Paul's Perambulations a personal blog

September 9, 2008

U.K. Conference on Peace/War Taxes — both good news and bad news.

Filed under: Peace — admin @ 8:08 am

Here is a very frank appraisal of this international conference that I recently attended.  Wonderful people, some very good times, some very frustrating times.  

Perhaps I spoke too much, but for me, there was very little in the way of direct action from this conference group.  This seems surprising when I consider what I know of the wonderful examples of direct action that have been taken by many of those who were present. There was a lost opportunity here. I felt I should stand up and cheer when, during the perennial discussion of why there were essentially no young people at this conference (thank you, Kristen and a few others, for being the exception), someone stated out loud that no young person could stand to attend something (often dull– my addition) as this was.  Exactly one solution was offered….let’s set up niffty interactive websites at sites where young people are active.  Since this is an older group whose members tend to be ignorant of technology,  this idea can take the form of “the answer” when nothing else seems possible.  Peacepays is a fine website, but it is not “the answer.”    My question — what do we offer after the website?  And just how great is that medium for us?  I am dubious about how well our peace message can ever compete on youth websites — it is not inherently well suited to the medium in the way that the U.S. Army has perhaps the world’s best hi-tech video games on their websites. How far can this approach take us — then what?

Our action needs to be “on the ground” and we offered not one stitch of that at this conference.  (more…)

July 6, 2008

July 4, 2008 — Peace is Patriotic

Filed under: Love,Politics — admin @ 5:48 pm

It’s 4th of July, and I have my peace flag flying as usual.  My most recent peace activities have focused on the Relgious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill and the 12th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Funds. Here also are some comments about my lovely and fascinating wife.

1. In late May I carried a Minute from Chester Quarterly Meeting to Interim Meeting of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting requesting that Philadelphia Yearly Meeting send a letter to all members of Congress asking for their support of the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill (currently H.R. 1921).  For those not familiar with Quaker lingo, the preceding sentence describes a process by which a large group of Quakers (more than 10,000 in PYM) reach unity on a decision (we don’t vote and don’t have representatives).  After some discussion at the Interim Meeting, PYM approved sending out such a letter in their name.  The Relgious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill would enable those conscientiously opposed to participation in war to pay their full taxes into a government fund that did not go to war-related purposes.  For many pacifists, paying for a gun for someone else is just as wrong as doing the killing yourself.  This puts such pacifists (myself included) in the quandry of either paying taxes for war or being civil disobedient by refusing to pay. The refused tax money is not retained but given away to charitable institutions. More information and links are available at my website www.peacefulways.com/   To read an informative draft of this letter, click Comment #1.

2. During May and June I have been working with regional Quakers (including PYM) to get their support for my attendance at the 12th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Funds, to be held in Manchester UK in early September.  I have attended these biennial conferences twice before and found them informative and practical.  Philadelphia Yearly Meeting agreed to Minute their support of my attendance at this conference and to pay my expenses.  For more information and to see my Minute, click on Comment #2.

3. This 4th of July weekend Fran and I went foraging in a nearby park along Darby Creek (there is also a prior post on this topic).  We had our milkweed peas last night (excellent) and spice bush tea and various other wild edibles.  We are getting more skilled at this (particularly Fran), and pictures are on line at sheldontimes. com.  Now when we go backpacking she is prepared to make fresh bread on the spot and cook it (something like pancakes) on a flat rock over a small flre, along with our foraged foods.  She never ceases to amaze me with her ideas and innovations.

4. About a month ago we attended a Memorial Service for the last relative of Fran’s mother’s generation.  The extended family was gathered, and I saw a chance (re my last comment in #3) to discover if Fran has always been as interesting and lively as she is now.  She always describes herself as being very shy and quiet most all of her life, and only starting to come out of her shell quite recently. This struck me as unlikedly, so I asked a number of her cousins about what she was like when younger.  They said “least shy of all…bubbly…striking… redhead…glamorous…just like she is now” and everything OPPOSITE of how she describes herself then.  I was not in the least surprised to hear this, but Fran was absolutely astonished.  Isn’t it interesting how others can know us and think about us in a way so different from how we know and think about ourselves?

June 20, 2008

Book Review on Quakers published in Journal for Peace & Justice Studies

Filed under: Religion — admin @ 10:16 am

Readers who would like some background information about Quakers might find helpful my review of Yount’s How the Quakers Invented America (published this month in the Journal for Peace & Justice Studies, v17, #1).  I  have copied it into Comments.

June 18, 2008

We got our economic stimulus check — sort of — well, some of it.

Filed under: Peace,Politics,Religion — admin @ 12:38 am

We recently recieved a check in the mail from the U.S. government.  Only it wasn’t for the amount that an earlier postcard had indicated.  Well, there was some small print that said it might be minus any amount that we owed the government.  As readers of this blog already know, we are pacifists and war tax resisters because we cannot in good conscience pay for training and arming others to kill in our name (search my blog for more on this).  So our check came up a few hundred dollars short of what was first promised. But this was no big surprise (sometimes they get the money, sometimes they don’t), and we follow our conscience in this not with certainty of the results (that is God’s will, not ours), but  certain that we can not willingly cooperate with something that we believe supports such an evil. Note that we have nothing against taxes per se and would gladly pay our full amount if we could be assured that none of it would go for war. You can be certain that we will continue to be war tax resisters.  We follow our conscience, not the calculations of the liklihood that government will or won’t get the money.

April 16, 2008

Recent Activities for Peace Tax Resistance and the Iraq War

Filed under: Peace,Politics — admin @ 11:08 pm

It’s been a busy week. On Sunday Fran and I were invited for brunch with a group of young people who are seriously commited to living the peace testimony (Circle of Hope Church, Shalom House), to discuss war tax resistance.  We had had a meeting previously. Two of them are prepared to be civil disobedient for the first time this year, as war tax resisters.  Another identifies himself as a war tax resister by living under the taxable income. On Tuesday April 15 I mailed our taxes, attaching our letter of explanation that for conscience’ sake we had not paid some of our taxes.  We had instead given that amount of refused tax to UNICEF for the children of the world.  Next, I distributed about 80 of WRL’s pie charts to tax payers in front of the Bryn Mawr Post Office.  The pie chart, based on published figures of the United States budget, shows how roughly half of the federal budget (our 1040 tax) is devoted to war and related military expenditures.  That same Tuesday afternoon the Republican candidate for President, Senator McCain, spoke at Villanova.  I and about ten other Villanovans for Peace held a very visible public demonstration as a few thousand students and townspeople passed directly in our path on their way to the Pavilion. That was the opportunity for me to distribute all my remaining pie charts. Later, I was interviewed by WFMZ (Allentown TV) and appeared briefly on their 10 pm news broadcast that night (click link for broadcast).  A good day. Last Tuesday we (Villanovans for Peace) sponsored the AFSC Boots display on campus. This display includes combat boots representing all the PA deaths in Iraq, as well as many large posters and informative handouts.  The display was set up in the middle of campus, and many students passed through it.    

Link to news video.

April 14, 2008

Civil disobedience and peaceful protest can change nations

Filed under: Peace,Politics — admin @ 11:25 am

The first two links below relate directly to the public protest on Rosenstrasse Street in 1943 Nazi Berlin. Nathan Stoltzfus has written a book about the demonstration, and it was also the subject of a recent movie.  There are also links below to material that describe another successful instance of peaceful resistance to the Nazi regime in WWII.  This relates to the unsuccessful attempt to organize the Norwegian educational system along Nazi lines.  There was mass non-cooperation and the Nazi government gave in.  Gene Sharp has written extensively about nonviolent resistance and non-cooperation as a practical approach for civilian defense.  In the way that he envisions this, it has never been tried.  Instances have always been quite spontaneous and poorly organized.  He suggests that we would need to spend billions of dollars (but still much less than we pay for war) and that many lives might well be lost (but still many fewer lives than would be lost in the war alternative) for the full implementation of such a plan.  So it is an imperfect solution, but so is war.

  

Public demonstration to successfully save Jewish husbands:

http://www.rinr.fsu.edu/fallwinter97/features/hitler.html

http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~rar4619/rosenstrasse.html

Material about successful resistance to Nazi plans for Norway’s school system is particularly relevant:   http://www.carolmoore.net/articles/nv-action-article.html    More instances of successful peace actions are in the links that follow:

http://www.peacepresence.org/readings/Victories.htm

http://www.answers.com/topic/nonviolent-resistance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_resistance

There are no guarantees with this peaceful approach, but neither are their guarantees with war.  And wars are getting progressively more destructive over the centuries.  People sometimes think I’m an optimist, but the opposite is more accurate.  If things continue as they are, WWIII would be inevitable at some point in time. I hardly expect to get a sudden influx of pacifists in this country or any other country (that’s neither a realistic hope for me nor a realistic fear for critics of this approach).  But if we could encourage a gradual de-escalation and recognize that peaceful people exist in all parts of the world (my parents had anti-Nazi peace-seeking German friends when they lived in Germany during my father’s graduate work there– that is a long and separate story), true peace might be achieved gradually.  This is not a certainty, but it is a possibility.  And I feel a certainty of WWIII as the eventual alternative, so I must pursue this possibility as the only hope.  We (or our offspring in the future) will see. 

 

April 10, 2008

The times, they are a’changin (Villanova included)

Filed under: General — admin @ 1:56 pm

The following is excerpted from an email I sent recently: 

I’m officially in the Psychology Department, but sometimes feel like I could be scattered various places among departments.  I got into the human senses area by taking all the basic science courses Tufts offered, plus some philosophy and engineering.  So my area of interest came naturally, because when I talk about vision for example, I describe the information transfer starting with (more…)

February 9, 2008

What Fourth Amendment?

Filed under: Politics — admin @ 12:35 am

An associate of mine, Nabila Mango, is an American citizen of Palestinian descent. Her problems began when she returned to San Francisco International Airport following a trip to Palestine. For more than an hour she was detained by federal agents who, without any reasonable cause, demanded details of people she had encountered and places she had gone in her three-week trip, the names and addresses of relatives in Jordan, and information about her U.S.-born adult daughter. They leafed through Arab-language books in her luggage, lost interest when they discovered the books were about music theory, and erased cell-phone messages from her daughter, who was waiting outside the airport.

Again, I am reminded of some of the stories my parents told me about Nazi Germany. Things are not as bad as they got there, but things were once much better there then they are here now. Links to articles in the news are below.

San Jose Mercury News

San Francisco Chronicle

February 1, 2008

All people deserve an opportunity for a healthy and productive life.

Filed under: Love,Politics,Religion — admin @ 4:07 pm

1. There is an undeniable value to every human life.

All war is a crime against human life.  “Human” life is defined by its distinctly human quality, and thus euthanasia and abortion are not acceptable if they destroy that human quality of life.

 2.  Every human life must be given adequate opportunity to develop.

Is it right that humans enter life with vastly different opportunities before them? Some are born rich, some poor. All humans have a right to personal property, a private life, safety, education, and health care. Once these needs have been met for all, those who have earned additional goods justly can be deserving of them. Humans are not equal but vary greatly in traits and talents; all must be given sufficient opportunity to develop their unique talents.  It is natural that results will vary greatly, with some being more successful than others. There continues to be a basic value and protection of every human life, including those lives which are less successful. Inherited wealth, passed from those who are dead to the living who have not earned it, is a crime against the values of a just society. Property that is strictly personal property can be inherited.

3. The natural world is a gift to all humanity and thus individual humans cannot “own” it, to do with as they wish.

Humans cannot own or inherit the natural world. It is a gift we neither earned nor did anything to deserve. Individual humans cannot control the use of the water or the air or the land. Accumulations of land, minerals, forests, water and their immediate derivatives, beyond what is sufficient for one’s personal needs, is a crime against humanity and nature. All living things must be given their due respect.

These three basic values are a vision for the future and not a political or sociological blueprint for how they might occur. Human values require that we look ahead not in terms of years or decades or even lifetimes, but for centuries.

 

January 30, 2008

Unjust War and St. Augustine

Filed under: Peace,Religion — admin @ 11:34 pm

Most people associate Unjust War Theory with Aquinas, but Christian thinking on this issue originated much earlier with St. Augustine. The current Iraq War is clearly unjust according to principles espoused by Aquinas and other Unjust War theorists such as Grotius. But what would Augustine have to say today?  Although we cannot directly query him on the Iraq War today, his principles were meant to be timeless. When we see the vengence (e.g., execution of Saddam Hussein and threats of revenge on Osama Bin Laden) and lies (e.g., WMD) that characterize the current war, the war clearly does not represent a “benevolent severity” motivated by the “caritas” that Augustine requires. Nor was it ever declared by the proper authority, which is not a Bush “monarch” but our Constitution that requires that only Congress can declare war. All of the following text is taken directly from the references cited in parentheses: (more…)

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