Peace (See Foreign Policy and specific nations and regions — and ALSO see Military Spending and Nuclear Weapons)

No Image

Besides Protesting What We Oppose, Let’s Also Organize to Achieve Positive Goals

January 12, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

by Glen Anderson We need to keep protesting against the cruelty, corruption, injustice and violence that continually assault us. But if we spend most of our time and efforts fighting the bad stuff, the oppressors will continue to have the upper hand because they can keep throwing bad stuff at us and we will always be on the defensive. We need to spend most of our time and efforts taking the initiative to organize for the positive goals that we want instead. We need to be proactive, envision the future we want instead of the current mess, and organize to […]

No Image

Nixon’s scheme against African Americans and against the peace movement

January 12, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

One of President Nixon’s top aides, John Ehrlichman, later reported this: “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did […]

No Image

“Nonviolence Is Ethical, Practical, Powerful.”

December 17, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

The general public — and also many people in progressive movements for peace and social/economic justice — do not understand nonviolence adequately.  People could make much more progress in working for issues we care about if we understood nonviolence more thoroughly and if we grounded ourselves more profoundly in it. The January 2018 episode of Glen Anderson’s TV series “Glen’s Parallax Perspectives” helps people understand nonviolence more richly and encourages them to practice it more effectively. Watch the video at this link:  “Nonviolence Is Ethical, Practical, Powerful.” Read a transcript at this link:  2018.01 Program Summary — Nonviolence After I […]

No Image

Watch these TV interviews about nuclear weapons

December 9, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

You can learn a lot about nuclear weapons by watching several interviews produced in Olympia WA by Glen Anderson.  These are posted in a chronological list on the “TV Programs” part of www.olympiafor.org and in the “Nuclear Weapons” category of this website, www.parallaxperspectives.org See this short list:  Watch interviews about nuclear weapons through websites

No Image

“Pakistan: What Are the Realities?”

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

The Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s June 2010 TV program is about Pakistan. The US war in Iraq seems to have dropped out of the news, but are those problems really solved? Or has a sleight-of-hand maneuver of public relations trickery shifted our attention from the “bad” war in Iraq to the “good” war in Afghanistan? And why has the US war in Afghanistan escalaated into Pakistan, where the US is attacking people – including many innocent civilians – in a country that is supposed to be our ally? The American people are long overdue in understanding Pakistan and the realities […]

No Image

Understand Korea. Don’t bomb it.

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

Understand Korea.  Don’t bomb it. During much of 2017 Trump has vented anger and ignorance against North Korea.  He has rejected diplomacy and threatened to utterly destroy the nation and kill 10 million or more of its citizens. Decent people know we must reject Trump’s terrorism. Also, we must reject the U.S.’s 65-year-long history of threatening war (including nuclear war) against North Korea.  It is within this long-standing history of U.S. foreign policy’s ignorance and violence that Trump was able to vent his own ignorance and cruelty. If you want to resolve a conflict with someone, it is necessary to […]

No Image

“Starting to Understand Africa”

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

Africa is a gigantic continent with a rich history. Africa’s creative and adaptive cultures have sustained themselves for thousands of years in a vast variety of climates and ecosys-tems, ranging from harsh deserts to dense jungles. Our school systems and mainstream media have failed to inform Americans about Africa. Much of what Americans think we know about Africa is simplistic, distorted, or not true. The Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s August 2010 TV interview features three guests who share their experiences, information and insights: • Jens-Dieter Stahmer is well known and well respected in the greater Thurston County area and beyond. […]

No Image

TV: “More Information on the 9-11 Attacks”

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

The Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s September 2010 TV program adds to the information we had provided in our September 2008 TV program.  Both interviews examined some of the flaws in the government’s official story of what had happened on September 11, 2001. A growing number of people – including many scientists, architects, engineers, pilots and other professionals – have continued to analyze and provide new information beyond what we knew for the 2008 program, so in September 2010 we presented some of that new information along with some persistent critiques of the government’s official story. On the very next day […]

No Image

“Honduras”

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

In the early morning of June 28, 2009, about 100 soldiers from the Central American nation of Honduras forced their way into the bedroom of Honduran president Manual Zelaya, kidnapped him while he was still in his pajamas, and forced him into exile in another country. This military coup – backed by conservative business leaders – overthrew a freely elected president. Latin American nations unanimously denounced this military coup against democracy. U.S. politicians and news media have distorted the realities, so the American people do not understand what really happened, or why. The crisis has continued ever since.  Human rights […]

No Image

“International Day of Peace: Olympia Connects with the World”

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

n 1981 the United Nations established the International Day of Peace to encourage individuals, organizations and nations to create practical acts of peace on a shared date. The first Peace Day was celebrated in September 1982. In 2002 the United Nations General Assembly officially declared September 21 as the permanent date for the International Day of Peace. For 2010, volunteers from the Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation, Veterans for Peace Chapter 109, the Rachel Corrie Foundation, Media Island International, Earthbound Productions, and other groups collaborated to produce a truly stunning and inspiring display and international conversation. These events marked the International […]

No Image

“Converting to a Peace Economy”

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

Throughout our nation’s history, we had occasional wars and then de-mobilized afterward. But after World War II we launched the Cold War and maintained a permanent war status. We also created a “permanent war economy.” Massive military spending year after year – decade after decade – since the 1940s – has distorted and disrupted the U.S. economy and hurt our society in many ways. This is the topic of the Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s December 2010 TV program. Every year Congress makes decisions about how much money to spend for which purposes. For example, Congress could spend less on nuclear […]

No Image

“Soldiers’ Wounds: One Cost of War that Never Ends”

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

One of the recurring themes in the Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s TV series is that we are all interconnected. No matter what issue we address on one program or another, we find ourselves affirming our common humanity – across nations, across social and economic groups, and so forth. Olympia FOR’s TV program for April 2011 took a fresh look at people who are in the military on active duty – and veterans who have served in the military. While the peace movement opposes wars and our violent foreign policy, we recognize that the individuals who serve or have served in […]

No Image

“Stories of Working for Peace and Justice”

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

For a long time the world has been suffering depressing news about war, violence, eco-nomics, human rights, environment, climate, and other issues. As a result, people who care about these issues can feel depressed and demoralized. But – over the years – people who persist in grassroots movements for civil rights, peace, labor, environment, and so forth keep saying that what keeps moving these move-ments ahead is people sharing their stories. The Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s June 2011 TV program features personal experiences, stories and insights from six local people who have worked effectively for peace and social justice. The […]

No Image

“The Arab World’s Democracy Movement”

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

The Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s July 2011 TV program examines the growing movement for democracy in northern Africa, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf states, and throughout much of the Arab world. The movement really took off in early 2011 and is continuing up through our taping date in June 2011, so it has been referred to as the “Arab Spring.” As usual, the mainstream news media and mainstream politicians have failed to understand or talk about some of the most important aspects of this, and they have described some aspects inaccurately, especially reflecting U.S. government bias, rather than understand […]