Peace/war summary
| Subject: | Re: The Morning Show topics |
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| Date: | Tue, 11 Nov 2025 14:56:23 -0600 |
| From: | Mark M Giese |
| To: | Greg Berg |
And thank you for taking that inspiration for your opera!
| Subject: | Re: The Morning Show topics |
|---|---|
| Date: | Tue, 11 Nov 2025 14:53:14 -0600 |
| From: | Mark M Giese |
| To: | Greg Berg |
So good you know of White Rose!
You have gladdened my heart by giving my points consideration.
Thank you, Prof. Berg.
Regards,
Mark
Excellent points all.
I am well acquainted with The White Rose. In fact, I composed a one-act opera called "Courageous Rose" that was done at Carthage two years ago. The students were fascinated and inspired by the story - which I learned of from an author I interviewed - Richard Hurowitz, author of "In the Garden of the Righteous," which told the stories of ten different people who in one way or another worked to save Jewish people from the Nazis. The White Rose group was only mentioned rather briefly in the preface, but it was enough to send me on a path of research and exploration- and an opera resulted.
I will be looking at everything else you sent me and give them due consideration. It's hard to think of a cause or issue more central to our survival than Peace.
GB
| Subject: | Re: The Morning Show topics |
|---|---|
| Date: | Tue, 11 Nov 2025 13:00:09 -0600 |
| From: | Mark M Giese |
| To: | Gregory Berg |
| CC: | David Swanson, danaka of codepink |
Please forgive a P.P.S.
We are nearly a quarter past the 21st century. Why are we still fighting wars?
We need to address climate change for just one thing.
In light of this, the money is there as shown here
https://peaceeconomyproject.org/wordpress/3-of-u-s-military-spending-could-end-starvation-on-earth/
P.S. Concerning the US Civil War and how the enslaved people could have been freed without resorting to war:
https://davidswanson.org/ending-slavery-in-washington-dc-and-war-in-ukraine/
On 11/11/2025 12:47 PM, Mark M Giese wrote:
Prof. Berg:
You, of course, commendably air shows on all sorts of topics, but it seems there have been few if any shows concerning peace-making.
There have been all kinds of shows, all told, concerning war, including today's show for Veteran's Day on the Unknown Soldier.
Of course, today was previously known for a number of years as Armistice Day. The switch from that designation to Veteran's Day is important.
I learn all kinds of things from postings at the website of peace activist David Swanson -- contactable at the address in the CC field.
Here are some items, little known by the public at large, much of which I learned from Mr. Swanson:
Veterans Day is no longer, for most people in the United States, a day to cheer the ending of war or even to aspire to its abolition. Veterans Day is not even a day on which to mourn the dead or to question why suicide is the top killer of U.S. troops or why so many veterans have no houses. Veterans Day is not generally advertised as a pro-war celebration. But chapters of Veterans For Peace are banned in some small and major cities, year after year, from participating in Veterans Day parades, on the grounds that they oppose war. Veterans Day parades and events in many cities praise war, and virtually all praise participation in war. Almost all Veterans Day events are nationalistic. Few promote “friendly relations with all other peoples” or work toward the establishment of “world peace.”
WW II has been known as 'the Good War,' somehow exemplary, but Mr. Swanson says, in essence, not so fast.
He points out that there were no enlistment posters saying, 'Join the Army and Help Save the Jews!'
Indeed there was a 1938 international conference concerned with the fate of the Jews the outcome of which showed that next to no countries really cared a whit (Hitler took note):
In Évian-les-Baines, France, in July 1938, an early international effort was made, or at least feigned, to alleviate something more common in recent decades: a refugee crisis. The crisis was the Nazi treatment of Jews. The representatives of 32 nations and 63 organizations, plus some 200 journalists covering the event, were well aware of the Nazis’ desire to expel all Jews from Germany and Austria, and somewhat aware that the fate that awaited them if not expelled was likely going to be death. The decision of the conference was essentially to leave the Jews to their fate. (Only Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic increased their immigration quotas.) The decision to abandon the Jews was driven primarily by antisemitism, which was widespread among the diplomats in attendance and among the publics they represented. Video footage from the conference is available on the website of the U.S. Holocaust Museum.
https://davidswanson.org/if-only-afghans-were-jews/
An earlier 'solution' of Hitler's was to deport the Jews to Madagascar.
Mr. Swanson wrote:
In July 1940, Adolf Eichmann, a major planner of the holocaust, intended to send all Jews to Madagascar, which now belonged to Germany, France having been occupied. The ships would need to wait only until the British, which now meant Winston Churchill, ended their blockade. That day never came.
https://davidswanson.org/if-only-afghans-were-jews/
Concerning some members of 'the Greatest Generation':
Alice Kaplan, an historian at Yale, has written that the U.S. military tolerated rape of German women more than of French, and that seems to really be saying something — and seems to be clearly true. Meanwhile J. Robert Lilly, author of Taken by Force: Rape and American GIs in Europe in World War II, estimates that U.S. soldiers committed 14,000 rapes in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom between 1942 and 1945. Other estimates, some of which are little more than guesses, go as high as 190,000 rapes, just in Germany, just by U.S. troops.
https://davidswanson.org/can-world-war-ii-say-me-too/
Mr. Swanson has a very comprehensive timeline of the events that led up to the attack on Pearl Harbor which demonstrates that FDR was provoking Japan to attack (similar to the US/NATO provoking Putin to attack Ukraine*).
See: https://davidswanson.org/pearl-harbor-goes-on-killing-and-will-until-we-dont-want-it-to/
Concerning Truman's two foremost war crimes:
On August 6, 1945, President Truman lied on the radio that a nuclear bomb had been dropped on an army base, rather than on a city. And he justified it, not as speeding the end of the war, but as revenge against Japanese offenses.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/08/03/the-people-in-hiroshima-didnt-expect-it-either/
In fact, among the 15 or so books Mr. Swanson has written is
Leaving World War II Behind (2021)
https://davidswanson.org/books/
People point out the bravery of soldiers, but pacifism and conscientious objection can also require bravery.
Just one example from Wikipedia:
The White Rose (German: Weiße Rose, pronounced [ˈvaɪsə ˈʁoːzə] ⓘ) was a non-violent, intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany which was led by five students and one professor at the University of Munich: Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl. The group conducted an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign that called for active opposition to the Nazi regime. Their activities started in Munich on 27 June 1942; they ended with the arrest of the core group by the Gestapo on 18 February 1943.[1] They, as well as other members and supporters of the group who carried on distributing the pamphlets, faced show trials by the Nazi People's Court (Volksgerichtshof); many of them were imprisoned and executed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose
By the way, International Conscientious Objectors Day is observed globally on May 15 every year.
This is worth a look:
Your show could be a small corrective effort.
Besides Mr. Swanson, other peace activists I think are worth a show are Medea Benjamin et al. of CodePink
And for Palestine/Gaza, the folks at Jewish Voice for Peace
https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/
These are the people who jump to my mind.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Mark M Giese
regular listener
P.S. There is a local peace group where a member might be willing to be on your show. Contact me if you'd like to pursue that.
See https://racinepeace.wordpress.com/
* https://markmgiese.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-ukraine-war-was-provoked.html
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