December 25, 2006 by PunsNotGunsPeaceBlog.

December 25
Jesus, the Prince of Peace, born to an unwed mother in a barn.

Note: This Day in Peace History material is adapted by Top Pun from This Week in Peace History, a publication of www.peacebuttons.info, and This Week in Peace & Justice History from the San Antonio Peace Center.

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December 24, 2006 by PunsNotGunsPeaceBlog.

December 24, 1865
Months after the fall of the Confederacy and the end of slavery, several veterans of the Confederate Army formed a private social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, called the Ku Klux Klan. Its first priority, declared in its creed, was “to protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless from the indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent, and the brutal.”
December 24, 1924
Costa Rica withdrew from The League of Nations to protest Monroe Doctrine of U.S. which stated U.S. is the big Daddy of North and South America.
December 24, 1992
President George Herbert Walker Bush pardoned six people in the Iran-Contra case, among them former Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger, and Robert McFarlane, the President’s former national security advisor.   He did so with less than one month to go in his presidency.  These people and others were responsible for selling arms to the revolutionary government of Iran in hope of the release of hostages held in Iran, despite then-President Reagan’s repeated pledge not to negotiate with hostage-takers.  The money raised through the arms sales was used to fund the Contra insurgents in Nicaragua, who were violently trying to overthrow the elected government. This support was in violation of an explicit legal ban on such activities under the Boland Amendment [see December 22, 1982 above].
 

Note: This Day in Peace History material is adapted by Top Pun from This Week in Peace History, a publication of www.peacebuttons.info, and This Week in Peace & Justice History from the San Antonio Peace Center.

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December 23, 2006 by PunsNotGunsPeaceBlog.

December 23, 1944
General Dwight Eisenhower endorsed the finding of a court-martial in the case of Eddie Slovik, who was tried for desertion, and authorized his execution, the first such sentence against a U.S. Army soldier since the Civil War, and the only man so punished during World War II.  Slovik made no secret of his unwillingness to enter combat, but his pleas to be reassigned to noncombatant status were rejected.  Eisenhower ordered that Slovik’s execution be carried out to avoid further desertions in the late stages of the war.
December 23, 1961
James Davis of Livingston, Tennessee, was killed by the Viet Cong, the insurgents in South Vietnam, and became the first of some 55,000 U.S. soldiers killed during the Vietnam War.  Lyndon Johnson later referred to him as “the first American to fall in defense of our freedom in Vietnam.” Over two million Vietnamese would die before the end of the war.  Over two million Vietnamese would die before the end of the war.  “Lyndon Johnson told the nation.  Have no fear of escalation.  I am trying everyone to please.  Though it isn’t really war.  We’re sending fifty thousand more To help save Vietnam from Vietnamese”
 

Note: This Day in Peace History material is adapted by Top Pun from This Week in Peace History, a publication of www.peacebuttons.info, and This Week in Peace & Justice History from the San Antonio Peace Center.

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December 22, 2006 by PunsNotGunsPeaceBlog.

December 22, 1943
A 135-day strike by 23 conscientious objectors (COs) ended dining hall segregation at Danbury Federal Penitentiary in Connecticut. The number of conscientious objectors had increased from 15 in early 1941 to 200 by the time of the strike.
December 22, 1967
Radio Free Alcatraz was broadcast for the first time from Berkeley’s Pacifica radio station, KPFA.
December 22, 1982
Congress passed the first Boland Amendment (411-0) which prohibited covert efforts by the President to overthrow the Nicaraguan government.
 

Note: This Day in Peace History material is adapted by Top Pun from This Week in Peace History, a publication of www.peacebuttons.info, and This Week in Peace & Justice History from the San Antonio Peace Center.

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December 21, 2006 by PunsNotGunsPeaceBlog.

December 21, 1919
Amidst a strike for union recognition by 395,000 steelworkers, the “Red Scare” was launched with the deportation of Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, and some 250 other radicals. They were deported to Russia aboard the S. S. Buford (”The Soviet Ark”).  J. Edgar Hoover, heading the Justice Department’s General Intelligence Division, advanced his career by implementing to the fullest extent possible the government’s plan to deport all foreign-born radicals.  Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman also organized against World War I
December 21, 1965
Student anti-war activists Tom Hayden, Staughton Lynd, and Herbert Aptheker began a visit to Hanoi, North Vietnam.
December 21, 1969
Seven hundred supporters visited jailed Vietnam War resisters at Allenwood Federal Penitentiary, Pennsylvania.
 

Note: This Day in Peace History material is adapted by Top Pun from This Week in Peace History, a publication of www.peacebuttons.info, and This Week in Peace & Justice History from the San Antonio Peace Center.

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December 20, 2006 by PunsNotGunsPeaceBlog.

December 20, 1946
The morning after Viet Minh forces under Ho Chi Minh launched a night revolt in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, French colonial troops cracked down on the communist rebels.   Ho and his soldiers immediately fled the city to regroup in the countryside. That evening, the communist leader issued a proclamation that read: “All the Vietnamese must stand up to fight the French colonials to save the fatherland. Those who have rifles will use their rifles; those who have swords will use their swords; those who have no swords will use spades, hoes, or sticks. Everyone must endeavor to oppose the colonialists and save his country. Even if we have to endure hardship in the resistance war, with the determination to make sacrifices, victory will surely be ours.” The first Indochina War thus began.
December 20, 1960
North Vietnam announced the formation of the National Front for the Liberation of the South (usually known as the National Liberation Front, NLF), designed to replicate the success of the Viet Minh, the umbrella nationalist organization that successfully liberated Vietnam from French colonial rule.
December 20, 1990
Kansas reservist Dr. Yolanda Huet-Vaughn refused orders to serve in the first Gulf War (Desert Storm) and was later sentenced to prison. The Kansas medical board withdrew her hospital privileges.  “The issue was not whether I belonged in the military but whether the military belonged in the Middle East waging war. I did not want to focus on the personal decision. I was trying to focus on the decision for which each and every American would have to be responsible.”  What if they gave a war and nobody came?
December 20, 1994
Hundreds of thousands of Chechnyans linked hands in a human chain to protest the Russian invasion.
December 20, 1999
The Vermont Supreme Court ruled that homosexual couples are entitled to the same benefits and protections as wedded couples of the opposite sex.
 

Note: This Day in Peace History material is adapted by Top Pun from This Week in Peace History, a publication of www.peacebuttons.info, and This Week in Peace & Justice History from the San Antonio Peace Center.

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December 19, 2006 by PunsNotGunsPeaceBlog.

December 19, 1940
Two months after the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 was passed Civilian Public Service camps were established for conscientious objectors who wanted to serve their country in other ways.  They served without weapons
December 19, 1962
Juan Bosch was elected President of the Dominican Republic in their first free elections in 38 years.  He was overthrown by a U.S.-backed coup in September of the following year.
 

Note: This Day in Peace History material is adapted by Top Pun from This Week in Peace History, a publication of www.peacebuttons.info, and This Week in Peace & Justice History from the San Antonio Peace Center.

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