[Peace-discuss] When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?

[E. Wayne Johnson]

Jenifer,

For there to be any real progress there has to first be the admission 
that there has not been any real progress in how wars can be prevented,
how they are supposed to be fought, what's permissable re treatment of 
prisoners, how governments are supposed to function... with consequences 
for breaches.

Mr. Bush continued Clinton's war, and Mr. Obama continues Mr. Bush's 
war, and torturing and immoral detention,
and dysfunction oligarchic government continues in its arrogant manner 
to trod down the people under the
iron boot of authoritarian control.

Whereas through GWBush the oligarchy scourged us with whips in their 
deceits,
through Obama and their other minions the oligarchy seeks
to scourge us with scorpions in the name of "hope".

I dont see the progress you speak of Jenifer.  It's time to stop pretending.
It aint there, and the movement has been lullabied to sleep on a pillow 
of lies.

It's time to quit distributing the sedatives.  The anti-war movement is 
co-opted
and it's being co-opted from within.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but hope begins again when people 
wake up.

Wayne


On 8/23/2009 11:34 AM, Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
> John,
> What you say is true if it's true that the best predictor of the 
> future is the past... But saying that a thing will be true because it 
> has always been true also invites complacency... and it overlooks that 
> there HAS been progress in how wars can be prevented, how they are 
> supposed to be fought, what's permissable re treatment of prisoners, 
> how governments are supposed to function... with consequences for 
> breaches. No, not a perfect system, of course, and yes, there are 
> violations... but it's a start. The real danger -- hope? -- is that 
> the way wars CAN be fought will be so horrific that major wars will 
> be bro't to a halt, OR -- the main fear -- that humankind will blow 
> itself off the planet (yes, even before it destroys the planet, or 
> what's left of it at that point).
> Have a good day... and let's all do what we can to keep things moving 
> forward.
>  --Jenifer
>
> --- On *Sat, 8/22/09, John W. /<jbw292002 at gmail.com>/* wrote:
>
>
>     From: John W. <jbw292002 at gmail.com>
>     Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?
>     To: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
>     Cc: "Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
>     Date: Saturday, August 22, 2009, 2:16 AM
>
>
>     On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 5:15 PM, C. G. Estabrook
>     <galliher at illinois.edu
>     <http://us.mc449.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=galliher@illinois.edu>>
>     wrote:
>
>         "... the Counter-Culture hung up the Out of Business sign
>         sometime in the
>         Nineties, finished off by identity politics and general
>         self-satisfaction..."
>
>         --<http://www.counterpunch.org/>
>
>         Commenting weekly in those days on "the news of the week and
>         its coverage by the media" on News from Neptune as I was, I'd
>         say that Alex Cockburn has this about right.
>
>
>     I haven't read Cockburn's article; his essays are invariably too
>     long for my limited attention span.  But I submit that in the
>     so-called "counter-culture" essentially BECAME the culture.  In
>     some ways our generation, that of the 60s, was absorbed into the
>     existing culture; in certain ways it profoundly changed the
>     culture; and in yet other ways the culture recoiled in horror and
>     moved in the opposite direction.   But isn't that simply the way
>     of the world?  Thesis ---> antithesis ---> synthesis , for good or
>     ill?
>
>     What we need now, I guess, is a NEW counter-culture.  The closest
>     thing I've seen to that in this country is the development of the
>     independent media movement starting in the late 1990s.  Last I
>     looked, the U-C Independent Media Center was still very much alive
>     and well.  But of course the new counter-culture needs to affect
>     more than just the media, important as that is.
>
>     I further submit, though, that as long as human beings populate
>     the planet and compete for finite resources, there will ALWAYS be
>     war.  I dare to imagine that American culture could change to
>     allow for universal health care if the political and public will
>     was there.   We could inject a bit of "socialism" into our
>     "free-market capitalism" without demonstrable ill effects.  But
>     human nature does not change, and war will be with us always.
>
>     J.W.
>
>     -----Inline Attachment Follows-----
>
>     _______________________________________________
>     Peace-discuss mailing list
>     Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>     <http://us.mc449.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=Peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net>
>     http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>    

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20090823/82f0ad57/attachment.htm