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From the description on WITF:

Harold, known as H.A., is more than just a name; he represents a symbol of hope amid global turmoil. As a pivotal figure within 1040 for Peace, a prominent organization committed to fostering peace in a world plagued by conflict, Harold stands as a beacon of change. The organization’s mission goes beyond mere rhetoric, actively involving communities in their pursuit of peace through initiatives like public penny polls. Through thought-provoking articles and journals, they articulate their vision for a more humane approach to conflict resolution.

Harold and his team tirelessly advocate for peacekeeping strategies that prioritize human welfare over hostility. Their efforts aim to challenge societal norms and redefine collective values toward a more peaceful coexistence. In a world often overshadowed by violence and discord, Harold’s leadership underscores the importance of conscious activism and grassroots engagement in building a better future. As he continues to champion the cause of peace, Harold embodies the spirit of resilience and optimism, inspiring others to join the movement towards a more harmonious world.

Click here for information on the National Priorities Project referenced in the interview.

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 dimly aware of my USA neighbors who struggle  to survive, and equally pained by the oppression suffered by neighbors around the world.  They are oppressed by imperial powers, and mostly by the imperial power of the USA, with its 800 military bases over the globe.  Bases for what purpose?  To enforce US hegemony and access to the world’s resources in a proportion far beyond anything deserved.  Presumed entitlement is a description far to benign to characterize this reality.

So today when I eat turkey and enjoy family and friends I will also think of our larger human family.  And I will think of this visual depiction of the experience of indigenous peoples in Palestine and North America  https://www.fosna.org/the-fosna-blog/thanksgivingambivalence

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 unwelcomed us in their lobby.  Boeing attempted an appearance of welcome with some shiny words,  but never came close to acknowledging the horrors of their global weapons  sales and profits.  Raytheon, in their giant building, offered neither signage nor personnel to acknowledge their presence there, and called police to move us out.  General Atomics refused the subpoena, which our delegation of two who went inside then taped to the door.  

The subpoenas were framed to give voice to the People of the World, calling on weapons manufacturers to reveal their complicity in aiding and abetting the United States government in committing War  Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Bribery, and Theft.  

The subpoenas ask for information in 23 specific areas.  Three example items follow:

1.  Documents indicating all profits generated from sales of specific military weapons and supplies, year by year, produced by Defendant since September 11, 2001;

2.  Documents demonstrating the number of lobbyists retained by defendant, year by year, since September 11, 2001, and the cost, for the purpose of influencing members of Congress with respect to their decisions on weapons and military supplies sales and regulation and foreign and military policies;

13.  Documents since September 11, 2001, explaining how the corporation leadership can, in good conscience, participate in the construction of nuclear weapons, given the certain knowledge that the use of these weapons will lead not only to gross human death and suppering but the near certainty that their use will lead to the extinction of the human race;

         The United States government is derelict in its duty to citizens of its land and the world for secretive complicity with these weapons manufacturing corporations.  So we took this action to implement just a little more democracy in the American empire.  Moro information on the War Crimes Tribunal (schedule, research plans, etc) can be found at https://merchantsofdeath.org

John K. Stoner

11/12/22

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?   A feeling of goodness?  Something big to belong to.   Something more than my little self  (big as I am in my own eyes…at least some days).

It’s natural and right to identify with some group or community beyond ourselves.   We like to belong to something bigger or greater.   Th fact is, we can’t flourish alone, any more than a stalk of corn or stem of wheat can survive, let alone flourish, alone. 

But the empire is troubled, big time, and it’s not clear that we’re getting what we need from it.  We…getting…what…we…need….that’s one way to ask what’s happening.  But it’s a pretty small way, after all, and maybe a bit selfish.   I, me, and mine.  A way of looking at the world, but kind of poverty stricken, really.  

Another way to think about what “we” have would be to start with a bigger “we”—a much bigger we.  We could, when we say “we the people” mean we the people, all of us, who inhabit this little blue globe of a planet.  

We Americans could be thinking of “we the human family” which we totally forgot in the exploited trauma of 9/11.  I called the human family  “our other family” in a previous blog.  We could expand whatever small or large goodness we have known in our biological family to a much larger family.  Family is the place of second and third and more chances.  It is what, in some form, gave us each and all our start.  

What if we didn’t have the Empire. and decided instead to build our lives around the human family.  That is, we could become honest about the fact that as a human species we will either survive by cooperation or die by greed and war.  If that is not true, the earth is flat.  If we cannot see that, we think that the earth is flat.  

We could begin to imagine solving problems rather than making war as the way to live in a family.  That would be instead of empire.  A plan big enough to make a difference, and small enough to start with one’s own circle of friends.  “Our other family” could be a family where we do to each other what we would like done to us.  

 John K. Stoner 9/29/21

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 enemies and terrorists.  Anything but another family.

In a previous post I said I hope we will stop and think about empire. 

Today I hope we will feel the warm reality of our other family.

Humanity, the whole sweet damn mess of us, is our other family, and no amount of forgetting or wishing it otherwise can change it.  Here we are, interconnected, surviving or dying together. 

So let’s do something different for the next twenty years   Let’s live as if our other family, humanity, is real and it matters.   

If we let ourselves feel it, we all have inklings of a larger family.  From our biological family we branch out to friends, neighbors, strangers, opponents, and enemies, but we all need each other and our fate is bound together, so let’s have the heart, imagination and creativity to bind our energy and our outlook together.

Stay with me in future days to explore the possibilities of our other family as a better way than empire.    

John K. Stoner 9/12/21

Take this as an invitation to stop and think.  To think about war-culture and empire, and to grow in consciousness.

I was reading two books at once (off and on) when I came upon the above sentence by Denton-Borhaug.  And it did seem unfathomable to me…in fact it had been seeming unfathomable to me for some time, thought maybe I had not described it as unfathomable.  But I was deeply troubled by this blissful ignorance of our culture—a war-culture— and our empire.  

Yet I keep finding other people, a few of them, who are troubled by the same thing.  Just this morning I read this terse description of the problem by Caitlin Johnstone:

“There’s more public criticism of ordinary people taking ivermectin than there is of planet-dominating power structures driving humanity to armageddon.”   Interesting…to stop and think about that. 

Besides Denton-Borhaug’s book AND THEN THEIR SOUL WAS GONE:  MORAL INJURY AND U.S. WAR-CULTURE,  these days I am also reading THE SORROWS OF EMPIRE:  MILITARISM, SECRECY, AND THE END OF THE REPUBLIC by Chalmers Johnson.   Here the key word is “empire.”

Do we think of empire?  Do we think we live in an empire?  How would you describe this country in which we live?  If not an empire, then what?  

Chalmers Johnson published his book in 2004.  He was calling the USA an “empire” in 2004.  Were you?  

Here’s a possibility.   Thinking of the United States of America as an empire might help us understand ourselves as Americans, and our troubled moment in world history.  Let’s stop and think: what if we could understand ourselves better if we recognized not only racism and white supremacy as debilitating moral injuries in our culture, but imperialism and assumptions of American supremacy as also profoundly injurious to our collective health? 

John K. Stoner    9/10/21