America and the World—Exploring True Activism

by Blue Evening Star

QUOTES FROM ABROAD

        In my fair Italy, all the medias talked about your president's elections. Yes, because normally politic changes in the most powerful nation in the world influence life of the rest of the planet. But when among all the various meanings that this event has got there is the persistence of a modern kind of world war, your elections are as significant for me as you.
       Then again, the people in Italy have the same problem as American people. The leader of our government owns the state TV industry's competitor, is the editor of the most important national medias and a lot of other things too at the same time. Why do so many people want these men as leaders? A lot of bright minds accepted Adolph Hitler. Believe me, I am doing what I can to understand how any country with a rich tradition of culture, creativity and humanity can forsake moral and human responsibility.
       The day after September 11, 2001, [in sympathy] our governors declared that we are all Americans. However, now and in the rest of my days I am proud to say that we are all human persons.

~ Alexander Ghebreigziabiher
Rome, Italy


        I live on a small island in North Eastern Canada in the summers and in Costa Rica the rest of the year. Yes, I listened to the radio in French all summer and the view of the United States is very different than what American people are being told. Canada in general feels that the U.S. government is overly aggressive, too anxious for war, and that the American people in general value money and the game of who can have the most toys before one dies more than they value strong family and community well-being. Americans are looked upon as rats running around a money-making wheel and ignoring their communities, children, and elders.
        When one listens to U.S. radio news or CNN it is generally all hype about war, disaster, terror warnings etc. Canadians comment that these are techniques to keep the people in a state of fear and therefore in a state of obedience.
        This was my observation from a summer of listening to debates regarding the Americans on Canadian radio. Canada cannot be too critical because 80 percent of their trade is with the U.S. But they do not hesitate to express that they do not support the current war in Iraq.
        In general, I have found that Costa Ricans view Americans as big, rich pigs. They come to this country with money to buy young women, big houses, and to drink themselves to death. There are some good Americans here also. Since 911 there has been a huge flood of U.S. investment in real estate here—people coming to retire in this peaceful place with no army and little threat of terrorism. U.S. citizens continue to flood here. Costa Rica is just now implementing very strict laws to dissuade Americans and other would-be immigrants from moving to Costa Rica. Americans are not viewed favorably by most of the world's population, though there is a saying that when there is a good American, they are the best.

~ Helena Buell
Tilaran, Costa Rica

War versus The Fight For Peace

        After serving as supreme commander in Europe of the forces of the allies during World War II, directing the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, and leading the overthrow of the German Nazi Govern-ment, General Dwight D. Eisenhower became president of the United States for two terms. Experienced in war and national leadership, he made the following statement in 1953 before the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

        Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hope of its children…this is not a way of life in any true sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

        After the February 2003 antiwar protests, the New York Times described the global peace movement as the world's second superpower. The world took sides over Iraq, with most countries and their people siding against the war on Iraq and the shrinking “Coalition of the Willing.”
        The world is splitting in two. Firmly in place is the international dominant culture which thrives upon the business of war and the plundering of human and natural resources. This culture is not bound by any country's borders. Developing hopefully is another international culture of those who have realized what is happening on the planet and have decided to create a decent world.
        What will it take to wake up America to the need for major changes in our country? Total disintegration, bankruptcy and poverty, says Tony Van Renterghem, an 85-year-old resident of Flagstaff who served in the Dutch resistance during the Nazi occupation of Holland in World War II. In an essay titled “A Crossroad in Time,” Mr. Van Renterghem, a Veteran For Peace who started his military career on horse-back writes:

        That group of people who promote international colonialism and war-mongering have a plan to keep the people hungry and stupid and therefore unable to act against oppression. Give everyone just enough. With everyone working just to barely survive there is no time to think, to react politically. Just exist. Then there is the dumbing down of education. In American education is the standard “rah-rah” business.
        I wish we had a leader with some spark. America is still very much asleep. Europe has experienced many shortages and discomforts in the last 30 - 40 years. This makes people there alert to the leaders whose greed for money and power gets out of control. People are more quick to take their demands to the streets in peaceful demonstrations—velvet revolutions of hundreds of thousands of people. What guts the people in the Ukraine, with their Orange Revolution, have today! It will take much hardship before Americans will act so courageously for their freedom.
        I recommend the book War Is A Racket by Smedley D. Butler. I have donated copies to the Sedona Public Library so they are available. He was a role model marine (died in the late 1940's) who realized near the end of his life that he had been used as a gangster by corporations who are behind both sides of every war because they want to control raw materials in those regions. Most Americans live in ignorance about these things.

Examples of Non-Violent Protest

        The six-week period between November 17 and December 29, 1989, which brought about the bloodless overthrow of the Czechoslovak communist regime, is referred to as the “Velvet Revolution.” The events of those times in Czechoslovakia were so named because the Czechoslovakian people felt the Communists there—resented for their strong-arm tactics—were treated with velvet gloves. Mass demonstrations, students offering flowers to riot police, and a general strike preceded the formation of a new government. There was much violence leading up to this six-week period for many decades, but this final effort was accomplished without violence.
        Massive, peaceful demonstrations have been occurring in the Ukraine as supporters of Victor Andriyovych Yushchenko protested what many believe to be fixed presidential elections in which Yushchenko was declared by the government to have lost, despite enormous popular support.
        The orange color of his election campaign is called his most brilliant political technology. They are creating an orange mood in the Ukraine, with hundreds of thousands wearing orange and streaming orange ribbons from their cars, homes and public buildings.         In fall even the trees campaigned for Yushchenko with their autumn colors.
The government had declared that Yushchenko lost the presidential election, but the majority of the people believe him when he says he is pure before the law and that his enemies must be held responsible to the Lord. The disenfranchised people of the Ukraine took to the streets in the time-honored tradition of the democratic process. Hundreds of thousands, decked in orange clothing and faith, rallied and called upon their nation and the world to nullify the fraudulent vote. And after the election was held again on December 26, Viktor Yuchshenko became the new President of the Ukraine.1
        Mr. Yuchshenko, an economist and former head of the national bank, has promised political and economic reform including an attack on corruption, establishing freedom of the media, and overhauling the police and courts. He has also pledged to review shady privatization deals brokered by the administration of the outgoing President, Leonid Kuchma, which gave state enterprises, property, and resources to the regimes cronies.
Having survived poisoning by his enemies that left his face permanently disfigured and having managed to make it through the re-election process violence-free (with the assistance of international witnesses), President Yuchshenko has become a promising leader who has vowed to serve his people in the highest way.

Music and Peaceful Revolutions

        Music is the universal language that unites all peace- and freedom-loving people of the world. Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution is traced to a beginning point in 1968 with the Beatle's song “Revolution” playing in the background. The Beatle's self-titled “White Album” was enormously popular in Czechoslovakia at that time, even though the Soviet authorities tried to prevent copies from filtering in, but thousands of tape dubs were passed around to eager enthusiasts. “Revolution #9” was destined to become an inspiration and a catalyst for a pacifist revolution against communism in Prague. Beatle's music continued to be heard under the iron boot of neo-Stalinism despite the threat of imprisonment. Shortly after John Lennon was killed in 1980, anonymous rock fans in Prague created a mock grave for Lennon, near a garden wall in a part of the city called “Mala Strana.” Flowers, candles and graffiti reappeared daily despite the efforts of Communist authorities to keep the area clean. The “John Lennon Peace Wall” quickly became a venue for complaints against Communist authorities and remained so until the Velvet Revolution in 1989 brought an end to communism in that country.
        In 1974, The Plastic People of the Universe, a Czech avant-garde band, began to illegally distribute tapes of their self-made album titled “Egon Bondy's Happy Heart's Club Banned.” Plastic People played mostly for friends at secret parties. In 1974 the Plastic People of the Universe were arrested by the secret police for performing at a private party. They were charged with “subversive acts against the state.” Soon more arrests were made of the band's followers. Stimulated by the trial and persecutions of the Plastic People's camp, young dissidents wrote a petition titled “Charter 77” to protest the lack of human rights in their country. The leaders of the Charter 77 movement included a dissident playwright named Vaclav Havel, who went on to lead his country's non-violent revolution against Communism in 1989 and became the first post-Communist president in Prague. Havel describes himself as an enormous fan of Lennon, the Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart and The Plastic People of the Universe.2
        Nothing like that could ever happen in America! Or could it? In mid-November 2004, a high school principal in Boulder, Colorado was visited by the Secret Service. They were asking questions about the patriotism of some students who happen to be in a band called “The Coalition of the Willing.” The punk band's plans to cover Bob Dylan's antiwar song from the '60s titled “Masters of War” at the talent show at Boulder High had prompted calls to the Secret Service in Denver. Some people were insisting that by singing this song the students would be announcing an assassination attempt upon the President!
Never mind that the intent of the song was to use a corpse as a metaphor for the Cold-War era U.S. military. People still called talk shows in Boulder insisting that the lyrics were about assassinating George Bush. After talking to the high school principal, the Secret Service cleared the band.
        The night of the talent show, the Coalition of the Willing performed before a sold-out crowd of young people who had gotten a crash course on the threat to their civil liberties. Though cleared of treason, the Coalition of the Willing must have taken delight in singing these lyrics from the third-most-covered antiwar song in recording history:

“How much do I know
To talk out of turn?
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never forgive what you do.”

        Here in Sedona, Arizona higher consciousness musicians are signing up on the Global Change Music independent record label—banding together (no pun intended) in the “Spiritualution” movement.3

Foreigners Or Friends?

Actions speak louder than words. What messages are the actions of America sending to the world, and how are we perceived? According to Stan Goff, who lost his faith in the military mission of America after 24 years of serving in Special Forces, Everything about U.S. foreign policy right now is increasing the power of people who hate us. This doesn't strike me as a very smart thing to do, even if you support U.S. imperial objective's.4 Mr. Goff is now active in the “Bring Them Home Campaign” led by Military Families Speak Out and Veterans For Peace.
Perhaps a much more effective foreign policy is happening in the exchange between the website sorryeverybody.com and apologiesaccept-ed.com, where 50 million hits have taken note of thousands of Americans who have posted snapshots of themselves holding up home-made messages conveying their chagrin and concerns about the direction our country is taking.

World peace cannot be maintained by treaties, diplomacy, foreign policies, alliances, balances of power, or any other type of makeshift juggling with the sovereignties of nationalism. World law must come into being and must be enforced by world government—the sovereignty of all mankind.5

The maintenance of world-wide civilization is dependent on human beings learning how to live together in peace and fraternity. Without effective co-ordination, industrial civilization is jeopardized by the dangers of ultra-specialization: monotony, narrowness, and the tendency to breed distrust and jealousy.” 6

The Olive Branch Of Peace

        Incidents of violence between Israelis and Palestinians are prominent in headlines all over the world. This serves the version of the world at war with an example of nations at each others' throats. But how much of the world's media has covered the story that busloads of Israelis have been pouring into the fields and villages of occupied Palestine to join other activists from around the world in protecting families from Israeli soldiers so they can harvest the olives?
        These actions of courageous friendship are truly serving the Palestinians in their hour of need. As the Palestinian pastor Mitri Raheb wrote in his diary Bethlehem Besieged, At times, when we feel as if the world must be coming to an end…our only hopeful vision is to go out…and plant olive trees. If we don't plant any trees today, there will be nothing tomorrow. But if we plant a tree today, there will be shade for our children to play in. There will be oil to heal the wounds, and there will be olive branches to wave when peace arrives.


1Ukrayinska Pravda, www.PRAVDA.com.ua , October 30, 2004
2 www.bagism.com/library/lennonwall-timeline.html
3Spiritualution™: A movement of millions inspired by Divine Administration. True revolution is the spiritual fusion of the heart/earth/star knowledge teachings of the old ways of the ancestors with the latest revelatory cosmic teachings of ascension science and the physics of rebellion in Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation as revealed in The Cosmic Family volumes. It is the realization by five hundred million starseed, who have not been able to fit into the present system, that they have lived before and know that they have a point of origin from another universe.
4”Stan Goff On Why U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers Us All,” by Rachel J. Elliot, The Sun magazine, November 2004
5The URANTIA Book, p. 1491
6The URANTIA Book, p. 911