I will never forget the commitment to reconciliation and peace that I encountered in Hiroshima in 2016. The memory… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
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Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 06, 2020
Posts Tagged ‘peace
Please see my full statement on my opposition to the Iran Deal on @Medium SenSchumer/my-position-on-the-iran-deal-e976b2f13478"> medium.com@SenSchumer/my…
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Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) August 07, 2015
Chuck Schumer, senior Senator from New York, last night came out in opposition to the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the five permanent Security Council members and the EU, a deal which takes an Iranian nuclear weapon off the table.
The fact that he released his statement when followers of politics had their eyes fixed on the GOP beauty pageant is telling. It was the equivalent of a Friday afternoon news dump.
Of course, he wasn’t counting that those of us who are Obama supporters and supporters of peace can do more than one thing at a time. The reaction was instant and furious. I’ve tried calling Sen. Schumer’s office, and no one is answering the phone.
His Medium piece is one roiling paranoid fantasy that Iranians can never be trusted, ever, on a par with Binyamin Netanyahu’s belief that Iran wants to conquer the world.
Continue reading ‘The incredible cowardice of Senator Chuck Schumer’
The birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was first celebrated as a national holiday in 1986. Its celebration was resisted by many states, for reasons too obvious to delineate here. By the year 2000, all states of the Union officially celebrated Dr. King’s birthday.
The fact that it took 14 years for a handful of recalcitrant states to celebrate the holiday is very telling. Dr. King, like Nelson Mandela, has had myth and legend encased on his memory, both in his life and after his death. And these myths tend to obscure the real man, the man of flesh and bone, the man with passion and thought.
We all remember and revere his stance for peace. But we cannot forget that he wielded peace like a weapon. His peace wasn’t a comfortable peace. To quote from another time, he wasn’t asking “Can’t we all just get along”.
He stood against a racial apartheid as pernicious as that which exiled South Africa from the community of nations. He stood against establishment assumptions of American empire and American militarism. He stood against the received wisdom of American capitalism.
He is too often seen now as an anodyne figure, someone who spoke to the better angels of our nature, someone who can be embraced by both left and right. (Well, some of the right. Some of them are beyond redemption.)
Peace was his tactic, and his belief. But it served something which was radical. Although he and Malcolm X spoke in different metaphors, they had much of the same view of the corrupted American experiment. It was an experiment which, at its inception, relegated slaves and the freed children of slaves to oppression and denigration. It was an experiment which depended upon keeping down the working class. It was an experiment which thrived by pitting natural allies against each other, based on culture, religion, race. It was an experiment which arrogated to itself the rights of empire as natural, exporting its system as a panacea for what ailed the world, blind to its own glaring failings.
On This Day
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama dance during the 2009 Nobel Banquet in the Hall of Mirrors at the Grand Hotel in Oslo, Norway, Dec. 10, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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President Obama looks at the Nobel Peace Prize medal for the first time at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway, Dec. 10, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
….. holding the Nobel Prize medal and diploma following the ceremony at the Oslo City Hall (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama depart Oslo City Hall following the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony (Photo by Pete Souza)
First Lady Michelle Obama looks at pictures of past Nobel Prize recipients at the Norwegian Nobel Institute (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama looks out a window at Slottet Royal Palace of Norway following his meeting with King Harald V and Queen Sonja in Oslo (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama wave from a balcony at the Grand Hotel as they greet the Torch Parade in Oslo (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama arrive at the 2009 Nobel Banquet in the Hall of Mirrors at the Grand Hotel in Oslo (Photo by Samantha Appleton)
War and peace in a democracy
Cross-posted at The People’s View
Even if you were stuffing yourself full of the first weekend of college football, by now you know that President Barack Obama conducted one of the most important Rose Garden addresses in the history of the modern Presidency.
Taking the baton from his Secretary of State John Kerry, he again laid out, in forceful, passionate language, the situation as it was in Syria. He explained that the intelligence community had concluded with great certainty that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical attacks in contested areas of Damascus the week before. He passionately argued that American values and national interest dictated that Assad’s regime be punished militarily for the use of those chemical weapons against civilians. He stated that the military had assets in place and was ready to go at any time.
And then he did something no modern president had done. Even though he believed he had the authority to act, he knew that this was a divisive issue, and that the people’s representatives had to join in the decision. He called for Congress to debate and vote on a resolution granting him specific authority to militarily strike Assad for violating international treaties banning the use of chemical weaponry, some of the oldest weapons conventions in international law. He had heard the rumblings from Congress saying that he had to seek approval before any strike, and agreed.
But why did he agree? This is where he pivots beyond what all the pundits and talking heads expected. Just before declaring that he would seek Congressional approval, he reiterated that he believed that he had the authority to conduct the attacks with or without Congressional approval. But such an action, in a region of the world where such action could quickly spiral out of control, needed more than just Barack Obama’s say-so as Commander in Chief. Syria is not Libya. In the Libyan crisis, the President had a UN resolution with which to work. As a signatory to the UN charter, all member nations had a duty to enforce Security Council resolutions. That was all the authorization he needed.
prayers for peace
The Prayer of Saint Francis
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred … let me sow love
Where there is injury … pardon
Where there is doubt … faith
Where there is despair … hope
Where there is darkness … light
Where there is sadness … joy
Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled … as to console
To be understood … as to understand,
To be loved … as to love
For it is in giving … that we receive,
It is in pardoning … that we are pardoned,
It is in dying … that we are born to eternal life
Buddhist Prayer for Peace
May all beings everywhere plagued
with sufferings of body and mind
quickly be freed from their illnesses.
May those frightened cease to be afraid,
and may those bound be free.
May the powerless find power,
and may people think of befriending
one another.
May those who find themselves in trackless,
fearful wilderness—
the children, the age, the unprotected–
be guarded by beneficial celestials,
and may they swiftly attain Buddhahood
Muslim Prayer for Peace
In the name of Allah,
the beneficent, the merciful.
Praise be to the Lord of the
Universe who has created us and
made us into tribes and nations
That we may know each other, not that
we may despise each other.
If the enemy incline towards peace, do
thou also incline towards peace, and
trust God, for the Lord is the one that
heareth and knoweth all things.
And the servants of God,
Most gracious are those who walk on
the Earth in humility, and when we
address them, we say “PEACE.”
Jewish Prayer for Peace
May we see the day when war and bloodshed cease
when a great peace will embrace the whole world
Then nation shall not threaten nation
and humankind will not again know war.
For all who live on earth shall realize
we have not come into being to hate or destroy
We have come into being
to praise, to labour and to love.
Compassionate God, bless all the leaders of all nations
with the power of compassion.
Fulfill the promise conveyed in Scripture:
“I will bring peace to the land,
and you shall lie down and no one shall terrify you.
I will rid the land of vicious beasts
and it shall not be ravaged by war.”
Let love and justice flow like a mighty stream.
Let peace fill the earth as the waters fill the sea.
And let us say: Amen
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More prayers here.
This is your late afternoon open thread.
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