From D.J. Mitchell

A friend of mine told me he’s seen a bumper sticker:

Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who don’t.

 

That indeed would seem to be the fallacy in traditional pacifism. It is troubling to me because it is true– and, contrary to the beliefs of some pacifists, there can never be a world without swords because nonviolence is an individual spiritual journey, not a social tranformation. As long as people are being born, there will be violence. Yet on the one hand, nonviolence is still a spiritual path. And on the other, many would say that there are worse careers than farming!

Ghandi is used as the traditional role model for nonviolence, Martin Luther King too. However, as Saul Alinsky pointed out in Rules for Radicals, Ghandi was able to achieve what he did because the Brits in India were looking to leave and didn’t have the stomach to roll in the tanks and open fire on the protestors. Nonviolent tactics would not have worked against the Nazis or Pol Pot. You would  have been a corpse. 

If someone occupies your country, and diplomacy and negotiation prove useless in getting them out, then picking up the gun may be the only way to drive them out. A people should always have the right to decide their own destiny.

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Speech by Jaber Suleiman, co-founder of Aidoun (Returnees) Group in Lebanon and Syria.

Suleiman is a Palestinian refugee who lives in Ein el-Hilweh, Lebanon. He has been engaged in the Palestinian struggle in Lebanon for many years. He was a researcher and writer with the Palestinian Planning Center in Beirut, Lebanon through the seventies and eighties. Suleiman has been with the international coalition for the Right of Return since its founding.

Recorded at an ANSWER LA Forum, April 19, 2005.

Link (Mp3 50:58. 17.5 MB)

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Tradition and orthodoxy will surely be the hallmarks of the new pontificate. Benedict not only condemns homosexuality as “an intrinsic moral evil” but also has suggested that Catholic altars should face east, to Jerusalem.

As John Paul’s “enforcer” on matters of orthodoxy (he was jokingly dubbed the “panzerkardinal”)

Ha, ha, ha…

The homily he made at the Mass before the start of the Conclave in which he denounced all deviations from traditional Church teachings as trickery and error, may have been decisive in winning his election.

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Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Tuesday the nation’s policy on preventing illegal immigration is too lax, telling a group of newspaper publishers the United States needs to “close the borders.”

“Close the borders in California and all across Mexico and in the United States,” Schwarzenegger said at the annual meeting of the Newspaper Association of America. “Because I think it is just unfair to have all those people coming across, have the borders open the way it is, and have this kind of lax situation.”

The Governator, fresh from getting his ass kicked over his privatization plans for pensions, has apparently decided to attack the defenseless instead. Hmm, lots of immigrants come here illegally from Canada and the U.K., yet he’s not attacking them, is he?

Update: (from the comments)  
“Governor apologizes for border comment, Hispanic leaders accept.”

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