--- Justice & Peace

Milton Friedman, Nobel Economics Prize winner, has left a trail of death and destruction wherever he, his students or admirers advised countries to implement his plan that involved privatization, government deregulation and deep social spending cuts. Advocating a free market economy, he thought that an unregulated market would maximize freedom and prosperity. Although he wrote a book in 1962, Capitalism and Freedom, he found no democratically elected government, including President Richard Nixon’s administration, would implement his program. The Keynesian model including a safety net, unions, workers protections and government spending helped the United States and other countries recover from the Great Depression and continue prosperity after the Second World War. Milton Friedman and his Chicago Boys (former students at the University of Chicago economics department) found that they could only persuade dictatorships or democracies in crisis to adopt his planned misery program.

Author Barbara Enrenreich wondered what is was like to live on $7 an hour after the 1996 welfare reform. Her bestseller Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting By in America describes her work as a waitress, cleaning lady, and a Wal Mart employee in different cities. Her book reminded me of John Howard Griffin, a white man who changed his skin color for six weeks in the early 1960s to find out what it was like a black person. His book Black Like Me was a sensation.

About one year ago Fr. Andrew Greeley published an article questioning why we don't hold war crimes trials in the USA. I would like to apply the rationale that the Surveillance Policy supporters used to justify their activities. " If you haven't done anything wrong , what do you have to worry about ? " . Greeley posts another criticism of Phony Patriotism on his site. The Statue of Liberty was highlighted with great enthusiasm but with no mention of the great sonnet she holds on a tablet rejecting ' Storied Pomp ' and welcoming the wretched huddled masses.

Matthew Smucker’s article, “What Is to Be Done? Assessing the Antiwar Movement” in the June 26, 2008 edition of www.commondreams.org got my attention. I read the readers’ responses and shares the same frustrations. For all the work in getting Democrats elected to Congress in 2006, we have achieved little. Spineless Democrats, headed by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, engage in a foot race to see which one will cave into President Bush faster. After the Congress approved a bill on war spending with deadlines, Bush vetoed it. Then, instead of demanding that Bush approve a bill that they would approve, the spineless Democrats approved Bush’s war budget to “support the troops.”

The United States and the European Union have selfish reasons to abolish world poverty: combat terrorists and reduce illegal immigration flow.

A world wide anti-poverty program will diminish the terrorists’ recruiting pool. Well-fed people do not contribute to terrorists’ causes. Some point out that the 9/11 hijackers were not poor with the inference that poverty and injustice have no bearing on terrorism. In fact, middle class people have always organized social movements. In his classic work, Anatomy of Revolution, historian Crane Britton examined the English, American, French and Russian Revolutions and found that middle class and upper class people lead them all. Poor people became involved only at the fringes. Reducing poverty means reducing terrorist activity.

Fr. Andrew Greeley has posted a new article just in time for the Holiday Weekend at the Chicago Sun-Times , suntimes.com , and on his website , agreeley.com , which also hosts his new Blog. In this article he decries the exploitation of the desire for revenge by the Republicans to win elections. He compares this to the excesses of WWII in the Firebombing devastation of 50 Japanese cities, and the Nuclear Holocaust visited upon two more of them. WWII was a just war , but we tend to make ourselves no better than our opponents, as with the RAF firebombing of German cities right at the war's end. Our Phony Patriots lied about Iraqi weapons to enable them to justify the taking of Iraq for Western advantage in the region even though the attackers of 9/11 were of Saudi extraction whose leaders had excellent relations with US Oil Companies. This is what Greeley calls a lethal combination that the GOP continues to use to win elections. It looks like McCain's only hope for winning is an Iran invasion riding on the same formula of fear and revenge. What a sorry lot. Greeley also characterizes our President as an opportunist. He cheerfully embraced a war option to get minds off of the Florida voting situation and the Antonin Scalia theft of said election. Greeley has just published a collection of his articles about this war , ' A Stupid , Immoral and Unjust War '. It is available from his website trough a link to Amazon. I read them every week to sustain me through this period. He has some choice words for the Press too as they rolled over for the Phony Patriotism scam without the slightest professional curiosity.

Writing about the glory of war is easy because there isn’t any. See this quotation from Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman:

“I am sick and tired of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have never fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.”

The idea that there is glory in war is a public relations job that disregards hideous death, mayhem and property destruction involved. The movies, parades, history textbooks and Memorial Day give the idea that war is unavoidable and that our cause has always been right and that our nation has usually been dealing with Absolute Evil. Our country always fights not just to defend our country but to free others from oppression.

Vincent Buglosi’s angry book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, has three themes: 1) laying out the case for a murder indictment, 2) showing Bush’s incompetence in dealing with terrorists and 3) a call for a restored America. Since Bush fabricated a case to go with Iraq, he is guilty of murdering some 4,000 American military people. Iraq was not a threat to the United States or anyone else. Saddam Hussein never had any connection with Al Qaeda. In fact, they hated each other. Saddam had his palaces, wives and luxurious living in secular government. Osama Bin Laden, a fundamentalist aesthetic, considered Hussein as an apostate. There was a 1995 meeting in Sudan with Bin Laden and an Iraqi intelligence officer to look for mutual goals but nothing came of this meeting. On October 15, 2001, Colin Powell stated that Iraq was no threat: “Iraq is Iraq, a wasted society for 10 years.”

DETENTION MINISTRY AND RESTORATIVE JUSTICE
HI, EVERYBODY!
THE PURPOSE OF SETTING UP FORUM TOPIC IS TO BRING TOGETHER AND SHARE OUR EXPERIENCES AS WE HAVE SHARED TIME IN JAIL, IN PRISON OR EVEN JUVENILE HALL. WHEREEVER YOU MAY BE, WHAT HAVE YOU TO SAY ABOUT WORKING WORKING WITH PEOPLE WHE ARE INCARCERATED OR HAVE BEEN INCARCERATED.
IT HAS ALSO BEEN MY EXPERIENCE THAT WHEN WE GET TOGETHER AND TALK ABOUT THIS THINGS AS PEOPLE OF FAITH, THERE IS SUCH A WIDE SPECTRUM OF CIRCUMSTANCES. MAYBE WE CAN PRAY FOR EACH OTHER, MAYBE WE CAN HELP EACH OTHER.