Category: Military
Peace Ribbons & More, In Peace & Justice History For 8/4
| August 4, 1964 The Pentagon reported a second attack on U.S. Navy ships in Vietnam’s Gulf of Tonkin [see August 2, 1964]. But there was no such activity reported at the time by the task force commander in the Gulf, Captain John J. Herrick. One of the Navy pilots flying overhead that night was squadron commander James Stockdale, who was later captured and held as a POW by the North Vietnamese for more than seven years, and became Ross Perot’s vice-presidential candidate in 1992: ” I had the best seat in the house to watch that event and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets — there were no PT boats there . . . There was nothing there but black water and American firepower.” Nearly three decades later during the Gulf War, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Sydney Schanberg warned journalists not to forget “our unquestioning chorus of agreeability when Lyndon Johnson bamboozled us with his fabrication of the Gulf of Tonkin incident.” |
| August 4, 1964 FBI agents discovered the bodies of three missing civil rights workers buried deep in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi. James Chaney was a local African-American man who had joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had traveled from New York to heavily segregated Mississippi that year to help register voters with the support of CORE.  Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman At the time, fewer than 10% of eligible black Mississippians were registered to vote. The three young men and many others were part of Freedom Summer, a massive voter registration and education project organized by the Council of Federated organizations (COFO), an umbrella group of major civil rights organizations. Watch a video Here is a transcription of what was written on the chalkboard (photo below) this August day in 1964: Yesterday – Negro woman arrested in Hattiesburg for refusing to give her bus seat to a white woman. • 400 attended mass meeting in Marks. • Tallahatchie Co. – 24 people tried to register to vote in Charleston; at least one man told he would lose his job as a result. Today – 6 youths arrested in Greenwood while singing in front of a store. One boy reported beaten. • Local girl missing since Sunday in Natchez • $200 each bond paid by 2 SNCC workers arrested in Anguilla (Sharkey Co.) yesterday for passing out vote leaflets.  This is a close-up of the chalk-board beside the front door of the COFO headquarters building in Jackson, Mississippi. (Transcript just above.) Read more |
| August 4, 1985 Peace Ribbons made by thousands of women were wrapped around the U.S. Pentagon, the White House and the Capitol. Twenty thousand people participated, and the 27,000 panels making up the ribbon stretched for 15 miles.  Maggie Wade, who traveled to Washington, DC from Indiana with her daughter, sitting at the Pentagon with her embroidery panel of the Ribbon Project. Photo © Ellen Shub |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august4
In Gaza, hunger forces impossible choices as Hamas releases propaganda video of hostage
Doctor Gives Eyewitness Account Of Gaza Horrors| Dr. Ambereen Sleemi | TMR
Peace & Justice History for 8/2
August 2, 1931 Albert Einstein urged all scientists to refuse military work. “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” – Albert Einstein (April-May 1949) Book review of Einstein on Politics Other Einstein thoughts on the military |
| August 2, 1964 The U.S.S. Maddox, a destroyer conducting intelligence operations along North Vietnam’s coast, reported it had been attacked by some of the North’s torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. The day before, the North had been attacked by the South Vietnamese Navy and the Laotian Air Force under U.S. direction. 30-year perspective on reporting of the Tonkin Gulf Incident Flawed Intelligence and the Decision for War in Vietnam (from official documents) |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august2
It’s August 1st! Peace&Justice History For Friday, 8/1
August 1, 1914 As World War I began, Harry Hodgkin, a British Quaker, and Friedrich Siegmund-Schulte, a German Lutheran pastor, attending a conference in Germany, pledged to continue sowing the “seeds of peace and love, no matter what the future might bring,” germinating the idea for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). FOR’s Mission: FOR seeks to replace violence, war, racism, and economic injustice with nonviolence, peace, and justice. We are an interfaith organization committed to active nonviolence as a transforming way of life and as a means of radical change. We educate, train, build coalitions, and engage in nonviolent and compassionate actions locally, nationally, and globally. History of the Fellowship of Reconciliation |
August 1, 1920 Mohandas Gandhi began the movement of “non-violent non-cooperation” with the British Raj (ruling colonial authority) in India. The strategy was to bring the British administrative machine to a halt by the total withdrawal of Indian popular support, both Hindu and Muslim. British-made goods were boycotted, as were schools, courts of law, and elective offices. More on the Non-Cooperation Movement |
| August 1, 1944 The Polish underground army began its battle to liberate Warsaw, the first European city to have fallen to the Germans in World War II. The heroic effort to rout the Germans |
| August 1, 1975 The U.S. and the U.S.S.R, represented by President Gerald Ford and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, along with 33 other nations, signed the Helsinki Accords at the close of the Finland meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.  The agreement recognized the inherent relationship between respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the attainment of genuine peace and security. All signatories agreed to respect freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, as well as freedom of religion and belief, and to facilitate the free movement of people, ideas, and information between nations. |
| August 1, 1976 200 people, organized by the Clamshell Alliance, occupied the site of a new nuclear power plant in Seabrook, New Hampshire. They were attempting to halt construction the same day the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission had issued a construction license. Eighteen were arrested. Eventually, only one of two planned reactors was built.  Clamshell Alliance history |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august1
Last Day Of July In Peace & Justice History
| July 31, 1896 The National Association of Colored Women (NACW) was established in Washington, D.C. Its two leading members were Josephine Ruffin and Mary Church Terrell. Founders also included some of the most renowned African-American women educators, community leaders, and civil-rights activists in America, including Harriet Tubman, Frances E.W. Harper, Margaret Murray Washington, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett.  Mary Church Terrell The original intention of the organization was “to furnish evidence of the moral, mental and material progress made by people of colour through the efforts of our women.” However, over the next ten years the NACW became involved in campaigns favoring women’s suffrage and opposing lynching and Jim Crow laws. By the time the United States entered the First World War, membership had reached 300,000. The NACW and its founders |
| July 31, 1986 25,000 people rallied in Namibia for freedom from South African colonial rule. In June, 1971 the International Court of Justice had ruled the South African presence in Namibia to be illegal. Eventually, open elections for a 72-member Constituent Assembly were held under U.N. supervision in November, 1989. Three months later Namibia gained its independence, and maintains it today. More on Namibia’s independence   Namibian flag |
| July 31, 1991 The United States and the Soviet Union, represented by President George H.W. Bush and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, known as START I. It was the first agreement to actually reduce (by 25-35%) and verify both countries’ stockpiles of nuclear weapons at equal aggregate levels in strategic offensive arms. The Soviet Union dissolved several months later, but Russia and the U.S. met their goals by December, 2001. Three other former republics of the U.S.S.R., Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine, have eliminated these weapons from their territory altogether. Comprehensive info from the Federation of American Scientists: |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july31
Four important clips from The Majority Report. Each video clip is a different subject
10 Women Disarm an F-16, & Torquemada’s Work in Spain, in Peace & Justice History for 7/30
| July 30, 1492 The same month Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain for his “expedition of discovery to the Indies” [actually the Western Hemisphere], was the deadline for all “Jews and Jewesses of our kingdoms to depart and never to return . . .” lest they be executed. Under the influence of Fr. Tomas de Torquemada, the leader of the Spanish Inquisition, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had ordered the expulsion of the entire Jewish community of 200,000 from Spain within four months. Spain’s Muslims, or Moors, were forced out as well within ten years.  The edict of expulsion from Spain signed by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella All were forced to sell off their houses, businesses and possessions, were pressured to convert to Christianity, and to find a new country to live in. Those who left were known as Sephardim (Hebrew for Spain), settling in North Africa, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe and the Arab world. Most went to Portugal, were allowed to stay just six months, and then were enslaved under orders of King John. Those who made it to Turkey were welcomed by Sultan Bajazet who asked, “How can you call Ferdinand of Aragon a wise king, the same Ferdinand who impoverished his own land and enriched ours?” |
| July 30, 1996 Four Ploughshares activists in Liverpool, England, were acquitted of all charges (illegal entry and criminal damage) on the basis of their having prevented a greater crime, after having extensively damaged an F-16 Hawk fighter jet to be sold to the Indonesian government for use in its genocidal occupation of East Timor.  Seeds of Hope-East Timor Ploughshares: the action and the aftermath |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july30
With Famine, No Electricity, Fuel, Water, No Family, How Are You Going To Survive?’ in Gaza
After over 21 months of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza, the humanitarian crisis in the Strip has reached its worst point yet. 94% of Gaza’s hospitals have been destroyed or damaged. Dozens of children have died from malnutrition. And Israeli troops continue to kill scores of Palestinians as they try to receive food from the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.”
In this second part of Zeteo’s live ‘Unshocked,’ Dr. Yasser Khan – a Canadian ophthalmologist and plastic surgeon who has traveled twice to Gaza since October 7, 2023 – describes to Mehdi and Naomi how Israel’s humanitarian assault on Gaza has turned injuries and disabilities in Gaza into, “a death sentence.”
Dr. Yasser Khan: “It was horrific, the most horrific things that I’ve ever seen.”
In the interview, Dr. Khan shares the stories of his many patients, the vast majority of whom he says were women and children.
Dr. Khan also discusses how upon returning from Gaza, many of his colleagues in the medical field refused to believe such stories, with some even going out of their way to tell him that, “‘he’s done nothing to be a hero.’”
Dr. Khan explains how he came to the conclusion that what he was seeing in Gaza was indeed a genocide and why he takes so much inspiration from the people in Gaza. Mehdi, Naomi, and Dr. Khan also take questions from a live audience.
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Also, if you are interested in learning more about Israel’s assault on Gaza’s healthcare system, check out Zeteo’s most recently acquired documentary, ‘Gaza: Doctors Under Attack.’
