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

Mon Aug 24 11:58:07 CDT 2009

The "Why?" of wars and and the militaristic mentality should be a ripe  
subject for inquiry at our great universities, but I've not noticed  
efforts to illuminate this vital topic for the populations or students  
here or elsewhere. It would be like a Department of Peace that  
Kucinich has been advocating. It seems to be too delicate a subject to  
broach in our institutions. If AWARE were resourceful enough it could  
conceive of putting together a conference on the subject.

--mkb

On Aug 24, 2009, at 11:29 AM, Ricky Baldwin wrote:

> Easy to repeat, perhaps ad nauseam.  Harder to demonstrate.
>
> I'd argue there was progress through the 1960s and 70s, but as Karen  
> points out, these victories are rarely permanent.  Eternal vigilance  
> and all that.
>
> Ricky
>
> "Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn
>
> --- On Sun, 8/23/09, E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag> wrote:
>
> From: E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag>
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?
> To: "Jenifer Cartwright" <jencart13 at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
> Date: Sunday, August 23, 2009, 12:18 PM
>
> 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 
>> > 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.
>>
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