Over on QuakerRanter:
“We’ll end the war just as soon as…” is the rhetorical parent of empire-crushing quagmires. The conditional changes as needed, because it needs to stay fresh to stay plausible. One president will claim that the right enemy leader needs to be killed, another that more troops need to be temporarily added.
Reflections from someone who traveled to Iran last December: “When I was there, I felt the energy of young people that wanted and needed change. Nearly two out of every three people is under thirty. Many of them highly educated, including many women. A hope for change is what brought millions of women and men to the ballot boxes. A hope for change brings these same people to the streets now. Demanding their rights and demanding their votes to be heard.”
From the Description:
This blog is a community and a resource for news, analysis and discussion on the many ways that ordinary people around the globe are using nonviolence every day, often under the most difficult circumstances. We welcome activists, students, scholars and critics, as well as those just discovering nonviolence, to read and take part.
Religion and politics collide in an ugly brew again with the shooting death of Dr George Tiller in the lobby of his Wichita church this morning. Tiller’s long been protest target for anti-abortion activists and has been shot at before. My prayers go out to his family and church. I’m also sending some prayers for the the principled nonviolent activists on both sides of the abortion debate who’s sincerity is sudden up for grabs (FWIW, Operation Rescue has denounced the killing). Both sides have their judgmental wing-nuts, fringes that polarize debate and have held effective policy hostage.
What this shooting “means” in the larger cultural sense will likely shift when we find the identity of the man who pulled the trigger. Was it someone who knew Dr. Tiller or who had a family member who was seen by him? A violent half-crazed individual who wanted to do something violent and high profile and wasn’t particularly motivated by politics? Was he active in any anti-abortion group? Was he acting alone? Is he an active church-goer himself and if so, what kind of church and what kind of preacher delievering what kind of message? Let’s hope this doesn’t get all get any uglier than it already is.
