GUEST BLOG: Lois Griffiths – Who is pushing for war? Why no protests?

ByThe Daily Blog

Chris Trotter, in his recent TDB article asks “Where is  the peace movement? Why has the Russo-Ukrainian War not generated a global movement for, at the very least, an immediate cessation of hostilities?  “

Oh but there is a worldwide peace with justice (true peace)  movement but it is shut out by corporate controlled mainstream media. In February, over 100 American Peace Activist NGOs including :  CODEPINK, Black Alliance for Peace, Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Massachusetts Peace Action, Pax Christi USA, Veterans For Peace, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and ,World BEYOND War issued  the following statement: 

“As organizations representing millions of people in the United States, we call upon President Biden to end the U.S. role in escalating the extremely dangerous tensions with Russia over Ukraine. It is gravely irresponsible for the president to participate in brinkmanship between two nations that possess 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.” 

The peace activists called for: Russia Troops out if Ukraine, NATO not to Expand, Negotiations not Escalation, no Sanctions.

Sanctions are a weapon of war. Negotiations would need to acknowledge the role of NATO in  deliberately provoking Russian concerns about their own security. Gorbechev had been assured that NATO would not move further east. Negotiations would need to condemn the 8 years of  bombing of Eastern Russian-speaking Ukraine by the coup-formed Ukrainian government of 2014 . 

Distinguished academics and experienced diplomats have written about the situation which they view with alarm: Diana Johnstone, Chris Hedges, Bruce Gagnon, Scott Ritter, Noam Chomsky, Medea Benjamin and others.  Many of them view  the situation as a war beween the US and Russia, that the US is determined to ‘fight to the last Ukrainian.’ Biden has let slip that the US is calling for regime change.  

Chris Trotter points out,

“ It is worth casting our minds back to the first quarter of 2003. The United States and the United Kingdom were engaged in obvious preparations for a full-scale military invasion of Iraq. All over the world people were gathering in huge demonstrations to oppose the US/UK plans. Over a million protesters flooded the streets of the UK’s largest cities in what was, almost certainly, the largest political protest in the nation’s history.” 

Here in Christchurch  Martin and I joined others in holding anti-war protests  near the Christchurch airport .

Yet public pressure, pressure from below, failed to stop the war on Iraq.  

Quoting Chris again, I assume speaking for the general public,

“And we are suffering, but not in a way that does Russia any good. Our suffering is vicarious, inspired by the pain and heroism of the Ukrainian people. How else are the people of the West supposed to feel when they are presented with the image of a Ukrainian father, now a soldier, fighting back tears as his wife and son are borne away from him on a westbound train to safety, clutching in his hands his little boy’s toy ambulance – all that is left to him? Are we supposed to be filled with an urge to make peace? Or, are we already part of the war?“

 Oh yes, we are presented daily with “images of the pain and heroism of the Ukrainian people.” Media images have convincd us. This is our cause.

Meanwhile Saudi Arabia continues to bomb Yemen with American weapons. Never mind. No images of Yemeni  fathers or mothers or children fighting back tears.  No images of Afghan parents agonizing of having no food for them or their children. 

There were no  images from Iraq. No images of Palestinian children being brutally beaten by so-called settlers and the IDF.

Why no images of “Pain and heroism” of the  Iraqi or Yemeni or Afghani or Palestinian people?

Nevermind. As a BBC reporter reminded us, those people are not even civilized. They aren’t even worth worrying about.

We’ve been sold the war on Ukraine. Biden has said that the conflict is a “clear test for democracies around the world.” 

We want to be part of it and will do our bit to ensure the war continues. 

Chris quoted an observation made by Time Magazine  during the Iraq war protests , describing  “the global peace movement as the other great power on the planet. “

It appears though that controlling the world’s media is “the other great power on the planet.” 

That would explain why it is so important for the powerful to ‘disappear’ Julian Assange!

 

Lois Griffiths is a Human Rights Activist.

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7 Comments

  1. fyi
    PEACE NETWORK SAYS IT’S TIME FOR KIWISAVER TO QUIT WEAPONS INDUSTRY

    A New Zealand peace network says it’s time for KiwiSaver to quit its investments in Lockheed Martin, the world’s biggest weapons manufacturer, which has four bases in New Zealand and works closely with the NZ government.

    Lockheed Martin produces nuclear weapons and last year had revenues of more than $67 billion, and they are being called out.

    World BEYOND War Aotearoa spokesperson Liz Remmerswaal says that’s an unbelievable amount of money based on an horrific amount of harm to both people and the environment.

    ‘Lockheed Martin is making a killing out of killing”, says Mrs Remmerswaal.
    ‘Its profits are going through the roof, with stock increases of nearly 30% since the war with Ukraine began, and we’re sure that many kiwis would not be happy with that.”

    ‘Lockheed Martin’s products have been used to spread death and destruction around the world, not least in Ukraine, as well as Yemen and other war torn countries where civilians are the casualties.

    ‘We’re telling Lockheed Martin that it needs to stop making profits from war and threatening the world with nuclear death, and the New Zealand government should not be dealing with such a dubious company.
    We encourage Lockheed to transition to creating a peaceful and sustainable business economy that they can be proud of,’ she says.

    Ethical investments expert Barry Coates of Mindful Money says the 2021 value of KiwiSaver investments in Lockheed Martin was $419,000, while their holdings in other retail investment funds is far higher, at $2.67 million. These investments are mainly in the KiwiSaver funds that have index-linked investments, such as the list of the largest US listed companies. Other weapons manufacturers, such as Northropp Gruman and Raytheon, show similar increases in profits.

    Mr Coates says New Zealanders do not expect that their hard-earned savings to be invested in companies like Lockheed Martin that make nuclear weapons and sell other weapons for use in the most brutal conflicts around the world, such as Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria and Somalia as well as Ukraine.

    This comes during a global week of action against the company, (https://www.stoplockheedmartin.org/ ) which has seen campaigners protest at sites across the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe, as well as Colombo, Japan and Korea, with a number of actions around New Zealand during the week.

    The week of action is coinciding with the company’s annual general meeting on 21st April which was held online.

    Lockheed Martin’s products include the widely-sold F-16 and the F-35 stealth combat aircrafts. Its missile systems include the submarine-launched Trident missile, the main element in the strategic nuclear force of the USA and the UK.

    Mindful Money has already had success getting investments in nuclear weapons producers out of KiwiSaver and investment funds, with the value of KiwiSaver investments in nuclear weapons production falling from $100 million in 2019 to around $4.5 million now.

    Mindful Money is also calling for those investment providers to switch to alternative indexes that exclude nuclear weapons producers and other unethical companies.

    For more information please contact:

    Liz Remmerswaal
    liz@worldbeyondwar.org https://worldbeyondwar.org/
    or
    Barry Coates ‭
    barrycoatesnz@yahoo.com https://mindfulmoney.nz/
    or
    https://www.stoplockheedmartin.org/

  2. Thank you Lois for your long commitment to peace in Aotearoa. There is much to do. I think we need to work smarter not harder. Unfortunately the 20 million people globally to protested on the streets to prevent the illegal war on Iraq, which was based on lies by Tony Blair and George Bush, were ignored, and the peace movement suffered. Calls for a ceasefire is the only same response at this time. Lobbying our government to make independent decisions that do no harm, as sanctions do to innocent people, would help. Joining our global https://act.worldbeyondwar.org/stoplockheedmartin/ campaign this week 21-28 April would help too. As would wearing a white poppy on Anzac Day. Never give up! Arohanui, rangimarie, Liz Remmerswaal, World Beyond War Aotearoa xx

  3. Thank you Lois for adding meat to the bones of protest of those who see past the one-sided reporting of all that ails our world. In any sane society our media would be taken before a court of law for failing to come even close to upholding the standards is claims to represent, let alone receive public funds to do it. How can anyone sneer at the lack of mass demonstrations against these iniquities, much less expect them to occur, when the media has so saturated people’s minds with propaganda What we are witnessing on a grand scale is a repeat of the control the Nazis had over Germany in the 30s, which produced many mass demonstrations – all of which enthusiastically supported the letting loose of history’s most horrendous period of destruction. And sadly even the most sage of our commentators can’t see it.

  4. I am delighted to discover the existence of an emergent American peace movement, Lois. Not quite so delighted, however, to discover that its protest will be online. This is a time for a mass demonstration (in the literal sense of the world) of the fact of opposition on the streets of the USA – and the rest of the Western world. Real people in real places. Online it would surely be preferable to establish a permanent “peace site” where people from around the world can go for a different, less bellicose, view of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

  5. I’m amazed you are still allowed to say these things in this outpost of the Empire of Lies. Well done Lois.

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