Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts

Saturday, May 9, 2015

Mother's Day for Peace

This year, Brave New Foundation is remembering and honoring the origins of Mother's Day in this short online video (HERE).  "Through the power of compassion and womanhood, we hope to work towards peace."

Embedded below, or watch it HERE.

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Saturday, February 21, 2015

The Kind Of Missionary The World Most Desperately Needs

I certainly don't agree with everything I've read by Benjamin L. Corey, but there is much truth in this post.

The Kind Of Missionary The World Most Desperately Needs

America - Christian Missionary - 17th centuryEver since I was a kid, I’ve been a lover of all things related to missions. Peering into the window of missionary life was perhaps one of the first things I remember of my childhood that completely fascinated me- while regular weekly sermons may have been boring to sit through, never once was I anything other that completely engaged when a foreign missionary came to speak. The world of missions for me came to embrace the best of everything that makes my heart tick: Jesus, theology, other people, travel, and experiencing different cultures. It is certainly no surprise that all these years later, this precise area of theology is what I would get my doctorate in. I love missions.
When one is studying missions for the purpose of being a practitioner in the field, one of the first things a person must decide is what “people group” God is calling them to. Determining a people group is crucially important because this will determine the course of the rest of one’s studies and preparations for becoming a missionary. A missionary can’t simply show up in the field one day and expect to be successful– one must first learn and study everything about the “people group” and culture they are called to, first. This process can actually take years for some, because it would also include difficult aspects such as language fluency and the like. However, when one is done with the hard preparation, they’re usually sent off with some bare essentials to begin learning a new culture and finding ways to inject the teachings of Jesus into that culture.
When talking with missionaries, I’ve often found them describing their particular calling in one of two ways: often they’ll either say, “God caused me to fall in love with this culture/people group” or, “God just really broke my heart for this culture/people group.” With the latter description, the missionary has often noticed something desperately broken in a particular culture that screams out the need for the teachings of Jesus, and the need becomes so glaringly obvious that it almost becomes gut-wrenching to look at those needs without doing something about it.
Lately I’ve been having one of those moments in life where my heart is broken and grieved over a people group who desperately need to hear the message of Jesus, in order that it might change their hearts and culture. It is a people group we have historically failed to send missionaries to, we have neglected, and through nominal encounters with Jesus, they have grown to feel inoculated- falsely believing they are no longer in need of the one who alone can radically reshape and renew us.
The kind of missionary the world most desperately needs are missionaries who are sent to introduce the message of Jesus to one of the last unreached people groups: Americanized Christians.
Christianity in so many parts of America has been blended together with American, nationalistic culture to the point that the Jesus many believe they are following is just a false American caricature of the real thing. In many ways, the tradition of Jesus has become a civil religion that is able to exist in complete harmony with American ideals instead of being something that was designed to turn culture on its head– showing those within culture a totally different way of living and being.
This week my heart feels particularly broken for this obviously unreached people group. Case in point: I issued a call to love our Muslim neighbors in our communities– loving neighbors being what Jesus called the second greatest commandment– and it was met with outright hostility, and even calls for acts of violence against Muslims. One Christian minister said that telling people to love their Muslim neighbors was a “slap in the face” and that we should do no such thing. Others said it is impossible to exist with Muslim neighbors. And, even some “Christians” said that the only approach to Muslims is to kill them before they kill us.
Or, there’s the response I get when I suggest that we should actually love our enemies (a core aspect of the message and life of Jesus): outright disgust, and immediately objections that surely, Jesus didn’t really mean that.
Better yet, there’s the times when I suggest that Jesus invites us to give our loyalty to God’s Kingdom instead of earthly nations, and the Christian response is quite predictable. “Go somewhere else” I’m often told, or as one internet commenter said recently, I’d do better to just “shut my mouth and pay homage to our soldiers.”
Day in and day out, I am faced with the heartbreaking reality that perhaps the last unreached people group has been sitting right in our very pews– those who have succumbed to an Americanized, civil religion, that is only loosely based on Jesus.
And so, the kind of missionary the world most desperately needs is the missionary who is dedicated to introducing American Christians to the message of Jesus.
It is a beautiful message.
A counter-cultural message.
A message of hope, transformation, and healing.
But, it is also a costly message- one that invites us to deny ourselves, and to follow in the footsteps of one who willingly died for his enemies.
And this message is precisely the one this last, unreached people group, desperately need to hear.
I hope you’ll join me– right from where you are– in becoming a missionary dedicated to evangelizing Americanized Christians with the radical, countercultural message of Jesus– because that’s the kind of missionary the world most desperately needs.



Thursday, February 12, 2015

Is it ever moral to desert?

My old friends know that I used to think like they do....so there is really nothing for me to consider when it comes to their view point...what grieves me is that (for the most part – I'm not going to lump all my friends together) they won't stop to examine or consider my point of view.   Maybe I have learned something that they haven't, maybe I can see a bigger picture they can't yet.  Maybe my eyes and heart are open to seeing that the Emperor is wearing no clothes. I'm not taking any credit. I know that only God opens eyes. Indeed it is a grave thing to be burdened by so much knowledge. The grief of knowing - the grief of others not seeing - it's all too much sometimes...

The photo that started it all.


We may never know the entire truth about this particular case (Sgt Bowe Bergdahl). The real issue it whether it's moral/just/right for someone to desert (break a contract) when they discover they have been lied to and are merely pawns/cannon fodder for the multi-national corporate interests/global elite. When they discover their mission is protecting poppy fields or territory for oil pipelines or rich mining resources. Or toppling a leader so a more “favorable one” (to US interests) can be installed.

22 suicides per day according to official records, 800,000 plus vets are homeless, how many can't live with themselves for the atrocities they committed or enable others to? Not to mention the fact that they are guinea pigs for pharmaceutical companies! God only knows how many lives and families are ruined as a result.



When did it become “okay” for a “christian nation” and flag waving church goers to champion invasion, death, destruction, plundering, genocide even - all in the name of “patriotism” or rather “nationalism” (expansion/exceptionalism, imperialism)?

Take a look at the history of America from sources beyond the approved government texts. Look at the history from victims' narrative instead of the victor's. When you realize what the Fed Govt of these United States has done over and over again you will never again believe official sources, official news stories coming from the “ministry of truth” and their approved outlets of propaganda – fear mongering, war mongering, fanning the fires of hate, prejudice, distracting, dividing, creating enemies so they can justify and gain support for the latest invasion - annihilation - destruction. It's the same play book they've used for years.

Why do people still believe it? Keep falling for it?

Because if you tell a lie often enough it becomes “truth” - quoting Goebbels. Because if you control the mainstream news outlets and have agents as “journalists” you control what people see, think and “know” - because you can plant disinformation and set up kooks in alternative news outlets to discredit sources outside the mainstream propaganda. When the same corporations who report the news also profit from the perpetual “war on terror” you won't hear the real story. Why would they report something that harms their bottom line? I've read that all mainstream media is controlled by just SIX corporations. You won't get “fair and balanced” from any of them. Just slightly different flavors of left or right and an illusion of any real difference between them!

Because people for the most part are comfortable and don't want their ideas, their beliefs challenged. I know I didn't! It's too much to even consider – that most everything we've been told and learned is fiction or that our tax money pays for CIA covert ops, coups, regime change, assassinations, terror cells, false flags, plundering for the multinational corporations, which ALL result in BLOWBACK. 

The enemies are created for a reason...perpetual war, control of resources, depopulation and billions in profits for military industrial complex, oil companies, those in power, etc. etc.


Sunday, May 13, 2012

Mother's Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe, 1870


This Mother's Day, we honor all mothers affected by war, in particular those who have suffered the ultimate loss of a child from war. These days, we must count the losses of our soldiers killed in action, but also those who die by their own hands both on and off the battelfield, as military suicides now exceed the number of combat deaths.
IVAW is focused on ending the Afghanistan War, and our Operation Recovery Campaign is working to end the deployment of traumatized troops and fighting for service members' right to heal from war so no more mothers have to experience the losing a child to war.
Today, we honor the origins of Mother's Day as an international call to end all wars.
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 This year, Brave New Foundation is remembering and honoring the origins of Mother's Day in this short online video (HERE).  Through the power of compassion and womanhood, we hope to work towards peace.
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Mother's Day Proclamation

by Julia Ward Howe, 1870

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice." Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means Whereby the great human family can live in peace, Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask That a general congress of women without limit of nationality May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient And at the earliest period consistent with its objects, To promote the alliance of the different nationalities, The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
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In Solidarity,
Iraq Veterans Against the War
Afghanistan Veterans Against the War Committee

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Gulf War Syndrome

Click here for the free documentary.

After the Vietnam War, hundreds of thousands of U.S. veterans suffered toxic reactions, neurological damage, and rare cancers due to exposure to 2,4,5,-D and 2,4,5-T dioxin that was used in the form of the defoliant Agent Orange. Unfortunately, the U.S. military denied the problem and failed to heed any of the lessons of this chemical butchery. Instead, it expanded its harmful legacy to the current generation of soldiers and civilians exposed to new, more deadly chemical toxins in the Persian Gulf.

Join accomplished filmmaker Gary Null, PhD, as he explores the real truth about Gulf War Syndrome and the secrets about chemical and germ warfare that the U.S. government is hiding from its veterans and the public. Dr. Null uncovers the hidden truths about Gulf War Syndrome, including the deadly and toxic effects of armor-piercing radioactive depleted uranium, the use of experimental and risky vaccines on over 1,100,000 U.S. troops, and the indescribable chemical contamination and environmental devastation that the military caused during the Persian Gulf Wars.

In this film, Dr. Null relies on compelling testimony from eyewitnesses who served in the military, leading doctors and scientists who specialize in chemical exposure, and those veterans still suffering from the effects of their tours of duty.

Monday, March 12, 2012

A guest post (2)

Another Post written by my daughter. Original post here.
~Debbie

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Have you ever thought much about the Japanese Internment (Concentration) Camps?

Section 1 of the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws..."

We just threw that out the window, the government had no respect of persons. Some will try to tell you that "we did it for their own safety" - but that's just not true. If it were true, things would have been done a lot differently.

Japanese Americans video part 1

And Japanese Internment:


(Look around on YouTube, there's lots more...)

This photo was taken by Dorothea Lange, (found here) "...Through her work with farm families and migrant workers during the Great Depression, photographer Dorothea Lange was familiar with images of displacement. But, when she was hired by the War Relocation Authority to document life in Japanese neighborhoods, processing centers, and camp facilities, the racial and civil rights issues added a new dimension. “What was horrifying was to do this thing completely on the basis of what blood may be coursing through a person’s veins, nothing else. Nothing to do with your affiliations or friendships or associations. Just blood,” Lange said. As the Library of Congress wrote, “Lange quickly found herself at odds with her employer and her subjects’ persecutors, the United States Government.”..."

10 min. Documentary:


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Photo Title: "Oakland, Calif., Mar. 1942. A large sign reading "I am an American" placed in the window of a store, at 13th and Franklin streets, on December 8, the day after Pearl Harbor. The store was closed following orders to persons of Japanese descent to evacuate from certain West Coast areas. The owner, a University of California graduate, will be housed with hundreds of evacuees in War Relocation Authority centers for the duration of the war."

Or so they said...did you know that we shot people who got "too close to the fence"? And after the war was over, we did not necessarily send/take people home again- we shipped some of them to strange foreign countries. (The "Institute of Texan Cultures" in San Antonino, Texas has a really good section about this very topic. It is a great (& large) museum, you should go if you are in the area.) ...I wonder if this family did get to go back...?

"...what corporate media tends to omit is that the U.S. fought that war against racism with a segregated army. It fought the war to end atrocities by participating in the shooting of surrendering soldiers, the starvation of POWs, the deliberate bombing of civilians, wiping out hospitals, strafing lifeboats... And Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the leader of this anti-racist, anti-atrocity force, signed Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, interning over 100,000 Japanese-Americans without due process. Thus, in the name of taking on the architects of German prison camps he became the architect of American prison camps...." (source)

I pray that our nation will wake up, and never make that mistake again. Fred Korematsu was a young man of 23, who tried to stand up for his rights....

A message from Mr. Korematsu's daughter:


Click here to watch the trailer for the documentary "Of Civil Wrongs and Rights"
(A film by Eric Fournier. The award-winning documentary that tells the story of Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American man who resisted internment, eventually facing (and losing in) the Supreme Court. For more information about Fred Korematsu and his struggle for civil rights, see http://korematsuinstitute.org) On June 12, 1942 Korematsu had his trial date and was given $5,000 bail (that comes to $71,120.16 today). Can you believe that?!? Click here to read Fred's full bio.
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Martin Niemöller said:
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

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And I say, what are you going to do if they (or your own government) come for your neighbors?
Who did Jesus say are our neighbors?
We are ALL neighbors....the Indians, Africans, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Mexicans, North & South Koreans, Germans, Oklahomans & Texans, People from Lone Oak & Campbell...and the list goes on...never, never ending...

People say we are a "Christian nation", but do we behave like one?
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Adrienne McKee (my blog can be found here)

Monday, March 5, 2012

A guest post

My daughter wrote the post below and I thought I'd share it. Great job, honey! When I first read about this event a few years ago it really opened my eyes. Reading War is a Racket by Major General Smedley Butler is another eye-opener (click this link to read it online).
~Debbie

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I am going to talk about The Bonus Army, otherwise known as "Bonus Marchers". This incident started in early 1932, and ended in July of '32. I know that this is not a very happy tale, but I think that we would do well to look into the past and see how our government treated our Veterans and their families. After the initial atrocities, the Vets were sent down to the Florida Keys in 1935 to work on the "Overseas Highway Project" (click here) - just in time for a really bad hurricane- a lot of them died.
This is the first article that I read on the subject, 5 or so years ago. If you look at nothing else here, please read it! click here (I don't remember how I knew about the marchers in the first place.)
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Click here to watch a 52second (silent) News Reel, of the marchers coming into Washington DC.
Click here to watch a short "talky" News Reel with an interview blip from an eye witness reporter.

This next one is a collection of photos set to Al Jolson's "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?"
embedded video:


And this last video "The World War I Bonus Army And My Dad" was neat. Click here to watch.

"Bonus Marchers" and police battle in Washington, DC.
By an unknown Associated Press photographer, July 1932

National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer
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Please go "Google"/search or YouTube Bonus Marchers or Bonus Army. (did you know in 2009 there were 106,558 homeless veterans? click here for charts or here for an article Just imagine how many more there are today, as the US economy so much worse now. Sad- really sad.

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Can you really blame these men for making their voices heard? Can you imagine the despair they felt? In 2010 alone, 950 solders/veterans tried to commit suicide per-month, and 18 a day actually are "successful".
I quote from an ArmyTimes article: "Troubling new data show there are an average of 950 suicide attempts each month by veterans who are receiving some type of treatment from the Veterans Affairs Department. Seven percent of the attempts are successful, and 11 percent of those who don’t succeed on the first attempt try again within nine months. The numbers, which come at a time when VA is strengthening its suicide prevention programs, show about 18 veteran suicides a day, about five by veterans who are receiving VA care...the VA’s suicide hotline has been receiving about 10,000 calls a month from current and former service members..." click here for the rest of the story....
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Needless to say, this subject is very hard for me to think about, I feel weak and like I have a stifling 100# weight on my chest....it makes me so sad. I don't really know what to do about it, except to try and raise public awareness. I know that simply throwing money at a problem does not help much. And you can imagine that I don't think much of Douglas MacArthur,
George Patton, Dwight Eisenhower or President Hoover.
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~Adrienne McKee (my blog can be found here)
PS: Thank you Mom for helping me research my data! Love you!

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Monday, February 20, 2012

Judge Andrew Napolitano - 1

It's too bad that FOX took the Judge off the air, but I must say I am not surprised.
I am more surprised that they let him stay on for so long...

Judge Andrew Napolitano: What if Both Parties are the Same?


Thursday, October 20, 2011

Protect our Liberty


"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers.
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."


-- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
US Supreme Court Judge
Source: Justice Louis D. Brandeis, dissenting, Olmstead v. United States,
277 US 479 (1928)


To see comments on this quote, please visit:
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Louis.Brandeis.Quote.CDBD

To read a bit about him:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Louis_Brandeis

Monday, September 5, 2011

Tyrannical Power is Absolute.....


"[Tyrannical] power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild. It would
be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to
prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in
perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice,
provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a
government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only
arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and
supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their
principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property,
and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care
of thinking and all the trouble of living?"
-- Alexis de Tocqueville
[Alexis Charles Henri Maurice Clerel, le Comte de Tocqueville] (1805-1859) French historian
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Alexis.de.Tocqueville.Quote.62D1

Thursday, August 25, 2011

When Martin Luther King Reached the Point of No Return


shorter version here

original post here

By John W. Whitehead
8/25/2011

"I have begun the struggle and I can't turn back. I have reached the point of no return."--Martin Luther King Jr.
The official dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial is scheduled to take place on Sunday, August 28th, the 48th anniversary of King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech. If anyone deserves a national monument in his honor, it would certainly be Martin Luther King Jr., a man who inspired countless Americans, including myself, to take a stand against injustice.

King was an amazing individual: courageous, passionate about freedom, willing to tackle large-scale issues (such as materialism, militarism and the Vietnam War), and relentless in his pursuit of justice--he stood his ground, even in the face of death threats and opposition from friends and associates. A warrior and a visionary, King saw first-hand what tyranny looked like and worked tirelessly to oppose it. As King observed, "The universe is on the side of justice."

King's journey to the "mountaintop," as he put it, began with a boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. City officials had done everything possible to stem the boycott of their segregated bus system by the black citizens of Montgomery. Inevitably, the city resorted to what had always worked in the past: the use of police power.

The date was January 26, 1956. It was in the afternoon, and the young minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, was on his way home with two fellow church members. The acknowledged leader of the highly controversial boycott, he was put on notice to follow the traffic laws meticulously. There was no reason to make himself an easy target for arrest. But, as fate would have it, the police targeted the young minister, and he was arrested: "Get out King; you are under arrest for speeding thirty miles an hour in a twenty-five mile zone."

Thus began Martin Luther King Jr.'s journey toward jail. The moment of truth, however, had arrived for the young minister. Warned that he could be made to disappear by the authorities, fear began to grip King. As he writes:
As we drove off, presumably to the city jail, a feeling of panic began to come over me. I had always had the impression that the jail was in the downtown section of Montgomery. Yet after riding for a while I noticed that we were going in a different direction. The more we rode the farther we were from the center of town. In a few minutes we turned into a dark and dingy street that I had never seen and headed under a desolate old bridge. By this time I was convinced that these men were carrying me to some faraway spot to dump me off. "But this couldn't be," I said to myself. "These men are officers of the law." Then I began to wonder whether they were driving me out to some waiting mob, planning to use the excuse later on that they had been overpowered. I found myself trembling within and without. Silently, I asked God to give me the strength to endure whatever came.
This was at the height of segregation in the American system. It was a time where, when blacks got out of line, at a minimum they faced jail time. Only a month earlier, Rosa Parks, a seamstress, had refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white man. This violation of the segregation law brought a swift arrest.

But King by now was the troublemaker. Cut off the head and the movement dies. This King knew. That is why he began to panic as his ride with the police continued:
By this time we were passing under the bridge. I was sure now that I was going to meet my fateful hour on the other side. But as I looked up I noticed a glaring light in the distance, and soon I saw the words "Montgomery City Jail." I was so relieved that it was some time before I realized the irony of my position: going to jail at that moment seemed like going to some safe haven!
As the jail doors slammed shut behind King, he felt a strong inner peace: "For the moment strange gusts of emotion swept through me like cold winds on an open prairie. For the first time in my life I had been thrown behind bars."

Soon King's bail was posted and King was free to leave. But King's rendezvous with jail cells was just beginning. More importantly, the movement that began in Montgomery was moving beyond state borders. A nationwide movement with a capital M was in process. This made King even more of a target.

Several weeks later, King happened to be in Nashville giving a lecture when he learned that he, with others, had been indicted by a grand jury for violating Montgomery's segregation laws. He immediately booked a flight home, stopping over to see his father in Atlanta. Martin Luther King Sr. recognized that a new scenario had developed. The threat was no longer jail time. It was death. "My father, so unafraid for himself," writes King, "had fallen into a constant state of terror for me and my family."

Earlier, King's home in Montgomery had been bombed and the police were watching his every move. After the bombing, King's mother had taken to bed under doctor's orders. King's father brought some of Atlanta's leading citizens into his home to speak with his son about the dangers of returning to Montgomery. But King knew that often courage in the face of tyranny is all that the oppressed have at their disposal. It was time, as King said, to take a stand. As he told those assembled:
My friends and associates are being arrested. It would be the height of cowardice for me to stay away. I would rather be in jail ten years than desert my people now. I have begun the struggle, and I can't turn back. I have reached the point of no return.
Upon arrival in Montgomery, King headed for jail to discover that the others indicted with King had the day before surrendered for arrest. "A once fear-ridden people had been transformed. Those who had previously trembled before the law were now proud to be arrested for the cause of freedom."

Against incredible odds, the blacks of Montgomery won the right to be treated equally on the city's buses. Soon, the movement took on amazing proportions which would compel a government that refused to hear their pleas to listen and heed their demands. But not a shot was fired by the blacks of Montgomery. Led by a man who believed in nonviolent resistance to government oppression--a man who believed that governments must listen to and heed our demands, these brave people would soon transform the face of America.

Few suspected that King's voice would be prematurely silenced, but King knew his days were numbered. He knew there was a larger force at work in his life. And that's how he concluded his sermon--the last words he spoke in public:
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
Forty-three years after King's assassination, our nation is still plagued with wars, government surveillance and a military-industrial complex that feeds a national diet of warmongering. And King, once a charismatic leader and voice of authority, has been memorialized in death to such an extent that younger generations recognize his face but miss out on his message. Yet he still speaks volumes to us today.

"Speaking truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act," George Orwell once said. Such was Martin Luther King. They may have killed the man, but his spirit of truth lives on. We would do well to learn from him how to speak truth to power.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

THE GENERAL'S SON

Miko Peled is a peace activist who dares to say in public what others still choose to deny. Born in Jerusalem in 1961 into a well known Zionist family, his grandfather, Dr. Avraham Katsnelson was a Zionist leader and signer of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. His Father, Matti Peled, was a young officer in the war of 1948 and a general in the war of 1967 when Israel conquered the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and Sinai. Miko's unlikely opinions reflect his father's legacy. General Peled was a war hero turned peacemaker.



From the end: ".....For those people who do want to associate themselves with Israel and Zionism and drape themselves in the Zionist flag, the flag that has come to represent intolerance, hate, racism, and brutality, they can feel free to do so, but they need to know this, that when the trials begin and the tribunals take their place and the Truth and Reconciliation commission begins its work and they are finally shamed into admitting that they were wrong, they need to remember to go down on their knees and beg forgiveness from the people they so blatantly wronged because they need to realize that we will never forget them and their conscience will never allow them to forget that they supported the killing, they draped themselves in the flag and they mocked the bereaved....the rest of us will move on and.....we will go on to create a democratic secular state in our shared homeland where Muslims, Christians and Jews live as equals......"