VIDEO: How the Pentagon Fuels Climate Chaos

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1. Thank you for this enlightening presentation. I am including below
   a call to face these issues which I recently wrote and has been issued (anonymously) by my Quaker yearly meeting. Please make use of it in any way that you like. Robert Allenson – Westville FL 32464.

   Call for Spiritual Uplift
   in the face of armed conflict

   For nine months talk among the people of the USA has centered on denial and insurrection. It is high time to discuss responsibility for change and the right use of our financial resources. I am proposing a movement, grounded in fasting and prayer, to accomplish this. By fasting, I do not mean trying to placate God or grab God’s attention, rather to free up and focus our energy for a vital cause. And prayer is no sticky sentimental whine, rather asking God to empower us for tasks beyond ordinary human capability.

   A recent event strikes me as emblematic of the crisis in which we are foundering. During the evacuation through the Kabul airport, what is called intelligence detected suspicious movements of a man loading packages into his car and then driving to a staging area close to the airport. A drone was sent to take out this target, killing a family including seven children. Too late we learned that this man had been stowing bottled water to meet his family’s needs.

   For times when the demons of war are set loose in our midst, passages from the Bible come to mind (from the Revised English Bible): Havoc and violence confront me, strife breaks out, discord arises. Therefore law becomes ineffective, and justice is defeated. … Because you yourself have plundered many nations, because of the bloodshed and violence you inflicted on cities and all their inhabitants over the earth, now the rest of the world will plunder you. (Habakkuk 1,3f. and 2,8) — Yet even now, says the Lord, turn back to me wholeheartedly with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Rend your hearts and not your garments, and turn back to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, long-suffering and ever constant, ready always to relent when he threatens disaster. (Joel 2,12f.) — His disciples asked Jesus privately, ‘Why could we not drive this demon out?’ He said, ‘This kind cannot be driven out except by prayer.’ (Mark 9,28f.) — [see Psalm 139,4-6 – Isaiah 55,8f.,11 – Matthew 5,3-10 – Ephesians 6,12]

   From biblical times and up to the Civil War, at critical moments a public ‘day of fasting, humiliation and prayer’ was declared. During my lifetime I recall isolated, individual acts of protest but no broad-gauge anti-war movement. Astonishingly we continue to squander our resources on feeding the insatiable wealth of profiteers from the military – industrial complex. Therefore I repent of my country’s wrongheaded imperialism. I repent of my complicity in evading responsibility for devoting our resources to the needs of war and climate refugees worldwide. For only through global cooperation and mutual aid will life on earth as we know it survive.

   I propose designating as a day for fasting and prayer — with intention of healing individual ills and social conflicts, and seeking our way forward — either or both of these Saturdays in November: the 6th (during 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, 31 Oct – 12 Nov) and/or the 27th (day before the season of Advent, a time for beginning anew). I envision an upsurge into a worldwide awakening to how we are ruining Planet A and inflicting grievous harm on each other, then resolving to turn about-face and march together toward freedom and peace.

   Drafted 20 September 2021 by a Friend. Approved and minuted 2 October 2021
   by Southeastern Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends

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