Keynoter:  Tom Cordaro (author, speaker, peace activist)

Guest Speaker:  Sr. Patricia Chappell, SNDdeN (Executive Director of Pax Christi USA)

Date:  Saturday, April 21, 2012  (8 a.m. to 4 p.m.)

Location:  St. Anastasia Church, 4571 John R  Road, Troy, Michigan 48085

ALSO:   10 Workshops

Registration:  $40 if received by April 14 ($45 after)

Students and low income:  $25

(scholarships by request)

Questions:  Contact PCM Office:  517-481-5280

Email:  paxchristimi.coord@gmail.com

From PCM Member Jim Rauner….  To add to his website (http://www.peaceistheway.us/), Jim now has a wonderful new discussion blog: http://jimrauner.com/wordpress/

We are the 99%

808 W. Barnes Ave;  Lansing, MI 48910

paxchristimi.coord@gmail.com  

 www.paxchristimi.org  

On this, the 10^th Anniversary of the September 11^th hijacked plane attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., Pax Christi Michigan prayerfully remembers the thousands who lost their lives, along with those who suffered the unbearable loss of family and friends in the resulting infernos.  We honor grieving family members as well, who in their personal pain, founded “Sept 11^th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows,” dedicating their lives to calling for total nonviolence and the cessation of all wars.

We remember the attackers – severely misguided souls who were brain washed into thinking they were doing the right thing – and their grieving families.  Finally we deeply grieve the way our politicians and others have continued to use these tragic events to demonize Muslim people here and abroad, manipulating the 9/11 tragedy to fuel their fear-driven vengeance against those who live in the Mideast.

“The cost of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan are estimated at 225,000 lives and up to $4 trillion in U.S.spending, in a new report by scholars with the Eisenhower Research Project at BrownUniversity’s Watson Institute for International Studies. The group’s ‘Costs of War’ project has released new figures for a range of human and economic costs associated with the U.S.military response to the 9/11 attacks.”  See http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2011/06/warcosts.

So how do we rise up out of all this pain?  Pax Christi Michigan believes that the message of this 10^th Anniversary must be the voice of sanity and healing – a call to right relationships in the midst of a madness that has been and continues to be manipulated by the machinery of war.  It is a call to recognize that we have the power to challenge and change ourselves and the prevailing mindset of hatred and retaliation.  More importantly, it is a call to re-commit ourselves to work together for the Common Good, so that all people may live justly, peacefully and nonviolently on this planet.

But if there is to be a refusal to use this anniversary to continue hijacking the souls of our citizens, it must begin with us. If there is to be a rejection of this madness – it must begin with us.  If there is to be an embracing of the whole world as sisters and brothers, it must begin with us.  If there is to be a commitment to building peace in our world, it must begin with us.

Many have worked tirelessly in the past 10 years to stand firm against becoming what our military industrial corporate-backed government would have us be. Thanks be to God! However, others may understandably be tempted to tire out, to give in, to give up.  Be aware!  We must not!

Instead we must stop politicians from manipulating people into believing that America has a legitimate right to indiscriminately retaliate, so that they can go on creating an acceptable climate for military mob violence against our sisters and brothers in Iraq,Pakistan, Afghanistan and ultimately,Iran.

So on this 10th Anniversary of 9/11, let us courageously use our personal and communal power to recommit ourselves to a life of active nonviolence.  Let us continue to openly refuse to support the hateful retaliation that our government has been engaged in for the past 10 years.  And let us ask our children and our children’s children to help give voice to that refusal and that commitment, so that peace and peacemakers may finally prevail upon the earth…hopefully in their lifetimes…if not in ours. Peace! Shalom! Salaam!

We hope you can join us for this wonderful weekend!

For all the details, visit the Pax Christi Michigan website.

July 29, 2011

On Thursday, July 28, 2011, eleven courageous people – including several religious leaders – were arrested in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda while singing and praying that our polarized political leaders will reject any vote that calls for balancing the U.S. budget on the backs of the poor and most vulnerable.

In placing their lives on the line to make this powerful statement, these leaders for a brief moment in time, seized the current debate in Congress and placed it where it should be – in the center of the public arena.  After a short period of demonstration, they were physically silenced by the police, handcuffed and taken away.

However, we know – there is no stronger statement than to lay down one’s life for others. M.L. King, Jr. did it. Nelson Mandela did it. The Berrigan brothers did it.  Rosa Parks did it. Dorothy Day did it. The Plowshares protesters did it. Jesus of Nazareth did it.  All working nonviolently to change “business as usual,” to save our sisters and brothers – not only the poor and disenfranchised – but ultimately to save the rich from themselves.

For only in convincing the wealthy who hold the purse strings, and unfortunately the political strings, that their lives are intimately intertwined with those of the poor – and that it is in their own best interests to work toward a solution for ALL, can this really be accomplished.  So we must all continue to work to convince them through protests, vigils, prayers, petitions, appeals, phone calls, letters, in hopes that they wake themselves up.

The looming budget tragedy can and must be avoided at all costs. These eleven disciples of the Holy One Who calls us to care for the Greater Good, the Common Good, represent scores of others – those whose voices would not be taken as seriously because they do not hold titles and perceived positions of power in their communities.  To be sure, these eleven were willing to even risk hostility from those in their own denominations who would not approve of, OR who fear the repercussions of doing nonviolent resistance.

These eleven are leading us all by example. They are taking the matter into the center of power – the U.S. Government – to beg, to plead, to appeal, to pray for sanity in determining how our system of economics which has supported so many for so long can be sustained for the long haul.  These faithful ones know, as we all know, that our U.S. leaders must be goaded into finally grappling with the Ultimate Truth – that our country’s addiction to wars, nuclear buildup, giving huge financial breaks to the rich and to corporations must CEASE and DESIST if we are to survive…if we are to thrive as a nation.

May the example and voices of these eleven protesters continue to ring out in our consciousness – singing, praying for a JUST justice to be done.  May the God of us all hear THEIR pleas.  May the God of us all hear OUR pleas.  May those who profess to represent the American people and profess to be followers of God, Allah, Yahweh, come to their senses before the ultimate tragedy of years of political and moral degradation occurs.  GOD, SAVE US FROM OURSELVES!

At the United States Social Forum in Detroit, representatives of peace and justice groups throughout Michigan met to discuss a problem that confronts us all: millions in Michigan care about peace and justice, but too few act, and our organizations are often too separate.

We concluded that too many people feel unheard and so don’t speak or act, and activists don’t cooperate enough in reaching out and listening.  We decided to launch an effort creating and expanding the commons, establishing times and places all over the state to advance a conversation: what does peace and justice mean in our hometowns, as well as worldwide?  How much money goes for war? And how could Michigan become more of a “state for peace?”

One of our primary goals is to listen to what people say and to develop a petition from the people, urging the creation of an official state of Michigan Commission for Peace and Justice, similar to commissions already established in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Berkeley, California, and to the proposed United States Department of Peace.

Using the Michigan Peace Network as a hub of communication and coordination, we have carried on this vision through meetings and discussions, designing the specific efforts that will make Moveable Peace a reality. We now invite groups and individuals throughout Michigan to join us in expanding the commons, and in creating a lasting culture of peace and justice.

Moveable Peace 2011 will consist of the following events:

Community Events Converging

Moveable Peace promotes community events moving the conversations on peace and justice all over the state, creating a presence in Fourth of July parades, and converging by Labor Day at the Mackinac Bridge walk and in the Detroit Labor Day march with a report on our listening and with a call for a state commission to facilitate the agenda for peace and justice coming from the communities of Michigan.

Mackinac Bridge Peace Gathering

The weekend festival and bridge walk at the Mackinac Bridge on Labor Day will be a capstone event of Moveable Peace, uniting our diverse efforts so that we can send a message of peace and solidarity that will be heard throughout the state.

Budget Priorities Roadshow

The Budget Priorities Roadshow will be a mobile exhibit/performance that will travel to communities across the state to engage people in a discussion of the Federal Government spending on various projects, especially the large portion of the discretionary budget that goes to the Pentagon. Through the use of an interactive “penny poll,” participants will have a chance to compare their budget priorities to the Federal discretionary budget spending.  Communities hosting the Roadshow will also be encouraged to hold supporting events such as performances, forums, or movie showings.

Peace Walk to Lansing

From July 30 through August 9, groups will participate in a “Peace Walk,” traveling on foot to Lansing from Kalamazoo, Detroit, Grand Rapids, and Saginaw.  The walk’s emphasis is on stopping in towns, cities, and villages along the way, highlighting the cost of military spending, listening to local residents, and then compiling their concerns and hopes.

Commission for Peace and Justice Petition

At many of our events, we will gather support and signatures for a petition to establish a Michigan Commission for Peace and Justice.  Our goal will be to present this petition to our governor and our state legislature as the Moveable Peace events draw to a close.

Detroit Labor Day Parade

Moveable Peace will have a presence in the Detroit Labor Day Parade.

For more information about Moveable Peace, or to get involved, click here to contact us by way of the Michigan Peace Network.  Be sure to mention that you’d like to join Moveable Peace, and let us know where you’re located.

Osama bin Laden

Friends,

The “killing” of Osama bin Laden is just the latest chapter in a long- running serial titled Osama bin Laden and 9/11. Like Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, since Osama bin Laden and 9/11 hit the TV screen a decade ago it has generated episode after episode, sequel after sequel. But now, finally, like Captain Kirk—after at least nine lives and fifty ever-more-preposterous escapes—Osama had to be killed and sent to wherever it is that literary characters go once their usefulness expires. But just as Star Trek was morphed into mythic dimensions after the last scene played out, so now after the curtain has come down on the Osama bin Laden and 9/11 tale, it too is being shape-shifted from momentary politically useful fiction (i.e., a lie) to perpetually useful political myth, with all the paraphernalia that accompanies such a transition in contemporary times. A big-budget movie is said to be already in the works. Its tentative title? The Seals Seal the Deal. Clooney is suppose to have the lead, with a direct descendant of Rin-Tin-Tin playing “War Dog,” the heroic canine choppered in with the Seals to take down Osama.

But a myth is not a myth if you know it is a myth. So, if there is no factual evidence to support the idea that a particular myth is actually rooted in reality, everything possible must be done to quash any and every suggestion that the myth is just a yarn made up by particular human beings for their particular purposes. Consequently, since 9/11 no major media outlet in the US has permitted any other narrative about 9/11 to be broadcast except the story of Osama bin Laden and 9/11, even though there is a veritable Niagara of scientific evidence and documentary evidence that demonstrates that story to have about the same reality quotient as Superman II.

And, as in all myths, the closing scene has to be strictly in concert with the opening scene. So, now, no other storyline of the death of Osama bin Laden is permitted to appear on the national media’s broadcast systems except that which is fully, 100 percent in cognitive and emotional accordance with the opening chapter, and all the subsequent chapters, of the official Osama bin Laden and 9/11 story. Scientific evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, Osama bin Laden destroyed three buildings with two planes with freefall-footprint demolition precision. Case closed. Even the evidence available before, at, and after 9/11, that bin Laden had been on life-supporting dialysis three times a week for kidney disease long before 9/11 and that he had been diagnosed with incurable Marfan Syndrome before 9/11—two conditions which require exceptional medical expertise and significant technology if even a short-term extension of life is to be gained—is bracketed out of perception and discussion. It can no more get a nanosecond of coverage on the six major media corporations that provide and control 85% of what Americans hear or read than can those thousands of scientists and engineers who are able to demonstrate that according to the laws of nature (to say nothing of straightforward human observation), the three World Trade Center mega-buildings could not have been destroyed the way the government and media relentlessly claim they were in their Osama bin Laden and 9/11 narrative blitzkrieg of the American psyche.

And so, we have 100 percent of the so-called major media news reporters, news commentators, and news analysts playing the same role that so-called sports announcers, commentators, and analysts play when, with great energy and the appearance of thoughtfulness, they announce, comment on, and analyze a professional wrestling match as if it were a real adversarial fight—when in fact all professional wrestling matches on mass media in the US are planned and choreographed theatre with a storyline, orchestration, and predetermined ending. The non-stop serious commentary and analysis is actually part of the created theatrical fantasy, for, without it, the spectacle of a 380-pound man calling himself “The Gorgeous One” and a 420-pound man calling himself “The Mad Dog Avenger” hitting each other continuously for a half hour without drawing a drop of blood would be “rolling in the aisles” ludicrous! The announcers, commentators, and analysts discuss with simulated gravitas, expertise, and in exhausting detail all aspects and possible interpretations of the wrestling match and of the “fighters”: their physiques, their lives, their techniques for winning, their won-lost wrestling histories. All aspects and interpretations, that is, except one. These “epic battles” between giants, which are being given such extensive, serious, and detailed examination, are as phony, bogus, make-believe, and pretend as the notion that Albania was a nuclear threat to the US depicted in the film Wag the Dog.

So what are the human and societal consequences of perpetrating a myth that is a lie? First, it is dangerous to ignore a violence-justifying, emotion-laden myth. The myth, once accepted cognitively and emotionally, generates its own theology and/or philosophy of right and wrong. Ancient religious texts—even if they, by any normal reading, communicate the opposite of the myth— are twisted to fit into it. The religious pseudo-legitimacy thus generated bestows on the myth even further power to alter consciousness and motivate people to act in a particular direction. “Native Americans are savages,” “blacks are sub-human,” Manifest Destiny, Eretz Israel, lebensraum- these are all myths, without any basis in fact, myths that have resulted in the self-righteous murder and maiming of hundreds of millions of human beings. None of these preposterous myths arose accidentally out of nothingness. They were all concocted by people and planted in the consciousness and consciences of individuals and communities before they ever erupted into anticipated and unanticipated mass murder and, worse yet, mass murder justified as right, as doing the will of God.

The myth of Osama bin Laden and 9/11 is now in full-throttle mode. Soon we can expect a song entitled “The Tale of a War Dog” by Willie Nelson to top the music charts. The saga of Osama bin Laden and 9/11is expanding and hourly being sown ever more deeply in the minds and souls of people, especially young people, via technology never before available to the economic, political, and military elites for such mind-manipulating projects. Here are examples from today alone:

• New video game lets you kill Osama bin Laden
• Kill Osama Yourself video game.
• “Kuma War”  is a free online war game that models its missions on real-world war events that are reported in the media. New missions have been released every month since 2004 and the kill Osama bin Laden mission will be the last episode in the 107 part series, according to the corporation that produced and freely distributed this long running, hands-on, interactive video “game” series. Kuma Games in announcing that episode #107 would be the last, said “it provides a neat end to the storyline.”

Charlie

P.S. The ever-mutating Christian Just War Theory is part of the problem in a world where contrived, emotionally charged, violent, self-righteous myths are culturally and politically hardwired into consciousness and conscience. The moral chameleonism called CJWT has a universal historical record of fitting in perfectly with any of them—or not fitting in—depending which side of the human carnage operation one is on.

There is absolutely no way out of this murderous moral sinkhole except through the unequivocal, unambiguous, and unmodified proclamation by the Christian Churches, Church leaders, and Church communicants of the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels as the Nonviolent Messiah of Israel, the Nonviolent Lord, the Nonviolent God, and the Nonviolent Savior of the world, along with the proclamation of the power and wisdom and truth of His Way of Nonviolent Love (Agape) of friends and enemies as God’s Way of being and God’s Way of conquering evil. There is one Way and only one Way for all humanity to exit this viper’s tangle. It is not the way of Bush, Obama, Cheney, Emanuel, Hillary, Condi, Rush, Chris, etc. It is the Way of Jesus. You can give your brief life to make it happen, but you cannot take another’s life to make it happen—therein lies the essence of both the problem and the solution. Believe it or not. The time allotted to you to choose is passing. Believe it or not.
–
__________

www.centerforchristiannonviolence.org

7:00 PM

St. Blase Church

12151 Fifteen Mile Road

Sterling Heights, MI 48312

Presented by: St. Blase Justice and Peace

Featured Guest Speaker:  Bishop Tom Gumbleton

Bishop Tom Gumbleton has been travelling to Haiti for almost twenty years as a friend of the Haitian people, working to improve the lives of the poorest of the poor.  He has also worked tirelessly to tell the world the real story of why Haiti is so poor; and what really needs to be done to help Haiti survive.  Bishop Gumbleton has been back to Haiti several times since the devastating earthquake of January, 12, 2010 and will provide us with an update on conditions in Haiti since the earthquake.  We will learn why there has been so little progress for so many people, why potable water and permanent housing is still so rare, what happened to all the aid promised to Haiti – and what we can do to help.  Please join us!