Category: Military

Peace & Justice History for 9/16

September 16, 1837
William Whipper, a wealthy negro from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, published “An Address on Non-Resistance to Offensive Aggression” in the The Colored American, outlining his commitment to a strictly non-violent response to the evils of slavery. This landmark essay predated Thoreau’s on “Civil Disobedience” by 12 years.

“ …fatal error arises from the belief that the only method of maintaining peace, is always to be ready for war.”
William Whipper
Whipper edited a newspaper, The National Reformer, a publication of the National Moral Reform Society, and furnished food and transportation assistance to fugitive slaves who reached Pennsylvania.
A biography of William Whipper 
September 16, 1939
August Dickmann, a German and a Jehovah’s Witness, became the first conscientious objector (CO) to be executed by the Nazis during World War II. The execution by firing squad took place in Sachsenhausen concentration camp before all prisoners, including 400 Jehovah’s Witness inmates.

NY Times, Sept 16, 1939
Though threatened by Commandant Hermann Baranowsky with the same fate, none of the remaining 400 Witnesses renounced their CO position. Later, the Nazis commonly executed Witnesses by guillotine or hanging, not wanting to spend bullets on COs. German military courts sentenced and executed 270 Jehovah’s Witnesses, the largest number of COs executed from any victim group during World War II.

August Dickmann
He Died for a Principle
September 16, 1974
A federal judge dismissed all charges against American Indian Movement (AIM) leaders Dennis Banks and Russell Means stemming from the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

.Dennis BanksRussell Means

On February 27, 1973, AIM and supporters seized control of Wounded Knee to draw attention to corruption and conditions on the Pine Ridge (Lakota Sioux) reservation.
Wounded Knee was the site where, on December 29, 1890, over 200 Sioux men, women and children were mercilessly gunned down by U.S. cavalry.
We Shall Remain  The Legacy of Wounded Knee 
September 16, 1974
President Gerald Ford announced a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam War deserters and draft-evaders, provided they swear allegiance to the country and agree to work two years in the branch of the military they had abandoned. He did this one month following his pardon of resigned former President Richard Nixon.
September 16, 1991
The Philippine Senate rejected a treaty allowing continued operation of U.S. military bases in the Philippines. The Americans had occupied the Philippines since 1898 (except after surrendering control to the Japanese in 1942 until the end of World War II), though on a “temporary” basis. More than two dozen U.S. military installations were established in the country, even after independence in 1945, notably Clark Air Base and the naval station at Subic Bay, the largest U.S. military installations in Asia.
September 16, 2003
New York Stock Exchange Chair Dick Grasso resigned amid a furor over his compensation package that would reach $139.5 million in one year.

Dick Grasso
The details of the plan and the reaction

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september16

Peace & Justice History for 9/15:

September 15, 1915
In a letter, Turkish Minister of the Interior Mehmet Talaat Pasha explained that the real intention of sending the Armenians to the Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) Desert (now in Syria) was to annihilate them. Talaat had primary responsibility for planning and implementing the Armenian Genocide.
The day before, The New York Times reported that the murder of 350,000 Armenians in Turkey had already occurred.

1915, orphaned Armenian children in the open, many covering their heads from the desert sun. Location: Ottoman empire, region Syria.
The Turkish Adolf Eichmann 
September 15, 1935
The “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor” and the “Reich Citizenship Law” were adopted by the Nazi (National Socialist German Workers’) Party Rally in Nuremberg, depriving German Jews of their citizenship.
September 15, 1963
During Sunday School, 15 sticks of dynamite blew apart the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four children in the basement changing room, and injuring 23 others. Prime suspects were the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and Nacirema (both white supremacist organizations; Nacirema is “American” spelled backwards).
A week before the bombing Governor George C. Wallace had told The New York Times that to stop integration, Alabama needed a “few first-class funerals.”

The four girls lost in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing,
the ruins of the church and grieving parents
This event set off racial rioting and other violence in which two African-American boys were shot to death, and became a turning point in generating broad American sympathy for the civil rights movement.
A member of the church, studying on a scholarship in Paris at the time, was Birmingham High School student Angela Davis.
Lives cut short…

Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Caole Robertson (14), Denise McNair (11)
Read more 
September 15, 1970
Vice President Spiro Agnew said the youth of America were being “brainwashed into a drug culture” by rock music, movies, books, and underground newspapers.
Agnew Assails Songs and Films That Promote a ‘Drug Culture’
September 15, 1981
A blockade started at a nuclear power plant construction site in Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo, California. Nearly 10,000 people tried to prevent fuel rods from being loaded into the two reactor cores. Over two weeks, 1,901 are arrested in the largest occupation of a nuclear power site in U.S. history.

Their immediate major concern was over the region being seismically active and the plant’s location near the Hosgri fault. In 2004 a 6.5 (on the Richter Scale) earthquake was centered less than 40 miles from the plant. Four other faults nearby have since been identified.

Additionally, 9.5 billion liters (2.5 billion gallons) of water needed to cool the reactors each day are discharged directly into the Pacific 11°C (20°F) warmer than the surrounding ocean water, affecting marine plant and animal life there.Diablo canyon
As with all nuclear plants, the problem remains with storage of spent nuclear fuel that remains dangerously radioactive for more than 10,000 years. Diablo Canyon generates 110 spent fuel rod assemblies each year. There is still no satisfactory solution to this long-term storage problem.
Diablo Canyon timeline 
September 15, 1986
Veterans Duncan Murphy (World War II) and Brian Willson (Vietnam) joined Charles Liteky & George Mizo in the Fast For Life, opposing U.S. support for the terrorist contra war against Nicaragua. The contras were insurgent guerillas using violence against civilians in the countryside to bring down the newly formed Sandanista government.
The contras were supported in contravention of the Boland Amendment which prohibited U.S. agencies from providing military equipment, training or support to anyone “for the purpose of overthrowing the Government of Nicaragua.”
Duncan Murphy, Brian Willson, Charles Liteky, George Mizo
The Fast for Life from Brian Willson’s perspective 
September 15, 1996
6,000 rallied and 1,033 were arrested near the Headwaters Grove in rural Carlotta, California, in protest against cutting one of the last large unlogged stands of redwood trees in the world.

Redwoods are coniferous trees (sequoia sempervivens: the genus is named for Sequoya, or George Guess, an American Indian scholar; sempervivens is ever alive in Latin) that can reach over 90m (300 ft.) over a life as long as 2000 years.
September 15, 1997
Sinn Fein, the political party closely allied with the goals of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), entered Northern Ireland’s peace talks for the first time.
September 15, 2001

Four days after 9/11, Representative Barbara Lee
(D-California) cast the only congressional vote against authorizing President Bush to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against anyone associated with the terrorist attacks of September 11. “I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States.”
Barbara Lee – Alone on the Hill 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september15

Peace & Justice History for 9/14:

September 14, 1918
Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison for opposing U.S. entry into World War I. Debs had been an elected official in Indiana, a labor organizer, writer and editor, had founded the first industrial union in the U.S., the American Railway Union, and had run for President four times on the Socialist Party ticket.
He ran again for president from prison in 1920 with the slogan “From Atlanta Prison to the White House,” and received nearly one million.
Learn more about Eugene V. Debs  
September 14, 1940
Congress passed the Selective Service Act, providing for the first peacetime draft (though Japan had already invaded China in 1937 and Germany had invaded Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1939) in U.S. history.
September 14, 1948
A groundbreaking ceremony took place in New York City at the site of the United Nations’ world headquarters.
The site selected for the permanent
headquarters of the United Nations as it was in 1946.
The 39-story building on 18 acres of Manhattan’s Turtle Bay neighborhood (donated by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.) on the East River. It is a major expression of the International Style with its simple geometric form and glass curtain wall, designed principally by Le Corbusier.
The UN building today
Background and more examples of the minimalist, utilitarian International style 
September 14, 1963
The ABC television network invited singer, songwriter, banjo player and activist Pete Seeger to appear on its Saturday night folk and acoustic music show, Hootenanny, despite the fact that he had been blacklisted.

But the invitation stood only if he’d sign an oath of loyalty to the U.S. He described his reaction: “This is ridiculous. I’d sign ’em, if you sign ’em, and everybody who’s born will sign ’em, then we’d all be clean.” 
In the 1940s Seeger traveled throughout the country with Woody Guthrie, performing at union meetings, strikes and demonstrations. After World War II, he and Lee Hays co-founded the Weavers, the legendary folk group that gained commercial success despite being blacklisted.
A Pete Seeger Biography More about Hootenanny 
September 14, 1964

The Free Speech Movement began at the University of California-Berkeley when its Dean Katherine Towle (pronounced toll) announced that existing University regulations prohibiting advocacy of political causes or candidates, signing of members, and collection of funds by student organizations at the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph, would henceforth be ”strictly enforced.”
Read more
September 14, 1982
Wisconsin became the first to approve a statewide referendum calling for a freeze on all testing of nuclear weapons.
September 14, 1990
The Pentagon announced a $20 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (Saudi Arabia’s eastern neighbor) had invaded Kuwait six weeks earlier.
Saud royal family
September 14, 1991
The South African government, the African National Congress, the Inkatha Freedom Party, a total of forty organizations, signed the National Peace Accord. It led to the country’s first multi-racial elections and the end of South Africa’s racially separatist apartheid (literally separateness in the Afrikaans language) political, economic and social system by 1994.
“ Bearing in mind the values which we hold, be these religious or humanitarian, we pledge ourselves with integrity of purpose to make this land a prosperous one where we can all live, work and play together in peace and harmony.”
Background of the conflict 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september14

Israel Drops 2000-Pound Bombs On Tents In Gaza “Safe Zone”

Let’s talk about Trump, an answer I didn’t want to know, and 18 months….

Peace & Justice History for 9/12:

September 12, 1977
Steve Biko, the leader of the black consciousness movement, and probably the most influential young black leader in South Africa, died while being held by security forces in Port Elizabeth; he was the forty-first person to die while in police custody in South Africa.
The Death of Stephen Biko

 
September 12, 1998
A group later known as the Cuban Five was arrested after infiltrating groups which had previously executed terrorist attacks on Cuban soil.They were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage against the U.S. Their conviction was overturned by a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court, then reinstated by the full court; an appeal to the Supreme Court is planned.
The United Nations Commission on Arbitrary Detentions has characterized their imprisonment as arbitrary detention.

Who are the Cuban 5? 
September 12, 2002

President George W. Bush told skeptical world leaders at the United Nations to confront the ”grave and gathering danger” of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, or to stand aside as the United States acted. 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september12

Republicans being their nutty selves hurting the country

Tuberville Blocks Promotion Of Austin’s Senior Aide

Tuberville previously blocked the promotions of dozens of top soldiers over the Pentagon’s abortion policy. This is more grandstanding.

Leo Pledges $1 Billion To “Crush” Liberal Corporations

 

Leo said the money would target “companies and financial institutions that bend to the woke mind virus.”

Ron DeSantis Defends Sending Police To Harass People Who Signed Petition Placing Abortion Rights On Ballot
Vance To Cultists: Keep Spreading “Pet Eating” Lies

 

As many have pointed out in the replies, that child wasn’t “murdered,” he was killed in a 2023 school bus crash with an immigrant who did not have a valid US drivers license.

 
https://twitter.com/RepSwalwell/status/1833516929895829903
Felon: Why Does Fox Let Harris’s Spox “Spew Lies”?
Swalwell Roasts Jordan For Lying “Eating Pets” Meme
Trump Screamed Racist “Eating Pets” Lie At Debate

Review of the Sunday news programs 9 11 2024

Let’s talk about Harris getting a letter from former senior military leaders….

Peace & Justice History for 9/11:

September 11, 1906
Mohandas Gandhi, a young Indian lawyer, began a nonviolent resistance campaign in Johannesburg, South Africa, demanding rights and respect for those of Asian descent. It was the birth of his concept of political progress through nonviolent resistance known as Satyagraha, or truth-force.
He led a meeting of 3000 of the town’s Indians, protesting the Transvaal Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance. That law required all Asians to obey three rules: those of eight years or older had to carry passes for which they had to give their fingerprints; they would be segregated as to where they could live and work; new Asian immigration into the Transvaal would be disallowed, even for those who had left the town when the South African War broke out in 1899, and were returning.


Gandhi, London, 1906
The meeting produced the Fourth Resolution, in which all Indians resolved to go to prison rather than submit to the ordinance.
In Gandhi’s own words:
September 11, 1973
Chile’s armed forces staged a coup d’etat against the government of President Salvador Allende, the first democratically elected socialist head of state in Latin America. Some three thousand were held in Santiago’s national stadium where guards singled out folksinger Victor Jara as he continued to sing protest songs. Jara was viciously beaten, and his mutilated body machine-gunned in front of the other prisoners.
 dissidents held in the stadium
Read more on Victor Jara
 Victor Jara plays to young supporters
 Victor Jara
The U.S. government, through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), had worked for three years to foment the coup against Allende. Striking Chilean labor unions, instrumental in destabilizing the Allende government, were secretly bankrolled by the CIA.
During the brutal and repressive 17-year rule of General Augusto Pinochet that followed, more than 3,000 political opponents were assassinated or “disappeared.” The U.S.-backed military dictatorship banned Jara’s music, image, name and, for a time, even outlawed the public performance of the folk-guitar.
More about the coup 
September 11, 2001

Suicidal Islamist terrorists, members of Al Qaeda and most of them Saudis, hijacked four commercial airliners in the eastern U.S., and managed successfully to turn three of the jet-fuel-loaded planes into missiles: two flew into New York City’s World Trade Center towers, destroying them, and a third into the west side of the Pentagon. On the fourth, passengers heroically seized back control but crashed it into an empty field in western Pennsylvania. The hijackers killed nearly 3000 that day: passengers and crew, workers in the twin towers and the Pentagon. A 911 chronology 
September 11, 2002
Women In Black (WIB) Baltimore started the first Peace Path as a response to 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. The nonviolent action presented images of peace rather than war and militarism as a response to problems.
Now in its seventh year, the path will extend for 12 miles through Baltimore. Others are beginning to create 9/11 peace paths in their own communities.Women in Black along the peace path in Baltimore, 2007
Participants in WIB vigils wear black as a sign of mourning for all that is lost through war and violence. The group seeks to bring together people of all races, faiths, nationalities, and genders who support positions of nonviolence and who seek peace through mutual understanding and constructive dialogue.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september101996