Plowshares

Plowshares PDF Author: Kristen Tobey
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271078286
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
In September 1980, eight Catholic activists made their way into a Pennsylvania General Electric plant housing parts for nuclear missiles. Evading security guards, these activists pounded on missile nose cones with hammers and then covered the cones in their own blood. This act of nonviolent resistance was their answer to calls for prophetic witness in the Old Testament: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not take up sword against nation; they shall never again know war.” Plowshares explores the closely interwoven religious and social significance of the group’s use of performance to achieve its goals. It looks at the group’s acts of civil disobedience, such as that undertaken at the GE plant in 1980, and the Plowshares’ behavior at the legal trials that result from these protests. Interpreting the Bible as a mandate to enact God’s kingdom through political resistance, the Plowshares work toward “symbolic disarmament,” with the aim of eradicating nuclear weapons. Plowshares activists continue to carry out such “divine obediences” against facilities where equipment used in the production or deployment of nuclear weapons is manufactured or stored. Whether one agrees or disagrees with their actions, this volume helps us better understand their motivations, logic, identity, and ultimate goal.

Plowshares

Plowshares PDF Author: Kristen Tobey
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271078286
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 179

Get Book

Book Description
In September 1980, eight Catholic activists made their way into a Pennsylvania General Electric plant housing parts for nuclear missiles. Evading security guards, these activists pounded on missile nose cones with hammers and then covered the cones in their own blood. This act of nonviolent resistance was their answer to calls for prophetic witness in the Old Testament: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not take up sword against nation; they shall never again know war.” Plowshares explores the closely interwoven religious and social significance of the group’s use of performance to achieve its goals. It looks at the group’s acts of civil disobedience, such as that undertaken at the GE plant in 1980, and the Plowshares’ behavior at the legal trials that result from these protests. Interpreting the Bible as a mandate to enact God’s kingdom through political resistance, the Plowshares work toward “symbolic disarmament,” with the aim of eradicating nuclear weapons. Plowshares activists continue to carry out such “divine obediences” against facilities where equipment used in the production or deployment of nuclear weapons is manufactured or stored. Whether one agrees or disagrees with their actions, this volume helps us better understand their motivations, logic, identity, and ultimate goal.

Transform Now Plowshares

Transform Now Plowshares PDF Author: Carole Sargent
Publisher: Liturgical Press
ISBN: 0814637469
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
In July 2012, a Holy Child sister and two Catholic Workers committed the largest breach in US nuclear security history. They entered an enriched uranium facility armed with candles, bread, Bibles, and roses, to pray and paint peace slogans. As Transform Now Plowshares, they hoped to put nuclear weapons—which target civilians in violation of the Geneva Conventions and UN treaties—on trial, making international news. This book shares their discernments of conscience and the civil resistance legacy of Plowshares with its background of Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker, while also engaging the work of the Berrigan brothers, the Catonsville nine, and the recent Kings Bay Plowshares seven. Learn their stories and see the principles of Catholic Social Teaching in action.

Plowshares into Swords

Plowshares into Swords PDF Author: Arno J. Mayer
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1789604087
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 597

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Book Description
A critical history of Israel and the Arab–Israeli conflict Eminent historian Arno J. Mayer traces the thinkers, leaders, and shifting geopolitical contexts that shaped the founding and development of the Israeli state. He recovers for posterity internal critics such as the philosopher Martin Buber, who argued for peaceful coexistence with the Palestinian Arabs. “A sense of limits is the better part of valour,” Mayer insists. Plowshares into Swords explores Israel’s indefinite deferral of the “Arab Question,” the strategic thinking behind the building of settlements and border walls, and the endurance of Palestinian resistance.

Swords And Plowshares

Swords And Plowshares PDF Author: General Maxwell D. Taylor
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 9780306804076
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
General Maxwell D. Taylor was one of the great military heroes of recent American history. During World War II, Taylor fought in Sicily and Italy before parachuting into France as head of the 101st Airborne Division on Dday, 1944. Later he commanded the Division in the Arnhem drop in Holland and in the defense of Basting in the Bulge. After the war, Taylor served as superintendent of West Point, U.S. Commander in Berlin, Commander of the Eighth Army in Korea, and Army Chief of Staff under President Eisenhower. John F. Kennedy named him chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and sent him to Vietnam in 1961; he returned to that country as Ambassador in 1965, and served as a key advisor to President Johnson until 1969. In Swords and Plowshares, Taylor tells the firsthand story of a life of action, courage, strategy, and dedication. Offering candid and controversial views of such central figures as Dwight Eisenhower, John Dulles, the Kennedy's, and General Westmoreland, Taylor contrasts their varying views of the role of air power in modern warfare, and presents his own approach to the problems of winning wars and making peace. These memoirs ably illustrate why General Maxwell Taylor deserves to rank among Marshall, Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Patton as one of the great American military geniuses of our time.

Plowshares into Swords

Plowshares into Swords PDF Author: David Ekbladh
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226820505
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
An in-depth look at how the ideas formulated by the interwar League of Nations shaped American thinking on the modern global order. In Plowshares into Swords, David Ekbladh recaptures the power of knowledge and information developed between World War I and World War II by an international society of institutions and individuals committed to liberal international order and given focus by the League of Nations in Geneva. That information and analysis revolutionized critical debates in a world in crisis. In doing so, Ekbladh transforms conventional understandings of the United States’ postwar hegemony, showing that important elements of it were profoundly influenced by ideas that emerged from international exchanges. The League’s work was one part of a larger transnational movement that included the United States and which saw the emergence of concepts like national income, gross domestic product, and other attempts to define and improve the standards of living, as well as new approaches to old questions about the role of government. Forged as tools for peace these ideas were beaten into weapons as World War II threatened. Ekbladh recounts how, though the US had never been a member of the organization, vital parts of the League were rescued after the fall of France in 1940 and given asylum at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. However, this presence in the US is just one reason its already well-regarded economic analyses and example were readily mobilized by influential American and international figures for an Allied “war of ideas,” plans for a postwar world, and even blueprints for the new United Nations. How did this body of information become so valuable? As Ekbladh makes clear, the answer is that information and analysis themselves became crucial currencies in global affairs: to sustain a modern, liberal global order, a steady stream of information about economics, politics, and society was, and remains, indispensable.

Plowshares & Pruning Hooks

Plowshares & Pruning Hooks PDF Author: Brent Sandy
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830896805
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
What are we to make of Isaiah's image of Mount Zion as the highest of the mountains, or Zechariah's picture of the Mount of Olives split in two, or Daniel's "beast rising out of the sea" or Revelation's "great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns"? How can Peter claim that on the day of Pentecost the prophecy of Joel was being fulfilled, with signs in heaven and wonders on earth, the sun turned to darkness and the moon to blood? The language and imagery of biblical prophecy has been the source of puzzlement for many Christians and a point of dispute for some. How ironic that is! For the prophets and seers were the wordsmiths of their time. They took pains to speak God's word clearly and effectively to their contemporaries. How should we, as citizens of the twenty-first century, understand the imagery of this ancient biblical literature? Are there any clues in the texts themselves, any principles we can apply as we read these important but puzzling biblical texts? D. Brent Sandy carefully considers the language and imagery of prophecy and apocalyptic, how it is used, how it is fulfilled within Scripture, and how we should read it against the horizon of our future. Clearly and engagingly written, Plowshares and Pruning Hooks is the kind of book that gives its readers a new vantage point from which to view the landscape of prophetic and apocalyptic language and imagery.

Swords Into Plowshares

Swords Into Plowshares PDF Author: Ron Paul
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780996426527
Category : Libertarianism
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Twelve-term US Congressman and three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul reveals an intensely personal side as he reflects on growing up during World War II. He provides a powerful critique of a 20th century full of war. Paul finishes with a stirring view of the future we may choose if we turn from war and violence toward peace and prosperity.

Proving Grounds

Proving Grounds PDF Author: Scott Kirsch
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813536668
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
In Proving Grounds, Scott Kirsch traces the rise and fall of this astonishing cold war initiative. He examines the work that went into making "geographical engineering" or "earthmoving" an imminent possibility as well as the public controversy, scientific uncertainty, and political opposition that kept it--with the exception of several massive craters in the Nevada desert--out of the landscape.

People, Parasites, and Plowshares

People, Parasites, and Plowshares PDF Author: Dickson D. Despommier
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231535260
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Dickson D. Despommier's vivid, visceral account of the biology, behavior, and history of parasites follows the interplay between these fascinating life forms and human society over thousands of years. Despommier focuses on long-term host-parasite associations, which have evolved to avoid or even subvert the human immune system. Some parasites do great damage to their hosts, while others have signed a kind of "peace treaty" in exchange for their long lives within them. Many parasites also practice clever survival strategies that medical scientists hope to mimic as they search for treatments for Crohn's disease, food allergies, type 1 diabetes, organ transplantation, and other medical challenges. Despommier concentrates on particularly remarkable and often highly pathogenic organisms, describing their lifecycles and the mechanisms they use to avoid elimination. He details their attack and survival plans and the nature of the illnesses they cause in general terms, enabling readers of all backgrounds to steal a glimpse into the secret work of such effective invaders. He also points to the cultural contexts in which these parasites thrive and reviews the current treatments available to defeat them. Encouraging scientists to continue to study these organisms even if their threat is largely contained, Despommier shows how closer dissection of the substances parasites produce to alter our response to them could help unravel some of our most complex medical conundrums.

Project Plowshare

Project Plowshare PDF Author: Scott Kaufman
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801465834
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Inspired by President Dwight D. Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" speech, scientists at the Atomic Energy Commission and the University of California's Radiation Laboratory began in 1957 a program they called Plowshare. Joined by like-minded government officials, scientists, and business leaders, champions of "peaceful nuclear explosions" maintained that they could create new elements and isotopes for general use, build storage facilities for water or fuel, mine ores, increase oil and natural gas production, generate heat for power production, and construct roads, harbors, and canals. By harnessing the power of the atom for nonmilitary purposes, Plowshare backers expected to protect American security, defend U.S. legitimacy and prestige, and ensure access to energy resources. Scott Kaufman's extensive research in nearly two dozen archives in three nations shows how science, politics, and environmentalism converged to shape the lasting conflict over the use of nuclear technology. Indeed, despite technological and strategic promise, Plowshare's early champions soon found themselves facing a vocal and powerful coalition of federal and state officials, scientists, industrialists, environmentalists, and average citizens. Skeptical politicians, domestic and international pressure to stop nuclear testing, and a lack of government funding severely restricted the program. By the mid-1970s, Plowshare was, in the words of one government official, "dead as a doornail." However, the thought of using the atom for peaceful purposes remains alive.