Conscientious Objection
The Peace Breakfast at GA
Wednesday, 7/07/2010
Peaceseeker Award recipients Bill Galvin and Mel Duncan
by Jan Orr-Harter
Last night, some 15 of us gathered in the hotel for cookies and milk and to collate the packets for our breakfast guests. Each received Tom Driver's sermon, "Accompaniment: The Great Theme of the Bible," as well as several brochures on aspects of our work, a sign-up slip and a bookmark from the Endowment Campaign.
Today we held our PPF Peace Breakfast at the Hilton hotel in a full room with a strong and well-planned experience of our work and concerns—a tour de PPF.
Booth Conversations at GA
We have invited several outstanding peace leaders to join us at the PPF Booth in the exhibit hall during the week. Please come meet them and join the discussion!
Visit Us at Booth #631 in the Exhibit Hall
Monday, July 5 2:00 PM
"Heeding God’s Call: Preventing Gun Violence in the US"
Truth Commission on Conscience in War
Friday, 4/30/2010By Bill Galvin
On March 21 and 22, approximately 500 people gathered in the sanctuary of the historic Riverside Church for the public hearing portion of the Truth Commission on Conscience & War. Celeste Zappala, one of the founders of Gold Star Families Speak Out, spoke of her son’s death in Iraq and the impact it had on her family and community. Tyler Boudreau, a former Marine Captain and Iraq war veteran, observed that many combatants have to believe, “the action they were part of must have been justified, or else there’s something wrong with what I did, and that’s too hard to bear.” And the ever engaging Josh Casteel, Army CO and former Abu Ghraib interrogator, observed, “There is no such thing as a private conscience. Conscience is inherently public and political.” Some of the testimony was in the form of excerpts from the movie Soldiers of Conscience.
Collatoral Murder? A soldier speaks out
Friday, 4/09/2010The sensational video "Collatoral Murder" has been circulating widely online, showing U.S. troops in Iraq firing on civilians. Josh Stieber was a member of Bravo Company 2-16 and remembers the incident portrayed in the video.
If you call this a heartless murder, I think that you’re being overly self-righteous. If you question the very nature of the machines that we trap ourselves in and our goals for doing so, then we can learn something from this video.
Peace Breakfast at GA
July 7, 2010
invites you to
THE PEACE BREAKFAST
AT THE 219TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY (2010)
MINNEAPOLIS, MN
“Faith, Conscience, and War”
Pacifist youth gain right to opt out of military in Colombia
Thursday, 10/29/2009Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) has welcomed the Colombian Supreme Court’s decision to allow Colombians to opt out of obligatory military service because of religious, moral, or philosophical objections.
Iraq Vet turned Conscientious Objector travels the country seeking alternatives to war
Friday, 6/12/2009
Josh, an Iraq War Veteran turned conscientious objector, is walking across the country to raise awareness for organizations that work for peace.
The following is an excerpt from his blog, Contagious Love Experiment
The basic idea is this…
When I got out of high school, I saw some real problems in the world and figured I’d do what I could to solve them. So I joined the US Army as an infantryman, wanting to be on the front lines of destroying my nation’s and my religion’s enemies. Back then, I thought military action was one of the only legit ways to solve problems; back then, I thought military might was synonymous to God’s will.
"Soldiers of Conscience" now viewable online
Monday, 11/10/2008The superb film, "Soldiers of Conscience," is now available in its entirety for free as a streaming online video until November 18th: http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2008/soldiersofconscience/fullfilm.html
"Soldiers of Conscience is a dramatic window on the dilemma of individual U.S. soldiers in the current Iraq war — when their finger is on the trigger and another human being is in their gunsight. Made with cooperation of the U.S. Army and narrated by Peter Coyote, the film profiles eight American soldiers, including four who decide not to kill, and become conscientious objectors and four who believe in their duty to kill if necessary. The film reveals all of them wrestling with the morality of killing in war, not as a philosophical problem, but as soldiers experience it — a split-second decision in combat that can never be forgotten or undone."
