Barry
06-14-2011, 11:25 AM
War to end no wars
https://www.pacificsun.com/news/show_story.php?id=3215
All MoveOn Marin is saying, is give peace a chance
by Peter Seidman
https://img812.imageshack.us/img812/7627/peacerally.jpgHow many people who attend a MoveOn anti-war rally on June 18 will realize they're gathering under a banner that was designed as a symbol for unilateral nuclear disarmament?
In the 1950s and early 1960s anti-war activists were focusing on the proliferation of nuclear weapons as the most-pressing danger in the world. In 1958, Gerald Holtom designed what now is known as the ubiquitous "peace symbol." Holtom created the symbol, which became an icon, for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, an organization dedicated to reducing armaments, nuclear and biological and conventional, around the world.
The pacifist philosopher Bertrand Russell was a signature spokesman for the anti-war effort then. One of his famous quotes encapsulates the ethos of the movement: "War does not determine who is right—only who is left." That provocative statement and the ethos it comes from are just as controversial now as they were then, and they still can trigger intense debate.
The flyer MoveOn is circulating for rally features the peace symbol superimposed on a map of Marin and Sonoma counties and brings the anti-war movement forward 50 years from the era of Russell and the nascent call to "ban the bomb."
The bomb these days is the perpetual state of war the country has fallen into like a black hole of psychological malaise. The flyer reads in bold letters, "It's Time for Peace!" A sentiment that Russell and those who joined the ban-the-bomb movement would understand with little trouble. This time, the anti-war effort is aimed at stopping a "war on terror" from continuing to siphon resources and blood and a country's psychic health and spill them on the sands in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The rally the flyer announces is just one in a long line of actions from Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, one of the leading anti-war activists in Congress. "Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey invites the North Bay to a forum on ending permanent U.S. warfare," read two lines on the flyer below the bold type. The forum will take place June 18, from 1 to 2:30pm in the San Rafael City Plaza at Fourth and Court in downtown San Rafael. The timing of the rally comes just a few weeks before the Obama administration will report in July the number of troops it intends to withdraw from Afghanistan. "This rally can be part of the message to the White House that we want real drawdown," says Woolsey. "We don't want a measly 5,000 troops. We want this over with."
A preliminary list of speakers includes representatives from Veterans for Peace, CODEPINK and Iraq Veterans Against the War. State and local officials also are expected to attend. Among the highlighted guest speakers are David Harris and Norman Solomon, who has announced his intention to run from Woolsey's 6th District seat if she decides to retire. (Exactly where the boundaries of that seat will be, whether Woolsey retires or not, remains an open question as a redistricting panel works to re-draw political boundaries.)
The event on June 18 is reminiscent of the anti-war rallies during the Vietnam War. There is, however, one striking difference. In the anti-war demonstrations during the Vietnam War, protestors turned out in the thousands, the tens of thousands. Backers of the rally in San Rafael hope to attract 1,000 people. That would be a big anti-war crowd these days.
"A perpetual state of war has enveloped this country in the last 10 years," says Solomon. "I want to talk at the rally about the impacts on Marin County and the country, and the world for that matter, to normalize war." Solomon was in high school during what was euphemistically called the "Vietnam Conflict." He remembers that "people would talk about, sometimes wistfully, when the war would be over. I think there's been a corrosion of hope [now because war has been so normalized. It's become the wallpaper in the media echo chamber."
That zeitgeist of psychological malaise is far from unintentional. Throwing a net of perpetual war over a populace is an age-old control tactic. When the term "war on terror" entered the national lexicon, so did the idea that war will never end. Good for defense contractors. Bad for military personnel, civilians, national budgets and the psychology of the country. Keeping people eternally afraid might pay short-term dividends, but it also brings long-term discomfort. "The perpetual state of war is bankrupting us morally and fiscally," says Woolsey. "Afghanistan alone is costing us $10 billion a month while we're sitting around and fighting over what domestic programs will be cut. But we keep [wars going with countries that aren't threatening us. But it's not just about the money. It's just bad policy, and we want it changed."
Woolsey met with a relatively new organization in Marin to plan the anti-war rally in San Rafael. The Marin MoveOn Council formed last year. The idea of creating local councils is a new tactic for MoveOn, which made its name as an Internet-based network for progressives. But the Internet is a cool medium. So are social media sites. The national MoveOn organization recognized the benefits that local councils could bring to members by promoting interpersonal interaction, face to face communication rather than cool keyboard-to-keyboard interaction.
Creating the councils enabled the national organization to reach into local communities in a way impossible for a monolithic Internet presence.
Richard Gray, who had worked on local political issues in Marin, attended what he describes as a "pop up" meeting, events where MoveOn asks people in communities to host gatherings.
"It just didn't make any sense to me that there was no MoveOn Council in Marin County, which is a very progressive county. I decided that I could act as an interim council coordinator to see if I could start one." Gray sent out the word to people who had attended gatherings to form the start-up core of a Marin MoveOn Council. Gray and the other initial members of the council held a demonstration in the Bon Air center to protest the continuation of the Bush tax cuts. "There were 25 of us there." The local council also came out in opposition to a new Target in San Rafael.
Gray moved to Clallam County in Washington, and although he spends some time in Marin, he's dedicated now to MoveOn councils in that state. When Gray left the local council in the fall of last year, he asked who would volunteer to take responsibility for guiding the local council. Bernie Stephan says, "I was willing to take on the council leadership."
Stephan says the local MoveOn people met with Woolsey and talked about what they could do to help her "advance her progressive agenda." Woolsey said she remained dedicated to ending perpetual warfare. "We fully agreed," says Stephan. "We said we will do what we can to help make this a big, big rally." The local chapter is helping to spread the word by tapping into its database of core supporters and others who have participated in one way or another since the council formed last year. That database, says Stephan, numbers about 1,500 names.
Woolsey's district includes Marin and Sonoma counties, and the MoveOn Council in Sonoma also is tapping its resources to spread the word about the rally. In addition to the MoveOn councils, a host of other organizations have pledged support. They include Progressive Democrats of Marin and Sonoma, Democracy for America, Marin Seniors for Peace, Next Generation, Peace Alliance/ Department of Peace Campaign, Social Justice Center of Marin and Marin Peace and Justice Coalition.
The strategy of using local councils and other organizations to reach into their membership to spread the word about the rally is a classic community organizing technique that plumbs the most local levels of interest. "When MoveOn started, it was pretty much an Internet-based national effort to solicit support and lobby Congress and the administration nationally," says Stephan. "Then they realized that we really didn't have a local face, and the councils are a way to interact directly with our representatives."
Solomon, who has a national reputation as an outspoken critic of the perpetual warfare state and the media's culpability in perpetuating it by omission, says few politicians these days are willing to criticize the concept of perpetual war. Many anti-war activists are disappointed the Obama administration has failed to reject the perpetual war gestalt. "Those people who may have said they didn't like the war policy during the Bush years just clammed up, unfortunately." Woolsey is a notable exception, Solomon notes. Part of the clamming up comes from Democrats refusing to criticize a Democratic president. Party politics. "I fundamentally object to that," says Solomon, who remembers when he heard Wayne Morse, the prominent Democrat, speak out against the war policies of the Johnson administration. "He did not hold back one whit." Solomon includes this reminiscence in his book "War Made Easy," which was made into a documentary narrated by Sean Penn.
In 2008, before the presidential election, Scientific American ran a story about how words affect actions and psychology. The metaphor embedded in "the war on terror" was a central issue in the article, written by Arie W. Kruglanski, psychology profession at the University of Maryland; Martha Crenshaw, professor of political science at Stanford University; Jerrold M. Post, psychiatry and political psychology professor at George Washington University; and Jeff Victoroff, clinical neurology and psychiatry associate professor at the University of Southern California.
The authors note the differences in the way presidential administrations forged language to transmit a psychological message about warfare. "The Bush administration's framing of terrorism as an act of war is a departure from past administrations' way of thinking…." President Reagan, they write, preferred a disease metaphor to describe his cold-war views and actions. President Clinton focused on "the pursuit of justice, law enforcement and international cooperation." (The killing of Osama Bin Laden resulted from a police-type action rather than a military invasion and occupation.) But Bush chose to push the war metaphor following the attack on September 11. That state of perpetual war "requires national unity, and dissent is easily interpreted as unpatriotic. The solution has to be military."
That military solution also "inculcates the public from realizing that what is going on is uncalled for," says Solomon, "We have become numb to the idea" that perpetual war is immoral and wasteful. It also is by definition unsuccessful.
The National Priorities Project has an Internet site that looks like the tote board at a telethon. It tallies the cost of war since 2001. It constantly increases. The total earlier this week was $1,203,502,025,500. It increases faster than a human can type. The cost of the war in Iraq was $782,310,893,500. The cost of the war in Afghanistan was $421,192,581,650. The astronomical and ever-increasing figures seem abstract. To put them in perspective, the Priorities Project has broken down just what they mean on a countywide basis.
Marin taxpayers have paid $1.8 billion for war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, according to the Priorities Project. That amount would pay for, among other benchmarks, 603, 913 people receiving low-income healthcare for one year or 22,732 elementary school teachers for one year. That money also could have covered the cost of 22,982 firefighters for one year or 18,753 police officers for one year.
"Because Lynn Woolsey is nearing the end of her term, and this is important to her, we want to make it a success," says Stephan. It's almost a tribute to her work." Woolsey says she will announce "by the end of June" whether she will retire from Congress.
Contact the writer at [email protected]
https://www.pacificsun.com/news/show_story.php?id=3215
All MoveOn Marin is saying, is give peace a chance
by Peter Seidman
https://img812.imageshack.us/img812/7627/peacerally.jpgHow many people who attend a MoveOn anti-war rally on June 18 will realize they're gathering under a banner that was designed as a symbol for unilateral nuclear disarmament?
In the 1950s and early 1960s anti-war activists were focusing on the proliferation of nuclear weapons as the most-pressing danger in the world. In 1958, Gerald Holtom designed what now is known as the ubiquitous "peace symbol." Holtom created the symbol, which became an icon, for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, an organization dedicated to reducing armaments, nuclear and biological and conventional, around the world.
The pacifist philosopher Bertrand Russell was a signature spokesman for the anti-war effort then. One of his famous quotes encapsulates the ethos of the movement: "War does not determine who is right—only who is left." That provocative statement and the ethos it comes from are just as controversial now as they were then, and they still can trigger intense debate.
The flyer MoveOn is circulating for rally features the peace symbol superimposed on a map of Marin and Sonoma counties and brings the anti-war movement forward 50 years from the era of Russell and the nascent call to "ban the bomb."
The bomb these days is the perpetual state of war the country has fallen into like a black hole of psychological malaise. The flyer reads in bold letters, "It's Time for Peace!" A sentiment that Russell and those who joined the ban-the-bomb movement would understand with little trouble. This time, the anti-war effort is aimed at stopping a "war on terror" from continuing to siphon resources and blood and a country's psychic health and spill them on the sands in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The rally the flyer announces is just one in a long line of actions from Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, one of the leading anti-war activists in Congress. "Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey invites the North Bay to a forum on ending permanent U.S. warfare," read two lines on the flyer below the bold type. The forum will take place June 18, from 1 to 2:30pm in the San Rafael City Plaza at Fourth and Court in downtown San Rafael. The timing of the rally comes just a few weeks before the Obama administration will report in July the number of troops it intends to withdraw from Afghanistan. "This rally can be part of the message to the White House that we want real drawdown," says Woolsey. "We don't want a measly 5,000 troops. We want this over with."
A preliminary list of speakers includes representatives from Veterans for Peace, CODEPINK and Iraq Veterans Against the War. State and local officials also are expected to attend. Among the highlighted guest speakers are David Harris and Norman Solomon, who has announced his intention to run from Woolsey's 6th District seat if she decides to retire. (Exactly where the boundaries of that seat will be, whether Woolsey retires or not, remains an open question as a redistricting panel works to re-draw political boundaries.)
The event on June 18 is reminiscent of the anti-war rallies during the Vietnam War. There is, however, one striking difference. In the anti-war demonstrations during the Vietnam War, protestors turned out in the thousands, the tens of thousands. Backers of the rally in San Rafael hope to attract 1,000 people. That would be a big anti-war crowd these days.
"A perpetual state of war has enveloped this country in the last 10 years," says Solomon. "I want to talk at the rally about the impacts on Marin County and the country, and the world for that matter, to normalize war." Solomon was in high school during what was euphemistically called the "Vietnam Conflict." He remembers that "people would talk about, sometimes wistfully, when the war would be over. I think there's been a corrosion of hope [now because war has been so normalized. It's become the wallpaper in the media echo chamber."
That zeitgeist of psychological malaise is far from unintentional. Throwing a net of perpetual war over a populace is an age-old control tactic. When the term "war on terror" entered the national lexicon, so did the idea that war will never end. Good for defense contractors. Bad for military personnel, civilians, national budgets and the psychology of the country. Keeping people eternally afraid might pay short-term dividends, but it also brings long-term discomfort. "The perpetual state of war is bankrupting us morally and fiscally," says Woolsey. "Afghanistan alone is costing us $10 billion a month while we're sitting around and fighting over what domestic programs will be cut. But we keep [wars going with countries that aren't threatening us. But it's not just about the money. It's just bad policy, and we want it changed."
Woolsey met with a relatively new organization in Marin to plan the anti-war rally in San Rafael. The Marin MoveOn Council formed last year. The idea of creating local councils is a new tactic for MoveOn, which made its name as an Internet-based network for progressives. But the Internet is a cool medium. So are social media sites. The national MoveOn organization recognized the benefits that local councils could bring to members by promoting interpersonal interaction, face to face communication rather than cool keyboard-to-keyboard interaction.
Creating the councils enabled the national organization to reach into local communities in a way impossible for a monolithic Internet presence.
Richard Gray, who had worked on local political issues in Marin, attended what he describes as a "pop up" meeting, events where MoveOn asks people in communities to host gatherings.
"It just didn't make any sense to me that there was no MoveOn Council in Marin County, which is a very progressive county. I decided that I could act as an interim council coordinator to see if I could start one." Gray sent out the word to people who had attended gatherings to form the start-up core of a Marin MoveOn Council. Gray and the other initial members of the council held a demonstration in the Bon Air center to protest the continuation of the Bush tax cuts. "There were 25 of us there." The local council also came out in opposition to a new Target in San Rafael.
Gray moved to Clallam County in Washington, and although he spends some time in Marin, he's dedicated now to MoveOn councils in that state. When Gray left the local council in the fall of last year, he asked who would volunteer to take responsibility for guiding the local council. Bernie Stephan says, "I was willing to take on the council leadership."
Stephan says the local MoveOn people met with Woolsey and talked about what they could do to help her "advance her progressive agenda." Woolsey said she remained dedicated to ending perpetual warfare. "We fully agreed," says Stephan. "We said we will do what we can to help make this a big, big rally." The local chapter is helping to spread the word by tapping into its database of core supporters and others who have participated in one way or another since the council formed last year. That database, says Stephan, numbers about 1,500 names.
Woolsey's district includes Marin and Sonoma counties, and the MoveOn Council in Sonoma also is tapping its resources to spread the word about the rally. In addition to the MoveOn councils, a host of other organizations have pledged support. They include Progressive Democrats of Marin and Sonoma, Democracy for America, Marin Seniors for Peace, Next Generation, Peace Alliance/ Department of Peace Campaign, Social Justice Center of Marin and Marin Peace and Justice Coalition.
The strategy of using local councils and other organizations to reach into their membership to spread the word about the rally is a classic community organizing technique that plumbs the most local levels of interest. "When MoveOn started, it was pretty much an Internet-based national effort to solicit support and lobby Congress and the administration nationally," says Stephan. "Then they realized that we really didn't have a local face, and the councils are a way to interact directly with our representatives."
Solomon, who has a national reputation as an outspoken critic of the perpetual warfare state and the media's culpability in perpetuating it by omission, says few politicians these days are willing to criticize the concept of perpetual war. Many anti-war activists are disappointed the Obama administration has failed to reject the perpetual war gestalt. "Those people who may have said they didn't like the war policy during the Bush years just clammed up, unfortunately." Woolsey is a notable exception, Solomon notes. Part of the clamming up comes from Democrats refusing to criticize a Democratic president. Party politics. "I fundamentally object to that," says Solomon, who remembers when he heard Wayne Morse, the prominent Democrat, speak out against the war policies of the Johnson administration. "He did not hold back one whit." Solomon includes this reminiscence in his book "War Made Easy," which was made into a documentary narrated by Sean Penn.
In 2008, before the presidential election, Scientific American ran a story about how words affect actions and psychology. The metaphor embedded in "the war on terror" was a central issue in the article, written by Arie W. Kruglanski, psychology profession at the University of Maryland; Martha Crenshaw, professor of political science at Stanford University; Jerrold M. Post, psychiatry and political psychology professor at George Washington University; and Jeff Victoroff, clinical neurology and psychiatry associate professor at the University of Southern California.
The authors note the differences in the way presidential administrations forged language to transmit a psychological message about warfare. "The Bush administration's framing of terrorism as an act of war is a departure from past administrations' way of thinking…." President Reagan, they write, preferred a disease metaphor to describe his cold-war views and actions. President Clinton focused on "the pursuit of justice, law enforcement and international cooperation." (The killing of Osama Bin Laden resulted from a police-type action rather than a military invasion and occupation.) But Bush chose to push the war metaphor following the attack on September 11. That state of perpetual war "requires national unity, and dissent is easily interpreted as unpatriotic. The solution has to be military."
That military solution also "inculcates the public from realizing that what is going on is uncalled for," says Solomon, "We have become numb to the idea" that perpetual war is immoral and wasteful. It also is by definition unsuccessful.
The National Priorities Project has an Internet site that looks like the tote board at a telethon. It tallies the cost of war since 2001. It constantly increases. The total earlier this week was $1,203,502,025,500. It increases faster than a human can type. The cost of the war in Iraq was $782,310,893,500. The cost of the war in Afghanistan was $421,192,581,650. The astronomical and ever-increasing figures seem abstract. To put them in perspective, the Priorities Project has broken down just what they mean on a countywide basis.
Marin taxpayers have paid $1.8 billion for war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, according to the Priorities Project. That amount would pay for, among other benchmarks, 603, 913 people receiving low-income healthcare for one year or 22,732 elementary school teachers for one year. That money also could have covered the cost of 22,982 firefighters for one year or 18,753 police officers for one year.
"Because Lynn Woolsey is nearing the end of her term, and this is important to her, we want to make it a success," says Stephan. It's almost a tribute to her work." Woolsey says she will announce "by the end of June" whether she will retire from Congress.
Contact the writer at [email protected]