Today in Labor History March 30, 1856: The Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Crimean War, between Russia and the victorious Ottoman Empire (allied with the UK, France and Sardinia-Piedmont). The flashpoint was a conflict over the rights of Christian minorities in Ottoman-controlled Palestine, and control of its holy sites.
The Crimean War was one of the first to utilize modern armaments, like explosive shells, railways and telegraphs. Much of these armaments came from Alfred Nobel’s family armament factory. It was also a particularly deadly war. Around 670,000 soldiers died in only four years, the majority from preventable infectious diseases (e.g., typhus, typhoid, cholera, and dysentery), not from battle wounds. Mortality rates for soldiers were 23-31%, compared with U.S. troop mortality rates of only 2% during the Vietnam War.
In the aftermath of the Crimean War, Russia sold Alaska to the U.S. out of fear that the UK would simply take it from them in their weakened military state. The last living veteran of the Crimean war was a Greek tortoise, named Timothy, who had served as a ship’s mascot during the war. He died in 2004, nearly 150 years after the war ended. Despite their victory, the Ottomans gained no new territory, and the war nearly bankrupted them, contributing to their decline as a super power. The Crimean War also helped forge the alliances and grievances that would lead to the First World War, and quite likely to the conditions leading up to Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea and its current fight with Ukraine.
Florence Nightengale became famous as a nurse during this war. Tolstoy fought in the 11-month Siege of Sevastopol. His experiences in this war contributed to his pacifism and anarchism. After witnessing a public execution in France, one year after the Crimean War ended, he wrote, “The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere.” The war also influenced his novel, “War and Peace.”
Today In Labor History March 26, 1872: French individualist anarchist Émile Armand was born. He wrote about and agitated for free love and polyamory, pacifism, and against war and militarism. He wrote for and edited L'Ère nouvelle (1901–1911), L'Anarchie, L'En-Dehors (1922–1939) and L'Unique (1945–1953).
“But beyond these explicit signs of moral injury, there was the ubiquitous specter of war. It lingered around every corner, reminding everyone of its presence in every tradition, every training, every taboo. It hovered over students training to bandage the war wounds their fellow sailors would suffer and inflict, and over staff members burdened with the dehumanizing work of teaching teenagers how to kill people. It permeated a military culture that strips people of their individuality – and often their moral reasoning – as they learn to assimilate, conform, and above all, obey. It undergirded an entire system designed to use lethal force to deter evil despite how evil lethal force is.”
Today in History, March 14, 1879, Albert Einstein was born. In addition to being one of the most significant physicists of all time, he was also a pacifist. Yet his letter to President Roosevelt warning of the Nazi progress on atomic weapons research was arguably key to the U.S. implementation of the Manhatton Project, a decision he later lamented. In 1955, well after the Cold War and nuclear arms race had begun, he and ten other intellectuals and scientists, including other Nobel Prize laureates, like Bertrand Russell and Linus Pauling, wrote a manifesto warning of the dangers of nuclear weapons. Einstein also participated in the U.S. Civil Rights movement, calling racism America’s “worst disease.” Later in his life he began to support socialism, and he criticized the Bolsheviks for their barbarism. Einstein was also a Zionist, and supported Jews’ right to return to Palestine. However, he wanted a free, bi-national Palestine in which Jews and Arabs shared sovereignty, living peacefully and equally with each other.
Deputy Chairman of the Ukrainian Movement of Pacifists (one of the "key" partners from #Ukraine of many antimilitarists in the west) Svetlana Novitskaya was arrested today in Lviv. She was a lawyer for pro-russian politicians in the country for many years. #Pacifism
Bertha von Suttner was a pioneering peace activist. She was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (in fact, she's credited with inspiring it) and became the second female Nobel Prize laureate after Marie Skłodowska Curie.
In 1889, Suttner became a leading figure in the peace movement with the publication of her pacifist novel, Die Waffen nieder! (Lay Down Your Arms!), which made her one of the leading figures of the Austrian peace movement. via @wikipedia
"The instinct of self-preservation in human society, acting almost subconsciously, as do all drives in the human mind, is rebelling against the constantly refined methods of annihilation and against the destruction of humanity."
1905 - Nobel lecture
~Bertha Sophie Felicitas Freifrau von Suttner (9 June 1843 – 21 June 1914)
We're the George Lansbury Memorial Trust, set up in 2012 to commemorate the life of George Lansbury; the life-long campaigner for social justice.
George started life as a radical Liberal, became a socialist in the early 1890s & joined the Social Democratic Federation, Independent Labour Party, and then finally a Labour MP in 1922, leading the Party in the early 1930s.
I will not compromise on pacifism, esp. on non-killing. All our actions have physical, social, and emotional consequences in this world.
There are no “justified wars.” Anything beyond conflict prevention is strategic failure, and anything that doesn’t quickly resolve conflict is inability to correct that failure.
I would be told “this isnt realistic,” but it is. That world is possible. We can rebel against this authoritarian-enabling “reality.” A new world is possible.
Scientists must understand that fanatical zealots among industrial and political powers actually want to hasten the "end times" — apocalyptic accelerationist doctrine, as @Wolven puts it (https://ourislandgeorgia.net/@Wolven/111307805336499187). Christian Zionism is another such example of apocalyptic accelerationism.
So we MUST stop thinking climate alarms and emergencies actually deter them or would encourage them into action.
It's the opposite: bad news actually emboldens them and tells them their strategies are working. They probably think it's easier to go to heaven by ending the world than it is to actually save it from their own capitalist bullshit.
Stockpiling, prep, and mobilisation for months of worldwide strikes, refusal to pay bills, and not buying anything. As a radical pacifist who is also an eco-socialist, this highly appeals to me.
Scientists must revolt instead when big journalism, big oil, and other such industries are stacked against us.
Many people here in the #fediverse — an otherwise progressive place — are loudly pro-war, as long as the cause is just. That disturbs me.
My generation grew up listening to veterans of two World Wars and living in the shadow of the Cold War and nuclear annihilation. We learned how futile even a just war is. #Pacifism was a cornerstone of the Left. Has that changed?
I do want #Ukraine to get its territory back. I don't support military offensives (especially where civilian lives are at risk).
So now that we’re all on the same page that Elon Musk (using Starlink) interfered with an allied country’s ability to defend itself against Russia, what is the American government going to do about it? #Ukraine
@LALegault I'm conflicted on this one. I don't believe Mr Musk's explanation (at all), but at the same time, I don't support weaponising things to kill people.
I'm not so naïve as to think that my open-source stuff has never been used in connection with weapons systems, but I've also never accepted a consulting gig that involved them (a big percentage of #XML work did 20+ years ago).
Today in Labor History September 9, 1828: Leo Tolstoy, Russian author and playwright was born. He is most famous for novels like Anna Karina, and War and Peace. He chose the name for the latter after reading French anarchist Proudhon’s publication called War and Peace. Tolstoy also wrote many short stories, an autobiography and many works of nonfiction. After witnessing a public execution in 1857, he wrote: "The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere." In the 1870s, he experienced a profound spiritual awakening, which led him to become a Christian anarchist and pacifist, and which he wrote about in his non-fiction work Confession (1882). He also wrote about nonviolent resistance in The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), which influenced Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Wittgenstein. He was repeatedly nominated for Nobel prizes in both literature and peace.
Today in Labor History, July 24, 1893: Ammon Hennacy was born. He was a Christian pacifist, anarchist, social activist, and member of the Catholic Worker Movement and IWW. He created the Joe Hill House of Hospitality in Salt Lake City, Utah, and practiced tax resistance. As a college student, he was a member of the Socialist Party of America and, in his words, "took military drills in order to learn how to kill capitalists." During World War I, he was imprisoned for protesting the draft. While in prison, the only book he was allowed was the bible. It was there that he became a pacifist and a Christian anarchist. He also led a prison hunger strike, which got him 8 months in solitary. In the 1950s, he joined the IWW, and the Catholic Worker movement, with founder, Dorothy Day, as his godmother. He continued to participate in war resistance, tax resistance and anti-nuclear protests throughout the 1950s and ‘60s. And he wrote numerous books, including “The One-Man Revolution in America,” with each chapter about a different American radical (e.g., Thomas Paine, William Lloyd Garrison, John Woolman, Dorothy Day, Eugene Debs, Malcolm X, Mother Jones, Clarence Darrow, and Albert Parsons).
In 1905, she became the second female Nobel laureate (after Marie Curie in 1903), the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and the first Austrian laureate.
As I pointed out in my blog yesterday, US Americans shooting each other with little or no provocation like this is nothing new, sadly. And our #GunCulture is not something that #GunControl will fix. We need to proselytize #peace and #nonviolence.
I don't get the #PunchANaziSaturday-movement. Why would violence solve anything?
“I do not hate anyone, not even Hitler. Hate is a disease which may destroy your enemy but will destroy you in the process. You may not like everyone, but that doesn’t give you the right to be nasty to them. I don’t love everyone but I hate no one. There is no revenge; staying alive is the only revenge.”
—Eddie Jaku, a holocaust survivor
@miiamustang No. Alternative is to stop them. It's not like "kill be or killed". I get the sentiment but I will never encourage anyone to violence. #Pacifism
@tigerfort You are contradicting yourself. You're saying violence is always bad, yet sometimes somehow necessary. No. You can't have both.
We can't avoid violence. And we can't afford it either. We don't have to accept things as they are, but how can't you see we will not stop the violence by adding more violence... #Pacifism