Waging Peace

And then they stopped, at 11:00 in the morning, one century ago. They stopped, on schedule. It wasn’t that they’d gotten tired or come to their senses. Both before and after 11 o’clock they were simply following orders. The Armistice agreement that ended World War I had set 11 o’clock as quitting time.

Armistice Day was established by Congress in 1926 to “perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations, (and added later in 1938) a day dedicated to the cause of world peace,” Armistice Day was widely recognized for almost thirty years.

In 1954 the holiday was was hijacked by a militaristic US congress and renamed Veterans Day, morphing into an occasion for flag waving and military parades. Today few Americans understand the original purpose of Armistice Day, or even remember it. The message of peace seeking has been all but erased. We no longer have a national day to recognize or reflect upon international peace.

Much of the following is excepted from David Swanson's excellent article worth a full read

WW1, the Great War, the war to end all wars was only a continuation of the forever war. Recall that the Great War was the worst, most concentrated violence that white people had ever imposed on themselves, and that they were not used to it. On top of the dramatic death toll, the United States shipped soldiers and sailors with the flu off to the trenches of Europe from which the deadly disease spread around the world, killing perhaps 2 or 3 times the number of people killed directly in the war. Ignorance about the flu was encouraged by policies that forbid newspapers to report anything less than cheerful during a war. Spain didn’t have those restrictions. So news of the epidemic was first reported in Spain, and people began calling the disease the Spanish Flu.

But can we really say that the war was won? If ever there was a conflict that both sides lost, this was it. For one thing, it didn’t have to happen. There were rivalries among Europe’s major powers, but in June, 1914, they were getting along amicably. None openly claimed part of another’s territory. Germany was Britain’s largest trading partner. The royal families of Britain, Germany, and Russia were closely related, and King George V and his cousins Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicholas II had all recently been together for the wedding of Wilhelm’s daughter in Berlin. And yet by early August of that year, after the epic chain of blunders, accusations, and ultimatums that followed the assassination of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand, at Sarajevo, the entire continent was in flames.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/05/a-hundred-years-after-the-...

Sadly it was a time when the world was redistributed and the road to more war was insured. Smart observers predicted World War II the moment they saw the nasty terms of the peace agreement that Wilson helped create from his sick bed. The treaty was a fit of collective lunacy which would eventually kill more than the first world war and its flu combined. And the legacy of World War II would be the endless ongoing slaughter of millions of civilians in a normalized permawar that has ended all peace. And that has included permanent WWII propaganda rendering it impossible to question WWII and therefore much more convenient never to think about WWI.

None the less, WWI is the subject of some great anti-war films. Among my favorites are Kubrick's Paths of Glory with its horrors of trench warfare (5 min charge scene gives a sense of the stupidity) Here's a 10 min discussion of the film.

King of Hearts proves being crazy is better than the insanity of war. Here's the closing 5 minutes.

And a last one, the 1971 Dolton Trumbo classic, "Johnny Got His Gun" (full 2 hour film) is difficult to watch. If you want a taste a 7 min review.

One reason peace advocates have not been and still are not listened to is the system of propaganda first created for World War I. The propaganda machinery invented by President Woodrow Wilson and his Committee on Public Information had drawn Americans into the war with exaggerated and fictional tales of German atrocities...

Historian Adam Hochschild argues war resisters are the real heroes who should be honored, as Trump visits Paris to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of WWI (video or text)
https://therealnews.com/stories/french-president-macron-praises-nazi-col...

Congress passed an Armistice Day resolution calling for “exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding … inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.” Later, Congress added that November 11th was to be “a day dedicated to the cause of world peace.”

That is the tradition we need to restore. It lasted in the United States up through the 1950s and even longer in some other countries under the name Remembrance Day. It was only after the United States had nuked Japan, destroyed Korea, begun a Cold War, created the CIA, and established a permanent military industrial complex with major permanent bases around the globe, that the U.S. government renamed Armistice Day as Veterans Day on June 1, 1954.

Reach for a new Armistice...Efforts at Peace

The First Nations Peoples wish to lead us toward peace. Stuart Myiow, Wolf Clan Representative of the Mohawk Traditional Council, Kahnawake of the Five Nations Longhouse Confederacy, Turtle Island was raised exclusively within the ceremonial cycle of the traditional longhouse people. He tells about the Great Law of Peace (Video or text)
https://therealnews.com/stories/what-can-humanity-learn-from-the-great-l...

"America", said Adams, “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. Otherwise, she might gain an empire and, in the process, lose her soul." … The best way to pay tribute to our veterans, living and dead, is to stop making so many of them – in other words, to have fewer wars. https://original.antiwar.com/Jack_Kenny/2018/11/08/remembering-armistice...

Will the US prevent peace? Why of course....

Afghanistan
Afghan Peace Talks in Moscow involving the Taliban and the government as well as many other countries...but not the US.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNifLLLR650 (3.5 min)
The landmark peace conference hosted by Russia could mark a shift in the 17-year war. The Taliban is there in its highest level diplomatic engagement in years. Vijay Prashad and Aaron Mate discuss the situation (video or text)
https://therealnews.com/stories/the-taliban-in-moscow-a-turning-point-fo...

Korea

Tim Shorrock of the Nation: There’s been this back and forth between the Trump administration and the Moon Jae in administration about South Korea moving too fast on its inter-Korea peacemaking, and diffusing the tensions between North and South Korea.
https://therealnews.com/stories/can-washingtons-hawks-sabotage-koreas-peace

Syria victory with no peace?
Russia, the US, Turkey, Iran, and Israel all continue bombing despite Assad's victory against the rebels.
https://original.antiwar.com/Brett_Wilkins/2018/11/08/latest-us-led-air-...

http://videotarts.com/video/vDjoHJEWzIo/syrian-war-report-november-9-201...

Yemen is our shame...

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis have both called for a ceasefire in Yemen. Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration is considering designating the Houthis a “terrorist organization.

The U.S. has sold billions of dollars in weaponry to Saudi Arabia to stop Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who Washington and the coalition consider a proxy for Iran.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/civilian-deaths-in-yemen-increasing-de...

Andrea Carboni from ACLED discusses his organisation’s new study which shows 56,000 have died as a direct result of conflict in Yemen, what steps can be taken to create peace in Yemen,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxHR9aWxDgM (8 min)

But wait there's more...Iran
The US desire for control, oil, and power can't be satiated. Iran is in the sights...
Jimmy in a great panel discussion... "How they start the Iranian War."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVP-CLnbFCA (6 min)

Former Iranian ambassador to Germany and the spokesperson for Iran in its nuclear deal negotiations Seyed Hossein Mousavian discusses Trump’s new sanctions on Iran & says Iran can resist them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_7RQ2KE05M (11 min)

And don't forget our own hemisphere...

And this president and his entire administration will stand with the freedom fighters. The troika of tyranny in this hemisphere—Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua—has finally met its match. Warmonger in chief, John Bolton

With Bob Scheer, Rubin expounds on a range of topics including progressive media and the corrupting influence of arms dealing in U.S. foreign policy. “I mean we are by far the biggest arms dealer in the world,” he says. “And a lot of the enemies, the official enemies that our government has, [were] in one way or another created by these arms deals. … We’re making a lot of money by selling [Saudi Arabia] arms that are being used in a genocide in Yemen. And the discussion’s just nowhere to be found.” (audio or text)
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/some-of-our-biggest-cheerleaders-for-w...

US soldiers have not been fighting and dying for freedom and democracy, they have been fighting and dying for imperialism, Raytheon profit margins, and crude oil.
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/the-best-way-to-honor-war-veterans-is...

War, it's a racket, all right. A few profit -- and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.

War is bipartisan, but the recent Mid Term Elections were not...
JtC was on target when he reported the big winners were the 1%.

Lee Camp's analysis is pretty much a bullseye too (1st 10 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4eEydYi9oE

Ralph Nader's analysis was interesting.

Conservatives and liberals, self-styled voters, are ripped off the same way. So the major redirections that we can win soon are living wage- that’s a left-right support among workers. You think conservative workers at Wal-Mart don’t want a better wage? The second is full Medicare for all. The third is dealing with the $1.4 trillion of gouging student debt that is aborting their opportunities in life year after year. The fourth is law enforcement, law and order crackdown on corporate crooks. From the ghettos to Wall Street they’re ripping off trillions of dollars of money that people earned.

https://therealnews.com/stories/ralph-nader-on-how-the-democratic-party-...

Abby Martin also sees the lack of a progressive agenda as the undoing of the dims
https://therealnews.com/stories/abby-martin-the-democratic-partys-abysma...

Supporting Ralph and Abby's concept of focusing on issues, Jimmy, Ron, and Stef discuss the success of progressive ballot initiatives in Red States
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9rjr_H5bwI

How will the mid-term effect our foreign policy? Not at all. Expect more war. Many new dims are ex-CIA and State Dept. hawks (8 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx-iXQ8P8k0

While most are fixed on election spin the wars rage on. Protests in the street for Beauregard Sessions, but not against all our wars? Celebrating diversity but a complete failure to recognize our alliance with the repressive Saudi and Israeli regimes.

Jimmy takes on Cory Booker's anti-BDS position.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVW1h_JD-iA (9 min)

The media focuses on the election of Islamic women... Palestinian American Rashida Tlaib in Michigan and Somali American Ilhan Omar in Minnesota became the first two Muslim women ever elected to Congress. Rashida Tlaib is a Democratic Socialist who supports the Palestinian right of return and a one-state solution. She also supports Medicare for all, a $15 minimum wage and abolishing ICE. She plans to introduce a Justice for All Civil Rights Act.
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/11/9/rashida_tlaib_on_impeaching_trump...
Yet she has a poorly informed understanding of Saudi US relations..."We send a lot of money—I don’t know, I think it’s in billions—of money to the Saudi government."
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/11/9/congresswoman_elect_rashida_tlaib...

Media blocks the way to peace with misinformation, distraction, omission, among other tricks.

Where are the Afghan stories? No one talks about it nor the Trillion plus we've spent there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ptTuKqYn9k (5 min)
Now our goal is the get rid of the Taliban? That guarantees forever war.

Do you ever hear about Pakistan? Poor Pakistan is caught in the cross fire.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/u-s-pakistan-relations-on-a-razors-edge/

Why are we ill-informed? Consider the fate of Truthtellers...
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is in the news again after reports of a “security incident” at the Ecuadorean Embassy where he is currently confined. He is denied contact with visitors and his health may be in decline. Afshin Rattansi discusses these concerns as well as the role political changes in Ecuador could play in determining Assange’s fate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kho3jOIvH5s (7 min)

Republicans and Democrats like it that way. They practice the politics of distraction and go on tacitly supporting one indecisive intervention after another, all the while basking in the embarrassment of riches bestowed upon them by the corporate military industrial complex.
https://original.antiwar.com/Danny_Sjursen/2018/11/05/2012334409/

Amanda Zackem's film “American Psychosis,” with Chris Hedges is their attempt to make people think more deeply about the world we’re living in.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/has-america-gone-insane/ (11 min with text interview)

Chris and David Harvey discuss neoliberalism on his show this week (and next week too)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-YO5EROH-I (26 min)

Chris and Jeremy Scahill in a longer wider ranging conversation (audio or text)
https://theintercept.com/2018/11/07/chris-hedges-on-elections-christian-...

Noam returned to Amy's show this week to discuss the midterms, nuclear war, and climate chaos. (video or text)
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/11/5/noam_chomsky_on_midterms_republic...
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/11/5/a_march_to_disaster_noam_chomsky
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/11/5/noam_chomsky_the_future_of_organized

War is glorified. Win at all costs...
Consider Sgt York, conscripted Quaker pacifist, celebrated for his war prowess.
or SGT. STUBBY: AN AMERICAN HERO tells the incredible true story of America’s most decorated dog. After being rescued off the streets by a young soldier on the eve of World War I, Stubby is given a home, a family, and the chance to embark on the adventure that would define a century...it's a heartwarming "tail" for the entire family!
http://www.stubbymovie.com/
Quite a contrast to the earlier films of WWI cited.

The transition from Armistice day to veteran's day clearly illustrates the subtle push for war pervasive in our culture....

If we really wanted to honour veterans, we would abolish Veterans Day and replace it with a day that celebrates peace, not war. Peace is a better way to honour the sacrifice of veterans like me than a day designed to recruit the next generation of soldiers we’ll have to thank for their service in yet another war.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/11/us-observe-armisti...

It is in our mutual interest to work together for peace. Most of us want similar things...a biosphere which promotes life instead of spreading extinction, a society which values people and nurtures children, an economy that provides productive work and rewards, a global peace with good will and cooperation among nations....

It's the 100th edition of the Weekly Watch on the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day. Peace is the theme of this column, and I try to make it a theme in my life. I was touched and affected by the Civil Rights movement (hey I'm from Alabama), but I was a child of the peace movement. We have not gotten there yet my friends. We have to seek peace within and among ourselves. We have to seek peace with the ecosystem. We must find a balance on the brink of extinction.
We must learn to harmonize. Peace!