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

Mon Aug 24 12:15:28 CDT 2009

Great idea!

Ricky

"Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn

--- On Mon, 8/24/09, Morton K. Brussel <brussel at illinois.edu> wrote:

From: Morton K. Brussel <brussel at illinois.edu>
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?
To: "Ricky Baldwin" <baldwinricky at yahoo.com>
Cc: "Jenifer Cartwright" <jencart13 at yahoo.com>, "E. Wayne Johnson" <ewj at pigs.ag>, "Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Date: Monday, August 24, 2009, 11:58 AM

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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