Dorothy Thompson: Peace Has To Be Created

The most destructive element in the human mind is fear. Fear creates aggressiveness; aggressiveness engenders hostility; hostility engenders fear, a disastrous circle.

Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict - alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.

Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.

There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings...Fear [False Evidence Appearing Real] grows in darkness; if you think there's a bogeyman around, turn on the light.

- Dorothy Thompson

 

Dorothy Thompson: There Is Nothing To Fear Except....

There is nothing to fear except the persistent

refusal to find out the truth.

- Dorothy Thompson

 

Dorothy Thompson: Life With All Its Sorrows Is Good

Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow.

- Dorothy Thompson

Sinclair Lewis: When Fascism Comes to the United States

When fascism comes to the United States 

it will be wrapped in the American flag and will 

claim the name of 100% Americanism.

- Sinclair Lewis, 1935

 

Gareth Porter: Hillary Clinton and Her Hawks

Clinton's hawkish neoliberal patterns and policies are deeply, deeply disturbing. In saying this, I also need to illuminate that Trump's narcissistic triggers to any form of perceived narcissism injury make him by far the most dangerous. America simply continues to have a long ways to go to truly live up to our ideals and the values we process as cherished. A long ways. And without being authentically aligned with a higher good for our nation, and the world - and instead being wedded to Dark Money, greed, fear, violence, and oppression - we are certainly anything but the greatest nation on earth. Even that belief system that we are "the Greatest!" is rooted in the naricissism of our culture that indoctrinates us from birth into the story that we are better than those "others" in different nations, different cultures, different ethnicities, different religions, etc. May we grow in our capacity to not see ourselves as better than or less than, but as equals. We are all equal, all related, all connected. As we change the story, we will change ourselves and this beautiful and precious world we share. Bless us all. ~ Molly

Some at the convention hold up "no more war" signs. (Photo: Kayla Epstein/The Washington Post)

Focusing on domestic issues, Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech 

sidestepped the deep concerns anti-war Democrats have about her 

hawkish foreign policy, which is already taking shape in the shadows.

Published on

Friday, July 29, 2016

by

Consortium News

by

Gareth Porter

As Hillary Clinton begins her final charge for the White House, her advisers are already recommending air strikes and other new military measures against the Assad regime in Syria.

The clear signals of Clinton’s readiness to go to war appears to be aimed at influencing the course of the war in Syria as well as U.S. policy over the remaining six months of the Obama administration. (She also may be hoping to corral the votes of Republican neoconservatives concerned about Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy.)

Last month, the think tank run by Michele Flournoy, the former Defense Department official considered to be most likely to be Clinton’s choice to be Secretary of Defense, explicitly called for “limited military strikes” against the Assad regime.

And earlier this month Leon Panetta, former Defense Secretary and CIA Director, who has been advising candidate Clinton, declared in an interview that the next president would have to increase the number of Special Forces and carry out air strikes to help “moderate” groups against President Bashal al-Assad. (When Panetta gave a belligerent speech at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night, he was interrupted by chants from the delegates on the floor of “no more war!”

Flournoy co-founded the Center for New American Security (CNAS) in 2007 to promote support for U.S. war policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then became Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Obama administration in 2009.

Flournoy left her Pentagon position in 2012 and returned to CNAS as Chief Executive Officer.  She has been described by ultimate insider journalist David Ignatius of the Washington Post, as being on a “short, short list” for the job Secretary of Defense in a Clinton administration.

Please continue this article here: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/07/29/hillary-clinton-and-her-hawks

 

Charles Eisenstein: We Have To Create Miracles

 A New Experience Of Being Human

We in the richest societies have too many calories even as we starve for beautiful, fresh food; we have overly large houses but lack spaces that truly embody our individuality and connectedness; media surround us everywhere while we starve for authentic communication. We are offered entertainment every second of the day but lack the chance to play. In the ubiquitous world of money, we hunger for all that is intimate, personal and unique.

Addiction, self-sabotage, procrastination, laziness, rage, chronic fatigue, and depression are all ways that we withhold our full participation in the program of life we are offered. When the conscious mind cannot find a reason to say no, the unconscious says no in its own way.

No one's ever completely broken. It's just a matter of how much has to fall apart before the ember of life is exposed to air.
 
We have to create miracles. A miracle is not the intersession of an external divine agency in violation of the laws of physics. A miracle is simply something that is impossible from an old story but possible from within a new one. It is an expansion of what is possible. 

How do we change the world? Change the story.

We sense that ‘normal’ isn’t coming back, that we are being born into a new normal: a new kind of society, a new relationship to the earth, a new experience of being human. 

We are all here to contribute our gifts toward something greater than ourselves, and will never be content unless we are.

The force of love, the force of reunion is unstoppable. 

- Charles Eisenstein