2008, OR 6000 OR MORE?
April 1, 2008 VERSUS INEVITABILITY OF VIOLENCE TO END TERRORISM
July 17, 2009 Drone War in Pakistan, The Nuclear Weapons Pandemic
DICK'S ESSAYS ON THE HEROES AND THE WARS
HISTORY OF NWA PEACE MOVEMENT