Your daily peace movement opportunity. Or not. Your choice.

We are on the road again, last night before passing out in our tent to the sound of wind and rain, read the great comments in response to my recent rant about the 'peace movement.' Thanks you all. Sorry about no responses.

Today after some nights camping and during the day observing and photographing wildlife along the Pacific Coast Trail in Monterey to Big Sur, we passed the Republican Party offices in Monterey, California on our way out of town.

Surely at some point they all were convinced Trump didn't have a chance. but now that he won, jakkalbessie noticed that well they have a life sized-cuttout of Trump that the willing clueless who visit this tourist mecca can have their pic made with! What a DEAL ! Heh.

Meanwhile, elsewhere around the planet, against all odds, people are working for peace. Now. Right now. Yup. Today. Others piss and moan about how small the numbers are. Me, I just LOVE it when one or more gather together in the name of peace. LOVE it when SOMEONE does SOMETHING to oppose the endless war and the death of innocent civilians. You know, the few, the futile, who speak out and speak up.

Sure, you have a right to be 'realistic.' You have right to spend your time any bloody way you want. For sure that's what we do. So hey, take this missive with a 'grain of salt.' But just know that there are those who are not just flapping their gums up against there teeth about how the peace movement is dead . There are those still out there for peace, and they are an inspiration for me. You?

If you have a minute make a comment about what you are seeing done to push back against the fail in Syria and elsewhere. Thanks

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divineorder's picture

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

Big Al's picture

news media supported the Syria attack by Trump and only one didn't. If we don't push back against the lies and false narratives we won't make any progress for peace. It seems more people know the truth, or at least have a general idea, but then again when you see polls they aren't much different than they've always been. But I think the ruling elite are relying on a smaller and smaller percentage of the American sheeple as dupes to keep their charade going. Maybe that will catch up to them.
But I still see too much half truths, beating around the bush from many who profess to be against war. U.S. imperialism needs to be called out strongly imo and few are doing that.

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divineorder's picture

@Big Al Agree BigAl more need to call them out.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

mhagle's picture

I don't know if you saw the "Peace Chant" I posted.
[video:https://youtu.be/pfWFeb2lB0A]

I was raised Lutheran, and I guess it sounds like lutheran liturgy.

The point is, how can we consider war when we are constantly reminding ourselves of our love for humanity?

Do you have a collection of peace songs?

I still like this one . . .
[video:https://youtu.be/0_DxNpW1kHQ]

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

divineorder's picture

@mhagle

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

Mark from Queens's picture

Am 2/3 of the way through another Twain bio and this sentence jumped out at me last night:

...Clemens read the first three chapters and outlined the rest on November 11, 1886, at Governor's Island in New York; this group was the members and guests of the Military Services Institution, fittingly enough for the subject matter a society dedicated to promotion of the military interests of the United States.

It rattled me for a moment, realizing just how long this country has been run by the hands of both a military industrial complex (fresh off Manifest Destiny and other bullshit American Exceptionalism) and the capitalist monopoly oligarchs.

Will we ever be able to throw off their shackles? We'd first have to convince people that there's a better way than the relentless grinder of trying to get rich and having to gear up to compete in the merciless competitive scheme pitting one against another in the "free market" fraud.

We'd also have to convince people that the one thing everyone wants is just more time to spend with their loved ones and friends, not be working all the time as another cog in a system is propped up by fear of being foreclosed upon by a medical emergency/student debt/rising housing costs/cost of living.

If our taxes were there to cover all those basics: free healthcare, free higher education, low cost housing and nationalizing all energy resources at a minimum, people wouldn't have to stay in shitty jobs if they no longer wished to be in the rat race of staying on for healthcare "benefits" or seeing how and if they can get richer, quicker, and bigger.

The military budget is obscene. It needs to be shouted to the hills, to all and sundry. They are not an institution keeping us "safe, and free." See Smedley Butler, and John Perkins (Confessions of An Economic Hitman) about that. Let's start there. Stop the phony nationalism and exceptionalism. And start connecting the dots.

Thanks for the essay d.o. Need to get to Big Sur someday to visit the Henry Miller Library. Just got an email from them, speaking of underfunding programs such as infrastructure, saying that an overpass bridge there had to be torn down after torrential rain rendered it too dangerous to ride on. Had to be blown up apparently, because it was longer safe. Our infrastructure is completely falling apart (see Bob Herbert's latest book) but nobody cares, because, more money for the military.

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

@Mark from Queens

The unsafe bridge had to be blown up, because the money the American people pay for public services is hogged by corporate interests and billionaires, many of these intent on military subjugation of the world?

...Had to be blown up apparently, because it was longer safe. Our infrastructure is completely falling apart (see Bob Herbert's latest book) but nobody cares, because, more money for the military.

The irony here is peculiarly painful... and this sounds like a great meme which might get through to some of those more heavily saturated with propaganda.

I don't do Twitter or have the capacity to create this sort of thing myself but - has this appeared as a meme yet, do you know? If not, could you or anyone you know do a captioned pic and get it out there as a tweet/pic which could be posted places?

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

lotlizard's picture

to my reading list, in addition to my usual diet of independent progressive and alternative left-Green media.

Here’s part of the reason why:

https://taz.de/Syrische-Diaspora-nach-dem-Giftgasangriff/!5401092/
https://taz.de/Kolumne-Nachbarn/!5396022/

I am trying to deal with the fact that “my” newspaper — in the sense that I am a member of the co-op that publishes it — the historically (and nominally, still) alternative-left-Green daily “taz.de | die tageszeitung” has taken to dedicating its front page to often tear-jerking, supposedly first-hand Syria stories, pushing the standard regime-change narrative of “moderate rebels” forced into a “civil war” by a Hitleresque dictator.

Stories that I presume could be legit but — as I see how similar pieces have been rushed into print over and over, with the clear aim of stirring emotions and war sentiment, unvetted by proper journalistic skepticism — that may equally likely be part of an ongoing, Deep-State orchestrated media campaign, on a level of the PR firm Hill & Knowlton’s Iraq 1991 incubator-babies story.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p25s02-cogn.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_%28testimony%29

That’s the bitter joke. The only real anti-war voices you hear in Germany right now come from the Neue Rechte (“New Right,” the German equivalent of the American Alt-Right).

Far too many Greens and progressives of all stripes are doing nothing to stop — or are even actively agitating for — NATO and the U.S. neocons’ “seven countries in five years” plan for regime change, balkanization, and permanent turmoil.

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mimi's picture

@lotlizard
tears, babies, heart-breaking stories of victims crying and other emotion-initiating visuals directed to "win the heart and minds" of the audience/readership are always a sign of psychological manipulation and is used in our times ad nauseam by deep state media campaigns of those who gain political advantages out of them. It is absolutely horrifying how much it is used in the US media and from what I see and hear in Germany now, it's the same, but in the US it's on steroids.

Some times I miss the times when news coverage was dry, boring and factual and video-less before www times. May be students who want to make it as journalists and reporters are told at their schools that to write a good story, always start with a real life tear jerking human interest story. Those are the ones reporters can always get someone to tell them and then they use them for manipulation of the audience.

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@lotlizard

... Far too many Greens and progressives of all stripes are doing nothing to stop — or are even actively agitating for — NATO and the U.S. neocons’ “seven countries in five years” plan for regime change, balkanization, and permanent turmoil.

Then they aren't Progs or Green in any sense; they're propagandists. Will the real Progs please stand up so we can see them? Or have they mostly been locked in pods for 're-education' or something? I really do suspect brainwashing...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.