Tag: Peace

“Two Weeks Notice,” “Most Deserving” (comics)

Most deserving by Ann Telnaes

Trump thinks he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize Read on Substack

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Two Weeks Notice by Clay Jones

Two weeks = never Read on Substack

This could all be moot if Trump starts bombing Iran before the weekend or even the day is over. Today, several B-2 stealth bombers, the only kind of jet that can carry the 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs thought capable of penetrating Iran’s underground Fordow nuclear facility, flew west to Guam. Most likely, Trump is trying to show off like he has a big penis.

When asked a few days ago about joining the fight Israel started with Iran, Trump said he’ll have the answer in two weeks. The right answer would have been no.

Part of the message of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign was no more “forever wars.” Unless he thinks a war with Iran will be short and sweet, he would break that promise if he drags us into Israel’s fight. The war in Iraq would be a MAGA-Lardo Trump golf tournament for Donald compared to a war inside Iran.

If the rule is, “no land wars in Asia,” then someone get Trump a map and show him what continent Iran is in.

When you criticize Israel for starting this war, or voice any opposition to it, then MAGAts start screaming that you love Iran and you want them to have nuclear weapons. That’s the talk of a simpleton. Remember in 2003 when you opposed invading Iraq, and W. Bush’s followers would howl, “You’re either with us or against!” That was simple thinking, too (where are all those people now?). But Republicans have never added a lot of depth to their thought process. Unfortunately, it works. More Americans respond to it. MAGAts prefer to communicate in three syllables, like “No more wars” and “Bomb Iran.” Now, explain what a syllable is to a MAGAt.

I don’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons, which is why I supported the nuclear treaty we had with Iran under President Barack Obama. The same one Donald Trump later destroyed and is asking for now. If Donald Trump could get the exact same deal with Iran that he destroyed while lying that it wasn’t working, he’d call himself a genius for it. I expect him to get something much less and heap hero worship on himself. He’s already talking about how he deserves a Nobel Prize, which Obama has.

Iran might actually be in a better position with Trump in office because Donald Trump is the world’s worst negotiator. If you just make him feel like he won, you can get everything you want. Not only could they have their bomb, but also get club memberships at MAGA-Lardo.

Who remembers what’s in the treaty Trump negotiated with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un?

And we should negotiate with Iran to stop its nuclear program, because the one Obama got them to sign was working. Why did Donald Trump cancel an agreement to end Iran’s nuclear program that was working? Probably because Obama’s name was on it. When Trump canceled the agreement, he made the world more dangerous. He gave Iran the green light to reignite its nuclear program.

Despite Trump’s treaty with North Korea, they’re closer today to being able to deliver a nuclear weapon to the continental United States.

But why should we join Israel’s war? They started it. Sure, Iran has been funding terrorist attacks against Israel for years, and we’ve funded Israel’s defense against that. But this is a war. Why should we join a fight we didn’t start? This isn’t our fight, especially when Israel is starting it just for us to finish.

When I was a stupid kid back in the 1980s, I was out with my buddy Ronny and Mark. Mark started a fight with another kid who also had his buddies with him. None of us joined in, and we all watched Mark and the other guy roll around, punching each other. Mark lost. Later, our other friends were angry at Ronny and me for not jumping into the fight. But it wasn’t our fight. If those other kids had jumped in, then yeah…we would have, too. But they knew it wasn’t their fight either. For what it’s worth, I did pull the guy off Mark when it was clear the fight was over and won. After the fight was over, we all stood around for 20 minutes talking about the fight. The moral is, don’t start a fight you can’t win, and don’t join a fight that’s not yours. We were sorry that Mark got his ass handed to him, but he shouldn’t have started the fight.

Trump’s decision to take two weeks to make a decision means it’s not important to him. This has to frustrate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because he knows when Trump says two weeks, it’s never delivered in two weeks…if ever.

Trump should have run on the message, “I’ll take two weeks to make decisions.” Ronald Reagan didn’t tell Gorbachev, “Tear down this wall…in two weeks.”

When Trump promised a new tax plan in 2017 of tax cuts for billionaire assholes, he promised he’d deliver it in two weeks. They delivered it two months later, and it was his only legislative accomplishment from his first term.

We’re still waiting to see Trump’s healthcare plan he promised years ago to deliver in two weeks.

Trump promised an infrastructure bill in two weeks during his first term. What happened? President Joe Biden signed an infrastructure bill.

In 2017, Trump said he would prove that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower in two weeks. We’re still waiting, much like the wait for Trump to prove that Obama was born in Kenya.

One Israeli official said that Trump “wouldn’t give himself a deadline that he would have to keep to if he hadn’t already made the decision.” Yeah, that guy hasn’t been paying attention for the past decade, because Trump doesn’t keep promises. What Donald Trump does is talk out of his ass.

Trump uses the two-week thing in hopes that people will forget. Maybe other shit will happen during those two weeks and people don’t remember the two-week promise. Or, Trump can create a new crisis, like when he said he’ll decide what to do about the Russian/Ukraine war in two weeks, which was months ago.

Or, Trump can be hoping the problem resolves itself within two weeks. Most likely, Israel will stop bombing Iran, and everyone will stop paying attention. Netanyahu overplayed his hand, starting a war and expecting Trump to save his ass. Isn’t Israel already in two other conflicts, one with Hamas and the other with Hezbollah?

Bibi needs to learn that Trump Always Chickens Out.

Creative note: I shouldn’t have had to spend three hours banging my head against a wall before this idea came to me because I watched half of Don’t Look Up last night.

Music note: I listened to more Tom Petty while drawing because I hadn’t finished listening to all of it during the last cartoon.

Drawn in 30 seconds: (snip-Go See!)

A Letter From God 😉

I Made A Rainbow To Troll Trump For Pride Month by God

Happy Pride! Read on Substack

Dear Humans,

First I sent a thunderstorm to ruin his stupid birthday parade. Now behold! I painted the skies with a rainbow to troll his helicopter for Pride Month!

1. God Hates You, Donold

The White House posted what they thought was a photo showing God’s endorsement: Marine One lifting off with a rainbow in the background.

But as always, the faux-king liars misinterpreted My meaning!

God LOVES LGBTQ+ people!

And I despise that infinite bigot Donold.

Luckily, Gavin Newsom’s press office understood and quote-tweeted it with:
“Happy Pride 😌”

2. Their ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Just Collapsed

Trump’s prized “One Big Beautiful Bill” crumbled in the House.

It was supposed to be his grand legislative comeback. Instead, it got nuked by the parliamentarian.

Now the GOP is in full-blown civil war. Fighting over AI, Medicaid cuts, deficit math, and whose bootlicking is most loyal.

On top of all that, Tangerine Palpatine is raging at Fox News because his poll numbers are in the toilet.

Verily, thou mayest eat shit, Donold.

3. God Bless the ACLU

God bless the ACLU, who just won a unanimous court ruling striking down Louisiana’s ludicrous Ten Commandments law.

Public schools are not Sunday schools. And this court had the guts to say it.

Let it be known: while the cult worships golden idols of Donold and demands state-mandated religion, real Americans are still defending the Constitution.

Before you go, I need to say something important.
This part isn’t a joke. It’s about survival. (snip-MORE)

“Endangered Earth Dove”

Purple Quail-Dove

Peace & Justice History for 6/21

June 21, 1877
 
The Molly Maguires
Four members of the Molly Maguires were hung for murder in what was then Mauch Chunk, and in Pottsville, towns in Pennsylvania’s Carbon County. The Molly Maguires was a secret and violent Irish-Catholic organization of coal miners formed to combat the oppressive working and living conditions in the anthracite coal region of the state.
Read more (2 links)
June 21, 1908
A Women’s Sunday Suffrage rally, supporting the right of women to vote, drew several hundred thousand to London’s Hyde Park from all over the country.

Women were encouraged to wear “the colours” – white (for purity), green (hope) and purple (dignity) – and in “as fetching, charming and ladylike a manner as possible.” As the Yorkshire Daily Post put it: “At least one half of the crowd was composed of the sort of people you would expect to see at a suburban garden party.”
The women’s suffrage movement 
June 21, 1964
James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, three young Freedom Summer workers, disappeared in Philadelphia, Mississippi, while registering negroes to vote. Their bodies were found six weeks later, having been shot and then buried in an earthen dam.

James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner
Eight members of the Ku Klux Klan eventually went to prison on federal conspiracy charges related to the disappearance; none served more than six years.
Schwerner and Goodman, both white New Yorkers, had traveled to heavily segregated Mississippi to help organize civil rights efforts on behalf of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Chaney was a local African-American man who had joined CORE in 1963.
Read more and hear versions of Pete Seeger’s song,  “Those Three are On My Mind”

More on Chaney 
Read about the movie
June 21, 1997
100,000 marched in solidarity with striking newspaper workers in Detroit after nearly two years on the picket line.

support rally march 1, 1997  photo: Paul Felton
The Detroit Newspaper Agency (DNA) had refused to bargain in good faith (later confirmed by a ruling of the National Labor Relations Board), even after the union members had worked for months without a contract, and the DNA, which ran both the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News, had begun to impose the changes they had been insisting on at the bargaining table.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjune.htm#june21

This Is A Wonderful Song-Please Take A Listen! 🎶 ☮

“Trust Your Own Thinking” “Share Your Favourite Tune June” – An Impromptu Unofficial Music Event template

Well Done, Personnelente:

Blowing Up Palestinian Hospitals OK

Peace & Justice History for 6/20

June 20, 1960
Nobel Prize-winner in Chemistry Linus Pauling [for study of the nature of the chemical bond and the determination of the structure of molecules and crystals] defied the U.S. Congress by refusing to name circulators of petitions calling for the total halt of nuclear weapons testing. Pauling later won a second Nobel, a Peace Prize, for his work championing nuclear disarmament.

Linus Pauling
Interview with Linus Pauling on the peace movement, 1983
June 20, 1965
Hundreds protested following a military coup in Algiers, the capital of Algeria. The military, under chief of the armed forces Colonel Houari Boumedienne and his National Revolutionary Council, had deposed President Ahmed Ben Bella, the first president of an independent Algeria (following the withdrawal of French colonial control).
On the news at the time 
June 20, 1967
Boxer Muhammad Ali was convicted in Houston, Texas, of violating the Selective Service law by refusing induction into the U.S. Army (during the Vietnam War). The World Heavyweight Champion had claimed conscientious objector status on the basis that he was a Muslim minister. The conviction, for which Ali was sentenced to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, was later overturned by the Supreme Court.

“I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.”
June 20, 1982
2500 were arrested during a two-day blockade of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, about 50 miles east of San Francisco, the principal American nuclear weapons research facility, operated by the University of California.
June 20, 1995
Shell Oil gave in to international pressure and abandoned its plans to dispose of the Brent Spar oil-drilling platform and its contents into the North Atlantic. The environmental group Greenpeace spearheaded the effort to prevent Shell from sinking the rig, its members boarding and occupying it as a tactic to stop the deep sea disposal, and to call attention to the issue peacefully.
Shell’s plan would have dumped toxic and radioactive sludge into the ocean just west of the British Isles. A month later, at the Oslo and Paris Commission (OSPARCOM) meeting, 11 out of 13 countries agreed to a moratorium on the “dumping” of offshore installations, pending agreement on an outright ban.
Greenpeace climbers on Brent Spar platform

Shell ships use water cannons against Greenpeace activists on board the rig.
Read more about Greenpeace and Brent Spar
June 20, 2002
The U.S. Supreme Court declared executing mentally retarded individuals convicted of capital crimes to be unconstitutionally cruel [Atkins v. Virginia]. Besides being in line with a consensus among state legislatures, the court found that “Their deficiencies [the mentally retarded] do not warrant an exemption from criminal sanctions, but diminish their personal culpability.”

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjune.htm#june20

Juneteenth & More, in Peace & Justice History for 6/19

June 19, 1865

Known among African Americans as Juneteenth (also Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Liberation Day, or Emancipation Day), this is the day enslaved people in Texas and parts of Louisiana learned they had been freed by President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. 
U.S. Major General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston, Texas, and announced the order that the slaves had been freed. This was two-and-a-half years after the Proclamation had taken effect January 1, 1863. It had stated, “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious (Confederate) states “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” This had been kept from the slaves so the slaveowners could reap additional harvests, or because there weren’t enough Union soldiers to enforce the order until Granger arrived, but Juneteenth is the celebration of that day….
A Junetheenth celebration Richmond. Photo from Library of Congress (maybe 1921)
Learn More About Juneteenth?  New York Times
“Black Joy—Not Corporate Acknowledgment—Is the Heart of Juneteenth”  The Atlantic
June 19, 1964

Two hundred college students left Oxford, Ohio’s Western College for Women to join hundreds of other civil rights volunteers in Mississippi as part of “Freedom Summer.”
Under the umbrella organization of COFO(Council of Federated Organizations) they worked on projects across the state.Led by SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) and CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) field secretaries, they helped Negroes try to register to vote, they taught in Freedom Schools, participated in community organizing and, in doing so, endured the hostility toward civil rights work among whites in the deep South. “If we can crack Mississippi,” the students said, “we can crack segregation anywhere.”

Mississippi Freedom Summer Volunteers singing We Shall Overcome, 1964<
Student protestors are photographed by a policeman on Freedom Day in Greenwood, Mississippi in 1964.

ROBERT MOSES, director of the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project and leader of the training program in Oxford, is shown here during a break in a session which he conducted in Jackson, Mississippi, to prepare African-Americans for politically effective action.
more photos 
Good background on the need for a “Freedom Summer” 
June 19, 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved after surviving an 83-day filibuster in the United States Senate. The new law, initiated and passed through the determination of President Lyndon Johnson and Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois, guaranteed for the first time equal access to public accommodations “without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.”

Massive demonstrations a year earlier ensured passage of the Acts
The Senate had never before voted to end the filibuster of a civil rights bill, all of which were consistently opposed by the bloc of senators from the South. Following Senator Robert Byrd’s (D-West Virginia) 14+ hour-long speech, Senator Dirksen rose to speak, “We dare not temporize with the issue which is before us. It is essentially moral in character. It must be resolved. It will not go away. Its time has come.”

About the Civil Rights Act 
June 19, 1982
One thousand landowners occupied key islands in protest against French nuclear weapons tests at Kwajalein Atoll.The atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the western Pacific Ocean, is about 2100 miles [3400 km] southwest of Hawaii and 1400 miles [2250 km] east of Guam. The island is now home to USAKA (United States Army Kwajalein Atoll), the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, and about 2000 support personnel and family members on Kwajalein and the islands Roi and Namur.

Kwajalein Atoll
Struggles of Pacific Islanders to stop nuclear testing 
June 19, 1987
U.S. Supreme Court ruled teaching of creationism in public schools to be a violation of the U.S. constitution’s prohibition on establishment of religion by the government [Edwards v. Aguillard]. Students, parents and teachers had contested the Louisiana “Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science in Public School Instruction” law (Creationism Act). It required schools that taught evolution to also teach creation science. “The preeminent purpose of the Louisiana Legislature was clearly to advance the religious viewpoint that a supernatural being created humankind,” concluded Justice William Brennan in his majority opinion.
(I’m inserting this, because it’s not yet made it into the newsletter. -A)
June 17, 2021 (for June 19)
President Joe Biden declared Juneteenth a national holiday. Read a bit about the significance here, from the National Museum of African American History & Culture:
“This year marks the second anniversary since President Joe Biden named Juneteenth a federal holiday in 2021.
“As more Americans celebrate Juneteenth with family and community, it is vital to share the important historical legacy behind Juneteenth and recognize the long struggle to make it an officially recognized holiday. It is an opportunity to honor our country’s second Independence Day and reflect on our shared history and future. 
“The origins of Juneteenth date to June 1865. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 and the Confederate army surrendered to the Union army in April 1865, enslaved people in Texas — the westernmost Confederate state — could not exercise their freedom until June 19, 1865. ‘On that date, Union General Gordon Granger led some 2,000 Union troops, many of whom were Black, into Galveston Bay, where they announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in the state were free by executive decree. This day came to be known as ‘Juneteenth,’ deriving its name from combining ‘June’ and ‘nineteenth.’” 
Read More

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjune.htm#june19

It’s Still PRIDE Month! Here’s Peace & Justice History for 6/18. Now Have Some Big Fun!

June 18, 1571
King Sebastian of Portugal enacted penalties for violation of censorship legislation. The fines could be as much as a quarter or half of the violator’s legal possessions, plus the threat of exile to Brazil or an African colony. Death sentences were also not uncommon. Seized books were burned and burnings were supervised by Roman Catholic priests.
June 18, 1840
The Oberlin Non-Resistance Society was formed at the Ohio college by students who believed “that the Gospel of Jesus Christ inculcates the duty of peace and good-will.” They were inspired by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison’s New England group of similar name.
They rejected all use of violence even in the name of duty to country. “We must submit to the ‘powers that be,’ and ‘obey magistrates,’ except when their requirements conflict with God’s laws; when we are meekly to endure the penalty of disobedience ‘threatening them not.’ ”
Though denounced by the faculty and ignored by the student newspaper, the group was among the first in a succession of peace- and justice-oriented organizations begun at Oberlin.
Oberlin’s peaceful tradition 
June 18, 1941
Less than two weeks before a scheduled march on Washington, its chief organizer, (Asa) A. Philip Randolph, was invited to the White House by President Franklin Roosevelt. Randolph was the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful black trade union. He, along with activist and singer Bayard Rustin, had issued a “Call to Negro America to March on Washington for Jobs and Equal Participation in National Defense on July 1, 1941.”

Roosevelt was wary of the prospect of such a demonstration and desirous of developing support for a war effort. Randolph told Roosevelt he would abandon the march plans only if the president would stop job discrimination in both the defense industry and the government. Before the end of the month, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, which barred government contractors from discriminating in hiring on the basis of race, color, creed or national origin.

A. Philip Randolph and Eleanor Roosevelt
The order, sometimes called a second emancipation proclamation, was the federal government’s most significant action on behalf of the rights of African Americans since post-Civil War reconstruction of the 1870s.
June 18, 1948
A United Nations commission approved and recommended to the General Assembly an International Declaration of Human Rights, recognizing that “the inherent dignity and . . . the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world . . . .”
Text of the Declaration:  . . .
June 18, 1970
The U.S. Congress passed the 26th amendment to the constitution, lowering the voting age to 18 for all elections—federal, state and local. The amendment went into effect just 100 days later after 38 state legislatures had ratified the amendment.
June 18, 1979
SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty), an agreement to put limits on both America’s and the Soviet Union’s long-range missiles and bombers, was signed by Presidents Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev. This was the first arms-reduction treaty between the two superpowers. It was signed despite the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the previous year.

Read more on SALT II’s control of weapons of mass destruction 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjune.htm#june18

The Best Way To Learn About Autistic Pride Is To Learn It From Autistic People

That’s a thing I began learning during my years working in schools, but I’ve really picked up a great deal more from fellow blogger Barry. Here is his Autistic Pride Day blog post!

Autistic Pride Day 2025: A Celebration of Worthiness, Not Superiority