05/08/2014
100th Anniversary of International Fellowship of Reconciliation Konstanz, Germany, August 1-3, 2014
Militaries Are Outdated and Should Go, Like Hanging and Flogging
Mairead Maguire
Dear Friends,
I would like to offer my congratulations to IFOR on this its 100th anniversary. I once asked Fr. Dan Berrigan, the great American anti-war activist, for some advice to me in my life as a peace activist. He replied ‘Pray and resist’.
The IFOR members will appreciate this advice, coming as they do from their roots in 100 years of building International Fellowship and Reconciliation between peoples of all faiths, traditions (and none), many of whom believe in the need for prayer in order to strengthen their spiritual lives, and many take their prayer, very seriously.
Our Muslim brothers and sisters show us great example by their very beautiful lives of prayer, (5 times a day), and fasting at Ramadan.
But I would like to ask how serious are we about Resistance? What is our Vision? And how does Resistance fit into this? What do we need to resist? How can we resist effectively? And what methods are allowed? In resisting, what are our aims and objectives?
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05/08/2014
By ICAN*, August 4, 2014 — At the Little White House in Key West Florida, on 16 May 2014, atomic bomb testimony was delivered in an official forum on Truman ground for the first time. Together with Clifton Truman Daniel, Hibakusha Stories organized an event where and Yasuaki Yamashita were able to share their experience of being children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively.
Setsuko Thurlow | Photo: ICAN
Thanks to support from the Truman Family, The Little White House and The Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, atomic bomb survivors are now on the official record defending the position that nuclear weapons are immoral no matter in whose hands. The following is Setsuko Thurlow’s speech from that evening.
“On that fateful day, August 6, 1945, I was a 13 year old grade 8 student and a member of the Student Mobilization Program, we were at the Army headquarters, 1.8 km from ground zero.
About 30 of us students were assigned to work as decoding assistants of secret messages. At 8:15 AM, as Major Yanai was giving us a pep talk at the assembly, suddenly, I saw in the window a blinding bluish-white flash and I remember having the sensation of floating in the air. As I regained consciousness in the silence and darkness, I found myself pinned by the collapsed building. I could not move, and I knew I faced death. I began to hear my classmates’ faint cries, “Mother, help me” “God, help me”.
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03/08/2014
By Uri Avnery*
Uri Avnery
2 August 2014
THERE WAS this village in England which took great pride in its archery. In every yard there stood a large target board showing the skills of its owner. On one of these boards every single arrow had hit a bull’s eye. A curious visitor asked the owner: how is this possible?
The reply: “Simple. First I shoot the arrows, and then I draw the circles around them.” In this war, our government does the same. We achieve all our goals – but our goals change all the time. In the end, our victory will be complete.
WHEN THE war started, we just wanted to “destroy the terror infrastructure”. Then, when the rockets reached practically all of Israel (without causing much damage, largely owing to the miraculous anti-missile defense), the war aim was to destroy the rockets. When the army crossed the border into Gaza for this purpose, a huge network of tunnels was discovered. They became the main war aim.
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02/08/2014
1 August 2014 – The world faces a looming energy problem. There’s not enough of it. It also faces a looming climate change problem. Too much of it. Could natural gas and fracking technology be part of the solution to both challenges?*
South Africa’s reliance on coal is clear to see. The coal-mining process can leave water supplies unusable for irrigation, for industry and for consumption. The water is not just dirty, but toxic. UN Photo/Gill Fickling
The answer to this question is especially relevant for developing countries. Nearly half the world’s population lacks reliable access to modern energy services and more than 20 per cent of the global population – 1.4 billion people – remains without access to electricity, according to a recent UN Development Programme (UNDP) report.
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Household air pollution from the use of biomass fuel is expected to cause more than 1.5 million deaths a year by 2030. Could natural gas, whose production is boosted by hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” – the process of drilling and injecting fluid into the ground at a high pressure to fracture shale rocks to release natural gas inside – be a bridge to greener economies and to new, more-efficient energy technologies? “Is fracking, by providing natural gas, giving us a cleaner energy source?
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02/08/2014
1 August 2014 – The best thing a mother can do for her newborn is breastfeed – which does more than help children survive, it helps them to thrive with benefits that last a lifetime, said the United Nations today, kicking off World Breastfeeding Week*.
A woman breastfeeds her newborn at a hospital in Belgrade, Serbia. Photo: UNICEF/NYHQ2011-1166/Holt
“Immediate breastfeeding within the first hour of birth could prevent one in five unnecessary deaths.
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That’s more than 500,000 children every year. More than 1,500 children every day,” said Anthony Lake, Executive Director of the UN Children’s Fund
(UNICEF), in a letter marking the start of the Week..
But despite being the simplest, smartest, and most cost-effective way of supporting healthier children, stronger families, and sustainable growth, fewer than half of the world’s newborns benefit from breastfeeding.
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Even fewer are exclusively breastfed for the first six months. To shift this trend, UNICEF says it is important to change social practices by working first and foremost with communities and families to encourage more mothers to breastfeed.
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01/08/2014
By Aaron Gray-Block*, Greenpeace, 31 July, 2014 — It was just past midnight when Indian police hauled two Greenpeace India activists out of their sleep and arrested them this week as a crackdown on protests against a planned coal mine in the Mahan forest intensified.
Photo: Greenpeace
The arrests are the latest example of intimidation tactics used in India to quell unrest over the plans by Indian conglomerate Essar to turn the Mahan forest into a climate-wrecking coal mine.
The timing of the arrests is far from coincidental. The local community was due to hold a Gram Sabha, or village council, sometime between 16-22 August to vote on the proposed coal mine development by partners Essar and Hindalco.
The police also seized a mobile signal booster and solar panels that Greenpeace India had set up in Amelia village to help spread the news from the community meeting to more than a million people who have signed a petition opposing the coal mine.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 