Tag: Peace

Peace & Justice History for 2/10

February 10, 1961

Pirate radio ship
The Voice of Nuclear Disarmament, a pirate radio station, began operation offshore of Great Britain. It was run by John Hasted, a physicist, a musician, and a radio expert in World War II. He was active with mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell in the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament, a group that practiced Gandhian an nonviolent civil disobedience.
February 10, 1964

Bob Dylan’s ”The Times They Are A-Changin’” was released. The album’s title song captured the emerging, principally generational gap in American culture concerning war and racism.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’
watch video (1964)
the lyrics 
February 10, 2003
Iraq acceded to U-2 surveillance flights over its territory, meeting a key demand by U.N. inspectors searching for banned weapons of mass destruction (WMD) there.The 60 weapons inspectors in Baghdad and Mosul were under the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), led by Hans Blix, and the International Atomic Energy Agency under Mohamed El Baradei.
The U.N. had destroyed all of Iraq’s banned weapons by 1994, as well as production and development facilities later, though Saddam Hussein expelled the U.N. representatives in 1998.

U-2 spy plane.

Hans Blix gives his report at the UN as Mohamed El Baradei listens.
The economic and trade embargo during the inter-war period prevented resumption of the weapons programs. CIA and other intelligence estimates, however, insisted upon the existence of WMDs in Iraq. None have ever been found.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february10

Peace & Justice History for 2/9

February 9, 1780
Captain Paul Cuffe, his brother John, two free negroes, and other residents of Massachusetts petitioned the state legislature for the right to vote.
A few years earlier, Cuffe and his brother had refused to pay local taxes, reasoning that there was a connection between an obligation to pay taxes to a government and the right to vote for that government.

Captain Paul Cuffe
Cuffe’s memoir available 
Cuffe’s career as ship captain, shipowner, African colonizer and generous citizen 
February 9, 1950
United States Senator Joseph P. McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) accused more than 200 staff members in the State Department of being Communists, launching his anti-red crusade.
He made the allegation in a public speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, saying that state was infested with communists, and brandished a sheet of paper which he said contained the alleged traitors’ names.

“I have here in my hand,” he said, “the names of 205 men that were known to the Secretary of State [Dean Acheson] as being members of the Communist party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.” The number changed repeatedly over the following months. Some years later, he confided the paper was actually just a laundry list.
Anti-Communist fear ran high in the U.S. at the time. Federal civil servant and Soviet spy Alger Hiss had been recently convicted, and a communist government had just come into power in China. Those accused by McCarthy and others often lost their jobs, regardless of the validity of the accusation of their connection to the Communist Party.
McCarthy’s career of irresponsible accusation 
Joe McCarthy’s Oversight Abuses (The Levin Center)
Released 50 years later, transcripts of closed committee hearings reveal more abuse
February 9, 1964
 
The G.I. JOE action figure made its debut as an 11.5 inch “doll” for boys with 21 moving parts, named after the movie, The Story of G.I. JOE. 

Puts you in the action!
February 9, 1965
President Lyndon Johnson ordered a U.S. Marine Corps Hawk air defense missile battalion deployed to Da Nang, South Vietnam, to provide protection for the key U.S. air base there. American military advisers had been in country since the defeat and withdrawal of the French in 1954, but this was the first commitment of combat troops to South Vietnam.There was considerable reaction around the world to this new level of U.S. involvement. Both the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union threatened to intervene if the United States continued its military support of the South Vietnamese government.
In Moscow, some 2,000 demonstrators, led by Vietnamese and Chinese students and clearly supported by the authorities, attacked the U.S. Embassy. Britain and Australia supported the U.S. action, but France called for negotiations.
A Marine HAWK missile launcher is in position at the Danang Airfield.
February 9, 2002
Ten thousand, organized by Gush Shalom (peace bloc in Hebrew), a coalition of Israeli peace groups, marched in Tel Aviv against the Ariel Sharon government’s increasingly brutal attacks on Palestinian civilians. The harsh tactics were part of Israel’s continuing occupation of the West Bank (of the Jordan River) and the Gaza Strip, territory beyond Israel’s internationally recognized 1967 borders.
February 9, 2003
Six weeks before the Iraq War began, Secretary of State Colin Powell on ABC-TV’s “This Week” dismissed the need for U.N. weapons inspectors to continue searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.
He said the administration saw no further need for ”inspectors to play detectives or Inspector Clouseau running all over Iraq.” Clouseau was the bumbling detective played originally by Peter Sellers (and lately Steve Martin) in the Pink Panther films.

Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau

U.N. weapons inspectors, left, and Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate members visit a Baghdad storage facility in this photo taken Feb. 5, 2003, just hours before U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared at the U.N. Security Council to offer evidence of alleged Iraqi attempts to hide banned weapons.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february9

Late-breaking Poetry

Whose flaming sword

Timely Toon + Help a Person Out (OT Post)

Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for February 07, 2025

Non Sequitur Comic Strip for February 07, 2025

So, we’ve always had nicknames for our doggies. We’ve had: Sparkinator, Chrissinator, Corkinator; Sparky-Larky, Missy Chrissy, Corky-Lorky; also Sparkasaur, and Corkisaur (Missy Chrissy was too good to be a dinosaur.) (Also, they each knew all their names.) Now there is Ollie, and while I tend to let Ollinator slip out now and then, I don’t think I care for it, somehow. DH always used the “saur” suffix, while I did the “-nator” one. I think I like Ollisaur, and am working on using it, but how about some feedback from the crew here at Playtime? Any other Ollie-name suggestion will be considered, as well. Thanks for whatever you can do! 🐕‍🦺 🌞

Peace & Justice History for 2/7

February 7, 1926
“Negro History Week” was observed for the first time, conceived by Dr. Carter G. Woodson as an opportunity to study the history and accomplishments of African Americans. Dr. Woodson was the founder, in 1915 Chicago, of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. There he first published the Journal of Negro History, currently known as The Journal of African American History (www.jaah.org).
Woodson was a graduate of the University of Chicago, the Sorbonne, and was the second black man ever to receive his doctorate from Harvard.
He chose February because it is the birth month of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass; now it is designated Black History Month.



Top L-R: Frederick Douglass, former slave and abolitionist leader; Muhammad Ali, poet, World Champion, the greatest; Maya Angelou, poet, novelist, voice of wisdom; Malcolm X, strong and clear-eyed brother seeking freedom and honor and dignity ; Harriet Tubman, liberator and conductor on the Underground Railroad.
Below: Jimi Hendrix, prolific guitar genius, rock ‘n’ roll writer; Nat “King” Cole, jazz composer, pianist and singer; Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., pastor, scholar and author, leader of a people, inspiration to peacemakers.

Dr. Carter G. Woodson
More on Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s life and work
February 7, 1971

Women in Switzerland were granted the right to vote in national elections and to stand for parliament for the first time in their nation’s history. This happened through a national referendum in which only men could vote, passing 621,403 to 323,596. A previous referendum in 1959 failed 2-1.
February 7, 1986
Haitian self-appointed President-for-Life Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier fled his country after being ousted by the military, ending 28 years of authoritarian family rule.Policies begun by his father, Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, had forced many to flee Haiti (the western portion of the island of Hispaniola), leaving it the poorest and most illiterate nation in the hemisphere. Deforestation (for cooking fuel and heat) eliminated forest cover on 98% of the country, in turn leading to significant annual loss of topsoil, often making agriculture unsustainable.

Jean-Claude `Baby Doc’ Duvalier with his father Francois `Papa Doc’ Duvailer.
Some Haitian history 
February 7, 1991
The Reverend Jean-Bertrand Aristide was sworn in as Haiti’s president after winning the country’s first-ever democratic election. Haiti had achieved its independence from France in 1804 but had a long succession on unstable governments, as well as significant U.S. control in the first half of the 20th century, including military occupation from 1915 to 1934.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in exile during the 1991-94 military junta.
Archive of Haitian history 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february7

And Another One

It’s an excellent poem, with more background on the page, of interest to us here. Click the title.

After

Youna Kwak

I never feel so alive as when I am    
writing and have no right    
answer for what this means   
for the lives of others, how

to live in the after which after    
all means the now of our living   
together when together    
means death for all

those forbidden from   
entering the home so    
methodically built until after   
they are dead. Only 

after will locked doors    
swing amply open to   
admit the murdered    
into rooms of vast

crushed comfort, whose    
inhabitants eat and sleep   
on furnishings carved   
with corpses, stepping

with hospitable sorrow   
around the bodies of the   
dead, speaking dirges   
into the phantom

darkness. What happens 
in the quiet grave where  
the living make themselves   
at home, where noisily

they intend to thrive, where  
the poem itself concedes 
to suffering so it might persist   
in blazing against it.

Copyright © 2025 by Youna Kwak. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 5, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

Enjoy Some Harlem Renaissance Poetry This Morning:

Click the poem title for more about this poet and her poem.

Things Said When He Was Gone

Blanche Taylor Dickinson 1896 – 1972

My branch of thoughts is frail tonight
As one lone-wind-whipped weed.
Little I care if a rain drop laughs
Or cries; I cannot heed

Such trifles now as a twinkling star, 
Or catch a night-bird’s tune. 
My whole life is you, to-night,
And you, a cool distant moon.

With a few soft words to nurture my heart
And brighter beams following love’s cool shower
Who knows but this frail wind-whipped weed
Might bear you a gorgeous flower!

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on February 2, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

Peace & Justice History for 2/6

February 6, 1899
Spain agreed to abandon all claims of sovereignty over Cuba, the cession of Puerto Rico and Guam, the cession of the Philippine Islands; and in exchange the U.S. agreed to pay $20,000,000 in a treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate on this day.
The previous July the U.S. took control of Gantanamo Bay, blockaded Cuba’s other ports and destroyed the Spanish fleet at Santiago Bay.
The U.S. Army, landed at Guanica, near Ponce, Puerto Rico, and shortly took possession of the island with the exception of San Juan.
The Spanish Pacific fleet was destroyed and the U.S. took control of Manila, the capital, and Luzon, the main island of the Philippines a few weeks later.
February 6, 1943
The U.S. government required the 110,000 disposessed Japanese Americans forcibly held in concentration (internment) camps to answer loyalty surveys.

Some of the interned were U.S. citizens, and some volunteered to serve in the armed forces during the war with Japan.
The Nisei, as they were known, were kept in the camps until the end of World War II.

The Manzanar Relocation Center, a one of the concentration camps where Japanese-Americans were forced to live throughout World War II.
February 6, 1956
Autherine Lucy was excluded from classes just three days after becoming the first black person allowed to attend the University of Alabama. Her suspension “for her own safety” followed three days of riots over her Supreme Court-ordered enrollment.

Autherine J. Lucy and her attorney Thurgood Marshall
Crowds of students, townspeople and members of the Ku Klux Klan shouted, “Kill her!” among other things. It is unclear why the University did not suspend the students who were among the rioters.
Lucy had originally applied for graduate study in library science in 1952, and had been accepted until the University realized her race, and claimed state law prevented her admission.
A graduate of traditionally black Miles College, she was only admitted with the help of the National Association for Colored People Legal Defense and Education Fund (NAACP-LDEF) and lawyers Thurgood Marshall (later a Supreme Court justice), Constance Baker Motley (future federal judge) and Arthur Shores (elected to Birmingham City Council).
Read more  
February 6, 1959
The United States successfully test-fired its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), known as Titan, from Cape Canaveral. It was a two-stage rocket designed to carry nuclear warheads.Titans were also capable of boosting satellites and spacecraft into orbit. Before the last was produced in 2002, they launched several two-man Gemini missions in the 1960s and launched the first spacecraft to land on Mars.

First test launch of Titan booster rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
February 6, 1961
The civil rights jail-in movement began when ten negro students in Rock Hill, South Carolina, were arrested for requesting service at a segregated lunch counter. They refused to post bail and demanded jail time rather than paying fines, refusing to acknowledge any legitimacy of the laws under which they were arrested.
More about Charles Sherrod 
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote to Charles Sherrod, Diane Nash
and the others in jail:
‘‘You have inspired all of us by such demonstrative courage and faith. It is good to know that there still remains a creative minority who would rather lose in a cause that will ultimately win than to win in a cause that will ultimately lose.’’
February 6, 1985
The Molesworth Common Peace Camp, just outside the Royal Air Force Base there, was evicted by the British Army. The 300 inhabitants and their many supporters had been nonviolently protesting the siting of nuclear-tipped U.S. cruise missiles at the base. Peace camps were established at several locations in Europe in the early 1980s to protest the destabilizing nuclear weapons buildup.

Molesworth Common peace camp

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february6

This Post is Well Written-Enjoy!

An Autistic Quaker’s Insight: Blending Culture, Spirituality, and Rationality

Peace & Justice History for 2/4

February 4, 1882

American Colonization Society ship leaving New York City bound for Liberia.
The American Colonization Society established the first settlement in what would become the west African state of Liberia. The new arrivals to the island called Perseverance were freeborn blacks from the U.S. who had emigrated with the encouragement of influential white Americans and funding from Congress. The colony was governed by whites for twenty years.
Read more
February 4, 1913
Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama.
She grew up to become civil rights leader Rosa Parks.

A teenage Rosa Parks poses with friend Samson Smith
The Neville Brothers music video says thank you in “Sister Rosa”
February 4, 1987
The U.S. House of Representatives overrode President Ronald Reagan’s (second) veto (401-26) of the Clean Water Act. The law provided funds for communities to build waste treatment facilities and to clean up waterways. Reagan described it as ”loaded with waste and larded with pork.”
February 4, 1990

The Colombian government recognized native rights to half of its 69,000 square miles of forest in the Amazon River basin, home to 55,000 indigenous people. In addition to the official Spanish, as many as 200 languages or dialects are spoken among Colombia’s peoples.

U’wa people

Boys on the Amazon
More on indigenous peoples 
February 4, 1996
Start of a week of marches for peace by thousands in Grozny, the embattled capital of Chechnya.
February 4, 2004

The Massachusetts Supreme Court declared that gays were entitled to nothing less than marriage under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. They ruled that Vermont-style civil unions would not suffice, declaring they created an “unconstitutional, inferior, and discriminatory status for same-sex couples.”
The actual text of the decision in Goodridge vs. Department of Public Health 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february4