Peace

    What do we in the West know about Islam? Perhaps more than we did before 9/11 but not much. When Tony Blair was prime minister of the United Kingdom he was photographed walking along holding the Koran. President George W. Bush said repeatedly that Islam was a religion of peace, even though at that time one of the most influential American political writers, Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard University, had written that it wasn’t fundamentalism that was the problem, it was Islam itself. He argued in his best-selling book, “The Clash of Civilizations” that “The twentieth century conflict between liberal democracy and Marxist-Leninism is only a fleeting superficial phenomenon compared to the continuing and deeply conflictual relationship between Islam and Christianity.” He foresaw nuclear war between the West and Islam. This seems to me to be extravagantly over the top. Yet there are many Islamic scholars who make,...

  . No other country has seen so many “blue berets”- UN peacekeeping troops- in its short history. The Belgian colonialists may have exploited it and transferred massive amounts of its wealth back to Belgium but one leader after another has continued in its steps, making use of the country’s vast mineral deposits to build an edifice of wealth and unilateral power. Leaders have played on tribal fears and insecurity. War has been the outcome. In the last few years there has been talk of winding down the large contingent. A kind of peace seemed to have arrived. No longer. There are still 16,000 UN troops there. The way the UN peacekeepers work has changed a lot since their first deployment soon after independence. Then the accent was on not using arms. UN soldiers accused of misbehavior were rare. Today force, even killing, is widely used by peacekeepers. So are...

-05/14/content_740876.htm”>China Today from May 2017 carries the main catchwords from a peace and security viewpoint: • win-win • inclusiveness • vision-based • anti-war • pro-peace (constructive) • respect for sovereignty of states • cooperative structures • common security • interconnectedness • benefits to all • respect for each other’s development path (diversity) • sharing And here some excerpts also from China Today in 2017: “As some western countries move backwards by erecting “walls,” China is contriving to build bridges, both literal and metaphorical. These bridges are China’s important offering to the world, and a key route to improving global governance. Proposed by China, the Belt and Road is for all to enjoy.” “China is not willing or able to replace or replicate the vast web of political and economic tendrils maintained by the United States, but China is trying to take the current structure and build from it a more...

  Robert J. Burrowes February 18, 2018 • The United States Department of Defense released its latest ‘Nuclear Posture Review 2018’ (NPR) on 2 February, updating the last one issued in 2010 during the previous administration. See ‘Nuclear Posture Review 2018’. The Executive Summary of the NPR is also available, if you prefer. See ‘Nuclear Posture Review 2018 Executive Summary’. Several authors have already thoughtfully exposed a phenomenal variety of obvious lies, invented threats, strategic misconceptions and flaws – such as the fallacious thinking behind ‘deterrence’ and significantly increased risk of nuclear war given the delusional ‘thinking’ in the document – as well as the political fear-mongering in the NPR. For example, eminent scholar Professor Paul Rogers has pointed out: ‘The risk now is that we are on a slippery slope towards “small nuclear wars in far-off places”, which themselves could either escalate or at the very least break the...

Dear story lover! I’m a peace-building practitioner and I have just launched a storytelling-for-peace platform.  I translate integral peace education themes into stories for both children and parents to practice together – for harmonious relationships within the web of life. With two forthcoming books that bring peace education issues at family level, I need support to raise the profile of my work. Two of the forthcoming, illustrated storybooks are available for free to a group of advance readers who can assist with the launches on Amazon.com in May and June 2018. Now, please click on these links to download the new e-books for free: Queen Rain, King Wind – The Practice of Heart Gardening Anagrania’s Challenge – Turning Conflict into Opportunity (Whole Nutrition Series) Enjoy the stories and stay tuned to hear about the upcoming launches where any small contribution will be very much appreciated. Spreading an educational message takes community...

By Robert J. Burrowes 24 Jan 2018 • As our world spirals deeper into an abyss from which it is becoming increasingly difficult to extricate ourselves, some very prominent activists have lamented the lack of human solidarity in the face of the ongoing genocide of the Rohingya. See ‘The Rohingya tragedy shows human solidarity is a lie’ and ‘Wrongs of rights activism around Rohingyas’. While I share the genuine concern of the Yemeni Nobel peace laureate Tawakkol Karman and Burmese dissident and scholar Dr Maung Zarni, and have offered my own way forward for responding powerfully to the ongoing genocide of the Rohingya – see ‘A Nonviolent Strategy to Defeat Genocide’ – in my view the lack of solidarity they mention is utterly pervasive and readily evident in our lacklustre official and personal responses to the many ongoing crises in which humanity finds itself. To mention just the most obvious:...

29 Jan 2018 By Anthony J. Marsella and Kathleen Malley-Morrison Introduction 26 Jan 2018 – The annual memorial holiday on January 15, 2018, celebrating Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s enduring contributions to peace and justice, has passed. The events of the day linger in our minds, eternally grateful for Reverend King’s efforts to free people and nations from the brutal oppressions imposed by governments, nations, societies, organizations, and individuals, who willfully continue to support and sustain the evils of racism, prejudice, violence, and war. Reverend King’s commitment to freedom from oppression and abuse compel us to continue his efforts far beyond the words, songs, and promises of his day. To this end, we, (i.e., Kathy Malley-Morrison & Anthony J. Marsella), the authors of this article, have chosen to demonstrate our responsibilities to continuing the work of Reverend King, by identifying 100 living peace and social justice leaders and models. The...

  – Pope Francis sent out a message that should have created headlines everywhere. It advocated a journalism for peace. The discussion of fake news has spread around the globe and there are all kinds of proposals on how to detect fake news and combat it – as the truly civilizational threat it is. Indeed one could day that fake is the debate 2017-2018. A quick DuckDuckGo search – no, I don’t use Google Search anymore because of its tracking and blatant censorship – reveals that a few leading US media took up the story, so did a series of religious media, of course, but the amazing statement didn’t obtain much attention. Objectively speaking, that is particularly strange since any editor and journalist should be professionally observant of a statement on their own profession from the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics. But what can surprise you anymore...

  By Abigail Ruane WILPF Women, Peace and Security Programme Director January 2018 In the last year, a women’s rights tidal wave flooded the world: over 4 million people marched in the first “Women’s March” in January 2017, and over a million marched a year later, from Washington DC to New York, from Sydney to Osaka, and from Rome to Nairobi. Over 2 million people from 85 countries shared #MeToo stories of sexual violence on social media (#BalanceTonPorc #YoTambien #QuellaVoltaChe وأنا_كمان#); and powerful men across the tech, business, politics and media industries stepped down in the face of allegations. Peace and conflict issues have not been immune from this women’s rights surge. Sweden and Canada have led the way with “feminist foreign policies” that included strengthened support for women peace civil society leaders. Under Sweden’s guidance, the Security Council has made some normative progress: The percentage of the Security Council presidential statements referencing Women,...

Obituary Just a week after his 90th birthday Gene Sharp passed away. The journal New Statesman once described Gene Sharp as the “Machiavelli of Nonviolence” and Thomas Weber labelled him “the Clausewitz of Nonviolent Action.” Who was this man and what is his contribution to our understanding of the possibilities to use nonviolent actions in large scale societal conflicts? Gene Sharp completed his baccalaureate in 1949, just a few scant years after the close of World War II, and quickly turned his attention to the study of nonviolence. After serving nine months in prison for being a conscientious objector to the Korean War, Sharp worked as secretary for A.J. Muste. He next joined the editorial team of Peace News in London before accepting an invitation from Arne Næss to join him in Oslo with Johan Galtung and others to study the philosophy and practice of Mohandas Gandhi. Throughout this time,...

Whether or not this short video is 100% in accordance with the original, it offers insights into perceptional psychology, the question of what is reality and what does it look like to us – and how do we receive new information. It’s also about science, philosophy, socially acceptable knowledge – and how to punish the messenger. And it’s a comment on truth and ignorance. We posted this educational video 2 days after it had been uploaded by TED; by then it had already been seen by 960.000 people, shared by 17.000 and reacted to by 27.000 people! People are craving for relevant knowledge helping them live their lives better – and think better. There is a formidable educational potential in the modern media – and… you can still read about The Cave and The Republic. When it comes to war and other violence, it seems we are still living in...

Women from around the world cross the DMZ – De-Militarized Zone – border between North and South Korea in 2015. To the left TFF Associate Mairead Maguire. Reported here by the Daily Mail.   By Samuel S. Kim* Abstract The often-used description in the American mainstream media and geopolitical literature of “North Korea’s nuclear aggression” is misleading. I argue in the first section that Pyongyang’s nuclear strategy has been significantly shaped by the perceived U.S. nuclear existential threat since the early 1950s, portending a quest for a self-reliant nuclear deterrent for the DPRK (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea). The shifting role and impact of U.S.-China competition in the course of the first and second U.S.-DPRK nuclear standoffs is explored as background for examining, in the second section, an intensified nuclear confrontation in the first half of 2017. The concluding section considers common-security engagement in charting an alternative pathway toward...