Manhunt for Steve Stephens Ends In His Suicide In Erie, PA (Videos)

Okay folks, I have been dealing with my own distraction in trying to make some sense out of why Trump would bomb Syria and wag the dog at North Korea. And then, right on Easter Sunday, while everyone is praising the Lord for rising from the dead, which I always ask, where did he go, this guy decides to kill a few people. But we only have a real account of one person so where are the other 13 bodies? Hmmmm, interesting number there, #13.

Then it's the whole thing about the manhunt.

Of course they knew where he was, how in the world of mass surveillance can they not find this guy? They know where me and you are, right?

https://youtu.be/UNwbEuIb__Q

So now dude is dead. Kilt himself. Now why did he go and do that? Gambling problem lead him to a suicide mission of killing some old man walking down the street collecting tin cans? Hmmm.

Now, I have been asked to do a reading on it, and I may or may not, cause this so-called "Threat of Nuclear War" looming over us and no place for my grandchildren to hide in the bunkers with the fat cats, I ain't too sure if I will get to  it, and besides by the time I do, we will be looking at some other crazy shit happening in this world.

But after watching the video of him talking about what he has done, he sure was pretty calm. I mean, he said he killed 13 people and was about to kill some more?

Questions:

Where are the bodies of the other 13 people?

Where are the families? Well we do have the Godwin family but how about the other 12?

Why was that dude so calm? He looked rather self contained to have just murdered 13 people. In fact he didn't even look like he "snapped" at all but more like he was reading a script.

Built in anger? Then how did he cover that up for 37 years?

If I am not mistaken, wasn't there another manhunt in Erie or there abouts when that dude went ballistic and killed a State Policeman while back?

What's with the woods of that part of the world?

But back to the video, he is driving and on the phone and recording himself and telling whomever he is talking to that he loves them and by the way, here's my facebook profile name. Huh?

  

Then he goes back to recording and tells everyone who watches the video his telephone number? He wanted people to call him while he was killing more people? Now that don't make sense.

Why would you call him? Did the police do their job and call him? Why would he, a serial killer, give out his phone number?

If he wanted to be tracked down, well, don't he know there are many, many ways these folks can track you, dang, they probably got a tracker in that car. Which I don't know how he could drive like that, talk on the phone and record. And did anyone notice he did not have on a seat belt?? Straight up violation. He should have been pulled over just for that.

I checked out a few articles, some saying this others saying that, but for sure, when it gets blasted all over the news, there is an ulterior motive. One we can ascertain and one we may never figure out.

With Trump being against a gun ban, and Obama trying with all his tears to get

one, I wonder if these killings are going to start that up again. The war against guns, meanwhile, folks is bombing up folks all over the place and buying guns like gangbusters on the black market, but I digress. But I do want to mention the guns and ammunition sales that were transacted between the US and the Rebels, but yeah, they don't like their government and so they got good reason for the US to support them with guns, ammunition and a little gas from time to time.  Seems like they should do the same for the anarchist and patriots here in the US who feel the same way, instead of taking their guns away from them, but boy was that a digression.

Anyways, I believe it's a distraction/false flag diversion, it doesn't mean no one is hurt or killed, but it does serve a purpose.

Some folks were thinking that since Trump has been in office that the false flags and mass shooting had subsided. They want to claim that the gun grab agenda of Obama has gone put the window, however people fail to realize that these false flags are NOT just for us, but for the President as well.

They have sleeper cells all over the place. All they have to do is give them the right signal and the person goes into action. It let's everyone know they can turn the madness on or turn it off. And if he had a gambling problem, he may have gotten an offer to be a "crisis" actor and get paid handsomely for participating in this shooting. Some feel it's a hoax and I really don't know but for sure.. it's a big distraction from the saber rattling of North Korea, China, Russia, NATO (North Atlantic Terrorist Association) and the US. While people are running into their basements, manhunting down the whole country, locking down schools in Philadelphia, the UN will be quietly passing resolutions against Syria cause you know, they still are saying that Assad gassed his people and you do know, they will not release the Intel on it, and you do know the Intel they did release is bogus. But hey, it's Easter Sunday and the show must go on.

Well, it was Easter Sunday and the show did go on, and folks woke up to horror and were given another dose of social engineering.

Hmmm, I wonder if they really woke up.. or if they just took their dose while in a deep sleep.

Some folks were thinking that since Trump has been in office that the false flags and mass shooting had subsided. They want to claim that the gun grab agenda of Obama has gone put the window, however people fail to realize that these false flags are NOT just for us, but for the President as well.

They have sleeper cells all over the place. All they have to do is give them the right signal and the person goes into action. It let's everyone know they can turn the madness on or turn it off.

PS did anyone notice how this guy looks like Christopher Dorner, LL Cool J?

And did anyone notice the whole "monster" label?

And did anyone think just for a moment, that here we have more fodder to label Black Men as dangerous monsters? Like that Blakc man who went ballistic and went all the way to the school and killed his wife in front of her students?

Hmmm, nice narrative for all the Trump Supporters who just happened to get galvanized by his racist vitriol.

The plot thickens and folks really need to see how manipulated they are being.

Of course they know where he is, how in the world of mass surveillance can they not find this guy? They know where me and you are, right?

Since folks want to say false flag hoax, etc. They will let it go and end dramatically with bombing the shit out of that guy, or in his case, this lone shooter just kills himself, and that's the end. No one will ever know what the hell happened and his girlfriend ain't talking.

I believe it's a distraction/false flag diversion, it doesn't mean no one is hurt or killed, but it does serve a purpose.

LINKS OF INTEREST:

Manhunt for Steve Stephens Ends In His Suicide In Erie, PA http://atlantablackstar.com/2017/04/18/manhunt-steve-stephens-ends-suicide-erie-pa/

Here’s What’s True and False About Man Accused of Posting Murder of Robert Godwin, Sr on Facebook http://atlantablackstar.com/2017/04/17/heres-whats-true-false-man-accused-posting-murder-robert-godwin-sr-facebook/

Man Accused of Murdering Robert Godwin Sr. Said He ‘Just Snapped,’ Joy Lane Speaks Out  http://atlantablackstar.com/2017/04/17/man-accused-murdering-robert-godwin-sr-said-just-snapped-joy-lane-speaks/

How the FL Shooting Will Be Used To Bolster War, Usurp Freedom, And Create More Terrorism

How the FL Shooting Will Be Used To Bolster War, Usurp Freedom, And Create More Terrorism

by Claire Bernish

After September 11, 2001, discarding freedom and personal liberties in the name of security became standard operating procedure following a tragedy, and Friday’s mass shooting at the airport in Fort Lauderdale has not deviated from the new Orwellian norm.

Officials say Esteban Santiago arrived in Florida on a flight from Alaska and proceeded to the baggage claim area, where he pulled a firearm from his checked bag and opened fire — killing five people and wounding eight.

“He eventually retrieved a firearm and began indiscriminately shooting,” Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel told the press Friday. “This cowardly, heinous act resulted in the deaths of five people.”

While the incident unfolded, before total casualties and injuries had been counted, corporate media presstitutes championed in live time increased security measures and tighter strictures on gun laws — except for TSA agents, whom, some intoned, should now be required to carry firearms in the performance of their duties.

We have been conditioned for this. Fustian politicians assume an inept undervaluation of rights — and a careless lack of vigilance under color of fear — in the minds of the somnambulant masses will allow the implementation of new rights-crushing legislation.

On cue, the Wall Street Journal nearly immediately published an article citing Jeff Price, an aviation security expert and aviation-management professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, who — without a hint of irony — asserted,

I think we can expect to see more of what we’ve seen every time we have one of these incidents at an airport — better-armed, better-trained police and a surge in law-enforcement visibility.

Because terrorism. Because mass shootings. Most simply, because guns.

Guns, many pols and gun-control enthusiasts will tell you, create calamity — nothing else — and the Second Amendment is an antiquated anomaly to be relegated to the already overflowing dustbin of constitutional rights.

These politicians will further exploit fear of The Next Tragedy to install new checkpoints, more scanners, appended means to verify identity, and additional TSA agents — already proven wholly ineffective, if not derelict — to molest, grope, and harass anyone daring to enter an airport.

Travel, they’ll say, is a dangerous affair — and must be policed accordingly.

No matter Santiago has been deemed mentally disturbed — one person, a lone shooter, who chose a divergent method for enmity — now that someone has undertaken a mass shooting in this manner, terrorists paid attention and gleaned fresh plans, they’ll say.

This snark is in no way reductive to the abhorrent nature of the indiscriminate shooting, nor to the mourning which indeed the country must now collectively experience; but right now is precisely the time for acute attentiveness — not fear-induced myopia as has become epidemic after such incidents.

A more rational response surprisingly came from one legislator, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Greg Steube, who is sponsoring a bill to eliminate gun-free zones in Florida — a necessary measure now that the state has experienced three horrific mass shootings.

“My first thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims,” Steube said Friday, quoted byUSA Today. “But this goes back to the fact why I’ve been working against gun-free zones for the past three years.

Gun-free zones don’t prevent criminals from breaking the law and killing innocent victims. All that law did was prevent law-abiding citizens who have a concealed-carry permit from carrying their firearm in defense of themselves and others.

While Steube’s thinking seems counterintuitive to those on a crusade to eliminate gun possession for everyone but law enforcement, Chicago — with the strictest gun control laws in the nation and more shooting deaths than New York City and Los Angeles, combined — proves the futility of the notion.

Stricture and prohibition spark black markets — if someone intends to do harm using a firearm, they will find it. That applies equally to all mass shooters — whether mentally unstable, paranoid xenophobe, or religious radical — if guns are the intended tool for an attack, oppressive gun laws only stop law-abiding civilians from killing whatever malicious wingnut next begins shooting random people in a crowd.

Tightening the reins on suffocating security procedures and positioning additional law enforcement officers in airports also won’t stop criminals of any motivation from discerning a creative method to thwart remaining deficiencies. These repeated clamp-downs only restrict our ability to travel freely — they aren’t preventing the next attack or quashing terrorism as politicians claim.

Fear is a potent manipulator — and the government counts on pulling the blindfold of dread over everyone’s eyes in the wake of catastrophe to erase yet another protected freedom from the Bill of Rights.

This time, don’t let it happen — don’t be fooled into obliging lawmakers whose only motive is to use death as a Police State weapon against all of us.

Claire Bernish writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared.

http://www.activistpost.com/2017/01/fl-shooting-will-used-bolster-war-usurp-freedom-create-terrorism.html

Ex-US Officials Demanded a 30 Billion Dollar Bribe

Excerpt: "He (Wanta) was tasked by President Reagan and CIA Director William Colby to destabilize the Soviet Union through establishment, with funds from the US Treasury, of a worldwide currency trading scheme......."

Being Robin Hood and taking down another government to support your own is a very interesting angle as it relates to extortion. The mission may have had some honest intentions but the idea of going after the Soviet Union in a "scheme" that would make trillions of dollars for the US is to me a question of ethics. Is it okay to do someone in so you can do for someone else? Well one thing that is for sure, there is no honesty among thieves. The issue of "my money" is a dubious one notwithstanding how you got "your money" in the first place.

For a long time a family member of mine was a pimp. He amassed great sums of money. When he offered it to me, I refused. I did not want money that was gotten under duress, torture, abuse or any other such thing.

Are the American people so shallow that they do not care, how they got the money, just that now they can use it? Are the American Christians and ethical social beings that shallow that they will look the other way, knowing that the money was ill-gotten in the first place, but yeah, we got millions of jobs out the deal? Are Americans so separated from the law of "what goes around comes around" that they think that since the "shake down of the Soviet Union" economy would not bite them in the ass as the Soviet Union and her descendants attempt to get themselves back on track knowing that it was the work of an American President that put them in the cross-hairs in the first place? 

To answer my own question, yes, in fact most people are that shallow. They do not realize that everything is energy and an exchange of energy, in this instance "ill-gotten money" will not bode well in the future. For instance, if one is willing to do something criminal to someone else, what makes them think they are "safe" from anyone else wanting to do something criminal to them? 

People who rally in support of criminalizing these two "culprits" who attempted to shake Mr. Wanta down are just as guilty as the party that Wanta engaged in to shake down the Soviet Union. There are no innocents in this kind of "economic tyranny" on all sides. The economies based on the Western Model is a ponzy scheme, no matter how you slice it. Issuing W9's is no clearance for the fact that a substantial amount of interest was amassed for the Banksters and Crooks of the world to leverage their bets and hedge funds as this "fiat money" traveled around the globe.

Who in this day and time can even imagine having $trillions of dollars in their bank account?Who can imagine in this day and time having even billions? In fact, who really knows how billions become trillions when millions are homeless and even more millions of homes lie vacant?

Is there a viable resolve for one to come to in a corrupt economy ran by corrupt banksters backed by corrupt corporations and governments? 

Again, the fact that people feel that Mr. Wanta has been "mistreated, threatened or bribed" have their eyes veiled by the deception of the "currency trading scheme" and I would dare to mention the reason why. All for the love of money.

There are no victims in this case and there are no innocents either. IMHO

Ex-US Officials Demanded a 30 Billion Dollar Bribe

Excerpt from Veteran's Today

Ex-US  Officials Demanded a 30 Billion Dollar Bribe

 

“Former Tenn. Gov. Don Sundquist and S. Dakota Sen. Sheldon Songstad may face not just the largest bribery charge in history but conspiracy to murder as well.”

… by  Gordon Duff,  VT Sr. Editor,    … with  New Eastern Outlook, Moscow

Lee Wanta, tough as nails, and still kicking

[ Editor's note:  You just can't make this stuff up. Two crooked aging politicians, who appear to be uber bagmen for Capitol Hill, don't disconnect a voice mail message left for their shake down victim, and then the caller rings up his co-conspirator to discuss their next move, including killing their target if they don't get paid.

But there is just one problem. The whole six-minute conversation goes into Lee Wanta's voice mail, which the jury is going to enjoy immensely. Lee calls his rather extensive security team to ask what to do, and here we are... doing it.

This murder conspiracy case might also break the media blackout on the Wanta case, which has gone on since 2006, after the Treasury Dept. snatched his $4.5-million wire transfer from China into the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, only to be tranferred to Goldman Sachs the next day; and off to Europe it went as part of the $16 trillion of liquidity pumped into the banking system there during the meltdown.

I wish I could say this was an unusual case, but really, only the amounts involved are. These two yo-yos... there is an army of ex-office holders who would be doing exactly what these two thought was going to be their final wet dream.

If we were really to round up all of them doing this kind of stuff, there would be so many special elections going on that they would run out of press people to cover them. And no, I am not exaggerating... Jim W. Dean ]

A day after former Republican Virginia governor, Bob McDonnell and his wife were convicted of 20 counts of bribery and influence peddling, former Republican Tennessee governor Don Sundquist and South Dakota Senator Sheldon Songstad may face, not just the largest bribery charge in world history but indictment for conspiracy to murder as well.

What is amazing about this case is the amount of money involved, totaling $9.5 trillion US dollars, in fact the entire GNP of the United States for several years.

Sundquist and Songstad, wanted $30 billion out of the proceeds to pay themselves along with Congress, the US Treasury Department, five Supreme Court justices and two former US presidents.

Best of all, the whole thing is on tape, a “shakedown” attempt against Ambassador Lee Wanta, former White House intelligence chief under President Ronald Reagan and editor at Veterans Today.

Sundquist and Songstad left, on a recording at Wanta’s embassy, full details, not only of their ability to virtually buy the entire US government and deliver a multi-trillion dollar settlement authorized to Wanta by the US Supreme Court, but were recorded making arrangements for the murder of Wanta as well. 

Read More..........Source: Excerpt from Veteran's Today

NB COMMENTARY "Missouri carries out eighth execution this year after rejecting concerns over 'inhumane' sedative"

Missouri carries out eighth execution this year after rejecting concerns over 'inhumane' sedative

EXCERPT: "Johnny Sutton, the lead prosecutor at Trottie's trial, said .........................'He hunted them down,' Sutton said. 'The self-defense claim is absolutely ridiculous. He kicked in their door. ... They already were worried about him. He was making threats and trying to run her off the road.'This one was so cold and calculated.' 

NB COMMENTARY

I fail to understand how one type of murder is better than another type of murder. For example, if I planned to kill someone after a 20 year stay locked up in my basement, would that not be considered per-meditated murder?

How any of this "killing" makes any sense, is beyond me. 

Killing another person who killed another person does not bring that person back, nor can the latter go and get them and bring them back. It's a total waste of time and resources.

I also wonder about the so called "witnesses". Aren't they complicit in this murder? No they didn't pull the trigger, but weren't they at the scene of the crime? How many people have been arrested and jailed for just being there?

I wonder about the mental stability of this entire system that condones, implements and financially supports this type of murder, that is blatant and cold, and out in the open with no question of who done it. Yet others are arrested, tried and convicted, sometimes even wrongfully and given the death penalty.

What a backwards psychology!

How does the person who administers the punishment sleep at night without nightmares and visits in the dream world from the person they just killed. Yet, this society wishes that the so-called convict sleep restlessly forever, with no peace in their lives ever.

And, quiet as it's kept, the so-called criminal given the death penalty has friends, family and loved ones too. What makes their pain of the loss of their loved one less than the loss of the family who feels so right in killing the criminal who killed their mother, brother, sister, father or friend??

These and other questions plague my mind as I watch the way the human beings treat each other. And in this case, they are actually conversing, debating and fighting over which way to kill someone is more humane.  I am not sure what the DSM-IV would diagnose this condition of the mind as, but it is certainly a pervasive mental illness.

 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2750483/Missouri-carries-eighth-execution-year-rejecting-concerns-inhumane-sedative.html#ixzz3CvoEWqRg 

Missouri carries out eighth execution this year after rejecting concerns over 'inhumane' sedative

A Missouri inmate became the eight was put to death in the early hours of this morning for the killing of two people during a restaurant robbery in 1998.

Earl Ringo Jr., 40, was executed at 12:22am by lethal injection after a plea for a stay of execution - based on irregularities in the use of lethal injection drugs in the state - was refused.

Ringo's last words came from the Quran and expressed belief and wishes for after death. He wiggled his feet as the process began, breathed deeply a few times, then closed his eyes, all in a matter of seconds.

Earl Ringo Jr., 40, was executed today for the killing of two people during a restaurant robbery in 1998

He had declined to request a last meal, eating instead the Salisbury steak and macaroni and cheese offered to other inmates.

In the early hours of July 4, 1998, Ringo and an accomplice killed delivery driver Dennis Poyser and manager trainee JoAnna Baysinger at a Ruby Tuesday restaurant in Columbia.

Both victims were shot dead at point-blank range.

The run-up to Ringo's execution was shrouded by controversy, as Missouri continues to use the sedative, midazolam, despite claims that the pre-execution drug is inhumane.

Earlier this year in Ohio, Oklahoma and Arizona.

In April, gruesome scenes accompanied the execution of Clayton Lockett, a murderer and rapist who shot his 19-year-old victim and ordered a friend to bury her alive.

It was a full 43 minutes after the drug was administered in the Oklahoma execution chamber that the convicted killer died. During this time, Lockett thrashed violently, lurching forward against his restraints, writhing and attempting to speak.

Willie Trottie,
who turned 45 Monday,
shot and killed 24-year-old
Barbara Canada,
and her brother, Titus

Witnesses described his body twisting, and his head reaching up from the gurney, before the curtains were drawn around the chamber obscuring Lockett's final minutes from public view.

In January, convicted murderer and rapist Dennis McGuire appeared to gurgle, gasp for air and convulse for around 10 minutes after being sentenced to death using an experimental two-drug concoction including midazolam. 

Chilling scenes also occurred in the Arizona execution chamber in July, when Joseph Rudolph Wood took nearly two hours to die from the lethal injection. 

Witnesses told how the murderer appeared to be struggling to breathe after the sedation and then gasped desperately for breath at least 600 times before falling still. 

Ringo's attorneys had argued that the drug could dull his senses and leave him unable to express any pain or suffering during the process.

They had asked a federal appeals court to postpone the execution until a hearing over Missouri's use of midazolam. 

Attorney Richard Sindel claimed that Missouri's use of midazolam essentially violates its own protocol, which provides for pentobarbital as the lone execution drug. But the courts and Gov. Jay Nixon had refused to halt Ringo's execution over the concerns.

The Missouri Department of Corrections says it administers midazolam before executions and not as part of its execution protocol.

'It should not be lost in the national debate over the death penalty that Earl Ringo Jr. was responsible for the murders of two innocent Missourians. For 16 years he avoided payment for this crime. Tonight he has paid the penalty,' Missouri's Attorney General, Chris Koster, said in a statement.

A clemency petition to Nixon had also cited concerns about the fact that Ringo was convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white jury.

Ringo was sentenced to death by lethal injection (file picture).  His execution is the eighth in Missouri this year

Chilling scenes accompanied the executions of Joseph Rudolph Wood, left, Dennis McGuire, centre and Clayton Lockett, right, who were all administered the pre-execution sedative midazolam

On July 3, 1998, Ringo told his accomplice Quentin Jones about his plan to rob the Ruby Tuesday restaurant in Columbia, where he once worked. Jones agreed to join him.

Before sunrise on July 4, Ringo and Jones hid behind a grease pit in the back of the restaurant. Poyser and Baysinger arrived and entered the restaurant. Ringo followed them and shot Poyser, 45, killing him instantly.

He then ordered Baysinger, 22, to open a safe. She pulled out $1,400 and gave it to him.

Ringo gave the gun to Jones, who stood with the weapon pointed at Baysinger's head for a minute and a half before pulling the trigger.

Interviews with restaurant workers and former workers led police to Ringo. Detectives found a blue ski mask, gun receipt, bulletproof vest and other evidence at the home of his mother.

THE CASE OF WILLIAM HAPP

Happ - who raped and killed Angie Crowley, 21, in 1986 - died by lethal injection in 2013

William Happ, 51, was the first death row inmate to be injected with midazolam hydrochloride.

The execution began at 6.02pm at Florida State Prison. Happ's eyes opened and he blinked several times.

He closed and opened them again two minutes later. He then yawned and his jaw dropped open.

At 6.08pm, the official overseeing the execution tugged at Happ's eyelids and grasped his shoulder to check for a response. There was none.

A minute later, Happ's head began moving back and forth and shortly thereafter his breathing stopped. 

He was pronounced dead at 6.16pm.

Ringo admitted to the robbery but claimed the shootings were in self-defense. He was convicted in 1999 and sentenced to death.

Jones, of Louisville, Kentucky, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison, but he was spared the death penalty when he agreed to testify against Ringo.

Jama Brown, who was married for to Poyser for 24 years, asked that people remember the victims.

'I can only tell you there is not a day that goes by that I don't think of him or wonder what my life would be like today, not only for myself, but for my kids,' she said. 

In a statement she added: 'Please do not make this about how executions shouldn't take place. Put your effort on how we can stop people from committing these terrible actions.

'Please remember these two wonderful people who just wanted to go to work on the Fourth of July to support their families.'

Ringo's execution is the eighth in the state this year and the tenth since November.

St. Louis Public Radio reported last week that Missouri administered midazolam to all nine inmates put to death since November. Corrections department spokesman David Owen said midazolam 'is used to relieve the offender's level of anxiety' and is not part of the actual execution process.

The execution was one of two scheduled for today in the U.S. This afternoon Texas plans to execute Willie Trottie for killing his common-law wife and her brother in 1993.

Trottie's execution will be Texas' eighth this year. Florida has performed seven executions in 2014, and all other states have a combined six.

Both Missouri and Texas use pentobarbital as their execution drug but decline to disclose where the drug is obtained.

'They don't tell you what it is and where it comes from,' Trottie told The Associated Press. 'What I've learned in 20 years here on death row is all you can do is say, 'OK.'

'I'm ready whichever way it goes. If God says, 'Yes,' I'm ready.'

Trottie, who turned 45 Monday, shot and killed 24-year-old Barbara Canada, and her 28-year-old brother, Titus, at the Canada family home in Houston. Canada's mother and sister were also wounded.

Lawyers for Trottie argued in their appeal that the one-time deliveryman and security guard suffered poor representation in his initial trial. 

They said his counsel failed to present witnesses who would have told jurors Trottie and Barbara Canada were romantically engaged at the time of the killings. Late Monday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the appeal.

Trottie said he and Barbara Canada were on 'good terms' despite an on-again, off-again relationship. Trottie said he was defending himself against Titus Canada, who shot first. He said the shooting of his wife was accidental.

'It wasn't like I just walked in there and gunned her down,' he said.

Johnny Sutton, the lead prosecutor at Trottie's trial, said evidence showed that's exactly what happened.

'He hunted them down,' Sutton said. 'The self-defense claim is absolutely ridiculous. He kicked in their door. ... They already were worried about him. He was making threats and trying to run her off the road.

'This one was so cold and calculated.' 

War in Our Collective Imagination

By David Swanson
Remarks at Veterans For Peace Convention, Asheville, NC, July 27, 2014.

I started seeing graphics pop up on social media sites this past week that said about Gaza: “It’s not war. It’s murder.”  So I started asking people what exactly they think war is if it’s distinct from murder.  Well, war, some of them told me, takes place between armies.  So I asked for anyone to name a war during the past century (that is, after World War I) where all or even most or even a majority of the dying was done by members of armies.  There may have been such a war.  There are enough scholars here today that somebody probably knows of one.  But if so, it isn’t the norm, and these people I was chatting with through social media couldn’t think of any such war and yet insisted that that’s just what war is.  So, is war then over and nobody told us?

For whatever reasons, I then very soon began seeing a graphic sent around that said about Gaza: “It’s not war. It’s genocide.”  And the typical explanation I got when I questioned this one was that the wagers of war and the wagers of genocide have different attitudes.  Are we sure about that? I've spoken to advocates for recent U.S. wars who wanted all or part of a population wiped out.  Plenty of supporters of the latest attacks on Gaza see them as counter-terrorism.  In wars between advanced militaries and poor peoples most of the death and injury is on one side and most of it — by anyone’s definition — civilian.  This is as true in Afghanistan, where war rolls on largely unchallenged, as in Gaza, about which we are newly outraged.
Well, what’s wrong with outrage? Who cares what people call it? Why not criticize the war advocates rather than nitpicking the war opponents’ choice of words?  When people are outraged they will reach for whatever word their culture tells them is most powerful, be it murder or genocide or whatever.  Why not encourage that and worry a little more about the lunatics who are calling it defense or policing or terrorist removal?  (Eight-year-old terrorists!)

Yes, of course.  I’ve been going after CNN news readers for claiming Palestinians want to die and NBC for yanking its best reporter and ABC for claiming scenes of destruction in Gaza that just don’t exist in Israel are in fact in Israel — and the U.S. government for providing the weapons and the criminal immunity.  I’ve been promoting rallies and events aimed at swaying public opinion against what Israel has been doing, and against the sadistic bloodthirsty culture of those standing on hills cheering for the death and destruction below, quite regardless of what they call it.  But, as you’re probably aware, only the very most open-minded war advocates attend conventions of Veterans For Peace.  So, I’m speaking here backstage, as it were, at the peace movement.  Among those of us who want to stop the killing, are there better and worse ways to talk about it?  And is anything revealed by the ways in which we tend to talk about it when we aren't hyper-focused on our language?

I think so.  I think it’s telling that the worst word anyone can think of isn’t war.  I think it’s even more telling that we condemn things by contrasting them with war, framing war as relatively acceptable.  I think this fact ought to be unsettling because a very good case can be made that war, in fact, is the worst thing we do, and that the distinctions between war and such evils as murder or genocide can require squinting very hard to discern.

We’ve all heard that guns don’t kill people, people kill people.  There is a parallel belief that wars don’t kill people, people who misuse wars, who fight bad wars, who fight wars improperly, kill people.  This is a big contrast with many other evil institutions.  We don’t oppose child abuse selectively, holding out the possibility of just and good incidents of child abuse while opposing the bad or dumb or non-strategic or excessive cases of child abuse. We don’t have Geneva Conventions for proper conduct while abusing children.  We don’t have human rights groups writing reports on atrocities and possible law violations committed in the course of abusing children.  We don’t distinguish UN-sanctioned child abuse.  The same goes for numerous behaviors generally understood as always evil: slavery or rape or blood feuds or duelling or dog fighting or sexual harassment or bullying or human experimentation or — I don’t know — producing piles of I’m-Ready-for-Hillary posters.  We don’t imagine there are good, just, and defensible cases of such actions.

And this is the core problem: not support for bombing Gaza or Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iraq or anywhere else that actually gets bombed, but support for an imaginary war in the near future between two armies with different colored jerseys and sponsors, competing on an isolated battlefield apart from any villages or towns, and suffering bravely and heroically for their non-murderous non-genocidal cause while complying with the whistles blown by the referees in the human rights organizations whenever any of the proper killing drifts into lawless imprisonment or torture or the use of improper weaponry.  Support for specific possible wars in the United States right now is generally under 10 percent.  More people believe in ghosts, angels, and the integrity of our electoral system than want a new U.S. war in Ukraine, Syria, Iran, or Iraq. The Washington Post found a little over 10 percent want a war in Ukraine but that the people who held that view were the people who placed Ukraine on the world map the furthest from its actual location, including people who placed it in the United States.  These are the idiots who favor specific wars.  Even Congress, speaking of idiots, on Friday told Obama no new war on Iraq.

The problem is the people, ranging across the population from morons right up to geniuses, who favor imaginary wars.  Millions of people will tell you we need to be prepared for more wars in case there’s another Adolf Hitler, failing to understand that the wars and militarism and weapons sales and weapons gifts — the whole U.S. role as the arsenal of democracies and dictatorships alike — increase rather than decrease dangers, that other wealthy countries spend less than 10 percent what the U.S. does on their militaries, and that 10 percent of what the U.S. spends on its military could end global starvation, provide the globe with clean water, and fund sustainable energy and agriculture programs that would go further toward preventing mass violence than any stockpiles of weaponry.  Millions will tell you that the world needs a global policeman, even though polls of the world find the widespread belief that the United States is currently the greatest threat to peace on earth.  In fact if you start asking people who have opposed every war in our lifetimes or in the past decade to work on opposing the entire institution of war, you’ll be surprised by many of the people who say no.

I’m a big fan of a book called Addicted to War.  I think it will probably be a powerful tool for war abolition right up until war is abolished.  But its author told me this week that he can’t work to oppose all wars because he favors some of them.  Specifically, he said, he doesn’t want to ask Palestinians to not defend themselves.  Now, there’s a really vicious cycle.  If we can’t shut down the institution of war because Palestinians need to use it, then it’s harder to go after U.S. military spending, which is of course what funds much of the weaponry being used against Palestinians.  I think we should get a little clarity about what a war abolition movement does and does not do.  It does not tell people what they must do when attacked.  It is not focused on advising, much less instructing, the victims of war, but on preventing their victimization.  It does not advise the individual victim of a mugging to turn the other cheek.  But it also does not accept the disproven notion that violence is a defensive strategy for a population.  Nonviolence has proven far more effective and its victories longer lasting.  If people in Gaza have done anything at all to assist in their own destruction, it is not the supposed offenses of staying in their homes or visiting hospitals or playing on beaches; it is the ridiculously counterproductive firing of rockets that only encourages and provides political cover for war/ genocide/ mass murder.

I’m a huge fan of Chris Hedges and find him one of the most useful and inspiring writers we have.  But he thought attacking Libya was a good idea up until it quite predictably and obviously turned out not to be.  He still thinks Bosnia was a just war.  I could go on through dozens of names of people who contribute mightily to an anti-war movement who oppose abolishing war.  The point is not that anyone who believes in 1 good war out of 100 is to blame for the trillion dollar U.S. military budget and all the destruction it brings.  The point is that they are wrong about that 1 war out of 100, and that even if they were right, the side-effects of maintaining a culture accepting of war preparations would outweigh the benefits of getting 1 war right.  The lives lost by not spending $1 trillion a year in the U.S. and another $1 trillion in the rest of the world on useful projects like environmental protection, sustainable agriculture, medicine and hygiene absolutely dwarf the number of lives that would be saved by halting our routine level of war making.

If you talk about abolishing war entirely, as many of us have begun focusing on through a new project called World Beyond War, you’ll also find people who want to abolish war but believe it’s impossible. War is natural, they say, inevitable, in our genes, decreed by our economy, the unavoidable result of racism or consumerism or capitalism or exceptionalism or carnivorism or nationalism.  And of course many cultural patterns interact with and facilitate war, but the idea that it’s in our genes is absurd, given how many cultures in our species have done and do without it.  I don’t know what — if anything — people usually mean when they call something “natural” but presumably it’s not the provocation of suicide, which is such a common result of participating in war, while the first case of PTSD due to war deprivation has yet to be discovered.  Most of our species’ existence, as hunter-gatherers, did not know war, and only the last century — a split-second in evolutionary terms — has known war that at all resembles war today.  War didn’t used to kill like this.  Soldiers weren’t conditioned to kill.  Most guns picked up at Gettysburg had been loaded more than once.  The big killers were diseases, even in the U.S. Civil War, the war that the U.S. media calls the most deadly because Filipinos and Koreans and Vietnamese and Iraqis don’t count.  Now the big killer is a disease in our thinking, a combination of what Dr. King called self-guided missiles and misguided men.
Another hurdle for abolishing war is that the idea rose to popularity in the West in the 1920s and 1930s and then sank into a category of thought that is vaguely treasonous.  War abolition was tried and failed, the thinking goes, like communism or labor unions and now we know better.  While abolishing war is popular in much of the world, that fact is easily ignored by the 1% who misrepresent the 10% or 15% who live in the places that constitute the so-called International Community.  Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come or weaker than an idea whose time has come and gone.  Or so we think.  But the Renaissance was, as its name suggests, an idea whose time came again, new and improved and victorious.  The 1920s and 1930s are a resource for us.  We have stockpiles of wisdom to draw upon.  We have example of where things were headed and how they went of track.

Andrew Carnegie took war profits and set up an endowment with the mandate to eliminate war and then to hold a board meeting, determine the second worst thing in the world, and begin eliminating that.  This sounds unique or eccentric, but is I believe a basic understanding of ethics that ought to be understood and acted upon by all of us.  When someone asks me why I’m a peace activist I ask them why in the hell anyone isn’t.  So, reminding the Carnegie Endowment for Peace what it’s legally obligated to do, and dozens of other organizations along with it, may be part of the process of drawing inspiration from the past.  And of course insisting that the Nobel Committee not bestow another peace prize on a war-thirsty presidential candidate or any other advocate of war is part of that.

The case against war that is laid out at WorldBeyondWar.org includes these topics:
War is immoral.
War endangers us.
War threatens our environment.
War erodes our liberties.
War impoverishes us.
We need $2 trillion/year for other things.

I find the case to be overwhelming and suspect many of you would agree.  In fact Veterans For Peace and numerous chapters and members of Veterans For Peace have been among the first to sign on and participate.  And we’ve begun finding that thousands of people and organizations from around the world agree as people and groups from 68 countries and rising have added their names on the website in support of ending all war.  And many of these people and organizations are not peace groups.  These are environmental and civic groups of all sorts and people never involved in a peace movement before.  Our hope is of course to greatly enlarge the peace movement by making war abolition as mainstream as cancer abolition.  But we think enlargement is not the only alteration that could benefit the peace movement.  We think a focus on each antiwar project as part of a broader campaign to end the whole institution of war will significantly change how specific wars and weapons and tactics are opposed.

How many of you have heard appeals to oppose Pentagon waste? I’m in favor of Pentagon waste and opposed to Pentagon efficiency.  How can we not be, when what the Pentagon does is evil?  How many of you have heard of opposition to unnecessary wars that leave the military ill-prepared?  I’m in favor of leaving the military ill-prepared, but not of distinguishing unnecessary from supposedly necessary wars. Which are the necessary ones?  When sending missiles into Syria is stopped, in large part by public pressure, war as last resort is replaced by all sorts of other options that were always available.  That would be the case anytime any war is stopped.  War is never a last resort any more than rape or child abuse is a last resort.  How many of you have seen opposition to U.S. wars that focuses almost exclusively on the financial cost and the suffering endured by Americans?  Did you know polls find Americans believing that Iraq benefited and the United States suffered from the war that destroyed Iraq?  What if the financial costs and the costs to the aggressor nation were in addition to moral objections to mass-slaughter rather than instead of?  How many of you have seen antiwar organizations trumpet their love for troops and veterans and war holidays, or groups like the AARP that advocate for benefits for the elderly by focusing on elderly veterans, as though veterans are the most deserving?  Is that good activism?

I want to celebrate those who resist and oppose war, not those who engage in it.  I love Veterans For Peace because it’s for peace.  It’s for peace in a certain powerful way, but it’s the being for peace that I value.  And being for peace in the straightforward meaning of being against war.  Most organizations are afraid of being for peace; it always has to be peace and justice or peace and something else.  Or it’s peace in our hearts and peace in our homes and the world will take care of itself.  Well, as Veterans For Peace know, the world doesn’t take care of itself.  The world is driving itself off a cliff.  As Woody Allen said, I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen, I want to live on in my apartment.  Well, I don’t want to find peace in my heart or my garden, I want to find peace in the elimination of war.  At WorldBeyondWar.org is a list of projects we think may help advance that, including, among others:

• Creating an easily recognizable and joinable mainstream international movement to end all war.
• Education about war, peace, and nonviolent action — including all that is to be gained by ending war.
• Improving access to accurate information about wars. Exposing falsehoods.
• Improving access to information about successful steps away from war in other parts of the world.
• Increased understanding of partial steps as movement in the direction of eliminating, not reforming, war.
• Partial and full disarmament.
• Conversion or transition to peaceful industries.
• Closing, converting or donating foreign military bases.
• Democratizing militaries while they exist and making them truly volunteer.
• Banning foreign weapons sales and gifts.
• Outlawing profiteering from war.
• Banning the use of mercenaries and private contractors.
• Abolishing the CIA and other secret agencies.
• Promoting diplomacy and international law, and consistent enforcement of laws against war, including prosecution of violators.
• Reforming or replacing the U.N. and the ICC.
• Expansion of peace teams and human shields.
• Promotion of nonmilitary foreign aid and crisis prevention.
• Placing restrictions on military recruitment and providing potential soldiers with alternatives.
• Thanking resisters for their service.
• Encouraging cultural exchange.
• Discouraging racism and nationalism.
• Developing less destructive and exploitative lifestyles.
• Expanding the use of public demonstrations and nonviolent civil resistance to enact all of these changes.

I would add learning from and working with organizations that have been, like Veterans For Peace, working toward war abolition for years now and inspiring others to do the same.  And I would invite you all to work with WorldBeyondWartoward our common goal.


David Swanson is Director of World Beyond War, host of Talk Nation Radio, author of books including War No More: The Case for Abolition, War Is A Lie, and When the World Outlawed War.