9/11--A Missed Opportunity For World Peace?

Wikipedia photo by Andrea Booher/ FEMA News Photo

Following the September 11, 2001 attack by Saudi terrorists, there was an unprecedented outpouring of expressions of support and goodwill from individuals and nations from every corner of the globe. Occurring as it did at the dawn of the 21st century, what if the United States had used this pivotal event as an opportunity to help launch a century of peace rather than having it become another century of ever escalating warfare?

Sadly, an official summary of President George Bush’s presidency 2001-2009 states, 

In Afghanistan, the United States and our allies removed the regime that harbored the terrorists who plotted the 9/11 attacks. As a result, more than 25 million Afghans are free; the terrorist training camps have been shut down; and Afghanistan has become an ally in the war on terror. Today Afghanistan has a democratically elected President, a national assembly, and a market economy. Women are voting and starting their own businesses. Millions more children are in school, including girls who were once banned from the classroom… In Iraq, the United States led a coalition to remove a dictator who murdered his own people, invaded his neighbors, and threatened the United States. Because our coalition acted to remove Saddam Hussein, 25 million Iraqis are free; the Iraqi people have the most progressive constitution in the Arab world; and Iraq has become an ally in the war on terror. With Saddam Hussein gone from power, the coalition’s mission turned to helping the Iraqi people defend their freedom against violent extremists. When the battle in Iraq reached a pivotal point, the President rejected calls for retreat. Instead, in January 2007, he ordered a new strategy supported by a surge in forces.This historic decision dramatically reduced violence and created the conditions for political and economic progress to take place.

That was America’s Plan A, which in hindsight has proved to be a tragic failure. What if we had launched a bold new Plan B, representing neither isolationism nor attempting to punish Afghanistan militarily for harboring Taliban terrorists, and had chosen an entirely new approach to world peace?

For example: 

• To redirect a large part of our current military budget—currently larger than that of the combined military spending of the next nine highest spending nations, including Russia and China,—toward funding a Department of World Peace and Justice, and to call on all other nations to join in funding a new kind of "Marshall Plan" for helping needy populations around the globe.

• To turn the Pentagon into an International Peace and Justice Research Center, focused on aggressive and persistent conflict negotiations in current and potential stress points around the world.

• To partner with host nations to turn our existing 750 military bases in 80 countries around the world into rapid response centers for peace negotiations and as stations for providing aid in natural disasters and ongoing help for nations experiencing the ravages of hunger, disease and forced migration.

• To maintain a well regulated and justly operated border patrol while investing billions in helping impoverished and oppressive countries from which so many of our migrants come. 

• To maintain a Coast Guard (and, in the short term, anti-ballistic missiles?) in the defense of our nation, but to phase out offensive weapons aimed at other nations.

• To become a leader among nations of all ideologies, ethnicities and religions “who do not lift up sword against nation, nor learn war any more,” and where “integrity and justice prosper, and justice produces lasting peace and security.” (Isaiah 2:4, 32:17)

In the words of the late Christian peace advocate A.J. Muste, "There is no way to peace, Peace is the way."

On Not Misreading The Parable Of The Talents

 

According to this source a talent in Jesus's day was a standard
measurement of weight of around 75 pounds. A talent of silver
or gold would have represented more wealth than a typical laborer
would be able to earn in a lifetime.

In the traditional interpretation of the Matthew 25 "Parable of the Talents" Jesus is the benevolent master whose servants are to multiply the kingdom wealth he entrusts to them in his absence. The servants whose efforts result in kingdom profit are commended, while one who simply preserves the "wealth" God has given them is severely punished.

If we clearly identify this wealth as kingdom capital rather than earthly gain, this is an important lesson well taken. No problem. 

But we must remember that Jesus would never approve of the actions of the "master" in this story, the kind of greedy capitalist with whom his hearers would have been all too familiar.

Prosperous landowners in Jesus's day typically amassed wealth by loaning money at high interest to small scale farmers, then acquiring their land when they were unable to repay their debt. This forced already poor farmers to become a source of cheap day labor for the wealthy, or to even become bondservants of their well-to-do masters.

As in Jesus's story, some such slaves might then be elevated to become managers of parts of their master's estate and stewards of their wealth, but they nevertheless remained slaves.

In a previous parable in Matthew 18 Jesus commends one such landowner (a "king") who, having threatened to foreclose on a slave who owed him an impossible sum of 10,000 talents(!), forgave him his debt rather than sell him and his family into slavery. This portrays a completely different kind of master. Then in another story Jesus actually commends a "dishonest steward," one who reduces his master's unjust(?) profits by writing off a portion of what several of his master's debtors owe him. 

So we note the following:

1. Jesus chose a life of poverty, and expects his followers to prefer the same.

2. Jesus consistently condemns any greedy acquisition of wealth and asked at least one rich would-be follower to sell his possessions rather than to continue pursuing more wealth.

3. Jesus would never condone owning slaves(!).

4. Jesus would not favor schemes for making exorbitant profits at others' expense, as in doubling one's investment in a relatively short time.

5. Jesus would actually agree that entrepreneurs should not "reap where they do not sow," or "gather where they have not scattered."

6. Jesus, as a Torah observant Jew, would never have commended anyone for loaning money on interest to needy fellow Jews. 

7. In the description of the Final Judgment which follows, Jesus makes clear that people from all nations will be judged solely on whether they have used their time and their means to offer food, shelter and care for those in need, quite unlike the business plan of the master in the parable.

William R. Herzog II, in his 1994 book, "Parables as Subversive Speech--Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed" suggests Jesus may have intended to portray the third servant, the whistle-blower and truth teller in the story, as the hero in the parable. This Upside Down Kingdom-informed person, while continuing to carry out his regular tasks as a slave, simply refuses to take part in his greedy and harsh master's get-rich-quick scheme. 

Personally, I'm still inclined to support the traditional interpretation of the parable, as long as we clearly see it as being about Kingdom prosperity and abundance rather than about Mammon-inspired profiteering.

Viewing The World Through a 14" x 27" Window

I found this reflection by my friend Jonathan White beautiful.
(photo is from our front yard)

As I stand here looking outward across the view from my prison cell window, something I have become accustomed to doing the 41 years of my incarceration, the view is always heavenward. A window barred with steel and shatter proof glass (378 square inches) is a reminder of my restricted freedom. 

Yet my eyes see the seasonal wonders that God has graced our lives with from without and here within. The leaves of the multiple trees on the hillside change their colorful coats when winter fades to spring, summer brings in the many shades of green and earthly floral brilliance, and fall awaits its call to start this wondrous cycle all over again.

"Freedom that is neither bound by man's judgmental control nor harnessed by any restrictions that injustice breeds is known as grace and mercy!"

I see the shadows from the clouds dancing across the vast open sky before the warmth of the bright sun, the wildlife racing to build and repair their nesting places, or searching for food to feed themselves and their young. Once in a while the yellow finch will appear and an eagle or a hawk will glide gracefully from on high. Or I hear ravens and crows squawking with one another about the latest open dead animal grab market meal lying lifelessly in the field that needs their professional sanitation clean up services, as if only they and the buzzards had the contractual rights to perform. Not knowing that worms have begun their feast long before they finished their bipartisan debate over who has first dibs at the plate.

"One man's trash can become another man's treasure, and so is it in the laws of nature."

I am reminded of the words written in Proverbs 4, "My son, pay attention to my words; listen closely to my sayings. Don't lose sight of them; keep them within your heart. For they are life to those who find them, and health to one's whole body. Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life... carefully consider the path for your feet, and all your ways will be established."

Recently, in several discussions with my estranged family and men in this incarcerated life I have heard the painful echo of what "homelessness" does to men and women who remain inside these prison walls, and what fences for decades do to their quality of survival and how it disenfranchises them from having a meaningful life upon reentry, without support networks willing to aide or assist them in their transition from prison life back to civilization.

I watched a fellow prisoner who once lived on the streets as a homeless person prior to his incarceration dig through the mess hall trash cans in search of more food to eat, items other prisoners discarded from their plates. I offered him my meal tray out of concern for his health and he refused it. When he explained his reasoning for not taking the meal he said he didn't want to lose sight of where he came from when his hunger pains touched him throughout the night in his prison cell with no commissary, no job assignment, and no support from anyone outside of the prison system who cared. Because upon his release (discharge or parole) he would be homeless and on the streets again.

"Yes, I too understood his projected reality. I too understood that without a family support system, or, a transitional reentry program available upon release. I too would face that same dreaded homelessness."

In Matthew 6:25-34. the cure for anxiety is simply, "Therefore don't worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." How hard this faith walk becomes when the reality of life comes crushing down on our doorstep. Yes, it takes great faith.

PSALM 71: 17 & 18. "God, You have taught me from my youth, and I still proclaim your wonderful works. Even when I am old and gray, God you do not abandon me."

Well, thank you and all the Members of the Valley Justice Coalition who have continually supported me throughout my incarceration with moral, spiritual, financial assistance and righteousness in my journey to seek a second chance from my incarceration. Yes, I have much to be grateful for in this life. But most of all I am grateful that you believed in me enough to make a positive difference in my journey and life!

Peace/Love/Prayer/Hope/Faith/Joy and Blessings,

Jonathan White 1161021

Augusta Correctional Center

1821 Estaline Valley road

Craigsville, VA 24430

03/18/23

A Letter To Virginia Lawmakers From Inside Augusta Correctional Center

Augusta Correctional Center is in nearby Augusta County.

This letter was sent to me recently by an individual in the Virginia Department of Corrections, with the request that it be shared with members of the Virginia legislature:

My name is Richard Webb, and I am almost 47 years old. I have been incarcerated for nearly 28 years for murder and aggravated malicious wounding.

At 18, I was a mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual mess when I committed my crimes. I was a broken kid who was dealing with psychological, emotional, and sexual abuse traumas from five to approximately 17 years of age.

There was a staggering amount of undocumented and subsequently untreated trauma which was to be a major contributing factor in my life leading up to my crimes. These mitigating factors were never used as part of my defense during my trial due to the fear of public embarrassment.

In these last 28 years, I’ve learned there are thousands of others in prison, like me, who have grown up and grown old and matured out of our trauma and became rehabilitated through life's experiences, studies, and applied knowledge of emotional, physical, psychological, and spiritually learned methods acquired through years of study, along with maturing and wanting to become better people. We have become personal success stories. Even though the DOC won't currently give any of us credit for doing these studies on our own, we did them nonetheless, not expecting any recognition.

This learned and applied knowledge that we have acquired over our incarceration is not unnoticed by the institutional staff as many of us have sometimes been given sensitive area jobs that are only allowed to certain prisoners who meet certain criteria where a vetting process was used for these sensitive area jobs. Many of us have gone decades - plus , without getting an institutional infraction written against us.

Many of us also completed all of the programs offered by the DOC that are considered both therapeutic as well as educational. Many of us have even became mentors in programs. Even creating and facilitating classes in re-entry and pre- reentry programs and conflict resolution classes. I was a mentor at one time, helping to prepare many through a communication class, knowing that I am still facing Life Without Parole.

We prisoners don't understand the criteria of which these powers that be are using in determining a persons future as to whether they are a danger to society , or not. We all collectively do know that during our yearly appointment with our institutional case manager, we have to answer a series of standardized questions , which is called a compass report and most of us pass this test with results indicating “low recidivism”. Despite all of the above, anyone with a violent charge against them, is most often turned down for parole, and even excluded from being made eligible for any of the good time or any early release bill.

Since 2009, there have been over 2500 prisoners paroled out from VA prisons. Many of them were serving sentences from charges ranging from murder, rape, robbery, and assault charges. Yet, the recidivism rate remains low for these parolees. Included in these 2500 parolees are the 140 or so people who Mr. Mark Obenshain so eloquently pointed out as being those people of which were released in some sort of technical violation under former parole board chairman Adrianne Bennett's watch during the period of April 2020 to May 2020.

Of those 140 people are still out there in society going on three years now, living proof that people can and do change. These individuals are working , paying taxes, paying fines, helping to give words of support for those of us still in here and words of encouragement to help keep people from making the same harms we caused.

There is no denying that though the crimes that were committed are very serious, and hard to digest, most of us in here have aged out of criminal behavior and thinking and have worked for decades on being accountable and being rehabilitated. After serving decades here, most of us are not the same person who committed those crimes when we were younger. Many of us have matured and are truly remorseful for our actions.

My hope in writing this is to bring some very necessary attention to an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Virginia's prison system. We need your help. Please know that the man I see in my mirror each day is not the same 18-year-old I was 28 years ago. I know of thousands more in here who are genuinely changed, and remorseful people. We are ready to show how we have changed and can be upstanding citizens in society.

Please think on this. Please be compassionate. I don't expect anyone to forget what we who are convicted of violent felonies have done. We are changed people and we are ready to come home and work, pay our fines, and be law abiding citizens. And pay it forward all the love and support that many of us have received during our many different roads to being rehabilitated.

I can't thank you enough for your time and consideration.

Respectfully submitted,

Richard Webb

Will More War Help Bring About More Peace?

This AP photo by Natacha Pisarenko and others can be seen on
Outlook India's website.

I'm sure many will see the following op ed piece in today's paper as hopelessly naive and impractical. But what are realistic and humane alternatives to today's horrific wars? 

I welcome your comments.

The late M. R. Ziegler, local Church of the Brethren leader, once wryly observed that world peace could be achieved if all Christians (and people of every faith) simply “agreed not to kill each other.” 

Following the 1892 meeting of the World Peace Conference in Bern, Alfred Nobel, a pioneer manufacturer of munitions and explosives, suggested another way to world peace: “Perhaps my factories will put an end to war even sooner than your congresses. On the day when two army corps may mutually annihilate each other in a second, probably all civilized nations will recoil with horror and disband their troops.”

The 1914-18 World War that followed, hailed as “the war to end all wars,” proved Nobel wrong. Massive use of his munitions resulted in the greatest bloodbath the world had ever witnessed. An added escalation involved the use of planes, first for reconnaissance, then to drop deadly explosives on factories, enemy positions and other targets. 

WW I created conditions that led to a far more devastating genocide, World War II. In that war massive bombardments of civilians became the norm from the very start. Near its end the first nuclear bombs completely obliterated two Japanese cities.  

Since then the world has endured a prolonged Cold War and countless other failed conflicts, including the war in Vietnam. According to analyst Cooper Thomas, “Between 1965 and 1975, the United States and its allies dropped more than 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—double the amount dropped on Europe and Asia during World War II. Pound for pound, it remains the largest aerial bombardment in human history."

Like Russia’s current assaults, this failed to create any enduring peace.

In the latter part of the 20th century,  many saw the prospect of “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD) by nuclear weapons as being the ultimate deterrence to war. But given the trajectory of modern history, it may well be how World War III begins. And ends.

Tragically, humanity seems unable to see any viable alternative to using brutal force to resist an invading nation. We continue to resort to ever more devastating means of fighting fire with fire, responding with an “eye for an eye” and a “tooth for a tooth” that results in unimaginable loss and destruction.

Some two thousand years ago a revolutionary movement of Jesus followers under Roman occupation practiced and preached a radically new message. They insisted that the only way to ultimately resist evil doers was by non-violent means, and by countering evil with good.

Drawing on Hebrew texts like Proverbs 25:21-22 and the teachings of Jesus, they responded to Roman oppression by praying for their enemies, feeding them if they were hungry, carrying a burden a second mile if coerced to carry it for one, and by turning the other cheek when wrongfully struck.

This was directly counter to those who advocated throwing off the Roman yoke by violent means. In the first several centuries of the Christian movement there is not a single record of a church leader justifying any killing by a follower of Jesus, either as a soldier or an executioner.

One wonders what would have happened if Christians, now with more adherents than any other world religion, had continued to promote and live by their original convictions, Never do harm, never resist evil by evil means, never take up arms against your enemies.

Mahatma Gandhi, profoundly influenced by the teachings of Jesus, successfully led thousands of his nonviolent followers in overthrowing British rule at a cost of only one death per 400,000 of India’s citizens (Algeria, by comparison, won its independence using weapons, at a cost of one in every ten Algerians). The Catholic-affiliated and non-violent Solidarity movement in Poland successfully overcame Soviet rule, and the Berlin Wall eventually came down without the use of military force. 

In a July 3, 1940, letter to citizens in England Gandhi wrote,

Your soldiers are doing the same work of destruction as the Germans. I want you to fight Nazism without arms. Let them take possession of your beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these, but neither your souls nor your minds. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself, man, woman and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them. 

This way of overcoming evil with good, and without resorting to violent and evil means, has not been tried and found wanting, but simply been found costly and seldom tried.

If civilization is to survive, good people everywhere must declare the barbaric practice of war obsolete, as they have cannibalism, slavery, religious persecution and human sacrifice.

A Disturbing Report From Inside Augusta Correctional Center

Augusta Correctional Center is in an isolated rural area southeast of Craigsville, and struggles to retain the number of staff needed to safely operate it.

I just got this distressing news from Jonathan White about another lockdown at ACC:

We had another stabbing and pod riot incident Thursday evening at 5 pm, (02/23/23) in a double cell pod where many new arrival's from other facilities and receiving have been placed. Many of these men are into gang related activities and have new law "no parole" sentences. The incident was extremely bad, with one offender thrown from the top tier to the concrete floor below and severely stabbed. He was allegedly jumped by twelve others. These violent actions mean nothing to them because they don't have any concern about being granted parole. The worst thing that can happen is that it can delay their exit from the prison system for getting a (new) conviction for their violent actions on top of their current sentence which would increase their time before being discharged from prison. 

It is sad that this same building has four of its pods closed and the least number of offenders (256) in that one housing unit. Now, a major shakedown/lockdown procedure is being conducted because of this kind of foolishness. Yes, this type of senseless violence always results in punishment for everyone... offenders and staff, with this prison already hurting to retain staff and remain open.

ACC should had been transitioned into a reentry facility for only parole eligible offenders. With the land around it and the wastewater treatment plant within walking distance, this could be an ideal training center for offenders to gain workforce skills to return back to society. They could bring construction equipment here to teach men how to operate bulldozers, backhoe's, tractors, forklifts and gain CDL license training for truck driving, and to use the shop areas for building prefabricated homes, skills that would allow these men and (myself) an edge toward a productive citizenship upon being granted parole.

Parole hearings could be tailored with real time productive progress of the participants. Then the other prisons can deal with those inmates who care less about the freedoms that so many of us have painstakingly worked to earn. This may not seem reasonable to many advocates who think everyone should receive the same benefits. But many of these new law offender' do not understand, or, care about the struggles that many of the "old law" offenders had to endure. And not because we wanted to endure them, but because those were the mandatory demands placed on our lives to receive an early release, or a release from prison through the parole process.

There is always going to be more bad blood among men who have nothing to lose than those that have everything to lose. Fighting and stabbing one another over a state-owned telephone, kiosk, or cell space is just another enslavement tactic of the prison system and the internal caste system that is created by gang violence. Again, this is the foolishness that this new generation of offenders are in to, and who do not care that the consequences affect all of us and hurt everyone.

Some Somber Signs Of How World Wars Begin

The lesson from history (and from Jesus):
Resist evil with good. In using evil means to 
resist evildoers, we perpetrate ever more evil.

Nicholson Baker's best-selling 2008 work is a compilation of over a thousand vignettes and news clippings that portend the most ghastly destruction in all of human history, World War II. 

The book begins with an 1892 statement by munitions maker Alfred Nobel and ends with a wishful journal entry by Mihail Sebastian on the last day of 1941. This was just weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but after multiple civilian sites had already been brutally bombed by forces on both sides. But most of the over 50 million casualties of that war were still alive on that date.

Here is the first entry:

Alfred Nobel, the manufacturer of explosives, was talking to his friend the Baroness Bertha von Suttner, author of Lay down Your Arms. Von Suttner, a founder of the European antiwar movement, had just attended the fourth World's Peace Conference in Bern. It was August 1892.

     "Perhaps my factories will put an end to war even sooner than your congresses," Alfred Nobel said. "On the day when two army corps may mutually annihilate each other in a second, probably all civilized nations will recoil with horror and disband their troops."

Another post part way through the book, on p. 309:

George Bell, the bishop of Chichester, wrote a letter to the Times of London. It was April 17, 1941.

     The bishop has been moved by what the pope had said on Easter about the suffering of civilian populations. It was barbarous, Bell maintained, for any belligerent nation to attack and terrorize unarmed women and children. "If Europe is civilized at all, what can excuse the bombings of towns by night?" He offered a proposal. What if the British government solemnly declared that it would not bomb at night, provided the German government promised to do the same." "If this single limitation were achieved it would at least make a halt in the world's rushing down to ever deeper baseness and confusion," he said. Gilbert Murray, a classicist at Oxford, wrote in support of Bell's idea, as did Bernard Shaw. The British government made no response.

Here's the last entry, on p. 471:

Mihail Sebastian wrote a few lines in his journal to end the year (1941). "I carry inside myself a few days of the dreadful year we are closing tonight," he said. "But we are still alive. We can still wait for something. There is still time; we still have some time left."

In a time when World War Three looms as an ever greater threat, I highly recommend everyone reading this book. While Hitler and Nazi Germany are clearly villains in this saga, we also see the regrettable part played by world leaders like Churchill and Roosevelt. Munitions and aircraft manufacturers of all kinds are clearly shown to be major agents of evil as well.