OMNI MEMORY
WHOLE
Defending
the Importance of Memory in the Struggle for Peace, Justice, and the
Environment: OMNI’s activities to resist
Orwell’s “memory hole” (information
control by the corporate/military state) and to restore reality to US
history and policy.
Contents
Orwell’s Memory Hole
Three US
Examples
Memory Hole
Google Search
OMNI’s Memory Whole Part I
Dick’s Books and Articles
OMNI’S Memory Whole Part II
OMNI’s
National and International DAYS Project
Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembrance
Indigenous Peoples of the Americas DAY
“Building
a Culture of Peace: Reinforcing and Transforming National Days.”
Address September 21, 2010, Montgomery College.
Address September 21, 2010, Montgomery College.
Orwell’s
Memory Hole
A memory hole is any
mechanism for INFORMATION CONTROL by censorship, particularly the alteration or
disappearance of documents, photographs, transcripts, or other records, such as
from a website or other archive, that contradict official
doctrines, statements, or news, particularly as part of an attempt to give the
impression that something never happened. The concept was first
popularized by George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, where the Party's Ministry of Truth systematically
re-created historical documents; in effect, re-writing history to match the
often-changing state propaganda. Physically,
the censorship begins in the Ministry in offices where documents are rewritten
and with chutes leading to enormous furnaces hidden somewhere in the bowels of
the building to destroy subversive materials.
Nineteen Eighty-Four's protagonist Winston Smith, who works in the Ministry of Truth, is routinely assigned
the task of revising old newspaper articles in order to serve the propaganda
interests of the government. For
example, Smith may be called to retroactively change a statement about the
endless wars to reflect new policies and new cover-ups by the Party. The Party is represented by O’Brien, whose
job is not only to destroy the evidence of the past but to erase even the
memory of it.
However, INFORMATION CONTROL is more
complicated and operates through the countless instances of censorship and of
propaganda and their relationships. Here
are a few examples of the countless capillaries of transmission regarding
population growth, political prisoners, and the Vietnam War.
Omission to Obscure Two Realities
John Kerry, Secretary of State, in his “Press Statement:
World Population Day July 11, 2015” omitted the agency of the DAY—the United Nations. It was not accidental; deletion of reference
to the UN by US officials is systematic, because positive reporting of the UN
calls into question the US history of obstruction via underfunding, Security
Council vetoes, and other actions. Also
in the Statement, no mention is made of the most important device for the “more
sustainable and just future” he advocates—contraception. We must urgently ”educate girls and empower women,” “we must
strengthen our partnerships.., shield the innocent, care for refugees, and
confront… common threats,” but we must also suppress the chief global
institution and technology to accomplish these goals. Kerry
so euphemizes and generalizes the catastrophe that a reader could easily forget
both the subject and the remedy of population
growth in an unsustainable world, while vaguely identifying the US with the
accomplishments of the UN.
Omission and Cover-up to Preserve National Myth
If you ask the
average U.S. citizen if the country has or had political prisoners, the reply
is likely to be no, or yes but few: Most
would be astonished to discover the US record is exceeded only by the Soviet
Union.
This is an exceptional country--a free country, a Bill of
Rights, a country of laws. But in realty
this country has imprisoned hundreds of thousands of its citizens for their
beliefs—trade unionists, suffragettes, communists and socialists, conscientious
objectors, anti-war demonstrators, civil rights protesters, and many more. Hundreds of books and articles have written
about the US police state: the 110,000 Japanese-Americans in WWII concentration
camps; some 20,000 prosecuted COs imprisoned, given noncombat roles in the
services, and assigned to civilian service (12,000); the FBI’s anti-democratic history—break-ins,
wire-tapping, etc.; thousands in the American Indian Movement and Central
American Sanctuary Movement; over 4,000 nuclear bomb protesters arrested in
1982 alone; the High Security Unit at Lexington built to contain primarily
women political prisoners. My Political Prisoners and Trials pp. 267-305
cites some of the evidence, lets in a little light.
Rewrite and Whitewash, Sanitize and Mythologize a War
The year 2014
marked the 50th anniversary of the landing of U.S. ground troops in Da
Nang, Vietnam. Many consider this to be the beginning of the American War
in Vietnam. To mark the anniversary of the war the Pentagon is undertaking a
ten-year, $65-million campaign to rewrite and whitewash the history of the war
in Southeast Asia.
In response, Veterans for Peace has announced the Vietnam War Full Disclosure project to offer a more truthful history of the war (http://vietnamfulldisclosure.org/ ). The Full Disclosure campaign is a Veterans for Peace effort to speak truth to power and keep alive the antiwar perspective on the American war in Viet Nam. It represents a clear alternative to the Pentagon's current efforts to sanitize and mythologize the Vietnam war and to thereby legitimize further unnecessary and destructive wars. See Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves.
In response, Veterans for Peace has announced the Vietnam War Full Disclosure project to offer a more truthful history of the war (http://vietnamfulldisclosure.org/ ). The Full Disclosure campaign is a Veterans for Peace effort to speak truth to power and keep alive the antiwar perspective on the American war in Viet Nam. It represents a clear alternative to the Pentagon's current efforts to sanitize and mythologize the Vietnam war and to thereby legitimize further unnecessary and destructive wars. See Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves.
References to
Memory Hole in Wikipedia
1.
Murphy, Kirk, Memorial Day Memory Hole: After Israel
Forgets “Exodus”, White House Forgets “Shores of Tripoli”. Will Obama Remember
NATO? 31 May 2010 Firedoglake.com
3.
Pittis, Don (13 May 2014). "Google's memory
hole a bottomless pit: Don Pittis". cbc.ca. Retrieved 3
August 2014.
4.
Stone, Brad (19 July 2009). "Amazon Erases
Orwell Books From Kindle". The New York Times. Retrieved 3
August 2014.
5.
Orwell (1954) pp. 34–35.
6.
Bhabha, Homi K. (2010). "Doublespeak and
Minority of One". On "Nineteen
Eighty-Four": Orwell and Our Future. Princeton University Press. pp. 32–33.
·
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, first published by
Martin Secker & Warburg, London, 1949. This reference, Penguin Bookspocket edition, 1954.
ORWELL’S MEMORY HOLE IN 1984, Google Search, October 15, 2015
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole
Wikipedia
A memory hole is
any mechanism for the alteration or disappearance of inconvenient or ... The
concept was first popularized by George Orwell's dystopian
novel ...
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1...
Information Clearing
House
How Truth Slips Down The Memory Hole John Pilger, applies to current eventsOrwell's description in '1984' of how the Ministry of Truth
consigned ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXiNkR9AZFE
Sep 13, 2014 - Uploaded
by Dean Noble
The Orwellian Memory Hole ... 1984 by George Orwell Book Movie on BBC TV from 1956,
Peter Cushing Glenn ...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4JSFSwf-og
Sep 20, 2014 - Uploaded
by Jonathan Lippe
Brief discussion on The Memory Hole in order to bring the concept to awareness. This is a term
in the book ...
www.globalresearch.ca/1984-was-an...to-the-memory-hole/5360175
Dec 4, 2013 - 1984 Was an Instruction Manual: Welcome to the Memory Hole. ... InOrwell's pre-digital world, the memory hole was a vacuum tube into which ...
www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p--9_Bennett.html
Many of the predictions made by George Orwell in his book 1984 in relation to ... The Ministry writes
people out of history -- they go "down the memory hole" as ...
OMNI’S
MEMORY WHOLE Part I
CONTROL OF INFORMATION IN THE UNITED STATES
Publications
by Dick (James R.) Bennett (not including book reviews)
Control of Information in
the United States: An Annotated Bibliography.
Meckler,
1987. 2943 entries.
Only by deliberate effort can we separate
ourselves from our culture in order to examine it.
Control of the Media in
the United States: An Annotated Bibliography. Garland, 1992. 4749 entries.
Domination filters through thousands of capillaries of transmission.
Political Prisoners and
Trials: A Worldwide Annotated Bibliography, 1900-1993. McFarland, 1995.
475
entries on the USA.
“”An Analysis of
Corporate Ideology Advertising: the Chromalloy ‘Dear Mr. and Mrs. America’
Ad.” Journal
of Applied Communication Research, 7 (April 1979) 23-29.
“A Lesson on Doublespeak.” Focus
Midwest, 13 (August 1979) 14-16.
“Free Film Guides Are Propaganda Tools.” Educational
Leadership, 37 (Dec. 1979) 196-99.
“Reporting the Iranian Embassy Hostage
Crisis.” Islamic Revolution, 2 (May 1980) 208-16.
“Free Speech, Reality, and the News.” Free
Speech Newsletter, No. 49 (June 1980) 3-7.
“A Comparison of Press Coverage of
Communist and Pro-Western Dictatorships.”
Freedom of Speech Newsletter, 6
(June 1980) 3-11.
“Mobil Oil in the Land of King Sam the
Avuncular.” Et Cetera 37 (Fall 1980) 6-16.
“Newspaper Reporting of U.S. Business Crime
in 1980.” Newspaper Research Journal, 3 (Fall 1981) 45-53.
“Reporting the CIA: National Security or
Civil Liberties?” Freedom of Speech Newsletter, 7 (June 1981) 3-12.
“The Westinghouse Broadcasting Company’s ‘Corita’
Advertising Campaign.” Free Speech, 51 (June 1981) 3-12.
“Reporting the El Salvador Civil War.” Freedom
of Speech Newsletter, 8 (Dec. 1981) 11-15.
“Media Credibility at Stake in Publishing
Unsubstantiated—though ‘Official’—News.”
The St. Louis Journalism Review, 8
(May 1982) 1 & 13.
“Reporting Poverty and Hunger in 1980.” Free
Speech Newsletter, 54 (Oct. 1982) 2-6.
“TV Guide Bozzles America.” Quarterly
Review of Doublespeak, 9 (Oct. 1982) 3-4.
“Nicaragua in Our Back Yard and on Our Doorstep.” Free
Speech, 55 (Dec. 1982) 6-15.
“Reporting Tio Sam’s ‘Free World’ Dictatorships in the Caribbean Basin.” Current
Research on Peace and Violence, 5.4 (1982) 218-39.
“Page One Sensationalism and the Libyan ‘Hit
Team.’” Newspaper Research Journal, 4 (Fall 1982) 34-38.
“Corporate-Sponsored Image Films.” Journal
of Business Ethics, 2.1 (Feb. 1983) 35-41.
“Saturday
Review’s Annual Advertising Awards.”
Journal of Business Ethics, 2.2 (1983)
73-78.
“Oceania and the United States in 1984: The
Selling of the Soviet Threat.” Social Theory and Practice, 10 (Fall
1984) 301-318.
“Out of Disaster a Pep Talk.” Quarterly
Review of Doublespeak, 12.1 (Oct. 1985) 10-12.
“Doublethink and the Rhetoric of Crisis:
President Reagan’s October 22, 1983, Speech on Arms ‘Reduction.’” Oldspeak/Newspeak:
Rhetorical Transformations. 1985. 54-66.
“Corporate and Government Control of
Education in the United States.” Transforming the Present for the
Future. 1986. 121-27.
“McCarran Goodthinkful.” Free
Speech, 60 (Fall 1986) 8-11.
“Soviet Scholars Look at U.S. Media.” Journal
of Communication, 36 (Winter 1986) 126-32.
“Terrorism: The Politics of Definition.” St.
Louis Journalism Review, 13.84 (1986) 2, 10.
“President Reagan’s Panegyric for the
Marines Killed in Lebanon.” North Dakota Quarterly, 55 (Spring 1987)
35-48.
“The Public Broadcasting System.” Freedom
of Speech Newsletter, 13.1 (1987) 3-5.
“Censorship by the Reagan Administration.” Index
on Censorship, 17.7 (1988) 28-32.
“Newspapers Neglect Car Safety.” St.
Louis Journalism Review, 18 (Oct. 1988) 14.
“Managing Consensus: The Presidential
Commission as an Indictment of Bureaucratic Policy Control.” New
Political Science, 16/17 (Fall/Winter 1989) 155-78.
“National Power and Objectivity in the
Classroom.” College English, 51.8 (Dec. 1989) 805-824.
“Grassroots Militarism…Washington County,
Arkansas.” Center on War and the Child,
1989. 30pp.
“There.”
(Media Coverage of Mine Disaster.)
St. Louis Journalism Review, 19
(June 1989) 2.
“One Classroom against Propaganda.” Propaganda
Review, 6 (Winter 1990) 27-29, 46.
“The Future of Media Hegemony in the United
States.” Human Energy Shaping the Future. College of Education, U. of
Arkansas, 1991. 287-296.
“Media Critics Survive ‘active and
unafraid.’” St. Louis Journalism Review, 21 (Oct. 1991). 12.
“Questioning the Supreme Obsession: Novels
about Anti-Communism in the United States Since World War II.” Works
and Days, 10.2 (Fall 1992). 89-118.
“The U.S. Media Submit to Censorship in the
Grenada, Panama, and Iraq Invasions.” St. Louis Journalism Review (Dec.
1992-Jan. 1993). 16-17.
“Control of the Media and the First
Amendment.” The Quarterly Journal of Ideology, 17.1-2 (June 1994).
OMNI’S
MEMORY WHOLE Part II
Many of
OMNI’s activities are restorations
of US “Memory Holes.”
OMNI’s National and International
DAYS Project
Two of the several DAYS OMNI
accentuates: Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Indigenous Peoples of the Americas DAY
Nuclear Bomb Destruction of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in 1945
Hiroshima-Nagasaki Remembrance Days,
August 6 and August 9
During the
1960s and ‘70s, Fayetteville, AR, supported the “Peace Organizing Committee”
against the Vietnam War. With the end of
the war and the beginning of the Reagan presidency, this group gradually dissolved,
except for one of its activities—the annual Remembrance of the nuclear bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which continues today under OMNI’s sponsorship. The dangers of nuclear war continue and in
the opinion of many are today increased with the proliferation of the bombs
from one to nine countries. Now OMNI
reminds people of these dangers and advocates for the Nuclear Abolition
Movement, including the Marshall Islands suits against the nuclear nations
(Nuclear Zero).
Genocidal Destruction of Natives of
the Americas from Columbus through the Nineteenth Century
Indigenous Peoples of the Americas
Day (IPAD), 2nd Monday of October
In 2008, the
Native American Symposium at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, in
coalition with OMNI, began a campaign to replace Columbus Day with a Day to
commemorate the victims of the European invasion. Our format has become mainly two
activities: 1) Readings about or by
native Americans, and 2) a Walk from the campus to the Trail of Tears marker
and park nearby. The importance of this
event is immense for many reasons. For
example, the false and arrogant doctrine of US exceptionalism, by which all and
future US depredations abroad were and are considered benign, partly motivated
the near-extermination of the North American Indians from some twelve million
people to less than one million in 1900. The event in 2015 was enhanced significantly
by the presence of Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala, who
walked with us and spoke at the memorial to a group of some 100 people. Following the Walk, we enjoyed a lunch at the
University, where Ms. Menchu spoke again.
EXPLANATION
OF OMNI’S NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL DAYS PROJECT
“BUILDING A
CULTURE OF PEACE: REINFORCING AND
TRANSFORMING NATIONAL DAYS” by Dick Bennett,
September
21, 2010, Montgomery College.
Introduction
I.
National Security State
II.
Birthdays
III.
National Days
A.
Reinforcing
B.
Transforming
Conclusion
I. National
Security State
If President
Eisenhower were saying Farewell today, he would have to say:
Corporate-Pentagon-White House-Congress-Secrecy-Surveillance-Exceptionalism-Mainstream
Media-National Security Complex.
Senator J. William
Fulbright is a traitor to my hometown.
Everything was settled and clear in my Arkansas home-town puddle, until
even our own people like Fulbright (Halfbright to President Johnson) came along
to muddy the water with books deploring US militarism and imperialism: The
Arrogance of Power and The Pentagon
Propaganda Machine.
The clarity of my
hometown certitudes was further disturbed when I undertook a few years of study
in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas (now named
after Fulbright), and then additional years of reading about Control of
Information and Control of the Media in the U.S., the titles of two of my
book-length bibliographies.
And now the
recent barrage of books on US imperial dysfunctions and derangements blurs
completely my smiling recollection of faithful birddog, shotgun, covey of
quail, and mother’s quail gravy.
I don’t smile so
much now, but who would like to be forced by some big fellows, who don’t seem
very bright and sometimes seem deranged, to participate in digging our own
graves?
One of the big
bullies is called exceptionalism. Since the graves are not finished, and
despite the difficulties in talking with such a fellow, let me pose two
questions.
Does the US US
But he is busy digging. I must go elsewhere for a
reply.
The essays in American Exceptionalism and Human Rights , ed. Michael Ignatieff
(2005) reply to these questions as they apply to human rights. And their answer is NO more than Yes. The U.S.
Andrew Bacevich in The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (2008)
expresses an aversion to claims of US
A part of the doctrine of US exceptionalism is the belief in the US
One author, Chalmers Johnson, has taken
four volumes to report the arrogance of US power; some the titles you will
recognize: Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire; The Sorrows of
Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic; Nemesis: The Last
Days of the American Republic; and just published, Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope.
These books provide an alternative narrative
to the seventy-year-old official, National
Security State
Noam Chomsky has been trying to
explain it for thirty years. It goes
like this. The power of the security
obsessed over most of the populace these seventy years was not accidental, but
was induced by an elaborate, well-financed propaganda system. Chomsky and Edward Herman explained it in
their 1988 book, Manufacturing Consent:
The Political Economy of the Mass Media.
They describe filters or control mechanisms through which propaganda
messages are created by the mainstream media in support of the Corporate
Security State, including: 1. concentrated business ownership; 2. advertising
as the primary income source of the mass media; 3. heavy reliance by the media
on information provided by the government, business, and “experts” approved and
often funded by these agents of power; 4. use of “flak” as a means of
disciplining media; and 5. anti-communism, as a national religion. While anti-communist and anti-socialist
rhetoric continue to enforce the status quo, it has been largely displaced by
the rhetoric of anti-terrorism.
Manufacturing
Consent has provided a model for analysis of a diversity of subjects. For example, Anthony DiMaggio in When Media Go to War: Hegemonic Discourse,
Public Opinion, and the Limits of Power (2009) demonstrates indoctrination
in US and UK media coverage of the Iraq withdrawal debate, especially how media
frame the antiwar movement to limit their effect; the ways human rights
violations are highlighted in US media coverage of enemy states and played down
in allied coverage; in journalistic
values and practices; in US and UK coverage of Iran; in public response to the
wars; and in the issue of controlling information to create consent.
These books are only a few of the critiques
of National Security (that is, USA
II.
Alternatives to Militarism and
Empire: Birthdays
But personally I learned eventually to
separate myself from the bullies. I
have dropped my shovel, though the thing still seems attached to my ankle.
I learned a lot from the British
socialist and literary critic, Raymond Williams. He urged all to step outside power systems
and inspect them; they’re always contradictory.
He taught also aggressive insertion of alternatives to official folly
and violence into every available niche possible. Facts:
The Pentagon has placed contractors in almost every county in the
country. The Pentagon has millions of
dollars annually to propagandize the US
BirthDAYS and National DAYS? Surely they are too obvious for Williams to
overlook. Little attention to peace and
justice heroes, compassion, diplomacy?
Yes, of course. The forces of
persuasion and conditioning are vastly unequal financially. But the people have numbers. A counter-conditioning campaign is called
for, I imagine him thinking. In
every way find niches for persuasion.
Birthdays. When I looked at birthday celebrations
local, state, and nation, active or
passive supporters of the Security State.Complex seemed to dominate. I scanned the Nobel Peace Prize winners, and
only King was honored by a national Day.
So I began to gather birthdays of peacemakers, write brief biographies,
and send to OMNI’s mailing list.
The idea actually was not new. Several years ago a close friend wrote
a biographical series on peacemakers,
called “Dove Tales,” in our alternative
newspaper, until the newspaper folded.
But the idea was not forgotten.
The new venture turned out to be
heuristic. I wanted to reinforce
knowledge of well-known peacemakers, as in the “Dove Tales,” but also to introduce stellar but little
known peacemakers. I knew some
nonviolence history, of Thoreau, Gandhi, and King, but I had never heard of
Anderson Sa, the Brazilian musician who teaches young people alternatives to
violence. Of the many peacemakers who
teach diversity and toleration—Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama--, how many had
heard of Bruno Hussar, promoter of interfaith harmony in his “Oasis of Peace”
village, or Riane Eisler, who taught the partnership over the dominator model
in human affairs, as explained in her book The
Chalice and the Blade? The list grew
(and is growing), as we affirm not military heroes but Thich Nhat Hanh, Colman
McCarthy, Oscar Arias, Henry Salt, Albert Schweitzer, Astrid Lindgren, Jane
Goodall, and on and on.
Of course, my subject is US peace and
justice heroes. US military men and
women are lauded for their “service.”
Let us concentrate on service to humanity without violence in preventing
violence and wars (and now warming). A
fine source is Michael True’s two volumes, Justice
Seekers, Justice Makers (1985) and To
Construct Peace: 30 More Justice Seekers, Peace Makers (1992), both
international in scope but mainly about stellar US peacemakers—Dorothy Day,
Joan Baez, Jim Corbett, Penny Lernoux, Maura Clarke, Noam Chomsky, Dolores
Huerta, Denise Levertov, and more. But
his total is only about sixty, when US peace heroes number in the
thousands. So here’s our niche. We can replace the self-aggrandizing National Security State
III.
National Days
But the project
to enlarge awareness of these heroes in the consciousness of the peace movement
and the public at large is simple compared to the project to reinforce some
DAYS and to change or even erase others
A. Reinforcing
For whereas the birthdays at least right
now require merely the writing and dissemination of a brief bio (though
potentially much more could be performed), the national days involve
necessarily the preparation of a more elaborate writing or event and commensurate publicity. Here is a partial list of DAYS TO CELEBRATE
or COMMEMMORATE, in bold indicating OMNI’s active participation, with notes
regarding OMNI observance.
February, Black History MONTH
March, Women’s History MONTH
March 1, Nuclear Victims DAY
March 8,
International Women’s DAY: In simple
ceremonies by women and men, we have focused on celebrating peace, justice,
ecology women heroes, locally, nationally, internationally.
March 15-21 Sunshine WEEK
March 22, World Water DAY
Earth DAY, April
22: for three years we had out of town distinguished speakers. Then we merged with Fayetteville ’s
SpringFest: Donna and Kelly, Jamie and
others organized displays and music at Fayetteville ’
Walton Art Center
Earth DAY at World
Peace Wetland Prairie: OMNI is
part-owner with the city of 2 acres of wetland prairie and a half-acre peace-sign rock garden celebrating world
peace. At WPWP on the Saturday preceding
SpringFest we celebrate world peace with music, gardening, and children’s
events..
Martin Luther King, Jr., Assassinated, April 4,
1968.
May 1, May DAY, the international workers holiday. (Woody
Guthrie and Pete Seeger, among many others, were Wobblies, members of the
International Workers of the World, IWW. An opportunity for great music.)
May 3, World Press
Freedom Day. We have organized several
events and newsletters to examine freedom of information in the US
May 15, International Conscientious Objectors’ DAY. This DAY should be observed; maybe next year.
Last Friday in April, Arbor DAY (different dates by
states)
June 4, UN International DAY of Innocent Children,
Victims of Aggression
June 5, UN World
Environment DAY
June 15, International Peace Prayer DAY.
June 15-23, Human Costs of Military Toxics WEEK.
June 19, Juneteenth.
A day to celebrate not only freedom from slavery for U.S.
African-Americans, but for all people.
In Fayetteville
the Day has the attention of several groups on and off campus.
June, Gay Pride WEEK.
A strong lgbtq org. exists in Fayetteville .
September 1, Labor
DAY, for jobs, fair wages, health
benefits, right to organize.
Newsletter. Unions are very week
in Arkansas
September 12, Interdependence DAY (www.civworld.org)
September 17, Constitution
DAY. For the past 3 years OMNI has
celebrated this DAY with a special newsletter.
September 21,
International DAY of Peace, Celebration of Peacemakers. We have paid special attention to this DAY,
marking it in diverse ways over the years:
a press conference at City
Center Fayetteville Square
September
25-October 2, Banned Books/Freedom to Read WEEK : OMNI has initiated activities
and participated in others for a decade; e.g. roundtables on banned books at
public library..
Sept. 25-Oct. 2, Keep
Space for Peace WEEK: For almost a decade OMNI has sponsored a variety of
programs during this week, including bringing Bruce Gagnon to Fayetteville
October, Domestic Violence Awareness MONTH. Several organizations in NW Ark. Focus on
this subject.
October 1, International/World
Vegetarian DAY
October 1-7,
International Vegetarian WEEK: Many in
peace movement consider Vegetarianism fundamental to peace, justice and
ecology, for its positive effects in ethics, nutrition, and checking global
warming. Vegetarianism is at the heart
of resistance to both wars and warming.
October 2,
International DAY of Nonviolence (Gandhi’s BirthDAY). We have shown Attenborough’s film
“Gandhi.” This is one of the DAYS we
need to accentuate more.
Universal Children’s DAY, Oct. 4
World Hunger Day, Oct. 12.
World Food DAY, Oct. 16
These two DAYs we have affirmed once by a newsletter and generally by
supporting local food and community gardens.
OMNI also has a Home Peace Places Network many of which are vegetable
gardens.
United Nations
DAY, October 24 (UN Charter became binding treaty): OMNI has celebrated this day for seven years
by sponsoring notable speakers, including the president of the Central Ark.
Chapter of UN/USA.
October 28, National Immigrants’ DAY
November, American Indian Heritage MONTH
International DAY for Tolerance, Nov. 16
International DAY to End Violence Against Women, Nov. 25
Buy Nothing DAY, Nov. 26
International DAY of Solidarity with the Palestinian
People, Nov. 29
Human Rights DAY,
Dec. 10: Ever since OMNI’s beginning we
have celebrated this DAY, with events of various kinds, including music/readings at the local bookstore.
Bill of Rights
DAY, Dec. 15: OMNI has cooperated with the local chapter of the ACLU to
celebrate this DAY, sometimes at the
home of a member for a talk and dinner. Occasionally we have combined the two DAYS.
If we listed
all the possibilities for reinforcing peace, justice, and environmental values,
we would be commemorating, that is reinforcing, at least one DAY in every
month.
B. Transforming
A more complex initiative directly challenges
the conditioning of the public to accept violence and wars through the many
patriotic days. The UN
initiative called the International Culture of Peace Decade (2000-2010)
attempted to define the Culture of War and the Culture of Peace and move away
from a war culture to a peace culture.
But we cannot make this change so long as
we celebrate the myths represented by the US
George Orwell wrote in 1984:
"Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure
was forgotten, the lie became the truth”—for example, that wars are inevitable,
that our species is inherently violent, that the US
Here are some of the Days we must
transform, if we are to counter the myths that enable such military expenditure
and worldwide intervention.
Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14
President’s Day, Feb. 15. The rise of
presidential and decline of
congressional power reached it apex under President George W. Bush, who
is guilty of war crimes and is impeachable by a dozen articles, and President
Obama has not repudiated most of those powers.
May 1, Law DAY.
The purchase of Congress by
corporations to make laws favorable to corporations has become another great
catastrophe endangering our democracy.
First Thursday of May, National DAY of Prayer. Our alternative should be DAY of Prayer by
People of All Faiths.
2nd
Sunday of May, Mother’s DAY for Peace:
The present Mother’s Day is another national day commodified for
business profit. For six years we have
celebrated the anniversary of Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day
for Peace, by a luncheon or newsletter..
Memorial DAY, last Monday in May, formerly Decoration
Day, a US
holiday in remembrance of members of US armed forces killed in wars. It is time we offered an alternative—the most
obvious possibility being all people killed in war. .
June 14, Flag DAY.
Traditionally a day of patriotic emotion. We can offer alternatives for world peace.
June 15, Father’s DAY.
Nothing yet. Like we are doing
with Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day regarding the role of women in the world,
we could help redefine masculinity on this day for peace and justice.
July 4, Independence Independence Independence US
August 6 and 9,
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Remembrance of Victims/Celebration of Peace Heroes:
OMNI’s oldest activity, begun in the 1970s by our predecessor Peace Organizing
Committee. Each year we encourage people
to think about the bombs and about air war: Were the bombs justified? What were the consequences globally up to today
and projected into the future? For many
years the event (walk, speakers, music) occurred at the Greek Amphitheater on
campus of U of Arkansas
2nd
Monday in October, Indigenous People of the Americas Columbus
9-11/Patriot
Day/Peaceful Tomorrows DAY. Following
9-11, another kind of immense explosion instantly occurred, characterized by
xenophobia, patriotism. ethnocentrism, nationalism, chauvinism, and
exceptionalism. Because 9-11 was employed by the Bush
Administration to so horrendously escalate the so-called “War on Terrorism” as
part of the 70-year-old US Afghanistan , and then invaded Iraq ,
began bombing Pakistan
November 11,
Veterans’ Day. Our 2008 Newsletter is a
large compilation of articles and bibliographies about illegal and ruinous US
November 25 (Thanksgiving), International Day to End
Violence
December 7, Pearl Harbor
Day. Increasingly, historians have
questioned the simple explanation of the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor as a dastardly attack by Japanese imperialists; for
example, Roland Worth, Jr.,’s No Choice
But War. December 7 offers the
peace movement a time to discusses the causes of the war in the Pacific and the
causes of other wars, toward understanding better how to prevent them. OMNI issued a newsletter in 2008 elaborating
these arguments. During the past two
decades, the official, patriotic, illusory enthusiasm for US wars that has led
to permanent war has received significant deflation.
Conclusion
When people ask, Aren’t they still
digging our grave? We can reply: Nobody promised a quick fix after 70 years of
threat, fear, and hatred. When people
ask, What can I do, what can
one person do, to change the world from war to peace? We have one answer at least: We can reinforce a peaceful DAY or Change a warfare
Day! Instead of digging graves, build a
DAY.
When scoffers ask, what difference can
we make? We can answer: we are engaged in a struggle with bullies
over the meanings of our ceremonies and myths, and there is something we can
accomplish. If it is true that the US
warfare state—Corporation-Pentagon-Secrecy-Surveillance-Violence-White
House-Congress-Mass Media-Permanent War—is a dominant system that filters
through a thousand political and social capillaries of repetitive transmission,
yet is not finished, not complete, we can counter it, point by point, place by
place, day by day, niche by niche by concrete actions building a Culture of
Peace inside the Culture of War.
We will be offering a model to the
world, and sometimes models grab the world’s imagination.
And remember the subtitle of Gandhi’s
autobiography: My Life of Experiments.
References:
Bennett, James R. Control of Information in the United States
_____. Control of the Media in the United States Garland , 1992. 4749 entries.
_____. Political Prisoners and Trials: A Worldwide
Annotated Bibliography, 1900 through 1993.
McFarland, 1995. 475 entries
on the US .
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