Tulsa Peace Fellowship

There never was a good war or a bad peace. ~Ben Franklin

 

The TPF Steering Committee is interested in your views, opinions, scribblings, and written submissions.   The "Penny Peace Push" is intended to focus on local views on peace-related issues, reflecting of the point of view of Eastern Oklahomans, as a modern up-to-date version of the one-cent broadsheets that used to circulate in print, that is, newsletters from the peace community provided in decades past. The broadsheets printed off by peace groups were distributed by hand in return for a small donation, just 1¢ if that's all people could afford.

 

Penny Peace Push

 

Tuesday, July 12, 2011 Volume 1, Issue 3 Price $.01*

 

Published monthly by the Tulsa Peace Fellowship (TPF), Tulsa, OK.

 

Co-editors: Larry Hochhaus and Bryan Cheek

 

Goals:

  1. To promote peace and justice at all levels from local to city-wide to state, national, and the world.

  2. To inform readers of significant events pertinent to waging peace in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Midwest, the Nation, and the World.

  3. To inspire our readers to take action toward advancement of peace on many levels.

 

Contact information:

Larry Hochhaus: addictionhelp@cox.net or Bryan Cheek: bcheek225@netzero.com

 

 

Announcements and Events:

Events:

Friday, July 22

10 AM – 4 PM NVC workshop: “Words That Hurt, Words That Heal”

Exploring Non-Violent Communication, in Tulsa Cost $25.00

John Calvin Presbyterian Church, 8181 E. 31st St. Tulsa, OK

Sponsored by the Tulsa Metropolitan Ministries (TMM)

RSVP: by July 14th to TMM or to fpcowasso@att.net

Saturday, August 6

Regular Peace Demonstration at 41st & Yale, Noon – 2 PM

Theme: “Bring the war $$ home.”

Possible Peace Slogans: “War destroys our wealth”

and “The wars are making you poor”

To prepare for the Peace Demonstration, keep in mind the C.A.R.A principles: Namely,

1. Center yourself

2. Articulate your truth

3. Receive the truth of the other person / Respect their opinion

4. Agree, don't assume

from Engage: Exploring Non-Violent Living, pp. 90-93 chapter section entitled:

"CARA: A FOUR-STEP PROCESS FOR NONVIOLENT ENGAGEMENT"

Thursday, August 11

6:30-8:30 Monthly Tulsa Peace Fellowship (TPF) meeting

(all TPF members and visitors welcome)

Church of the Restoration, Unitarian Universalist, 1314 N. Greenwood

Ongoing Event:

TPF is encouraging members and PPP readers to write post cards in support of Bradley Manning. Send cards, with sufficient postage, direct to:  Bradley Manning 89289, 830 Sabalu Road, Fort Leavenworth KS 66027

 

Looking ahead:

  1. TPF is planning to co-sponsor a visit by David Rovics, protest singer, to Tulsa for a concert sometime in Oct 2011.

  1. A trip to D.C. for October Occupation of Liberty Square, Washington D.C. is being planned. The lead organizer for this trip is TPF seasoned activist Mark Manley. The start of the rally/occupation is planned for Oct 6 th , 2011 . See the flyer from Manley, on page 5 of the present Penny Peace Push. To express your interest in joining the bus/van headed to D.C. from Tulsa contact Mark directly (email: oneactivist@impeachok1.org) (or see other info at http://october2011.org/welcome).

 

 

Featured Article: Movie Review:

 

Slaughterhouse-Five” (1972)

based on the novelette of the same name, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), by Kurt Vonnegut

 

Prepared 26th June 2011 review by TPF President, 2009-2011

 

The destruction scenes of the city of Dresden, Germany, are harrowing. The film builds up, with good narrative pacing, to the street-level experience of the eye-witnesses to the Allied bombing of the hapless city. To build to this climax, and make the destruction more poignant, I particularly liked the perspective/landscape shots of the city of Dresden, used in the film as the group of protagonists approached the city by train, as prisoners of war, and the affectionate approach of the cinematography towards the details of the buildings in the city, and to a lesser extent, towards the humanity of the city's inhabitants. The film is directed by George Roy Hill. The camera work is by Miroslav Ondrícek. But this is also the account of the breakdown of one U.S. soldier in the face of this unjustified bombing campaign. In “Slaughterhouse-Five,” the psychological burden of having witnessed a war crime committed by one's own country is very powerfully depicted through the eyes of Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist of the film.

Having provided the city with some character, the viewer can feel the anguish/sadness of both the POWs and their German keepers when they realize the city is being bombed for the first time by the Allies (U.S. & U.K. Bombers, in Feb 1945, just as the war was ending). The film makes a point of explaining that there were no military objectives worth bombing in Dresden, and the youthful German prison guard yells out in German, to his American prisoners, in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of a civilian city: “You are forever swine!” (But this is not translated into English, no subtitles being provided in the film). The only motivation suggested for the bombing, according to the film, is revenge killing by the Allies. The film mentions the figures of 100,000 killed as a result of the Dresden bombing, and one is left with the impression that these were almost entirely civilians. (The actual number of killed in the bombing is the subject of a fair bit of academic debate. For his part, in his book, Vonnegut mentions the figure of 130,000 killed.) The contradiction between the victory over the Axis forces and the knowledge of this war crime committed by the Allies for no reason that could be conceivably related to achieving a military victory is enough to account for the protagonist's becoming "unstuck in time." There are other similar filmic treatments of WWII that also use time disjunction as an effective means of capturing the soldier's perspective, for example, the film version of Joseph Heller's Catch-22, or the film version of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient.

However, there are two experiences during the bombing of Dresden that are not depicted at all in this otherwise excellent film: 1. When taking refuge in the bomb shelter underground, within the city of Dresden as it is being attacked for the first time, none of the American POWs nor their keepers in the German army suffer any oxygen deprivation, when this is known to have been experienced by others in similar bomb shelters in the city, during the bombing; in fact, instead of oxygen worries, they light candles to find their way out of the shelter, up the stairs – in this film; 2. Although a first-person account, and neither the fictional Billy Pilgrim, nor the author Kurt Vonnegut would have been at street-level to see/witness the actual bombing of Dresden, as they both (in fictional account and in real life) made it to the bomb shelter before the bombs struck, a fire storm is now known to have occurred as a result of the Allied bombing, and in fact, this was deliberately caused by the bombing of the old city center, with its many wood-timbered buildings. To see these two facts depicted in moving images, you'll have to see these important details accurately depicted in a German made-for-TV film (available with English subtitles), entitled “Dresden” (Germany, 2006, directed by Roland Suso Richter). But in considering the film's protagonist, who is standing in for the author himself and his eyewitness account of the bombing, the mental state of the man is a major issue of the film. Even his compensation, or disassociation, as a result of his experience, seems understandable, given the fact that this war crime was denied by so many for so long, among the Allies, in the post-war period. In the film, post-war, Billy Pilgrim is even subjected to shock therapy (six times!) in order to try to suppress/erase the truth in his memory about what he experienced while at Dresden. The victors in the war do not appreciate Pilgrim/Vonnegut reminding them of the crimes committed by the victors, or the question of whether the means here had anything to do with the ends.

A powerful witness film, which the author of the book upon which it is based says is an accurate portrayal: “I drool and cackle every time I watch that film, because it is so harmonious with what I felt when I wrote the book," says Kurt Vonnegut, eye-witness and author. A watchable anti-war film, even if a little eclectic. © Tony Nuspl, 2011

 

(You can find other anti-war films reviewed by Dr Nuspl online at

Living Social http://movies.livingsocial.com/people/1706548662

or on Facebook http://apps.facebook.com/dvdshelf/people/1706548662 )

 

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I urge anyone reading this to email us anything they consider helpful in working for peace. Email me (Larry Hochhaus) at addictionhelp@cox.net or send your thoughts to Bryan Cheek at bcheek225@netzero.com. We want to hear from you.

Notes: * other donations cheerfully accepted

 

 

Please mail a check or money order made out to the"Tulsa Peace Fellowship" to :

 

The Tulsa Peace Fellowship
c/o UU Church of the Restoration,
1314 N. Greenwood Ave, Tulsa Oklahoma. 74106-4854
Find on a map: Google Maps link

Contributions to TPF are not tax deductible at the present time.  The Tulsa Peace Fellowship is a registered non-profit in the State of Oklahoma.

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TPF newsletter for this month (Oct 2012) attached, with the upcoming events listed prominently.

Please download the PDF file, print it off, and mail it to 2 friends or family members.

For complete event listings, please visit our main calendar of events on Google:

https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=tpf.918%40gmail.com&c...

Or, the immediate upcoming events are posted on our Wordpress site, right column:

http://tulsapeace.wordpress.com/

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