Hayward Demos Democratic Club

I have said nothing about the bombings in Boston because I wanted to escape the feelings of dread and panic that are fueled by our news media and our politicians, our ‘movers and shakers,’ who always move us away from love, truth and intelligence to abject fear.  “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,” one of the proverbs from the Bible, is no less true because of its age or provenance.  I choose love and peace, the peace that passeth all understanding. But love and peace should always compel us to speak out, for surely it is clearer than ever today, as Albert Einstein said, that the world “is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”

We are enmeshed in a world of fear and negation; we are as puppets of the merchants of fear, greed and negation.  We are manipulated daily so that we will buy unnecessary things, in order, so they tell us, to buy ‘happiness.’  The beautiful words of 1st Corinthians, “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love,” is unknown in our modern times.   And yet the greatest of these is love, love IS all you need; as Emmet Fox clearly says, a sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all… but in our daily quest for the toys of empire, love is left far behind, and we live in an illusion that all is for the best “in the best of all possible worlds.”

We cannot continue to repeat Pangloss’ mantra; we cannot continue to remain silent at the gates of hell, a hell paid for and promoted with our tax dollars.  We cannot continue to remain silent while our government uses drones to kill babies throughout the world, or expect that when babies are killed in Palestine or Honduras, Colombia or Lebanon, it will not have an effect upon us.  Daily we visit countries we could not name on a map with death and destruction, killing wedding parties and pregnant women and their babies.  We choose to insulate ourselves from the violence and the pain that our empire inflicts throughout the world.  It was our beloved Dr. King who said, forty-five years ago, that the US was the greatest purveyor of violence in the world… and that he could not be silent.  “True compassion,” King declared, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 — a year to the day before he was murdered — King said the US was “on the wrong side of a world revolution.” He asked questions about “our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America.”  The United States then and now continues to suppress revolutions “of the shirtless and barefoot people” in the Third World, witness only our refusal to concede the Venezuelan electoral results, or our well-known shameful part in the toppling of the Honduras presidency and the ouster of Paraguayan president Lugo.

For years we were rarely visited by the ‘fruits of our labor,’ but as ‘ye sow, so shall ye reap.’  It is indeed time for all of us to come to the aid, not of our country, but of the entire planet we inhabit, by the grace of God, and have allowed to be despoiled.

Dear President Obama,

We applaud and support your timely crusade to control and limit the manufacture and use of assault and automatic guns, weapons which have no earthly purpose but killing human beings quickly and in large numbers.  For the sake of our grandchildren, we must succeed, even if it means fighting the powerful interests who make and sell them, and those who profit from the fear and instability they incite.

By one bold action, you could dramatically gain the initiative:  make a speech at the UN calling for a conference of the leaders of all the nuclear-armed and nuclear-ambitious states with the purpose of negotiating and signing a treaty completely banning nuclear weapons within five years.  The time is overdue for this action.  It would cut through seemingly intractable problems such as North Korea and Iran, who would no longer have an incentive for nuclear arms.

The groundwork has been done already.  It would defuse tensions around the world, but domestically it would set a precedent for  getting rid of automatic weapons and set a new tone in both international and domestic affairs.

Surely, Mr. President, you remember the words of Dr. Martin Luther King when he said  46 years ago that he could no longer counsel youth in the ghetto to be non-violent without first addressing “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,”  his own country.

Our signing and ratifying the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty commits the U.S. and other nuclear power signatories to proceed  without delay to reducing and eliminating their nuclear stockpiles.  It is time we complied with this treaty.  The world on the brink of climate catastrophe can no longer afford the burden of an  arms race  which can only end, as you know, in an even greater holocaust.

Imagine !   What if all the people should decide to put an end to war !   And why not now?