All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front was written by Erich Maria Remarque.  Remarque fought with the Germans in WWI, but he stood against the system of war the whole time.  He was sent to the front on mutiple occasions, survived trench warfare, and was seriously injured five times.  Like many who have gone to war, he didn't support it, and he spoke out against it.  Here are some excerpts from his beautifully written narrative which depecits the age-old human pastime of war:

 Sorry about this crazy spacing, I don't know how to work this thing.  I need an intern...

Rorschach's Take on Life

From Watchmen, by Alan Moore, illustrated by Dave Gibbons.  Thank you Nick for letting me borrow the book:

Empires Fall

Here is a nearly 150 year-old statistical graphic depicting Napoleon’s failed invasion of Russia in 1812.  The thickness of the line represents the number of people alive. 422,000 started, 10,000 came back.  The graphic was made by Charles Minard.  (Right click on the image to see it in full.)

Genius

Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.

                                                                                                       -Ghandi

On some positions cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.

                                                                                                       -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.   

A time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Now there is little left to build on -- save bitterness. We are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. This way of settling differences is not just. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as one who loves America. To the leaders of our own nation, the great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

                                                                                                           -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  



This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate in to the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love...  Don't let anybody make you think God chose America as his divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with justice and it seems I can hear God saying to America "you are too arrogant, and if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God. Men will beat their swords into plowshafts and their spears into pruning hooks, and nations shall not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war anymore." I don't know about you, I ain't going to study war anymore.

                                                                                                         -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  

How to Negotiate the End Times

The following excerpt is the preface to an article written by Canadian journalist Darren Fleet and is featured in the current issue of Adbusters.

Camille Seaman, Stranded Iceberg, Cape Bird, Antarctica 2006

Every generation has its apocalypse. It may or may not be real, but if you are overcome with a sense that nothing can stop your society from sinking into the abyss of some type of destruction, you’re probably in one. Jesus of Nazareth claimed he lived in the end times and that the antichrist walked alongside him. Entire cities repented when the bubonic plague killed a third of Europe because people were convinced judgment day had arrived. World War I, the war to end all wars, succeeded in sowing the seeds of an even greater war. During the USSR and American squabbles from the next Great War onwards, the globe was gripped in fear that at any moment some unelected fool in a suit could start the megadeath. In 2011 there are even more apocalypses to choose from, an entire smorgasbord of end time scenarios, comets, ancient prophecies, solar winds, Mayan calendars, reverse Earth magnetism, climate change, species extinction and so on. Take your pick. To whittle some perspective out of all these options, you might ask yourself what do the antichrist, nuclear winter, the end of war and the end of the world have in common?

They never happened.

                                                                                                   -Darren Fleet, April, 2011

Judgment Day billboard photo I took on HWY 5 in L.A, where everyday is Judgment Day.