Archive for May, 2017

It’s a question of human survival!

Tuesday, May 30th, 2017

Wage Peace Not War!

Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.” President John F. Kennedy 1961

     Our hearts go out to the families of innocent people (especially children) killed or injured in the Manchester, England, bombing, Portland train killings, etc. To see the faces of the people killed and hear the grief of families who lost loved ones is heart wrenching.  When will this violence end?   As Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.

      We need to look at the root of this escalating violence.  What gave birth to ISIS and Al-Qaeda? The US and the CIA supported Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan when he was fighting the Russians.  Then came escalating US interventions in the Middle East, regime changes, and endless war — and the growth of Al Qaeda and ISIS.  Where is the violence headed?  A recent article states, “Civilians killed by US are largely ignored as endless global war continues.”  https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/05/24/civilians-killed-us-largely-ignored-endless-global-war-continues

      We point to the terrorist violence of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, etc. but fail to see the terrorizing violence of the U.S.A.  We need to end this escalating cycle of violence. It starts by “taking the log out of our own eye.” Matthew 7:5  Seeing U.S. violence for what it is: wars for oil, domination, global empire, profits of a military-industrial complex. Stopping U.S. violence is our first order of business. Otherwise bombs will continue to explode, including eventually nuclear bombs in cities all around the world.  It is up to each one of us to Stop the Violence.  Wage Peace not War!  Practice nonviolence – Kapu Aloha. Build a world of peace based on a foundation of justice for all.  Refuse to hate. “Love your enemies.”

End the Cycle of Violence!

  1. Mourn all victims of violence. 2. Reject war as a solution. 3. Defend civil liberties.
    4. Oppose all discrimination, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, anti-Hawaiian, etc.
    5. Seek peace through peaceful means and work for justice in Hawai`i and around the world.

Contact: Malu ‘Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action
P.O. Box 489 Kurtistown, Hawai’i 96760 Phone (808) 966-7622. Email: ja@malu-aina.org

Sign up on our website to receive our posts  http://www.malu-aina.org/

Hilo Peace Vigil leaflet June 2, 2017– 819th week – Friday 3:30-5PM downtown Post Office

How America got to where it is today…

Monday, May 29th, 2017

JFK at 100

By Paul Craig Roberts

May 29, 2017 “Information Clearing House” –  This Memorial Day, Monday, May 29, 2017, is the 100th birthday of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States.

JFK was assassinated on November 22, 1963, as he approached the end of his third year in office. Researchers who spent years studying the evidence have concluded that President Kennedy was assassinated by a conspiracy between the CIA, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secret Service. (See, for example, JFK and the Unspeakable by James W. Douglass)

Kennedy entered office as a cold warrior, but he learned from his interaction with the CIA and Joint Chiefs that the military/security complex had an agenda that was self-interested and a danger to humanity. He began working to defuse tensions with the Soviet Union. His rejections of plans to invade Cuba, of the Northwoods project, of a preemptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, and his intention to withdraw from Vietnam after his reelection, together with some of his speeches signaling a new approach to foreign policy in the nuclear age ( see for example, 

https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/BWC7I4C9QUmLG9J6I8oy8w.aspx ), convinced the military/security complex that he was a threat to their interests. Cold War conservatives regarded him as naive about the Soviet Threat and a liability to US national security. These were the reasons for his assassination. These views were set in stone when Kennedy announced on June 10, 1963, negotiations with the Soviets toward a nuclear test ban treaty and a halt to US atmospheric nuclear tests.

The Oswald coverup story never made any sense and was contradicted by all evidence including tourist films of the assassination. President Johnson had ro cover up the assassination, not because he was part of it or because he willfully wanted to deceive the American people, but because to give Americans the true story would have shaken their confidence in their government at a critical time in US-Soviet relations. To make the coverup succeed, Johnson needed the credibility of the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Earl Warren, to chair the commission that covered up the assassination. Warren understood the devastating impact the true story would have on the public and their confidence in the military and national security leadership and on America’s allies.

As I previously reported, Lance deHaven-Smith in his book, Conspiracy Theory in America, shows that the CIA introduced “conspiracy theory” into the political lexicon as a technique to discredit skepticism of the Warren Commission’s coverup report. He provides the CIA document that describes how the agency used its media friends to control the explanation.

The term “conspiracy theory” has been used ever since to validate false explanations by discrediting true explanations.

President Kennedy was also determined to require the Israel Lobby to register as a foreign agent and to block Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. His assassination removed the constraints on Israel’s illegal activities.  http://www.voltairenet.org/article178401.html

Memorial Day is when Americans honor those in the armed services who died serving the country. JFK fell while serving the causes of peace and nuclear disarmament. In a 1961 address to the United Nations, President Kennedy said:

“Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us. It is therefore our intention to challenge the Soviet Union, not to an arms race, but to a peace race – to advance together step by step, stage by stage, until general and complete disarmament has been achieved.”

Kennedy’s address was well received at home and abroad and received a favorable and supportive response from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, but it caused consternation among the warhawks in the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The US led in terms of the number of nuclear warheads and delivery systems, and this lead was the basis for US military plans for a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. http://prospect.org/article/did-us-military-plan-nuclear-first-strike-1963 Also, Many believed that nuclear disarmament would remove the obstacle to the Soviet Army overrunning Western Europe. Warhawks considered this a greater threat than nuclear armageddon. Many in high military circles regarded President Kennedy as weakening the US viv-a-vis the Soviet Union.

The assassination of President Kennedy was an enormous cost to the world. Kennedy and Khrushchev would have followed up their collaboration in defusing the Cuban Missile Crisis by ending the Cold War long before the military/security complex achieved its iron grip on the US government. Israel would have been denied nuclear weapons, and the designation of the Israel Lobby as a foreign agent would have prevented Israel’s strong grip on the US government. In his second term, JFK would have broken the CIA into a thousand pieces, an intention he expressed to his brother, Robert, and the Deep State would have been terminated before it became more powerful than the President.

But the military/security complex struck first, and pulled off a coup that voided all these promises and terminated American democracy.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

Memorial Day

Monday, May 29th, 2017

Manchester Bombing Reflection — Civilians Killed by US Largely Ignored as Endless Global War Continues

Wednesday, May 24th, 2017

Manchester Bombing Reflection — Civilians Killed by US Largely Ignored as Endless Global War Continues

Reflection by Jim Albertini  Wed. May 24, 2017

“My heart goes out to the families of innocent people (especially children) killed or injured in the Manchester, England, bombing.  To see the faces of the people killed and hear the grief of families who lost loved ones is heart wrenching.  When will this violence end?   As Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.” We need to look at the root of this escalating violence.  What gave birth to ISIS?  Al-Qaeda? 

“The US and the CIA supported Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan when he was fighting the Russians.  Then came escalating US intervention, regime changes, and endless war in the Middle east — and the growth of Al Qaeda and ISIS.  Where is the violence headed?  As the article below states, “Civilians killed by US are largely ignored as endless global war continues.”  Perhaps if the faces of all the innocent people (especially the children) the U.S. has killed with bombs could be seen across the U.S. like the faces of Manchester bombing victims, and the grief of the families heard, we would all say “this violence has to stop.”  But by and large, we don’t see the faces of our innocent victims or hear and feel the grief of the U.S. victims families, hence the killings go on and on. 

“We point to the Terrorist violence of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, but fail to see the terrorizing violence of the U.S.A.  Or to put it another way: 

You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”  Matthew 7:5

“To prevent further violence, and to break the existing escalating cycle of violence, we need to see the faces and hear the grief of all the victims of violence, especially the violence being conducted in our names.  Otherwise the bombs will continue to explode, including eventually nuclear bombs in cities all around the world.  It is up to each one of us to Stop the Violence.  Wage Peace not War!  Embrace the spiritual command to “Love your enemies.”  Practice non-violence.  Build a world of peace based on a foundation of justice for all.  It starts by taking the log out of our own eye.”

Jim Albertini

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/05/24/civilians-killed-us-largely-ignored-endless-global-war-continues

Published on
by

Civilians Killed by US Largely Ignored as Endless Global War Continues

Borderless ‘War on Terror’—now operated by President Donald Trump—continues to claim innocent lives around the world… but pattern holds that not all victims receive equal attention

 
 

A man displays the bloodied shirt of a child victim at the rubble of houses destroyed by an Saudi airstrike in the Okash village near Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. Saudi Arabia’s bombing of Yemen continues with the backing and support of the U.S. (Photo:Reuters)

Contradicting a version of events presented by the U.S. military and reported widely by the corporate press, a human rights group and a journalist in Yemen are citing witnesses who said a raid by U.S. Navy SEALs on Monday night killed multiple innocent civilians and not just “Al Qaeda militants” as the Pentagon claimed.

“This new flawed raid by President Trump shows the US is not capable of distinguishing a terrorist from an innocent civilian.”
—Kate Higham, Reprieve
Reprieve, a UK-based human rights group, cited witnesses from the village of Al-Jubah in Marib province, where the raid took place, and offered the names of five civilians killed as Nasser Ali Mahdi Al-Adhal; Al-Ghader Saleh Salem Al-Adhal; Saleh Al-Taffaf; Yasser Al-Taffaf Al-Adhel; and Shebreen Saeed Salem Al-Adhal.

The witnesses said that none of those five were fighting for al-Qaeda and that Nasser al-Adhal, identified as being approximately 70-years-old and partially blind, was the first one shot by the U.S. soldiers when he mistook them for arriving guests and came out to greet them. According to Reprieve:

The four other villagers were killed when they started to argue with the Navy Seals after the shooting of Nasser al-Adhal. Six villagers were seriously injured, including another elderly man who was around 69-years-old.

Al-Qaeda fighters gathering nearby, who are thought to have been the original target of the raid, were alerted by the gunshots in the village and firefight ensued in which at least two of them were killed. The Navy SEALs then left with the help of air support from a helicopter.

Independent journalist Iona Craig, who has reported from the ground in Yemen for years, helped corroborate the version of events provided to Reprieve. “Five tribesmen amongst killed in US raid last night were not AQ,” Craig tweeted on Tuesday. “They were tribesmen of young activists who drove me from Mareb into Yakla.”

Part of the wider “global war on terror” that the U.S. began in the wake of the September 11th attacks in 2001, Yemen has been a target of drone strikes and clandestine operations for years. But as foreign policy experts and the people of Yemen have repeatedly stated, the use of drones and clandestine raids have only hardened Al-Qaeda’s position in the country and the killing of innocent civilians as provided a nearly perfect recruiting tool for the militant group.

In addition to backing the ongoing Saudi-led war against Yemen, the military under President Donald Trump has continued to target Al-Qaeda aligned forces in the country. In January, just days after his inauguration, Trump was roundly criticized for a botched raid that led to the death of one U.S. soldier and as many as thirty civilians, including children.

Kate Higham, head of the Assassinations Programme at Reprieve, said this week’s killing of more innocent Yemenis proves that Trump is no better than his predecessors when it comes to protecting civilian lives. 

“This new flawed raid by President Trump shows the US is not capable of distinguishing a terrorist from an innocent civilian,” Higham said in a statement. “When even a 70-year-old is shot dead, it is clear these attacks are not targeted or precise. President Trump must order an immediate investigation into what went wrong and halt all raids and drone strikes before more innocent Yemenis are killed.”

Yemen, of course, is not the only place where the U.S. military is claiming innocent lives. On Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks casualties amid Syria’s ongoing civil war, reported the number of civilians killed by U.S. bombings over the last month has been the highest ever recorded over a 30-day time period. According to the group, 235 civilians were killed in U.S. airstrikes from April 23 to May 23. That number includes 44 children and 36 women.

“The past month of operations is the highest civilian toll since the coalition began bombing Syria,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told Agence-France Presse in an interview. “There has been a very big escalation.”

According to Rahman’s group, which is also based in the U.K., the U.S.-led coalition has now killed 1,481 civilians since operations against the Islamic State (ISIS) began in 2014. Of that total number, the groups says, 319 were children.

And as people mourned the horrific loss of life in Manchester this week, where innocent children and other concert-goers were targeted by a suicide bomber, it was difficult not to notice the difference between the attention various killings—all of them horrific and none of them possible to justify—received in the dominant western press.

As journalist and columnist Glenn Greenwald, citing the killings of those civilians in Yemen on Monday, asked, “More reporting that US killed 5 more innocent Yemenis yesterday. Will the media tell their stories, hear from their grieving relatives, etc?”

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Where is the Pohakuloa Clean Up & Exit Plan?

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2017

Aloha ‘Aina! Protect Pohakuloa!

                                                                                                                                                                 

     Military command officials of the 133,000-acre Pohakuloa Training Area (PTA), located in the center of Hawaii Island, held meetings May 18 in Hilo and May 19 in Kona. These meetings were required under the National Historic Preservation Act concerning cultural, religious, and historic sites at PTA. Peace activist Jim Albertini said “the Hilo meeting was one of the most insulting I ever attended in my life.” The military turned away people at the door that had not sought prior permission to attend even though the notice sent out did not state that requirement.

     It is clear the military has no intention of seriously addressing questions that may restrict or stop their bombing plans, even on a base known to be contaminated with Depleted Uranium (DU) radiation. As for a question that the military address an exit plan for Pohakuloa with their lease expiring in 2029, it was very clear the military has no intention of leaving. That is how occupation works. How dare we raise that question and insist that the the entire area of Po-haku-loa –“the Land of the Night of Long Prayer” is sacred. From a spiritual perspective, Pohakuloa is viewed as the heavenly realm of unity between the three great mountains –Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa, and Hualalai. This entire area should be designated an historic site of cultural and religious significance. To bomb such an area is desecration pure and simple! Auwe!

                                                                               

                   

Where is the Military Exit Plan?

  1. Mourn all victims of violence. 2. Reject war as a solution. 3. Defend civil liberties.
    4. Oppose all discrimination, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, anti-Hawaiian, etc.
    5. Seek peace through peaceful means and work for justice in Hawai`i and around the world.

Contact: Malu ‘Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action
P.O. Box 489 Kurtistown, Hawai’i 96760 Phone (808) 966-7622. Email: ja@malu-aina.org

Sign up on our website to receive our posts  http://www.malu-aina.org/

Hilo Peace Vigil leaflet May 26, 2017– 818th week – Friday 3:30-5PM downtown Post Office