pegleg jack wrote:

kind of a crazy late night stroll for those senior citizens, and just might be an expencive one on top of it,

Isn't this is naval base where the commander was recently dismissed due to lack of security ? Good thing these ole timers were kind of hamless, what is this were someone with something else on their minds ?

scary

Wow, '60s flashback here.  Everybody join hands and sing Kumbaya ...

I disagree with you, Crawfish.  These aren't hippie rejects but people acting out of deeply held moral and religious conviction, which I have to respect.  For those who would ask "what would Jesus do?" how many really believe that Jesus thinks it's a great idea to have weapons capable of annihilating entire populations on hand?  For all that we do what we believe we have to do, it's pretty clear that some of what we do could hardly be described as moral or Christian.  When the power to rain death down on an unsuspecting populace first peeked its head over the landscape of World War I religious and moral leaders everywhere railed against the anonymity and inclusiveness of the new weapons of death.  They talked about how it violated the concept of a just war.  The debate was renewed in World War II but buried under the sheer magnitude of the conflict.  By the end of the war we, a moral people, and all of our allies had somehow convinced ourselves that it's perfectly moral and just to destroy entire cities when we are at war.  We reason that by taking a hundred thousand lives now we save a million lives later, and with that we salve our consciences.  But the reasoning is specious and does not take away the reality of what we do by using such weapons.  We cannot help but murder innocents with them.  So people like these elderly Christian activists are determined to remind us of this. 

We should never be too comfortable with the idea of killing on a massive scale.  If we are to cling to the remaining shreds of what it means to be a moral human, then we cannot easily or lightly think it right to use such weapons, even though we think them necessary for our own protection.

Geez, here we go again.  As long as the technology exists, and since it has been discovered it will always exist, to produce nuclear weapons, we MUST have them and be ready to use them.  To do otherwise would be simply to disarm ourselves before our enemies.  Religious beliefs or not, it is a simple case of REALITY, and no hippie/flower child mentality can change it.

The one thing that jumps right out at me is

Deadly force is authorized in SWFPAC, Haley said.

This particular group of individuals protests anything and everything military in the Puget Sound region including attempting to disrupt military shipments of equipment to and from OIF and OEF.

SWFPAC = Strategic Weapons Facility, Pacific

Captain Kirk wrote:

lWow, '60s flashback here.  Everybody join hands and sing Kumbaya ...

I disagree with you, Crawfish.  These aren't hippie rejects but people acting out of deeply held moral and religious conviction, which I have to respect.  For those who would ask "what would Jesus do?"


MA,

I'm not at all sure that these peope  have deepluy held religious convictions. I think they are envoiromental wacos that think they are above the law!

Jesus would NOT Break the Law no matter what it was. Including the Abortion laws. He would work within the law and change the law. He would protest wwithin the law and never dammage  legal personal property.

These peoiple are Acid head burn out wacos from Haight and Ashberry. In SF.

Sounds like they're a bunch of radical Catholic clerics.  I've known a few in my time.  They don't go around dropping acid or smoking dope.  Usually they're intensely invested in social justice issues, working at places like the Catholic Worker guesthouses or community clinics, and agitating against perceived injustices.  Usually such people are pacifists and quite often philosophical anarchists in the Dorothy Day mode, followers of Peter Maurin and other Catholic philosophers who influenced and were influenced by the social justice encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII and some of his successors such as Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II. 

They did not break the law over the environment - although it would be philosophically consistent for them to do so - but over the military-industrial complex.  They believe fervently that they are mandated by their belief in Jesus Christ to work to oppose weapons of mass destruction and all war. 

As for Jesus never breaking the law, I would have to differ with you.  The Jesus who overturned the moneychangers' tables at the Temple (even though they were sanctioned by the hierarchy), flouted customs against associating with prostitutes and tax collectors, had his followers grab someone's donkey to ride into Jerusalem, and challenged the authority of the Scribes and Pharisees doesn't sound like someone who would have been overly concerned about breaking a law if it were done for a higher purpose.  Passive, nonviolent law-breaking as a form of civil protest has a long and honored history in this country, and if it had not been for lawbreakers like the suffragettes, the civil rights marchers and lunch-counter sitters, and the Underground Railroad our country would be a much worse place in which to live.

In the gospel of Luke, Jesus advises those of his disciples who don't own swords to sell their cloaks and buy one (Luke 22:36).

Jesus was the Prince of Peace, but he never taught any of his disciples, or the thousands who came to hear him teach (including the Roman Soldiers), to disobey the laws of the rulers appointed over them, nor did he ever teach a doctrine of remaining defenseless in times of danger. 

MA, Jesus overturning the money-changers' tables and whipping the "loan sharks" was neither non-violent nor passive.  Allowing loan-sharking in the Temple was neither God's law nor Roman law, but a custom allowed by the Pharisees who tended to "'look the other way".