Pax Christi Australia NSW

3. Chocolate, agribusiness and the Ivory Coast Crisis

2011-04-12T21:14:00.000+09:30

The Roots of the Côte d'Ivoire Crisis

James North

This tropical West African nation, once the most prosperous in the region, is sliding even deeper into civil war. At press time, after a weeklong street battle for Abidjan, the commercial capital of 5 million, there were reports of a fragile settlement. But the vicious violence could break out again at any time. Mainstream Western press accounts included depressingly familiar explanations: the stolen presidential election in November, rising ethnic conflict. The explanations were accurate, as far as they went.

Right now, Côte d’Ivoire’s 21.5 million people are living in a terrible human rights crisis, a catastrophe that is being downplayed partly because the uprisings in the Arab world are distracting attention. But several thousand people have already died here, and up to 1 million are refugees. The small United Nations peacekeeping force should be strengthened, and the world pressure to force the election’s loser, Laurent Gbagbo, to give way to Alassane Ouattara must continue. (Right now Gbagbo is still hanging on to power.) But a change in presidents will not end the danger—and the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire is representative of deeply rooted structural problems in many other African nations.

You have to come here, to one of the forest regions where Côte d’Ivoire’s million-plus cocoa farmers live, to find the fundamental reason that fighting is breaking out again: a profoundly unjust international economic order that pays the people who supply our primary products a pittance and leaves their nations chronically ill with unemployment and poverty, and with people who will fight one another over scarce resources. Here, too, you will learn that the giant American agribusiness corporations Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) are one part of the problem, even though their names do not appear in the grim dispatches about widespread killings and mass graves.

To read the full article,cut and paste the link below to your browser:

http://www.thenation.com/article/159707/roots-cote-divoire-crisis

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Report on Japan

2011-04-12T21:04:00.001+09:30

US Sees Array of New Threats at Japan's Nuclear Plant

Wednesday 6 April 2011

by: James Glanz and William J. Broad, The New York Times

United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis in Japan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Among the new threats that were cited in the assessment, dated March 26, are the mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to rupture in one of the aftershocks rattling the site after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11. The document also cites the possibility of explosions inside the containment structures due to the release of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater pumped into the reactors, and offers new details on how semi-molten fuel rods and salt buildup are impeding the flow of fresh water meant to cool the nuclear cores.

In recent days, workers have grappled with several side effects of the emergency measures taken to keep nuclear fuel at the plant from overheating, including leaks of radioactive water at the site and radiation burns to workers who step into the water. The assessment, as well as interviews with officials familiar with it, points to a new panoply of complex challenges that water creates for the safety of workers and the recovery and long-term stability of the reactors.

While the assessment does not speculate on the likelihood of new explosions or damage from an aftershock, either could lead to a breach of the containment structures in one or more of the crippled reactors, the last barriers that prevent a much more serious release of radiation from the nuclear core. If the fuel continues to heat and melt because of ineffective cooling, some nuclear experts say, that could also leave a radioactive mass that could stay molten for an extended period.

The document, which was obtained by The New York Times, provides a more detailed technical assessment than Japanese officials have provided of the conundrum facing the Japanese as they struggle to prevent more fuel from melting at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. But it appears to rely largely on data shared with American experts by the Japanese.

To view the complete article, please cut and paste the link below into your browser:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/asia/06nuclear.html?_r=2&ref=global-home

1. Book review of Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India

2011-04-12T20:44:00.001+09:30

A Different Gandhi

Anita Desai

Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India
by Joseph Lelyveld
Knopf, 425 pp., $28.95

Even in his lifetime the legend of Mahatma Gandhi had grown to such proportions that the man himself can be said to have disappeared as if into a dust storm. Joseph Lelyveld’s new biography sets out to find him. His subtitle alerts us that this is not a conventional biography in that he does not repeat the well-documented story of Gandhi’s struggle for India but rather his struggle with India, the country that exasperated, infuriated, and dismayed him, notwithstanding his love for it.

At the outset Lelyveld dispenses with the conventions of biography, leaving out Gandhi’s childhood and student years, a decision he made because he believed that the twenty-three-year-old law clerk who arrived in South Africa in 1893 had little in him of the man he was to become. Besides, his birth in a small town in Gujarat on the west coast of India, and childhood spent in the bosom of a very traditional family of the Modh bania (merchant) caste of Jains, then the three years in London studying law are dealt with in fine detail and with a disarming freshness and directness in Gandhi’s Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Lelyveld’s argument is that it was South Africa that made him the visionary and leader of legend. He is not the first or only historian to have pointed out such a progression but he brings to it an intimate knowledge based on his years as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times in both South Africa and India and the exhaustive research he conducted with a rare and finely balanced sympathy.

To read the full review, cut and paste the link below in your browser :

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/apr/28/different-gandhi/?pagination=false

Our Asylum Seeker Policy Is Brutal

2011-03-24T19:22:00.000+10:30

Our Asylum Seeker Policy Is Brutal
Ben Eltham
New Matilda, March 23 2011

Australia's leaders continue to make political hay from the suffering of asylum seekers. Our system of mandatory detention is morally bankrupt, and must be abandoned, writes Ben Eltham

The asylum seekers at Christmas Island continue to be deprived of their liberty. The laws of our society have been explicitly rewritten against them, and they have been imprisoned against their will by an impersonal and callous bureaucracy that operates under a cloak of legal nicety. Not only do they lack access to justice or a safe environment, they suffer from a corrosive uncertainty, as men and women who have never met them decide their fate according to a set of rules that make no sense, as demagogues rail against them from the soap-boxes of talk radio shows.

And when those who were locked up and oppressed tried to escape, what happened? Squads of riot police shot tear gas and bean-bag bullets at them. Christmas Island looked suddenly like Bahrain, or any other country where an authoritarian regime needs to impose force on protesters.

But, being Australia, the concentration camp at Christmas Island is not even run by the government. It’s run by a private contractor called Serco. In the cosmic wonderland of Australian immigration policy, the incarceration and possible mistreatment of asylum seekers is now a legitimate profit-making activity. Serco is currently the beneficiary of a five-year, $370 million contract to manage seven detention centres.

Serco is not doing a very good job of it. It is under investigation for using unlicenced security guards and a leaked police dossier claims many of its staff have received ‘minimal or no training’. Despite the chronic overcrowding at the Christmas Island centre — thanks to the government’s policy of locking up each and every person who arrives on our shores in an ‘unauthorised’ manner — the centre was ‘typically 15 staff short per day’. Serco has been fined more than $4 million in contract breaches.

And why do our governments keep acting like this? The historical roots of mandatory detention of asylum seekers are complex and run all the way back to the Hawke-Keating government, but at its core, it’s simple: oppressing asylum seekers is popular. As in any society, there are plenty of Australians who are openly and confidently racist and xenophobic.

The harsh reality is that many of us are uncomfortable with people who are different to us. And we tell politicians and opinion pollsters this. Hard-line policies on asylum seekers are very popular in certain sections of the community; every time Labor tries to soften its policies, the Opposition attacks, and Labor’s support drops. As a result, we have absurdly oppressive immigration policies.

After all, politicians make policies which they hope will gain them re-election. It doesn’t matter that both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott immigrated to Australia by boat. What counts was Labor’s election loss in 2001, which the party continues to believe was the result of the Tampa affair. Hence we have a race to the bottom where ludicrous arguments about ‘queues’ and ‘border integrity’ are used to justify what is essentially a kind of exemplary cruelty. Australians seem to like the fact that our government locks up asylum seekers. There’s no getting around it: detention centres are popular.

I know this because every time I write an article about asylum seeker policy, out come the racists and the hate-mongers. Some of the them blame it all on the people smugglers, but most seem quite happy with hating asylum seekers themselves. One commenter on an article I wrote for the ABC even suggested the government shoot arriving boats with machine guns. That would surely deter illegal entries, he wrote.

Opposition Immigration spokesman Scott Morrison takes a frighteningly similar position. Doing anything to alleviate the cruel and unusual conditions at Christmas Island will only send a message that Australia is ‘putting the white flag up’, he said this week. According to Morrison, not detaining people offshore — where they are excised by a special part of the Migration Act from the due process of Australia’s legal system — effectively means ‘all you have to do is get to Australia and you won’t even be detained anymore’.

Can you imagine that? According to Scott Morrison, there is a grave risk that asylum seekers might escape injustice and oppression in Afghanistan or Sri Lanka, travel thousands of kilometres in a leaky boat on the open ocean and legally claim refugee status in this country under a 60-year international treaty that Australia is a signatory to — and won’t even get locked up.

No wonder Immigration Minister Chris Bowen rushed to assure the media that ‘in all cases they are regarded and treated as offshore entry persons’.

Sometimes public policy is a difficult and complex thing to explain. Emissions trading, or tariff reductions, or the operation of the proposed mining tax are like this. In all of these cases, complex technical issues cloud the over-arching moral calculus we might bring to the rights and wrongs of pricing carbon, removing trade protections for local industry or asking mining companies to pay more tax.

Sometimes, however, public policy is easy to explain. Sometimes the technicalities of the issue are at heart quite simple, and the moral clarity of the issue stark. Asylum seeker policy in Australia is like this. The facts of the matter are simple: our government is locking up innocent people. The moral situation is just as clear. It is a great injustice.

The liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin once wrote, ‘everything is what it is’. He meant that liberty was not equality or fairness or justice. It is liberty.

Let’s be just as frank about asylum seeker policy. It’s not ‘border protection’, it’s oppression. It’s not ‘processing’, it’s incarceration. Asylum seekers are not ‘illegal’ or ‘unauthorised’ — they have a legal right to claim asylum in Australia. It’s not about ‘stopping the boats’, it’s about inflicting great harm on innocent people to satisfy the vicious hatreds of racist and xenophobic voters in marginal seats.

Berlin was talking about liberty, and he distinguished two kinds. One was what he called ‘positive liberty’, in other words, the ability of a person to make her own life choices or to attain a kind of self-mastery. Berlin called the other kind ‘negative liberty’, and this is the sense in which most of us understand it today: freedom from coercion or interference by an external body. When Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom, he was talking about this kind of liberty: the liberty of individuals to be free from government control.

It’s seems like a long way from the philosophy textbooks to the situation inside razor wire at Christmas Island. But perhaps it shouldn’t be, because the situation there now resembles almost exactly the 20th century totalitarian societies about which Berlin and Hayek were writing. In the Cloudcuckooland of Australian asylum seeker policy, treating people decently and humanely according to international law is ‘putting the white flag up’. Alexander Solzhenitsyn would have found it all too familiar.

A PUBLIC STATEMENT by Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish and Hindu faith organisations.

2011-03-19T21:17:00.000+10:30

March 2011

Prison Reform in NSW
The twelve religious groups below join the many voices calling for prison reform in NSW in this important pre-election period. We seek to apply the values of compassion, healing and social justice to all members of society, including prisoners, who are often the forgotten ones - ‘out of sight, out of mind’. The measure of compassion and social justice we extend to prisoners reflects on the presence of those values in our society. We are actively involved in the pastoral care of prisoners through the prison chaplaincy programmes.
For too long, NSW has seen an increasing rate of imprisonment, and the highest rate in Australia of prisoners returning to prison after release (43%). These “prisoners” are children of the Australian society, we have a choice to support their rehabilitation and allow them to be constructive members of society, or keep them in this vicious cycle of relapse and recidivism. We believe that many prisoners can be reformed if there is the political will to do the work required. Prisoners should not be used for political gain with some political parties using the fear tactics around crime, and promising more harsh treatment to gain votes.
We recommend the incoming government consider the following measures to improve this situation.
1. To increase the focus on rehabilitation and education programmes and other measures to assist prisoners reintegrate into society, thus decreasing the rate of return to prison. To reduce the current rate of recidivism by 10% within the next 3 years.
2. To reform the bail laws that have been increasingly toughened, causing far too many to be imprisoned on remand. Restore the presumptions in favour of bail in all cases except where there is genuine evidence of harm, if the alleged offender is left in the community.
3. To create strong and independent oversight of the Corrective Services Department to ensure full transparency of their operations. In particular, official visitors should be able to report any concerns about prisoner management to an independent regulatory body without fear of being dismissed or locked out of prisons.
4. To provide a stronger pastoral care resource in the prison system. The government accepted a target of one chaplain per 200 inmates but this has not been met. If that ratio were implemented, pastoral care resources would be improved by 30%. Chaplains should also have better access to inmates in terms of longer visiting hours and better facilities for interviewing inmates and holding religious services.
5. To create a planning and review body to look at all of the ways that the performance of corrective services in NSW could be improved. NSW should be a model of best practice. This would benefit all citizens of NSW through lower rates of incarceration and crime.
It is our role as religious organisation to make a strong stand on these issues by upholding the values of compassion and social justice. We urge the people of NSW to expect and pressure the incoming new government to adopt policies to improve the rehabilitation of prisoners. This will create a more wholesome society for us all.
Supporting Organisations
Missionaries of the Sacred Heart Justice and Peace Centre
Father Claude Mostowik msc
Director,
PO Box 146
Erskineville NSW 2043
Australian Federation of Islamic Councils
Ikebal Patel
President
PO Box 7185 SSBH,
Alexandria, NSW 2015
Justice and Peace Office, Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney
Dr Steven Lovell-Jones
Justice and Peace Promoter
133 Liverpool St Sydney 2000 Federation of Australian Buddhist Councils
Mr Kim Hollow
President
PO BOX 6479
Footscray West (Vic) 3012

UnitingCare NSW.ACT
Rev Harry J Herbert
Executive Director
Level 4
222 Pitt Street
Sydney
The Hindu Council of Australia
Prof. Nihal Singh Agar
Chairman
17 The Crescent
Homebush
NSW 2140
Islamic Council of NSW
Khaled Sukkarieh
Chairman
PO Box 423, Greenacre
NSW 2190
Australia Conference of Leaders of Religious Institutes in NSW [CLRI(NSW)]
Sister Sharon Price rsm
Executive Director
PO Box 259
(72 Rosebery Ave)
Rosebery NSW 1445

Friends of Refugees Of Eastern Europe
Rabbi Yoram Ulman
Judge, Jewish Ecclesiastic Court of Sydney
Past President, Rabbinical Council of NSW
Chabad House Bondi
25 O'Brien St
Bondi NSW 2026 Council Of Imams NSW
(Affiliated with Australian National Imams Council)
Tarek El-Bikai
Secretary
PO Box 145 Lakemba 2195
NSW, Australia

Australian Sangha Association
(representative body for monks and nuns of all Buddhist traditions)
Sujato Bhikkhu
Secretary
P.O. Box 132
Bundanoon NSW 2578
Churches Together NSW.ACT
(NSW Ecumenical Council )
Rev. Paul Swadling
Acting General Secretary
379 Kent St
Sydney 2000

A personal note from Donna Mulhearn

2010-11-21T21:53:00.000+10:30

Dear friends

It’s my birthday today (16th), and I would like to invite you to help me celebrate!

To be more specific there’s a gift I would love to receive above anything else: the chance to tell a story that urgently needs to be told, to give voice to those whose voices are rarely heard: the women and children of a dusty, war-torn Middle Eastern town struggling to survive a war that, for them, has never ended.

On the contrary, the war begins anew every day in the maternity ward of Fallujah City Hospital where gynaecologists say that on average three babies are born each day with severe deformities. That’s more than 1000 a year for what is now a relatively small town. Many babies are stillborn, others live a few hours, and the majority of those who survive will only live a few months such is the severity of their abnormalities. Fallujah cemetery is littered with tiny ‘baby’ graves. Others, who make it past their first birthday, will need intensive specialist care for the rest of their lives.

The medical recommendation of the gynaecologists to the women of Fallujah is simple: “just stop”. Stop having babies, stop falling pregnant because it is likely you will not give birth to a healthy baby.

These words carry a shocking implication: a whole generation of young women who will never be mothers, a whole generation of babies, little human beings, who will never see light, or laugh or feel love.

This is life now, in Fallujah - a once-thriving town the size of Newcastle or Wollongong. Once alive with growing families, bustling markets, ornate mosques, sporting fields, schools, industry and the famous ‘best falafel’ in all of Iraq.

Now the residents of this toxic, war-ravaged, virtual ghost-town are the ones who simply can’t afford to flee, or have nowhere else to go.

The dramatic rise in birth deformities in Fallujah began in 2005, a year after intense U.S military attacks on the city in April 2004 and again in November 2004. It is alleged that depleted uranium was used widely in the attacks as well as white phosphorous, and that the toxic nature of these substances and their subsequent contamination of the local eco-system, is the reason for the rise in birth abnormalities, as well as an increase in cancers and leukaemia amongst adults. This would seem a logical conclusion given the evidence we have on the impact of depleted uranium on human beings. But the U.S military has denied there is a problem, claiming there is no solid evidence of a link between its use of chemical weapons and the dramatic increase in birth deformities in Fallujah. It claims reports are anecdotal, that there are no accurate figures or research to respond to. So it refuses to respond - as does the World Health Organisation, despite pleading from Doctors, Iraqi and international human rights groups and medical NGOs around the world. At the same time, the military occupation makes it almost impossible for western researchers to go to Fallujah to do research. Despite this, one research team, led by UK scientist Prof Chris Busy, did get into the city and conducted a major survey, the results of which are confronting and demanding of a response by governments. The research, published this year in an international health journal, concluded that the birth defects and other health problems in Fallujah such as cancers and leukaemia are worse than in the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki following the use of atomic bombs there.

I repeat. The health problems in Fallujah are deemed worse than the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A copy of Prof Busby’s report can be found here:
www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/7/2828/pdf

News items and short docos on this issue can be found here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8549745.stm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFqyK8kB1Vk
You may have noticed this story has barely made it on to the radar of the Australian or U.S media. But I’m sure you agree it is a story that needs to be widely told and responded to with immediate action. The babies of Fallujah deserve justice and the women of Fallujah deserve hope.
That’s where you come into the picture. Dr Richard Hil, a semi-retired academic and author, and myself have decided to collaborate to tell the story of the babies of Fallujah from the point of view of the families themselves. We hope to produce a book, a documentary and resources to contribute to the world-wide campaign to ban depleted uranium weapons (DU) so that this can never happen again.

To do this we will need to go to Fallujah. The aim is to use the scientific data from Prof Busy and others, and humanise it through the stories of the children, the grief of the mothers, the struggle of the families and the views of the town elders. But, as you could imagine, getting into Fallujah will be a major logistical challenge, which is why we will need your help. The cost of the mission and the extra safety precautions we will need to take mean a very large budget that we cannot fund ourselves.

My first invitation to you is to help send Richard and I to Fallujah early next year to make this a reality. Together we can ensure this story is told. You are also invited to help with other needs for the campaign to ensure justice, accountability and an end to the use of DU weapons. We will need help with a website, lobbying of governments to achieve new U.N resolutions, distribution of information, graphic design, publicising the issues in your groups etc
More on that in due course, but first, for my birthday, you can give me the most useful present ever - please donate an amount that you can afford to an appeal that will support the logistics of this project: $20, $50 - if enough of you respond in a small way, it will be possible!
We believe this project can make an important contribution to the international campaign to ban depleted uranium. (We now have an international treaty banning cluster munitions; we can do the same for depleted uranium weapons). It can help ensure justice for Fallujah, and above all acknowledge the suffering of the people who are so often overlooked by our governments and corporate media. It will give us the chance, on behalf of all of you, to say “we are sorry, and we will work for change”.

For me this is personal. Many of you are aware of my intimate links with depleted uranium. My relationship with baby Noura, a DU baby I met in Baghdad in 2003 who was born with no arms and legs. She is just a torso and a head, but her smile and her energy has a profound effect on me. Then there was Arean: the girl from Basra I met in Baghdad Children’s hospital who was dying of leukaemia because of the use of depleted uranium in the 1991 Gulf War.
My interaction with her was powerful and sacred, something I will never forget. My book, Ordinary Courage, is dedicated to her memory because she helped me realise that all we have to do is what we can do. That will empower us when faced with shocking situations like this one.

I was present in Fallujah in April 2004 when the U.S attack was taking place and was an eye-witness to the massacre of civilians there.
And then there’s my exposure to depleted uranium during my time in Iraq which has affected my fertility options (explanation of this in the last section of my book).

The story of the Fallujah women is my story. Their babies are our babies.
Arean, a dying Iraqi girl, body riddled with leukaemia, gave me hope the day I met her because she taught me that although I could not save her, I should not cry for too long over what I cannot do. She encouraged me to think of what I can do....to think of who I am, and what I can actually do to contribute to change.

I am not a Doctor, but I have a notepad and camera. I am not a scientist but I can go to Fallujah, (I know the way), I can listen to the people there, I can help give them a voice. That’s what I can do.
And that’s just the start. With all of you, we’ll do much more than that.

Your pilgrim
Donna

PS: If you are able to contribute to my birthday wish, the bank account details are: Commonwealth Bank, a/c name: Donna Mulhearn – volunteer expenses, BSB: 062 181 a/c number: 1030 5704, or if you want to do the old fashioned cheque thing, reply to this email and I’ll send my address.

PPS: Dr Richard Hil is Honorary Associate in the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney. Richard has taught previously at Southern Cross University, Queensland University of Technology, University of the Sunshine Coast, James Cook University, and the University of York. He has published widely in the fields of criminology, child and family welfare, youth studies, and peace and conflict studies. He’s also a great guy with a big heart!
PPPS: More news soon on how to pressure the Australian government to support U.N resolutions which challenge the use of depleted uranium. At the last vote, they abstained, while 131 nations supported the resolution. The United States voted against the resolution. Why did we abstain?

PSx4: If you want to grab a copy of my book, you can now purchase one from me, so you don’t have to pay bookshop price ($32.95) rather my ‘mate’s’ price ($25). Just email back and I’ll post you out a copy, see www.ordinarycourage.org

PSx5: “When I saw her suffering it made me so depressed. I hated the world. I feel like I’m having a nervous breakdown. She stopped sleeping recently and cries with anger.” Mother of Baby Tiba from Fallujah, born with two heads, who has now passed away.

Interfaith Dialogue and Rabbi Ron Kronish

2010-11-16T23:01:00.001+10:30

Joshua Stanton
Co-editor, 'Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue'
Can Interfaith Dialogue Make a Difference in the Face of Middle East Setbacks?
For many, the end of the moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank feels devastating. Could it mean the end of the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians? Could it lead to another round of violence?
But for one rabbi, it is just another day of work. He has been making peace longer than most diplomats -- and arguably with greater success.
Rabbi Ron Kronish, Executive Director of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel (ICCI), has been living in Israel for 31 years and carries himself with the assuredness of someone who has experienced a great deal and will find a way, somehow, to overcome new obstacles.
Having arrived in Israel in the euphoric wake of the '67 War, in which Israel assured its own survival and overnight found itself to be one of the region's strongest military powers, he has seen the hope for an enduring diplomatic peace evaporate time and time again between Israelis and Palestinians and many of the nationalistic ideals of both peoples undone by war.
As a "Post-Zionist Zionist" who acknowledges many of Israel's national myths but takes great pride in his adopted country nonetheless, Kronish's identity and vocation have been shaped by the idea that there are just two options in the current conflict: You can "be ensconced in despair and stop watching the news" or "avoid 100 years of war and don't let them [Israelis and Palestinians] be enemies" -- at least person-to-person.
It is of little surprise that Kronish has not cultivated a "can do" so much as a "must do" personality. The ICCI was founded in the midst of the Persian Gulf War of 1991, and the two dozen founding members met in one of Jerusalem's seminaries with great gusto and gas masks in hand to formally launch it. Not even the threat of scud missiles from Saddam Hussein could dissuade them.
In many ways, that gathering has been symbolic of ICCI's work and Ron Kronish's outlook as its leader: Peace can only be made through hard-nosed efforts to make it happen on the ground. The time for fluffy dialogue had long passed. The time for a political solution may stretch on into the future. Now is the time for transformational gatherings that produce results for citizens, not just politicians.
One of the ICCI's flagship programs is the "Face to Face/Faith to Faith" initiative, run in partnership with Auburn Theological Seminary for high school students in and around Jerusalem. I had the chance to meet up with the some of its participants just after the 2009 Gaza War. The room, full of about a dozen cheerful Israeli and Palestinian high school students, contrasted with the grim political scene. The group's conversations that day centered on outreach to houses of worship in order to involve them in inter-religious work and volunteer efforts that would assist both Israeli and Palestinian communities.
The underlying determination of the group gradually became apparent as I grew to know its participants. Lighthearted conversations gave way to more serious discussions about how their group managed to stay together in spite of the Gaza War -- and in contrast to nearly every other interfaith group for Israeli and Palestinian youth. "If we were able to get through those times without hating each other, nothing can keep us from being friends," one student told me, with an intense smile on her face. She then went on to tell me how the group had grappled with the toughest, most personal issues of the war.
Several students dropped out of the program; many cried, raised their voices, or had to take a few moments to themselves. A number had friends or relatives in Gaza, while others had loved ones in the Israeli army or the south of Israel, which was impacted by ongoing rocket fire. But the program's organizers refused to ignore the issues and pushed the group to confront them head-on.
By engaging directly with the toughest topics of the time -- life and death, injustice, bad politics, theology, the media's spin -- students managed to dialogue their way through the war and emerge from it ready to lead their communities and work together. They spent the remainder of the year leading volunteer programs and demonstrating that even in the most infuriating moments of diplomacy and war, interfaith engagement and leadership development can endure. They must.
As I reflect on the recent, unsettling news about the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, I look to the example of Ron Kronish. Even when inspired to work for peace by the belief that "we are all part of God's creation," he has shown that it is the tough, up-front, determined dialogue among citizens that sustains the possibility of a lasting political accord. There is no choice but to continue on.

Kashmir’s Fruits of Discord By ARUNDHATI ROY

2010-11-14T15:27:00.000+10:30

Search All NYTimes.com
Published: November 8, 2010
A WEEK before he was elected in 2008, President Obama said that solving the dispute over Kashmir’s struggle for self-determination — which has led to three wars between India and Pakistan since 1947 — would be among his “critical tasks.” His remarks were greeted with consternation in India, and he has said almost nothing about Kashmir since then.
But on Monday, during his visit here, he pleased his hosts immensely by saying the United States would not intervene in Kashmir and announcing his support for India’s seat on the United Nations Security Council. While he spoke eloquently about threats of terrorism, he kept quiet about human rights abuses in Kashmir.
Whether Mr. Obama decides to change his position on Kashmir again depends on several factors: how the war in Afghanistan is going, how much help the United States needs from Pakistan and whether the government of India goes aircraft shopping this winter. (An order for 10 Boeing C-17 Globemaster III aircraft, worth $5.8 billion, among other huge business deals in the pipeline, may ensure the president’s silence.) But neither Mr. Obama’s silence nor his intervention is likely to make the people in Kashmir drop the stones in their hands.
I was in Kashmir 10 days ago, in that beautiful valley on the Pakistani border, home to three great civilizations — Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist. It’s a valley of myth and history. Some believe that Jesus died there; others that Moses went there to find the lost tribe. Millions worship at the Hazratbal shrine, where a few days a year a hair of the Prophet Muhammad is displayed to believers.
Now Kashmir, caught between the influence of militant Islam from Pakistan and Afghanistan, America’s interests in the region and Indian nationalism (which is becoming increasingly aggressive and “Hinduized”), is considered a nuclear flash point. It is patrolled by more than half a million soldiers and has become the most highly militarized zone in the world.
The atmosphere on the highway between Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar, and my destination, the little apple town of Shopian in the south, was tense. Groups of soldiers were deployed along the highway, in the orchards, in the fields, on the rooftops and outside shops in the little market squares. Despite months of curfew, the “stone pelters” calling for “azadi” (freedom), inspired by the Palestinian intifada, were out again. Some stretches of the highway were covered with so many of these stones that you needed an S.U.V. to drive over them.
Fortunately the friends I was with knew alternative routes down the back lanes and village roads. The “longcut” gave me the time to listen to their stories of this year’s uprising. The youngest, still a boy, told us that when three of his friends were arrested for throwing stones, the police pulled out their fingernails — every nail, on both hands.
For three years in a row now, Kashmiris have been in the streets, protesting what they see as India’s violent occupation. But the militant uprising against the Indian government that began with the support of Pakistan 20 years ago is in retreat. The Indian Army estimates that there are fewer than 500 militants operating in the Kashmir Valley today. The war has left 70,000 dead and tens of thousands debilitated by torture. Many, many thousands have “disappeared.” More than 200,000 Kashmiri Hindus have fled the valley. Though the number of militants has come down, the number of Indian soldiers deployed remains undiminished.
But India’s military domination ought not to be confused with a political victory. Ordinary people armed with nothing but their fury have risen up against the Indian security forces. A whole generation of young people who have grown up in a grid of checkpoints, bunkers, army camps and interrogation centers, whose childhood was spent witnessing “catch and kill” operations, whose imaginations are imbued with spies, informers, “unidentified gunmen,” intelligence operatives and rigged elections, has lost its patience as well as its fear. With an almost mad courage, Kashmir’s young have faced down armed soldiers and taken back their streets.
Since April, when the army killed three civilians and then passed them off as “terrorists,” masked stone throwers, most of them students, have brought life in Kashmir to a grinding halt. The Indian government has retaliated with bullets, curfew and censorship. Just in the last few months, 111 people have been killed, most of them teenagers; more than 3,000 have been wounded and 1,000 arrested.
But still they come out, the young, and throw stones. They don’t seem to have leaders or belong to a political party. They represent themselves. And suddenly the second-largest standing army in the world doesn’t quite know what to do. The Indian government doesn’t know whom to negotiate with. And many Indians are slowly realizing they have been lied to for decades. The once solid consensus on Kashmir suddenly seems a little fragile.
I WAS in a bit of trouble the morning we drove to Shopian. A few days earlier, at a public meeting in Delhi, I said that Kashmir was disputed territory and, contrary to the Indian government’s claims, it couldn’t be called an “integral” part of India. Outraged politicians and news anchors demanded that I be arrested for sedition. The government, terrified of being seen as “soft,” issued threatening statements, and the situation escalated. Day after day, on prime-time news, I was being called a traitor, a white-collar terrorist and several other names reserved for insubordinate women. But sitting in that car on the road to Shopian, listening to my friends, I could not bring myself to regret what I had said in Delhi.
We were on our way to visit a man called Shakeel Ahmed Ahangar. The previous day he had come all the way to Srinagar, where I had been staying, to press me, with an urgency that was hard to ignore, to visit Shopian.
I first met Shakeel in June 2009, only a few weeks after the bodies of Nilofar, his 22-year-old wife, and Asiya, his 17-year-old sister, were found lying a thousand yards apart in a shallow stream in a high-security zone — a floodlit area between army and state police camps. The first postmortem report confirmed rape and murder. But then the system kicked in. New autopsy reports overturned the initial findings and, after the ugly business of exhuming the bodies, rape was ruled out. It was declared that in both cases the cause of death was drowning. Protests shut Shopian down for 47 days, and the valley was convulsed with anger for months. Eventually it looked as though the Indian government had managed to defuse the crisis. But the anger over the killings has magnified the intensity of this year’s uprising.
Shakeel wanted us to visit him in Shopian because he was being threatened by the police for speaking out, and hoped our visit would demonstrate that people even outside of Kashmir were looking out for him, that he was not alone.
It was apple season in Kashmir and as we approached Shopian we could see families in their orchards, busily packing apples into wooden crates in the slanting afternoon light. I worried that a couple of the little red-cheeked children who looked so much like apples themselves might be crated by mistake. The news of our visit had preceded us, and a small knot of people were waiting on the road.
Shakeel’s house is on the edge of the graveyard where his wife and sister are buried. It was dark by the time we arrived, and there was a power failure. We sat in a semicircle around a lantern and listened to him tell the story we all knew so well. Other people entered the room. Other terrible stories poured out, ones that are not in human rights reports, stories about what happens to women who live in remote villages where there are more soldiers than civilians. Shakeel’s young son tumbled around in the darkness, moving from lap to lap. “Soon he’ll be old enough to understand what happened to his mother,” Shakeel said more than once.
Just when we rose to leave, a messenger arrived to say that Shakeel’s father-in-law — Nilofar’s father — was expecting us at his home. We sent our regrets; it was late and if we stayed longer it would be unsafe for us to drive back.
Minutes after we said goodbye and crammed ourselves into the car, a friend’s phone rang. It was a journalist colleague of his with news for me: “The police are typing up the warrant. She’s going to be arrested tonight.” We drove in silence for a while, past truck after truck being loaded with apples. “It’s unlikely,” my friend said finally. “It’s just psy-ops.”
But then, as we picked up speed on the highway, we were overtaken by a car full of men waving us down. Two men on a motorcycle asked our driver to pull over. I steeled myself for what was coming. A man appeared at the car window. He had slanting emerald eyes and a salt-and-pepper beard that went halfway down his chest. He introduced himself as Abdul Hai, father of the murdered Nilofar.
“How could I let you go without your apples?” he said. The bikers started loading two crates of apples into the back of our car. Then Abdul Hai reached into the pockets of his worn brown cloak, and brought out an egg. He placed it in my palm and folded my fingers over it. And then he placed another in my other hand. The eggs were still warm. “God bless and keep you,” he said, and walked away into the dark. What greater reward could a writer want?
I wasn’t arrested that night. Instead, in what is becoming a common political strategy, officials outsourced their displeasure to the mob. A few days after I returned home, the women’s wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (the right-wing Hindu nationalist opposition) staged a demonstration outside my house, calling for my arrest. Television vans arrived in advance to broadcast the event live. The murderous Bajrang Dal, a militant Hindu group that, in 2002, spearheaded attacks against Muslims in Gujarat in which more than a thousand people were killed, have announced that they are going to “fix” me with all the means at their disposal, including by filing criminal charges against me in different courts across the country.
Indian nationalists and the government seem to believe that they can fortify their idea of a resurgent India with a combination of bullying and Boeing airplanes. But they don’t understand the subversive strength of warm, boiled eggs.
Arundhati Roy is the author of the novel “The God of Small Things” and, most recently, the essay collection “Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers.”

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on November 9, 2010, on page A35 of the New York edition.

Pax Christi Youth Forum Encourages Your Support of Arms Down! for Shared Security. (03/09/2010)

2010-09-21T12:26:00.001+09:30

The Global Youth Network of Religions for Peace is advancing a United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution that asks member states to cut military spending by 10% and redirect those funds toward the achievement of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The campaign has 4 million signatures and has a goal of 50 million before October 2010.

At the end of the campaign, the petition will be presented to the United Nations Secretary General and senior Head of States.

To support these efforts, Pax Christi International is disseminating the sign-on letter of the Arms Down! Campaign for Shared Security.

Please consider adding your name to the below petition.

The link to the Petition is http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs022/1103498098783/archive/1103578429922.html

A muted 'victory' points to similar exit from Afghanistan

2010-08-31T22:00:00.001+09:30

Editorial, The Age, August 30, 2010

THE US is on the eve of ending combat operations in Iraq. After 2721 days of war, in which 4734 coalition soldiers and 9961 Iraqis serving alongside them died, such a moment might in other circumstances be a cause of excitement and celebration. A year-long withdrawal of US troops and equipment leaves an ''advise and assist'' force of 50,000, less than a third of the ''surge'' peak of 2007. Yet when President Barack Obama stands in the Oval Office this week to declare the end of combat, the occasion will be haunted by memories of his predecessor's premature claim of victory back in May 2003.

In contrast to George Bush's declaration, there will be no fighter jet landing on an aircraft carrier, no banner declaring ''Mission Accomplished'' after barely six weeks of war. There will probably be no repeat of the declaration that ''Iraq is free'', marking ''one victory in a war on terror that began on September 11, 2001''. Mr Obama will not draw the false link between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attacks, which the Bush administration drew upon to justify going to war on the false pretext that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Instead, Mr Obama has overseen a reassessment of the mission in order to fulfil an election promise to bring combat troops home from Iraq, as did the Rudd government in June 2008. If the job is done, it bears little resemblance to the original 2003 goals for ''Operation Iraqi Freedom''.

Far from being established as a regional beacon of democracy, Iraq and its people fear what lies ahead. Almost six months after national elections, a government has yet to be formed and the two main political parties have suspended talks. As the US troops left, co-ordinated bombings across the country killed scores of people and wounded hundreds. According to Iraqi officials, 535 people were killed in July, the bloodiest month since May 2008.

The attacks have been blamed on al-Qaeda terrorists who, although not active in Iraq under the Sunni-dominated dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, are now a dangerously destabilising influence in a Shiite-Sunni power struggle. While Iraqis' courageous support for elections may yet lead to a more stable, pluralistic democracy, which serves as a counterweight to theocratic Iran, the Shiite majority could just as likely align Baghdad with Tehran once the last US troops leave by an agreed December 2011 deadline.

With combat operations at an end in Iraq, the even longer war in Afghanistan is due for reassessment. ''Operation Enduring Freedom'' came under the same rhetorical banner as the Iraq war - although the architects of the September 11 atrocities were at least to be found in Afghanistan. Victory was similarly declared too soon as the US turned its attention to Iraq, at great cost to the mission in Afghanistan. Australian forces withdrew in late 2002, only to have to return in September 2005. Each year since 2003, the annual death toll of coalition soldiers has greatly increased. Of the 2030 killed, 462 have died this year. Twenty-one Australians have been killed - 10 in the past 11 weeks.

In the US and Australia, the loss of lives, including more than 100,000 civilians, and the costs, well over $US1 trillion, have turned the public against wars that were meant to last months, not years. Defence Minister John Faulkner has conceded that recent losses would ''cause some to question why we are in Afghanistan''. However, Labor and the Coalition speak as one in asserting that the mission is vital to Australia's security and that the Taliban must be defeated to ensure Afghanistan is not a base for terrorism. They have at last agreed, though, to a proper debate on a deployment that could continue for years. Mr Obama's timetable for withdrawal from next July has been challenged by his commander David Petraeus, who says the current troop surge must be given time to work. In that case, the mission will have to be better explained and justified to a war-weary public. What exactly does ''until the job is done'' mean?

The prospect of criminal charges against Defence Force commandos is a reminder that this is an ugly and unconventional war. Military force alone will not bring victory, nor is it the best way to deal with the shifting global threat of terrorism. Without a political breakthrough, which also depends on an increasingly unstable Pakistan, the war could last indefinitely. Reining in corruption, achieving basic competency in government and the military and creating enough stability to enable civil society to function would rate as a success.

It is naive to think that when troops withdraw they will leave behind a country that has been liberated from repression, the drug trade and feudal warlords. The coalition forces that invaded in October 2001 are still obliged to restore a level of order. The result is unlikely to live up to the original mission goals, nor compensate for the human and financial costs of the war. As in Iraq, we may get barely a whiff of victory. A realistic reappraisal of Afghanistan - in short, more honesty about our options - is needed to develop an exit strategy that does not amount to defeat. Time, money and public patience are running out.

Source: The Age

Let's debate Afghanistan, but give us the facts first

2010-08-30T20:14:00.002+09:30

Tom Hyland
Sunday Age, August 29, 2010
Where there is no information, there is no hope of a meaningful discussion.

IT HAS taken nine years, the deaths of 21 Australian soldiers and a hung parliament, but now our politicians agree: they will have a debate on Afghanistan. The Greens have long called for one; so have former and serving soldiers. Now Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott reluctantly concur.

But now comes the hard part, because many of those agreeing to a debate want the discussion to reach the contradictory conclusions they cling to. The Greens want the troops out now. Gillard and Abbott say any debate will not divert them from their commitment to the war. The soldiers who want a debate appear to be the only ones with open minds, even though they have the most at stake.

If the debate is to go beyond the reiteration of entrenched views, it would help if the government gave us some unadorned facts about what our troops are doing, why they are doing it, and whether it has any chance of success. The last point is the crucial one.

While media commentators say a rising death toll is undermining popular support for Australia's commitment, the evidence is that it is the perception we are not winning - not that Australians are dying - that is the key factor in the war's unpopularity. This disenchantment, reflected in opinion polls, comes despite strenuous efforts by governments and defence officials to restrict the flow of information about our role in the conflict.

An American academic, in an analysis published by the US Army War College, of all places, has tracked the drop in public support for the war in Australia and five other countries with troops in Afghanistan. The academic, Charles Miller, traces declining Australian support back to 2007, when Australia had lost just four soldiers, when the conflict barely rated in public discussion and when it had bi-partisan political backing.

This is the issue governments fail to address. Instead, there is a constant refrain that we are making ''progress'' in our stated aim, which has settled on training Afghan troops so they can take charge of security and we can leave. We do not know what this confidence is based on, nor do we know how politicians decided to cap Australia's contribution at 1500 troops, a number the government says is ''about right''. The politicians dodge the question by saying they're acting on the advice of the generals. Generals, however, operate within politically imposed parameters.

Without facts free of spin, any debate will take place in an information vacuum. We don't know how the government settled on troop numbers, nor is there any detailed explanation of the work the soldiers are doing, the analysis that underpins it and how this will meet the stated aim.

If the promised debate raises questions for the government, it poses diabolical political and ethical issues for the Greens, soon to gain the balance of power in the Senate.

As they lose their political impotence, they will have to ditch their assumed purity.

The Greens' stated policy is for the immediate withdrawal of troops. Beyond that, there is wishful thinking. NSW Green Lee Rhiannon, for instance, reckons our military budget could be spent on aid programs for Afghan women and children. Yes, but who will deliver that aid when the Taliban think aid workers are legitimate targets, as are girls at schools built by foreign aid money?

There are other questions for those advocating unilateral withdrawal. It might not trouble the Greens, but where would it leave our relationship with Barack Obama, or our commitment to the 46 other countries with troops in Afghanistan?

And what about the Afghans who have worked with us? Do we abandon them?

Independent Andrew Wilkie has highlighted the dilemmas in staying, and going.

''It is clear,'' he says, ''that on one hand there needs to be foreign forces in Afghanistan to create the stability to allow the government to establish itself. But on the other hand, it's the very presence of those forces which is fuelling this ongoing war, mostly by nationalists, not by terrorists.

''Ultimately, we have to get out as quickly as we can and let Afghanistan find its own natural political level and a lot of people will die in the process.''

Our soldiers will not have a say in the debate, even if we know what some of them think. Writing on the Lowy Institute's blog in July, an anonymous soldier lamented the failure of politicians and defence chiefs to spell out a detailed, public policy underpinning the campaign.

''That Australians neither understand the war nor why its soldiers' sacrifice is needed in Afghanistan is shameful,'' he wrote.

''The government, ADF and media are all to blame for this ignorance. If we are to risk life and go to war, the policy must be properly articulated. As it stands, the state of Afghan discourse in Australia is emblematic of our commitment to the war effort and Afghan people: token.''

Tom Hyland is The Sunday Age's international editor.

Compassion needed for homelessness, says Social Justice Council

2010-08-09T22:12:00.000+09:30

The Australian Catholic Social Justice Council has called on political parties to address homelessness in Australia with commitment and compassion, saying methods used to forcibly remove an Indigenous community last week raised questions about the current political resolve.

The Council's chairman, Bishop Christopher Saunders Bishop Saunders, said in a statement: "National Homeless Persons' Week provides an opportunity for the major parties to commit to making a real difference for the 105,000 Australians who are homeless on any given night.

"Support is particularly needed for communities throughout the nation where homelessness is reaching crisis proportions.

"Last week I witnessed the forced removal of Indigenous people from the sand dunes of Kennedy Hill in Broome. In the process, possessions such as tents, blankets and food and medication were taken away.

"To witness homeless people losing the only shelter they had makes me question Australia's resolve to address homelessness.

"When I think of how Indigenous Australians are already over-represented in every category of homelessness, the events of last week highlight the need for a more targeted approach to addressing homelessness for particular groups who are most affected.

"At the very least, a practical response to homelessness must bring a level of compassion that ensures the dignity of vulnerable people is respected at all times.

"The strategy of moving people on is no solution at all. An important challenge for Australian communities is to be mindful that those people who are moved on may be 'out of sight' but they remain in great need.
"In this National Homeless Persons' Week, it is time to remember that every citizen has the right to shelter offering security and providing the basis for participation in society," Bishop Saunders concluded.

Young Palestinians With Cameras Shooting Back

2010-08-05T08:16:00.001+09:30

CounterPunch, August 3, 2010, DON DUNCAN

Every Friday, the slingshot-wielding boys, or shabab, of the West Bank village of Ni’lin protest at Israel’s separation wall, which has deprived the village of 750 acres of farmland. But among the shabab are other youngsters with a different weapon – video cameras.

For the past three years, Btselem, the Israeli human rights NGO, has provided cameras and training to young Palestinians as part of its camera distribution project, to collect video evidence of abuses and misconduct by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and Israeli settlers in the West Bank. There are 150 such cameras all over the West Bank and Gaza, and most of the footage captured – 1,500 hours so far – ends on the floor-to-ceiling archive shelves of the Jerusalem office of Yoav Gross, who directs the NGO’s video project.

Footage captured by Btselem’s volunteers has been key evidence in Israeli court rulings in favor of Palestinian plaintiffs. The presence of cameras, now on both Palestinian and Israeli sides, has deterred violence and abuse. But three years after launching the project, Btselem has seen another, unintended consequence. ‘People started to take this tool, the video camera, and use it as a way to express themselves, to tell stories,’ said Gross. ‘We didn’t train them to do that. We trained them to document human rights violations. But pretty soon we got the sense that this can be a powerful tool for them to empower themselves.’

What has emerged is a generation of young Palestinian filmmakers, at ease with the camera and fluent in editing and the language of visual storytelling. Arafat Kanaan, 17, stood back at the Ni’lin protest one recent Friday afternoon. He had been detained by the IDF the previous week and decided to leave his camera at home and sit this one out, obscuring half of his face with a piece of cardboard. Though he has to worry about IDF cameras, he says: ‘The camera is like a weapon for us. It can show everyone in the world what the truth is.’

Arafat’s sister Salam, 19, was a volunteer who captured IDF misconduct – shooting a handcuffed Palestinian detainee in Ni’lin – that led to the successful prosecution of an Israeli soldier. Together with Salam and Rasheed Amira, 17, Arafat has set up Ni’lin Media Group, which produces weekly video packages of each protest and longer-form documentary videos on life under occupation. He posts them to the group’s YouTube channel and screens the films for the community on Ni’lin’s central square. ‘We collect ourselves into a group because it gives us the power to continue the work and to train others,’ said Arafat.

The evolution from documentation to storytelling is evident elsewhere. Diaa Hadad, 17, a Palestinian who lives in the Jewish-settled H2 sector of Hebron, wanted to show the effects of settlement and IDF sanctions on Palestinian movement, and did so through a one-minute film called H1H2. The film is a split screen. On the right is the bustling market street of Bab al-Zawiya, in the Palestinian-dominated H1 sector of the town. On the left is al-Shuhada street in H2, once also a busy market for Palestinians but now empty due to Israeli restrictions and settler violence. ‘I made this film to show the people outside what is happening here,’ Diaa said, outside HEB2, a community media centre for Palestinians. ‘We are living here and a lot of incidents occur here and nobody knows what is happening, even people from Bab al-Zawiya, two kilometres away, in H1.’

Behind him lay the landscape of occupation he tries to document: army CCTV cameras that silently monitor the contested territory, IDF watchtowers and the barbed wires of settlement demarcation. ‘We give the audience the full picture of what is happening here in the West Bank – violations, normal life, occupation, normal life – and what is the connection between the occupation and normal life. This is very important,’ said Issa Amro, 30, director of HEB2, which, using Hebron’s new video-adept youth, has launched a community television service live on www.heb2.tv.

‘If you keep showing settlers throwing stones at a certain family, then you don’t know how this family is living,’ said Amro. ‘If you show how this family is living, you become connected to them in another way and you care about them personally.’ This philosophy is driving grassroots filmmaking in Gaza, a territory with no Israeli army or settler presence but challenged by the siege that prevents information from leaving the territory.

‘The films we are making in Gaza are so important because the world media is not focused on the details on the ground, the real life here,’ said Mohammed al-Majdalawi, 22, by telephone from Gaza. He recently made a short documentary about the Gazan hip-hop scene.

‘There are no Israeli journalists allowed to go inside [the Strip],’ said Yoav Gross, ‘which basically leaves the Israeli public with a very shallow image of what goes on inside Gaza. This sense of a very human existence in Gaza has kind of disappeared from Israeli discourse.’ That’s starting to change. Al-Majdalawi’s work was one of five films from Gaza made available recently by Israel’s number one news site Ynet.com, used by a million Israelis every day. Other films on the site showed the child workers of Gaza’s supply tunnels, the video game craze that has gripped the strip, and a play camp for children.

Back at the wall in Ni’lin, the protest was as expected. Like every Friday, the shabab poised themselves behind the wall while the protestors made their way through an opening in it to yell and wave banners at the IDF stationed behind jeeps on the other side of a barbed wire fence. Then the shabab launched their barrage of rocks, whirring and whizzing over the seven-meter high wall.

During the first and second intifadas, the shabab became a dramatic manifestation of the Samson and Goliath proportions of the wider struggle. Today, the ‘video shabab’ compete for attention and status.

After a few minutes of orders in Hebrew, delivered from the other side of the wall, the IDF sent over round after round of tear gas, scattering the shabab and the activists gathered up the rocky hills. The video volunteers put on their gas masks and kept operating their cameras, despite the haze.

Don Duncan is a freelance journalist based in Beirut.

This article appears in the August edition of Le Monde Diplomatique, whose English language edition can be found at mondediplo.com. This full text appears by agreement with Le Monde Diplomatique. CounterPunch features one or two articles from LMD every month.

The human face of homelessness MATTHEW COX National Times, July 30, 2010

2010-08-04T21:50:00.001+09:30

I first met K not long after I began working at the Red Cross. She was 18 and a participant at a crisis support service for young people living on the streets. K ran away from home in her early teens to escape the worst things that can happen to a child at the hands of their parents.

When you first hit the streets, young people tell me, you spend your first nights terrified. The terror and the sadness and the hurt over the things that drove you there in the first place never really go away. Everyone on the streets is hurting, that's what one young man tells me.

I find that people who live on the streets long for the same things I long for. Someone to love, something they can do well and take pride in, something that says they are unique and valued and have a place in the world. No matter how trampled they feel, no matter how desperate or brutal life on the streets can be, nothing seems able to extinguish those elemental human desires.

Today I received some good news. I hadn't heard of K for some time. Today I hear she has not only moved off the streets, but she has got a job and bought a house. I marvel at what she has already crammed into her life at just 22. She has guts and resilience I fear I will never have. Doing my sort of job you occasionally see the worst there is to see in life. But you also get to see the best. Today's news is the best. It keeps you going.

M's story is similar but different. A loving home, a quiet suburban childhood, but things went awry in her teenage years. Wild partying turned into drug dependence. Mental health problems set in and things unravelled. A few years on the streets and a few years climbing back see M with her own landscaping business. I'm talking to her about her newly acquired bobcat driving skills. More news in the "best" category.

J's story is perhaps most compelling of all. She wound up on the streets at 15 and spent three decades of her life there. Now, approaching 50, she wants something different. From somewhere deep she dredges up the motivation to give a different path a go. Somehow she finds enough strength to break from her peer group of long-term streeties and risks going it alone. After 30 years sleeping rough she has lost her family and knows no other life. She places her trust in a group of my colleagues and they help her get some money together and find her a small flat. It's a high wire act. One slip and she'll fall again. But against the odds she makes it work. She sticks at it. She's a reliable tenant and she starts to make plans for a better life. It is a heart-stopping triumph.

These stories are everywhere. But our community has the knowledge and the resources to end homelessness in this country. Collectively we know what to do. We know that access to secure accommodation – bundled with the right kinds of support and sustained for a reasonable period of time — gets results. People with even the most challenging life histories can be housed and develop a productive focus for their life.

We simply need to scale up our efforts to eliminate homelessness in Australia. We need to focus on the task and do the things we know work. With the right planning and persistence, children being born today will inherit a country free from homelessness.

Unrealistic? In the year of my grandmother's birth, 1908, it wasn't uncommon for men to die before they reached 60 and only a handful of children attended high school. High-schooling for girls was seen as a wild fantasy. Today we are closing in on universal completion of Year 12 and life spans have increased about a third to more than 80. These are the staggering achievements of the 20th century. These are the impossible dreams of my grandmother's generation.

They are dreams that didn't come cheap. They required a massive mobilisation of resources and the development of vast systems to support better education and health. But we saw the value and were happy to spend more than half of all state expenditure on those aims.

It costs far more to allow homelessness to persist than to end it. Homeless people are super-users of government services. The bill for their interactions with hospital emergency wards, psychiatric services, ambulance, police, courts, prison, child safety and the like has been calculated variously at between $60,000 and $260,000 a year. If there was a government frequent flyer program, they'd be double-platinum members.

It costs on average one-10th of those figures per head to provide the support to lift people out of homelessness for good. The national saving would be between $5 billion and $10 billion a year.

What to do next: build on the valuable work of the federal government's white paper on homelessness and map out a 20-year plan to end homelessness in Australia. Firm up the economic case for ending homelessness, so the value for money question is conclusively answered. Then roll out resourcing for the support services required in three-year cycles to build capacity steadily, learning from each success. Persist until the mission is accomplished.

We are perhaps the first generation of Australians to have the knowledge and the opportunity to end homelessness in our country. Let's shoulder that load and give the gift of a country free from homelessness to our children.

Matthew Cox is Red Cross Queensland community services group manager. National Homeless Person Week starts today.

Source: theage.com.au

Where Is Haiti’s Bailout? - Isabel MacDonald

2010-07-14T08:37:00.000+09:30

CommonDreams.org July 13, 2010

After the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, Western leaders announced bold blueprints for building a ‘New Haiti.’ This reconstruction, they emphasized, would be ‘Haitian-led,’ based firmly on the principle of respect for ‘Haitian sovereignty’ and carried out through ‘full and continued participation‘ by Haitians, ‘consistent with the vision of the Haitian people and government.’ At the March 31 International Donors Conference Towards a New Future for Haiti at the UN headquarters in NYC, nearly 10 billion dollars were pledged for Haiti's recovery. Nicholas Sarkozy -- the first French president to visit Haiti since the latter won its independence from French colonial rule -- proclaimed during his historic February 2010 trip to Port-au-Prince, ‘International aid must be massive and be there for the long term.’

‘Now is the time to step up our investment in Haiti,’ Clinton reiterated in April at an Inter-American Development Bank meeting in Washington, D.C. Yet six months after the earthquake, the plan for a ‘New Future for Haiti’ (a ‘Haitian-led’ effort which is curiously being funded under World Bank oversight, through a commission whose 20 voting board members include only seven Haitians) seems remote indeed.

A partial index of the West's ‘humanitarian efforts’ in Haiti so far:

Amount pledged for Haiti's reconstruction over the following 18 months at the March 31 UN conference: $5,300,000,000
Percentage of this amount that has been paid: 1.9
Amount of pledged U.S. bilateral search and rescue assistance to Haiti that was delivered in the wake of the earthquake: $0
Value of the no-bid contract the U.S. government awarded the private prison group GEO in the month after the earthquake:$260,589
Ratio of U.S. pledges for Haiti's reconstruction to Venezuelan pledges: 1:2
Value of aid the French government has promised Haiti through pledged contributions to UN agencies, NGOS and the Red Cross: $180 million
Quantity of this aid that has been delivered: $0
Cost of the French secretary of state for overseas development's travel via private jet to a conference on aid for Haiti: $143,000
Estimated number of Haitians who remain homeless after the earthquake: 1,500,000
Amount that has been collected for Haiti relief by U.S. charities: $1,300,000,000
Number of Haitians without even tents or tarps for shelter: 232,130
Haiti's global ranking in terms of the number of NGOs operating in the nation, measured globally on a per-capita-basis: #1
Haiti's global NGO-per-capita ranking before the earthquake: #1
Ratio of Haitian-produced rice to U.S.-imported rice consumed in Haiti in 1985: 22:1
Ratio of Haitian to US-produced rice consumed in Haiti in 2000, 5 years after an IMF structural adjustment program went into effect reducing rice import tariffs: 1:2
Value of USAID's current contract with a subsidiary of the parent company of American Rice Inc., the corporation that is considered to have most benefited from the demise of Haitian rice production: $126,000,000
Value of total French humanitarian assistance to Haiti since the earthquake: $35,956,408
Estimated value today of the compensation Haiti paid France for lost French slave trade profits after Haiti, a former French slave colony, won independence: $40,000,000,000

Isabel MacDonald is a Montreal-based freelance journalist. She can be reached at isabelmacdonald1 at gmail.co. Follow her on Twitter: www.twitter.com/isabelmacdo

Race card is a great, big attack on everything that makes us great Adele Horin,

2010-07-04T15:28:00.000+09:30

Sydney Morning Herald, July 3, 2010

With Kevin Rudd dispatched and the ‘great, big tax on everything’ defanged as an election issue, Tony Abbott's firepower will be aimed squarely on the issue of refugees. It will be his last straw, and he will clutch it. Once again Australia faces the ugly prospect of an election that will plumb the depths of xenophobia, just as in 2001.

The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, with her repeated references to Australia as a ‘sanctuary’ (for those of us safely here) gives no early sign of taking a principled stand to change the rhetoric or assuage Australians' fears about the ‘boat people’.

The fears about refugees are irrational in light of the small numbers of asylum seekers who hope to call Australia home; and in light of Australia's proud record of multicultural harmony. There is a curious disjunction between the racism that lies latent, ready to be whipped up by opportunistic politicians, and the civility and everyday rubbing along of all the diverse people in our nation.

Australia is the most cosmopolitan country in the developed world, research by the UTS academic Jock Collins has shown. We have more immigrants per capita and from more diverse sources. In Sydney, 58 per cent of people are first or second generation migrants. People from all over the world live here, and most of the time - the Cronulla riot notwithstanding - they get along pretty well. You just have to lunch in the food hall at the Bankstown shopping centre, as I did this week, to see both the diversity and the harmony. From the wearers of turbans and burqas to those in blue jeans and crop tops everyone was united in the great Australian pastimes of shopping and eating ‘ethnic’ food.

This is the irony of Australia's response to the boat people. Many Australians, in their enclaves, never meet a refugee or recent migrant. But traditionally those who do are polite, accepting, or at least benign, and newcomers have, over time, felt welcome and fitted in. That is why almost 90 per cent of migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds told Monash University researchers last year that they felt they belonged here. They believed even more strongly than the rest of the population, that Australia is a ‘land of economic opportunity where in the end hard work brings a better life’.

My mother, now 82, has been teaching English to refugees in their homes for 10 years, and, being Jewish, was extremely nervous at the start about Muslims, having never met one. Now after having taught several people from Sudan, Syria and Somalia, she realises there are ones she likes and ones she doesn't, and a couple she has loved, including her current student, a mother of two from Sudan, who spent some of her small budget last week to buy my mother a dressing gown for her birthday. My mother won't hear a bad word about Muslims, or refugees, knowing you can't generalise.

Yet this success story, repeated over and over among ordinary people, is a dirty little secret instead of a proud boast. Political leaders shy away from accentuating the positive. They recoil from emphasising that Australians have done a pretty good job in accepting, helping, and accommodating waves of migrants and refugees, and the nation is economically and socially better for it. John Howard stoked the fires of anxiety about terrorism, disease and difference, and it is hard to put the evil genie back in the bottle.

Yet fears about asylum seekers are irrational because of the small numbers involved. Last year Australia received 6206 applications for asylum, according to 2009 Global Trends, a recent report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In comparison, South Africa received more than 220,000 asylum applications, the Republic of Congo received nearly 96,000, France 42,000, Malaysia 40,000 and Canada 34,000. Indeed 32 nations received more applications for asylum than did Australia; on a per capita basis we ranked 41st; and relative to national GDP we were 71st.

It is not that tens of thousands are clamouring to come here - about 3400 have arrived by boat this year - and compared to countries like Pakistan and Iran, with porous borders, and more than 2.7 million refugees in camps between them, our boat people problem is minor. Last year just 3441 asylum seekers were given refugee status in Australia, a number so small it amounts to about 1 per cent of the total immigration intake for that year. They would not be noticed.

The hysteria is utterly disproportionate. And though the numbers of boats are relatively few, it will not be so easy to stop them. Australia is part of the global community, and, like it or not, a world experiencing turmoil, war, and persecution will send millions across the globe looking for safety. A small number is bound to come our way.

The xenophobia the Howard government unleashed in 2001 to help it win an election has left its mark. Another race-based election campaign might be Australia's last straw, inflicting permanent harm on our social cohesion, and unpicking the work of generations.

The most cosmopolitan county in the world lacks a leader who will defend its honourable record as a welcoming multicultural country, rich enough to be generous rather than afraid.

No Nukes/No Empire: The Abolition of Nuclear Weapons Requires the End of the U.S. Empire

2010-06-16T22:10:00.002+09:30

by Robert Jensen

CommonDreams.org June 15, 2010
[A version of this essay was delivered to the ‘Think outside the Bomb’ event in Austin, TX, on June 14, 2010.]

If we are serious about the abolition of nuclear weapons, we have to place the abolition of the U.S. empire at the center of our politics.

That means working toward a world free of nuclear weapons demands we not only critique the reactionary wing of the U.S. power structure, the Bushes and Cheneys and Rumsfelds -- call them the reckless hawks. A serious commitment to a future free of nuclear weapons demands critique of moderate wing, the Obamas and Bidens and Clintons -- call them the reasonable hawks. The former group is psychotic, while the latter is merely cynical. After eight years of reckless reactionary psychotics, it's easy to be lulled into a false sense of security by reasonable moderate cynics. But we should remember that a hawk is a hawk.

The next step is asking whose interests are advanced by the hawks. Even though in the post-World War II era the hawks have sometimes differed on strategy and tactics, they have defended the same economic system: a predatory corporate capitalism. Let's call those folks the vultures. Different groupings of hawks might be associated with different groupings of vultures, giving the appearance of serious political conflict within the elite, but what they have in common is much more important than their differences. The political empire of the contemporary United States serves the corporate empires that dominate not only the domestic but the global economy, and it all depends on U.S. military power, of which the nuclear arsenal is one component.

George W. Bush was the smirking frat-boy face of the U.S. empire. Barack Obama is the smiling smart-guy face of the U.S. empire. Whoever is at the helm, the U.S. political/economic/military empire remains in place, shaky at the moment, but still the single greatest threat to justice and peace on the planet. Any serious project to rid the world of the particular threat of nuclear weapons has to come to terms with the more general threat of the empire.

We shouldn't expect our leaders, Republican or Democrat, to agree with that assessment of course. And they don't. Here's a paragraph from the Obama administration's 2010 Nuclear Posture Review:

The conditions that would ultimately permit the United States and others to give up their nuclear weapons without risking greater international instability and insecurity are very demanding. Among those conditions are success in halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, much greater transparency into the programs and capabilities of key countries of concern, verification methods and technologies capable of detecting violations of disarmament obligations, enforcement measures strong and credible enough to deter such violations, and ultimately the resolution of regional disputes that can motivate rival states to acquire and maintain nuclear weapons. Clearly, such conditions do not exist today. http://www.defense.gov/npr/docs/2010%20Nuclear%20Posture%20Review%20Report.pdf

Nowhere on the list is a recognition of a more crucial fact: nuclear abolition depends on the death of the American empire.

The reason that is not on the list is because nuclear weapons are a key component of U.S. empire-building. That is as true today as it was when Harry S Truman dropped the first nuclear weapon to end World War II and begin the Cold War. Although tonight we want to focus on the present, it's useful to return to that moment to remind ourselves of the harsh reality of empires.

Though the culture can't come to terms with this history, the consensus of historians is that the U.S. decision to drop atomic weapons on Japan had little to do with ending WWII and everything to do with sending a message to the Soviet Union. The barbaric act that ended the barbarism of WWII opened up a new chapter in the tragedy of empire, leading to more barbarism in the U.S. assault on the developing world over the past six decades.

Even though it was clear that after WWII the United States could have lived relatively secure in the world with its considerable wealth and extensive resources, the greed that drives empire demanded that U.S. policy-makers pursue a policy not of peace but of domination, as seen in this conclusion of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff in 1947: ‘To seek less than preponderant power would be to opt for defeat. Preponderant power must be the object of U.S. policy.’[1] Preponderant power means: We run the world. We dictate the terms of the global economy. Others find a place in that structure or they risk annihilation. No challenge from another system or another state is acceptable.

In service of this quest, elites created the mythology of the Cold War -- that we were defending ourselves against a Soviet empire bent on destroying us -- which was grafted easily onto the deeper U.S. mythology about a shining city upon the hill and Manifest Destiny, about the divine right of the United States to dominate. As a result, much of the U.S. public is easily convinced of the righteousness of the U.S. imperial project and persuaded to believe the lie that we maintain nuclear weapons only as a deterrent. The reality should blunt the self-congratulatory instinct: U.S. nuclear weapons were created to project power, not protect people.

In his book Empire and the Bomb, Joseph Gerson lists 39 incidences of ‘nuclear blackmail,’ of which 33 were made by U.S. officials.[2] That helps explain the subtitle of his book, ‘How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World.’

Not surprisingly, Obama has said he does not envision abolition in the foreseeable future. In his famous Prague speech in April 2009, he said:

So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. I'm not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly -- perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist, ‘Yes, we can.’ http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-By-President-Barack-Obama-In-Prague-As-Delivered/

Yes, the world can change --- if the dominant military power in the world, the United States, can change. If the United States could give up the quest to consume a disproportionate share of the world's resources and disavow its reliance on securing that unjust distribution of wealth through the largest and most destructive military in the history of the world, things could change.

That's why most U.S. elites are interested in non-proliferation, not abolition. The goal of abolition will remain safely out of reach, on the horizon, just beyond our ability to accomplish in the near future -- while the United States continues to imagine a future in which the rest of the world accepts U.S. domination. Since countries threatened by the empire won't accept non-proliferation unless there is a meaningful commitment to abolition and a scaling back of imperial designs, the U.S. policy will fail. That's because it's designed to fail. U.S. policy is designed to keep a hold on power and wealth, and the people running the country believe nuclear weapons are useful in that quest.

That's why the Nuclear Posture Review of the Obama administration is not all that different from the Bush administration's, as Zia Mian (an analyst at Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security) pointed out at a gathering of activists preceding the May 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. That's why Obama's policy includes a commitment to nuclear weapons, conventional missile defense, and modernization of the nuclear complex. That's why Obama is increasing expenditures on nuclear weapons, now over $50 billion a year, for modernization.

Our task is to make sure we aren't conned by politicians, either those who push the fear button or pull on our hope strings. When we take up questions of military strategy and weapons, our task is to understand the underlying political and economic systems, name the pathologies of those systems, identify the key institutions in those systems, withhold our support from those institutions when possible, create alternative institutions when possible, and tell the truth. We may support cynical politicians and inadequate policy initiatives at times, but in offering such support we should continue to tell the truth.

This commitment to telling the truth about our leaders, Republican and Democrat alike, also means telling the truth about ourselves. I have argued that any call for the elimination of nuclear weapons that does not come with an equally vociferous call for the elimination of the U.S. empire is empty rhetoric, and that a call for the end of an empire also must come with a deep critique of our economic system.

I want to end by taking the argument one step further: Such critiques ring hollow if we don't engage in critical self-reflection about how many of us in the United States have grown comfortable in these systems. We decry injustice but spend little time talking about how our own material comfort is made possible by that injustice. A serious commitment to the end of nuclear weapons, the end of empire, the end of a predatory corporate capitalist system demands that we also commit to changing the way we live.

We cannot wake up tomorrow and extract ourselves from all these systems. There are no rituals of purification available to cleanse us. But we can look in the mirror, honestly, and start the hard work of reconfiguring the world.

1] Quoted in Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press, 1992), pp. 18-19.

[2] Joseph Gerson, Empire and the Bomb: How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World (London: Pluto Press, 2007), pp. 37-38.

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin. He is the author of All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice, (Soft Skull Press, 2009); Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002). Jensen is also co-producer of the documentary film ‘Abe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, the Other Still Dancing,’ which chronicles the life and philosophy of the longtime radical activist. Information about the film, distributed by the Media Education Foundation, and an extended interview Jensen conducted with Osheroff are online at http://thirdcoastactivist.org/osheroff.html.

Join the petition for an independent investigation into the raid, accountability for those responsible, and an immediate end to the blockade in Gaza

2010-06-02T19:06:00.001+09:30

The Avaaz Team

___

Dear friends,

Israel's deadly raid on a flotilla of aid ships headed for Gaza has shocked the world.

Israel, like any other state, has the right to self-defence, but this was an outrageous use of lethal force to defend an outrageous and lethal policy -- Israel's blockade of Gaza, where two thirds of families don't know where they'll find their next meal.

The UN, EU, and nearly every other government and multilateral organization have called on Israel to lift the blockade and, now, launch a full investigation of the flotilla raid. But without massive pressure from their citizens, world leaders might limit their response to mere words -- as they have so many times before.

Let's make the world's outcry too loud to ignore. Join the petition for an independent investigation into the raid, accountability for those responsible, and an immediate end to the blockade in Gaza -- click to sign the petition, and then forward this message to everyone:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_flotilla_6/97.php?cl_tta_sign=b5535e1bee5f6bf1145e51f7806f95d5
The petition will be delivered to the UN and world leaders, as soon as it reaches 200,000 names -- and again at every opportunity as it grows and leaders choose their responses. A massive petition at a moment of crisis like this one can demonstrate to those in power that sound bites and press releases aren't enough -- that citizens are paying attention and demanding action.

As the EU decides whether to expand its special trade relationship with Israel, as Obama and the US Congress set next year's budget for Israeli military aid, and as neighbours like Turkey and Egypt decide their next diplomatic steps -- let's make the world's voice unignorable: it's time for truth and accountability on the flotilla raid, and it's time for Israel to comply with international law and end the siege of Gaza. Sign now and pass this message along:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_flotilla_6/97.php?cl_tta_sign=b5535e1bee5f6bf1145e51f7806f95d5
Most people everywhere still share the same dream: for two free and viable states, Israel and Palestine, to live side by side. But the blockade, and the violence used to defend it, poisons that dream. As a columnist wrote to his fellow Israelis today in the newspaper Ha'aretz, "We are no longer defending Israel. We are now defending the siege. The siege itself is becoming Israel's Vietnam."

Thousands of pro-peace activists in Israel today protested the raid and the blockade in demonstrations from Haifa, to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem -- joining demonstrations around the world. Regardless of which side threw the first punch or fired the first shot (the Israeli military claims it did not initiate the violence), Israel's leaders sent helicopters of armed storm-troopers to raid a convoy of ships in international waters bringing medicine and supplies to Gaza, and some now lay dead.

Their lives cannot be brought back. But perhaps, together, we can make this dark moment a turning point -- if we arise with an unshakable call for justice, and an unbreakable dream of peace.

With hope, Ricken, Alice, Raluca, Paul, and the rest of the Avaaz team

SOURCES:

Live coverage from Al Jazeera:
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2010/05/31/live-coverage-israels-flotilla-raid
Live coverage from the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2010/may/31/israel-troops-gaza-ships

"The Second Gaza War: Israel lost at sea" - Bradley Burston, Ha'aretz
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/a-special-place-in-hell-the-second-gaza-war-israel-lost-at-sea-1.293246

Analysis of violence from IDF's perspective from Debka, reporters with ties to Israeli intelligence:
http://debka.com/article/8824/
70% of Gazans suffer from food insecurity - 2008 ICRC report, cited by al Jazeera:
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/05/20105319333613851.html

Analysis of possible political consequences of the flotilla attack:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gtowfFjiFD4HYdHuYgxydKNwVRDwD9G2B3880

Israeli Butchery at Sea

2010-06-01T20:46:00.003+09:30

Dissident Voice, May 31, 2010

As I write this piece the scale of the Israeli lethal slaughter at sea is yet to be clear. However we already know that at around 4am Gaza time, hundreds of IDF commandos stormed the Free Gaza international humanitarian fleet. We learn from the Arab press that at least 16 peace activists have been murdered and more than 50 were injured. Once again it is devastatingly obvious that Israel is not trying to hide its true nature: an inhuman murderous collective fuelled by a psychosis and driven by paranoia.

For days the Israeli government prepared the Israeli society for the massacre at sea. It said that the Flotilla carried weapons, it had ‘terrorists’ on board. Only yesterday evening it occurred to me that this Israeli malicious media spin was there to prepare the Israeli public for a full scale Israeli deadly military operation in international waters. Make no mistake. If I knew exactly where Israel was heading and the possible

consequences, the Israeli cabinet and military elite were fully aware of it all the way along. What happened yesterday wasn’t just a pirate terrorist attack. It was actually murder in broad day light even though it happened in the dark.

Yesterday at 10 pm I contacted Free Gaza and shared with them everything I knew. I obviously grasped that hundreds of peace activists most of them elders, had very little chance against the Israeli killing machine. I was praying all night for our brothers and sisters. At 5am GMT the news broke to the world. In international waters Israel raided an innocent international convoy of boats carrying cement, paper and medical aid to the besieged Gazans. The Israelis were using live ammunition murdering and injuring everything around them.

Today we will see demonstrations around the world, we will see many events mourning our dead. We may even see some of Israel’s friends ‘posturing’ against the slaughter. Clearly this is not enough.

The massacre that took place yesterday was a premeditated Israeli operation. Israel wanted blood because it believes that its ‘power of deterrence’ expands with the more dead it leaves behind. The Israeli decision to use hundreds of commando soldiers against civilians was taken by the Israeli cabinet together with the Israeli top military commanders. What we saw yesterday wasn’t just a failure on the ground. It was actually an institutional failure of a morbid society that a long time ago lost touch with humanity.

It is no secret that Palestinians are living in a siege for years. But it is now down to the nations to move on and mount the ultimate pressure on Israel and its citizens. Since the massacre yesterday was committed by a popular army that followed instructions given by a ‘democratically elected’ government, from now on, every Israeli should be considered as a suspicious war criminal unless proved different.

Considering the fact that Israel stormed naval vessels sailing under Irish, Turkish and Greek flags. Both NATO members and EU countries must immediately cease their relationships with Israel and close their airspace to Israeli airplanes.

Considering yesterday’s news about Israeli nuclear submarines being stationed in the Gulf, the world must react quickly and severely. Israel is now officially mad and deadly. The Jewish State is not just careless about human life, as we have been following the Israeli press campaign leading to the slaughter, Israel actually seeks pleasure in inflicting pain and devastation on others.

Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military. He lives in London and is the author of two novels: A Guide to the Perplexed and the recently released My One and Only Love. Atzmon is also one of the most accomplished jazz saxophonists in Europe. He can be reached at: atz@onetel.net.uk. Read other articles by Gilad.

Israeli Butchery at Sea

2010-06-01T20:46:00.001+09:30

Daniel Berrigan at 89

2010-05-10T12:43:00.000+09:30

John Dear SJ

On the Road to Peace
National Catholic Reporter, May. 04, 2010

I'm in New York City this week, attending some of the peace events around the opening of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty conference at the United Nations, and staying with Fr. Daniel Berrigan and the Jesuit Community. This past Good Friday, Dan was arrested at the U.S. Intrepid War Museum; he goes to court in June. May 9 is his 89th birthday.

To celebrate this friend and peacemaker, I offer this week excerpts from my long introduction to a great new anthology which I just published with Orbis Books, Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings. In honor of Dan, let's keep going, following the nonviolent Jesus, working for justice and disarmament, and trusting the God of peace.

* * * * * *

Daniel Berrigan exemplifies a Christianity that works for peace, speaks for peace, and welcomes Christ's resurrection gift of peace, first of all to the poor and the enemy. Through word and deed, he has spent his life shedding new light on the Gospel of Jesus, pointing us toward a new world of nonviolence, a new future of peace if we but welcome the gift. His life work, he would say, is modest, but the cumulative effect of his writings and actions, I suggest, show us what the church might look like, what a Christian looks like in such times, indeed, what a human response looks like in an inhuman world.

Dan knows by heart that God does not bless war, justify war, or create war. He points to a nonviolent Jesus who blesses peacemakers, not warmakers; who calls us to love enemies, not kill them; who commands us to take up the cross of nonviolent resistance to empire -- not put others on the cross …

To my mind, Dan's writings are best understood as the fruit of his nonviolent actions and resistance, and as such, they stand within the tradition of resistance literature. But more, they join a legacy of spiritual writing that stretches from the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of St. Paul through the poetry of St. Francis to the sermons of Archbishop Romero and Dr. King. Dan's writings fit in both categories: as resistance literature and spiritual writing. The genius of Daniel Berrigan is that for him, they are one and the same. All spiritual writing is political for it resists the culture of war and injustice by its very nature. All political writing for peace and justice is therefore quintessentially spiritual, for it points us toward the reign of God. This, I suggest, is the mark of a true spiritual master.

* * * * * *

Dan's contemplative rhythm of listening and going public puts him in the tradition of the towering prophets -- Isaiah, Daniel, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel -- who notwithstanding the vast distance in time, have become Dan's mentors and models. Like them, he denounces war, weapons, arms races, corrupt regimes, miscarriages of justice, assaults on human rights, and threats to widows and orphans, the unborn and prisoners. What makes Dan's critique so unique, according to one of his biographers, Francine du Plessix Gray, is his ‘startling’ use of language. Even his opponents sit up and take note.

For Dan, the spiritual life demands our encounter with the world, and thus, nonviolent resistance to its violence, in the tradition of the peacemaking Jesus. His early poems were, in his words, ‘sacramental,’ but his later poems took on the world and its wars and suffering, he says, because he himself began to taste some of its suffering. And so, Dan teaches not a comfortable spirituality -- with its private relationship to God -- but an uncomfortable spirituality that finds God in the poor, in the marginalized, and in the enemy and evokes loving action on their behalf.

‘Some people today argue that equanimity achieved through inner spiritual work is a necessary condition for sustaining one's ethical and political commitments,’ Dan writes. ‘But to the prophets of the Bible, this would have been an absolutely foreign language and a foreign view of the human. The notion that one has to achieve peace of mind before stretching out one's hand to one's neighbor is a distortion of our human experience, and ultimately a dodge of our responsibility. Life is a rollercoaster and one had better buckle one's belt and take the trip. This focus on equanimity is actually a narrow-minded, selfish approach to reality dressed up within the language of spirituality.’

‘I know that the prophetic vision is not popular today in some spiritual circles,’ he continues. ‘But our task is not to be popular or to be seen as having an impact, but to speak the deepest truths that we know. We need to live our lives in accord with the deepest truths we know, even if doing so does not produce immediate results in the world.’

Dan finds the wherewithal to set his face against the tide of war in large part because of his daily Bible study. Indeed, like his brother Philip, Dan is a rare biblical person, one who wrestles with the Word of God day and night. ‘Open up the book of Jeremiah and you do not find a person looking for inner peace,’ Dan notes. Jeremiah cries out against injustice, then rejoices in the fulfillment of God's justice, he observes. ‘Jeremiah goes through mountains and valleys. That kind of richness I find very appealing, whereas the kind of spirituality that looks for a flat emotional landscape brought on by the endless search for inner peace and equanimity I find disturbing, a quest that goes nowhere.’

‘I draw from the prophets a very strong bias in favor of the victim and a very strong sense of judgment of evil structures and those who run them,’ Dan writes in his latest book, The Kings and Their Gods. The prophets and Christ, he writes, talk ‘about the God who stands at the bottom with the victims and with the ‘widows and orphans' and witnesses with them in the world, from that terrifying vantage point which is like the bottom of the dry well that Jeremiah was thrown in. That vantage point defines the crime and sin; that point of view of the victim indicts the unjust, the oppressor, the killer, the warmaker. And the message is very clear. It's a very clear indictment of every superpower from Babylon to Washington.’

Dan reaches such unlikely conclusions because he is thoroughly immersed in the text. He dares think that God can be taken at God‘s Word, most notably, in the Gospel message of Jesus. ‘I've been maintaining a new discipline,’ he told me casually a few years ago, at the height of Bush's war on Iraq. ‘First, I get as little of the bad news as possible. I only look at The New York Times once a week, if that, and occasionally the BBC. Second, I spend more time than ever with the good news, reading and meditating on the Gospel every morning, to be with Jesus.’

That, to my mind, is the job description of the modern day biblical prophet -- aware of the world, immersed in the Word of God, a kind of Barthian recipe for readying oneself to announce the Gospel in word and deed. Deed especially. It is Dan's nonviolent direct action which gives Dan's words such vigor and power. But it is his words that unpack his deeds and vision and inspire so many others.

‘The Word of God is spoken for the sake of today,’ Dan writes, ‘for ourselves. If not, it lies dead on the page. Lift the Word from the page, then -- take it to heart. Make of it the very beat of the heart. Then the Word comes alive -- it speaks to commonality and praxis. Do it -- do the Word.’ This is the advice of a post-modern spiritual master. And it rings true because its ancient wisdom was first tested by the early saints and martyrs.

His message is a consistent Gospel word -- ‘Do not kill. Do not support the culture of killing. Do all you can to stop the killing.’ He put it succinctly in an influential open letter to the Weathermen: ‘The death of a single human being is too heavy a price to pay for the vindication of any principle, however sacred.’

Over the decades, Dan has stayed faithful to the Gospel journey of peace. He keeps on walking the road to peace, one mindful step at a time, whether others do or not. ‘We walk our hope and that's the only way of keeping it going,’ he says. ‘We've got faith, we've got one another, we've got religious discipline and we've got some access that goes beyond the official wall.’

‘Peacemaking is tough, unfinished, blood-ridden,’ he told one interviewer. ‘Everything is worse now than when I started, but I'm at peace. I don't have to prove my life. I just have to live.’ The point for Dan is to be faithful to the God of peace and the Gospel of Jesus.

‘Nobody can sustain him or herself in the struggle for a nonviolent world on the basis of the criterion of immediate success,’ Dan writes. ‘The Bible gives us a long view rather than the expectation of a quick fix. All of us are in grave danger of being infected by this American ethos that good work brings quick change, rather than the older spiritual notion that good work is its own justification and that the outcome is in other hands besides ours.’

‘The good is to be done because it is good, not because it goes somewhere,’ he says. ‘I believe if it is done in that spirit it will go somewhere, but I don't know where. I don't think the Bible grants us to know where goes, what direction. I have never been seriously interested in the outcome. I was interested in trying to do it humanly and carefully and nonviolently and let it go.’

Daniel Berrigan remains faithful to his vocation and the vision of peace, calling us to do the same -- whether we're successful or not. The focus, he teaches, is on the God of peace, and so, ‘the outcome is in better hands than ours.’ With that, he insists, we can live in hope.

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) 3 - 28 May 2010 Stay in touch - Join our list by April 29!

2010-04-29T09:04:00.003+09:30

Dear ICAN Australia partners and friends

Want to stay in touch with the NPT? Join our list by April 29!

As you know the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will begin in New York at the United Nations in just under a fortnight.

From 3 – 28 May, our government and nearly every other in the world will be working on nuclear weapons disarmament and non-proliferation issues in the United Nations. But civil society has a huge and important role to play both there and back home too.

If you would like to be kept up-to-date about the events, discussion and our Governments behaviour at the NPT this year, please send a return email to this email address and I will add you to the list. Updates will come at least twice weekly (action alerts may be more often depending on what happens there).

ICAN Australia will have unique access to the conference through our project based in New York staffed by Tim Wright. This means we expect to have regular access and meetings with the Australian delegation, and a pair of good eyes on the spot to help us not miss a trick. In addition, we can all access the daily reports and the freshest analysis through the work of our dear friends and colleagues at WILPF’s Reaching Critical Will project. Our updates from the ICAN Australia office will keep you in the loop on what is important to know.

We will also confirm dates for a follow-up/debriefing meeting between NGOs and DFAT following the NPT (mid-late June) in both Sydney and Melbourne through this list.

Please note: ICAN partners will NOT automatically receive these updates if they haven’t signed on to the list! So reply directly to me by April 29 to join this NPT update list for May 2010.

Thanks
Dimity

PS: check out the wonderful ANF petition on our website now! http://icanw.org/node/5138

Dimity Hawkins
Campaign Director
ICAN Australia

International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons (ICAN)
ph: +61 (0)3 9347 4795
f: +61 (0)3 9347 4995
m: 0422 612 702
e: dimity@icanw.org
w: www.icanw.org
skype: Dimity_iCAN

Northern Territory intervention

2010-04-26T22:33:00.002+09:30

Incarceration rates among Australia’s indigenous people bear comparison with the jailing of blacks in minority-ruled South Africa. Aborigines make up just 2.5% of the country’s population, but they account for nearly a quarter of all prisoners. In the Northern Territory, the ‘outback Australia’ made famous in the Crocodile Dundee films of comedian Paul Hogan, the proportion of those held under lock and key who are Aboriginal is a staggering 83%.

Under the ‘Northern Territory National Emergency Response’ – known to everyone else as ‘the Intervention’ – government ‘business managers’ have assumed draconian powers over Aboriginal communities, and acquired compulsory leases over Aboriginal township land.

Assumptions still run through government policies, imposed from Territory and federal authorities alike, as the wording through a stick of rock, that Aboriginal people need to be assimilated into the way of life, and forms of political organization, brought by westerners.

But a creative resistance movement to the Intervention is now taking shape.

Read more at: http://www.transcend.org/tms/2010/04/apartheid-is-alive-and-well/

And come to the International Peace Research Association conference, in Sydney, July 6-10, to be opened by Patrick Dodson, the ‘father of Aboriginal reconciliation’, and addressed by Professor Larissa Behrendt, the eminent Aboriginal legal scholar.

More details at www.iprasydney2010.org

Register and pay to attend the whole event at http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/peace_conflict/news/ipra2010.shtmlOr pay on the door: $95 daily rate; $50 for students.
--
Jake

Associate Professor Jake Lynch, BA, Dip Journalism Studies, PhD
Director, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies
Chair of Organizing Committee, IPRA conference 2010
Executive Member, Sydney Peace Foundation
Room 121 | Mackie Building (K01)
The University of Sydney | NSW | 2006
AUSTRALIA

p 61 2 9351 5440 | f 61 2 9660 0862
w www.arts.usyd.edu.au/cpacs
e jake.lynch@usyd.edu.au

Asylum seekers are not political footballs

2010-04-21T07:07:00.001+09:30

© AFP Photo/Roslan RahmanI’ve just heard the most appalling news - the Australian Government has announced a blanket suspension on processing new asylum claims by Afghan and Sri Lankan nationals.

Over 90 per cent of asylum seekers who arrive here by boat are found to have genuine claims for protection.

The situation remains desperate for many people in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. Activists, journalists, women and minority groups among others face real threats to their lives.

We cannot allow our politicians to use men, women and children fleeing persecution as political footballs. Join me and tell our Government to immediately reverse its freeze on applications by Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum seekers.

As a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention, we made a commitment to protect people at risk of torture, persecution and death. It's time to live up to our promises and show leadership on asylum and refugee issues.

Claire Mallinson
National Director
Amnesty International Australia

Tell our government to reverse this appalling policy move

Add your voice to global disarmament

2010-04-11T20:04:00.001+09:30

Dear friends,

The US-Russia nuclear pact is a major step -- but experts are pleading with governments that disarmament is the only way to prevent a nuclear nightmare. Sign the petition calling for zero nukes and bring a powerful public voice to the crucial Nuclear Security Summit next week:

Just a few hours ago, President Obama and President Medvedev of Russia signed a new treaty on nuclear arms control.

It's a crucial step, and at just the right time. Next week could see the beginning of the end of all these monstrous weapons at a crucial global disarmament summit in Washington.

Experts are pleading with governments to disarm or risk disaster, but politicians cite the lack of a public movement on this issue. Let's show them where people stand -- sign the petition for "global zero" nuclear weapons -- it will be delivered directly to leaders at the summit!

http://www.avaaz.org/en/together_for_zero/?vl

There are over 23,000 nuclear weapons in the world, and as many as 13 countries are on the edge of building them. Experts say we can’t maintain the status quo -- the risks of regional nuclear war, nuclear terrorism, or catastrophic accidents are rising daily. The only workable solution is for all countries to give these weapons up.

Avaaz is helping to build the Global Zero campaign, backed by hundreds of former heads of state, foreign ministers, national security advisers, and thousands of grassroots activists across the world. Last year we saw that this movement can have influence -- over 115,000 Avaaz members signed a petition and helped secure a historic US-Russian agreement to slash their nuclear arsenals by one third!

But now we need stronger action globally: with fears of a Mideast nuclear arms race mounting, and tensions in the Korean Peninsula and Pakistan far from over, the chance of a military or terrorist nuclear attack remains a chilling threat.

The Presidents of the US and Russia have agreed in principle to Global Zero, but the hard part is getting them to do it in practice. The Washington summit next week is a major chance to hold them to their word. Let's join together and make sure our leaders hear a powerful call for Global Zero. Click below to sign the petition:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/together_for_zero/?vl

With hope,

Luis, Ricken, Pascal, Ben, Alice, Raluca and the entire Avaaz team.

Reaching Zero, Jonathan Schell (The Nation):
hhttp://www.thenation.com/doc/20100419/schell/2

Huge cut in warheads banishes legacy of the Cold War, The Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/huge-cut-in-warheads-banishes-legacy-of-the-cold-war-1928733.html

Obama Limits U.S. Use Of Nuclear Arms, New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/04/06/world/international-uk-nuclear-usa-review.html

Scrapping nuclear arms is now realpolitik. Six security experts urge America and Russia to act today
http://www.avaaz.org/the_times_nukes

More information about the Global Zero Campaign:
http://www.avaaz.org/the_times_nukes

Full Global Zero Action Plan available at:
http://www.globalzero.org/en/about-campaign

JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE STATEMENT: U.S. SETTLEMENT FUNDERS

2010-03-24T22:22:00.000+10:30

As an organization that focuses on the critical role of the United States in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Jewish Voice for Peace is deeply concerned by the ongoing activities of U.S. organizations whose 501c3 (non-profit) status enables them to raise money from American donors to support and maintain settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

In the Washington Post last year, David Ignatius noted that from 2004-2007, 28 U.S. tax exempt organizations raised $33.4 million in funding for settlements and related organizations.[1]

The construction of settlements in occupied territory is a violation of international law.

Non-profit settlement funders include New York-based Hebron Fund, which supports the extremist Jewish settlement of 700 settlers in the center of Hebron, making the area inaccessible and unlivable to its 150,000 Palestinian residents. Israeli organizations such as B’tselem describe the settlement in Hebron as a severe violation of the most basic human rights of the Palestinians in the city and an ongoing war crime.[2] The Hebron Fund contributes almost $1 million dollars annually to support this settlement.[3]

An additional example is Friends of Ir David, which raises money to expand Jewish settlement in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem. From 2004-2006, Friends of Ir David contributed over $10 million dollars to activities that include fraudulent home purchases and ideological archaeological excavations that are used as a pretext to demolish Palestinian homes. Since 1967, thirty five percent of East Jerusalem has been taken over by the Jerusalem municipality for the sake of housing Jewish citizens—and changing the facts on the ground in anticipation of a final status settlement.[4]

While many of these organizations claim to merely fund “social and educational” activities, the Center Fund, also based in New York, contributed over 100,000 shekels (over $27,000) to the Od Yosef Chai Shechem yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar near Nablus. This is the same yeshiva whose rabbi said it was permissible to kill gentile babies because of "the future danger that will arise if they are allowed to grow into evil people like their parents." [5] The Center Fund also funds settler organized “security” organizations—ie, militias[6]. Indeed the violence from the Yitzhar settlement has been so pronounced that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert described it as "pogroms against non-Jews."[7]

The Colorado-based Christian Friends of Israeli Communities encourages churches and
ministries to connect with "the pioneers of Biblical Israel" through
the "adopt-a-settlement” program. The director of the organization’s Israeli office estimates that more than half the settlements in the West Bank receive direct or indirect support from Christian organizations.[8]

The impact of American dollars on helping settlers deepen and broaden their hold on Palestinian neighborhoods and cities is clear. These are just four examples of how U.S.-based organizations, taking advantage of their tax-exempt status, are contributing to creating “facts on the ground” in flagrant opposition to international law, as well as materially contributing to the ongoing human rights violations and daily misery of Palestinians struggling to survive and remain in the West Bank.

Unfortunately, these settlements, and their U.S. fundraising counterparts, are in no way outside the Jewish mainstream in either Israel or the United States. The Israeli beneficiary of Friends of Ir David, for example, known as Elad, has been in and out of a contractual relationship with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. That relationship gives Elad control over the very archaeological site that itis using to pursue its political goal of increasing Jewish control over Silwan The yeshiva in Yitzar funded by the Central Fund received over a million shekels in funding from Israel’s Education and Welfare ministries in 2007 and 2008. [9]

Even mainstream American non-profit organizations like Nefesh B’Nefesh, which works in partnership with the Jewish Agency to promote North American immigration to Israel, receives one third of its aliyah related funding from the Israeli Absorption Ministry each year. Nefesh B’Nefesh encourages North American Jews to move to settlements in the West Bank, both by promoting those “communities” on their website, without mentioning that they are situated in the West Bank, and by helping new immigrants access increased fiscal benefit packages they receive from the Israeli government for settling in West Bank settlements.[10]

Thus the Israeli settlement enterprise, despite an avowed settlement “freeze,” is a conscious target for expansion, aided and abetted both by the Israeli government and the American organizations that support them.

A STATEMENT FROM THE CONFERENCE OF MAJOR RELIGIOUS SUPERIORS SRI LANKA (CMRS)

2010-02-19T23:42:00.001+10:30

We, the members of the Conference of Major Religious Superiors of Sri Lanka (CMRS) composed of Religious Congregations of priests, brothers and sisters, met on Tuesday 16th February 2010 at the CMRS Secretariat in Mutwal, during which grave concerns about the situation of our country were expressed.

The lamentable erosion of moral values, the lawlessness that prevails, and the impunity with which the wrongdoers are protected, have led to a loss of faith in the democratic process and even just governance. On the whole there is a sense of helplessness and hopelessness.
Impacted by the perception of the current events and trends in our society, we as a Religious body cannot but heed the call of God to respond to the signs of the times. Desirous of being faithful to our Prophetic calling as consecrated persons, we call upon the people of our country and especially the political leaders to respect the Rule of Law and basic Human Rights which are inherent part of the democratic process, and uphold the principles of reconciliation, forgiveness, freedom of media, freedom of speech and the right to dissent.

Sr. Bernadette Fernando SCC

Executive Secretary CMRS

'Outcast' Aborigines stage red desert walk-out

2010-02-14T12:08:00.001+10:30

'Outcast' Aborigines stage red desert walk-out
LINDSAY MURDOCH
The Age, February 13, 2010

BANJO Morton forced the owners of the vast Lake Nash cattle station in the Northern Territory to pay him and other Aboriginal stockmen £1 a month when he led a walk-off from there in 1942.
‘We were getting paid only in rations, clothes and boots and we had a good win although we still grumbled it wasn't enough,’ he says.
Sixty-eight years later Mr Morton has led another walk-off, this time from Ampilatwatja, a settlement in central Australia's red desert country, where his Alyawarr people say they have been treated as outcasts and isolated from white man's decision-making under the 2007 federal indigenous intervention.
They are carving a new community from mulga scrub three kilometres from Ampilatwatja - just outside an area prescribed under the intervention - at a place called Honeymoon Bore, 350 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs.
‘We feel free and happy here, away from the all the rules and interference of the intervention,’ says Mr Morton, who is living in a tin hut at the camp, which has no running water and where up to 70 people are living in tents and crude shelters, including the rusty shell of a long-abandoned vehicle.
Mr Morton, 83, and other Alyawarr leaders moved to Honeymoon Bore in July last year to protest against the neglected and overcrowded state of Ampilatwatja, where raw sewage was ankle deep in some houses and overflowing into the street.
They were also upset about the forced takeover of their community store and lack of consultation with white bureaucrats sent to the community under the intervention.
But as the protest - and their plight - fell on deaf ears, they decided to make the walk-off permanent, abandoning Ampilatwatja, where a government-appointed business manager is living in a $500,000 home and office complex and where a sign outside the store names the people who have been ordered to work at the local council or face cuts in their welfare payments.
Mr Morton objects to the intervention's income management, where half of a person's Centrelink payments must be spent on food and other essentials. ‘It's like the ration days all over again,’ he says. ‘We have gone backwards. There's no incentive for my people to work. This makes me feel no good … it's about our pride.’
Mr Morton says the only benefit Ampilatwatja has received from the $1.5 billion intervention is a BMX bicycle track, which is now eroded and unsafe to use and which most residents did not want. Bicycles remain locked in a container.
‘We wanted grass for the football oval,’ Mr Morton says, because the favoured sport is Australian rules football. ‘They shut us out … they didn't ask us what we wanted,’ he says.
Mr Morton says little work has been done to repair houses in Ampilatwatja, some of which are little more than tin shanties.
This week, raw sewage was flowing from an open hole there.
Ampilatwatja, population 450, has not been allocated any houses under a $672 million government housing program under which 700 homes will be built in 20 bigger remote communities across the territory.
But three kilometres away at Honeymoon Bore volunteers this week poured a concrete slab, and a $25,000 kit home donated by an Adelaide company arrived by truck and was expected to be erected in time for a traditional smoking ceremony opening tomorrow.
Richard Downs, another Alyawarr leader, says he envisages up to 100 people will be living at the bore within two years, with wind generators and gardens and work for all in an indigenous ‘utopia’ about 70 kilometres away from a clutch of disadvantaged outstations that are actually called Utopia.
‘Our aim is to show that Aboriginal people can break the cycle of dependency, that we can look after ourselves on our country,’ Mr Downs says.
Plans for Honeymoon Bore include families making 3000 mud bricks.
‘When they are made, everyone will chip in and help build a mud-brick house for the family,’ he says.
‘This will give my people pride in owning homes they built themselves as well and developing building skills and knowledge . . we think with some hard work, sweat and tears we can create a special place.’
Mr Downs, 56, says his people's stand has attracted support from around Australia, including most trade unions, while no federal or NT government MP or minister has visited to listen to their complaints. Protest letters have gone unanswered.
The Age asked federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin about the walk-off and complaints from Ampilatwatja residents.
A spokeswoman replied that decades of successive government failure meant infrastructure in many indigenous communities like Ampilatwatja, was in serious disrepair.
The spokeswoman said work on a significant number of houses in Ampilatwatja was expected to begin in late April.
Speaking with the laconic drawl of a man who has spent all his life in the bush, much of it on the back of a horse, Banjo Morton, says living in Ampilatwatja under the intervention was like being cattle in a yard.
‘We were being prodded and pushed around,’ he says.
‘We needed to get away from there, to build our own community and live the way we want to, on our country.’

Related Coverage
Sorry not enough for stolen generations
Two years after Kevin Rudd's historic apology to the stolen generations ...

Many gaps remain in indigenous policy
The apology two years ago was a good start, but much work is still ...

Launch of Donna Mulhearn's Book 29 January 2010

2010-01-24T09:35:00.005+10:30

Murdoch Books and The Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at The University of Sydney are delighted to invite you to the launch of Donna Mulhearn’s first book, Ordinary Courage

To be launched by journalist and author Antony Loewenstein

Date: Tuesday 2nd February Time: 6.00-8.00pm Venue: Footbridge Theatre, The University of Sydney Parramatta Road, Camperdown Please RSVP by 29th January to claireg@murdochbooks.com.au

‘In this powerful memoir, Donna Mulhearn’s courage and principles stand in damning contrast to the lies told in our name. I salute her.’

John Pilger

All those who know Donna or have heard her speak will be delighted that the book is finished and published, you are invited to come along and make the book launch a great celebration!

Crisis Group quote: Sri Lanka

2010-01-24T09:33:00.000+10:30

"Now, put yourself in a Tamil's shoes, and decide whom to vote for in the presidential election: Choose either the head of the government that ordered the attacks against you and your family, or the head of the army that carried it all out. Tamil humiliation and frustration could well lead to militancy again."
Chris Patten, Co-chair, on the 26 January elections in Sri Lanka, United Press International, 19 January

2010-01-17T11:30:00.002+10:30

Religions for Peace urgently appeals to you to contribute to relief efforts in Haiti. Religious communities and their humanitarian agencies are uniquely well-positioned to help people in Haiti right now.
Religions for Peace will work with our experienced, credible, faith-based partners with aid networks on the ground in Haiti now. Your contribution will be forwarded to the following:
ACT International: www.act-intl.org
Caritas Internationalis: www.caritas.org
Islamic Relief Worldwide: www.islamic-relief.org.uk
The Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief: www.jdc.org/jcdr_about.html
Your generosity will help provide immediate life-saving relief and contribute to urgently needed rebuilding of communities, families and lives.
Importantly, Haitian religious communities and their leaders will be in the forefront of the immediate and long-term efforts to bring hope through concrete action and spiritual support. Your contribution will be used to support them in their vital work through our partners.

GAZA FREEDOM VIGIL - SYDNEY 27 December 2009

2009-12-24T08:24:00.002+10:30

on the anniversary of Israel's attack on Gaza

SUNDAY 27 DECEMBER

RALLY and MARCH 5PM

CANDLELIGHT VIGIL 7PM

Break the Siege of Gaza - End the Occupation

TOWN HALL SQUARE, SYDNEY

WHAT WE ASK:
• an end to the siege of Gaza
• remember those killed in Israel’s "Operation Cast Lead" attack on Gaza
• remind the world that 20 thousand (as at October 2009) people in Gaza
still live in tents as Israel blocks the import of building materials
• an end to Israel’s military occupation
• an end to the discrimination suffered by1.5 million Palestinians citizens
of Israel, denied even their national identity and recognition of the right
of return for Palestinian refugees

See flyer here:

Protest letter sent from Pax Christi Austalia re: Nobel Peace Prize

2009-12-14T17:13:00.002+10:30

Pax International
Christi Christian Peace Movement
Australia

National President: Father Claude Mostowik MSC
61+2+9550 3845
0411 450 953
mscjust@smartchat.net.au

December 10, 2009

His Excellency
Mr Lars A WENSELL
Royal Norwegian Embassy
17 Hunter Street
Yarralumla ACT 2600

emb.canberra@mfa.no

Pax Christi, Australia, which is part of the International Christian Movement for Peace, Pax Christi International, wishes to protest and express its profound dismay at the recent awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to US President, President Barack Obama.

Norway has often been portrayed as a nation of peace by presenting itself as a moral model and moral action in various peace-negotiating actions from the Oslo accords in the 1990’s to the present. This image has been shattered when we learn that your country has had troops working alongside US Special Operations forces in Afghanistan and its involvement in logistic support of running of Guantanamo Bay.

When Barack Obama became President of the USA he pledged to dismantle Guantánamo Bay. He has failed in this. He has failed stop torture. He has failed to bring to justice US citizens and their collaborators who have been involved in the torture of numerous prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan. More importantly, he has protected these perpetrators.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to a man who can justify committing more troops to Afghanistan in the same week that he receives his award devalues and debases the Nobel Peace Prize. Many would argue that the Prize has already been devalued when it was awarded to people such as Simon Peres, Yassar Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin to mention a few names.

When the Nobel Peace Prize is offered to people whose words grossly mismatch his executive decisions, like Barack Obama, it becomes a meaningless honour.

President Obama’s insistence that the troop escalation in Afghanistan is a necessary response to the instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan should be rejected. The actions of the USA along with its allies, including Norway, in Afghanistan, have done nothing to bring stability and peace to the people of Afghanistan, and now Pakistan. Does the Noble Peace Prize Committee really wish to present to the world a message that war is peace?

Pax Christi Australia would wonder if the Nobel Committee may now regret its decision in light of recent developments. Pax Christi Australia can only hope that more and more people and those belonging to peace groups will rise up in solidarity to promote peace through development and justice, to more strenuously acknowledge our common humanity, to loudly protest all war, and listen to voices of the peoples of Pakistan and Afghanistan who are highly affected and rarely considered
Yours sincerely,

[Father] Claude Mostowik msc
National President.

Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation - Opinion Poll - Changed

2009-10-28T22:28:00.003+10:30

ANSTO apologises for poll changes

ANSTO is interested in stimulating public debate and discussion about nuclear science and technology. In so doing, it recently began a web poll on whether nuclear power should be part of Australia's future energy mix.

As a result of a dramatic change in poll voting patterns over the weekend, a staff member, without authority, modified the poll by changing the "I am against it" answer to "It is one of the options" at around 7.30am today. This was an unauthorised change. ANSTO acknowledges that both making a change and changing the answer "I am against it" to "It is one of the options" was a serious error of judgement by the staff member. This gave misleading and incorrect results to web visitors and poll participants.

Following an approach by an online news service, the staff member then changed the answer to "No" in a bid to correct the situation.

When ANSTO management became aware of the situation, it took action to restore the poll to the original answer and also included "No" to ensure all voters in the intervening period would be included in the statistics.

As the CEO of ANSTO, I wish to apologise unreservedly to stakeholders and participants for this unauthorised intervention in the poll results. The poll is on the front page of the ANSTO website at www.ansto.gov.au.

Dr Adi Paterson

Chief Executive Officer

Posted: 26 October 2009

Media Release from the Greens
ANSTO turn nuclear poll "NO" into "YES"

The Australian Nuclear Science & Technology Organisation (ANSTO) has been caught out blatantly lying over the results of its own survey which showed overwhelming rejection of nuclear power by Australians.

“ANSTO deliberately fudged an online poll to appear as if respondents voted in favour of nuclear power in Australia,” Australian Greens Spokesperson on nuclear issues, Senator Scott Ludlam said this morning.

“Up until the weekend (Sun 25 Oct) the poll was running 3-1 against nuclear power. ANSTO simply changed the words “I am against it” option to read “It is one of the options," without resetting the poll numbers. Voila – manufactured consent for nuclear power.

“After howls of protest from irate respondents and calls from journalists, ANSTO changed the poll again, allowing people to register a simple “No”.

“This is a small but perfect example of the dishonesty that surrounds the "debate" about nuclear power in Australia,“ Senator Ludlam said.

“Instead of hearing the clear message coming through in its own survey, ANSTO turned a 'no' into a 'yes'. What an appropriate symbol for the way the whole nuclear power debate is being run in Australia.

"ANSTO chair Ziggy Switkowki has been a persistent advocate for nuclear power, even though we're told it is against Government policy. It is time Minister Kim Carr stepped in and clarified to ANSTO - and the public - what that policy is.

“The dishonest act brings into question any so-called surveys or reports stemming from ANSTO or any other nuclear advocates trying to propagate the idea that Australians are warming to the idea of nuclear energy.”

(See attached documents showing online poll before and after the fudge – www.ansto.gov.au)

Media contact – Fernando de Freitas on 0415 174 302

SRI LANKA: Religious sisters in Sri Lanka refugee camps among Tamil refugees

2009-09-04T16:11:00.001+09:30

Article on Asia News IT by Melani Manel Perera
Twenty nuns working in centers and hospitals around Vavuniya. Sister Fatima Nayaki, head of the group, says: "The only desire of every refugee is to begin a new life with dignity and freedom."

Colombo (AsiaNews) - For three months they have helped war refugees gathered in camps and hospitals in northern Sri Lanka. Twenty nuns of various congregations, who in May, through Caritas-Sri Lanka, responded to the government request for assistance to the so-called internally displaced persons (IDPs).

Official data report that, until mid-August, only 19 camps in the district of Vavuniya, are home to more than 79 thousand families for a total of over 246 thousand people. The sisters have lived with them and now they are describing what they saw. At first they were not allowed to enter the camps and hospitals, only after some time could they begin their work of assistance, but not without restrictions and prohibitions.

Sister Jayangika of apostolic congregation of the Carmelites, worked in a hospital in Poovarasankulam. "The health authorities would allowed us to treat only people with chickenpox. There were several pregnant women. Ten of them had lost their husbands and had only the clothes on their backs. " Sr. Jayangika adds: "They eyes were filled with tears and we wanted to cry-out from seeing them in those conditions. Of course we could not do it in front of them, so each time a scream would rise in our throats we struggled to hold back”.

Sister Fatima Nayaki, who led the group of nuns, tells AsiaNews: "The only desire of every refugee is to begin a new life with dignity and freedom. They do not want to remember what has happened to them in recent months and are struggling with their past. When they saw us they asked us to pray for them and bless them".

Sister Francisca, of the Congregation of the Holy Family, said: "The refugees are waiting for someone to come help them, bring them food, clothes. They have only rice, dhal, salt and some coconut”. In temporary shelters set up by the government to house refugees in the transition from the camps to villages of origin, there are shops and markets. But Sr. France explains that "the benches are full of fruit but is too expensive and the refugees have no money to buy it. Some collect a few coins recovering clean water, firewood or catching fish for other refugees, but never more than 10 or 15 rupees, and they use them to buy food for the children".

Many of the camps in which the sisters have provided support are huddled along the roadside. "Everyone can see them from outside - says Sr. Francisca - Hundreds of colourful huts. But the life of those who live there is not colourful at all. There are only people who mourn their children, who have been killed or have disappeared”.

In the days of the great pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Madhu the streets were full of cars and trucks. The religious women add: "Watching the pilgrims on the move was painful for many. We consoled them explaining that Madhu Amma [the Mother, ndr] knew their problems and that She was with them. On August 15, then some priests of the diocese of Mannar who had not travelled to the shrine celebrated the Mass of the Assumption in the camps with the refugees”.

Pat Dodson on God, philosophy and his move to academia

2009-09-01T14:11:00.002+09:30

Source: http://www.unsw.edu.au/news/pad/uniken/UnikenMayJune09/UnikenMayJune.pdf

(UNIKEN Magazine of University of NSW, pp 12-13.)

In an Australian first, UNSW’s Professor Pat Dodson is tackling Indigenous issues through whole-of-country dialogue underpinned by policy research.

Susi Hamilton reports.

Pat Dodson wears several hats. There’s the broad-brimmed, black Akubra that is ubiquitous in all Dodson’s public appearances.

Then there are the other “hats” he wears as a former priest, the one-time Chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation and Commissioner into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, Sydney Peace Prize winner and now Professor at UNSW.

If there is one thread connecting all those achievements, it is leadership. In an academic sense, his leadership will help steer UNSW’s newly created Indigenous Policy and Dialogue Research Unit.

“I think it’s time for a national dialogue about our underpinning philosophical basis as we redefine our identity and role in a globalised society,” he observes.

“This is not just about Indigenous affairs,” says Dodson. “This is about all Australian people having a say.”

The stakes are high. Asked if he’d like to have an influence on government policy in relation to Indigenous people, Dodson scoffs.

“I’m thinking much bigger than that,” he grins. “Ultimately, we’d like to see a treaty or even constitutional reform.”

The work has already begun. Dodson has just hosted the first regional dialogue in the Kimberley, involving business leaders, government representatives, Indigenous people and other community members.

The plans to build a major gas plant off the Kimberley coast were a major focus of the talks, with some Aboriginal people expressing concern that the development might lead to some of the same problems experienced in the Pilbara.

“The mining went ahead there, but there was little tangible benefit for the Indigenous community,” he says. “We don’t want that to happen again.”

The dialogue is “not a talk-fest,” Dodson declares. “It’s about developing an interface between key stakeholders. Too often local communities feel excluded from policies and decisions that directly affect their daily lives.”

The Northern Territory intervention is an example of the kind of “top-down” approach he hopes to avoid.

There’s no doubt this is an ambitious project. Reconciliation on this scale is something people have been working towards for generations, but it has so far proved elusive. Nonetheless, Pat Dodson has taken on big challenges in the past. When he became involved in land rights campaigns as a young Catholic priest, it got him into “strife” with some of the clergy.

He eventually left, due to the restrictions of the church and differing views on reconciliation, but says he’s still a believer.

“I rarely attend services. I guess I’m a bit more like my grandfather,” he says. “Where is God? He’s everywhere, isn’t he? You don’t have to go into a church to find him. I have a very liberal view of what it all means.”

He speaks of the wrench of leaving the church, but then finding a new purpose in life in the political realm. “You have to decide in your own mind about what you need to do to remain true to who you are and your purpose – to the extent that you understand it,” he laughs.

Broome might be home, but the 61-year-old Yawuru man spends a lot of time away. The part-time position at UNSW will take him to many regional communities as well as regular visits to the Kensington campus. He also chairs the board of the Kimberley Development Commission and heads the Lingiari Foundation – an Indigenous non-government advocacy and research group.

While Mick Dodson, who is currently Australian of the Year, has moved in academic circles for years, it is a new realm for his older brother.

“I periodically have some discussions with Mick, but he does his own things,” says Pat Dodson. “He’s a lawyer, so he has a different way of looking at things. I’m more philosophical and I have a broader-based approach.”

Dodson sidesteps questions about personal motivation and family connections, steering questions back to topics closer to his work. But the Dodson family’s story is well known. Their mother died when they were young and they were orphaned when their father died in 1960. Pat and Mick were made wards of the state, but their sisters decided the boys should accept scholarships to study in Hamilton, Victoria.

While education clearly had a role in why the Dodson boys both became so prominent politically, it doesn’t explain their success completely. “I think it comes from the early stages of injustice, when you had a non-native protector who had total right and power and autonomy to determine your life,” Dodson says.

“They decided where you lived, who you could marry, how you conducted your domestic affairs, who could remove your children, who could decide everything, such as where your garbage bin needed to go at the front of your house.

“You come out of these sorts of moulds and you say, ‘This is not how human beings are meant to be treated, or what citizenship entitles you to enjoy, and there are other measures which we should be aspiring to.’”

Almost half a century after that first trek across the country, Pat Dodson made the trip to the Prime Minister’s 2020 Summit, giving guidance on Indigenous affairs with a group of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island community members, activist organisations and a smattering of academics, including UNSW’s Sarah Maddison.

Maddison was struck by Dodson’s commitment and compassion.

During a chance conversation soon after, it became clear to Maddison, the Senior Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, that a collaboration was possible.

“A colleague of Pat’s said as a throw-away line, ‘We’re thinking that the dialogue needs an institutional base,’” she recalls. “I went to the bathroom and had this flash – ‘I have an institution!’”

Within a year, Dodson was on campus at UNSW, getting his staff card and being inducted by the Human Resources Department. Indigenous studies is not unusual in academia, but UNSW’s approach is. It involves two components: a whole-of-country dialogue, plus policy research. The Unit is based in the Social Policy Research Centre, but within three years it is hoped there will be a standalone centre.

The dialogue process is also an Australian first. It follows a model that has proved worthwhile in South Africa, Indonesia and Guatemala, although it hasn’t been as successful in Canada.

The Dean of Arts and Social Sciences, Professor James Donald, said one of his personal highlights of 2008 was hearing Dodson give the Sydney Peace Prize lecture at the Opera House – an address that showed him the possibility of new philosophical underpinnings for the nation.

Donald says that the research combines social engagement and social justice on a pressing issue that “may just change the course of Australian history”.

When asked about his favourite achievement – the Sydney Peace Prize notwithstanding – Professor Dodson scans the Library lawn quickly and says, “I think this adventure of coming to university. It is challenging, but it is also reminiscent of the eight years that I spent in the seminary, which was a very rewarding, studious period of my life.”

And then there’s that hat. Is it symbolic, is it purely practical – what does it signify to him?

“I’ve worn a hat for many years, in part from a practical perspective because I live in the north and it keeps the sun from my face,” he smiles. “It is a reminder that Aboriginal people are part of this country – and particularly the band, which was knitted by my older sister. It’s second nature to me – I feel a bit undressed when I don’t have it on my head. I get very annoyed when I see people carrying a hat instead of wearing it!”

“Where is God? He’s everywhere, isn’t he? You don’t have to go into a church to find him.”

Watch the video on UNSWTV’s Arts and Society channel at www.tv.unsw.edu.au
__._,_.___

Statement of Religious Delegation to Honduras

2009-08-30T01:09:00.000+09:30

August 18-25, 2009

We are the sixth international delegation that has come to Honduras since the coup d’état of June 28, 2009. We have come from Panama and the United States as people of faith – Catholic Christians -- to accompany the pain of the Honduran people and to understand more clearly the reality they are living. We represent the Justice Team of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns and Pax Christi International.

We have been in Honduras from August 18-25, visiting Tegucigalpa, Progreso, San Pedro Sula, Santa Rosa de Copan and Santa Barbara. What we have seen and heard here has broken our hearts and evoked in us deep concern.

It also has given us hope as we met with many sectors of Honduran society that demonstrate amazing courage and capacity to organize a diverse and strong popular resistance to the coup and subsequent repression. Clearly, Hondurans have enduring hope for a country that promotes the common good, justice and human rights.

We have heard first-hand from victims of horrific human rights violations inflicted by Honduran military and police forces upon ordinary people peacefully exercising basic rights guaranteed by the Honduran Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These abuses, including beatings, rape, harassment and intimidation, arbitrary arrest, disappearances and even death, have been well documented by the Honduran Human Rights organization, COFADEH, and in recent reports from Amnesty International and by the InterAmerican Human Rights Commission, also present in Honduras this week.

We are alarmed to see people and patterns of abuse re-emerging from the shadows of repression in earlier decades. Impunity in the past for criminals and violators of human rights has left Hondurans vulnerable to a painful repeat of history. Militarization, disinformation, extreme attempts to control the civilian population and a terrible polarization of the citizenry have far-reaching ramifications for a people yearning for a just end to poverty and exclusion.

We are distressed by the implications for the region and beyond of what we have seen in Honduras. We are convinced that the conflict here is not only about Mel Zelaya, although the return of the legitimate president to office is imperative, but about the abuse of political and military, and especially of economic, power. That does not bode well for the future of the hemisphere or for any country in the world where the basic rights of citizens to a decent life, to a healthy environment, and to participate in important decisions that affect their lives challenge the privileges and power of a few – be they individuals, institutions or business interests.

We are heartened by the strong response of the international community to events on June 28th. The United Nations, the Organization of American States (OAS), the European Union, and many individual countries around the world have denounced the coup and have taken strong measures to isolate the illegitimate government.

We are concerned, however, by what we believe is an inadequate public response of the U.S. government to the coup and to the ensuing repression. We were encouraged by the initial U.S. response, but, caught in the controversy over constitutional technicalities, subsequent actions were neither timely nor sufficiently strong.

We urge the U.S. government
- to be unequivocal and very public in denouncing the brutal human rights violations committed by Honduran military and police forces;
- to cancel diplomatic as well as tourist and business visas for a broader group of those implicated in orchestrating or leading the coup;
- to freeze the accounts in U.S. banks of these same coup leaders; and
- to follow the example of other nations by recalling Ambassador Llorens until the legitimate president of Honduras is restored to office.

Although the process hosted by Nobel laureate Oscar Arias may facilitate the return to Honduras of President Zelaya, long term peace will depend on ensuring that the poor and marginalized sectors of society be included in the economic and political life of the country.

One of our deepest preoccupations, however, is about the profound divisions in and animosity surrounding the vibrant Honduran Catholic community, when the rich resources of our faith tradition should be guiding the nation toward a just resolution to this intolerable situation.

We have heard from many people about the deep hurt, anger and loss of credibility occasioned by the July 3rd statement of the Honduran Bishops’ Conference. Despite our attempts, we were unable to secure a meeting with Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, SDB to hear his perspective on this and try to understand his words and actions that have created such an intense reaction from the Honduran people.

The Gospel and Catholic social teaching clearly articulate the values, principles and priorities that should offer a framework for the Church’s engagement with Honduran society at this painful moment. In particular, the preferential option for the poor, which is one of the distinguishing features of the Latin American and Caribbean church (Aparecida #391), and the virtue of solidarity should place the Church clearly on the side of Hondurans whose basic dignity is now being abused.

We met courageous priests, women religious and lay women and men who accompany people from all walks of life whose human rights are being violated. Many of these pastoral workers have been threatened and attacked as well. We had a long conversation with the bishop of Santa Rosa de Copan and heard clearly his commitment to the poor and his perspectives on the influence of economic interests in facilitating the coup. That analysis we heard repeated many times over in our visits throughout the country. We pray that the official Catholic Church in Honduras will listen with care to the pain of those who feel abandoned and assume a role of speaking out forcefully for an end to the pattern of intimidation and official abuse against those non-violently expressing their opposition to the coup.

We also urge the Catholic community worldwide and all people of good will to strengthen international solidarity with the Honduran people, accompanying those whose basic human rights are being violated, advocating for a just and enduring resolution to this crisis, and addressing the many ways in which international greed for minerals and markets, wealth, power and control provide fertile ground for the suffering in Honduras. Long-term peace and stability depend on ensuring that the poor and marginalized sectors of society be included in the economic and political life of the country.

We believe that Hondurans – including civil society, the Catholic Church and all communities of faith, the military and police, the private sector, organized labour, politicians, scholars, lawyers – can come together to create a just society and end the crisis they are now living. To move in that direction will require a return to legitimate government of and for ordinary people, an end to the abuse of power that characterizes the Honduras we have visited in these days and a deep commitment to honest and broadly participative dialogue across the differences that now divide Honduran society.

We commit ourselves to supporting this endeavour and to helping to animate action in solidarity with the people of Honduras in the international networks of religious communities and people of faith of which we are a part.

Sisters of Mercy of the Americas-Justice Team:
Sister Diane Guerin, Justice Minister, Mid-Atlantic Community
Sister Edie Lopez, Justice Minister, Central and South America Community
Jean Stokan, Director, Institute Justice Team

Marie Dennis, Co-President, Pax Christi International and Director, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns

2009-0628-en-am-HR

YOUTH PARLIAMENTARIANS DEBATE FOR PEACE AT PARLIAMENT HOUSE

2009-08-12T20:49:00.000+09:30

MEDIA RELEASE

Acting Minister for Youth
The Hon. Linda Burney MP

Wednesday, 12 August 2009

Around 100 young people from NSW have gathered at Parliament House today to debate peace in politics at the inaugural Youth Peace Parliament, said Acting Minister for Youth, Linda Burney.

Minister Burney officially opened the event that was organised by the Ministry for Peace, a non-profit organisation calling on the Australian Federal Government to establish a Department of Peace.

“Today’s marks the first time that the future generation of NSW have met at Parliament House to discuss the role of peace in democracy,” said Ms Burney.

“More than 90 young people were in attendance at the Youth Peace Parliament and they represented 23 schools from around NSW, including areas such as Broken Hill, Berrigan Shire, Dubbo and Wagga Wagga.

“The young people, from grades nine to 12, became members of parliament for the day, including splitting into political parties and electing leaders.

“Prior to the event, they studied how the parliamentary process worked so they could put what they learnt at school into practice at Parliament House,” said Ms Burney.

In addition to electing a leader, the young people elected a deputy leader and a party whip. They then held party meetings to decide on bills to put forward in Parliament. The three parties were named Blue Peace, White Peace and Aqua Peace.

“The Youth Peace Parliament was a great opportunity for young people to understand how parliament works, debate issues of concern to them, and understand how laws are passed in NSW,” said Ms Burney.

Ms Burney also presented 16 young people with Ministry for Peace ‘Youth Ambassador’ certificates.

“The Ministry for Peace now has 62 official youth ambassadors. They represent the ministry, and act as official ambassadors of peace in their schools and in their communities.

“The role of youth ambassador is an important responsibility, particularly leading up to and on the day of the United Nations’ International Day of Peace, celebrated annually on September 21.”

Ministry for Peace Chair, Biannca Pace, said the Youth Peace Parliament was an opportunity for young people to review parliamentary procedures and processes.

“By being part of Youth Peace Parliament at Parliament House, young people had first-hand experience of parliamentary processes.

…/MORE
…/2

“They provided feedback on how parliament can improve, which we will keep and present to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd next year, after the second Youth Peace Parliament.

“In addition, I gave out two awards to young people. The first was a ‘Peace Pioneer’ award given to the most original and applicable motion put forward. The second was the ‘Advocate of Peace’ award given to a young person who demonstrated passion and commitment to peace through their public speaking and actions throughout the day,” said Ms Pace.

Ms Burney said, “Youth Peace Parliament is a great program to engage young people in the state’s political system.

“I congratulate the Ministry for Peace for organising the event, and teachers and parents for supporting the program and actively educating young people on parliamentary processes.”

About the Ministry for Peace
The Ministry for Peace is a non-profit organisation part of a global initiative calling on world governments to establish Ministries and Departments of Peace worldwide. The Ministry believes the Australian Federal Government must support the peace initiatives of the United Nations, and urges Australians to write letters and place phone calls to Canberra, local members, State Government and local government to show support for the creation of a Department of Peace.

For more information, go to www.ministryforpeace.org.au

Media contact: Phyllis Sakinofsky 9228 4455 / 0406 164 034

Australian National Imams Council: Media Release

2009-08-06T08:56:00.000+09:30

مجلس الأئمة الفدرالي الاسترالي

5th of August 2009

The Australian National Imams Council (ANIC) and the Muslim religious leaders it represents categorically denounce any form of terrorist activity on both Australian and overseas soil.

Like other Australian citizens we are equally astonished by the arrests of “alleged terrorists” in Victoria yesterday, and the Australian Muslim Community will support police investigations into these allegations as we are strongly against violence and vehemently discourage it.

The Muslim community is a law abiding active member of the Australian society. The Australian legal system is built on a presumption of innocence, which we are confident, will be upheld throughout this legal process.

In view of these serious allegations, and given that this matter is currently under police investigation and before the courts, we trust that the Police and other relevant authorities will perform its proper duties in this investigation so as to ensure that all aspects of the investigation is thorough and just.

We also appeal to all media outlets to exercise responsibility and diligence in their reporting and to respect the privacy of the families of those who are currently under investigation.

Thank you,

Imam Mohamad Nawas

Public Relations Officer

Contact details;

Phone No: 0433 924 197

Email:
info@anic.org.au

Kind Regards,

The Australian National Imams Council (ANIC)

Ph: 1300 765 940

Fax: 1300 765 964

Email: info@anic.org.au

Web: www.anic.org.au

Postal Address: P. O. Box 145 , Lakemba NSW 2195 Australia

Civilian Death Toll Soaring In Afghanistan

2009-08-04T11:13:00.002+09:30

By James Cogan

WSWS.org August 3, 2009

A report issued late last month by the Human Rights Unit of the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) sheds light on the rising number of innocent Afghan men, women and children who are being killed in order for the US and its allies to consolidate their neo-colonial occupation of the country.

The UNAMA report contrasted the number of officially recorded civilian deaths for the first six months of 2009 with the number in previous years. From January 1 to June 30, it registered 1,013 civilian fatalities, ‘compared with 818 for the same period in 2008, and 684 in 2007’. In other words, as the Obama administration has escalated the war and sent thousands of additional troops and aircraft to Afghanistan, the number of civilian deaths has soared by 24 percent.

The military activities of both the Taliban-led insurgency, dubbed in the report ‘Anti Government Elements (AGEs), and the operations of the so-called Pro Government Forces (PGFs)—foreign troops and Afghan government security forces—contributed to the body count.

Insurgent roadside bombings and suicide bombings were blamed for 595 deaths or 59 percent of the casualties. In many cases, civilians were killed during attacks on occupation military targets. American and NATO forces drive convoys through residential areas and have established bases inside Afghan towns and villages in order to prevent them coming under the direct control of the Taliban.

Included in the number of civilian deaths caused by the insurgency are also a number of pro-occupation government officials and employees who were assassinated.

The occupation forces killed 310 of the civilian deaths recorded by UNAMA, or 30.5 percent. ‘Unknown’ or unconfirmed parties were held responsible for the remaining 108 fatalities, or 10.5 percent.

Air strikes were the main cause of fatalities inflicted by the US and allied forces. UNAMA recorded 40 air attacks that, combined, caused 200 deaths. In June alone, six air strikes killed 51 people, suggesting that the rate is climbing despite proclamations by American generals that greater care is being taken to avoid what the military still calls ‘collateral damage’.

UNAMA’s assessment of the impact of air strikes would be challenged by many in Afghanistan. The report accepted, for example, the official figure that 63 civilians died in the hours-long May 4 aerial assault on the village of Bala Baluk, in the western province of Farah. Locals continue to insist that the number who died was at least 144. It also accepted that the hundreds of alleged Taliban killed in remote areas of the country by air strikes were in fact combatants.

According to a tally compiled by Associated Press, American and NATO forces claimed to have killed more than 2,310 Taliban this year. In 2008, the tally was over 3,800. With the scale of fighting escalating, the new commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, ordered occupation forces in mid-June to stop giving any estimates on alleged Taliban casualties.

The air strike figure also does not count the hundreds of men, women and children who have been killed this year by missile strikes launched from unmanned US Predator drones over the border in the tribal agencies of Pakistan. The anti-occupation insurgency is supported by the ethnic Pashtun population of the region. In retaliation, the US military is waging a systematic campaign of killings and terror against them.

On June 23, a single US attack on a funeral procession in South Waziristan killed over 80 people. In just two days in July, Predator strikes killed another 80.

Other civilian deaths that may not have been counted, or been falsely reported as Taliban fatalities, are those inflicted during the regular raids conducted by special forces’ units on the homes of suspected insurgent leaders, fighters or financiers.

The report noted: ‘Implementation of search and seizure operations (including night time raids) are also of concern, and there have been reports of a number of joint Afghan and international military forces operations in which excessive use of force has allegedly resulted in civilian deaths.’ Agencies such as UNAMA rarely have the ability to independently verify who, and how many, are killed in such actions.

Overall, the UNAMA report makes a pessimistic estimate of the situation facing the US-led occupation in Afghanistan. Far from Obama’s surge curbing Afghan resistance to the presence of foreign troops, the Taliban and other insurgents are gaining support and expanding the territory in which they operate.

UNAMA noted: ‘As the conflict has widened and deepened throughout 2007, 2008 and into 2009, almost a third of the country is now directly affected by insurgent activities with differing intensity. Armed conflict is particularly prevalent in the South, South-East, East, Central, and Western regions of the country. It is also spreading into areas formerly relatively tranquil, such as the North and North-East.’

The occupation forces, in response, are ‘attempting to quell the insurgency and responding to insurgent activity within civilian areas, [and] are also conducting more operations in areas where civilians reside. These factors have resulted in a rising toll in terms of civilian deaths and injuries and destruction of infrastructure, including homes and assets, which are essential for survival and the maintenance of livelihoods.’

The result will be greater numbers of Afghan civilians losing their lives, particularly in the continuing air strikes against alleged Taliban targets. On July 30, the Los Angeles Times reported that McChrystal had instructed that the Predator drones previously used for hunting for Al Qaeda leaders in remote mountainous areas of the country be focused instead on operations in ‘major insurgent strongholds’—i.e., areas with large civilian populations.

McChrystal has also requested that at least another dozen of the unmanned aircraft be dispatched from the US to Afghanistan. Central Command has further ordered the redeployment of U2 spy aircraft, combat engineer units, road-clearance teams and helicopters from Iraq to the burgeoning war in Afghanistan.

Underscoring again the fraudulent character of the ‘war against terrorism’, an unnamed official told the Los Angeles Times: ‘We might still be too focused on Bin Laden. We should probably reassess our priorities.’

McChrystal himself declared in a recent interview: ‘I don’t think there is enough focus on counter-insurgency. I am not in a position to criticise counter-terrorism, but at this point in the war, in Afghanistan, it is most important to focus on almost classic counter-insurgency.’

Far from being against terrorism, the war is against the Afghan people. The consequence of the rising death toll among both civilians and insurgents will be wider hostility toward the occupation forces and greater sympathy for the armed resistance to their presence.

At the same time, the surge is leading to a rise in US and NATO casualties. In July, foreign occupation forces in Afghanistan suffered their worst casualties of nearly eight years of war, with 75 losing their lives. In just the first two days of August, nine US and NATO troops have been killed—a rate as high as the worst days of fighting in Iraq.

The UNAMA report predicted that a sharp upsurge in violence would take place over the next several weeks, as the Obama administration and its allies attempted to hold a stage-managed presidential election in the country—including in areas controlled by the Taliban, where Afghan President Hamid Karzai is viewed with contempt.

O'Brien's talk should re-energize church disarmament drive

2009-08-02T20:21:00.001+09:30

Written by Dave Robinson Pax Christi USA Executive Director

In a bold move to reenergize the U.S. Catholic church’s decades-old quest for a nuclear weapons free world, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sent an unlikely messenger [1] into the very heart of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex—Strategic Command’s (STRATCOM) Omaha headquarters.

The venue was the ‘2009 Deterrence Symposium’ organized by STRATCOM Commander General Kevin Chilton. STRATCOM oversees the operational end of the U.S. nuclear deterrent—thousands of nuclear bombs on missiles, bombers and submarines, poised on hair trigger alert, and capable of bringing cataclysmic destruction anywhere on the planet. The messenger was Baltimore Archbishop Edwin O’Brien, a Vietnam Veteran and formerly the Archbishop of the Military Services.

O’Brien’s unique familiarity and credibility with the military signals the seriousness the U.S. Catholic church is bringing to the complex and urgent matter of nuclear disarmament.

The speech entitled, Nuclear Weapons and Moral Questions: The Path to Zero, was the concluding keynote of the first day of the Symposium, a gathering of the key civilian and military leaders charged with developing and implementing U.S. policy on the use and future of U.S. nuclear weapons.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Catholics in Alliance adds its voice of praise for O'Brien speech

Last Two Activists Hand Themselves In at End of Exercises

2009-07-27T19:51:00.000+09:30

MEDIA RELEASE:

You can call: Yulanji Bardon 0432036871 for further information

TWO ANTI WAR ACIVISTS remained for 11 days in the Shoalwater Military Exercise Area until last Sunday, officially the last day of the joint Australia-US exercises. The two, Yulanji Bardon and Emily Nielsen, turned themselves in to Range Control and were escorted from the premises by military police, under arrest for trespass.

The presence of Ms Bardon and Ms Nielsen and 5 other activists prevented the live fire phase of the exercises from being reinstated. They were able to meet their goal of staying till the end of the Talisman Sabre Exercises which represented the largest training in ‘interoperability’ between the US and Australia.

Emily Nielsen [19] said: "These exercises are not just a ten-day long game of laser tag as Brigadier Bob Brown and the media would have us believe. They represent Australia joining the United States in the illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan where thousands of civilians have been killed."

Ms Bardon and Ms Neilsen lived on rations and slept in a tent in the Western and southern sectors of the area while Jim Dowling and Culley Palmer had stayed in the Eastern area. Their presence posed a difficulty for the military who were forced to limit live firing and conduct a ‘quiet’ invasion. They dodged helicopters, military dogs and avoided thousands of military personnel refuting the idea of the ‘all-pervasive security state’.

"The ideas that the military offers protection and that terrorism can be overcome with military means are in glaring need of revision. " Ms Bardon said. "If two young women with a compass and limited ‘tactical experience’ can get away with sight-seeing in a military base over the course of eleven days without detection, there may need to be an inquiry into just how effective these training exercises actually are."

Yulanji and Emily entered the base on the 16th July with 5 other activists in two groups: the Jaegerstatter 3 and the Grana 4.

5 of the group have been arrested and subject to charges of trespass with notices to appear. Yulanji and Emily have bail conditions not to go near military installations.

Bryan Law has a notice to appear in court on 7th August. Mark Palmer has a notice to appear later in the month.

Jake Bolton appeared on Friday 24th pleaded guilty and was fined $200.

Jim Dowling and Culley Palmer were not arrested but walked out of the area on Thursday.

Another 4 Christian nonviolent activists, Margaret Pestorius, Jarrod Saul McKenna, Jessica Morrison and Simon Moyle [the Bonhoeffer 4], were fined $2500 in an earlier action to stop the exercises. They were discovered by men playing ‘insurgents’.

Call Yulanji Bardon 0432036871 for further information

For an overview of nonviolent actions held in relation to Talisman Sabre call:

Margaret Pestorius 0403214422, Bryan Law 0403049566

A Moral Choice: Divesting from the Israeli Occupation

2009-06-22T22:43:00.003+09:30

Moral choice

Resources on selective divestment

Jewish Voice for Peace statement on selective divestment
Jewish Voice for Peace informational booklet on divesting from the occupation
Survey of economic engagement to end the Israeli occupation
United Methodist Church and divestment
Presbyterian Church USA and divestment
Caterpillar and corporate accountability
Jews and allies speak up for selective divestment
Statement of support from Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions
Contact us to request more information

In the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, four million Palestinians live under military occupation. The Israeli government retains control over Palestinian land and lives but refuses to grant Palestinians equal rights under the law. For most Palestinians, most of the time, there is no recourse to stop injustice. Most Palestinians live in fear.

Though Israel has a right and duty to defend itself, occupying the Palestinian people by force has brought Israelis neither peace nor security. Instead, it has eroded Israeli civil society, causing a rise in post-traumatic stress disorder amongst Israeli soldiers and an increase in violence against women.

You can help end this.

Several Christian denominations have taken brave steps to ensure that their church investments are not funding injustice in Israel/Palestine. This year, the United Methodist Church and Presbyterian Church USA will vote on resolutions dealing with divesting from the Israeli occupation.

No body in either church has advocated for divesting from Israel. Rather, resolutions are on the table to divest from corporations, mostly multinational, that profit the Israeli occupation.

You can join us.

We welcome you to browse through the resources here, to familiarize yourself with the issues, and to get in touch with us if you have any questions. We welcome you to become a member of Jewish Voice for Peace. We count on our allies to support us and hope you will join us by clicking here.

Jewish Voice for Peace is asking you to make a moral decision during difficult times. Someone has to stand-up and speak against injustice. You are the prophetic voice.

In Peace,
Sydney Levy
Director of Campaigns

The Spiritual Journey of Nonviolence

2009-05-23T12:11:00.000+09:30

Pace e Bene eNews

May 21, 2009

The Spiritual Journey of Nonviolence

Pace e Bene Australia Associate Brendan McKeague was recently a featured speaker at the Australian Ecumenical Spirit Directors Conference.

His theme was: "My Experience of the Holy through Nonviolence."

Click here to read this powerful talk

Join the RESPECT campaign _Sign the pledge

2009-05-23T09:36:00.002+09:30

ANTaR has launched a new campaign, calling on all Australians to commit to a new partnership between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians based on mutual respect.

Find out more
Sign the pledge

JOIN THE GLOBAL FAMILY AGAINST WAR

2009-04-12T22:35:00.001+09:30

The purpose of this website is to obtain enough signatures to present a petition to the United Nations urging all countries to relegate war to history, where it belongs.

The site outlines in a logical, succinct manner, alternatives to war as a way of solving differences between nations, and also how we can eliminate civil wars, terrorism, poverty and stop existing wars.

In support of my argument you will find quotes from highly esteemed past leaders like George Washington, Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Dwight Eisenhower, Albert Einstein, John F Kennedy, Mikhail Gorbachev, Confucius, Anwar Sadat, Franklin D Roosevelt, Pope John II, Abraham Lincoln and many others.

Through the power of the people and for the benefit of all inhabitants of our planet, together we can eliminate war forever, so:

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE SITE.

Dave Elborn.

STOP TALISMAN SABRE NO WAR GAMES

2009-04-10T13:10:00.003+09:30

The Australian Government is hosting Talisman Sabre, a huge US-Australian military exercise in July.

We oppose these war games because

· They are held on land which belongs to the Aboriginal people.

· They are designed to practice aggression and offensive military
strategies, not to defend Australia or protect its people.

· They are intended to train Australian military personnel to take US
military orders – the so-called “seamless interoperability”.

· The exercises will cost well over $100 million, an obscene amount in these
times of economic recession and on top of the $62 million spent every
single day by the government on the military.

· They will cause serious environmental damage in a beautiful area near the
irreplaceable Great Barrier Reef.

JOIN THE PEACE CONVERGENCE

Rockhampton – Yeppoon

July 10 – 13

Travel:

Tickets on the Sydney Bus cost $280 per person return. One way tickets are not available.

The Sydney bus is being organised as part of the Peace and Activism training course at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney. For details of this and the travel itinerary, please see the reverse side of the leaflet. Participants in the course have first preference for seats on the bus.

Thursday July 9 leave Sydney 7 am; arrive Brisbane 11 pm approx.

Friday July 10 leave Brisbane 8 am; arrive Rockhampton 5pm

Set up camp. Public meeting in Rockhampton

Saturday July 11 Sydney group meeting 9 am

March and beach front rally in Yeppoon

Sunday July 12 Peace Convergence activities in Rockhampton

Monday July 13 depart campsite 10 am

Tuesday July 14 arrive Sydney 11 am approx

Accommodation:

The Council camping site where almost all the activists will stay has toilets, showers, a small shop and some other facilities.

Camping: camping sites cost $20 per night – a total of $60 for the 3 nights.

Cabins: A limited number of cabins are available at the site. They contain one double bed and three bunk beds and cost $65 for 2 people plus $10 for each extra person per night. If five people are sharing, the 3 nights will therefore cost each person $57.

For travel and accommodation bookings, please contact
Dr Hannah Middleton on (02) 9351 4468 or 0418 668 098

Bookings must be made by the end of April

Speech by Obama in Prague

2009-04-06T14:11:00.003+09:30

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 5 2009

Speech issued from the White House

Remarks of President Barack Obama -- As Prepared for Delivery
Hradcany Square
Prague Czech Republic
April 5 2009

Thank you for this wonderful welcome. Thank you to the people of Prague. And thank you to the people of the Czech Republic. Today, I am proud to stand here with you in the middle of this great city, in the center of Europe. And - to paraphrase one my predecessors - I am also proud to be the man who brought Michelle Obama to Prague.

I have learned over many years to appreciate the good company and good humor of the Czech people in my hometown of Chicago. Behind me is a statue of a hero of the Czech people - Tomas Masaryk.

In 1918, after America had pledged its support for Czech independence, Masaryk spoke to a crowd in Chicago that was estimated to be over 100,000. I don't think I can match Masaryk's record, but I'm honored to follow his footsteps from Chicago to Prague.

For over a thousand years, Prague has set itself apart from any other city in any other place.

You have known war and peace. You have seen empires rise and fall. You have led revolutions in the arts and science, in politics and poetry. Through it all, the people of Prague have insisted on pursuing their own path, and defining their own destiny. And this city - this Golden City which is both ancient and youthful - stands as a living monument to your unconquerable spirit.

When I was born, the world was divided, and our nations were faced with very different circumstances. Few people would have predicted that someone like me would one day become an American President. Few people would have predicted that an American President would one day be permitted to speak to an audience like this in Prague. And few would have imagined that the Czech Republic would become a free nation, a member of NATO, and a leader of a united Europe.

Those ideas would have been dismissed as dreams.

We are here today because enough people ignored the voices who told them that the world could not change.

We are here today because of the courage of those who stood up - and took risks - to say that freedom is a right for all people, no matter what side of a wall they live on, and no matter what they look like.

We are here today because of the Prague Spring - because the simple and principled pursuit of liberty and opportunity shamed those who relied on the power of tanks and arms to put down the will of the people.

We are here today because twenty years ago, the people of this city took to the streets to claim the promise of a new day, and the fundamental human rights that had been denied to them for far too long.

Sametová revoluce - the Velvet Revolution taught us many things. It showed us that peaceful protest could shake the foundation of an empire, and expose the emptiness of an ideology. It showed us that small countries can play a pivotal role in world events, and that young people can lead the way in overcoming old conflicts. And it proved that moral leadership is more powerful than any weapon.

That is why I am speaking to you in the center of a Europe that is peaceful, united and free - because ordinary people believed that divisions could be bridged; that walls could come down; and that peace could prevail.

We are here today because Americans and Czechs believed against all odds that today could be possible.

We share this common history. But now this generation - our generation - cannot stand still. We, too, have a choice to make. As the world has become less divided it has become more inter-connected.

And we have seen events move faster than our ability to control them - a global economy in crisis; a changing climate; the persistent dangers of old conflicts, new threats and the spread of catastrophic weapons.

None of these challenges can be solved quickly or easily. But all of them demand that we listen to one another and work together; that we focus on our common interests, not our occasional differences; and that we reaffirm our shared values, which are stronger than any force that could drive
us apart. That is the work that we must carry on. That is the work that I have come to Europe to begin.

To renew our prosperity, we need action coordinated across borders. That means investments to create new jobs. That means resisting the walls of protectionism that stand in the way of growth. That means a change in our financial system, with new rules to prevent abuse and future crisis. And we have an obligation to our common prosperity and our common humanity to extend a hand to those emerging markets and impoverished people who are suffering the most, which is why we set aside over a trillion dollars for the International Monetary Fund earlier this week.

To protect our planet, now is the time to change the way that we use energy. Together, we must confront climate change by ending the world's dependence on fossil fuels, tapping the power of new sources of energy like the wind and sun, and calling upon all nations to do their part. And I pledge to you that in this global effort, the United States is now ready to lead.

To provide for our common security, we must strengthen our alliance. NATO was founded sixty years ago, after Communism took over Czechoslovakia. That was when the free world learned too late that it could not afford division. So we came together to forge the strongest alliance that the world has ever known. And we stood shoulder to shoulder - year after year, decade after decade - until an Iron Curtain was lifted, and freedom spread like flowing water.

This marks the tenth year of NATO membership for the Czech Republic. I know that many times in the 20th century, decisions were made without you at the table. Great powers let you down, or determined your destiny without your voice being heard. I am here to say that the United States will never turn its back on the people of this nation. We are bound by shared values, shared history, and the enduring promise of our alliance. NATO's Article 5 states it clearly: an attack on one is an attack on all. That is a promise for our time, and for all time.

The people of the Czech Republic kept that promise after America was attacked, thousands were killed on our soil, and NATO responded. NATO's mission in Afghanistan is fundamental to the safety of people on both sides of the Atlantic. We are targeting the same al Qaeda terrorists who have struck from New York to London, and helping the Afghan people take responsibility for their future.

We are demonstrating that free nations can make common cause on behalf of our common security.

And I want you to know that we Americans honor the sacrifices of the Czech people in this endeavor, and mourn the loss of those you have lost.

No alliance can afford to stand still. We must work together as NATO members so that we have contingency plans in place to deal with new threats, wherever they may come from. We must strengthen our cooperation with one another, and with other nations and institutions around the world, to confront dangers that recognize no borders. And we must pursue constructive relations with Russia on issues of common concern.

One of those issues that I will focus on today is fundamental to our nations, and to the peace and security of the world - the future of nuclear weapons in the 21st century.

The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War. No nuclear war was fought between the United States and the Soviet Union, but generations lived with the knowledge that their world could be erased in a single flash of light. Cities like Prague that had existed for centuries would have ceased to exist.

Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up.

More nations have acquired these weapons. Testing has continued. Black markets trade in nuclear secrets and materials. The technology to build a bomb has spread. Terrorists are determined to buy, build or steal one. Our efforts to contain these dangers are centered in a global non-proliferation regime, but as more people and nations break the rules, we could reach the point when the center cannot hold.

This matters to all people, everywhere. One nuclear weapon exploded in one city - be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague - could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences may be - for our global safety, security, society, economy, and ultimately our survival.

Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be checked - that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction. This fatalism is a deadly adversary. For if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.

Just as we stood for freedom in the 20th century, we must stand together for the right of people everywhere to live free from fear in the 21st. And as a nuclear power - as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon - the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it.

So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. This goal will not be reached quickly - perhaps not in my lifetime.

It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change.

First, the United States will take concrete steps toward a world without nuclear weapons.

To put an end to Cold War thinking, we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy and urge others to do the same. Make no mistake: as long as these weapons exist, we will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies - including the Czech Republic. But we will begin the work of reducing our arsenal.

To reduce our warheads and stockpiles, we will negotiate a new strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia this year. President Medvedev and I began this process in London, and will seek a new agreement by the end of this year that is legally binding, and sufficiently bold. This will set the stage for further cuts, and we will seek to include all nuclear weapons states in this endeavor.

To achieve a global ban on nuclear testing, my Administration will immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. After more than five decades of talks, it is time for the testing of nuclear weapons to finally be banned.

And to cut off the building blocks needed for a bomb, the United States will seek a new treaty that verifiably ends the production of fissile materials intended for use in state nuclear weapons. If we are serious about stopping the spread of these weapons, then we should put an end to the dedicated production of weapons grade materials that create them.

Second, together, we will strengthen the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a basis for cooperation.

The basic bargain is sound: countries with nuclear weapons will move toward disarmament, countries without nuclear weapons will not acquire them; and all countries can access peaceful nuclear energy.

To strengthen the Treaty, we should embrace several principles. We need more resources and authority to strengthen international inspections. We need real and immediate consequences for countries caught breaking the rules or trying to leave the Treaty without cause. And we should build a new framework for civil nuclear cooperation, including an international fuel bank, so that countries can access peaceful power without increasing the risks of proliferation.

That must be the right of every nation that renounces nuclear weapons, especially developing countries embarking on peaceful programs. No approach will succeed if it is based on the denial of rights to nations that play by the rules. We must harness the power of nuclear energy on behalf of our efforts to combat climate change, and to advance opportunity for all people.

We go forward with no illusions. Some will break the rules, but that is why we need a structure in place that ensures that when any nation does, they will face consequences. This morning, we were reminded again why we need a new and more rigorous approach to address this threat. North Korea broke the rules once more by testing a rocket that could be used for a long range missile.

This provocation underscores the need for action - not just this afternoon at the UN Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons. Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response. North Korea must know that the path to security and respect will never come through threats and illegal weapons. And all nations must come together to build a stronger, global regime.

Iran has yet to build a nuclear weapon. And my Administration will seek engagement with Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect, and we will present a clear choice. We want Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations, politically and economically. We will support Iran's right to peaceful nuclear energy with rigorous inspections. That is a path that the Islamic Republic can take. Or the government can choose increased isolation, international pressure, and a potential nuclear arms race in the region that will increase insecurity for all.

Let me be clear: Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat, not just to the United States, but to Iran's neighbors and our allies. The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defense against these missiles. As long as the threat from Iran persists, we intend to go forward with a missile defense system that is cost-effective and proven. If the Iranian threat is eliminated, we will have a stronger basis for security, and the driving force for missile defense construction in Europe at this time will be removed.

Finally, we must ensure that terrorists never acquire a nuclear weapon.

This is the most immediate and extreme threat to global security. One terrorist with a nuclear weapon could unleash massive destruction. Al Qaeda has said that it seeks a bomb. And we know that there is unsecured nuclear material across the globe. To protect our people, we must act with a sense of purpose without delay.

Today, I am announcing a new international effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years. We will set new standards, expand our cooperation with Russia, and pursue new partnerships to lock down these sensitive materials.

We must also build on our efforts to break up black markets, detect and intercept materials in transit, and use financial tools to disrupt this dangerous trade. Because this threat will be lasting, we should come together to turn efforts such as the Proliferation Security Initiative and the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism into durable international institutions. And we should start by having a Global Summit on Nuclear Security that the United States will host within the next year.

I know that there are some who will question whether we can act on such a broad agenda. There are those who doubt whether true international cooperation is possible, given the inevitable differences among nations. And there are those who hear talk of a world without nuclear weapons and doubt whether it is worth setting a goal that seems impossible to achieve.

But make no mistake: we know where that road leads. When nations and peoples allow themselves to be defined by their differences, the gulf between them widens. When we fail to pursue peace, then it stays forever beyond our grasp. To denounce or shrug off a call for cooperation is an easy and cowardly thing. That is how wars begin. That is where human progress ends.

There is violence and injustice in our world that must be confronted. We must confront it not by splitting apart, but by standing together as free nations, as free people. I know that a call to arms can stir the souls of men and women more than a call to lay them down. But that is why the voices for peace and progress must be raised together.

Those are the voices that still echo through the streets of Prague. Those are the ghosts of 1968. Those were the joyful sounds of the Velvet Revolution. Those were the Czechs who helped bring down a nuclear-armed empire without firing a shot.

Human destiny will be what we make of it. Here, in Prague, let us honor our past by reaching for a better future. Let us bridge our divisions, build upon our hopes, and accept our responsibility to leave this world more prosperous and more peaceful than we found it. Thank you.

PALM SUNDAY Rally for Peace Parramatta, 2.00 pm

2009-04-03T23:37:00.001+10:30

Amphitheatre at Parramatta Town Hall

2.00pm - Multi-Faith Prayers for Peace

Fr Pat Mullins, priest at Mt Druitt; Exodus Choir

2.30pm - Rally - Dr Sue Wareham, Medical Association for Prevention of War
Sally McManus, Australian Services Union

Sponsored by NSW Ecumenical Council

Organised by Sydney Peace & Justice Coalition

Contact: Bruce Childs 0412 803 457; Fr Claude Mostowik 0411 450 953; Peter Murphy 0418 312 301

No more Australian troops to Afghanistan!

Peace through Dialogue!

Prime Minister Rudd is poised to send up to 5,000 more soldiers to fight in Afghanistan. The Obama Administration is delaying a formal request while public opinion is being gauged in Australia. Over 50 per cent of Australians now oppose the war in Afghanistan. The government needs to answer many questions before possibly increasing its military role there.

The war in Afghanistan is part of a much larger region greatly destablised by the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent horrific war there. It is also destablised by the convulsion of the Government of Pakistan, also due largely to the huge mistakes of the Bush administration. China, Russia, Iran and India, as well as Pakistan, are neighbours of Afghanistan. All of them, with different interests, will try to influence events in Afghanistan. It appears that the Obama administration is now willing to talk to them about Afghanistan.

Questions that must be answered:

1. If an increase of Australian forces in Oruzgan Province is to replace the Dutch forces withdrawing in 2010, shouldn’t the Prime Minister tell us why the Dutch troops are going, before replacing them?

2. If European members of NATO are unwilling to increase the number of combat troops in Afghanistan, why should Australia do so?

3. Isn’t it true that the Karzai government is negotiating with parts of the Taliban, as is the UK and UN, because they recognize that the war is not working and that a political solution is required?

4. Since neither the British Army nor the Soviet Army could prevail in Afghanistan, shouldn’t the Prime Minister recognize that the US and Australian forces cannot prevail in this military conflict either? Isn’t it more responsible to refuse to go in deeper, to withdraw military forces and promote a political solution?

5. Isn’t the war in Afghanistan degrading Australia’s credibility as a genuine part of the international community, upholding international law, because Australian soldiers are killing civilians including women and children, only to support the general concept of the US Alliance?

6. Since the Bush gang - and the incoming Obama administration - could not define a credible, justifiable strategy for the Afghanistan War, how can Australia justify it? It is no longer credible to claim that the war is to capture Osama bin Laden because of the terror attacks in the USA way back on Sept 11, 2001.

7. While the Taliban is a reactionary political movement which commits atrocities against civilians, isn’t the US aerial bombing – particularly of wedding and funeral processions – killing even more civilians?

8. Isn’t it true that the Taliban are thriving because European Christian troops are taking control of their country? Doesn’t the high civilian casualties only make the Taliban stronger, and destablise Pakistan and India?

9. Isn’t it accurate to see the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai as a coalition of warlords who also engage in repression, discriminate against women, and are now the world leaders in heroin exports?

10. Wasn’t the Howard policy in Afghanistan part of his subservience to the George W Bush version of US interests? Shouldn’t Australia have an independent approach to foreign policy, even within the US Alliance, especially in the Afghanistan War where Australian soldiers are being killed and wounded?

11. Won’t the outcome in Afghanistan be similar to Viet Nam - another cohort of young Australian men and women with their lives brutalized for nothing, and brutalised communities who call Oruzgan Province ‘home’?

12. Isn’t Australia’s Afghanistan War commitment now costing $575 million per year? Wouldn’t this be better spent on essential public services, the uplift of Aboriginal communities, and on a peaceful Afghanistan?

Sydney Peace & Justice Coalition

Sponsored by: UnionsNSW, Construction Forestry Mining & Energy Union NSW, Aust Manufacturing Workers Union NSW, NSW Teachers Fed, Australian Services Union, Pax Christi, MSC - Peace & Justice, Quakers Peace & Justice, Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom, People for Nuclear Disarmament NSW, Progressive Labour Party, Labor for Refugees, Communist Party of Australia (Marxist Leninist), Evatt Foundation, SEARCH Foundation.

Palm Sunday rally for peace April 5 2009

www.search.org.au
Level 3, 110 Kippax St, Surry Hills, 2010
Ph: 02 9211 4164 Fax: 02 9211 1407
ABN 63 050 096 976

Promoting Democracy, Social Justice and Environmental Sustainability

Poll finds 51% oppose role in Afghanistan

2009-03-30T18:47:00.000+10:30

Tony Wright

The Age, March 30, 2009

AUSTRALIA'S involvement in the war in Afghanistan is increasingly unpopular, despite Prime Minister Kevin Rudd backing at the weekend a larger role for military trainers in the conflict.

The latest Age/Nielsen poll has found 51 per cent of voters oppose Australia's current involvement. Two-thirds of voters oppose any increase in the number of Australian troops in Afghanistan.

The findings follow Mr Rudd's enthusiastic response in the US to President Barack Obama's revamped strategy to try to win the war.

The strategy — an integrated approach of increased military effort, training of Afghan security forces and civil aid —was described by Mr Rudd as "absolutely right".

Although he insisted there had been no direct request from the US for more Australian forces during his visit to Washington, his support for the renewed American effort was interpreted as flagging the likelihood that Australia would increase its troop commitment.

Mr Rudd admitted during a TV interview in the US last week that the war in Afghanistan did not have broad voter support in Australia.

Today's poll confirms that opposition is increasing. In February 2006, an Age/Nielsen poll found that 48 per cent of Australians opposed the war, while 45 per cent supported it. Support has now slipped to 44 per cent, and opposition is the majority position. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US, a Nielsen poll in October 2001 revealed 70 per cent support for the war on terrorism, though Afghanistan was not specifically named in the question.

The Plight of Tamil Civilians: NO CHANGE

2009-03-22T14:48:00.001+10:30

By Chandi Sinnathurai

Countercurrents.org March 20, 2009

There is no famine of view points or opinions on this Sri Lankan dirty war on Tamil civilians. Much ink has been spilt, and inch columns have been filled by various journalists and writers. So much have been spoken by politicians, protests by activists, government and non-Governmental agencies both local and foreign. But, one thing is constant: All of these have failed to change either the mind of the Sri Lankan state or the plight of the Tamil civilians in the North.

The international community on the other hand mooted the idea of an humanitarian intervention. The grand plan was to ‘evacuate’ the civilians (around 200,000) from the Tiger pocket (35 sq km) of land. In other words, to deplete the Tigers of the so-called ‘civilian shield.’ Nothing seem to have materialised.

Tamil Tigers have repeatedly called for a ceasefire in order to kick-start negotiations. The SL Government has categorically rejected that appeal. For both India and Sri Lanka they want the Tigers disarmed. That might be the position of the international community including the UN.

In the Vanni region, there are over 330,000 Internally Displaced People without proper medical care, shelter, food, water and other necessary items.

BBC News* reported yesterday (19/03/09):

‘In addition to the war-related casualties, the lack of food, water and medical supplies left a number of children dead from acute respiratory infection and diarrhoea in the final two weeks of February,’ says James Elder, the spokesperson for Unicef, the UN children's agency.

According to BBC, Annemarie Loof, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) head in Sri Lanka, is quoted to have said:

‘MSF doctors came across a mother who lived with her child inside a bunker for four months - another woman had lost her two children in the fighting, then her husband went missing after losing a leg and a hand in an artillery attack.’

The fundamental cause of civilian suffering, according to aid workers, is owing to ‘the denial of freedom of movement for people trapped…’ *MSF pointed out that, both parties need to prioritise civilian safety.

The sad fact is, the war is continuing, and daily helpless civilians are dying.

BBC News Article Civilian Misery in Northern Sri Lanka

Inaugural lecture with Pat Dodson Wednesday March 4 2009

2009-02-23T19:48:00.002+10:30

Caritas Austraia's Project Compassion
Starts: 6:30pm, Wednesday March 4 2009

Where: St Benedicts Hall, The University of Notre Dame, Sydney - Corner Broadway and Abercrombie St, Broadway, Sydney

Who: Dr Patrick Dodson, Mr Jack de Groot CEO, Caritas Australia

The largest aid and development fundraiser in Australia, Caritas Australia’s 2009 Project Compassion is launching its inaugural lecture with Caritas Australia partner Dr Patrick Dodson of the Lingiari Foundation. Following last year’s landmark apology from the Australian PM, acclaimed Indigenous leader and justice advocate Dr Dodson, will provide a road map on where to now for reconciliation.

For more information contact Caritas or download a flyer. RSVPs essential, places strictly limited

SOLDIERS OF PEACE - 19 March 2009 - Special Benefit Screening

2009-02-21T23:52:00.002+10:30

A star-studded Australian documentary which won Best Feature Film and Best Documentary Director for Feature Film at the Monaco International Film Festival

With a powerful and moving message on the vital importance of peace to world sustainability, Soldiers of Peace takes the viewer on an inspiring journey across 5 continents and 14 countries to show the extraordinary peace efforts of ordinary individuals across the globe.

Narrated by actor Michael Douglas and featuring interviews with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Sir Bob Geldof, Sir Richard Branson, Dr Hans Blix, and Tim Flannery, Soldiers of Peace aims to put peace back on the world agenda and to illustrate the connection between individual acts of enterprise and heroism and the systemic changes needed for our planet's survival in the 21st Century.

The film visits religious fundamentalists in Nigeria who preach a peaceful co-existence; IRA bomber Pat Magee reconciling with the daughter of one of his victims; a young Kenyan woman bringing clashing tribes together through football; and former militia men who advocate peace through music.

A One Tree Films' production, Soldiers of Peace is the brainchild of Australian businessman and philanthropist, Steve Killelea, who is also the founder of the Global Peace Index, an annual ranking of the world's most peaceful nations. It is directed and filmed by award-winning director and war correspondent, Tim Wise.

SPECIAL BENEFIT SCREENING

Thursday, 19th March 7pm

Footbridge Theatre, Parramatta Road
(Sydney University)

Speakers: Director Tim Wise, Professor Jake Lynch, Director Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, and Professor Stuart Rees Director of Sydney Peace Foundation

Tickets $15. Book online at Moshtix

For more information visit: Soldiers of Peace Movie

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

International Social Justice Day February 20, 2009

2009-02-20T10:52:00.000+10:30

February 20, 2009 is an important day for all persons in our global village but especially for those of us committed to living the Good News of peace and justice. The World Day of Social Justice is being observed for the first time following its unanimous adoption by the 192 member States of the United Nations during their November 2007 General Assembly. You are invited and asked to share with your members the enclosed prayer for this day. It was developed by members of the USG/UISG Secretariat Commission for Justice Peace and Integrity of Creation in Rome. For a copy of the prayer go to: Click here for more information

The World Calls On UN To Stop Genocide Of Tamils In Sri-Lanka

2009-02-18T19:43:00.000+10:30

Dr C P Thiagarajah

Countercurrents.org February 17, 2009

Robert Evans, Chairman of the European Parliament Delegation for Relations with South Asia , (according to IANS on 13 February 2009) called on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to send a peacekeeping mission as soon as possible. This clarion call is most timely in view of the non-compliance of the Govt of Sri-Lanka (GSL) to UNHRC request to abide by international war laws in protecting civilians.

About a month earlier, on 14 Jan 2009, John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, in a debate at United Nations Security Council on the protection of civilians in armed conflict said that, the Council's focus must be on the conduct of hostilities and the need for strict compliance with international humanitarian law. In Sri Lanka , strict compliance with international humanitarian law was all the more critical with the intensification of fighting in the Vanni. Consequently humanitarian needs assessment was difficult. He was, concerned about the 350,000 civilians trapped in an increasingly confined space.

NORIHIRO OKUDA ( Japan ) emphasized at the same session at UNHRC the importance of a) protecting and empowering civilians in armed conflict from a human security perspective. b) taking care of the dire situation of vulnerable civilians in armed conflicts worldwide, including Sri-Lanka , Afghanistan , Iraq , Darfur, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia . c) stopping deliberate attacks against civilians, journalists, aid workers as well as the recruitment of child soldiers, restriction of humanitarian access and other human rights violations.

The surprising aspect of the UN declaration with the expectation that the Sri-Lankan polarised government would abide by it assiduously have had tragic consequences. It had been estimated that 2000 were massacred within the period 1 January and 15 February 2009. The scene of the carnage heaped on the Tamils by the Sinhala GSL is heart rending and cannot be looked at.

Further, Ranjith Jayasundera, a Sinhalese, in Sunday Leader of 14 December under the title “Govt's war costing more lives than in Lanka's history” revealed that the Sri-Lanka Air Force already holds the unenviable record of being the first, only and thus most frequent dropper of bombs on its own citizens, and the government would gain little from being seen in the eyes of the world as having used cluster munitions on a refugee camp as alleged by some NGOs and the LTTE.

When the GSL is not paying any attention to the UN the only remedy lies in a more united drastic action by the UN. Canada and UK had already called for such a move. Here are some of the Western parliamentarians who sincerely felt that immediate action should be taken by the UN.

Mr Bob Ray Canadian MP told The Star, on February 04, 2009 “The UN can’t allow the Sri Lankan government to say “it’s an internal matter” and stay away”.

UK Parliament had a one and a half hours adjournment debate on 5 February 2009. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North) (Lab):

I endorse the strength Minister’s call for a ceasefire. That said, if the Government of Sri Lanka are simply not prepared to listen to the international community's calls for a ceasefire, is it not time for some degree of sanctions, such as suspension from the Commonwealth or the suspension of military or trade agreements, to show that the rest of the world means business in trying to bring about peace in Sri Lanka?

Mr. Philip Hollobone ( Kettering ) (Con):

Is it not important for the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit Sri Lanka as soon as possible so that they can see at first hand what is going on and have face-to-face meetings with the President of Sri Lanka?

Mr. Keith Simpson (Mid-Norfolk) (Con): we should spell out to the Sri Lankan Government the types of ultimate sanction that the international community could impose. A number of organisations could do that.

Joan Ryan (Enfield, North) (Lab): A recent report by the Genocide Prevention Project highlighted Sri Lanka as one of eight red alert countries where genocide or mass atrocities are under way or at risk of breaking out. I do not think that any of us can afford to ignore such an alert. We have said many times in the aftermath of genocide that we could have seen it coming and that we could and should have done more to prevent it. We must say and do more to prevent it from happening in Sri Lanka .

Mr. Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD):
I am also delighted that the Foreign Secretary achieved, through his discussion with Secretary Clinton in the United States, a joint US-UK call for a ceasefire. However, I urge the Government to go further. As I said in a letter to the Prime Minister recently, they should go to the United Nations Security Council. We need the whole international community to speak as one. We need to work for that, because the Sri Lankan Government should be in no doubt about how the international community feels.

Mr. Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow) (Lab):
Members have suggested, we should think seriously about sanctions. For years, the Government there have not been interested in listening to any criticism.

Simon Hughes ( North Southwark and Bermondsey) (LD

Said firstly Sri-Lankan government should accept the proposed ceasefire immediately, allow the presence of the UN and the relief agencies. He wanted media freedom restored because Sri Lanka has the second worst record on press freedom in the world, behind only Eritrea .

Secondly, there has to be a reference to the UN, the Commonwealth and other bodies, so that the international community can make their voices clearer. There may be a case for reference to the International Criminal Court. At least one Sri Lankan Minister is an American citizen, and there may be a war crimes issue to be dealt with.

Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab):

He wanted the suspension of Sri Lanka from the Commonwealth. He urged the members to do something that hurts.---We need to do something large and bold. We need to take a step.

Stephen Hammond ( Wimbledon ) (Con

We must ensure that any sanctions that we impose hurt the people we intend to hurt.

Canada parliament also took very serious decision after two and half hours debate and concluded that Tamil’s genocide be taken to UN.

Hon. Irwin Cotler ( Mount Royal , Lib.):

We must support the call for the appointment of a United Nations special envoy for Sri Lanka to monitor and guard against abuses and to assist the peace process, as has been recommended by the United Nations itself, by the United States Department of State and by other international actors. Free press be allowed unfettered access to the conflict area to report on the ground situation.

Hon. Maria Minna (Beaches— East York , Lib.

an immediate ceasefire with international monitors put in place to ensure that it is respected. The UN should appoint a special representative to monitor the ceasefire and also to start the peace talks immediately.

It is time that the Government of Canada be aggressive on this issue with the United Nations. The Security Council of the UN should also be involved

Hon. Albina Guarnieri ( Mississauga East—Cooksville, Lib.)

Canada must call for immediate posting of international observers and peacekeepers towns in the north and east . If not this tragedy will continue to reach catastrophic proportions. Canada can also demand that Sri Lanka submit fully to an international war crimes tribunal where the actions of leaders on all sides of this conflict can be investigated and judged. The suffering in Sri Lanka will continue as long as there is no legal consequence, no opportunity for justice and no international will to bring a just peace.

Mr.John Cannis : Thanks for using the true word "Genocide", pointing these statements "go nowhere", urging "we need solutions, not papers"

Hon. Jack Layton ( Toronto —Danforth, NDP)

He called for sustained effort for all possible diplomatic pressure to achieve the ceasefire. We are also calling for an immediate end to the apparent use of cluster bombs by the Sri Lankan military. We know that this is against international law. We also have to do everything we can to ensure the supply of emergency aid and access to the conflict zone for international aid organizations.

We have to use all available channels including our influence at the United Nations and at the Commonwealth to achieve these goals

Mr. Wayne Marston ( Hamilton East— Stoney Creek , NDP):

He indicated that the international community has to face the problem of the Sri Lankan government prohibition of independent journalists and human rights monitors from accessing the area of conflict. But one thing is very clear, Sri Lankan civilians are being maimed and are dying in this conflict.

Mr. Paul Dewar ( Ottawa Centre, NDP):

is it plausible for Canada to raise in the UN General Assembly the issue of ceasefire to the Security Council? How realistic is that idea, and what can we do to advance it?

U.S. Judiciary Committee Chairman and Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy said that "it is imperative that the government and the LTTE agree to an immediate ceasefire to avoid further loss of life, permit access to UN monitors and humanitarian organizations, and permit civilians to leave for areas of safety. The Obama administration, the British, Indian and other concerned governments, should be publicly urging the same,"

If no action is taken expeditiously there will be genocide of a quarter million Tamils within a week. Just look what happened in Rwanda when UN delayed action. Nearly a million Tutsi were murdered within 100 days. Will the UN take action? Yes I am sure for Ms Navaneethan Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in a press release issued 29 Thursday January 2009 had made it clear that the UN is aware of HR violation in Mullaitivu where GSL last battle against the LTTE is taking place. She reiterated that “it is imperative that we find out more about what exactly has been going on”.

Emergency rally - Stop the war on Gaza 2pm Sunday 18 January

2009-01-13T19:17:00.001+10:30

End the brutal siege, bombing and invasion of Palestine

End the Rudd government's support for Israel's massacres

Suspend all Australia-Israel ties until Gaza is free

Freedom and self-determination for Palestine

Assemble Sydney Town Hall for rally and march 2pm Sunday 18 January

Speakers include

Palestinian activists
John Pilger, renowned author and documentary film maker
Greens MP Sylvia Hale

PRESS RELEASE IKV Pax Christi: Talking with Hamas

2009-01-10T21:52:00.000+10:30

Utrecht, 8 January 2009

No sustainable political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is possible without Hamas. That is one conclusion in "Talking to Hamas: On Isolation and Its Failure" a report by peace organisation IKV Pax Christi.

"The political boycott of Hamas has failed", peace organisation IKV Pax Christi notes. It has served neither the Palestinians' national aspirations nor Israel's desire for security. This strategy has left in tatters the credibility of Quartet's pursuit of peace. (The Quartet is made up of the EU, Russia, the UN and the USA.)

"The presupposition that peace talks can achieve a good result when Hamas is left out is pure fantasy", notes Jan Gruiters of IKV Pax Christi. "Isolating Hamas has reinforced its radical tendencies while weakening President Abbas. Recognition of Israel and renunciation of violence must be the results of, not the prerequisites for, political dialogue with Hamas".

Like most other EU countries, the Netherlands is a proponent of Hamas' political and diplomatic isolation. Yet, this isolation has done nothing to bring about a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In its report, which was written prior to incursion into Gaza, IKV Pax Christi examines various scenarios for Hamas' continued isolation, including 'more violence in Gaza', of the type now taking place. None of these scenarios leads to peace or to more security for the Israeli population. The report is based on credible sources including leading experts like Graham Fuller (ex-CIA), Efraim Halevy (ex-Mossad).

The report does not justify Hamas' strategy. IKV Pax Christi calls the shelling carried out by Palestinian extremists a contravention of international humanitarian law. Still, IKV Pax Christi calls on the international community, the EU and the Dutch government to reassess the political isolation of Hamas. Hamas must be influenced, not isolated.

An immediate and permanent ceasefire, the opening of border crossings and the raising of the blockade to admit humanitarian aid are only possible when Hamas is admitted to the political process. That is why the international community must support Arab countries' attempts to reconcile Fatah and Hamas and why it must shatter the taboo against dialogue with Hamas. These acts are also for Israel's benefit.

Note for the press
Download the report on www.ikvpaxchristi.nl/uk.
For more information please contact Helma Maas, IKV Pax Christi's press officer at +31 06 48.98.14.88 or consult our website.

IKV Pax Christi works for peace, reconciliation and justice in the world. We join with people in conflict areas to work on a peaceful and democratic society. We enlist the aid of people in the Netherlands who, like IKV Pax Christi, want to work for political solutions to crises and armed conflicts. IKV Pax Christi combines knowledge, energy and people to attain one single objective: there must be peace!

Candlelight vigil for Gaza victims

2009-01-07T23:36:00.000+10:30

Come and show your respect for the victims of Israel's bombing and invasion of Gaza,
which has now resulted in the deaths of over 550 Palestinians

This Thursday 8 January from 7pm & next Thursday 15 January
Sydney Town Hall

Justice says others help Obama shut Guantanamo

2009-01-05T20:13:00.001+10:30

Editorial

January 5, 2009

‘Australia shares responsibility with the US for cleaning up the mess.’

GUANTANAMO Bay is and always has been a legal black hole, deliberately set up by the Bush Administration on a US military base in Cuba to hold terrorism suspects beyond the reach of US courts and, for that matter, international law. For six years, the world observed a charade of justice, as the Administration thwarted a succession of efforts to challenge, in a properly constituted court of law, the legal basis for the detention of 775 detainees in all.

Last June the Supreme Court finally established that the detainees could not be held beyond the reach of US law and upheld their claim to the centuries-old right of habeas corpus. Incoming president Barack Obama has already distinguished himself by denouncing Guantanamo as a "sad chapter in American history" and vowing to shut it down as he moves to rebuild "America's moral stature in the world". As his legal adviser, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, has said: "We can't put people in a dungeon forever without processing whether they deserve to be there."

Most of the 255 people still detained at Guantanamo are expected to be freed. Only one, Osama bin Laden's former driver Salim Hamdan, has undergone a trial by the Bush Administration's military commission that actually tested the evidence against him. Sentenced to 5½ years in prison, including his time in detention, he was released last month in his homeland, Yemen.

A minority of so-called "high-value" suspects such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 terrorism, can rightly expect to be charged and tried in a court of law that complies with the democratic norms of justice. Even then, the admissibility of confessions and other evidence has regrettably been tainted by their long detention in harsh conditions and, in some cases, torture.

Another problem the US faces is resettling detainees whom it has demonised repeatedly to justify their years of detention without trial. In several cases since the Supreme Court's ruling in June, US courts have assessed the evidence against the men brought before them as being too weak to justify their detention and ordered their release. The US has now cleared about 60 detainees for release, but is unable either to ensure their safety if they return to their home countries or to find other countries willing to accept them.

Only a few nations, such as Germany and Portugal, have said they will consider taking detainees. The Netherlands has responded with an argument that is likely to resonate with a public that is also naturally fearful of men held as terror suspects for so many years. "If they are not to be tried but cannot return to their countries, it is first and foremost the responsibility of the country which arrested and imprisoned them, the United States," a Foreign Ministry official said. In other words, it's their mess and they should clean it up on their own. Unfortunately, the likely consequence would be to doom a large number of probably innocent people to yet more time in detention.

And the US did not do this all on its own. A few nations that were once supportive of Guantanamo Bay, including Australia under the Howard government, share the shame and some responsibility for helping to shut it down. The Rudd Government is one of about 100 asked by the US to help clear the camp. Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard said at the weekend that the Government had rejected a request to accept a group of detainees as they did not meet security and immigration criteria but that future requests would be considered on a case-by-case basis.

A number of legal experts have already sought to establish the truth about the 775 detainees deemed to be "enemy combatants". One two-year project by Professor Mark Denbeaux and his students at Seton Hall Law School, in New Jersey, based on official documents, found that 86 per cent of detainees were not enemy combatants at all. As David McColgin, a lawyer for detainees, points out, "A lot of it was justified on false reports from local Afghan people who simply wanted to get the bounty money the US Government made available, which was a real incentive to provide potentially false information." Until recently, none of this information was tested in court.

Only 14 per cent of detainees were actually captured on a battlefield, but many of those are believed to be among the people still in detention. Thus the domestic political difficulties of resettling any detainees are considerable. However, Australia has already done so in the case of two of its citizens, both of whom are now free. Three years ago, Mamdouh Habib was freed without charge after three years at Guantanamo. He had been vilified by the Bush Administration and the Howard government, in order to persuade the public he belonged among the alleged "worst of the worst" at Guantanamo. No proper explanation, no apology, was offered upon his return. David Hicks returned to Australia in May 2007 to complete a nine-month sentence, having agreed to a plea-bargain deal as a way to end his 5½-year ordeal.

The bottom line is that if other nations want the US to end the injustices endured by the detainees of Guantanamo Bay, they will probably have to help. This dark chapter must be closed soon in order to reclaim some of the high moral ground that the US and its allies so needlessly surrendered in their struggle against terrorism.

This story was found at: The Age Article

Emergency Petition for Ceasefire

2008-12-30T09:04:00.002+10:30

Dear friends,

The Gaza crisis has exploded -- put your name to our emergency petition demanding a ceasefire. We'll deliver it immediately to the UN Security Council, the Arab League, the US and other world leaders!
Take Action Now
As we watch the Gaza bloodshed with horror, appalled at how the crisis is spiraling further out of control, one thing is clear -- this violence will only lead to further civilian suffering and an escalation of the conflict.

There must be another way. Over 280 are dead so far in the Gaza Strip and hundreds more injured -- rockets are striking Ashdod deep inside Israel for the very first time, and the sides are mobilising for invasion. A global outcry has begun, but it'll take more than words -- the immediate violence won't end, nor will wider peace be secured, without firm action from the international community.

Today, we're launching an emergency campaign which will be delivered to the UN Security Council and key world powers, urging them to act to ensure an immediate ceasefire and address the growing humanitarian crisis -- only with robust international oversight and action can civilians on all sides be protected and real steps be taken toward a wider peace. Follow this link now to sign the emergency petition and send it to everyone you know:

Click here to go to petition

After Gaza's bloodiest day in recent memory and eight or more years of ineffective US and global diplomacy, we need to get world leaders to do more than issue statements if they're to ensure a lasting ceasefire.1 Through the UN Security Council and other international bodies, the world can provide the help and pressure needed to stop the violence and change the situation on the ground in Gaza -- preventing the rockets and incursions, re-opening crossing-points under international oversight so that instead of weapon-smuggling, the 1.5 million ordinary people of Gaza can get the fuel, food and medicines they so desperately need.

All sides to the conflict will continue to act as they have in the past if they believe that the world will stand by and allow them to do so. We mobilised for a ceasefire in 2006's Israel-Lebanon war and succeeded, but this time the international community must not delay -- let's raise a truly worldwide outcry. 2009 is a year that things can be different. As we face this crisis, and the possibilities of a new year, it's time for us everywhere to work together to stop this violence.

With hope and determination,

Brett, Ricken, Alice, Ben, Pascal, Paul, Graziela, Paula, Luis, Iain and the whole Avaaz team

1 Further actions could include: a formal resolution from the Security Council rather than issuing a press statement as was done on 28 December 2008; explicit private and public international pressure on the parties to end the hostilities including developing clear terms for the resumption of negotiations; proper international oversight of the Rafah border; and in time, a detailed Security Council resolution setting out the terms in international law for a permanent peace between Israel and Palestine. For background, see this Jerusalem Post article, "No international pressure to end op"

----------------------------

ABOUT AVAAZ Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in Ottawa, London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Buenos Aires, and Geneva.

I've been thinking a lot about courage.

2008-11-29T12:37:00.003+10:30

A message from Howard Zinn, Jewish Voice for Peace .

This message was sent to Abe Quadan Peacefriends

I've been thinking a lot about courage.

Right now, while I'm snug and fed this Thanksgiving holiday in the comfort of my home, halfway around the world a group of teenagers is sitting in a jail cell today, demonstrating the very definition of courage and sacrifice. It's frustrating. Humbling. And I'm damn glad to have the chance to do something big about it.

Send a letter to the
Israeli Minister of Defense now.

I am Raz Bar-David Varon.
I am one of the Shministim.
I need your help.

See that fresh-faced, bold young woman on the right? Her name is Raz Bar-David Varon. She's an 18-year-old Israeli who just graduated from 12th grade. And as I write this, she's sitting in jail in Tel Aviv because she refuses to join the Israeli army.
In my day we called them the "refuseniks" and here in the U.S. they're "conscientious objectors." In Israel, they're still in high school and they are the Shministim. Get used to that word because I'm going to ask you to know it, to say it, to use it. You see, Raz Bar-David Varon and another dozen or so Shministim have asked Jewish Voice for Peace for our help and this is one request we can't refuse.
The Shministim - all about ages 17, 18, 19 and in the 12th grade - are taking a stand. They believe in a better, more peaceful future for themselves and for Israelis and Palestinians, and they are refusing to join the Israeli army. They're in jail, holding strong against immense pressure from family, friends and the Israeli government. They need our support and they need it today.
They have asked people like us to let the Israeli government know we are watching, and that we support their courage. They're hoping to receive hundreds of thousands of postcards to be delivered to the Israeli Minister of Defense on December 18th, when they will hold a huge rally and press conference. They're hoping to stand strong on the steps of this majestic building - and on the steps of history - representing not only the thousands of refusers who came before them, not only the many young people to whom they are an example of a better world, but also to represent us. They have asked you, me, and every person who strives for peace to be on those steps with them, on that day. I will be there. See:

Will you join me? It's simple. Sign a letter now. And don't stop there - ask your loved ones to join you. During this week of giving thanks, signing a letter is the least we can do to give thanks for the courageous among us.
Raz is a Shministit. Raz is Courage. And with our support of her today, you and I are Shministim too.
Thank you - and go sign that letter.

Howard Zinn

Asylum Seeker Documentary Provokes

2008-11-25T21:06:00.002+10:30

Media Release

“Australians urgently need to encourage the Government to
continue with immigration reforms” ERC's Glendenning
Sydney, Thursday 20th November 2008

Edmund Rice Centre director, Phil Glendenning today called for Australians to make known to the Federal
Government, their support for the process of reform of the Howard Government's immigration regime and it's inhuman treatment of asylum seekers.
Mr Glendenning was responding this afternoon to enquiries to the Edmund Rice Centre following last-night's national screening on SBS-TV of the documentary A Well-Founded Fear.
"Centre staff have today taken literally hundreds of phone calls, emails and web responses from members of the public calling for justice to be afforded to the refugees and rejected asylum seekers who were deported to danger". he said.
"We're getting some calls just asking what they can do to help - and others are calling because they really need to vent their outrage at how our nation has treated these people." he added.
The documentary portrays the human stories behind the research work the Centre has conducted following up on Australia's treatment of rejected asylum seekers.
"Over the past six years, Centre staff have conducted interviews in 22 countries - making contact with over 250 rejected
asylum seekers." Mr Glendenning stated.
"We have published the formal reports - Deported to Danger I & II - but even though this hard data has been available for some time, too often it is not until you have seen the faces and heard the stories that you can really understand the
human impact that these Howard government policies had on the real lives of real people! This is what came through in the documentary and this is why our phone lines and website are so overwhelmed today!"
"Such a strong response is an indication of the emerging movement towards a more decent and humane approach in our treatment of refugees, asylum seekers and other vulnerable people.”Mr Glendenning said.
Responding to the calls for action Mr Glendenning said: “There are three ways people can help. The first and simplest
thing is to sign the online petition on the Edmund Rice Centre's website www.erc.org.au ."
"Secondly, you need to write to your Federal MP and to Senator Evans, calling for an urgent reopening of the cases of
the asylum seekers removed to danger from Nauru. Australians urgently need to encourage the Government to continue
with immigration reforms.”
"Finally, this work is desperately difficult to resource and yet urgently needs to continue. If you are able to support this
work, please donate via the Edmund Rice Centre website www.erc.org.au/donate or mail a cheque to the Centre."
[Ed: see address below!]
"Any and all donations will ensure that this process of identifying, naming and advocating for those removed to danger will continue."
"Quite frankly, we need your help and we need it now." he concluded.

For further information, or to arrange an interview contact:-
Phil Glendenning,
Director, Edmund Rice Centre
Phone: (02) 8762 4200
Mobile: 0419 013 758
PO Box 2219
Homebush West, NSW 2140

Clean up own backyard says Pat Dodson

2008-11-05T11:13:00.000+10:30

Tony Stephens

The Age, November 5, 2008

AUSTRALIA was trying to strut the international stage, talking about improving the world, when problems needed fixing in our backyard, Aboriginal leader Pat Dodson said yesterday.

Australia risked being condemned as a pariah nation unless it ratified the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights, passed last year, he said.

"We don't come to the table with clean hands," he said. "We behave schizophrenically. Internationally, we present a front about Australia as a tolerant nation, about mateship and the land of the fair go. But domestically we don't acknowledge that we are swimming in a backwater because we haven't advanced our social discourse on change."

Mr Dodson was speaking before his delivery tonight of the Sydney Peace Prize Lecture and his receipt of the 2008 prize tomorrow night from the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

He said the nation would lose absolutely if the riches of one of the world's oldest living cultures were squandered, abused or simply denied.

"We have had opportunities to address this: Mabo, Wik, the report of the stolen generations, the royal commission into deaths in custody, the reconciliation process itself, the national apology in Canberra. But we keep dropping the ball."

Of government intervention in indigenous communities, he asked: "Do you want the army, police or bureaucrats taking control of people's lives, or to work out a way that involves Aboriginal leadership, who could then collaborate with everything else?"

The problems in remote Australia were a failure of the federal system of government: "In the Kimberley, we are controlled by people in Perth and Canberra." Investment should be in the human capital of health, education and cultural values rather than controlling mechanisms.

Mr Dodson is co-convenor, with former West Australian governor John Sanderson, of The Australian Dialogue, which aims to move on from the apology. Governor-General Quentin Bryce gave her support last week.

Pat Dodson was seen as the father of reconciliation before the 1997 Reconciliation Convention, when then prime minister John Howard took water from Aboriginal elders to his lips.

However, he fell out with the Howard government and then focused his efforts in the Kimberley. Now he expects to return to more prominence.

"We seem to be stuck in a mentality of interventionism that has a poor view of who the indigenous people are," he said.

"We need to look towards the substantial contribution Aboriginal Australians can make and have made towards this nation."

The difference between Australia in 1997 and now, he said, was that an introspective nation now realised it was more closely linked to the rest of the world, through globalisation, climate change and economic problems.

He conceded that reconciliation needed to take place within Aboriginal communities — Warren Mundine criticised him last week as outdated — as well as with non-indigenous Australians.

South Africa could have blown itself apart if Nelson Mandela and other leaders had not risen above their prejudices to create a new republic, he said.

Movement to Ban Cluster Bombs Gains Momentum

2008-11-05T11:03:00.002+10:30

Lisa Schlein

November 4, 2008 by Voice of America

Activists are urging governments to sign an international treaty to ban the use, production and stockpiling of cluster bombs one month from now in Oslo. The Cluster Munition Coalition says global momentum is growing to put an end to these weapons, which the group says mainly maim and kill civilians. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.

Cbu97 Cluster Bomb

A Group of Governmental Experts is meeting at the United Nations to negotiate a treaty on cluster munitions. The agreement aims at striking, what it calls, a balance between military and humanitarian considerations.

The Cluster Munition Coalition calls the process flawed. It says the draft text being discussed will do nothing to stop the death and destruction from cluster bombs. It says the text proposes a 13 to 20-year transition period in which States would be able to continue to use, produce, stock pile and trade these weapons.

On the other hand, Coordinator of the Coalition, Thomas Nash, says the Oslo treaty offers a holistic solution because it will ban an entire category of weaponry before it gets out of control.

"It has been largely preventive in nature," he said. "Unlike the landmine problem, which spread to around 80, 90 countries before an international treaty was agreed to prohibit that weapon. So far, cluster munitions have only affected-I say only, it is already too much of a problem, but, only around 32 States or territories have been affected. So, in many ways, we are acting before the problem gets to the scale of landmines. Far too many people have been killed or injured by this weapon. "

The Coalition says about 76 countries have stockpiled cluster bombs. It says it is the billions of sub-munitions contained within these weapons that create all the damage. It says the U.S., with nearly one billion sub-munitions, possesses the biggest arsenal in the world.

It says 34 countries produce cluster bombs. The biggest producers are the United States, Russia and China. Others include Britain, Germany, France, Israel and Brazil. It says the number of victims is unknown, but may be in the hundreds of thousands.

About 100 countries are expected to sign the Oslo Treaty next month. The U.S., Russia and China are major holdouts. Co-Chair of the Coalition, Steve Goose, agrees this is problematic. But, says it will not lessen the impact of the agreement.

"We believe in the power of the stigma against the weapon," said Steve Goose. "We have seen this very clearly with anti-personnel landmines. That same litany of States that we just ran through-U.S., Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel-none of those States are part of the landmine treaty either 10 years later. And, yet, we see that the stigma of the weapon has had a very powerful deterrent affect on those States."

Goose says the United States has not used, produced and traded in landmines since the treaty was signed. And, it has destroyed millions of its stockpiles.

He says almost none of the 39 countries that did not join the agreement have used this weapon. He says Burma was the only State that used landmines in any significant way last year.

He says even those States that stay outside the treaty have to bend to the new standard of behavior that is being established internationally.

Claims of child abuse are proving a fertile pretext to menace the Aboriginal communities lying in the way of uranium mining

2008-10-24T21:48:00.000+10:30

John Pilger

The Guardian, Friday October 24 2008

Its banks secured in the warmth of the southern spring, Australia is not news. It ought to be. An epic scandal of racism, injustice and brutality is being covered up in the manner of apartheid South Africa. Many Australians conspire in this silence, wishing never to reflect upon the truth about their society's Untermenschen, the Aboriginal people.

The facts are not in dispute: thousands of black Australians never reach the age of 40; an entirely preventable disease, trachoma, blinds black children as epidemics of rheumatic fever ravage their communities; suicide among the despairing young is common. No other developed country has such a record. A pervasive white myth, that Aborigines leech off the state, serves to conceal the disgrace that money the federal government says it spends on indigenous affairs actually goes towards opposing native land rights. In 2006, some A$3bn was underspent "or the result of creative accounting", reported the Sydney Morning Herald. Like the children of apartheid, the Aboriginal children of Thamarrurr in the Northern Territory receive less than half the educational resources allotted to white children.

In 2005, the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination described the racism of the Australian state, a distinction afforded no other developed country. This was in the decade-long rule of the conservative coalition of John Howard, whose coterie of white supremacist academics and journalists assaulted the truth of recorded genocide in Australia, especially the horrific separations of Aboriginal children from their families. They deployed arguments not dissimilar to those David Irving used to promote Holocaust denial.

Smear by media as a precursor to the latest round of repression is long familiar to black Australians. In 2006, the flagship current affairs programme of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Lateline, broadcast lurid allegations of "sex slavery" among the Mutitjulu people in the Northern Territory. The programme's source, described as an "anonymous youth worker", was later exposed as a federal government official whose "evidence" was discredited by the Northern Territory chief minister and the police.

The ABC has never retracted its allegations, claiming it has been "exonerated by an internal inquiry". Shortly before last year's election, Howard declared a "national emergency" and sent the army to the Northern Territory to "protect the children" who, said his minister for indigenous affairs, were being abused in "unthinkable numbers".

Last February, with much sentimental fanfare, the new prime minister, Labor's Kevin Rudd, made a formal apology to the first Australians. Australia was said to be finally coming to terms with its rapacious past and present. Was it? "The Rudd government," noted a Sydney Morning Herald editorial, "has moved quickly to clear away this piece of political wreckage in a way that responds to some of its own supporters' emotional needs, yet it changes nothing. It is a shrewd manoeuvre."

In May, barely reported government statistics revealed that of the 7,433 Aboriginal children examined by doctors as part of the "national emergency", 39 had been referred to the authorities for suspected abuse. Of those, a maximum of just four possible cases of abuse were identified. Such were the "unthinkable numbers". They were little different from those of child abuse in white Australia. What was different was that no soldiers invaded the beachside suburbs, no white parents were swept aside, no white welfare was "quarantined". Marion Scrymgour, an Aboriginal minister in the Northern Territory, said: "To see decent, caring [Aboriginal] fathers, uncles, brothers and grandfathers, who are undoubtedly innocent of the horrific charges being bandied about, reduced to helplessness and tears, speaks to me of widespread social damage."

What the doctors found they already knew - children at risk from a spectrum of extreme poverty and the denial of resources in one of the world's richest countries. Having let a few crumbs fall, Rudd is picking up where Howard left off. His indigenous affairs minister, Jenny Macklin, has threatened to withdraw government support from remote communities that are "economically unviable". The Northern Territory is the only region where Aborigines have comprehensive land rights, granted almost by accident 30 years ago. Here lie some of the world's biggest uranium deposits. Canberra wants to mine and sell it.

Foreign governments, especially the US, want the Northern Territory as a toxic dump. The Adelaide to Darwin railway that runs adjacent to Olympic Dam, the world's largest uranium mine, was built with the help of Kellogg, Brown & Root - a subsidiary of American giant Halliburton, the alma mater of Dick Cheney, Howard's "mate". "The land grab of Aboriginal tribal land has nothing to do with child sexual abuse," says the Australian scientist Helen Caldicott, "but all to do with open slather uranium mining and converting the Northern Territory to a global nuclear dump."

What is unique about Australia is not its sun-baked, derivative society, clinging to the sea, but its first people, the oldest on earth, whose skill and courage in surviving invasion, of which the current onslaught is merely the latest, deserve humanity's support.

www.johnpilger.com

Soliders ask fundamental question: To kill or not to kill

2008-10-24T21:29:00.001+10:30

Reviewed by CLAIRE SCHAEFFER-DUFFY
Published:
October 21, 2008

Director Catherine Ryan in Hinesville, Ga., the day after the court martial of conscientious objector, Kevin Benderman. (Photo by Gary Weimberg)Director Catherine Ryan in Hinesville, Ga., the day after the court martial of conscientious objector, Kevin Benderman. (Photo by Gary Weimberg)A review

“Soldiers of Conscience,” the latest documentary by husband and wife filmmakers Gary Weimberg and Catherine Ryan, looks at how individual combatants grapple with war’s fundamental question — to kill or not to kill. Made in cooperation with the U.S. Army, the film profiles eight American soldiers, four who become conscientious objectors and four who believe in the duty to kill when necessary. All wrestle with the morality of killing, not as an abstraction but as soldiers experience it. Interspersed with the soldier’s narratives are images of casualties from the Iraq war not seen on our nightly news and some intriguing background on conscientious objection.

The film’s focus makes “Soldiers of Conscience” accessible to pacifists and warriors alike. The soldiers’ candid and deeply personal reflections remind us that in war human beings make choices they must live with the rest of their lives.

Early in the film, we learn a little-known stat from a U.S. Army study conducted during World War II: Less than 25 percent of US soldiers fired on their enemies, even when under attack. To overcome this inhibition toward the taking of human life, the military developed a technique known as “reflexive fire training.” Disturbing footage of combat training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, provides a glimpse of what this conditioning entails. Fresh-faced recruits gun down tin silhouettes of humans and shout “Kill! Kill! Kill without mercy!” While such “training” has dramatically increased soldiers’ firing rates in combat (upwards to 90 percent in Vietnam), it has not freed them from the burden of conscience, as evidenced in the revealing reflections of the eight men featured in the film.
Watch the trailer

Two of the conscientious objectors, Joshua Casteel, an Evangelical Christian, and Aidan Delgado, a Buddhist, are given honorable discharges for their refusal to kill. But the military imprisons Camilo Mejia, the first Iraq combat veteran to publicly refuse to return to war, and Kevin Benderman, a 10-year Army sergeant from Tennessee. All four eloquently describe their transformation from willing enlistee to refusenik. Delgado encounters Iraqi prisoners of war, who look just like the men in his own unit “but with brown skin,” and the fighting spirit “bleeds” out of him. The war’s devastating affects on civilians, leads Benderman to ask, “Why are we even doing this anymore?”

The awful but necessary choice of war can be a moral imperative when the weak need protecting and human rights are violated, argues Major Peter Kilner, a West Point ethics professor and former 82nd Airborne Infantry Commander. For drill sergeant Jaime Isom, pulling the trigger in battle has little to do with God or country; it’s about “defending the man to the left and right of you.” Isom admits to killing a 10-year Iraqi boy who held a grenade that would have killed his men. “I got no regrets,” he says, “but looking back at it, that’s when the demons come back. That’s when it haunts us.”

The candor of these soldiers evokes questions that haunt us. What are we asking of those ordered to kill on our behalf?

The film’s thoughtful interest in the soldier’s perspective is resonating with people who differ on the morality of war. The documentary, which airs on PBS stations this week, has been circulating among churches, peace groups, and VA Hospitals where clinicians are showing excerpts to soldiers struggling with combat trauma. In November, the film will screen at the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. In January, it will be shown at a major conference for chaplains in the armed forces.

Claire Schaeffer-Duffy lives in Worcester, Mass. and writes frequently for National Catholic Reporter. US

World Day of Fasting for Peace and Independence of Nourishment - Water for Peace

2008-10-18T18:58:00.000+10:30

Call for a Solidarity Fasting on 18 October 2008

Message from Pastoral Land Commission, CPT, member organisation of Pax Christi International in Brazil
We are calling upon you to join us on a worldwide day of fasting for peace and independence from nourishment in defence of free access to water and healthy food as a human right and in support of local, family farmers.
At the end of 2007 the Franciscan bishop Dom Luiz Cappio protested with fasting and praying for 24 days against the water diversion project of the Rio Sao Francesco. This was his means of supporting the preservation of the natural resources of this semi arid region and a proper revitalisation of the Rio Sao Francesco.

Pax Christi International awards Dom Cappio and all those who fought with him the Pax Christi International Peace Award 2008. The awarding of the prize is going to take place together with the fifth Water Pilgrimage (Romaria das Aguas) in Sobradinho, Bahia on 18 October 2008. Numerous organisations and thousands of people are expected to come to the event "Water for Peace".
During the World Nourishing Week the social movements of the Rio Sao Francesco region and of the northeast, the Via Campesina Brasilia and Pax Christi International are going to carry out a worldwide day of fasting for peace and independence from nourishment. These activities are part of the campaign of Via Campesina against genetically manipulated plants and continue the movement of solidarity fasting that developed from the solidarity with Dom Cappio. Hundreds of people worldwide fasted for one or more days during the hunger strike of the bishop. Their action was a demonstration for a world of justice. This movement combines political aims and spirituality and is to be seen in the tradition of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the non-violence of many others which was founded by Jesus Christ himself.
We want to use this gesture to draw attention to the severe and growing conflicts about water. This issue affects one third of the world population, as does the growing control that some transnational companies are exhibiting over land, production of, and access to, food.
The abundance and extravagance of the rich coincide with a growing endangerment of the population by pesticides and genetically manipulated foods. At the same time the number of those who do not have regular access to enough quality food is constantly rising.
The world day for peace and independence of nourishment supports the immediate necessity for an agricultural reform to give more families the opportunity to produce their own food. This reform has to make the production and consumption of healthy and ecologically produced food possible. Every people and every region have to have the right to produce and to consume their own food without being suppressed by global players like Syngenta, Monsanto, Bunge, ADM, Cargill, Dupont, Bayer and BASF. These companies are striving to control the water resources, the agricultural land, the biological and agricultural diversities, biotechnology and the global business with food. Their main asset is the development of genetically manipulated seeds which is made possible because the governments neglect their caretaking principles.
This gesture strengthens the necessity of recognising the access to water as a human right and as a universal right of creation. It explicitly opposes the diversion project of the water of the dying Rio Sao Francesco, which supports the production of fruit meant for export, of bio-fuel, of shrimps and steel by 70%.
The infrastructural mega-projects of the growth speeding programme have to be reconsidered in favour of another development programme that does not only take the need of the whole population into consideration, but looks especially at the needs of the poor, and which at the same time includes the challenge of the ecological crisis. Hundreds of fundamental organisations in the semi arid regions are already working accordingly on methods of water capacities and water usage. One example out of many is the Atlas Nordeste of the ANA (Agencia Nacional de Aguas) proposal to decentralise water supplies. These are much less expensive and much more expansive in their social and local responsibilities than the apparent "solution" of the diversion of the Rio Sao Francesco waters. The life and production model is supported by the simple people who live and know about the real needs of the population of the region and their independent organisations.
Until today the following organisations, that will participate on the Global Day of Peace and Independence of Nourishment" have signed the Manifest "Water for Peace" (as of 13-10-2008) Pax Christi International, Misereor (Germany), Via Campesina Brasil (MST, MPA, MAB, MMC, FEAB, CPT, PJR), CPP, PACS, CESE, CARITAS, Forum Permanente em Defesa do Rio Sao Francisco, SERPAJ-Brasil e America Latina, International Free Water Academy.
Please tell CPT if your organisation wants to sign this manifest and who wants to participate in the fasting. E-mail cptba@cptba.org.br - or tel. (0055)71.8714-5724; 71.9208-6548 -- Ruben; 31.9997-2440 -- Erica) or Via Campesina / Nordeste (e-mail viacampesinape@gmail.com or tel 81-3222-7569 81-9164-9758 -- Paula) this is important to enable us to publish the participants!
Brussels, 17 October 2008
2008-0760-en-am-HS

19 October - The 7th International Interreligious Abraham Conference

2008-09-21T23:05:00.002+09:30

Affinity Intercultural Foundation welcomes you to attend:

Date: Sunday, 19th of October 2008

Time: 11am to 3:30pm

Location: Webster Theatre, University of Sydney, City Road Camperdown.

Cost: $20 (Includes Lunch and Afternoon Tea)

Keynote Address: Prof Larissa Behrendt, Prof of Law & Director of Research
at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of
Technology, Sydney

Panel Chair: Mr Richard Morecroft, former ABC TV News anchorman

Theme: Walking together: Our faiths and reconciliation.

The Australian Government has recently declared an apology to the "stolen generation" of Aboriginal Australians on behalf of Australia. Yet even after this landmark event, much still needs to be done. Delicate and careful considerations are needed from all parties. A robust and accommodating approach to reconciliation must be taken if we are to share this land. The Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam need to listen to handwork together with indigenous voices to recognise injustice and to explore common traditions of offering forgiveness and moving forward in a new direction. The Abraham Conference provides a practical way forward for people of all faiths and backgrounds to become aware of our responsibilities
and thus work towards reconciliation.

For further information please click on below link:

http://www.affinity.org.au/7IIAC%20-%20Abraham%20Conf%20Program%20v2.pdf

Pacific Calling for Climate Justice

2008-09-06T16:22:00.000+09:30

The Pacific Calling Partnership invites you to a participatory forum Pacific Calling for Climate Justice a human rights framework?

9.00am - 5pm Saturday 25 October 2008
Gleeson Auditorium Australian Catholic University
25A Barker Rd Strathfield NSW
Forum

The forum will open with Indigenous representatives from Australia and the Pacific speaking about the effects of climate change on their people. The forum will then explore how an effective human rights framework can respond to calls for climate justice from our neighbours:

* WHAT STRUCTURES ARE CURRENTLY AVAILABLE INTERNATIONALLY THAT CAN BE APPLIED IN OUR NEIGHBOURHOOD?
* WHERE ARE THE GAPS?
* WHERE ARE THE STRESSES EMERGING?
* WHAT STRUCTURES DO WE NEED TO PUT IN PLACE FOR THE FUTURE?

The forum will be participatory and is open to as broad a range of organisations as possible. All who come will be contributing to the outcomes which will include recommendations to be taken to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Poland in December 2008.

Call for Papers and Abstracts
If you would like to present at the forum please send the title and a brief description of about 200 words by email to jillf@erc.org.au, or post Attention: Jill Finnane PO Box 2219 Homebush West LPO NSW 2140, or fax to 02 9745 9770

The DEADLINE for receiving abstracts is 31 August. Papers will be 20 minutes in length. You will be notified by 7 September, by email or phone if your proposal is accepted.

Registration
Fee (includes lunch, morning and afternoon tea) (will depend on how much sponsorship we receive) Business/Government, NGO, Concession, Student

Early bird registration must be received by Monday 1 October 2008 to be eligible for the discount. Cheques should be made payable to the Edmund Rice Centre and posted to the above address.
ABN 4063781303

2008-09-06T16:03:00.002+09:30

Dear friends,
Next week, a group of small islands' leaders plan to take the unprecedented step of putting a resolution before the United Nations calling upon the Security Counci to address climate change as a pressing threat to international peace and security.

It seems a small ask for all of us to sign the petition organised by Avaaz. Please consider signing the petition now! Click here

Signatures will be presented to the UN by the islands' ambassadors as they introduce their resolution next week. States who are sponsoring the resolution are Fiji, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, joined by Canada and Turkey.

President Remengesau of Palau, a small island in the Pacific, recently said: 'Palau has lost at least one third of its coral reefs due to climate change related weather patterns. We also lost most of our agricultural production due to drought and extreme high tides. These are not theoretical, scientific losses -- they are the losses of our resources and our livelihoods.... For island states, time is not running out. It has run out. And our path may very well be the window to your own future and the future of our planet".

The more signatures are delivered to the UN next week, the more urgently this call will ring out to protect our common future. So please sign now: For a draft of the Small Islands States Resolution, please click here

You might also consider sending an email to the Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Affairs, Duncan Kerr, asking for Australia to support their resolution. This is one of the issues the delegation from the Pacific Calling Partnership will take up with him when it meets with him on 15th September so it would be helpful for you to have written to him from your organisation or as an indivdual before we meet. His email address is duncan.kerr.mp@aph.gov.au.

Thank you for your support
Jill Finnane
Pacific Calling Partnership
Edmund Rice Centre for Justice and Community Education
Flemington

ZIMBABWE CRISIS

2008-08-18T14:32:00.004+09:30

Dear friends,

This Saturday, thousands of trade unionists and citizen groups will march on a Southern Africa leadership summit, waving red cards to signal that Mugabe must go. Stand with the marchers and the people of Zimbabwe -- send a red card now!

CLICK HERE TO SEND A RED CARD

Hopes are slipping away for a deal to resolve Zimbabwe's political crisis. Yesterday, Robert Mugabe announced plans to ignore the ongoing negotiations with the opposition MDC party, form a sham "Government of National Unity" with a breakaway opposition faction, and open parliament next week.

This weekend, when Southern Africa's 15 leaders, including Mugabe, meet at a major summit in Johannesburg, they will look out upon a sea of red. Thousands of Southern African trade unionists and other citizens will march to the summit waving red cards -- the football penalty symbol for expulsion -- and call for Mugabe to go. The organisers have appealed to Avaaz for international support, and will carry signs at the march representing the "red cards" sent by Avaaz members.

The region's powerful trade unions have threatened that unless Southern African leaders take action now, they will refuse to handle goods coming to or from Zimbabwe and will squeeze Mugabe out. A massive march this weekend backed by 100,000 supporters from around the world will be a overwhelming signal to Southern African leaders that they must act now before the crisis becomes even more desperate -- to announce that the Mbeki-led negotiations have failed, and to launch a new and fairer negotiating process immediately. Click below to send a red card, and pass this message along to friends and family!

Four and a half months have passed since the people of Zimbabwe voted for Morgan Tsvangirai and the Movement for Democratic Change on 29 March. Hyperinflation has exploded to an unimaginable 40,000,000%, and millions now face starvation. The EU, US, and UK have pledged a $1.9bn financial aid package to stabilise Zimbabwe's economy, feed the hungry and combat hyperinflation -- but only if Mugabe is removed.

Meanwhile, distribution of food aid by local and international humanitarian agencies has been prohibited by Mugabe's government. Torture camps remain in operation, political violence continues in some rural provinces, and 12 opposition MPs languish in jail on trumped-up charges. The Mbeki-led talks are collapsing, as Mugabe and his military high command insist on retaining control.

The people of Zimbabwe need strong allies willing to take bold action. Already, more than 300,000 Avaaz members -- including tens of thousands in Africa -- have signed petitions, donated funds, and written to their leaders in global campaigns for democracy and justice. After Avaaz flew a 280-square-metre banner over an Mbeki-chaired United Nations meeting, South Africa finally called for the release of elections results. In April, trade unions and civil society groups including Avaaz led a successful campaign to block a Chinese arms shipment to Zimbabwe. Now, as the crisis accelerates, our voices matter more than ever -- we can send an electronic wave of red cards to Johannesburg and bolster the efforts of on-the-ground advocates pressing for change.

Join the global outcry now, and then pass this message along!

http://www.avaaz.org/en/red_card_for_mugabe

With hope,

Ben, Alice, Ricken, Brett, Paul, Iain, Pascal, Graziela, Veronique, and Milena -- the Avaaz.org team

PS: For a report on Avaaz's campaigning so far.

PSS: Here are links to sources for this alert:

"Zimbabwe: Mugabe set to keep power amid rumours of breakaway deal" - The Guardian, 14 August 2008
http://

Information on the march - COSATU / SW Radio Africa

"South Africa: Unions Bid to Halt Zimbabwe Arms Ship" - Business Day (Johannesburg), 22 April 2008

"No arms for Zimbabwe" - Avaaz campaign

Patrick Dodson wins 2008 Sydney Peace Prize

2008-07-28T10:29:00.003+09:30

2008 Sydney Peace Prize Winner

“The nearest Australia has to a Nelson Mandela”

Mr Patrick Dodson has been awarded the 2008 Sydney Peace Prize for his ‘courageous advocacy of the human rights of Indigenous people, for distinguished leadership of the reconciliation movement and for a lifetime of commitment to peace with justice, through dialogue and many other expressions on non violence’.

Chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation Alan Cameron says, “It is significant that the Peace Prize jury’s choice of Patrick Dodson can build on the momentum for justice and reconciliation for Indigenous people which was given such a boost by Sorry Day on February 13th.”

Peace Foundation Director Professor Stuart Rees comments, “The jury was impressed with Patrick’s work for reconciliation internationally – in Northern Ireland and in South Africa – as well as by his creative leadership of the Lingiari Foundation and as inaugural chair of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. In the history of this Peace Prize, Patrick is only the second Australian recipient. In 2001, former Governor General Sir William Deane was recognized for his work with Aboriginal Australians and on that occasion he was presented with the Prize by the Reconciliation chair, Patrick Dodson.”

Commenting on news of this year’s choice of the Sydney Peace Prize, the Director of the Edmund Rice Centre, Phil Glendenning, says “This is a wonderful choice. Patrick is a great communicator, a significant leader, the nearest Australia has to a Nelson Mandela.”

Speaking from Broome, Mr. Dodson has responded, “I would be very honoured to receive the Sydney Peace Prize. I thank the jury for considering me and my work worthy of such recognition.”
Other distinguished recipients of Australia’s only international prize for peace have included previous Nobel winners Professor Muhammad Yunus and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, Indian author and human rights campaigner Arundhati Roy and, last year, the Swedish diplomat and disarmament advocate Dr. Hans Blix.

Patrick Dodson will give the City of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture on November 5th in the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House. On November 6th he will receive the 2008 Sydney Peace Prize at a gala ceremony in the Great Hall of Sydney University and on the morning of Friday 7th November he will be the guest of 1500 high school students in a festival of welcome and gratitude hosted by Cabramatta High School.

‘Radical Discipleship, Restorative Justice and Nonviolence Conference’

2008-07-13T20:39:00.002+09:30

is being held next weekend July 18-20th at the Uniting Church Centre for Ministry in North Parramatta.

The keynote speakers are biblical scholar, faith, peace and justice advocate Ched Myers and his Wife Elaine Enns. Ched Myers is perhaps best known for his radical discipleship book ‘Binding the Strong Man – A political Reading of Mark’s story of Jesus’ and he is a wonderfully engaging speaker. Elaine specializes in the field of restorative justice and conflict transformation. This is a wonderful opportunity to hear these two overseas speakers in Sydney.

Pace e Bene will be presenting two sessions at this conference.

Please pass this on to your networks and others you think may be interested.

Registration is available online Click here

Solomon Islands Facilitator Co-learning

2008-06-21T09:01:00.002+09:30

Pace e Bene Australia From Violence to Wholeness Facilitator Co-Learning programme was held in the Solomon Islands April 7-27th 2008

In partnership with Catholic church Solomon Islands and Caritas
Pace e Bene facilitators Carole Powell [Qld] and Brendan McKeague [WA] presented a series of three Facilatator co-learning workshops.. They have shared their fantastic experiences in a wonderful journal Click here

Open Invitation to our National Gathering

2008-06-21T08:56:00.001+09:30

Engaging Nonviolence – Deep listening to the Spirit

Adelaide: November 6th – 9th 2008

An Invitation to join with others and listen to the spirit as we share the journey of ‘exploring nonviolence’ and how it takes shape in our lives. The gathering seeks to bring together people from around the country to network, share experiences and be further equipped for nonviolent life and action. Costs will be kept to a minimum with scope for some part-scholarships.

This is the second such national gathering - the first was at Pallotti College in Millgrove, Victoria in December 2006 - from which Pace e Bene Australia emerged. Click here for further details and registration.

The Pace e Bene AGM will be held in Adelaide on Nov 10th after the Gathering.

PACE E BENE AUSTRALIA NEWS

2008-06-21T08:44:00.004+09:30

1.‘Engage - Exploring Nonviolent Living’ STARTING Sat JULY 26TH

….will be offered again this year as four Saturday workshops following the success of last year’s programme.

Combining intellectual and experiential learning this programme helps participants take the next steps on the journey towards living nonviolently.
The dates are 26 July, 16 August, 6 September and 27 September, running from 9am to 4:30pm in Epping.

Full details and registration can be found here

‘Engaging Nonviolence – Deep Listening to the Spirit’

2008-06-15T17:42:00.003+09:30

NSW Facilitator Co-learning weekend

We are keen to have more workshop facilitators in NSW and will be offering this programme to any one who might be interested. We have an opportunity for the weekend of Dec 5-7th 2008 and are interested in finding out how many people would be available to participate at this time since it is getting close to Christmas.
Please email or phone Gill Burrows on gill.burrows@madtechnology.net or ph 02 99222927 if you are interested and indicate if you would be available in Dec this year or prefer some other time.

Communication from Gill Burrows

2008-06-15T17:34:00.004+09:30

Dear Friends of Pace e Bene

Here is a brief update on Pace e Bene news and a few dates for your diaries: If you have any queries please don’t hesitate to contact me.

‘Engage – Exploring nonviolent Living’ will be offered again this year as four Saturday workshops starting on July 26th.

NSW Facilitator Training We have an opportunity to offer this programme over the weekend of Dec 5-7th 2008. Recognising that it is getting close to Christmas I would encourage anyone interested in participating to let me know their availability. We have funding to provide this programme in each state and would like to offer it to as many as possible in NSW. Thanks.

Weapons of War Expo, Adelaide November 11th – 13th 2008
Immediately after the Pace e Bene National Gathering, the city of Adelaide will also be hosting another significant gathering - a weapons Expo commencing on Nov 11th armistice day!!! …. to quote from the SA Premier’s press release:

Asia-Pacific Defence Security Exhibition

11-13 November 2008 Adelaide - Australia

Servicing your business needs!

http://www.eiaa.asn.au/upl_images/APDS%20Documents.pdf

"APDS has been launched for the Defence and Security industries creating a fully integrated, business orientated, and international forum for companies wanting to expand their business within the Asia Pacific. Market analysis clearly indicates that the Asia-Pacific is the significant growth market and yet it is the least represented by quality defence and/or security exhibitions"

Alternatives to Weapons of War, Adelaide Pace e Bene Australia intends to provide an 'alternative nonviolent presence' alongside this weapons marketplace. We are in the early stages of planning what shape this might take in Adelaide and in other parts of the country....what we hope is that there will also be some intentional activities around the country to raise awareness that there are other ways of doing business than by manufacturing and marketing machines that kill and injure people and the planet....we will keep you informed about what emerges - meantime, mark your diary and be creative in discerning how you might contribute to this conscientisation process - either by coming to Adelaide and/or staying on for a few days after the national gathering (I'm reliably informed that there are some interesting areas to visit where delicious grapes grow...) and/or by planning something in your own area/school/parish/community that seeks to provide a gospel-centred counter-witness on November 11-13th this year.

We would love your ideas and feedback together with info on activities planned by other groups. Thanks.

There is also a website campaigning to stop the exhibition: http://www.apdsexhibition.org and you can sign up to receive email updates at the campaign gets underway.
A Google search will provide lots more links if you are interested.

Solomon Islands Facilitator Training Pace e Bene Australia facilitators Brendan McKeague and Carole Powell, in conjunction with Caritas Australia recently completed three very successful From Violence to Wholeness Facilitator training programmes in the Solomon Islands. The local SI people gave Carole and Brendan a wonderful welcome. They participated keenly and really enjoyed their workshop experiences. They are now taking this work forward into their own communities.

Carole and Brendan kept a journal of their amazing journey and it will shortly be available on the PeBA blogsite. I will forward the link once it is available.

2008 REFUGEE THANK-YOU MARCH

2008-06-07T08:41:00.002+09:30

2008 Dario Palermo Refugee Art Exhibition
2008 Refugee Humanitarian awards
2008 Refugee Short Film Festival

Thursday JUNE 19th

(2 weeks to go)

You are all formally invited to this years refugee celebrations starting with the Refugee Thank You March.

Refugees thankful for what Australia and Australians have done for them will march along side Australians that are thankful for the contributions that refugees have made to their lives and communities.

We will be carrying blue lanterns through the streets of Sydney, the symbolic United Nations blue which is used throughout the world as a sign of protection and assistance to refugees worldwide.

We encourage everyone to make banners, t-shirts and lanterns with positive messages of thanks to walk around hide park in sydney and then we will conclude at the opening of the 2008 Refugee Art exhibition, Refugee Short Film Festival and Refugee Humanitarian awards.

You can make your own (non flame glow stick) lanterns or Blue lanterns will be able to be purchased from 5:30pm in Hyde park for $10 with all proceeds going towards refugee programs in NSW

EVENT DETAILS

5:30pm -Marches to meet at Hyde Park Sydney Corner of Park St and Elizabeth St.

6:00pm -March commencement

6:30pm - March arrives at Venue

- Refugee art exhibition opening

- Free refugee food dinner

Date: 19th June

Venue: Uniting Church, 264 Pitt Street, Sydney

Time: 6:30 pm – 9:30 pm

Cost: FREE

7:00pm -2008 Refugee humanitarian awards

7:30pm -2008 Refugee short film festival

9:30pm -End of event

For any further information please don’t hesitate to contact me at the detail below.

See you on the 19th June

Gary Taylor

President Friends of STARTTS

(Services for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors)

www.friendsofstartts.org

Balanced policy the only way to peace

2008-05-20T22:24:00.003+09:30

by Malcolm Fraser

The Age
10 May 2008
___________________________________________________

TWO months ago, the Australian Parliament passed a resolution celebrating
Israel's first 60 years. Until recently, Australia had preserved a balance
in Middle East policy that asserted Israel's right to survival and security,
but also the right of the Palestinian people to their own state. Under the
previous government, in lock-step with the US, our policies veered to a more
one-sided support for Israel. The vision of a Palestinian state seemed to
slip from view.

US President George Bush claims that it is possible for Israel and
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to negotiate the establishment of a
Palestinian state before the end of this year. That ignores the realities of
the current situation, which Bush has done a good deal to exacerbate.

It is a fact that Israel has persistently established more and more
settlements on the West Bank and that it has ignored the US and the UN
Security Council, which have continuously branded these settlements,
together with settlements in East Jerusalem, as illegal. However, the US has
not exerted real pressure to stop them and the process continues. Through
most of my life I have believed that Israel was a beacon of hope. But
somewhere Israel's leadership lost its way.

Since the start of the war on terror, US policies have become increasingly
unrealistic, branding people as terrorists to be beaten with guns.

In Bush's world, discussion or negotiation with those who are labelled as
terrorists is unthinkable, and indeed would be a betrayal of American
values. Yet he should recall what earlier US presidents did in negotiating
with leaders of the Soviet Union. Those presidents avoided nuclear war and
won the Cold War. Britain achieved peace in Northern Ireland with similar
policies.

Failure to talk with an opponent or with an enemy is perhaps the major
mistake of the Bush Administration. A mistake that has made many parts of
the world more dangerous. Hamas won a legitimate election in early 2006. Aid
workers on the ground in Palestine knew that Hamas would win because Hamas
helps local people while Fatah, corrupt and inefficient, did not. The West
claimed to be surprised at Hamas' victory. It betrayed its own principles by
making it plain that democracy was only acceptable if it gave the kind of
result that Israel and the US wanted.

It would have been possible to say to Hamas: a number of your policies must
change but we welcome your participation in the democratic process and we
are therefore prepared to talk and explore possible areas of agreement. This
approach would have given Hamas an alternative to violence and the
possibility of a different future.

When a joint Hamas-Fatah government was formed, it was short-lived. Both
Israel and the US sought to undermine it and encouraged Abbas to pursue a
policy that would diminish or destroy Hamas. In this regard, Israel and the
US have played a major part in the continued divisions among the Palestinian
people themselves.

I know there are those who would say that Hamas cannot be believed. No
agreement would be sustainable because it wants the total destruction of
Israel. However, those who hold such views commit themselves in effect to
continued warfare. If this situation prevails, Israel will lose more and
more friends and will place its own future in danger.

Terrorism must, of course, be condemned but if one measures the loss of life
in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is clear that the scales are heavily
balanced against the Palestinians. The tactics used by Hamas are inefficient
as a weapon of war, almost futile, but they have extracted a
disproportionate response.

If there is to be any progress, in addition to talking to Hamas it is
critical to heal the divisions between Hamas and Fatah. No arrangement
between Israel and Abbas will be acceptable unless the divisions among
Palestinian people are addressed. But Israeli and American policy is still
focused on perpetuating those divisions, breeding more hatred and bitterness
and making a secure future even more remote.

Former US president Jimmy Carter has recently held discussions in the Middle
East with many of those with whom Bush will not speak. He has attracted a
great deal of criticism from many quarters, including the Israeli lobby.
However, his efforts are to be applauded because he recognises that talking
to Hamas is essential for progress.

Hamas has supported a ceasefire. But this was rejected out of hand as a
subterfuge for gaining time to reorganise and rearm. Hamas has said that if
Abbas can negotiate a solution and if that is endorsed in a referendum by
the Palestinians, it will support it, provided that there is reconciliation
among Palestinians.

What then should be done? The principles endorsed by the Baker-Hamilton
report in relation to Iraq must be adopted in regard to the Palestinian case
as well. There must be talks leading to negotiations involving all the
players including Hamas. Progress will not be quick, it could be months and
possibly years, but a ceasefire, even initially for a limited period, would
be a good start. The ending of the blockade of Gaza and the cessation of new
settlements in the West Bank would be a prerequisite. In addition, the
adjudication of boundaries of Israel and Palestine would be critical to a
final settlement.

Against this modern-day tragedy, it is important for countries such as
Australia to be even-handed. That is why I support the appeal for the
Australian Parliament to pass a resolution recognising the hardships of the
Palestinian people and committing Australia to work for a fair and peaceful
resolution and the establishment of a viable independent state for
Palestinians.
_____________________________________________________________________
Malcolm Fraser is a former prime minister of Australia.

Web link
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/balanced-policy-the-only-way-to-peace/2008/05/09/1210131260171.html

New Prospects for Nation Building?hursday, June 26, 2008

2008-05-20T22:15:00.002+09:30

So, what? Public lectures in contemporary humanities and social sciences
SO.What@UNSW.EDU.AU
WWW.ARTS.UNSW.EDU.AU
Please join us for the next lecture in the UNSW Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences series.
We are pleased to present Professor Michael Pusey
School of Social Sciences and International Studies

Introduction by Bruce Petty
Has economic ‘reform’ run its course? What potential remains for constructive nation building?
Contrary to expectations Canberra emerges from twenty years of free market ‘economic rationalism’ with disciplined government, ample revenues, an effective regulative apparatus and — perhaps — the capacity for government to steer the economy towards a brighter future. For a quarter of a century neo-liberal politics has made the people serve the economy. Can we recover the political capacity, the clear-sightedness, and the will to again make the economy serve the people? We face three crucial challenges. We must deal with climate change, re-build our rotting infrastructure and
fix federal state relations. Are we up to it? Can our history of nation-building come to the rescue of our future?

Date: Thursday, June 26, 2008
Time: Cocktail reception from 6.00 pm
Lecture from 6.30 - 7.30 pm
Location: Tyree Room, John Niland Scientia Building, UNSW
RSVP: so.what@unsw.edu.au (numbers are limited)
Null Doro
After completing his doctoral studies in sociology at Harvard University Michael worked with the Schools Commission and at the Australian National University. Over the last thirty years at UNSW he has taught on social theory, the media and the public sphere, economic ideas, and, most recently on quality of life in Australia. Michael is a Professor of Sociology at UNSW
and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. His writings and media commentary on economic reform and on the changing Australian middle class are extensive, including two highly influential and prize winning books,
Economic Rationalism in Canberra and The Experience of Middle Class Australia.
From 1995 to 2002 Michael was the Director of the Middle Australia Project. Michael is currently working with Paul Jones

Sydney to honour the Stolen Generations

2008-05-13T21:02:00.000+09:30

MEDIA RELEASE

Busy weekday traffic will come to a standstill on Monday 26 May 2008 when hundreds of members of the Stolen Generations, their families and supporters march through the streets of Sydney. The City of Sydney and the NSW Police Service have given their full support to this public event, which commemorates the 10th Anniversary of Sorry Day and the historic apology of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

The event, which is being organised by the NSW Sorry Day Committee, will commence at 10:30am from Hyde Park (Northern end) and proceed down Macquarie Street. There will be a flag raising ceremony at Parliament House before the march proceeds to Circular Quay and onto First Fleet Park where there will be entertainment, speakers and refreshments.

NSW Sorry Day Committee Chairperson and Stolen Generations member Marie Melito-Russell said:

We hope this march will raise awareness about the issues that continue to affect members of the Stolen Generations. The Prime Minister’s apology was an important step in our healing, but this must be followed with reparations. We want justice and the same basic human rights that apply to others in our society. We invite all those that were affected by the removals policies to join us in solidarity and ask all Australians to walk with us in unity for a better future for all people.

Interviews with members of the Stolen Generations will be available upon request. For further information please contact NSW Sorry Day Committee on 02 9319 1034

1. Week of Action on Peace in Israel & Palestine 4 - 10 June 2008

2008-04-22T19:45:00.001+09:30

Two Invitations for Action in Peace

Week of Action on Peace in Israel & Palestine 4 - 10 June 2008

Global Week of Action Small Arms 2 – 9 June 2008

1. Week of Action on Peace in Israel & Palestine 4 - 10 June 2008

The International Church Action for Peace in Palestine and Israel is an annual Week of Action advocacy initiative, convened by the World Council of Churches and supported by Pax Christi International. In 2008, the Week of Action will take place from the 4th to the 10th of June, and the theme is “It’s Time for Palestine.”

The goal of the Week of Action is to raise awareness in churches and civil society, and to impress upon governments the need for new efforts to end the conflict and negotiate a settlement. Four types of actions will be developed: Pray, Educate, Advocate and Public Action. The Ecumenical Service with the Heads of Churches will take place on the 4th or the 8th of June in Jerusalem. Member organisations of Pax Christi International are invited to join the Week of Action and develop their own type of actions in collaboration with churches, church related organisations, religious communities or congregations, and with NGOs at the national and/or local level.

The following material is available and could be used at the national and local level:

1. Invitation to Action: Who, What, Why, How and When?

2. The message “It’s Time for Palestine”

3. The Jerusalem Prayer for Sunday, the 4th or 8th of June 2008

4. A liturgy from the Churches in Jerusalem.

Some of you have been asking what you can do. Please read more for ideas at http://www.oikoumene.org/en/events-sections/icappi-2008.html.
2. Global Week of Action Small Arms 2 – 9 June 2008

A key focus of IANSA, the International Action Network on Small Arms, of which Pax Christi International is a member, is the next UN Biennial Meeting of States on Small Arms (BMS), scheduled to take place in New York, from the 14th to the 18th of July 2008. Countries are expected to provide written reports to the UN on their efforts to reduce small arms proliferation, and in particular to outline challenges and gaps in capacity. Shortly before that, the Global Week of Action, from the 2nd to the 9th of June 2008, will help link the commitments at the regional and global level with actions by national governments. Member Organisations of Pax Christi International are invited to join these opportunities for global advocacy. More information is available on the website: www.iansa.org

Paul Lansu
Pax Christi International
Rue du Vieux Marché aux Grains 21
B-1000 Bruxelles
Belgium
Phone: +32 (0)2 502 55 50 fax: +32 (0)2 502 46 26

www.paxchristi.net

Action for peace in Palestine/Israel

2008-03-22T12:29:00.003+10:30

by Joshua McElwee, PCUSA intern

In the middle of the holiest week of the year, the week in which we eagerly anticipate the joy of the resurrection of Jesus, it seems necessary to call to mind the horrors that are occurring in the land which first witnessed his nonviolent message of all- encompassing peace and love.

At the beginning of this month in Gaza, a five-day assault left this place, what we commonly call the 'Holy Land,' reeling from the death of between 125- 131 people, half of whom were civilians and of which 22 were children. Tragically, this assault is merely one example in the constant flow of violence which is likely to continue until the underlying problems blocking the creation of two secure, independent and viable states are earnestly dealt with.

ACTION

We ask that you write to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at secretary@state.gov expressing your concern for the security of both Israelis and Palestinians. Ask that the U.S. use its influence to help bring about two secure, independent and viable states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace. Ask that the U.S. be even-handed in its support of Israelis and Palestinians as they negotiate an end to the occupation and a just sharing of Jerusalem as the capital of both states.

For more information, please see:

Religious leaders' letter on Gaza Crisis (Churches for Middle East Peace)

Sources: regarding the numbers of Palestinians killed -- adapted from Phyllis Bennis' article Click here. The action alert: from the Maryknoll website Click Here
web: USA Pax Christi Website

Easter Sunday 2008 - Sermon Fr Claude Mostowik

2008-03-21T16:25:00.003+10:30

When confronted with a major disappointment, when our hopes and dreams are dashed on the rock of reality, others might say, ‘Well, what can you expect?’

The women on Easter morning expected to find a smelling body. The disciples were smelling the decay of lives in disappointment as they reflect on the one who seemed so connected to God and was abandoned by God. He even convinced them that his way of seeing the world and seeing people was the right way. And this happens! And what would happen to them now? They could go home to their fishing and admit they mistakenly followed a dreamer who left them disillusioned.

The women did not get what they expected. They found no smelly decaying body but the presence of the one they had known and loved, who said, as he always did: ‘Do not be afraid’. And the disillusioned disciples would receive a ministry to proclaim the presence of love and life in the world. It changed them and the world forever. It is interesting that the early community seemed to only preach Jesus' rising from the dead because everything else seemed irrelevant and unimportant alongside the news that death was not the last word and the Reign that Jesus preaching was breaking in. Only later did it become obsessed with finding little instructions for life’s every little problem with lots of dos and don’ts which caused people to fear again for themselves and become irresponsible about this world by focussing on a future world.

Chocolat – film [about Lent and chocolate]. It is set in a little French village where everyone and everything is in its right place. Tranquility is the supreme value. The status quo must not be disturbed. If you see something, look away. The village is dominated by a mayor who knows what is good for everyone. The mayor even corrects and rewrites the parish priest’s homilies. Church attendance is obligatory However, a woman and her daughter arrive in the village to set up a chocolate shop – during Lent. They are not churchgoers. The woman is a single mother. The mayor spurns them and gets the villagers to do the same. But she seduces the curious villagers who peer through the shop window [remember, it is Lent] by inviting them to come in and taste her delicious chocolates. This awakens in them the ancient mysterious desire for connection, intimacy, and inclusiveness. A stone has been rolled back and a spirit of life breaks through into that community. A spirit of ‘playful’ resistance occurs when mother and daughter help person after person reawaken a sense of connectedness which is based on love rather than fear. She reawakens in them a sense of their beautiful humanity. It enables them to begin to do life differently. Jesus does this for us.

Today’s gospel begins in an atmosphere of darkness, oppression. It is the darkness of the empty tomb; the darkness of not knowing; the darkness of loss; the darkness of shock at seeing Jesus' capture, torture and death. This darkness persists until the ‘other disciple’ entered the tomb, ‘saw and believed.’

What can we see? Can we see things we usually do not? Do we see the Christ in the poor and suffering around us? Do we see that winning and power are not the solutions to every problem or confrontation? Do we recognise that those who have lost much in life have a story to tell that others have not experience? Do we hear from those who are least privileged stories that no one else would ever know? Do we see that being able to have all we want does not mean we should? Do we see that people in other parts of the world suffer because of our personal and national excesses? Do we see God’s reign, God’s seduction, in the little efforts to change our world Do we see that letting go of our fear is a way of entering new life?

‘Well, what did you expect?’ Jesus is risen – and so are we. Jesus is not in the tomb. But will we leave our tombs; leave behind what entombs us – fear, preciousness, self-centredness. New life has been set loose in the world and possibilities for change are available to us. It depends on us to accept it.

It means that we act differently: to see that life is about slow growth, not perfection; a reckless love of the unlovable; traveling through life with new insight, with new people, in new ways. Important question: will we, touched by Jesus, now rise and do life differently?

There are many things which call forth our passion: injustices to redress; social and moral outrages that cannot be ignored. Though always with us, it is no excuse for tolerating them. Christianity’s strength is seen in its ability to build a barrier against hatred in our hearts. We can relieve the world of a little hatred that will otherwise almost surely contribute to the suffering and pain in others.

Jesus’ prayer for his persecutors is a model of how to do life differently in the face of hatred. His rising puts us in touch with a world where it is no longer necessary to settle scores. We have seen the disastrous outcomes when people keep settling scores in the old ways: Iraq; the Balkans; Middle East; even our neighbours who we might not speak with.

People still live with vilification, racism, sexism, prejudice and other forms of violence and we risk just taking it for granted and keeping silent, looking away. We can accept lies of systems and institutions that preach themselves rather than challenging them. In these weeks before Easter [Lent] we have been called again beyond private religion to the prophetic; beyond perfectionism to seeking true growth; beyond mere ritual to witness; beyond religion-for-show to religion-for-real and deep spirituality.

The empty tomb alone proves nothing but we can acknowledge the presence of Jesus everywhere. God and Jesus cannot be locked up. Resurrection invites us to find God by being open to our world; by making connections; by allowing ourselves to be surprised by God in places and in ways we never thought possible. We are invited to allow others – like those women at the tomb, those whom we might refuse to consider - to open our hearts to things we do not want to hear. Let us allow God’s voice to be released in everyone, everywhere. So, let go of the fears that protect us from one another – reach out to the other: the Muslim, the child who needs, support, the homeless, the unemployed, the Indigenous person, the person living with mental illness, the stranger, the gay and lesbian. Our attitude and action leads to removing stones from their graves.

‘Well, what did you expect?’ Jesus lives! Let us do resurrection by insisting on the things of life, justice and peace. Will we rise and resist the deadening grip of the world's burnt-out systems and be open to the light-giving presence of God. These are hints of resurrection in our daily lives. Mary's stubborn commitment to give witness to her community's mourning and grief is inspirational. As the late Dorothee Söelle put it:

"Resurrection is the sign of a power that changes life and breaks its subservience to and cooperation with death. The resurrection has need of witnesses, for it does not function here for the sake of Jesus' return to his father, but for the sake of liberation of all people from fear and submission to the powers of death."

We might ourselves say, or heard other people say, ‘I will not collaborate in my own oppression’. I do not have to list the groups of people.

‘Well, what did you expect?’ This can be life changing! We have resurrection moments in our lives. Do we recognise them when we absorb animosity? Refuse to be violent in speech and behaviour in the face of violence? Hope in the face of despair? Live with depression and still come through? Be faithful where faithlessness might be understood? Let go of hurts in order to begin the process of forgiveness? Resist what is contrary to life? We glimpse resurrection whenever people break through prejudice and fear; attempt reconciliation and make bonds of friendship across cultural divides; when we question institutions, country and church - when they fall short of justice, love and compassion; when we question and challenge racism, inequality or unfair practices in the workplace, war, detention of children, women and men who seek our protection. The tomb is not the final solution.

Why do you seek the living among the dead? The Easter question provokes us: how is it that we have thought that the institutions of death will provide us with new life? Where did we get the idea that by embracing and blessing the death of others we find new life for ourselves?

This was Caesar’s solution. Pilate says send in the troops. It is still the solution of the powers today. Israel is adopting it in Gaza and China in Tibet. The USA sends in the marines, or better those of client states. Kill the one who objects, the rebel, the conscientious objector, the Jew, the Arab, the Salvadoran, the Filipino, the Iraqi, the Turk. Lynch the black person, drown the homosexual, rape the resister, deport the immigrant and the illegal alien. Quarantine the person living with AIDS; gaol the drug addict. Silence dissent by vilification or anti-terror laws or cutting funding to charities and research projects.

‘Well, what did you expect?’ You roll away the stones that prevent people from coming out of their graves – they begin to live. They do things differently. The resurrection introduces us to an uncomfortable newness in relationships and social arrangements. We want it and dread it. The call is to risk new life – and help others risk it. Let others roll away the stone… The resurrection stories show us the importance of the ordinary things of life. Jesus shows us that his wounds remain visible in his body; that whatever our wounds, they are not taken away, but become sources of hope to others. We can still feel the world’s pains and the pains of our family and friends.

This is the 8th day of Creation: it is about new creation; a new earth; new relationships; a new and united humanity. God's image is imprinted on us. It begins with God saying to us, "I love you. Where love is, I am. Where I am is home." God has fallen in love with you and wants you to come home.

Today shows us how much we are remembered by God; how much God wants to intervene in our lives and have a place in our hearts. The death of Jesus revealed how powerful we humans are. We did what we wanted with him. But today reveals how powerful God is and what joy God is holding out for us as we ‘see and believe’ and come to ‘understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead’. ‘Well, what else did you expect?’

A Message from Peacefriends - Tibet

2008-03-21T16:14:00.003+10:30

Hi,

I've just joined the urgent campaign to send Kevin Rudd to China with a message to stand up for the human rights of Tibetans.

As Australians, we are in a unique position to help stop the cultural genocide taking place right now in Tibet.

Kevin Rudd happens to be the world leader who not only can speak to the Chinese leaders in their own language, but is visiting Beijing the week after next to meet the President and the Premier. Add to that the impending Beijing Olympics, where the world's eyes will focus on China, and we have a once in a generation chance to resolve this crisis.

As you read this, Tibetans are burying an unknown number of their dead from these recent protests - the number is unknown because China is keeping out all international media and human rights monitors. But China can't afford too much damage to its international reputation, and will listen to Australia's concerns.

Please sign the petition today: Sign petition

It's Time for Palestine

2008-03-05T15:16:00.002+10:30

It is time to remember also that there are many friendships between Palestinian and Israeli people.

It's time for Palestine.
It's time for Palestinians and Israelis to share a just peace.

It's time to respect human lives in the land called holy.
It's time for healing to begin in wounded souls.
It's time to end 60 years of conflict, oppression and fear.
It's time for freedom from occupation.

It's time for equal rights.
It's time to stop discrimination, segregation and restrictions on movement.
It's time for those who put up walls and fences to build them on their own property.
It's time to stop bulldozing one community's homes and building homes for the other community on land that is not theirs.
It's time to do away with double standards.

It's time for Israeli citizens to have security and secure borders agreed with their neighbours.
It's time for the international community to implement 60 years of United Nations resolutions.
It's time for Israel's government to complete the bargain offered in the Arab Peace Initiative.
It's time for those who represent the Palestinian people to all be involved in making peace.
It's time for people who have been refugees for 60 years to regain their rights and a permanent home.
It's time to assist settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to make their home in Israel.
It's time for self-determination.

It's time for foreigners to visit Bethlehem and other towns imprisoned by the wall.
It's time to see settlements in their comfort and refugee camps in their despair.
It's time for people living 41 years under occupation to feel new solidarity from a watching world.

It's time to name the shame of collective punishment and to end it in all its forms.
It's time to be revolted by violence against civilians and for civilians on both sides to be safe.
It's time for both sides to release their prisoners and give those justly accused a fair trial.
It's time to reunite the people of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
It's time for all parties to obey international humanitarian and human rights law.

It's time to share Jerusalem as the capital of two nations and a city holy to three religions.
It's time for Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities to be free to visit their holy sites.
It's time in Palestine as in Israel for olive trees to flourish and grow old.

It's time to honour all who have suffered, Palestinians and Israelis.
It's time to learn from past wrongs.
It's time to understand pent-up anger and begin to set things right.
It's time for those with blood on their hands to acknowledge what they have done.
It's time to seek forgiveness between communities and to repair a broken land together.
It's time to move forward as human beings who are all made in the image of God.

All who are able to speak truth to power must speak it.
All who would break the silence surrounding injustice must break it.
All who have something to give for peace must give it.
For Palestine, for Israel and for a troubled world,

It's time for peace - co-sponsored by Pax Christi International

“It’s Time for Palestine” – Week of Action

2008-03-05T15:13:00.000+10:30

International Church Action for Peace in Palestine and Israel

In 2008, the Week of Action will take place 4 – 10 June on the theme “Its Time for Palestine.” The International Church Action for Peace in Palestine and Israel is an annual Week of Action advocacy initiative convened by the World Council of Churches and supported by Pax Christi International. The Arab Educational Institute, AEI, in Bethlehem, is active in the project as well.

The goal of the action is to raise awareness in churches and civil society and to impress upon governments the need for new efforts to end the conflict and negotiate a settlement. Four types of actions are/will be developed: pray, educate, advocate and public action. The Ecumenical Service with the Heads of Churches will take place on 4 June in Jerusalem. Member organisations of Pax Christi International are invited to join the Week of Action and develop its own type of actions in collaboration with churches, church related organisations, religious communities or congregations, and with NGOs on the national and/or local level, if possible.

The following materials will be made available and could be used on national and local level:

The message “It’s Time for Palestine,” is already available in English (Read in 2008-0241-en-me-HR). The message will also be made available in French, Spanish, German and Dutch.
The Jerusalem Prayer for Sunday 8 June 2008 - Will be made available in English, French, Spanish, German, Arabic, Swedish and Dutch.
A liturgy from the Churches in Jerusalem. In English.

Find also in attached the Newsletter of the Coordination in Australia. For your inspiration!

Please keep the International Secretariat informed about your plans.

With kind regards,

Fr. Paul Lansu

International Secretariat

THE PINE GAP 4 HAVE WON THEIR APPEAL!

2008-02-23T00:46:00.001+10:30

Dear friends

Today Bryan, Jim, Adele and Donna were acquitted of their convictions under the Defence (Special Undertakings) Act 1952.

It was a unanimous decision by the full bench of the Northern Territory Court of Criminal Appeal.

The three judges agreed with our submission that there was a miscarriage of justice at last year's trial because we were not able to bring evidence before the jury about the function of Pine Gap.

There were other grounds to the appeal, of a more technical nature. The judges will publish the detailed reasons for their decision in coming weeks.

The Prosecution quickly sought a re-trial, but was quickly rebutted.

"What would be achieved for these individuals or the community if there is a re-trial?" asked Justice Riley rather sternly.

The judges unanimously ruled there would be no re-trial.

The fact that we had already served prison time was a significant factor in their decision to refuse a re-trial. We are all very glad we did this as now our slate is clean regarding the other charge of 'damage', under the crimes act. So now it's all over!

This 'David vs Goliath' outcome is a result of the excellent work of our legal team: Ron Merkel QC, Rowena Orr and Russell Goldflam. Their commitment, persistance and brilliance was amazing. They should be heartily congratulated. (I hope to have a way for you all to do that soon).

The result now raises significant questions for the Government about the use of the Defence (Special Undertakings) Act 1952. It was the first, and mostly likely last time it will be used in this context.

It is a victory for fairness and common sense, and a slap in the face for Prosecutor's who seek to use draconian legislation to respond to pacifists partaking in non-violent civil disobedience with an extreme witchunt.

Congratulations to our Pine Gap colleagues Jessica Morrison and Sean O'Reilly and thanks to everyone involved in our journey since December 2005.

It's been an amazing experience for all of us!

Rise Up!
Put Pine Gap on trial!

cheers from

Donna, Jim. Adele, Bryan

PS: Within 10 minutes of the ruling there was national media coverage on most major newspaper websites as well as ABC Radio and TV.

PPS: Some pics to come, news reports below

http://news.smh.com.au/pine-gap-protesters-conviction-quashed/20080222-1txp.html

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23257820-5005961,00.html

Letter sent to Pope Benedict - US Visit

2008-02-17T11:00:00.001+10:30

To His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI
From:
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, Archdiocese of Detroit Kathy Boylan, Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Stephen Vincent Kobasa Kathy Kelly Marie Dennis, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns Frank Cordaro, Des Moines Catholic Worker

Most Holy Father:

In your own words, "today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a 'just war'." Yet, during your upcoming visit to the United States, you are planning to meet with President George W. Bush, whose empty justifications for the violence in Iraq lead to increasing numbers of dead, injured and displaced people. Iraqi civilians still endure the "continual slaughter" which you described in your 2007 Easter Sunday address.

Shortly before the U.S. invaded Iraq, you rightly declared that "there were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war." You've also called attention to the terrible new technologies which cause indiscriminate destruction. Five years later, how much more reason you have to call for an immediate end to this war, and to refuse to meet with the President of the United States until that is accomplished.

If you kneel in grief and outrage before the cross of the tortured Christ, can you offer your blessing to a head of government who excuses the most terrible abuses of human minds and bodies as "legal?"

If meet with him you must, then meet as a prophet should - issuing a warning and an invitation to repentance. Courtesy cannot be used as an evasion of our biblical faith. Ezekiel was repeatedly reminded of his responsibility to admonish those doing evil if he desired to escape sharing in the responsibility for their sins. Shouldn't any of us who recognize the horror of what is happening in Iraq be condemned if we are silent?

You are scheduled to be in Washington, D.C. on the anniversary of your birth. We feel sure that you will be thinking of the countless children of Iraq who never reached their fifth birthday. In 2005 alone, 122,000 Iraqi children under age five died. There are many, both within the Church and outside of it, who long for your voice to speak for those innocent dead and - face to face with those whose policies denied all respect for their lives - demand that the killing stop.

We are, in faithful hope

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, Archdiocese of Detroit Kathy Boylan, Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Stephen Vincent Kobasa Kathy Kelly Marie Dennis, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns Frank Cordaro, Des Moines Catholic Worker

FACILITATING SOCIAL CHANGE CONFERENCE 2008

2008-02-08T20:49:00.001+10:30

Commonground Conference Centre, Seymour, Victoria
Thurs 6pm 8-5-08 to 6pm Sat 10-5-08
Plus - a free party chucked in for Sat night 10-5-08
thru to breakky Sun Morning 11-5-08

THE IDEA
Like never before, the world needs good facilitation to help collaborate
around just and sustainable outcomes on SOOOO many fronts.

This is a little Conference between the big Australasian Facilitation
Network (AFN) Conferences held annually in November. This May
Conference seeks to extend the reach of facilitation further into the
realm of social change, and being social change agents.

For such just and sustainable outcomes to have greater impact, we need
to gather together people who think differently. At this Facilitating
Social Change Conference - we would like to extend the invitation to
Facilitators from the 'top end of town' through to activists working
from 'the bottom up' - and all in between.

THE PROGRAM
At this stage, we would like to 'keep it fluid', and consult with people
interested in attending - to find out the kind of topics you would like
covered. So if you have ideas about what you want, and who could do
it - then contact Glen Ochre at all@groupwork.com.au.
In subject line of email, put 'FSCC Topics'.

As we get closer to the Conference - the melding of what people want,
what people can offer, and who is coming will form the core of the
Conference.
There will be room at the Conference for spontaneous topics.

THE VENUE
The venue is at Commonground - a small dedicated conference/social
change resource centre and intentional community. Glen Ochre and Ed
McKinley are among those who founded the Commonground Co-operative in
1984. It is nestled into the bush on a 95 acre property, near Seymour,
95 kms north of Melbourne. It is easily accessible fromMelbourne
Airport, is on the Sydney/Melb rail line, the Brisbane/Melb and
Sydney/Melb bus
routes.

THE DETAILS
A maximum of 60 participants, with 4 levels of accommodation.
We encourage people to come for the full 3 days to get the full benefit
from the conference process.

Costs range from $170 to $380 for the 3 day conference - depending on
your income level and accommodation option. The aim is to subsidise
those with low incomes/high costs. Delicious vegetarian meals are
included in the conference price. A roster will be used for
dishes/cleanup. This helps keep costs down.

See the Conference website www.fscc.net.au for full details.

THE PARTY
The Conference will formally close at 6pm on Saturday 10-5-08, but
everyone is warmly welcome to stay on for a great Saturday night
Freebie:
- dinner
- band and lotsa dancing
- accommodation
- Sunday morning breakky

THE NEXT STEP
For further enquiries:
Contact Ed McKinley edd@itu.com.au or +61 03 5793 8257 (AUST)
Stephen Thorpe stephen.thorpe@aut.ac.nz or 0011 6421 110 3018 (NZ)
To book: go to www.fscc.net.au/docs/registration.html#

Appeal -To stop violence against Iraqi women ..

2008-01-26T09:41:00.000+10:30

Let us work together for justice, equality and the right of life

Despite the relative improvement in the security situation is still the Iraqi people to live in an atmosphere of chaos that unprecedented or other peoples live in its airspace.

Perhaps the most important manifestation of this lawlessness and chaos exacerbated terrorism and lawlessness and the spread of organized crime, which claimed the lives of more than fifty women in Basra alone in the second half of this year, at the hands of the forces of darkness and gangs and criminal motives and pretexts different social, religious and political.

The Iraqi women who are subjected to various forms of discrimination, oppression and exploitation, and to exercise their right of violence on a daily basis and through innovative, today face mass killings because of widespread terrorism against them, and implement the most heinous murders of their right everywhere in broad daylight with impunity ..

The murders of women in the city of Basra but a terrible proof of barbarism and the perpetrators behind them.

Despite the condemnation of these crimes faced by the government and the authorities concerned did not take necessary action about these crimes to put an end to them and to punish the assailants and stand behind it.

We in the Commonwealth of Iraqi women denounce and strongly condemn the killing of women in Basra and other Iraqi cities, and denounce all forms of violation of human rights in Iraq, and we call on international organizations and the Iraqi Government and the relevant authorities to:

1.- send an international commission of the High Commission for Human Rights of the United Nations, and with the participation of international organizations advocate for human rights, truth and help the Iraqi authorities to identify the perpetrators and to work towards the immediate cessation of crimes against Iraqi women.

2. - disclosure of the perpetrators of crimes against women and stand behind them and bring them to justice.
3. - disclosure of the results of investigations and declaration of public opinion.

4. - working for the protection of women's rights and maintenance of personal freedoms guaranteed constitutionally and in accordance with international charters.

5. - to take stringent measures to protect women and the lives of citizens.

6.- serious work to improve the conditions of women and enable them to participate actively in political life and the rebuilding of Iraq.

Iraqi Women's Association / Commission coordination abroad

To sign the campaign click on the link below

Stop Violence Against Iraqi Women .. Let Us Work Together for Justice, Equality Let Us Work Together for Justice, Equality
and the Right to Life And the Right to Life

Global Campaign against and prevention of crimes of honour
Raise the voice of protest against the exacerbation of violence and killings against women in Basra

Association of Iraqi women
sivany1@hotmail.com Sivany1@hotmail.com
2008 / 1 / 3 2008 / 1 / 3

Peace and Solidarity with the People of Kenya

2008-01-21T22:02:00.000+10:30

Pax Christi International

Pax Christi International and its partner organisations in the Horn of Africa are deeply concerned about the violence that has shaken Kenya following the country’s 27 December elections. We lament the widespread loss of life, extensive destruction of property and massive displacement of people in a country that has been for many Africans a model of security and democracy on the continent.

We call upon all Kenyans to stop immediately the violence that is destroying their country. We also urge Kenya’s political leadership, particularly President Mwai Kibaki and the Honourable Raila Odinga, to seek a speedy and peaceful resolution to the crisis and to call upon their constituencies to end their fighting.

We commend international efforts to mediate in this situation. It is crucial at this time that agreement is reached on a way forward in order to restore security, to put the economy back on track and to permit a process of national reconciliation to begin. Pax Christi partners and other organisations are already actively engaged to make a positive contribution in this respect.

Whereas the international media has often reported the violence as ethnically-motivated, we recognize the wider historical context of Kenyan politics. Structures that perpetuate political and economic inequalities have long been tolerated in Kenya. Such policies will only engender further resentment and fragmentation at the heart of Kenya’s fragile democracy. It will be important for Kenya’s political leadership to address these matters in the years ahead.

Given the deep political divisions in Kenya at this time, it will be necessary that some negotiated solution be achieved if the government is going to accomplish anything in the coming years. Anything less will lack legitimacy and Kenya’s role as a beacon for stability and democracy in the region will remain seriously compromised.

Pax Christi International expresses therefore its solidarity with the people of Kenya and appeals to Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga to:

1. Publicly urge the end of violence and the restoration of order;
2. Favour in their public discourse the way of dialogue, transparency and a negotiated solution to the crisis; and
3. Permit an independent inquiry into the results of the December 2007 elections.

We also call upon all political, religious and civil society leaders, along with international partners, to:

1. Support a solution to the current situation that is peaceful, just and democratic;
2. Consolidate efforts to provide vital humanitarian assistance to those affected by the violence;
3. Acknowledge the painful divisions that exist within Kenyan society and seek ways to promote broader participation in public life and to strengthen democratic governance at all levels;
4. Stimulate discussion on strategies for national reconciliation with special attention to ethnicity, power-sharing and political inclusion.

Pax Christi International
Brussels, Belgium
11 January 2008