No peace without justice!

Politics, culture, economics, and belief systems:
No peace without justice!

The philosophical meanderings of Anton-Scott Goustin, a devout Lennonite (see below)

Some of my intellectual gurus:

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
You can read about his political philosophy of non-violent resistance in several languagues, including German , Italiano, Italian. There is even a WWW site which desecrates Gandhi's name, by mixing it with a list of «icons of capitalism» such as William Randolph Hearst, H. Ross Perot, and Henry Ford!
Gandhi was not exactly a slave to fashion:

"The truest test of civilization, culture and dignity is character, not clothing."

To listen to Gandhi's voice (recorded in 1928, explaining his atheism), click here.
Lewis Mumford (1896-1990), American sociologist, urban architect. Author of many books, including Technics and Civilization (1934), recently translated into Swedish, and The Story of Utopias (1922) written when Mumford was in his 20s, in which he properly describes the Utopian as having his head in the clouds, but feet of clay, firmly planted in reality!

... ...
Gunnar and Alva Myrdal
Alva Myrdal (1902-1986), Swedish Nobel Laureate (Peace, 1982)
Swedish Ambassador to India (1955-62), mother (of three, including Sissela Bok). Helped her husband (Gunnar) and his Social Democrats (socialdemokraterna) make Sweden safe for mothers and children. Established SIPRI in 1964, an international peace research institute heaquartered in Stockholm.
Hubert H. Humphrey (1911-78) U. S. Senator, Vice-President of the United States
Architect of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Medicare, Medicaid,
motivating force behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the
Voting Rights Act of 1965
Duped by LBJ into believing in the US cause in Vietnam.
James Farmer (1920- ), American social thinker
Worked in the Johnson Administration, coining the term:
«affirmative action»

Max Weber
Max Weber (1864-1920), German economist
Author of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, a book described by Yoonwoo Choi at Temple University as a classic. You may read more about Max en español or in Sociology 302.
How could I forget about John Lennon (1940-1980), whose bold vision of a new and better world was not clouded by his fantastic wealth:
Imagine there's no heaven It's easy if you try No hell below us Above us only sky
Imagine all the people Living for today
Imagine there's no country It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too
John once said that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ, a statement which raised the ire of those with a vested interest in being called "Christians". Whatever. But why not take John seriously and reset our calendars so that the year of his birth (1940) becomes Year 1. That would also solve the Millenium Bug (the problems encountered by the world's computers in the year 2000), eh?
For a musical break, listen to Winter's recent CD The Future of Hip-Hop, a guy I met on the National Mall in Washington D.C. at the January 18 peace rally
George C Marshall (1880-1959), Nobel laureate (1953), U. S. Army Chief of Staff under President Eisenhower, author of "The Marshall Plan", a foolhardy idea that rebuked the time-honored tradition of military victors (such as Caesar, Hitler, Douglas C MacArthur, Stalin, Nixon, etc) of making the perpetrators of war "pay for their deeds" by crushing them after the end of war. Marshall's idea was that the USA should spend a small fortune to rebuild Germany after the end of WW2, suggesting that such an investment would pay off with 50 years of peace in Europe. The rightwing pigs of his time (such as Dulles and Nixon) argued against him, but the pigs lost, and peace won! No shit!
Mikhail S. Gorbachev (1931-present), Nobel laureate (Peace, 1990), general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party (1985-91) and preseident of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR; 1988-91), last leader of the USSR. A vision of world peace which began at home in the USSR from a sweeping program of economic and political reforms (perestroika) and a new policy of openness in the media (glasnost). Ended 70 years of Communist rule of the Soviet union in 1991 by a peaceful transition, proving that the old effete farts (Tricky Dick Nixon, Loose Wire Reagan, and George Fwill) were wrong as usual, with nothing important to say.
THE «HAPPY WARRIOR» AND HIS PUPIL. Photo taken in July 1976 (by me), Parade Stadium, Minneapolis, Minnesota, just before Senator Mondale (L) was chosen by Jimmy Carter to be his Vice-Presidential running mate. Both Mondale and Humphrey (R) were U. S. Senators at that time.

A LONG TIME AGO...just about any heretic ex-communicated by the Pope or burned alive at the stake for their beliefs, including:

Czech skeptic Jan Hus (1372-1415), like Englishman John Wycliffe (1329-1384), a leader of the Protestant reformation long before Martin Luther
Jeanne d'Arc (a k a Joan of Arc, or Joan or Orleans; 1412-1431), shown to the upper left on this page, preparing for her celebrity roast. Although it's hard to know what Joan of Arc actually looked like, some pop artist named Tal Bachman has put Joan in the class with Cleopatra and Aphrodite (stranger than truth!)
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), the Italian astronomer-mathematician who boldy suggested that the Earth was not the center of the Universe in his famous Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), for which he was called to Rome for trial by the Inquisition
The Noaids in Saami (Lappish) Culture in Scandinavia
In the belief-system of the Saami, the indigenous people of Northern Norway, Finland, and Sweden, Noaids are intermediaries between the gods and the people, a class of messengers. In the Spring of 1693, the archbishop of Sweden, then a Roman Catholic, ordered the burning of a Noaid named Lars Nilsson, at the stake in the center of Arjeplog, a village in Lappland, now in the far north of Sweden
The heretics of today, who challenge the illogic of The Church on the subject of biological evolution.

KEYWORDS: politics justice peace sociology economics democracy liberalism enlightenment evolution philosophy church dogma religion heresy heretic

Gunnar and Alva Myrdal

Max Weber

THE «HAPPY WARRIOR» AND HIS PUPIL. Photo taken in July 1976 (by me), Parade Stadium, Minneapolis, Minnesota, just before Senator Mondale (L) was chosen by Jimmy Carter to be his Vice-Presidential running mate. Both Mondale and Humphrey (R) were U. S. Senators at that time.

A LONG TIME AGO...just about any heretic ex-communicated by the Pope or burned alive at the stake for their beliefs, including: