The Insanity of War

Once again there is nothing new to report. Dominant cultures act out of dominance and humanity is forsaken.

It’s said the Nazis learned the ways of legalizing the mistreatment of human beings from their study of the United States government and military’s treatment of indigenous people.

Accounts of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing are rampant in our history. From the moment colonizers landed on these shores, Native people were systematically removed by ignorance or by plan.

In 1830, Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act forced the relocation of 60,000 Cherokees and other tribes. Known as the Trail of Tears the presidential orders were brutally carried out by the United States military.

And there are still those among us who glamorize the legendary Kit Carson whose scorched earth policy on the Dine or Navajo people were followed by numerous and deadly, violent forced removals. This ethnic cleansing or genocide was driven by ignorance, greed and racism and gave way to the Navajo Long Walk.

Sounds all too familiar, doesn’t it?

Land acquisition, resource plundering and cultural assimilation are the root of dominant culture and continue throughout the world.

Intentional and willful killing, displacement of innocents, destruction of non-military homes and other civilian enclaves such as hospitals, all fall within the realm of war crimes as ratified in the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

The retaliation of the Israeli government to the terrorist attack by Hamas has resulted in widespread war crimes from both sides. President Biden’s continued support in word and in financial aid to Israel constitutes an extension of those war crimes – and by default on all of us as citizens.

Isn’t it time we emerge from the insanity of war?

The signing of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 which established laws regarding war crimes.

Maybe it’s time we make war a crime…

The Dangerous Game of Retaliation

It’s said, no two things can occupy the same space at the same time. However, this understanding does not apply when the two things are in total opposition and yet both are equally true.

It’s possible to hold the awareness that the Hamas brutal attacks on Israeli settlers and the indiscriminate and unrelenting bombing of Palestinians by the Israeli military are equally barbaric.

Both are true.

This dangerous game of retaliation that has claimed the lives of over 6500 Palestinians including 2700 children does not exist in a vacuum. Israel’s refusal to allow sufficient aid to reach those in need is not going unnoticed. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is correctly calling for a humanitarian ceasefire.

The reality is that this has happened far too many times in our collective history. This over powering of captive people, this theft of land, and this total inability to seek peaceful resolution has all been done before. And there are countless peoples throughout the world who reckon with the generational traumas of inhuman colonizing.

What we all know is this: Violence begets violence and defiance and resistance are the outcome of reckless power and inhumanity. It’s a cycle that we can no longer afford to give way to.

There are those speaking up for a new approach. Polls indicate two-thirds of United States voters are calling for a ceasefire and thirteen members of Congress introduced a resolution calling for ceasefire “to save Palestinian and Israeli lives”.

More voices are needed. Yes, two horrible things can both be true. But more powerful than these two truths is the greater reality that all human beings want peace. It’s time we work for it.

Our Choice

Innocents are dying and humanity keeps revealing the horrific side of our nature. We shake our heads and mutter silent prayers for the killing to end, while others of us pray that the other side may be annihilated.

It is an old and bitter story that repeats again and again. Humanity boasts of great accomplishments and colonizers race to conquer space yet human kind has not found a way to live and let live.

What is it in our nature that finds it easy to take sides? What kind of ignorance do we harbor? What kind of hatred feeds us?

Why is the voice of peace, that so many cherish, compliant to the voices of war? Are the distractions so great that we cannot take a moment from our busy and entertaining lives to declare an end to the inhumanity?

You see it is true; whatever happens to one happens to all. We may not feel it; we may be able to ignore it, but the disregard for life eats away at us. Our inability to stand firmly in the river of peace that surely is available to all of us continues to allow ignorance to win.

Many will say, “War is inevitable”. But I say, “What is inevitable is our capitulation, not war”. War can be stopped if we find the passion to do so. War will be stopped when we unify behind passion for living and when we understand the precious gift that every life holds, that every breath promises.

No, we are in the thick of it now. Endless wars and the acceptance of genocide are about as low as we can go.

People say, “God save us”. And God responds, “Save yourselves. You’ve been given everything you need.”

And the choice, as always, is ours.

What If

You’ve all heard that sheep are timid followers and to be called a Black Sheep is not an endearing term. So what must it be like to be identified as a Black Sheep all your life then one day you find yourself in a culture that honors Black Sheep? You’re told another story. Black Sheep are leaders. They are courageous, curious and the first to face danger. Would you be like, “No you’re wrong, Black Sheep are misfits. They are unwelcomed and mistreated because they are different.”

That would probably go through your head, but then you might think, “Wow, maybe this Black Sheep thing isn’t all bad. Maybe my culture got it wrong.”

And you flash back to the time you got a lump of coal for Christmas and your father jumped in to protect you and said something like, “Stop it. This is a load of crap.” And you got a glimpse that the load was a lot bigger and smellier than you ever dared to think.

If you’re fortunate the unraveling begins and you start to question the things that you have been told and taught and with good reason.

Much of the foundation that we build our lives around is more sand castle than rock. When the tide rises, we either cling tightly to the beliefs we were born into or we learn the life saving gift of letting go.

I suppose it doesn’t matter much in the scheme of life whether you cling to your beliefs or find reason to question them. But when we look at the greater puzzle we must reckon with the reality that *“no man is an island” and what you do and say does impact another, either to benefit or to harm.

As our society continues to follow beliefs of dominion and superiority and drives us with cookie cutter sameness, perhaps its time to champion our diversity as the wonder that it is.

***********

Each week I write and record a two minute piece for WDRT Community Radio. It can be found on Soundcloud and I bring it here to my blog. But here you get extra information and sometimes the back story. The sheep in the photo is Cupcake and she is almost four months old. Yesterday I watched her take on our dog Chester after he chased her lamb friend Cookie…as he turned away from her “face down”, she promptly butted him, and I remembered the audacity of being a Black Sheep…

No Man is an Island – John Dunne

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

Peace Day. Every Day.

I was invited to speak at a celebration honoring the International Day of Peace. Here is an excerpt:

Since 1981, when the United Nations declared Sept 21 as the International Day of Peace, people from around the world have gathered to lift up, unite around, and sometimes, demand peace.

On these celebratory days, people have been asked to consider aspects of peace: ending racism, ending poverty, forgiveness, dignity for all, uniting for peace, ceasefires and more… yet peace has eluded us.

Or has it? People often say, “I love the peacefulness of nature”. They might even say, “I find myself there”. There are places, books, works of art and many beautiful things that touch us. One friend told me she had an experience of peace as she touched the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. She went on to say that that one moment of peace satisfied her for a lifetime. This is not true for me. I find myself needing to feel peace every day.

So we are unique as we meander through life and there are triggers that help us touch the feeling of peace, but I would say to you, peace is not inherent in that place or object or even person that touches us, peace is something that lies within each and every one of us. It stands on its own merit. It resides within and within is where we feel it.

And I would suggest to you that that is precisely why international or world peace has eluded us. Simply put, we are looking for peace in the wrong place. We put a tremendous amount of energy to try to change the outside, without first becoming cognoscente of the power we already have.

We all know and love the saying “peace begins with me”. But do we believe it?

Have we tapped the peace within us, have we consecrated it? Or, have we understood that it consecrates us? Consecrates us…transfers the power of the sacred to us.

Have we understood and accepted the sacred nature of peace? Do we recognize peace as the most powerful tool in our arsenal against ignorance and hatred?

These are important questions.

One of my favorite quotes is by Audre Lorde, and I am paraphrasing here, “ You can’t dismantle the master’s house, using the master’s tools.”* We cannot and should not fight fire with fire. If we are to have a legacy of this day and of our lives, why could it not be that we have put down the master’s tools of battle, of anger, of hatred, of ignorance and have instead reached for the greatest tools we have.

It is time we stop giving lip service to peace. Peace does not need us to champion it. Peace needs to be felt and from that feeling, purposeful action can and will arise.

If we have not yet recognized this fundamental point, we need to begin. And today is the best day to take stock of our most valuable gift. Peace. Call upon it.

We need to stop acting like peace is something elusive and we must allow it to be tangible and real in our lives.

This year the theme for the International Peace Day is “Actions Towards Peace”. It is directed to each individual, not to a government or any other agency. The request is that we all become Peacemakers.

So now the questions before us are: What are we doing to initiate peace?

And more importantly will we take the time to know what peace truly is?

Doubt is a horrible human disease. It causes us to falter when there is no need to falter. It robs of us life’s sweetness. It is said, no two things can occupy the same space at the same time. Let this be the time that we remove the doubt and replace it with knowing. Let us all begin that journey. Let us all know peace.

Thank you to Unity of Appleton for the opportunity to speak.

Full quote of Audre Lorde: “For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.”

Here’s to Human Dignity

On Monday, we drove to Madison for Laborfest. It was a celebration of workers rights and a call for workers’ justice. Though the temperatures were in the nineties, the place was bustling with unions, students and organizations all championing labor, all trying to impress upon us the very real need to respect and give dignity to those who are the ones keeping it all going.

I enjoyed seeing old friends, all activists striving for a better day.

And I appreciated meeting new friends, most young and passionate. It reminded me of younger years as I challenged our government’s choice to war with Vietnam and as I allowed myself to question our role in the overthrow of Salvador Allende. Signing up for socialist information made a lot of sense. Still does if you need a dose of new possibilities.

I grew up in a union enclave. My father and uncles worked union jobs and we lived in the midst of steel mills, glass, paint and lumber factories. Much of that came tumbling down in the late 70’s when the mills left the area for cheaper labor abroad. A lot more changes followed. The playgrounds, swimming pool and other amenities available to blue-collar families disappeared.

The camaraderie that had been forged in our little neighborhoods began to shift as fear of other and “Keeping up with the Joneses” took on whole new meanings.

It’s not a new story. It’s boringly old. The rich get richer and the poor are told they are poor because they are lazy, or because that’s the way God planned it. There’s nothing new here.

But being with earnest people who know better days are still before us, and that better ways are still possible stirred my thinking and fueled my hope.

Here’s to the rise of human dignity. And to all who champion it!

Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice

Family Farm Defenders

Worker Justice Wisconsin

Try To Care

On September 30, federal child-care support ends. It’s projected over 70,000-child care programs will close due to lack of funding. More than three million children will lose their care. The effects of this lack of funding will reverberate throughout the workforce as parents make the harsh choices of needing to leave work altogether or to dramatically cut their work hours. Facilities will close and worker’s livelihoods will be terminated.

And who will suffer most? The children. Yes, studies show that businesses will suffer, our economy will suffer, but our future will suffer the greatest threats as we abruptly halt the lifeline of support to those who are the neediest: our children.

This is something we cannot afford. Far too many of our children are still rebounding from the effects of the pandemic. To force them into further hardship at this time is inhuman.

Our federal defense spending is greater than all of our programs to assist low-income people. These include: SNAP, school meals, low-income housing and childcare assistance. We spend more on military might than on ensuring everyone can pay their energy bills or on programs to aid abused children.

Now on September 30^th we will end childcare support. What signal are we giving the future leaders of our land? We are effectively saying, “We do not care about you”. When the youngest are abandoned surely that is a sign that the society has truly gone mad.

People squabble over the two party system, which is the better party? Which approaches are the right ways to go? But I’ll tell you this: a government or lack thereof is the result of people who do not care.

“Kids at Daycare” is a Creative Commons, attribution 2.0 license

How can we not care?

Entrapment

A friend calls it psyhological entrapment. What amounts to a total disregard of process and environmental concerns, Minnesota Power recently signed a labor agreement with the Northern Wisconsin Building and Construction Trades Council to build a $700 million gas-fired power plant in Superior next spring.

The Nemadji Trail Energy Center was proposed in 2017 and has failed to secure the permits necessary to begin construction. Environmental groups have issued warnings and legal challenges, but apparently lobbyists for fossil fuels operate in a vacuum.

The generating cooperative, Dairyland Power, boasts that this plant will help us towards a “clean energy future”. They’re certain most people will accept the words “clean energy” and call it a day. They’re hoping ratepayers will ignore the price tag as well as the increased amount of energy required to run the plant. They’re hoping the calls for protecting the water; the people and their ancestral homeland by the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa will fall on deaf ears. They have not yet understood environmental justice or human rights.

The fossil fuel industry distorts facts regarding renewables and battery storage as insufficient. They dismiss the science that tells us there’s no more time to waste as we continue to extract resources from the earth. They ignore the health risks associated with methane emissions and burst pipelines. And they’re tying our children’s children to unsustainable systems.

What could possibly go wrong building a natural gas plant along a wetland corridor of the Nemadji River?

Had enough of entrapment? Contact your local cooperative (Vernon Electric Cooperative) or utility or contact Dairyland directly at 608-788-4000. Let them know where you stand on this ill-fated energy center.

The following is a fact sheet from Sierra Club

Stories We Refuse To Hear

It’s August and commemorations of the bombings of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and of Nagasaki three days later honor the lives lost. We’re reminded of the gruesome destruction and the inhumanity released on the world through the atomic bomb.

Podcasts and radio raise the voices of survivors and the unanswered debate lingers: Wasn’t the carnage of Hiroshima enough? Why did the US bomb Nagasaki?

As a youth I was taught the United States won the war and saved lives through the use of nuclear weapons. I don’t recall learning much about horrific annihilation. And I can assure you I never learned about Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Bayard Russell and W. E. B. Du Bois speaking up for nuclear disarmament or ending nuclear testing. Nor was I aware of the racial connections they drew as they warned against the use of the bomb in Vietnam and Korea.*

While we all knew the first atomic bomb test happened in New Mexico, we’re only now learning that generations of families living near the test site are still haunted by cancers linked to that initial explosion. We were not taught that the government did not take the time to warn residents about what was coming, nor did they ever document the after effects. We can thank concerned citizens and family members for that research.

The lasting legacy of the first atomic bomb

I ask myself, what will it take for people to end this nightmare of nuclear war? We fear it. Yet we continue to glorify war and refuse to find peaceful solutions. We teach our histories of omission and refuse to take responsibility for guiding our government to a new direction. Abolition of violence, in our selves and in our world, still waits for us.

This is the map of the first atomic test site in New Mexico known as Trinity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(nuclear_test)

*https://www.zinnedproject.org/if-we-knew-our-history/web-dubois-coretta-scott-king-ban-the-bomb/

W. E. B. Du Bois to Coretta Scott King: The Untold History of the Movement to Ban the Bomb

How Far Are We Willing To Go?

How far are we willing to go to kill? The United States has made the decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine as part of another 800 million dollar military package.

Cluster Bombs were developed in WWII. They carry canisters of explosives that are designed to detonate on tanks and hard surfaces, but they do not always detonate on contact. There are fragments of cluster bombs used in Vietnam that are still killing and harming people decades after they were used.

More than 120 countries have banned them. The US, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey did not sign on to ban them and they have been widely used during the war in Ukraine by both sides.

Most allies are balking at the decision. Canada, New Zealand and Spain have doubled down on their support of the ban. Others support the US decision yet choose for their own countries to honor the ban. We are becoming the world’s henchmen. (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66144153)

As this proxy war continues and Ukraine is dismantled, the question becomes how many of the millions of displaced people and refugees will be willing to return at the war’s end? An estimated 17.6 million people living in Ukraine will need humanitarian assistance this year as the war carries on. (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61778433)

Our citizenry needs to decide where we stand.

How far are we willing to go to support death and destruction?

Are we too weak to demand a peaceful resolution?

Or are we too cynical to believe it is possible?

Our collective inability to redirect our government from war to diplomacy, and our refusal to halt shipments of weapons weighs heavily upon us.

How far are we willing to go?

Let your elected officials know where you stand, sign here: https://afsc.org/action/tell-congress-dont-send-cluster-munitions-ukraine

For more:

A B-1B Lancer drops cluster munitions. The B-1B uses radar and inertial navigation equipment enabling aircrews to globally navigate, update mission profiles and target coordinates in-flight, and precision bomb without the need for ground-based navigation aids. (U.S. Air Force photo – Public Domain)

Top photo: March 1991 unexploded cluster bomblet in a tarmac in Kuwait, photo: Johnny Saunderson compliments of creative commons licensing

Category: Choice