Showing posts with label peace movement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peace movement. Show all posts
10/17/10
New generation lacks 'cohesion' of the 1960s, iconic folksinger says
punditman says...Wondering where the antiwar movement is? According to Joan Baez, it is dispersed amongst 400 other issues, that's where. And when you dilute something, it loses its potency. Punditman also thinks Bush was such an easy target, that once he was gone, peace activists sort of melted away. But still the war drags on...
The gentle urgency of Joan Baez's stunning vibrato on "We Shall Overcome" turned the song into an anthem for the antiwar movement on the 1960s. Back then, it seemed possible for music to galvanize a generation into calling for peace.
That was a long time ago, observed the legendary folksinger during a recent phone interview, and things have changed. In addition to the war in Afghanistan, today's youth have to deal with everything from environmental catastrophes to economic ones.
"It isn't like a community of people working for the same thing," Baez says. "The only thing that's missing is the feeling of cohesion. By circumstances, that's what you had in the '60s and early '70s. It was a perfect storm. It was by chance that I was there and involved in it, but now without the antiwar movement being the central issue, with 400 issues instead, it's very difficult for people to feel that cohesiveness."
Even the optimism she felt when U.S. President Barack Obama was elected is beginning to slide, largely because of the U.S troops in Afghanistan, "which makes absolutely no sense from any angle" Baez can see.
Keep Reading...
8/4/09
Scott Horton Interviews Eric Stoner
punditman says...The Afghan War is going badly. The peace movement is going badly too; here is some analysis on what to do.
Eric Stoner, freelance journalist based in New York, discusses the use of nonviolence to force political changes, the decline in the antiwar movement after Obama’s election, the need for more creative and assertive protests, the replacement of soldiers with remote controlled robots and why there is no such thing as a humanitarian war.
MP3 here. (30:25)
7/9/09
Miss Obama's peacenik T-shirt sends a message to G8 leaders
Peacenik posts this story without comment.
By Charlotte Spratt
Last updated at 9:35 AM on 09th July 2009
Her father had just won agreement from the Russians to cut back on the world's stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
And Barack Obama's eldest daughter was obviously keen to make her own statement on the issue - even if it was merely a fashion statement.
Read on...
4/20/09
The Next Forgotten War
By Ryan McCarl
www.antiwar.com
Human beings have strong emotional immune systems, and human societies have a remarkable capacity for collective forgetfulness. Milan Kundera, writing of the effect of the news cycle on historical memory, once said: "The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the war in the Sinai desert made people forget Allende, the Cambodian massacre made people forget Sinai, and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten."
Likewise, the histories of our time might say: there was an American invasion and occupation of Iraq, a war that amounts to a crime, but it was quickly followed by other wars, a financial crisis, and an economic depression – and we found that we had enough problems on our plate without worrying too much about the past.
Americans are leaving the Iraq War behind; it is seen as an embarrassing episode, best unmentioned in polite company. The Obama administration is stacked with liberal hawks who supported the Iraq War, and figures from the former Bush administration are signing book deals and making the rounds of press conferences and interviews, propagating meae culpae of the "mistakes were made" sort. A war of choice is being quietly transformed into an unfortunate but ultimately unavoidable mistake, one caused not by politicians and public intellectuals cocooned in their hubris and their reckless ideologies, but by an "intelligence failure."
Keep Reading...
punditman says...
Punditman realizes that there are those out there who have bought the media nonsense that the "surge" in Iraq has been a "success," and because that same media now conveniently turns its gaze elsewhere, then the war itself must be a "success." But it isn't. The tragedy that is Iraq will continue to play out one way or another whether or not the world pays attention. And if all its victims on all sides are forgotten, then repeating unjust wars will happen over and over. This article challenges peaceniks everywhere to show that the Iraq war would have been a mistake even if it were a "success."
www.antiwar.com
Human beings have strong emotional immune systems, and human societies have a remarkable capacity for collective forgetfulness. Milan Kundera, writing of the effect of the news cycle on historical memory, once said: "The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the war in the Sinai desert made people forget Allende, the Cambodian massacre made people forget Sinai, and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten."
Likewise, the histories of our time might say: there was an American invasion and occupation of Iraq, a war that amounts to a crime, but it was quickly followed by other wars, a financial crisis, and an economic depression – and we found that we had enough problems on our plate without worrying too much about the past.
Americans are leaving the Iraq War behind; it is seen as an embarrassing episode, best unmentioned in polite company. The Obama administration is stacked with liberal hawks who supported the Iraq War, and figures from the former Bush administration are signing book deals and making the rounds of press conferences and interviews, propagating meae culpae of the "mistakes were made" sort. A war of choice is being quietly transformed into an unfortunate but ultimately unavoidable mistake, one caused not by politicians and public intellectuals cocooned in their hubris and their reckless ideologies, but by an "intelligence failure."
Keep Reading...
punditman says...
Punditman realizes that there are those out there who have bought the media nonsense that the "surge" in Iraq has been a "success," and because that same media now conveniently turns its gaze elsewhere, then the war itself must be a "success." But it isn't. The tragedy that is Iraq will continue to play out one way or another whether or not the world pays attention. And if all its victims on all sides are forgotten, then repeating unjust wars will happen over and over. This article challenges peaceniks everywhere to show that the Iraq war would have been a mistake even if it were a "success."
2/10/09
Opposing the Troop Surge in Afghanistan
punditman says...Highlights from the speech below include the fact that, unlike the propaganda we constantly hear, most of the Taliban are made up of unemployed young men with no ideological axe to grind; their interests are local. And yes, Western troops are committing atrocities. It's time to get with the program and wake up. Punditman is wondering where the next big antiwar demonstration will be and Peacenik is working on starting up a Pubs for Peace movement. Who is with us?
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