Lyn Smith, Voices Against the War: A Century of Protest (British)

Voices Against War: A Century of Protest, by Lyn Smith

By Jonathan Sale  Monday, 9 November 2009

My father had a bad war, but then most pacifists did. He didn't have a very good peace either, as soldiers returned from a victory in which he was only too aware he had played no part.

Some of his wartime correspondence with the sculptor and fellow anti-militarist Henry Moore ended up in the Imperial War Museum. Their testimonies are not in Voices Against War, but Lyn Smith has drawn on the same source. They include the usual suspects like Tony Benn, who wrote an essay on disarmament at the age of 11. Fenner (later Lord) Brockway suffered imprisonment, one night spent in the Tower of London, for being a conscientious objector in the First World War and was still active in the early Sixties when I rattled a collecting tin at a CND meeting, the organisation he helped to found.

More unexpected are the observations of the wife of the RAF commander at Greenham Common. Confronted by angry American women demanding to know why the protesters should be allowed near the base, Ann Marsh replied that the whole point was that this was a free country where people did what they thought right. Such fair-mindedness was not common in the First World War, which saw COs receiving death sentences, although they were not usually carried out. On the home front, women gave the white feather of cowardice to men not in uniform. One recipient pointed to his damaged leg and invited the accusing woman to look for the missing bit – on a battlefield of the Somme.

The quotations speak for themselves, apart from Smith's introductions at the beginning of each section. Moving and powerful contributions come from all classes. William Douglas-Home, brother of the Tory prime minister, Alec, was court-martialled for refusing to obey an order he believed would cause the deaths of French civilians. A A Milne moved in the other direction, from defence of pacifism to defence of the realm: the howitzer at Pooh Corner, as it were.

·                                 Soldier Magazine

Voices Against War: A Century of Protest by Lynn Smith

I DID not expect to find much in the way of original material in this latest offering from the Voices series. I was wrong. Voices Against War proved to be a very thought-provoking and revealing read. As the title suggests the subject matter ranges across a century of anti-war protest and conscientious objection. Beginning with the Great War and progressing through history right up to today’s conflicts, this book really does take the reader inside the ranks of the various anti-war movements.
Maj Mike Peters, AAC

Veterans for Peace Endorses David Swanson's Critique of Murder of Bin Laden

VFP Board of Directors Endorses David Swanson's Position On The Killing of Osama Bin Laden's

vfp@veteransforpeace.org,  News from Veterans For Peace,  

                        

216 S. Meramec Avenue St. Louis, MO 63105

(314) 725-6005

www.veteransforpeace.org

VFP Board of Directors Endorses David Swanson's Position

On The Killing of Osama Bin Laden, May 2, 2011

“Killing Resolves Nothing” By David Swanson

http://warisacrime.org/node/57708

The plane I was on landed in Washington, D.C., Sunday night, and the pilot came on the intercom to tell everyone to celebrate: our government had killed Osama bin Laden.  This was better than winning the Super Bowl, he said.

Set aside for a moment the morality of cheering for the killing of a human being -- which despite the pilot's prompting nobody on the plane did.  In purely Realpolitik terms, killing foreign leaders whom we've previously supported has been an ongoing disaster.

Our killing of Saddam Hussein has been followed by years of war and hundreds of thousands of pointless deaths.  Our attempts to kill Muammar Gadaffi have killed his children and grandchildren and will end no war if they eventually succeed.  Our attempts to kill Osama bin Laden, including wars justified by that mission, have involved nearly a decade of senseless slaughter in Afghanistan and the rest of the ongoing global "generational" war that is consuming our nation.

The Taliban was willing to turn bin Laden over for trial both before and after September 11, 2001. Instead our government opted for years of bloody warfare. And in the end, it was police action (investigation, a raid, and a summary execution) and not the warfare, that reportedly tracked bin Laden down in Pakistan. After capturing him, our government's representatives did not hold him for trial. They killed him and carried away his dead body.

Killing will lead only to more killing.  There will be no review of bin Laden's alleged crimes, as a trial would have provided.  There will be no review of earlier U.S. support for bin Laden.  There will be no review of U.S. failures to prevent the September 11th attacks.  Instead, there will be bitterness, hatred, and more violence, with the message being communicated to all sides that might makes right and murder is the way in which someone is, in President Obama's words, brought to justice.

Nothing is actually resolved, nothing concluded, and nothing to be celebrated in taking away life.  If we want something to celebrate here, we should celebrate the end of one of the pieces of war propaganda that has driven the past decade of brutality and death.  But I'm not going to celebrate that until appropriate actions follow.  Nothing makes for peace like ceasing to wage war.  Now would be an ideal time to give that a try.

Our senseless wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Libya must be ended.  Keeping bin Laden alive and threatening, assisted in keeping the war machine churning its bloody way through cities and flesh for years.  No wonder President Bush was, as he said, not interested in tracking bin Laden down.

Ending the wars was our moral duty last week exactly as this week.  But if the symbolism to be found in the removal of a key propaganda piece can be combined with the recent overwhelming U.S. support for ending the wars, to actually end the wars, then I'll be ready -- with clean hands and with no nasty gleam of revenge in my eye -- to pop open the champagne.

But let's return to the morality of cheering for the killing of a human being.  A decade ago that would not have seemed as natural to a U.S. airline pilot.  The automatic assumption would not have been that there could be no dissenters to that celebration.  A decade ago torture was considered irredeemably evil.  A decade ago we believed people should have fair trials before they are declared guilty or killed.  A decade ago, if a president had announced his new power to assassinate Americans, at least a few people would have asked where in the world he got the power to assassinate non-Americans.

Is it too late to go back 10 years in time in some particular ways?  As we put bin Laden behind us, can we put the degredation of our civil liberties and our representative government, and our  honesty, accountability, and the rule of law behind us too?  Can we recover the basic moral deceny that we used to at the very least pretend and aspire to?

Not while we're dancing in the street to celebrate death.

Imagine the propaganda that the U.S. media could make of video footage of a foreign country where the primitive brutes are dancing in the streets to celebrate the murder of a tribal enemy.  That is the propaganda we've just handed those who will view bin Laden as a martyr.  When their revenge comes, we will know exactly what we are supposed to do: exact more revenge in turn to keep the cycle going.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, but the blind people think that they still see.  The world looks to them like a Hollywood adventure movie.  In those stories, killing somone generally causes a happy ending.  That misconception is responsible for piles and piles of corpses to which more will now be added.

Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day for Peace

May Day 2011

OMNI NEWSLETTER #1 FOR MAY DAY/ /INTERNATIONAL WORKERS DAY 2011, Compiled by Dick Bennett, April 29, 2011 for a CULTURE OF PEACE, WE, THE PEOPLE

This DAY deserves attention in this Blog on militarism, empire, and wars because May Day appeals to global human solidarity in contrast to nationalistic wars that pit worker against worker.    D

Contents

May 1

Bragg’s “The Internationale”

Eco-socialism

May 1, 2011 Events

MAY 1

And now, our annual history lesson for Americans who got the white-washed history lessons in school.

         On May 1st, 1886, labor parties went on strike in Chicago for an eight-hour workday (down from the standard 10 to 16).  Chicago companies (especially the Chicago Tribune) and the local government found the eight-hour workday idea to be ridiculous, and dangerous for the economy.  They conspired to break the strike.

        On May 3rd, during a union rally outside the McCormick Harvester plant, the police fired into the protesters to disperse them.  With two dirty, little agitators killed, and the rest dispersed, the police called the day a success.  The protesters saw it differently.

        The labor leaders organized another meeting on the 4th to protest the severe actions of the police at

Randolph Street

and

DesPlaines Avenue

.  The police moved in again against the 80,000 workers, but then from the sidelines, a bomb was thrown.  The blast killed one cop instantly and seven others died later.

        The eight speakers and union leaders who organized the meetings were rounded up and put on trial for inspiring violence.  Seven were sentenced to death and the eighth (because he wasn't present) was given fifteen years.  On November 11, 1887, Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel were hanged.  Louis Lingg killed himself in his cell earlier in the morning by biting down on a dynamite blasting cap.  Saumel Fielden and Michael Schwab had been commuted to life in prison the previous day.

        The five dead were buried together, and a monument was erected at the German Waldheim Cemetery (now Forest Home Cemetery) to them on June 25, 1893, in a ceremony attended by most of the visitors to the World's Columbian Exposition.  The next day, facing great international criticism, Governor Altgeld commuted the sentences of the two lifers and  the remaining years of Oscar Neebe's fifteen.

        Many (in death) have joined them under the monument, including anarchist Emma Goldman, and singer/unionist Joe Hill.

        The eight-hour workday was finally enacted in 1935.

        Around the world, except here in America, this incident is taught as one of the watershed events in modern history.  Nearly all countries has official observances of this incident on May 1st, the day the struggle began.  They call it Labor Day.

        Here in America, especially Chicago, we officially observe nothing the first week of May except getting plastered on Cinco de Mayo (this year on a Saturday!).  Later, we celebrate the Labor movement in September by sitting on our butts.

 Travis J. Cartwright, Rev.

Email: traviscartwright@bigfoot.com

BRAGG’S “THE INTERNATIONALE”

. This is the updated version of the classic workers' anthem "The Internationale", rewritten in 1990 by Billy Bragg.

Stand up, all victims of oppression

For the tyrants fear your might

Don't cling so hard to your possessions

For you have nothing, if you have no rights

Let racist ignorance be ended

For respect makes the empires fall

Freedom is merely privilege extended

Unless enjoyed by one and all.

CHORUS: So come brothers and sisters

For the struggle carries on

The Internationale

Unites the world in song

So comrades come rally

For this is the time and place

The international ideal

Unites the human race

Let no one build walls to divide us

Walls of hatred nor walls of stone

Come greet the dawn and stand beside us

We'll live together or we'll die alone

In our world poisoned by exploitation

Those who have taken, now they must give

And end the vanity of nations

We've but one Earth on which to live

And so begins the final drama

In the streets and in the fields

We stand unbowed before their armor

We defy their guns and shields

When we fight, provoked by their aggression

Let us be inspired by life and love

For though they offer us concessions

Change will not come from above.

__._,_.___

.ANALYSIS OF CAPITALISM: ECOSOCIALISM

Every day, FSTV  provides its cutting edge challenges, pushing us to think.  For example, reaching back in time a lttle,  6-25-2007,  "Ecosocialism or Barbarism" by Joel Kovel, a Marxist analysis of capitalism:  Accumulation, competition, creation of surplus value, increasing worker productivity, commodifying everything, overproduction, perpetual expansion of consumption by advertising =  inherently unsustainable system.   OMNI:  for a Culture of Peace through critical thinking.  http://www.areallyinconvenienttruth.com/

SOME MAY DAY 2011 EVENTS

May Day 2011

 Public Event

Time	Today at 8:00pm - Sunday at 10:00pm
Location	CounterPULSE 1310 Mission Street @ 9th San Francisco, CA
More Info	May Day Festival CounterPULSE's 6th Anniversary Fri.-Sun., April 29 - May 1, 8pm Discount (Artist/Low-income/Student/Senior)* $40- General Admission $75- Hot Shot = Free drink and $20 auction credit $150- VIP = Table for two, free drinks, and $20 auction credit (call 415.626.2060 to reserve) CounterPULSE celebrates its 6th birthday with their lively May Day festival fundraiser -- three nights of performance designed to echo the different aspects of this eclectic arts space. In one weekend, May Day offers three completely unique evenings of performance, packed with the Bay Area's most exciting dance companies, performance artists, comedians, drag queens, circus artists, and more. Friday's Dance Extravaganza presents dance fans with a jaw-dropping line up of the Bay Area's hottest dance superstars. Performers include: AXIS Dance Company, Charlotte Moraga, Chris Black, Lizz Roman Dance, Robert Moses Kin, Scott Wells & Dancers, and Zaccho Dance Theater. Saturday's Cabaret welcomes the Bay Area's phenomenal circus artists, risky and risqué burlesque, and masterful drag. Performers include: The Devil-Ettes, Fou Fou Ha, Honey Mahogany, La Chica Boom, Marina Luna, Natasha Kaluza, Tommy Shephard, Seth Eisen, VivvyAnne ForeverMORE and Mona G. Hawd. The festival, scheduled to coincide with the people's holiday for justice and celebration, is a lovely reason to come out and champion Bay Area arts and artists by supporting CounterPULSE, a hub for cutting-edge and community-based performance. The event, which is a benefit for the local non-profit, also includes a fabulous silent auction featuring the best of San Francisco's local businesses.

Stacy Poulos

I put your event on Girlpages Network, rock on!
http://www.girlpagesnetwork.com/Girl_Nightlife.html

o    Hey all, we're in major prep mode for May Day 2011 and the start of our 2011 home season - Goin' Gaga and Other Dances the first weekend of June! Join us!

Tuesday at 12:10pm

[AND MUCH MORE; THIS IS A BIG DAY IN SAN FRANCISCO.  D]

[AND IN NYC]

Join the Demonstration!
Sunday, May 1, 2011 at 1:00 PM

Foley Square

(Between Centre and Lafayette Streets), NYC
May Day is a celebration of international solidarity with roots in the United States. The international workers’ holiday commemorates the day in 1886, when laborers, immigrants, artisans and merchants in Chicago waged a general strike to win the eight-hour work day. It’s a day that recalls both our own immigrant histories and the ongoing struggle for the rights of working people everywhere.
Last year, for the first time in a generation, the New York City labor movement united with immigrants’ rights organizations to organize a demonstration on May Day. This year, a broad coalition of groups is continuing the fight.
Our demand today—for the rights of workers in the face of a rising tide of austerity and anti-immigrant rhetoric—is as urgent and transformative as our predecessors’ demand for the eight-hour day.
The general anti-austerity theme of May Day complements the more specific call of the PSC contract/budget rally on Thursday, May 5th for an end to economic austerity for CUNY, and a restoration of CUNY’s public funding. Join us for both rallies.
Contact Jim Perlstein, chair of PSC’s Solidarity Committee, to let us know you’re coming.
The History of May Day
May Day, the international workers’ holiday, began in the U.S.A. Its roots go back to Chicago, in 1886.

May Day began in the U.S,

After the Civil War, the nation’s factories and mines were growing fast. They employed hundreds of thousands of new immigrants – German, Irish, Mexican, Chinese, and eastern Europeans – and tens of thousands of African Americans who had just won their freedom. Workers toiled 12, 14, and even 16 hours a day, for miserable wages and in dangerous conditions. During frighteningly long depressions, thousands of working-class families couldn’t find work and often starved.
But business owners and the mainstream press blamed this widespread poverty on individual failure – and on the growing number of immigrant and black workers, who they claimed didn’t share traditional “American values.” Unions had to fight this tide of prejudice, racism and mindless worship of “free markets” as they organized workers.
The emerging labor movement united around a demand to shorten the working day to eight hours. One national labor organization called for a nationwide general strike on May 1st, 1886, if Congress did not act to establish an eight-hour day.
1886 was a year of strikes and militant labor action across the country. People called it “the Great Upheaval” – and Chicago was a center of protest. The city was home to a powerful anarchist movement that included Texas-born Albert Parsons, Lucy Parsons (who historians think had both African American and Mexican ancestors) and August Spies (a German immigrant). With thousands of other workers, they prepared to strike for the eight-hour day.
When May 1st dawned, 60,000 Chicago workers went out on strike. Two days later, with the strike gaining momentum, the Chicago police shot two strikers and wounded dozens more at the giant McCormick Reaper Works.
The anarchists organized a demonstration to protest the shootings, on May 4th in Chicago’s
In the chaos and hysteria that followed, the authorities smashed Chicago’s labor movement. The Chicago police arrested anarchist leaders Albert Parsons and August Spies and six others and charged them with murder – even though there was no real evidence against them. They were convicted anyway, and four of them, including Parsons, were hanged in Nov. 1887.
After 1886, workers and labor radicals around the world began celebrating May 1stas a day of international working-class solidarity to demand the eight-hour day. In 1890, huge May Day demonstrations in the U.S., across Europe, and even in Australia and Cuba demanded eight hours. The international labor movement denounced the frame-up of “the Haymarket martyrs” and demanded that those still in prison be freed. (They were pardoned by a pro-labor governor in 1893.)
American business leaders and the mainstream press wanted to distance the U.S. from May Day, because of its radical roots. With business support, in 1894 President Cleveland officially declared the first Monday in September as Labor Day.
Around the world, workers continued to celebrate May Day as International Workers Day. In the United States, especially after the Russian Revolution, this made-in-U.S.A. holiday was denounced as “un-American.” Regular celebrations of May Day continued anyway, notably in New York’s
Today May Day is coming back to the country where it began. Millions of immigrant workers from Latin America, Asia and Africa have come to the United States, bringing their own experience in union struggles. They have always known that May Day is the workers’ day.
As more immigrants join the U.S. working class and organize for their rights, immigration laws have increasingly been used to fire union members and break up union drives . In response, the labor movement started speaking out in support of immigrants’ rights. In 1999 the AFL-CIO called for repealing the anti-immigrant law that makes work a crime. Instead, it called for legal status for the undocumented, reuniting immigrant families, and protecting organizing rights for everyone.
On May 1st, 2006, millions of immigrant workers poured into the streets in the Great American Boycott, walking off the job and marching against anti-immigrant legislation then being considered by Congress. Many unions supported this May Day protest, and others in the years that followed.
Today May Day belongs to us all. We march to demand equal labor rights and jobs for all. We march to carry forward the May Day tradition that began in 1886, and renew it for our new century.

© 2000-2010 PSC/CUNY
61 Broadway, 15th Floor, NYC 10006 | 212-354-1252 | psc@pscmail.org | AFT Local #2334

END OF NEWSLETTER #1 2011 ON MAY DAY

Military Industrial Complex: From Eisenhower to Obama

Why Obama Gets Four More Years in White House: Ralph Nader

By Ralph Nader - Apr 27, 2011, Bloomberg News  http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/72-72/5771-obama-will-have-four-more-years   [Scroll down several paragraphs for Obama.  D]

The stars are aligned for Barack Obama’s re-election in November 2012. He won’t join Jimmy Carter to be the second Democrat in 120 years to lose a second term.

Five things are playing in Obama’s favor.

First, the Republicans -- driven by their most conservative members in Congress -- will face a primary with many candidates who will advance harsh ideological positions. Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump and others might as well be on the Democratic National Committee payroll. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s reverse Robin Hood plan to cut more than $6 trillion in spending over a decade will provide the outrage, stoked by a sitting president possessed of verbal discipline.

Second, the Republican governors’ attacks on unions are turning off the swing voters and Reagan Democrats in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Imagine the voter reaction if millions of workers lose their right to collective bargaining, and the impact that cuts in benefits and wages will have on their lives.

Democratic governors, such as Jerry Brown of California, Pat Quinn of Illinois and Andrew Cuomo of New York, are cutting -- but not taking away -- workers’ bargaining rights. This is a politically useful contrast for Obama. Reagan Democrats, who have won many elections for the Republicans, are a big plus for Obama in the contested states.

No Challenge

Third, no candidates are emerging to challenge Obama in the primaries. A discussion of Obama’s forgotten campaign promises and record would have public support among Democrats. Even so, the liberal base has nowhere to go to send a message about war, free-trade agreements, raising the minimum wage or union membership.

Nor does a third party or independent candidacy pose a threat, given the winner-take-all, two-party system.

Fourth, Obama has neutered much of the big corporate lobby’s zeal to defeat him. He decided from the beginning not to prosecute executives from Wall Street banking, brokerage and rating firms. Multinational companies are pleased with Obama’s position on trade, on not disturbing the many corporate subsidies, handouts and giveaways, such as the corn-ethanol subsidy.

Shelters for Wealthy

By 2014, Obamacare will deliver some 30 million subsidized customers to health-insurance companies. The auto industry is forever grateful for its bailout. Obama hasn’t moved on corporate-tax reform, tax shelters for the wealthy, or the preferential capital-gains tax treatment on the 20 percent service fees of hedge fund managers. Don’t forget last December when Obama agreed to extended tax cuts for the rich while the budget deficit gets larger.

The military-industrial complex about which President Dwight Eisenhower warned in his farewell address 50 years ago, is still uncontrollable, leading departing Defense Secretary Robert Gates to express serious concerns. Obama has even surprised George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and his cohort of neocons, who can scarcely believe how militarily aggressive Obama has been on just about every move that liberals used to call impeachable offenses by former President George W. Bush.

Big Business

Then there’s Jeffrey Immelt, the chairman and chief executive officer of General Electric Co., who can attest to Obama’s outreach to big business. GE Capital was bailed out. The company effectively paid no federal income taxes on $14.2 billion in 2010 profit and received a $3.2 billion benefit. Immelt got a $15.5 million pay raise. And in January, Obama appointed him chairman of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness while letting him stay as head of a company receiving many government contracts and having regulation problems with the federal authorities. The corporate state doesn’t get much better than that.

Fifth, since the Republicans have little to offer by way of creating jobs, Obama need only show improvement in macroeconomic indicators, as Ronald Reagan did in 1983-1984, and proceed to showcase all the tax breaks he has signed into law for big and small businesses. Poor Americans who continue to bear the brunt of the recession are hardly going to vote Republican. It will be easy for Obama, with his oratorical skills, to paint the Republican-controlled House of Representatives as obstructionist, especially as he develops an economic plan for his second term.

There remain the Black Swans, events that defy prediction as those in Japan and the Middle East have shown. Handling them with firmness and calmness from the White House is what most people expect of a president. Obama will surely not repeat Bush’s mistakes after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Obama is averse to conflict with corporate power and disarmingly expedient in compromising with Republicans, leaving the latter to argue largely among themselves. The political duopoly lets the tactical Obama use the Bully Pulpit to his political advantage, even if his principles perish. Obama can look forward to four more years in 2012.

(Ralph Nader is the founder of Public Citizen and author of the book “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” The opinions expressed are his own.)

Controlling the Deficit--Bring the Troops Home, Stop Permanent War

President Obama Pledges to Protect Social Security
NOW Calls for Plan that Addresses Real Causes of Deficit
Statement of NOW President Terry O'Neill

April 14, 2011
Thoughtful people are breathing a sigh of relief that President Obama has signaled he understands the federal budget must not be balanced on the backs of those who rely on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- programs that keep millions of women and their families out of poverty and allow seniors in nursing homes a measure of dignity.
Let's remember what caused our deficit to begin with: George W. Bush's unnecessary wars, tax cuts for the wealthiest, and an out-of-control financial sector that wrecked our economy, decimating jobs and the income tax revenues that go along with them. These are the first places anyone -- Democrat, Republican or Very Serious Economist -- should look when setting out to bring the deficit down.
The basic principles for reducing the deficit are really quite simple: Multimillionaires and corporations must pay their fair share of taxes; health care is a fundamental right, not a privilege to be voucherized or block-granted; troops should come home and the military's bloated budget reined in; and creating jobs must be the government's highest priority unless and until the private sector begins to do so.
The National Organization for Women welcomes President Obama's reaffirmation that "Social Security is not the cause of our deficit." In his written statement about how he would reduce the federal deficit by $4 trillion over 12 years, the president opposed privatization or weakening of the Social Security system and confirmed that reform must strengthen the program as well as ensure its long-term solvency. We are reassured by his stand in favor of protecting Social Security in the face of an unrelenting, multi-million dollar disinformation campaign by conservative think tanks, right-wing politicians and deep-pocketed Wall Street interests.
In addition, the president's stated pledge to protect Medicare from House Republican efforts to covert it to a voucher program heads in the right direction. Obama also said that he would not support changing the federal-state funded Medicaid program to a block grant program that would result in reducing support for seniors and persons with disabilities in nursing homes.
Obama said that he will appoint a bipartisan, bicameral panel to produce a detailed plan for deficit reduction by August. Who gets appointed to that panel is a matter of concern to NOW. Late last year the president's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, chaired by two individuals with a history of hostility to Social Security, released a proposal to drastically reduce Social Security benefits and raise the retirement age to 69.
NOW hopes the president keeps his promise that "we will not abandon the fundamental commitment this country has kept for generations" and refuses to make any concessions on Social Security in order to achieve agreement on his deficit-cutting plan. We also hope that in any discussions of reducing the deficit, its real causes -- tax breaks for the wealthy, unnecessary wars and high unemployment -- will receive the attention they deserve.

US "Exceptionalism" Examined