Tag: Peace

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Christian Witness, Perspective, Political, , , ,

When defense is co-opted for offense

A Serbian-Canadian’s reflection of NATO’s involvement in the internal affairs of Serbia. Also recall that NATO bombed Serbia on Easter Sunday. From The Bloody Catholic Easter 1999 by Dr. Vladimir Ajdacic at Swans

Easter is the most sacred and the happiest day for Christians. However, the people of Yugoslavia will never forget Easter 1999. NATO, led by the Americans, carried out vicious bombing attacks on a variety of civilian targets in Yugoslavia. Despite a message and request from the Pope not to bomb during this important Christian holy day, NATO bloodied their hands. The patriarch of the Russian Eastern Orthodox Church, Aleksej II, predicted their actions correctly. NATO’s message, written on the bombs and tomahawk missiles was, “Easter presents to the Serbs”…

Similarly, NATO working outside its bounds in Afghanistan, continues to ‘mis-target’ civilians.

Perspective, Political,

U.S. ‘Catholic’ leaders take aim at Iran’s Christians

From Christian Newswire: Iran Sanctions Pass in Congress —“ Catholic Leaders Influential in Legislative Victory

These “Catholic” neo-con, more interested in politics than in Jesus, leaders seem to have forgotten how well sanctions and interventionist adventures worked against Iraq. Their warmongering, and the cheerleading they provided for the Bush regime, lead to the virtual destruction of Catholic and other Christian communities in Iraq as well as several thousands of American lives. Under Saddam, who was a secularist, Christian communities in Iraq were left in peace. Seems like these devils in sheep’s clothing (Matthew 7:15) want to set up what are left of the Armenians, Assyrians and members of the Chaldean Catholic Church of Iran for martyrdom. All for the greater glory of Go… oh yeah, interventionist U.S. government escapades.

These leaders are all for a nuclear free Iran. Perhaps they should focus on a nuclear free Middle East – thus the purge of Israel’s nuclear firepower. But of course, the United States has to sell its children to war just to prop up one country. Ezra Waldman, writing an opinion piece in the Albany Time Union asks:

Does [Ms. Hotaling] suggest that we cease supporting Israel? Whom would she support? Should we back Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Yemen and others?

How about this for the most simple, easy to understand answer… support no one, trade equally with all, and never ever intervene. If we were to do so, pulling completely out, the terrorism problem would disappear overnight.

Poetry,

December 7 – Pearl Harbor’s Child by Linda Brown

I was born a week after Pearl Harbor
into a crib with an air raid siren.
It wailed nightly from the elm outside
until I went rigid as a hypnotist’s steel board,
too scared–even in my mother’s arms–to cry.

We moved cross-country when I was two
so my father could build the air strip
at Whidbey Island. There I was jumped on
by Zombie Doggy, a big red Irish setter
who loved me so much he knocked me down.
When they practiced firing on the artillery range,
Mother had to drive me to the other side of the island
because I screamed & cried and cried.

There are two things infants are afraid of:
falling and loud noises. This was my baptism
into touch and sound–being knocked flat
on my back by a dog licking my face,
the rage of artillery shells and sirens.

So much fear. What to do for it
but become a poet? Still afraid
of being knocked on my ass by love,
still living in a world at war.

Found at Poets Against War.

Poland - Polish - Polonia, ,

Remembering September 1, 1939

Merciful and loving Father, Who knowest the misfortune of our nation, with eyes of mercy look Thou down upon us; pardon our sins, make straight our ways, watch over a guide us amid the confusion of the world, that serving Thee in truth and righteousness, we may behold at length Thine everlasting light. Through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. — A Prayer for the Polish Nation from A Book of Devotions and Prayers According to the Use of the Polish National Catholic Church.

Zakazane piosenki – Dnia pierwszego września
Forbidden songs – On the First of September

Dnia pierwszego września, roku pamiętnego
Wróg napadł na Polskę z kraju sąsiedniego

Najwięcej się uwziął na naszą Warszawę
Warszawo kochana tyś jest miasto krwawe

Kiedyś byłaś piękna bogata wspaniała
Teraz tylko kupa gruzów pozostała

Domy popalone, szpitale zburzone
Gdzie się mają podziać ludzie poranione

Lecą bomby z nieba brak jest ludziom chleba
Nie tylko od bomby umrzeć będzie trzeba

Gdy biedna Warszawa w gruzach pozostała
To biedna Warszawa poddać się musiała

I tak się broniła całe trzy tygodnie
Jeszcze Pan Bóg pomści taką straszną zbrodnie.

From the Wikipedia list of events in September 1939:

  • September 1 —“ World War II: At 0445 Central European Time, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opens bombardment on the Westerplatte, a Polish military base outside Danzig, firing what are, according to many sources, the first shots of World War II. At the same time, regular Wehrmacht troops begin crossing the border into Poland.
  • September 15 —“ World War II: Diverse elements of the German Wehrmacht surround Warsaw and demand its surrender. The Poles refuse and the siege begins in earnest.
  • September 17 —“ World War II: The Soviet Union invades Poland and then occupies eastern Polish territories.
  • September 22 —“ World War II: Joint victory parade of the [German] Wehrmacht and [Russian] Red Army in Brest-Litovsk at the end of the Invasion of Poland.
  • September 28 —“ World War II: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agree on a division of Poland after their invasion.
  • September 28 —“ World War II: Warsaw surrenders to Germany; Modlin surrenders a day later; the last Polish large operational unit surrenders near Kock 8 days later.

A link to memories of the beginning of the war and the mass deportation of Poles to Russian slave labor camps from three Roman Catholic sisters courtesy of the Young Fogey.

From the Guardian, a video of the dawn memorial service at Westerplatte where the first shots of the war were fired.

Dr. John Guzlowski will be speaking on Saturday, September 5, 2009 between 10 and 11:30am at Michigan’s commemoration service held in conjunction with the Polish Roman Catholic Mission at the Orchard Lake Schools.

September 1, 1939 Commemoration

Russian revisionist history, setting the stage for the next conflict by excusing the crimes of the past: “…but it wasn’t all our fault that we deported 1.7 million Poles to Siberia, killing 1.3 million in the process including the 25,000 unarmed Polish military officers, police and intellectuals we shot to death in Katyn over a few days.”

Poetry,

An interview with former Poet Laureate Robert Hart

From Examiner.com, The Berkeley Bard: Robert Hass, rock star poet

I guess a lot of the questions in poetry can only be answered by poetry. That is they can only be answered by dramatizing and intensifying the contradictions which we suppress in everyday life in order to get on with it–Robert Hass

Marin Catholic grad; Stanford Ph.d; MacArthur Fellowship; Pulitzer Prize; National Book Award; former U.S. Poet laureate–this partial list of awards and accomplishments only hint at the intellect and profound engagement with the world of San Francisco native/California poet Robert Hass.

From his Midwest Iowan perch, Michael Judge describes a recent dinner with Hass at “a fancy joint called Yoshi’s” (excertped from the Wall Street Journal Online).

“One benefit of being a poet — as opposed to, say, a politician or talk-show host — is that you can be the most celebrated person in your field, a virtual rock star among those who study, read and write poetry, and still remain anonymous in just about any public setting.

“The thought occurs to me as I stand outside one of this city’s finer Japanese-fusion restaurants (a fancy joint called Yoshi’s) chain smoking and awaiting the arrival of Robert Hass, a poetry rock star if ever there was one.

“Still, for the life of me, I can’t remember what he looks like. So, after approaching a few slightly startled gentlemen in his age bracket, I’m relieved when a pleasant man with a warm countenance, wearing blue jeans and a black windbreaker, extends his hand and says simply, ‘I’m Bob.’

“After snuffing out my cigarette, I tell him my wife Masae awaits us inside and is holding what we hope will be a quiet booth where we can talk. Alas, there’s a speaker above us blaring jazz, and adjacent diners are shouting above the din. Undaunted, we peruse the wine list. ‘Buttery and oaky is the classic California chardonnay that everyone’s gotten sick of,’ says the poet, with a slight grin. ‘But I haven’t!’ And with that we order a bottle from California’s Santa Rita Hills and begin.

“He’s just flown in from Toronto, he tells us, where he attended the Griffin Poetry Prize ceremony, and asks that we please forgive him if he ‘fades early. …But before I can ask him for details, he’s on to another topic: a Berkeley-based nonprofit called the International Rivers Network. ‘I’m the only poet on the board,’ he says. ‘It’s an environmental organization that thinks about the ecological consequences of big dams’ and provides ‘real life estimates of the damage done by these big boondoggle projects to the people who are trying to resist them.’ The group has worked in some 60 countries, he says, to help prevent the kind of cultural and environmental devastation caused by projects like the Three Gorges dam on China’s Yangtze River.

“Suddenly, like a guest who feels he’s gone on too long, Mr. Hass apologizes and peppers us with questions. ‘How long are we here?’ ‘Where are we from?’ ‘How did we meet?’ When he discovers my wife is from Japan and we met in Tokyo the conversation turns to his love for haiku, particularly the poems of the 17th century master Matsuo Basho.

“In the early 1970s, he says, ‘I tried to teach myself something about how to make images from working on haiku . . . I had this real paradisiacal period in my life where I would teach, come home, get out the Japanese dictionary, work on haiku, then go swim laps for an hour, then have dinner and put my kids to bed. . . .’

Just then our waitress brings the ‘Fisherman Carpaccio,’ a flower-like assemblage of raw fish marinated in soy with a dash of karashi hot mustard and sesame oil. We order another bottle of chardonnay, and I attempt to ask another question. ‘That’s a really pretty presentation, don’t you think?’ says Mr. Hass, admiring the dish that’s just arrived. ‘Can we stop?’ He then turns to my wife, who’s a potter and chef, and asks, ‘What do you think about this presentation? And about saying this is carpaccio rather than sashimi?’

“Right about now I begin to feel as if we’re inside a Robert Hass poem. They are known for their playfulness with language, love of long, sprawling sentences, and, above all, a kind of unquenchable honesty, a wrestling with memory and the world as it is. Yet listening to him talk it strikes me that he isn’t self-absorbed. He is, in fact, other-absorbed. His conversation, like his poetry, is full of wonder and horror, two wholly appropriate reactions to human history — or a plate of sashimi-cum-carpaccio…

“In a poem for his friend and longtime collaborator, Czeslaw Milosz (became Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at UC Berkeley in 1961)– who died in Krakow in 2005 at the age of 93 after living through the Nazi occupation of Poland and the rise and fall of communism — Mr. Hass writes how Milosz ‘never accepted the cruelty in the frame / Of things, brooded on your century, and God the Monster, / And the smell of summer grasses in the world / That can hardly be named or remembered / Past the moment of our wading through them, / And the world’s poor salvation in the word.’

“This idea, this lament–‘the world’s poor salvation in the word,’ that language often fails us, yet it’s our only hope for redemption — permeates Mr. Hass’s latest book, which was completed in 2005 at the height of the Iraq war. In a poem titled ‘Bush’s War,’ he conflates 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with the brutal history of the 20th century, when the slaughter of civilians and the “firebombing” of entire cities was commonplace. ‘Forty-five million, all told, in World War II,’ he writes. ‘Why do we do it?Certainly there’s a rage / To injure what’s injured us.’…

Christian Witness, Perspective, Political,

Take Action: Tell the Appropriations Sub-Committees No Military Aid to Israel

picasso-peaceI’ve just sent letters to Members of Congress on the Appropriations Subcommittee that deals with foreign aid letting them know I oppose the President’s request for $2.7755 billion in military aid to Israel for FY2010. Israel routinely violates the U.S. Arms Export Control Act and Foreign Assistance Act by using U.S. weapons to commit human rights violations against Palestinians. Join me in taking action to oppose more military aid going to Israel by clicking here.

Thanks to the Young Fogey for pointing to this.

Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , ,

CNN – Autumn of Change, The New Poland

A huge retrospective on the fall of Communism led by Poland’s Solidarity revolution. Stories include:

Blog: Poles thrive in new Europe

Starting tomorrow, June 1st, CNN will present a week of programming focused on the changes in Poland over the past 20 years.

Christian Witness, Perspective, Political, , , ,

Dr. Laurence Vance – Christianity and War, Other Aspects of the Warfare State

Dr. Laurence Vance will address the Institute On The Constitution as part of its First Friday program. The program will take place on Friday, June 5, 2009, at 7pm. As with past “First Friday” lectures, this one will be held at 8028 Ritchie Highway, Suite 315, Pasadena, Maryland 21122. Doors open at 6:30pm and the lecture will begin promptly at 7pm. The event is free but because of limited space please RSVP to 1-866-730-9796. Refreshments will be provided.

Dr. Vance’s address will be streamed live, at no cost, on the Internet, June 5 at 7pm (EST).

Dr. Laurence M. Vance is a Bible-believing Christian author, freelance writer, and book reviewer. He holds degrees in history, theology, accounting, and economics. He has written and published sixteen books on the diverse subjects of theology, biblical languages, Bible history, economics, politics, and war. Dr. Vance regularly contributes articles and book reviews to both secular and religious periodicals. He is a regular columnist for LewRockwell a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the editor of the Classic Reprints series, the director of the Francis Wayland Institute, and an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

The “Institute on the Constitution (IOTC)” is an educational effort sponsored by the Law Office of Peroutka and Peroutka of Pasadena, Maryland. It is neither an instrument of, nor an advocate for, any particular political party. Rather, it advocates the restoration of our Constitutional Republic by offering classes, lectures, and products designed to re- acquaint the American people with our history, our heritage, and our Constitution, which is the very foundation of our Republic. You will not find smoke, mirrors, or political correctness filters at our presentations — just real American history, the way it was, the way it ought to be taught.

The following is a presentation by Dr. Vance on Christianity and War at the 2008 Austrian Scholars Conference:

Current Events, Perspective, Political,

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

From The Christian Science Monitor: Soldier rampage hints at stress of repeated deployments

Sgt. John Russell was charged with murder Tuesday. He was finishing his third tour in Iraq.

WASHINGTON – Military police on Tuesday charged Sgt. John Russell, a soldier on a 15-month tour to Iraq —“ his third deployment to the country —“ with murder in the shooting deaths of five soldiers at an American base.

Details about Sergeant Russell are beginning to emerge. In an interview with a local television station in Sherman, Texas, Russell’s father said his son was facing financial difficulty and feared he was about to be discharged from the Army. The case has focused further attention on the effect that multiple, extended deployments are having on soldiers.

Fifteen-month tours and repeated deployments are increasing the rate of suicide, divorce, and psychological problems, according to Pentagon data. The shootings at Camp Liberty in Iraq speak to the need “to redouble our efforts … in terms of dealing with the stress,” said Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a Pentagon press conference Monday.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is requesting to “institutionalize and properly fund” programs to help wounded troops, including those with psychological disorders. Roughly 300,000 veterans have been diagnosed with some form of post-traumatic stress disorder.

But a main source of the problem —“ the repeated, extended deployments —“ will probably continue. President Obama is drawing troops down in Iraq, but he is also sending more to Afghanistan, minimizing the impact that the drawdown from Iraq will have on the health of the force…

I saw a bumper sticker the other day, actually two. The left side of the car sported a huge Obama sticker. On the right side there was a sticker that read: Got War — blame a Republican. My first thought was one of sympathy for the poor deluded person who thought things would change. My next thought was to market an updated sticker:

“Got War – blame a Republican
Still have war – blame a Democrat”

obama-cartoon-711310The sad fact is the all of this could be over; we could disengage from our foreign adventures. Unfortunately, the escapades of the Bush neocons are being continued by the social engineers of the Obama administration.

A word to those who think we are getting something out of this: What are we getting exactly? Are we getting plunder? Cheap oil? Security? Labensraum? A resounding no! When these damaged souls return they will be on the street. They will be homeless Vietnam Vets Part 2. They will be the homeless Vietnam Vet but with twice the anger and triple the skills (see the DHS report: Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment [pdf] or the everyday experience documented in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette’s article: Iraq vets’ troubles appear long after return). They’ll know how to construct lovely roadside bombs, how to kill without remorse, how to weaponize and disguise until — boom. Your neocon/socially engineered plunder and security will go up in smoke like the cities those Vets will occupy.

From the Washington Post:

“There is no front line in Iraq,” said Col. Charles W. Hoge of the division of psychiatry and neuroscience at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, the lead author of the report published yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “Individuals who are patrolling the streets will be at higher risk of being involved in combat, but folks who are largely located at one base are also targets of mortar and artillery, and everyone in convoys is a target.”

In other words, these Vets will have faced years in situations where the enemy is all around, where danger lurks around every corner. That makes for a wonderful stew of psychological problems.

On top of all this consider the lack of funding the VA receives for veterans health care (especially mental health treatment), the bureaucratic mismanagement of the military discharge process, the social cost associated with caring for those who won’t be on the street because they’re too crippled and too sick to do anything, and the overall economic impact these wars have had (think debt, lots and lots and lots of debt — about 10,000 years worth of debt). Those impacts will last long after the last soldier comes home (which won’t happen anyway as there will always be another ‘engagement’).

What to do? First: pray – really pray because it does work. Next, advocate for better veterans healthcare, wiser policies, peace, and most of all — vote differently. Voting for the same two parties is no different than voting for the same corrupt politician, excepting that the faces change.

“Got War – blame a Republican
Still have war – blame a Democrat”

Christian Witness, PNCC, ,

Prayer vigil for Blue Star families

From the Stratford Star: Prayer vigil April 26 for Blue Star Families

1bluestar

The Blue Star Mothers and Families of Stratford Inc. will hold its fourth annual prayer vigil service honoring the men and women of the U.S. military Sunday, April 26, at 4 at St. Joseph’s of Stratford National Catholic Church, 1300 Stratford Road.

The theme for the vigil is —Wake Up the Pride,— and will include patriotic songs and religious hymns, interfaith prayers, a candlelight ceremony, and brief addresses by state and local officials.

The ceremony is open to the public.

Mothers and fathers, spouses and children of local military personnel will be recognized during the prayer vigil in the church, then will be received at a coffee and cake fellowship in the parish hall.

The Blue Star Mothers and Families of Stratford was founded in 2003 by mothers who had children serving overseas as a support group for the families of servicemen and servicewomen. It is not affiliated with the Blue Star Mothers of America.

Among its activities, the Blue Star Mothers and Families of Stratford Inc. collects goods to send to soldiers overseas. The organization also maintains an honor board on the green of the Stratford Town Hall that bears the names of those who are currently serving from the town and some nearby communities.

This is the third time this annual vigil has taken place at St. Joseph’s of Stratford National Catholic Church. Several mothers from the parish are active in the Blue Star Mothers and Families of Stratford.

More information may be obtained from Kathy M. Sullivan at (203) 377-0676.

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