A World Printmakers Pre-Emptive Strike for Peace

Just over five years ago, seven months before President George W. Bush declared war on Irak, World Printmakers convened a virtual exhibit called The Printmakers' Peace as a protest against the United States invading that beleaguered country and killing and maiming its innocent population. President Bush didn't heed our warning, and the tragic results are there for all to see. Now, far from expressing any remorse for the crimes committed in Irak, the American president seems to be hell bent on attacking Iran, or giving Israel the "ol' wink and a nod" to do it, which amounts to the same thing.

Our suspicion is based on President Bush's recent track record of bombing soverign nations under false pretenses. We suspect that, if he wants to bomb someone, he'll find a pretext, no matter how specious. So, in the interest of sparing innocent lives on all sides, we're launching this massive pre-emptive print protest, and we're inviting you all to participate. Just send along one of your images (print or photograph) which you think might be appropriate and we'll publish it as part of our pre-emptive protest, just in case President should get any more megalomaniac homicidal ideas. If you'd like to send along a few lines of text (optional), we'll publish that, too.

In looking back at our last anti-war protest, I came across this quotation, cited by printmaker Barbara Milman. Unfortunately, it never seems to go out of date:

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war
in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervour,
for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword.
It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind...

And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and
the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed,
the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry.

Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism,
will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so."

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Maureen and I and a few World Printmakers artists have started the snowball rolling with some of our own images (below). If you want to participate, just send your image (print or photograph, 360 pixels long, 72 dpi) and text to us at: miguel@worldprintmakers.com, and we'll add your voice to the protest. Let's see if we can do our bit to prevent more killer madness before it happens.

Tony Lazorko. U.S.A. "...mushroom cloud..." Color woodcut printed on hosho paper, 9-1/2" x 10"   "There will always be some uncertainty about how quickly [Saddam Hussein] can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Condolezza Rice

Barbara Carr, U.S.A. "Attached is my print contribution, "Crusade," to the online protest exhibit. It's a 3-block woodcut with watercolor and gampi chine colle on Rives lightweight paper, approx 10.5 x 7.5 inches. Bush actually used the word "crusade" near the beginning of the Iraq war. It's a religious war and there's no question who started it."

Crusade

Mike Booth, Spain "I invite the reader's attention to the... men and the means, both in politics and war, by which Rome's power was first acquired and subsequently expanded. I would then have him trace the process of our moral decline, to watch first the sinking of the foundations of morality as the old teaching was allowed to lapse, then the final collapse of the whole edifice, and the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them." Livy 64 BC-17 AD

Give yourself up, Bush, we've got you surrounded!

Jonathan Talbot, N.Y., U.S.A.

"The Gift," 2001. Enlarged photocopy of actual
objects with type added. These identification tags were worn by my son Garret, who was in the first crew of construction workers to enter "Ground Zero" on September 11, 2001 to aid in the recovery effort. My son said, even
as he sorted through the horrible, all-too-human wreckage of the twin
towers, "More violence is not the answer." The whistle was a gift from his sister Loren (my daughter).

Gloria Kagawa, Ontario, Canada

Just as the pirates of yore plundered by force, now too, the world's
superpower stoops to take by force whatever it wants, visiting chaos on
the hapless citizenry of the world.

Katherine Anteney-Tipper, Southampton, England

I made this print after going to a CAAT (campaign against the arms
trade) demo in Titchfield, Hampshire. it was part of the Sites Unseen
series of protests. It was a bleak windy day and we held our banner whilst employees of BAe drove past us and made snide comments.
It's a woodcut and in 'real life' measures 80 x 25 cm.

Brian Jones, Wales, U.K.

George Warmonger Bush

Annie Bissett, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

This is a 12-color moku hanga (Japanese woodblock) print based on a satellite view of the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that includes Baghdad, this print references the area called the Fertile crescent, the biblical land of Babylonia. This is the place where the ancient Sumerians developed the earliest known form of writing, cuneiform. This is where Hammurabi wrote the earliest known laws in the world, laws which underpin today's legal systems. And this is the place where the U.S. military has unleashed a seemingly unstoppable chaos that now threatens to engulf the whole region.

May we learn from our mistakes, and do it quickly.