Quaker Meeting--a huge sign: “Meeting…for the torturers and the tortured.”

With so many humans opposed and hostile to each other in the U.S.:
Conservatives versus Liberals,
Republicans versus Democrats,
Muslims versus Christians
Atheists versus Theists,

AND AROUND THE WORLD:
Russia versus Ukraine,
Palestine versus Israel,
Spain versus Catalonia,
India versus Pakistan,
Syria versus Sunni Fundamentalists,
endlessly...

HOW CAN HOPE AND PEACE TAKE PLACE?

The beginning for peace-activist Gene Knudsen Hoffman of a transforming, life-changing experience hope came about this way:
FROM a powerful article at
https://newconversations.net/communication-skills-library-of-articles-and-teaching-materials/gene-knudsen-hoffman-articles/compassionate-listening-first-step-to-reconciliation/

After seeing a huge sign in front of a Quaker Meeting: "MEETING FOR WORSHIP FOR THE TORTURERS AND THE TORTURED"

GENE KNUDSEN HOFFMAN: “I was on a world tour of peace centers...
I’d long known I should listen to the tortured
but listen to
the torturers?

“I’d never thought of that.

“I began wrestling with the idea that I should listen to both sides of any conflict and when I arrived in Israel I began listening to Israelis and Palestinians. I found it changed my perspectives on each. I began to practice it everywhere I went.
-
“Reconciliation is the most difficult of peace processes because it requires the resumption of relationship between those in conflict. It means the coming together in harmony of those who have been sundered.

“My sense is that if we would reconcile, we must make radically new responses to the radically new situation in a world where violence is mindless, hopeless, meaningless and so many nations have nuclear weapons…

“We peace people have always listened to the oppressed and disenfranchised. That’s very important. One of the new steps I think we should take is to listen to those we consider ‘the enemy’ with the same openness, non-judgment, and compassion we bring to those with whom our sympathies lie.

--
“In 1989 my work-focus became the Middle East, and in that year a small group of us from the Fellowship of Reconciliation went to Libya to listen to the Libyans after we’d bombed Libya twice, first to kill Khadaffi and second after we’d downed two Libyan planes over Libya. We knew our governments’ side and we wanted to hear the other. We did.

“After ten days in Tripoli, as guests of the Libyan government, we learned a lot. We met with Libyan leaders, professors, government members, religious representatives.
--
“Our government wouldn’t listen to us, since we’d gone there illegally. So we wrote our articles, spoke publicly where we could and were considered ‘dangerous.’

“My next efforts were on my own. Between 1989 and 1996, I went to Israel and Palestine some seven times to listen to both sides. I listened to Israeli psychiatrists, Settlers, government members, peace people, writers, publishers and plain people.

"In the West Bank, since I stayed in Palestinian homes, I had more opportunity to listen to the people: refugees, families, parents whose sons had been killed, some of their sons who hadn’t, academics, peace leaders, and twice I met with Yassir Arafat. Out of those experiences came Pax Christi’s Just World book of 1991 called Pieces of the Mideast Puzzle.
--
“Now we are preparing for our first formal Compassionate Listening delegation, which will bring Rabbis and Jewish community leaders to listen deeply to Israelis and Palestinians representing all sides of the conflict.

"Compassionate Listening is adaptable to any conflict. The listening requires a particular attitude. It is non-judgmental, non-adversarial, and seeks the truth of the person questioned. It also seeks to see through any masks of hostility and fear to the sacredness of the individual and to discern the wounds suffered by all parties.

“Listeners do not defend themselves, but accept what others say as their perceptions. By listening they validate the others’ right to those perceptions.

“I’m not talking about listening with the ‘human ear.’ I am talking about discerning. To discern means to perceive some thing hidden or obscure. We must listen with our ‘spiritual ear.’ This is very different from deciding in advance who is right and who is wrong, and then seeking to rectify it. And, it’s very hard to listen to people whom I feel are misleading, if not lying. Hard to listen to such different memories of the same event – hard!

“Here are two definitions of reconciliation we use. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese teacher, peace-maker, and poet, describes it as “understanding both sides.”

“Adam Curie, senior Quaker mediator from England, says “We must work for harmony wherever we are, to bring together what is sundered by fear, hatred, resentment, injustice, or any other conditions which divide us.
--
“…Thich Nhat Hanh asks this of us: “In South Africa the black people suffer enormously, but the white people also suffer. If we take one side, we cannot fulfill our task of reconciliation. Can you be in touch with both sides, understanding the suffering and fears of each, telling each side about the other? Can you understand deeply the suffering of both sides?”
Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace, Parallax Press, 1988

"Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person. You can call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart...

"Because you know that listening like that, you give that person a chance to suffer less. If you want to help him to correct his perception, you wait for another time...You just listen with compassion and help him to suffer less. One hour like that can bring transformation and healing."
Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace
--
“Finally, I treasure this quotation from the poet Longfellow: “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each person’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”6
Gene Knudsen Hoffman
____________________________

Gene Knudsen Hoffman expands on this theme in her 1995 Pendle Hill Pamphlet: No Royal Road to Reconciliation. (Pendle Hill, Wallingford, Pa.)

READ the rest at https://newconversations.net/…/compassionate-listening-fir…/

Also, check out her site at
https://www.compassionatelistening.org/

“Compassionate Listening is

A personal practice – to cultivate inner strength, self awareness, self regulation and wisdom

A skill set – to enhance interpersonal relations and navigate challenging conversation

A process – to bring individuals or groups together to bridge their differences and transform conflict

A healing gift – to offer a compassionate listening session to a person who feels marginalized or in pain”
--

In the Light of Listening, Caring, and Working for the True and Good,

Daniel Wilcox

Part 2: Soldier War Versus Mass Slaughter of Civilians

Despite the horrific and tragic news which assaults us humans every day and long into the despairing night, we need to keep in mind great statements of ethical leaders such as this:
"...refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history.
...refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him."

For Christian, Muslim, and secular leaders are blaring out real threats (and spending multi-trillions of dollars on weapons). Their volatile statements sound like this:
We intentionally plan to torture and murder millions to assure "peace."

The Great War, the 30 Years War, the Crusades, ad nauseum, show that planning and building for war eventually leads to horrific wars mostly fought by dutiful individuals of differing countries.

And that soldiers fighting, tragically, eventually leads to the murder of many civilians.

AGAIN, a central maxim: Not only is the action of intentionally killing civilians horrifically immoral, EVEN THE INTENT to destroy, torture, slaughter, steal, abuse is evil.

For instance, imagine a neighbor who has been threatened by another neighbor. Then the threatened man stockpiles his house with bombs and other weapons and overtly threatens to kill his bad neighbor and all of the latter's family and all of their extended relatives, and everyone near them!

Does this sound like an ethical policy?

Nuclear weapons are the very real threat--terrorism to the max--for the purpose of mass slaughter. A threat is only a threat if it is real and probable.

If a nation threatens to rape all the children of another nation, its threat has to be real, or it won't be threatening.

Since the U.S. has already dropped nukes on hundreds of thousands of civilians, including over an elementary school, wiping about 200,000 civilians,
and since many, probably most, Americans still think the U.S. is always right,
and they still think that America is "blessed" to have many thousands of nuclear weapons,
it seems to me, that eventually the U.S.
if it ever gets desperate will, again, slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians.

The ONLY reason the U.S. condemns HAMAS and other "terrorist" groups for their terrorism is because we disagree with their aims, and because we are strong enough that we don't think we need small acts of terrorism ourselves.

Remember the keen slogan: A "terrorist" setting off a bomb is a soldier of a nation that doesn't have an air force.

Nations slaughter far more when they bomb than any walking or driving Islamic jihadist ever has.

If a new situation came up, where the U.S. was an underdog, it appears likely that the U.S. would again justify the slaughter of untold civilians. Some U.S. leaders have already threatened to do so to Iran!

See, it's like torture. The U.S. tortures BUT it doesn't call it torture, because it's only "torture" when the enemy does it;
when we do such actions,
it's justice.

Good grief.

When our enemies kill civilians they are terrorists, but when we kill civilians we are are heroic leaders defending our country.

As a follower of of Martin Luther King, Thich Nhat Hanh, etc., I oppose all wars, but I still do recognize that we humans, for whatever reason, no matter how cultured and how educated still,
in every generation, do descend into wars, always justifying them...

And that we think the wars are always the enemy's fault, never ours...

SO I do recognize that given the extreme selfish, hypocritical nature of nations (group egotism),
there will, probably, always be a national DEFENSE.

But that OUGHT to be soldier-against-soldier, NOT the intentional killing of civilians.

If Muslim-Christian soldiers aim their guns at Jewish soldiers, then Jewish soldiers have the right to defend themselves and their nation. And vice versa.

That is entirely different from weapons of mass destruction, which are primarily for threatening and executing of millions.

Hopefully, WMD will never be used again. But I guess I am pessimistic, especially now that another arms race appears to be starting.

Humans almost always use the weapons they have created because they think that they are the "good guys," ALWAYS.
Especially if they are the underdog.

Stand against this coming unethical darkness,

Daniel Wilcox

The New U.S. Plan for More Nuclear Weapons versus Reconciliation

"North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the 'Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.' Will someone from his
depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!"
--President Donald J. Trump, January 2, 2018

and

“My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before. Hopefully we will never have to use this power, but there will never be a time that we are not the most powerful nation in the world!”

“The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”

“Perhaps someday in the future there will be a magical moment when the countries of the world will get together to eliminate their nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, we are not there yet.”

"'America First' will be the major and overriding theme..."
--President Trump

VERSUS

"A nation that continues year after year, to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift, is approaching spiritual death."
--MLK

--

YET, even without President Trump's new trillions on war-making, the U.S. already has the ability to damage civilian structures greater than all the way around the earth, 48,269 km!!

Nations in the "Nuclear Club" already have enough weapons to annihilate all humans living:-(

Tragically, former President Obama also started an update of our nuclear arsenal--that will cost, eventually, at least 1 trillion dollars!

And some Congressmen and Senators have also called for the possible use of nuclear arms, particularly against Iran.

Here we go with a new nuclear arms race:-(

“The new arms race has already begun,” says former Defense Secretary William Perry. “It’s different in nature than the one during the Cold War, which focused on quantity and two superpowers producing absurd numbers of weapons. Today it is focused on quality and involves several nations instead of just two. The risk for nuclear conflict today is higher than it was during the Cold War.”
--Time Magazine

Of course, in some ways nuclear arms are no more lethal when they hit their targets than any other major bombs. Major regular fire-bombing campaigns of the past killed MANY MILLIONS of civilians.

BUT nuclear weapons of the present, bomb for bomb, will slaughter far more than conventional bombs. And the newer ones will destroy a much larger area, will turn civilization to ash, reduce cities to moonscape.
--
from The Washington Post:
"Every president since Reagan has worked to reduce the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and dreamed of a world free from nuclear weapons. Not Trump. 'Perhaps someday in the future there will be a magical moment when the countries of the world will get together to eliminate their nuclear weapons," he said. “Unfortunately, we are not there yet.” He proposed more spending to “modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal.”
--Washington Post
James Hohmann
--

from Time Magazine:
"In addition to putting the Nevada testing ground on notice, he has signed off on a $1.2 trillion plan to overhaul the entire nuclear-weapons complex. Trump has authorized a new nuclear warhead, the first in 34 years. He is funding research and development on a mobile medium-range missile. The new weapon, if tested or deployed, would be prohibited by a 30-year-old Cold War nuclear-forces agreement with Russia (which has already violated the agreement). And for the first time, the U.S. is expanding the scenarios under which the President would consider going nuclear to “significant non-nuclear strategic attacks,” including major cyberattacks."

"Trump has openly threatened to unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” and has been hostile toward international agreements. He reportedly called for more, not fewer, nuclear weapons in a July 20 Pentagon briefing, where military advisers were upbraided for presenting global reductions in nuclear stockpiles as progress."

“The long-standing strategic policy of the United States has been to reduce the role and number of nuclear weapons,” says Andrew Weber, who spent 30 years on nuclear-weapons issues in the State and Defense departments before retiring in 2015. “That idea seems to have been balled up and thrown out the window.”
http://time.com/5128394/donald-trump-nuclear-poker/
W.J. Hennigan

From The New York Times:
"The United States currently has about 7,000 nuclear weapons in the stockpile, including about 1,750 strategic warheads deployed in missile silos, on bombers and in submarines around the world, according to the Federation of American Scientists. That is down from more than 30,000 warheads at the height of the Cold War. Russia has about 7,300 nuclear weapons, the federation says.

Under the New Start treaty, both countries have committed to reducing the number of deployed nuclear weapons to 1,550 by 2018, though that figure can be exceeded because each bomber is counted as a single weapon even if it carries more than one.

David Wright, co-director of the global security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, expressed dismay at Mr. Trump’s choice of Twitter to discuss nuclear weapons policy."
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/22/us/politics/trump-says-us-should-expand-its-nuclear-capability.html
--

All of President Trump's push for more weapons including nuclear ones is so CONTRARY to other statements by him about human life:

“In America, we know that faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, are the center of the American life. Our motto is "in God we trust."
--President Trump at the March for Life

"Under my administration, we will always defend the very first right in the Declaration of Independence, and that is the right to life."

Vice President Pence called Trump "the most pro-life president in American history."

Certainly not.

If in doubt read the actual accounts of horrific civilian deaths in past nuclear bombings including the eyes of children literally running down their ashed faces:-( And how so many non-military individuals including firefighters and doctors were turned, literally, to cinders.

1. For many years during my teaching of American literature-history, we covered most of the 8 views of human violence including the many cases of the actual slaughter of civilians. The use of nuclear weapons was one of the worst terrorist actions ever committed. Then there were the fire-bombing campaigns against Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, etc., also, some of the worst terrorist actions ever, also.

Of course, those slaughters weren't nearly as evil as the intentional murder of millions of civilians by the Nazis and the Communists.

2. Even if one could justify doing evil to obtain good, according to some scholars the atom bomb wasn't nearly the preventive that many think. And don't forget the wasted multi-billions spent on bombs instead of positive civilized actions--for the impoverished, the ill, for clean water, for education, enhancement, the arts, and so forth.

3. Furthermore, murdering any number of children, the elderly, doctors, patients, firefighters, etc. NOW
in order, hypothetically, to prevent the murder of future humans is one of the worst forms of ethics, very immoral, anti-humanistic.
DOWN-WRONG MASS MURDER!

This is exactly the sort of justifying of slaughter that many nations and political groups such as HAMAS and other Muslim organizations use in the Middle East.

They emphasize that they kill enemy civilians NOW to prevent civilians from being killed in the future.

When I lived in Palestine-Israel, Muslim soldiers came over the Jordan River a little over a mile away from us, attacked an apartment building, and shot down unarmed families:-(

Were those Muslims soldiers justified in fighting against the Israeli government? Yes.

Were they justified in intentionally shooting down Jewish civilians? NO.
--

This was the same sort of ethically wrong thinking that most Americans held about our warring in Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador, etc. Kill and destroy to save and bring peace later!

4. Besides, General Dwight Eisenhower and some other major military leaders opposed the use of nuclear weapons.

And Senator Mark Hatfield, who as a young Navy man was one of the first Americans to observe the result of Little Boy:-(

Senator Hatfield, forever after, strongly opposed any sort of such slaughter. He was one of only 2 senators to oppose the Vietnam War. Read his article against such killing, and his 2 books about the importance of making wise moral choices.

Also, read Hiroshima by John Hersey which shows the obscenity of killing civilians, including all the kids whose eyes melted:-(

And the many who suffered radiation sickness to death.

#5 Many think, like President Trump, that creating more nuclear weapons keeps the peace, prevents war!

On the contrary, nuclear weapons don't stop a lot of war slaughter. Since WW ll, millions have been killed in numerous proxy wars.

The major powers just shoved the death down by proxy to places such as Laos, Cambodia, Latin America, and so forth.

It's true that the death toll hasn't been as horrible as WW ll. See Steven Pinker's brilliant tome on human violence: The Better Angels of Our Nature is a powerful study.

HOWEVER, those millions of humans killed in the recent minor wars are still dead, and still suffered horrifically before dying.

CONCLUSION:

The human species doesn't deserve to exist if it bases its existence on the killing of civilians including children.

In this I TOTALLY identify with the character in The Brothers Karamazov who said that the death of even ONE innocent child
wouldn't be worth it.

BUT what about Islamic regimes such as Iran who have no ethical conscience against slaughtering civilians?

I have no illusions about Muslim governments, secular or dictatorial or jihadist.

They would annihilate Israel and the U.S. if they could.

Heck, recently Muslim leaders praised a Muslim teen for murdering a 13-year-old Jewish girl in her bedroom.

Suddenly, this thug was hailed as a "martyr" and a Palestinian "hero" by HAMAS and Fatah. Something like 75% of Palestinians support the killing of civilians. Really!

I also stand against all the injustices and inequality that the Israeli government does.
I know their history, their killing, their land theft, and so forth.
--

But doesn't America's MADD protect against the worst of such wars?

It seems to me based on my own reading of many history books that increasing weapons NEVER reduces wars,
but only makes them horrifically worse, especially for families and the most vulnerable.

What mostly hindered the former Soviet Union from launching an horrendous war that would slaughter millions wasn't MADD
but that its leaders were cognizant--extremely so--
of the many millions of their loved ones they lost in WW ll.

They realized that ANY sort of overt war among the major powers would be horrific.

They, like the U.S., didn't want a major war, so both sides did minor wars by proxy. And the Soviet leaders in the 70's and 80's weren't as irrationally fanatical as earlier Soviet leaders such as Stalin, Lenin, and Trotsky.

Putin appears to be a very nationalistic Russian Orthodox Christian who doesn't seem to worry about civilians being killed.

And Trump also claims to be a Christian.

If so, it's, again, Christian leader against Christian leader engaging in murderous threats, creating weapons of Mass Slaughter in the name of God and their countries.

TO BE CONTINUED:

How tragic is "humanunkind'!

Daniel Wilcox

The Universal Soldier

One of our friends enlisted in the U.S. Army at 17, soon was fighting against the Viet Cong in a lost spot around the globe most Americans knew nothing about.

When this big teen became a battling soldier, not only didn't he know anything about Vietnam nor about Vietnam's history, nor that the U.S. had supported the re-invasion of the French after WWII, none of this was why he was fighting!

This serious soldier was thinking about his own life, and those of his fellow soldiers. Like so millions of other soldiers throughout history, he was in a war NOT
for political,
social, religious,
or historical reasons BUT because he was a young guy who thought that the military might be good for him.

Or consider another friend of mine. When he came back from a year in Vietnam, did he mention politics or justice or even patriotism? NO.

He told me about how his platoon guarded a bridge in the Mekong Delta and smoked weed most of the time.

For millions of other soldiers, they were drafted. Unless they became conscientious objectors (only a very few), these young men (and a few older ones) served out of duty, honor, or because they didn't want to go to prison or leave their country.

Ask most veterans, and they will speak especially of caring about their "band of brothers," NOT about global politics or religious commitment: "God and Country," though all of the German soldiers in the Great War did have that on their belt buckles.

Of course, in the 1800's, the 1600's, and so forth, millions of draft-age men did leave their nations in order not to kill, in order not to be a soldier, not to battle in countless killings. The clearest example are the many thousands of Germans such as the Mennonites and Brethren who immigrated to the United States in the 19th century and before to escape the endless political and religious wars which devastated Europe year after year, century after century.

A perceptive secular thinker on the Internet, Keith Parsons, has spoken to this several days ago on the blog, Secular Outpost, in relation to those who are vandalizing or taking down statues to Confederate soldiers:
"I was born in Macon, Georgia in 1952, the fourth generation of the Parsons family to be born in Georgia. My great-great grandfather Parsons was born in London, England, and in 1844 he settled in Georgia on land only recently stolen from the Creek Indians. On the other side of the family, my roots in Georgia go back at least five generations. Several of my ancestors owned slaves. Several fought in the Civil War; no need to guess which side.

"Am I sorry that my ancestors owned human beings? Yes, of course I am.

"Am I ashamed that my ancestors fought for the Confederacy? Not really.

"Let’s consider just one of my ancestors, the Rev. Enoch Hooten...Seriously wounded...How seriously did my progenitor take that? Was he fighting for slavery?

"I don’t think so. Now, I’m sure he was no abolitionist, and if asked he would have endorsed slavery. But was he motivated to fight by a pro-slavery mania? Was it a die-hard commitment to the “peculiar institution” that inspired him to face shot and shell?

"I don’t think so. Consider a parallel case: Did the average Russian of the Great Patriotic War fight for Stalin? Did he fight for Communism and for the ultimate victory of Marxism/Leninism?

"No, he fought because the Germans had invaded his country. He fought because he hated the invading enemy, whatever he thought of Marxist theory, if he thought about it at all.
--
"Except for Gettysburg, practically all of the major Civil War battles were fought in the southern or border states. For the southern soldier, it truly was The War of Yankee Aggression.

"So, my bet is that my ancestors fought because they felt a threat to their homeland.

" The despised Yankees had marched onto sacred southern soil and had to be sent home...
Southerners perceived the North as another country,
and northerners as a foreign people who had no right to rule them...southerners thought they were fighting for Christian values over the godless, soulless mercantilism of the north.
They sang, “Down with the eagle and up with the cross!”
--
"One can see a cause as very bad while respecting the motivations of the individuals who fought and died for it. Just because you oppose, say, gun control, or abortion, or the death penalty, you don’t have to question the integrity of those who disagree with you on those issues.

"So, I’m not ashamed of my Confederate ancestors. I think that, though grievously wrongheaded, they were doing what they thought that honor and duty required which, really, is all that we can ask of anyone.
--
"...I might be willing to countenance a statue of Robert E. Lee if a statue of Frederick Douglass or Harriet Tubman, just as big and just as prominent, were erected next to it.
--
"In the end, the ones most deserving of honor are those who were the victims of slavery and of the hundred years of Jim Crow repression that followed slavery.

from "Confederates in the Closet" by Keith Parsons
Secular Outpost

And, let us think back to the millions of 20th and 21st century American soldiers such as our friend who at 17 went off to fight in a place he knew nothing about...

HOWEVER, consider this:

UNIVERSAL SOLDIER

He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years

He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you

And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way

And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls

But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on

He's the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war.

by Buffy Sainte-Marie

As a peacemaking poster states, THERE ARE NO JUST WARS, just wars...and wars and wars and wars...and every nation thinks its particular war is just, and that all their enemies are "unjust."

Let us seek the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

"NO FLAG LARGE ENOUGH...

Historian Howard Zinn down-dated to the 6 wars the U.S. is now waging, bombing, especially Syria:

"We live in a world in which we are asked to make a moral choice
between one kind of terrorism and another.

The government, the press, the politicians, are trying to convince
us that [the U.S. support and funding
of Muslim killers in Syria, etc.], our "terrorism is morally
superior to [President Assad's] terrorism."

"Of course, we don't call our actions that, but...congratulating
[our]selves that the world's most heavily-armed nation [the U.S.]
can bomb with impunity..."

"Modern technology has outdistanced the Bible. "An eye for an eye" has become
a hundred eyes for an eye, [by the U.S. government, with over 400,000 slaugtered
by our side and Assad's side]
which tried to wrap their moral nakedness in the American flag."

"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing..."

"...terrorism...is a very old weapon of fanatics, whether they operate
from secret underground headquarters,
or from ornate offices in the capitols of the superpowers."
Howard Zinn
from http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/Tripoli_ZR.html






How great is the darkness of the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Syria, Turkey, etc.



Please, for Aleppo's civilians, turn to the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

9/11, A Last, Again

News: This is the 15th anniversary of the slaughter
of over 3,000 humans at the World Trade Center.

Yet tragically now the U.S. is planning to sell 1.5 billion dollars' worth of weapons to an Islamic government which is bombing, killing many civilians, and denies its citizens basic human rights, a country where you can be executed for disagreeing with Islam!

Further, we continue to supply millions of dollars to jihadists involved in the slaughter in Syria.

WHY?!

Multiply the 3,000 9/11 deaths to about over 300,000 deaths, (probably about 413,000 deaths) in Syria and millions wounded.

Why are we involved in this slaughter being conducted by various contrary groups of Muslims against each other?

A Last

Alas, grieving sorrow, tribulating
Don’t ask from where—
Yes, Shiloh; down to Sheol, after Shoah

Welted eyes, shadowed tears,
Wind-cuffed face with ‘fulled’ lashings

Of more less and less,
Wiping away
With wept wetness
In a downward swirling wet sweep,
The torn sky in
A multiple series of weeping losses,

Stark--
Abyssed fall of all welling reveries
In the wreck--aging.

How long, how many tomorrow’s tomorrow
This a las—ting loss lostness?

Selah



--Daniel Wilcox

First pub. in The New Verse News
in different form

The Perseverance and Hope of "How Much is a Person Worth?" by E. A. Kersnovskaya

http://www.gulag.su/album/index.php?eng=1&page=1&list=1

How did this book come to be written and painted?

Euphrosinia Kersnovskaya, spent many years in Soviet prison camps, exiled to Siberia.

Don't miss this powerful, illustrated autobiography of one individual's experience in the Russian Gulag, her perseverance, and continual hope.

For more extensive background, read the powerful histories, Young Stalin and Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by the historian, Simon Sebag Montefiore.

And visit Quaker Johan Mauer's thoughtful, reflective blog at http://johanpdx.blogspot.com/

Live for the Light,
despite the abyss'd ocean of political and religious darkness
that George Fox wrote about,

Daniel Wilcox