A new video, produced by Al Jazeera, includes an interview with Brad Wolf on The Merchants of Death.   Click here to watch

A five minute video created by Brad Wolf  while in Hiroshima during a memorial in the Peace Park for the Korean victims of the Atomic Bombings.  Speaking is Taeje Lee, President of the Second Generation of Korean Atomic Bomb Victims, and after his words he plays a song on the traditional Korean wood flute entitled […]

H.A. Penner discusses the Penny Poll, and the never-ending work to change our perspective on how to achieve peace in our world, on WITF, the local PBS station in Harrisburg PA on February 15. 2024. (Click the picture to listen to the interview) From the description on WITF: Harold, known as H.A., is more than […]

Thanksgiving, a Very Difficult Good Day As a citizen of USA I have very ambivalent feelings about today, Thanksgiving Day.  I affirm gratitude and aim to live with a sense that I am fortunate to enjoy the more than adequate supply of food, clothing and shelter which I have.   But I am at least […]

The Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal group which I joined in Washington D.C. on Thursday delivered questions to military profiteering corporations.  Will they answer the questions?   It is doubtful, because our subpoenas asked for information which, by past record, they want to hide, and we were not received with open arms.  Lockheed Martin […]

The Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal will serve subpoenas on the corporate offices and directors of weapons manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and General Atomics tomorrow, November 10, in Washington, D. C.  I’m going to support this action on behalf of the global victims of American militarism. I go to support family and future.  […]

What would we have if we didn’t have the Empire—the American empire.?   Like MAGA.  Make America Great Again. What would we have?  A good question.  Worth thinking about a little.   Maybe even feeling a little.  Let’s get in touch with this feeling about America the great.  What is it…a feeling of strength maybe? […]

Twenty years ago on 9/11, in our rush to act like an empire, we forgot something.   We forgot our other family. I know, nobody forgets their family.  You can’t do that.  But we did. It didn’t take a week that fateful year until the USA was acting like whole great swaths of humanity were […]

“If one was to stop and think, it might seem unfathomable that people in the United States, living in the most extensive war-culture the world has ever known, have so little consciousness of it.” — Kelly Denton-Borhaug Take this as an invitation to stop and think.  To think about war-culture and empire, and to grow […]

Who ever thinks about how many ways of war there are? In chapter three of the book AN INDIGENOUS PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, readers are introduced to “America’s first way of war.”  It’s a grim, but probably necessary, project for us to think about our country’s ways of war. In 2005 military historian […]

Only by increasing our awareness of the large populations and skilled lifestyles of the indigenous population of North American before European setter colonialism devastated them can we begin to appreciate the scope and depravity of the destruction of those original inhabitants and their way of life. So today, for the health of our souls and […]

I promised more reflections on  the book AN INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.   So here I go to the last chapter of the book, a paragraph which summarizes painfully well why and how our world and souls today are shaped by the genocide of America’s first inhabitants. The conventional […]

  For my own mental and spiritual health I will in the future have a moment of contrition every time I touch a $20 bill, which carries the image and inscription of the homicidal and genocidal Andrew Jackson, the 7th and most popular to that date president of the United States. Jackson, who rose to […]

 At a time when the ideology of white supremacy is under critical scrutiny across the land, is American supremacy remaining intact and embraced by all?  It is possible to wonder how history will judge this current USA military occupation of the world.     Seventy five years ago the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August […]

    Yesterday I asked if we are protecting our freedom to ask ANY question, no exceptions.  I think you told yourself that of course, you maintain your freedom to ask any question. Today I want to ask if we’re free to accept an answer which is radically different from the public consensus on politics, health, etc. […]

Every day during this COVID-19 time I ask myself:  Am I, are we, maintaining our freedom and our duty to question everything?  To keep asking questions, however hard or unpopular? I start with this question:  Is a thing true just because everybody, or seemingly everybody, believes it?  There, I’ve asked it as a “yes” or […]

        Today I share a comprehensive look at our COVID-19/Election Year times by Caitlyn Johnstone.  Johnstone is a writer whom I find not infallible but generally trustworthy and helpful. She warns her readers not to even be looking for perfection in people—journalists, opinion writers, politicians—but rather to nurture their own capacity to […]

At the Un-National Monument (along the Canadian Border) by William E. Stafford   This is the field where the battle did not happen,   where the unknown soldier did not die. This is the field where grass joined hands,   where no monument stands,   and the only heroic thing is the sky.   Birds […]

“One beggar telling another beggar where to find bread” is the way Sam Shoemaker described sharing good news. So that’s about the best I can do these days—tell you where I’m finding bread.  I thought that this interview of Jason Reynolds by Krista Tippett gives some good insights from an African American writer  into the […]

“People want  to celebrate the things that symbolize generosity and goodness in their lives.”   Jared Seide I read that sentence today, and thought, “that is something I believe about people—or at least try to believe and act upon.” But there is so  much in U.S. American culture that works against generosity and goodness, and conditions […]

Second Amendment gun advocates probably know their US American history better than many of us do.  A groundbreaking history of the Second Amendment is available now, and it clarifies the purpose of the private militias provided for in the Second Amendment.   LOADED: A DISARMING HISTORY OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (2018) documents […]

The call for a redirection of funding from police to community welfare, from war to peace, has been sounded courageously by Liz McAlister for many years.   Her sentencing on Monday for protesting the Trident Submarine weapon of mass destruction inspired her daughter Frida Berrigan to write this message to the judge and all who […]

The (White) American notion of finding safety and security from police mirrors its obsession with finding national security from bombs and guns, and now even a new branch of “armed services” (aka homicidal force) called “Space Force.”  That would be hard to beat for a lunatic use of America’s wealth.   To one like myself […]

Sometimes I feel that my posts here are one move too far from giving comforting care for the soul—one step too far on the side of afflicting instead of comforting; that is, afflicting the comfortable instead of comforting the afflicted.   And then I think, but we are way too much in love with our […]

When someone, in the context of the current rebellion against America’s racial and economic injustice, mentions “looting,” (probably to condemn it), what should be our first thought and response? How about this, by African American Rev. Dr. Nick Peterson:  “ “I mean if we want to talk about looting, let’s talk about the “stolen properties” […]

One week ago an African American man named George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis while bystanders objected and recorded it all by video.  Now more than ever U.S. Americans need to hear the voices of Black people, to try to come closer to understanding what is happening in the wake of that atrocity. […]

I just read a book recommended by my grandson: THE TRUE AMERICAN:  MURDER AND MERCY IN TEXAS by Anand Giridharadas (2014).  It tells a story of revenge and forgiveness after 9/11.  A novel, based on fact and extensive historical research.   Asks a question:  who is the true American?  Or maybe, what is the true America? […]

While the left hand of the magician is over here, his right hand is doing something else over there. Do you give your informed consent to a new cold war and a new round of nuclear roulette in which we could all lose but no one could ever win? If you do, that’s a world […]

If there is such a thing as American exceptionalism, it is most likely in the area of consumerist capitalism.  To think more accurately about this is surely one essential path toward healing.  How should we respond to this?  Paul Clark says that his response to America’s exceptional consumerist capitalism is to “return to a deep […]

In response to “Truth: Making Uncomfortable and Free”   https://1040forpeace.org/news-and-blog/ on Sunday, Dennis Rivers wrote: ”It seems to me, after a lifetime of wrestling with the Angel of Truth, that Truth is one of the most important of three or four central human ideas.  Like an essential vitamin, it plays a role in almost all other ideas. But I like the […]

A wise person once said (it may have been Jesus) that you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.  We like that. However,  another wise person added “but first it will make you uncomfortable,” and we should remember that too. We, in our selves and our souls, are nourished by truth. […]

Soul/Self Care—USA Exceptionalism as Planetary Emergency  5/15/20 My last email/blog invited reflection on Michael Moore’s new movie “Planet of the Humans.” https://1040forpeace.org/soul-self-care-planetary-emergency/  That movie has proven to be intensely controversial in the environmental/green community, largely because it offers criticisms of some of the broad strokes and hopes of the efforts of the environmental movement to […]

Last Friday I recommended viewing Michael Moore’s new film “Planet of the Humans” https://1040forpeace.org/soul-care-look-but-do-not-fear-5-1-20/  A number of readers have shared good comments on this email list.  Today I add two further sources on this subject of our ecological/earth care crisis. First, the following April 28 Common Dreams article by Cynthia Kauffman, critical of the film.https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/28/mobilizing-climate-action-face-planet-humans […]

 Jesus often said “Fear not,” but I do not know that he ever said “Look not.”   Over the years Michael Moore has invited the public to look at a number of things, most recently at the ecological abyss into which we stare.  I recommend his new movie, “Planet of the Humans” online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE As […]

On April 23 we considered ‘Wisdom essential for survival’  https://1040forpeace.org/soul-care-wisdom-essential-for-survival-4-23-20/.  That reflection made a strong claim: that humanity must move from a notion of survival by dominating, homicidal power to the embrace of survival by empathy and cooperation with humanity and earth’s fragile ecosystem.  Can we do that? There is a lot of talk these […]

 “War or Peace:  We cannot survive with Real-Politik” is the title of Arno Gruen’s reflection on modern culture and psycho-social conditioning.  The following words in the second paragraph of the article state his thesis that “real-politic” is based on an ultimately suicidal belief that the world must be run by dominating, homicidal power.  https://www.arnogruen.net/war-or-peace.pdf “We […]

On this Sunday/Sabbath I recommend renewal of your spirit/soul by listening patiently to “On Being”, Krista Tippet interview with Ellen Davis and Wendell Berry. https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9BdUF4SF9CZg&episode=NDE4NTQ5ZjQtZTY1My00MmQxLTk1MDUtNTgzZWYwZGI5N2Rh&hl=en&ved=2ahUKEwir29KwufToAhUwmHIEHbyGCL4QieUEegQIBRAE&ep=6 You will do better than me if you get all the wisdom and inspiration of this hour in one listening. See this email also on the blog at www.1040forpeace.org. Subscribe […]

Yesterday I shared the link to Arno Gruen’s “War or Peace:  We Cannot Survive With Real Politic.”  https://www.arnogruen.net/war-or-peace.pdf  Today I’m wondering if you read it and what you thought of it—I saw no comments on it.  I know we’re all focused on surviving COVID-19, but I wonder nevertheless if we think or care about how […]

SOUL CARE—WE CANNOT SURVIVE… The purpose of the title is to provoke interest.  Cannot survive what?  Read on. What are we doing here in these Soul/self care emails?  I see it this way:  Some of us want to have hard conversations toward the end of avoiding even harder consequences.  History is, after all,  relatively (more […]

Good morning, friends, I had these thoughts this morning, before I read Julio Vincent Gambuto’s article submitted by James Landis last evening. I wrote down my thoughts (in response to Caitlyn Johnstone’s piece which I had just read).  So my thoughts (in italics) below and Caitlin Johnstone’s piece are my contribution today, all as my […]

Soul Care:  Questions of Inevitability and Possibility  4/10/20 What is inevitable, and what is possible?  Those are larger questions, and/or assumptions, around which we form our ideas about how the world might be run.  Is war inevitable?  Is a world without war possible?  Today I pick up the question of war itself. So it has […]

Soul Care— What do CORVID-19 and War Have in Common?  Considerations of the Inevitable  4/8/20 Today (as a conversational device…not a teaching device, we know we learn by talking these days, etc. not from teachers, right?…yeah, I too know that) I will compare two evils.  One of the ways we do learn is by comparing […]

Are We Starting A War on Nature? Is This the Real Struggle?  THIS being, not what will a virus coming out of nature do to us, but what will we, with all of the possibilities of our own nature, do to ourselves?   We have needed something to focus our attention, the attention of the […]

Today, in my series on Soul/self Care, here is an example of a group response to the problem of American militarism.  The 1040forpeace.org group in Lancaster county PA, which supports conscientious objection to war taxes, sent the following letter (see text below)  to the Mennonite Central Committee U.S.  The concept of the letter predates the coronavirus […]

SOUL CARE—THE CALL FOR GLOBAL CEASEFIRE  4/2/20 Imagine what it would do for the soul of America if the nation heeded the call of UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutierrez for cessation of all wars in the world now that the CORVID_19 virus crisis is upon us.  “The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war. […]

Soul/self care: Responses to Moral Injury Post  4/1/20 Responses to yesterdays post about a US military suicide in Iraq war were varied.   One person said, inventing a probably useful verb, “to me there remains no violencing that is essential, in any way, shape or form.  If I were given to fear, our societal assumptions […]

MORAL INJURY: EXAMPLE AND DESCRIPTION  3/31/20 I have been saying that moral injury is damaging to soul/self care.  An assumption here is that societies, and countries, can experience collective moral injury as surely as individuals can experience it.   Rita Nakashima Brock has been a pioneer of naming and researching moral injury.  With co-author Gabriella […]

IS MILITARY PRODUCTION ESSENTIAL PRODUCTION?  3/30/20   I have started to post these emails on the https://1040forpeace.org website.  You can find past and current posts of this series there.  Sharing this URL with others will be an easy way to broaden the discussion.   Today something simple, just a question, before continuing tomorrow more deeply […]

Good morning, friends, Before going further with what is lost due to moral injury, let’s look a little more at what the healthy, pre-injury human being looks like.   I will share fresh insights which came to me this Sunday morning.  Janet keeps me listening to Krista Tippet’s “On Being” early on Sundays.  Today Tippet […]

Friends, Today I am moving into the theme of the subject line of this email.  This will not be an easy journey.  COVID-19, and other bigger things in our world, do not confront us with easy choices.  Yes, bigger, which predate and will postdate COVID-19. I am not in the business of inventing or creating […]