LEAP AHEAD IN WARMAKING POWER, WHILE EVERYTHING ELSE GOES TO POT

Russian Television {English language} gives us the news about our own CRS study documenting surge in arms sales

 

“U.S. Arms Sales Make Up Most of Global Market” announces the NYT 8-24-12 article.  Weapons sales by the United States tripled in 2011 to a record high…  … weapons sales by the United States totaled $66.3 billion last year, or more than three-quarters of the global arms market, valued at $85.3 billion in 2011. Russia was a distant second, with $4.8 billion in deals.

We are more than ever, Number One!  In Weapons and War [and Obesity].  We have always been in first place since WWII.  Now this Superpower has pulled far ahead of cold and hot war competition.  We now export more than 12 times the firepower of old Cold War competitor Russia.  Left them in the dust.   Job One is the gun.  Yet you get what you pay for, and produce.  Invest in war and the general impoverishment it effects in the world, and we will surely remain a nation at war, weighted down by a self-inflicted bad economy and morality.  For U.S. Christians who are taught to love the enemy, pray for the persecutors, and trust in God’s mercy, this is a fundamental problem.  Every weapon built leads us closer to a godless Armageddon.

War is not the answer.  Or, war is the answer to the question, “What is the most dangerous behavior, occasion of sin, risking loss of our collective soul—that of all nation states, the world’s tribes and factions, international corporations?

 

et us beware of conventional wisdoms that propel us in war’s direction: only good “injun” is a dead “injun”; better dead than red; must kill the village to save it; shoot first ask questions later=preemptive strike; deficits don’t matter; have cake and eat it too.  These noxious half-truths come whispered by the serpent in the Garden, paradise lost.  The Deceiver promises intricate knowledge of good and evil, and leaves us with a forest devoid of trees—a weapons of mass destruction wasteland.

Our Catholic Church effort at a “new evangelization” desperately needs the old regular full Gospel of Jesus Christ.  The Son of God needs to be once again acknowledged Our Nonviolent Lord and Savior—the Way, Truth, and Life.  God is Love.  There is no violence in God.  Jesus has conquered death.  What was His weapon?  Forgiveness. 

Further study and action: Friends Committee on National Legislation

Conventional Arms, Nuclear Disarmament, and Peaceful Resolution of Conflict sections.

 

 

 

From U.S. Center for Disease Control, more than one-third of U.S. adults (35.7%) are obese [eg. -- 5’4” and >174 lb.]  [Read data brief [PDF-528Kb]]

 

This Sunday’s scripture--peace is a pure fruit, war perdition.

Jas 3:16-4:3

 But the wisdom from above is first of all pure,
then peaceable, gentle, compliant,
full of mercy and good fruits,
without inconstancy or insincerity.
And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace
for those who cultivate peace.

Where do the wars
and where do the conflicts among you come from?
Is it not from your passions;
that make war within your members?
You covet but do not possess.
You kill and envy but you cannot obtain;
you fight and wage war.
You do not possess because you do not ask.
You ask but do not receive,
because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

 

 

VOTING --- RAISE THE BARRICADES, OR OPEN DOORS AND WINDOWS

By Khalil Bendib , OtherWords

 

Our local Port Huron Times Herald 9-16-12 editorial, “Spare voters needless obstacles,” gets it right.  The problem in our democratic elections system is not voter fraud, but voter inactivity.  There have been almost no cases of documented voter fraud in the past two decades [Wall Street Journal 8-31-12 “Voter Fraud: Hard to Identify”].  Almost half of eligible voters don’t vote in national elections.  Some of this is unfortunately voter apathy, but in addition we have subtly engineered ballot box obstruction [eg. those “anti-voter fraud” laws written by our state’s Republican legislature, most of them commendably vetoed by Gov. Snyder.]

Unfortunately, Republican strategy across the nation appears designed to further, and selectively, decrease voter turnout.   Democrats are no political angels, but a decade plus of Karl Rove’s Machiavellian influence is having unprecedented effect on the GOP juggernaut.  His super-PACs and others are not just trying to convince you by billion-dollar advertising to vote their way, but if it’s likely you’ll vote otherwise, they’ll put tripwires in the way.  Will Michigan’s newly minted emergency managers provide enough voting booths and staff in the 5 cities of over 50% minority population they now control?  [see article in my June 2012 archive]

It appears we can vote on this as a ballot proposal this election.  Hope the font size is adequate.
 

Photo ID laws now in 11 states  [21 states yet have had no voter ID law at all, photo or otherwise—as noted in TH editorial, identification is taken care of by voter registration] [and according to the WSJ article above, the rate of voter impersonation in the U.S. is "statistically zero."]  Felons barred from voting [5.8 million Americans denied this year].  Voter record purges by computers.  Rollbacks to early voting [which was response to long lines in inner city areas, in 2000 and 2004 elections].  Redrawn congressional districts—now disputed in Texas--to minimize minority voters’ impact.  New laws to make it very difficult for voter registration drives.  Cadres of vote challengers sent to swing precinct polling places, trained to harass the process.  A redundant citizenship question, to get a ballot in our state.
 
      Group wants to use this button at polls to challenge

  

“Voter ID has been a hot topic in state legislatures over the past decade. Since 2001, nearly 1,000 bills have been introduced in a total of 46 states. Twenty-four states have passed major legislation during the period 2003-2012…”

Now Representative. Candice Miller joins the fray on the side of the vote protection racket. She co-sponsors a House bill which would automatically advise the voiding of a new voter registrant in Michigan of their previous state’s voter registration, when they move here and go through the driver’s license process. This is the subject of her 9-12-12 “Putting an End to a Chance to Cheat in Elections” email posting.  Innocuous enough--and she does cite one person who was an alleged double voter in two states while maintaining double registration.  Yet most people in transition may keep 2 voting registrations as they make the move.  They don’t try to vote double, and God bless them if they do take the time to register and vote in their new location, or in their old if they’ve not completed the move.   Rep. Miller would better serve constituents by writing new jobs legislation for a new generation of workers, and effective regulations and declaration of war policies for the war- makers and financial wizards who’ve nearly bankrupt our nation.

Instead of circling the wagons to “protect the vote,” we need new ways to encourage the vote.  How about a law making national voting day, every 2 years, a National Election Holiday?  Everyone know your candidates, the issues, and get out and vote.  Make a day of it—responsible citizenship.  How about our state joining those 45 that have early-voting and/or no-excuse- necessary absentee voting?

As the corporate power brokers, now further empowered by the Citizen’s United court decision, beat the final breath out of the dying/dead horse of democracy, too many politicians stand by ready only to administer more convoluted last rites.  There is an even deeper problem to be addressed beyond whether we’re in the 99% or the 1%, that overshadows all our financial disparities.

Are we an inclusive or exclusive society?  For those of us who are Christian believers, some believe in the interdependent family of humankind given grace and justice by the one all-merciful God, and that the greatest among us are the ones who serve, that losing our life for the sake of the Gospel we save it.  Then there are those who believe in Manifest Destiny belonging to the fittest survivors who are committed to using all their powers to secure God’s blessings for themselves, and for the trickle down benefit of their chosen allied communities.  Which way will we turn, and who are our leaders?

 

 

 

Preview of coming voting distraction in Michigan?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/07/voters-frisked-detroit_n_1752297.html

 

IN THE SPIRIT OF MARTIN LUTHER KING--JAVIER SICILIA CATHOLIC POET FROM MEXICO--APOSTLE OF NONVIOLENCE AS THE ANSWER TO GUNS & DRUGS

As Caravan for Peace visits Atlanta, GA, Javier Sicilia prays at tomb of Martin Luther King

Detroit—Murder Capitol of the USA.  We’ve seen the headlines.  A recent benchmark high for Detroit was a murder rate of 37.4 per 100,000 population in 2008.  How does that compare to the killing in the drugs & guns wars that plague Mexico? — Ciudad Juarez, a murder rate of 238.7 per 100,000 in 2010. 

Drug cartels, a flood of assault weapons from the U.S. and elsewhere, a military & police compromised by drug money, an escalating violence to maximize drug profits in Mexico from the U.S. drugs/guns marketplace, all these have made life unlivable in many parts of Mexico.  This was the message from the 100 plus members of the Caravan for Peace, coming from Tijuana towards Washington D.C. over this past month, and as I joined the northern Chicago to Toledo leg.  It arrives in D.C. September 12th.  Most Mexican participants have directly experienced the death-violence in loss of their family and friends.

Javier Sicilia and supporters of the Caravan on the march in Chicago

 

They plead for an end to the War on Drugs as unwinnable--another way to spend outrageous amounts of money aimed at illegal drugs, but just killing more people.  They ask us to decriminalize drug use, to take the huge money out of the illegal drugs business, by government control and taxation, as we did with alcohol when we ended Prohibition.  Organized crime on both sides of the border is cashing in, while most of the killing happens in Mexico, 70,000 dead, 20,000 disappeared in the past 6 years.

Economic changes have lessened the immigration impetus to come to the U.S. for a better life.  They’ve always hoped to be able have a good life with their family in their native land.  But now many are being expelled by the violence.  They come to the U.S. as refugees, for physical survival.

Image by Corbis, from Wall Street Journal

 

I walked with them in a march in Chicago from the Latino to African American neighborhoods. A good sign of reconciliation between communities which have often been pitted against each other.  I listened to these  Mexican pilgrims tortured testimonies at the New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church that had invited them in, and at the Centro Autonimo de Albany Park the following night.   Shootings, women assaulted, assassinations, beheadings, disappearances with dismembered or no trace left behind.  Mind-numbing violence.
 

Disabled AK 47 held aloft by Javier at Caravan's stop in Houston 

 

Javier Sicilia, a professor and poet, a devout Catholic who leads the Caravan, opened one of his talks with a poem from Emily Dickinson, “I felt a funeral in my brain”… He knows grief firsthand, losing his 24 year old son to the drug violence.  He wrote his last poem then, and has been leading the movement to Stop the Drug War since.

"I felt such an immense pain, I can't even explain," Sicilia said in Spanish. "It's the biggest pain one can feel — when one loses a child."

His son's friends had visited a bar they hadn't known was operated by people involved with organized crime, Sicilia said. Valuable work equipment had been stolen from the car of a friend of his son. When his son, "the pacifier" of the group, approached the bar owners, he and his friends were kidnapped and murdered, Sicilia said.
His son, three months from graduating from university, had been offered a job as a cardiologist in Mexico before he died, his father said.  *

Javier asked me to pray for him and his Caravan as I left Toledo for home.  I am doing that, and trying to tell some of their story.  Thank God we don’t have their level of violence yet in our towns and cities.  But there were 11 heroin deaths in my mainly rural St. Clair County in 2011.  I don’t know the Detroit figure.

Drugs guns and violence are a terrible curse, taking deeper hold if not confronted.  We must make it severely less profitable to be pushers and killers.  This can be done by the nation courageously decriminalizing drug use, and state control of pricing and availability.  Upping the violence ante with superpower assault swat teams will not work.  It hasn’t in Mexico.  It won’t here.  This is a common sense opinion within the police departments themselves.  The Law Enforcement Against Prohibition group had a symbolic squad car as first car in the Caravan for Peace behind the 2 giant buses.  Please visit especially the Caravan’s website.

ork and pray in any way you can for their success.  Let him and her who have ears listen to their pleas.  They have decided not to be silent.  These pilgrims are the frontline against the wave of guns & drugs violence that can soon inundate ourselves and our children, perhaps much sooner than any international terrorists. 

 

 

*   http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-09-02/news/ct-met-mexican-caravan-20120903_1_javier-sicilia-drug-traffickers-drug-consumption

 

 

Illumination by Kathey Brahney

¿QUIEN ES {WHO IS} JAVIER SICILIA?

Javier Sicilia, 55 y.o., Catholic poet turned leader--His story

 

You may have heard that 60,000 Mexican citizens have died in the past 6 years as the “War on Drugs” has escalated.  You probably haven’t heard of Javier Sicilia, Mexican Catholic poet professor who lost his 24 year old son, assassinated by the drug merchants in 2005.  Javier has led his people on long caravans pleading for an end to this violent war, in which criminals and authorities are locked in struggle and profit—the bodies of bystanders piled ever higher.   The war on drugs is newly militarized.  Firepower escalates on both sides of the battle.  Now Señor Sicilia leads a bi-national Peace Caravan from Tijuana across the USA to Washington D.C.   My priest friend in Chiapas, a champion of justice himself, says this may be the next Martin Luther King.

 

Violence has become an epidemic across our border, as the marketplace for illegal drugs and hi-power weapons mushrooms, supply and demand provided mostly in US dollars.  And the U.S. Army and CIA are newly on Mexican soil [partnering with the DEA], raising old specters of the sovereignty question.  Most of the bloodshed is on Mexican ground.

 

Javier Sicilia with assault weapon that's just been sawn in half during current U.S. caravan

 

The “Fast and Furious” controversy, which accused the Obama Justice Department for tracing some guns as they went across the border which came back to kill a DEA agent, ignored the point that Arizona and other states hemorrhage massive amounts guns and ammunition into Mexico daily, because of our historically permissive gun laws.  Was tracing some of them a bad idea?

From the definitive Fortune magazine article on the issue [long, but please read entire]:

 “The Mexican government has estimated that 2,000 weapons are smuggled daily from the U.S. into Mexico. The ATF is hobbled in its effort to stop this flow. No federal statute outlaws firearms trafficking within the U.S., so agents must build cases using a patchwork of often toothless laws. ...”   “By 2009 the Sinaloa drug cartel had made Phoenix its gun supermarket and recruited young Americans as its designated shoppers or straw purchasers.”

o counter this deluge of violence and drugs, a Caravan for Peace comes to us from Mexico.  A poet cries out to us in the name of his son and countless dead, Stop the War on Drugs, estamos hasta la madre!  {Virgin Mary we’re at the end of our rope!}  I hope to join them in Chicago tomorrow, Labor Day, and accompany to Cleveland [their northern part of the U.S. journey].  May we hear their cries, and find the courage to invest in nonviolent solutions to the many threats we feel surround us.  No more scorpions when our children ask for bread.  Seek ye first the nonviolent kingdom of God, all else will be given to us.
 

On Caravan with La Virgen de Guadalupe in Mexico

 

 

 

Illumination by Kathey Brahney

 

THE MANIPULATION OF IMMIGRATION ATTITUDE -- OUR COUNTRY IN NEED OF GOOD SAMARITANS, NOT SUPERPACS

          The reality                                                                     The propaganda

Click on blue higlights for further information

To warn us that we are constantly menaced by illegal immigrants, a new group has formed in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.  This vocal cadre of 10 within thousands of ICE employees has grabbed headlines by complaining that their own agency is not being strict enough bringing actions against immigrants, and they’ve launched a lawsuit against their own bosses to prove it.

 

“NumbersUSA, a group that advocates for reduction of immigration, is funding the lawsuit on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents opposed to current policy. The suit goes after two key Obama policies on immigration: prosecutorial discretion to focus on criminals and repeat offenders, as well as deferred action for undocumented young people.”  *

Outside of the question of political nature of this lawsuit, pushing the hot-button immigration issue in this election season, and whether a super-PAC like Karl Rove’s Crossroads America might be funding NumbersUSA [nobody knows where the super-PAC money goes], there are the questions of common sense, Gospel charity, and the continued contribution that immigrants legal & illegal make to our society. 

On common sense, a friend of the family who works for ICE recently expressed his opinion that most of his coworkers think that this in-agency lawsuit group is a minority going way overboard, and that enforcement has to be focused and sensible.  You can’t go after everyone that’s here illegally, even if you had four times the agents, while spending even more on drones and spy camera balloons for our border patrols [dejavu Port Huron's "mooned" balloon? --some to be recycled from Afghanistan] .  And do we need to do this in this time of drastic across-the-board federal budget cuts?  Other ICE agents I know, from my church including my brother, approach their jobs logically, and with compassion.

At a family wedding this summer, a guest described to me his being a mechanic maintaining two large farm operations.  The Mexican and Guatemalan farm laborers he worked alongside, he supposed were undocumented.  With the language barrier they were somewhat hard for him to get to know, but were indispensable workers, and some had become valued friends.   He believed his boss was paying them fair wages, and providing just working conditions--after not being able to find local laborers to employ.

Immigrants built this country, and they are still vital contributors to its structure, and our daily bread.  That doesn’t impress Roy Beck, founder of NumbersUSA who seems a rational advocate for his cause of more impenetrable borders, apparently disclaiming those who would use hate language against immigrants.  He finds Gospel charity impractical in this instance.  "There's no question that the gospel is pretty radical, but that's just not the way the world works," he said. "Whenever we've had peaks of high immigration, the most vulnerable in our society have been the ones to suffer."  What causes the suffering is not addressed.  There’s routinely a struggle across borders between rich and poor.

Bought & paid for with U.S. drugs & weapons dollars -- violence based market, made in the USA

 

ext week we’ll look at a wave of violence, drugs, weapons, and militarized war on drugs, that is currently driving refugees into the U.S. from Mexico --- and at the movement in Mexico that comes now to the USA, pleading for an end to the violence.  It’s led by Javier Sicilia, a Mexican Catholic poet and professor, who lost his 24 year old son in the crossfire.

 

Background stories on Javier Sicilia, and link to his current caravan from Tijuana to Washington, D.C.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/world/americas/14sicilia.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13141263
http://www.caravanforpeace.org/caravan/  ---  Please consider joining in some way.

For more on Roy Beck -- https://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/about/roy-beck-executive-director.html

* http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/23/kris-kobach-immigration-lawsuit-obama_n_1825272.html

 The Good Samaritan "after Van Gogh"

 

Illumination by Kathy Brahney

 

MAKING SENSE OF SYRIA – DOMINOES OF VIOLENT MISERY

Please click on blue links for full articles

Syrian rebel  battles with Syrian government forces--Rastan in Homs province--Jan 31, 2012 AP photo

Syrian army tanks T-72 are seen in the al-Midan area in Damascus on July 20, 2012

The nonviolence of Arab Spring is confronted by its addicted older brother in the cold hard weapons market of death that is Syria.  Whether it was elements within the demonstrators, or President Assad’s troops firing first, {and how many have been massacred by armed insurrectionists, vs. government reactionary forces, since} the only clear message is that violence has staged a coup.  The outside nations of interest have another proxy battleground on which to exert their influence, and sell their weaponry.  Arab Spring is nipped in the bud, demonstrations and dialogue shrink back as impracticalities, and the reality of cold & hot wars is re-established.

So the U.S. repeats it’s Mideast mistakes.  We would topple Assad because he is axis-of-evil friend of Iran, and/or is a dictator {as in Qadaffi, & Saddam}. The Syrian rebels open a lobbying office in Washington D.C., the CIA helps funnel arms to the rebels.  The rebels themselves are 80% Sunni {—and Syria accepted more refugees from our war in Iraq than any other country}.   Many Syrian Sunni rebels are partial to Al Qaeda [as they were in Iraq].  We now back these rebels because our current #1 enemy of the day is President Bashar al-Assad, who is allied with the Shiites of Iran [himself a member of a similar religious group, the Alawites].  Our Syrian freedom fighter rebels are almost certain to turn firepower against us whenever opportune.

"Syria was a major staging area for Sunni jihadis (attacking U.S. forces) in Iraq," he said. "Many of these networks are still in place in Syria. These are elements that view Shi'ites as heretics and Alawites as even more heretical." Reporting by TomHeneghan--Reuters, 12-23-11  These are the guys we are helping arm against Assad.

aradoxically the Iraqi government [a Shiite majority] which we recently went to great trouble to help install, supports President Assad’s effort to stay in power, and is quite sympathetic to Iran.  “… Iraq who has long-cautioned for neutrality and a centrist position on Syria, rejected the Arab League’s call for Assad to step down, and said others should ‘not interfere’ in Syria’s affairs.”  From Al Arabiya News Chanel-- July 25, 2012. 

A recent NYT oped, Syria is Iraq, points to the big problem with our recent actions in Iraq.    Because of both U.S. incompetence and the nature of Iraq, this U.S. intervention triggered a civil war in which all the parties in Iraq — Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds — tested the new balance of power, inflicting enormous casualties on each other and leading, tragically, to ethnic cleansing…   The author, though promoting our eventual role there as a “well-armed midwife” managing Iraq’s transition, has admitted that this birth canal of war was a terrible graveyard.  Iraq does not see the U.S. “midwife” as pro-life. 

2006 estimate of "probable excess mortality"of Iraqis since our 2003 invasion--only study done by professional epidemiologists--Johns Hopkins' University Bloomberg School of Public Health--Please read overview article.

f course Shiite and many other Iraqis were glad to see the Sunni, Saddam Hussein, go.  He’d persecuted them and fought eight years of bloody war against Iran {with some help from the U.S.} in the 1980’s.  Strange bedfellows--a game of musical beds.  The leadership of Iran is fundamentally Shiite for many decades [after deposing our secular friend the Shah], and certainly supports the new Shiite authorities of Iraq. To make things more complicated, both Syria & Iran back the Hezbollah group in Lebanon against Israel.

'ARMS FLOW TO SYRIA’ [International Herald Tribune, France]

We will never buy real respect and influence or security with our weaponry.  Not in Syria, not in Iraq, not in homeland USA.  Whack-a-mole politics with bombs & guns never wins.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. indicates the one Good News hope that leads out of this hole, "I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”

Egypt's Tahrir Square

More references on the intrigue in Syria

New York Times video on Syria--updated

 http://projects.nytimes.com/watching-syrias-war?ref=world

June 25, 2012  "Turkish Border Is Crucial Link in Syrian Conflict" in NYT

 and it's related video -- Smugglers in Support of Syria  

While we're on border problems, how about this?--

     May, 2011- Israel's border breached from Syria by nonviolent protesters as part of Arab Spring.

 

Illuminations by Kathy Brahney

POWER AND LIGHT OF UNCONDITIONAL LOVE—NOT BOMBS AND ELECTROCUTIONS

We approach August 6, 2012-- celebration of the Transfiguration of the Lord Jesus * --with measured steps up a mountain of misunderstanding.  The Son of God reveals himself in all his glory, full of the divine light of  mercy and overwhelming love He has preached and shown in His healings.  The three apostles present still don’t understand (want to stay in a cloud), nor do we, two thousand years later.

On this same August 6^th two terrible events have occurred in recent history, which demonstrate the depth of our hard-hearted rejection of the message and person of Jesus--who is our Light against the darkness.  

Little Boy--first Atomic Bomb--Dropped on Hiroshima, Aug. 6, 1945--Boston Globe source

Kemmler's electric chair--or facsimile

Lesser known is the story of the execution on this day in 1890 of the first person to die in the electric chair, William Kemmler.  The state of New York introduced this new method to kill a murderer.  Though advertised as a most modern technology it took multiple shocks from a dynamo that needed to be restarted to finish off Mr. Kemmler—sensationally reported as a ghastly affair.  {The book Empires of Light gives full description and context}.  This should have given pause to capitol punishment proponents, and some people did protest, but the culture of death for criminals by “humane methods” persists over 100 years later.

Unfortunately, a local Port Huron hero of that era, Thomas Edison, the world’s greatest inventor, was involved in manipulations to make sure this new form—execution by electricity—occurred as grim spectacle.    The current used was AC [that favored by Westinghouse] and Edison championed DC for widespread household use.  AC could now be discredited as too dangerous, and execution by electric chair termed, “to be westinghoused.”  So went the Edison strategy.   The father of the light bulb, failed though to prevent the more utilitarian AC from becoming our common power source, and the power that lights our cities has extinguished the lives of thousands of U.S. prison inmates.

Representation of slightly more modern version of electric execution, from film "The Green Mile"

The second terrible perversion of power and light occurred this day August 6^th 1945 massacring a civilian population of Hiroshima Japan, in the name of victory over enemies and saving our troops lives.  {The book Hiroshima by John Hershey tells some of the grim, still not often told story—Bob Tighe who was a member of our BWPC, and Fr. George Zabelka, who was chaplain for the Enola Gay plane that dropped the A-bomb, were Michigan people I’ve known, there soon after as GI’s, and collaborate the total destruction.}

Hiroshima, autumn 1945--two lone figures walking--Boston Globe source

There is historical debate about what was really necessary.  There is no question that a weapon of mass destruction without precedent was introduced into the world, in this way radical evil was served, and that Jesus’ teaching to love your enemy was violated.  A blast of superhuman light and power was embraced as more trustworthy, than the light of truth revealed by God in the life death and resurrection of God’s beloved Son.

Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy has written an essay on the theme above.  Please read.

http://centerforchristiannonviolence.org/data/Media/Remember_August_6.pdf 

In it we find:

 “If the spirit of homicidal violence had but one victim in human

history, it would be no less monstrous, grotesque and perverted.

 The satanic is not fundamentally discerned by statistics. Indeed,

 statistics can dull empathic sensibilities that expose critical

 truths.”

  Nor is God a calculator of statistics.  Forgive 70 times 7 is the measure.  We wrestle

 here on earth with the dark angel that advertizes a culture of preemptive death and

 despair.  Jesus our Transfigured Light shows us the only way to drive out these

 demons.

*  http://www.americancatholic.org/features/saints/saint.aspx?id=1099

On July 22, 1456, Crusaders defeated the Turks at Belgrade. News of the victory reached Rome on August 6, and Pope Callistus III placed the feast of the Transfiguration on the Roman calendar the following year.
We seem to always want to attribute victory in war, and justice executed by death, to our faith in the One who said, “Father forgive them they do not know what they do,” as He died on the cross. 

Have we yet listened to, or even heard, the voice of the U. S. Catholic Bishops, spoken in their “ The Challenge of Peace” pastoral letter of 1983 ?

             “After the passage of nearly four decades and a concomitant growth in our understanding of the ever growing horror of nuclear war, we must shape the climate of opinion which will make it possible for our country to express profound sorrow over the atomic bombing in 1945.  Without that sorrow, there is no possibility of finding a way to repudiate future use of nuclear weapons…”

Hiroshima bomb aftermath--excavated years later

Transfiguration by Raphael