Documentary on Ongoing Human Rights Violations in Yemen - "In Darkness" by Mwatana

New Documentary by Mwatana on arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearance by all conflict parties in Yemen. وثائقي جديد لمواطنة يسلط الضوء على الاعتقال التعسفي و الاختفاء القسري، اللذان تمارسهما كافة أطراف النزاع في اليمن.
 
Ask your Senators and Representatives to support Senate Joint Resolution 7 to end USA involvement in Yemen.

Favorite Quotes: Carlos Ruiz Zafón on War in "The Shadow of the Wind"

Lucia Graves translated Carlos Ruiz Zafón's La Sombra del Viento as The Shadow of the Wind.

Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war, Daniel. We all keep quiet and they try to convince us that what we've seen, what we've done, what we've learned about ourselves and about others, is an illusion, a passing nightmare. Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, until the moment comes when we no longer recognize them and they return, with another face and another name, to devour what they left behind. (p. 428)

I don't know Spanish, but I think I've found the passage in the original text:

Hey Creative People! Is it the right time for a remake of "The Prisoners of Quai Dong" by Victor Kolpacoff?

My local public library regularly removes books from its shelves for a variety of reasons. I purchased about 15 boxes of books through the Friends of the Library, a volunteer organization which sells these books to fund efforts to support the public libraries in my city. I've sold, exchanged and given away most of the books in those 15 boxes. Recently, I received an order through my Amazon store for The Prisoners of Quai Dong by Victor Kolpacoff. Before fulfilling the order, I read the book. I can't do a proper review of it, but I wanted to give you creative people out there a heads up that this book may be a productive basis for a play or movie or a graphic novel.

Review: Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut

This collection of short stories by the American writer Kurt Vonnegut reflect his visceral disgust at war, which developed during his World War II experience as a prisoner of war disposing of the corpses left after the British and United States air forces destroyed Dresden in February of 1945. I'd read two of his novels, Slaughterhouse Five and Cat's Cradle, a long time ago. Slaughterhouse Five has been made into a movie.

In any short story collection, each reader will like some and dislike some. My favorites were "Great Day" and "The Commandant's Desk." The style, in its satirical humor, reminded me of Mark Twain, who opposed United States imperialism.

Zurayk’s “War Diary: Lebanon 2006”: Get your free download!

ICYMI, u can get a *free* download of Rami Zurayk's poignant "War Diary: Lebanon 2006" here: https://t.co/GiKBglGYrt pic.twitter.com/wEJCAw0AEH

— Just World Books (@Justworldbooks) August 7, 2016

Film: "The Ghosts of Jeju" by Regis Tremblay

Regis Tremblay's "The Ghosts of Jeju" is an 81 minute documentary film describing the resistance of the people of Jeju Island in South Korea to the establishment of a United States naval base.

Everyday Iran on Twitter, Instagram & Facebook

Women dishing up a family gathering lunch. #Qazvin, #Iran. Photo by Mehdi Bidel @mehdibidel #everydayqazvin #everydayiran #everydayeverywhere خانم‌ها در حال کشیدن غذای یک مهمانیِ خانوادگی. #قزوین، #ایران. عکاس: مهدی بیدل

A photo posted by Everyday Iran (@everydayiran) on Apr 1, 2015 at 12:08pm PDT

As elements of the United States government continue to press for war with Iran, perhaps the most effective action for peace is to remind people everywhere that the victims of war will overwhelmingly be everyday Iranians, not the stereotyped, cartoonish villains whom warmongers portray with their rhetoric. For this purpose, I ask people to follow and share the pictures of Everyday Iran on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook.

Tweets by @everydayiran

Quote: Chris Hedges on Friendship and Comradeship in "War is Force that Gives Us Meaning"

In War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges (Twitter) explains why the bonds among soldiers are likely comradeship, not friendship.

There are few individual relationships – the only possible way to form friendships – in war. There are not the demands on us that there are in friendships. Veterans try to regain such feelings, but they fall short. Gray wrote that the “essential difference between comradeship and friendship consists, it seems to me, in a heightened awareness of the self in friendship and in the suppression of self-awareness in comradeship.”

Comrades seek to lose their identities in the relationship. Friends do not. “On the contrary, “Gray wrote, “friends find themselves in each other and thereby gain greater self-knowledge and self-possession. They discover in their own breasts, as a consequence of their friendship, hitherto unknown potentialities for joy and understanding.”

The struggle to remain friends, the struggle to explore the often painful recess of two hearts, to reach the deepest parts of another’s being, to integrate our own emotions and desires with the needs of the friend, are challenged by the collective rush of war. There are fewer demands if we join the crowd and give our emotions over to the communal crusade.

The only solace comes from simple acts of kindness. They are the tiny, flickering candles in a cavern of darkness that sustain our common humanity.

Find the book in your local library.

Enemy of the Reich: The Noor Inayat Khan Story - Storified on Twitter

Religious War is Not So Bad: Modern Defenses of the Crusades

I was flipping through the TV yesterday and hit upon EWTN ON LOCATION - RETHINKING HOLY WARS: THE CRUSADES AND CATHOLIC DEVOTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES. It featured a lecture by Dr. Thomas F. Madden, of Saint Louis University, on "Rethinking Holy War: The Crusades and Catholic Devotion in the Middle Ages" delivered at the Catholic Vision of History Conference at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia. The full lecture is available in audio and visual format through iTunes University.

Review: Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq by Michael Scheuer

Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq by Michael Scheuer (Twitter)


As I was listening to this abridged book on CD, I pictured its author Michael Scheuer as a combination of Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now and Cersei in Game of Thrones. His commitment to no principle other than the cohesiveness of the United States and his view that ultra-violence is a necessary tool to preserve that cohesiveness made it difficult for me, a proponent of non-violence and globalism (his term is antinationalist), to keep an open mind to his ideas. Yet I'm glad I did persevere and finish the book, and there is some value in it.

Support Gareth Porter & Just World Books Refute Fearmongering About Iran

Just World Books is asking people to pledge money to support a book project concerning the so-called threat posed by Iran's "nuclear program." It has asked historian and investigative journalist Dr. Gareth Porter to write the book.



Please pledge money so that this important project can see the light of day!

P.S. I just added Just World Books's RSS Feed to its podcasts to my iTunes.

Al-Mutannabi Street Coalition Deserves Your Support

There's a meaningful project I recommend that you support called al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition.

Review: Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control by Medea Benjamin

Tom Hayden wrote a review of Medea Benjamin's Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control. Medea is a cofounder of Code Pink.

I have not read the book.

Updated July 24, 2016 - I read the book several years ago. It's good. Read it!

Review: Hiroshima by John Hersey

John Hersey's first version of Hiroshima was published in 1946. This edition included updates on the six survivors he had originally profiled and was published in 1985. It is available through Georgia PINES-participating libraries.

 
Regular readers of this blog know that I am completely appalled by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and I see no purpose for any nation or group, particularly one claiming to follow Islam, to possess such weapons.

Perhaps the only thing more depressing than the desperate testimonials of these six survivors is how the author interspersed, as the years went by in the lives of the survivors, landmarks in the spread and development of the world's nuclear arsenal, such as the development of the hydrogen bomb and Indian proliferation. Some survivors tried to educate the world on Hiroshima's lesson, namely that humans must end war. Sadly, the world has so far refused to listen.

Review: Falcons on the Floor by Justin Sirois

Sirois, Justin. Falcons on the floor. Baltimore, Maryland: Publishing Genius Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0-9831706-4-8. Softcover, 264 pp.

Review: Teach Us to Live: Stories from Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Diana Wickes Roose

This book can be ordered from Intentional Productions.

Listen to the CD accompanying this book with the recordings of translated testimonies of survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I hope no Muslim ever uses the term "Islamic bomb." There's nothing "Islamic" about the bomb, and we should work towards complete nuclear disarmament.

P.S. If you get a chance, watch David Rothauser's Hibakusha, Our Life to Live.