Articles by Peace

We found 992 results.


While Our Attention Is Elsewhere, Climate Change Worsens
Mel Gurtov | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Sevice, 6 Mar 2017

The news of actual events—hurricanes, floods, drought, sharp temperature changes, and other distortions in weather patterns in the US and around the world—typically are being crowded out by Trump’s tantrums, fake news, and conflicts of interest. For the strong of heart, here are some important developments affecting climate change over the past several months that you may have missed.

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Increase in Arms Transfers Driven by Demand in the Middle East and Asia
SIPRI-Stockholm International Peace Research Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Mar 2017

The flow of arms increased to Asia and Oceania and the Middle East between 2007–11 and 2012–16, while there was a decrease in the flow to Europe, the Americas and Africa. The five biggest exporters—the United States, Russia, China, France and Germany—together accounted for 74 per cent of the total volume of arms exports.

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Why Should Trump―or Anyone―Be Able to Launch a Nuclear War?
Lawrence Wittner | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Mar 2017

The accession of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency brings us face-to-face with a question that many have tried to avoid since 1945: Should anyone have the right to plunge the world into a nuclear holocaust? Ultimately, then, the only long-term solution to the problem of national leaders launching a nuclear war is to get rid of the weapons.

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Unique Aleppo Photos Seen by over 100.000 People but Not in Mainstream Media
Jan Oberg | Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Feb 2017

21 Feb 2017 – It’s probably unusual that a research organisation’s photos go viral – and do so in spite of the mainstream media’s manifest lack of interest in their story. But the photos I took in Aleppo in Syria December 10-14, 2016 have been seen here by well over 100.000 people around the world, exclusively by organic, non-paid online sharing.

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Keep Focus on Aleppo and Global Dimensions of Syria
Jan Oberg | Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research - TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Feb 2017

24 Feb 2017 – Three Perspectives on the Syrian Conflict Formation – The Syrian conflict formation is hugely more complicated than we’ve been told by Western politicians (all mainstream in spite of democratic features) and mainstream/dependent media.

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Trump–Putin Could Rescue the World Taking the Advice of Alfred Nobel
Fredrik S. Heffermehl | Nobel Peace Prize Watch – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Feb 2017

In the will he used the term “the prize for the champions of peace,” and the correspondence with Bertha von Suttner, the great peace movement leader of the period, shows that it was her political ideas and political friends he wished to support – abolishing weapons and warriors as the tool to get an end to war. This means that almost all statesmen and generals who have received Nobel honors from the Oslo committee have been — considering the actual intention of Alfred Nobel — illegitimate winners.

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An Open Letter to Trump and Putin: The World Needs Nuclear Zero
David Krieger | Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – The Hill, 20 Feb 2017

16 Feb 2017 – As the leaders of the USA and Russia, the two countries with the largest nuclear arsenals, you have the grave responsibility of assuring that nuclear weapons are not used — or their use overtly threatened — during your period of leadership. We, the undersigned, implore you to commence negotiations to reduce the dangers of a nuclear war, by mistake or malice, and immediately commit your respective governments to the realizable objective of a nuclear weapons-free world.

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Moscow & Washington – Last Chance to Get It Right?
Jonathan Power | Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research - TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Feb 2017

Russia and the US have never fought each other in the 200 years of their relationship. Russia aided the North during the Civil War and sent warships to prevent England and France supporting the confederacy. During the World Wars the two were close allies.

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US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D) Visits Syria
Jan Oberg - Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research, 30 Jan 2017

26 Jan 2017 – Tulsi Gabbard and former peace presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich have just visited Aleppo and Damascus in Syria and met citizens, religious leaders and President Assad. A brilliant blow to US/NATO policies and mainstream media.

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Rest in Peace Prof. Glenn Paige (1929 – 2017): Pioneer of Nonkilling and Peace Researcher
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Jan 2017

I am very sorry to hear of the death of my good friend Prof. Glenn Paige, who passed away on Sunday 22 January, 2017. Glenn was 87 years of age and he died at the end of a struggling illness during which he was nursed by his wonderful partner, and co peacemaker, Glenda Paige.

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Nobel Peace Prize Nominations NEW DEADLINE: 31 JANUARY 2017
Fredrik S. Heffermehl | Nobel Peace Prize Watch – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Jan 2017

New deadline: Please nominate by Jan. 31, 2017, 12 p.m. CET (Norwegian time). Please also, send us a copy, to nomination copy@nobelwill.org of all nominations suited you believe may be suited for inclusion in our 2017 list.

Nobel Committee postmaster@nobel.no

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USA: It’s Going to Be a Wild Ride
Bruce K. Gagnon | Space4Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Jan 2017

This corporate takeover of the US government runs far deeper than Trump. He is not an aberration from the norm – Trump represents the norm in Washington. We are now ruled by Christian fundamentalism (the American Taliban), an economic expansion ideology that has no concern for the planet, and a military ethic that carries with it strong Puritan evangelical strains. Greatness only means domination – of everything.

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Aleppo’s Evil Humanitarians
Jan Oberg | Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Jan 2017

Aleppo Shall Not Be Forgotten – Eyewitness to who helped the Aleppians, Dec 11-14, 2016. This eyewitness report and documentation contradicts the major Western mainstream media’s narrative. In spite of the world historic dimension of this liberation, the tragedy of these innocent war victims and the heartbreakingly vast proportions of the systematic destruction of this dynamic city, none of their media were present in Aleppo there and then.

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What Kind of Nonviolence Training Do You Need?
Rivera Sun for Campaign Nonviolence | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Jan 2017

Campaign Nonviolence is often contacted by people who are looking for nonviolence trainings. Frequently, they are not sure what type of training they need, or what the catch-phrases are to describe what they’re looking for. This guide is offered as a resource in identifying which type of nonviolence training supports the needs of each situation.

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“Where Do We Go from Here?”
Dale Bryan | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Jan 2017

15 Jan 2017 – That question was a touchstone for The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the last year of his life. He preached on it. He delivered speeches on it. He wrote a book on it. The answers he put forward may be what got him killed.

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New Stories for a New Era
Tom H. Hastings | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Jan 2017

The Way Between by Rivera Sun, El Prado, NM: Rising Sun Press Works (2016). This novel should be read aloud to everyone, by everyone, from childhood onward. It is an auspicious beginning to a new mythology of peace, of justice, of inclusion, of conversion and transformation.

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Every Single Piece of Plastic Ever Made Still Exists – Here’s the Story
Diego Gonzaga | Greenpeace – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Jan 2017

And it’s not just the amount of plastic being produced. Everything related to plastic is damaging the planet, from the impact of extracting the fossil fuels used to produce plastic, to the health effects of the toxins it releases into the environment when it is burned, to the devastating impact on sea life.

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Rohingya in Burma/Myanmar: Nobel Laureates Urge Action over ‘Ethnic Cleansing’
Submitted by Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Jan 2017

Dear President and Members of the UNSC,
As you are aware, a human tragedy amounting to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity is unfolding in Myanmar.

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Syria’s Destruction – When Everybody Thinks Power and No One Thinks Peace
Jan Oberg | Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Dec 2016

The consequences of ignoring every known and simple conflict and peace method and pursuing nationalist, racist and militarist policies. Peace was never an important factor in anything Western countries have done in and to Syria. No matter what they say. If it were, this would not be the result. It’s easy to blame Syria and Russia for the destruction of Aleppo. Far far too easy.

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Nuclear Weapons Modernization: A New Nuclear Arms Race? Who Voted for It? Who Will Benefit from It?
Kevin Martin and Paul A. Olson | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Dec 2016

So who will benefit? Certainly Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and the nuclear weapons contractors in other countries (and the politicians who rely on their campaign cash). Anyone else? Anyone? The children? The environment? The smart way forward is not rocket science. Instead of embarking on a plan we can’t afford and that makes our country and the world less safe, let us cancel nuclear modernization.

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Human Rights Day: A Call to Care
Kathy Kelly | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Dec 2016

December 10th marks the U.N. Human Rights Day, celebrating and upholding the indispensable and crucial declaration of universal human rights. On the eve of this event, I visited a refugee camp housing 700 families in Kabul.

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The Treaty of Tlatelolco: Giving Thanks to Our Latin American Neighbors toward a World Free of Nuclear Weapons
Robert F. Dodge, M.D. | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Dec 2016

Latin American nations drafted the treaty on Feb 14, 1967 in Mexico City and it went into force on Apr 22, 1968. Today all 33 nations of Latin America and the Caribbean have signed the treaty as part of the 80 million square kilometers of the entire southern hemisphere that is free of nuclear weapons.

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Kissinger and Brzezinski to Be Honoured by Nobel Institute and Oslo University
Jan Oberg | Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Dec 2016

These two top officials behind major US wars (Iran/Afghanistan and Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos) and regime change (against Allende, Chile) will speak at the first of a new event, The Nobel Peace Prize Forum Oslo, created by the Nobel Institute in Oslo. One way to go: Boycott the event and let Kissinger, Brzezinski, Njölstad and Ottersen be the only ones who turn up in that huge hall on December 11th. Or, go there – students, media and civil society – and raise all the questions any independent, decent academic must.

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Food Politics: The GMO Conspiracy
Mel Gurtov | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Dec 2016

One of the longest-standing tricks of corporations is to produce an item that is dangerous, breakable, or soon to be obsolete and then produce another that will supposedly remedy the defect. That is what is happening with GMO-laden crops: As they become resistant to Roundup and other toxins designed to keep them bug- or disease-free, the producers—such as Monsanto and Syngenta—come up with new herbicides for the farmer to apply.

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Just How Grey Are the White Helmets and Their Backers? (Part 2)
Jan Oberg | Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Nov 2016

• The – bizarre – White Helmet Mannequin Challenge video;
• The Swedish Institute of International Affairs’s event with the White Helmets on November 24;
• The Right Livelihood Award Foundation’s Award Ceremony to take place on November 25

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International Conference on Gandhian Perspectives on Contemporary Conflicts and Peace
Dr. Aurobinda Mahapatra | Gandhi Center for Non-Violence, Human Rights and World Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Nov 2016

The Mahatma Gandhi Center for Non-Violence, Human Rights and World Peace at the Hindu University of America organized an international conference on Nov 3-4 2016, on the theme Gandhian perspectives on contemporary conflicts and peace. Speakers from Europe, Canada and India, besides the US, participated in the conference and focused on various aspects of Gandhian philosophy and its relevance for conflict resolution.

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Taking a Stand at Standing Rock
Rev. John Dear | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Nov 2016

If the Standing Rock campaign is able to stop or reroute the pipeline, it will do so because of their steadfast nonviolence and the strong movement that has grown up around them. But like every grassroots movement of nonviolence, they need help and are asking for it. Everyone can get involved to help build this movement, support their nonviolence, and reach that good outcome and transformation.

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Just How Grey Are the White Helmets and Their Backers? (Part 1)
Jan Oberg | Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research - TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Nov 2016

While thousands of humanitarian organisations around the world are struggling fiercely with diminishing support from governments and the public, one has achieved a surprising amount of support from Western governments in a surprisingly short period of time and gained a surprising attention from mainstream media and ditto political elites: The Syrian Civil Defence or White Helmets. Their name of course makes you think of the UN’s Blue Helmet and white is the colour of those who should be protected in harm’s way – and the colour of innocence.

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Threats and “Strategic Patience” Haven’t Worked with North Korea, Let’s Try Serious Diplomacy
Kevin Martin | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Nov 2016

Resolving tensions over North Korea’s nukes, likely by the next president at this point, will require the same commitment to diplomacy the Obama administration showed in securing the Iran nuclear agreement and opening to Cuba, but we would have much more credibility were we not preaching atomic temperance from a barstool brimming with nuclear weapons.

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The Kapp Putsch and Modern Memory
Michael N. Nagler | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Nov 2016

Nonviolence in Today’s USA – Nonviolence cannot simply mean you wait for the putsch to happen, then rush to the street and non-cooperate. It has to mean a complete overhaul of the cultural factors that led to our putting more citizens in prison than any other democracy, having more guns than people and a higher rate of murder or suicide, a larger military budget than most of the world’s countries put together, and a foreign policy incapable of any but endless war.

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International Women’s Boat to Gaza
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service, 31 Oct 2016

I was a participant onboard the Zaytouna-Oliva boat | 29 Sep-5 Oct 2016. To the Palestinian people of Gaza, please keep your hopes high and believe that freedom and peace will come. Thank you for your perseverance and ongoing inspiration to us all.

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US Uranium Weapons Have Been Used in Syria
John LaForge | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 31 Oct 2016

28 Oct 2016 – This month, the Pentagon admitted it has used uranium weapons in attacks inside Syria — violating its public promise last year that it would not use DU there, and contradicting the claim that US bombing is done in defense of the Syrian people, according to the Int’l Campaign to Ban Uranium Weapons.

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Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI, at 50. Now Change Name to SIMSI
Jan Oberg | Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 31 Oct 2016

I have a proposal for this mainly government-financed and not exactly independent institute. Since its work has so conspicuously little to do with peace thinking and re-search into the vast and fascinating field called world peace, perhaps change its name to Stockholm International Military Security Institute, SIMSI?

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[Nobel Peace Laureate] Gorbachev Appeals for Sanity
John Scales Avery - Pugwash Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service, 31 Oct 2016

28 Oct 2016 – President Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Soviet Union and recipient of the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize, has appealed to world leaders to reduce the dangerous the tensions which today threaten to plunge human civilization and the biosphere into an all-destroying nuclear war.

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The Tragedy in Yemen
Derek Royden | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 31 Oct 2016

Besides intelligence and targeting assistance provided to the Saudis in Yemen, since 2010 the US has sold $60 billion in arms to the country, an absolute monarchy with one of the worst human rights records in the world. Human rights groups have concluded that these weapons, including cluster munitions banned in most countries, have been used indiscriminately against civilian targets including markets, schools and hospitals.

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Myanmar’s Rohingya Continue to Suffer Systematic Extortion, Abuse
Physicians for Human Rights, Nobel Peace Laureates – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Oct 2016

Report from Physicians for Human Rights Shows Severe Persecution Contributes to Cycle of Poverty and Despair among Rohingya Minority

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A Milestone for America’s Culture
James A. Haught | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Oct 2016

When I was a young adult, the only Americans who mattered were WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants). They were the overwhelming majority. Their laws and customs dominated everything. But now, they’ve dwindled to just 16 percent among those under 30. And they’re destined to keep shrinking as nonwhite Americans rise, the Census Bureau projects.

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Delusions of Worthy Wars
Nicolas J S Davies | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Oct 2016

When we compare our military spending to that of other countries, we are outspending the next 9 military powers in the world, and we are single-handedly spending more than 180 less militarized countries combined. Clearly it has not enabled the U.S. to win any wars. The only wars we have won since WWII were over tiny Grenada, Panama, Kuwait and Kosovo. Hillary Clinton derided those operations as “splendid little wars” in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, as she urged more ambitious uses of U.S. military force.

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Why Aleppo Is the Symptom of What Is Wrong with How We Deal with Atrocities
Patrick T. Hiller | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Oct 2016

It is time to follow a new path. A path that is not informed by some sort of perceived naïve pacifism, but by rigorous analysis of nonviolent alternatives without a so-called military option as part of the picture. The military option needs to be taken off the table, otherwise all the other approaches are facing a counterforce and are directly undermined.

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Rethinking Killing Civilians
Tom H. Hastings | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Oct 2016

We not only create more terrorists when we accidentally or mistakenly take out a hospital, almost more importantly, we create a widening, deepening pool of sympathy for any sort of insurgency against the US. Why on Earth would we continue to essentially guarantee that this global war on terror is permanent?

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October: This Month in Nuclear Threat History
Jeffrey W. Mason | Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Oct 2016

October 30, 1961 – The Soviet Union’s “Tsar Bomba,” the most powerful nuclear weapon ever constructed was detonated after being dropped from a TU-95 bomber at approximately four kilometers altitude over Novaya Zemlya Island in the Russian Arctic Sea. This hydrogen bomb formally designated RDS-220, which weighed about 27 tons and was eight meters long, had an estimated yield of 50 megatons or the equivalent of 3,800 Hiroshima bombs. The tremendous blast triggered a seismic shock wave, equivalent to an earthquake registered at 5.0 on the Richter Scale, that travelled around the world.

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The Long, Long Journey to Female Equality
James A. Haught | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Oct 2016

For millennia, female inferiority was presumed, and mandated, in virtually every human culture. Through most of history, the brawn of heavier males gave them dominance, leaving women in lesser status — often mere possessions of men, confined to the home, rarely educated, with few rights.

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Ukraine as the Border of NATO Expansion
Jan Oberg - Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research, 3 Oct 2016

And Why Russia Doesn’t Have to Be a Threat to the West

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The Simple Act of Pushing a Button
David Krieger | Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Oct 2016

On one side of the ledger is everything natural and extraordinary about life with its long evolution bringing us to the present and poised to carry its processes forward into the future. On the other side of the ledger is “the button,” capable of bringing most life on the planet to a screeching halt. Also on this side of the ledger are those people who remain ignorant or apathetic to the nuclear dangers confronting humanity.

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International Meeting ‘Thirst for Peace‘
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Sep 2016

Assisi, 18-20 Sep 2016 – The Future of Europe: Capacity to Integrate, Dialogue, and Generate

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International Peace Day in Assisi
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate | The Peace People – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Sep 2016

Update about Pope Francis’s Message

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Human Decency Moves Civilization Forward
James A. Haught | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Sep 2016

Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker asserts that rampant killing was 1,000 times worse in medieval times than today. In his classic 2011 book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,” he notes that international warfare has virtually vanished in the 21st century — and that murder, rape, genocide, torture, wife-beating, lynching, gay-bashing, dueling, racial attacks, and even cruelty to animals are vastly less than in the past.

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Greenpeace Investigation Uncovers Studies Showing Pesticides Pose Serious Harm to Honeybees
Joe Sandler Clarke | Greenpeace – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Sep 2016

22 Sep 2016 – Chemical giants Bayer and Syngenta commissioned private studies which showed that their neonicotinoid pesticides can cause serious harm to bees, a Greenpeace investigation has uncovered.

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How Ensuring Public Access to Information Can Help to Build Peaceful and Inclusive Societies
Univ. of Sydney Dept of Peace and Conflict Studies – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Sep 2016

20 October, 2016 – 18:00-19:30h – In this webinar, Jake Lynch traces the debate over information and communication and their place in development and peace, with reference to interventions along a spectrum from journalist training, on the one end, to intended-outcome programming on the other.

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Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire Joins the Freedom Flotilla 2016 to Break the Gaza Siege
The Peace People – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Sep 2016

Sep 15, 2016 – Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize winner, will join the women’s boat to Gaza. The goal of this mission is to highlight the devastating effects of the brutal blockade of the Palestinian people living in Gaza.

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Isn’t It Time to Ban the Bomb?
Lawrence S. Wittner | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Sep 2016

Nuclear weapons are the most destructive devices ever created. If they are used―as two of them were used in 1945 to annihilate the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki―the more than 15,000 nuclear weapons currently in existence would destroy the world. Only an unusually firm stand by the non-nuclear nations, coupled with an uprising by an aroused public, seems likely to awaken the officials of the nuclear powers from their long sleepwalk toward catastrophe.

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Jewish Voice for Peace – Statement on Antisemitism in the US
Jews for Justice for Palestinians | Jewish Voice for Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Sep 2016

In the United States, as in Britain, accusations of the prevalence of antisemitism abound and are used as sticks to beat those – protesting too vigorously? – at Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. But some antisemitism is real and it is important to make the right distinctions, to clarify the difference between expressions of antisemitism and support for Palestinian human rights.

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Whose Finger? On What Button?
Kevin Martin | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Sep 2016

Even a “limited” nuclear war between India and Pakistan could cause global famine on top of the deaths of hundreds of millions. How is it acceptable or legitimate for anyone to have the power to decide whether our civilization continues? We shouldn’t trust anyone with this power. Human beings are far too fallible. Unfortunately we have ceded too much power to alleged experts.

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Commemorate the Good September 11
Tom H. Hastings | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Sep 2016

On September 11, 1906, Mohandas Gandhi stood to speak in the Imperial Theater in white-ruled South Africa, a society completely grounded and awash in blatant, “legal” racism. Gandhi–those old enough to have seen the 1982 Hollywood version of his life may remember the scene—stood in a crowded theater and explained the new odious racial laws that ruled Hindu marriages void, that allowed police to enter the home of any Indian without a warrant or permission, and that required each Indian to carry a pass at all times.

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Thrown under the Automated Bus
Rivera Sun | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Sep 2016

We can praise the timesaving efficiency of automation, but we must also deal with the unintended consequences. The potential of automation comes with a shadow side, which must be rigorously discussed and addressed in our nation and around the world. People will be replaced by machines. Profits for the already wealthy will soar. Millions will be left without jobs.

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How Did Western Europe Cope with a Much Stronger Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact?
Jan Oberg - Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research, 5 Sep 2016

How did Western Europe survive the much stronger Soviet Union & Warsaw Pact 30-40 years ago? A pact that had about 70% of NATO’s military expenditures where today’s Russia has 8%? How did we get on after the Soviet invasion of Hungary and Czechoslovakia – and a Union with much more global military and political influence?

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The Power of Imagination
David Krieger | Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Sep 2016

20 Aug 2016 – Albert Einstein, the great 20th century scientist and humanitarian, wrote, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Let us exercise our imaginations.

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Webinar – How Ensuring Public Access to Information Can Help Build Peaceful and Inclusive Societies
Univ. of Sydney Department of Peace and Conflict Studies – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Sep 2016

Sustainable Development Goal 16 identifies the building of peaceful and inclusive societies as essential to delivering the development agenda, and one of its goals – the tenth – specifies “ensuring public access to information” as a co-requisite of peace and, therefore, development.

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September: This Month in Nuclear Threat History
Jeffrey W. Mason | Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Sep 2016

September 25, 1959 – A U.S. Navy antisubmarine aircraft carrying an unarmed nuclear depth charge developed mechanical problems but was unable to reach land to make an emergency landing and crashed into the Puget Sound, Washington. The nuclear weapon was never recovered despite an extensive search. There remain deadly serious concerns about the very long-term radioactive contamination from this incident and hundreds of other similar Broken Arrows.

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Game Changer
Tom H. Hastings | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Aug 2016

Everything we’ve done has been destructive. We are great at destroying. Bomb refugee camps, hospitals, funerals. Bomb Iraq, and Afghanistan, also Pakistan, don’t forget Somalia, Libya or Yemen. Bomb bomb bomb… Hey, ISIS, we need to talk. Hey, my fellow American voters, we need to elect leaders who can get this done. Innovation has been abandoned to devastation—let’s fix this.

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Hiroshima, Presidential Campaigns and Our Nuclear Future
Robert F. Dodge, M.D. | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Aug 2016

Seventy-one years ago on August 6th and 9th the world entered the nuclear age with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing and injuring in excess of 200,000 immediately and untold additional fatalities from lingering radiation effects.

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Ten Lessons from Chernobyl and Fukushima
David Krieger | Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Aug 2016

The nuclear power plant accident at Chernobyl was repeated, albeit with a different set of circumstances, at Fukushima. Have our societies yet learned any lessons that will prevent the people of the future from experiencing such devastation? As poet Maya Angelou points out, “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage doesn’t need to be lived again.”

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The Global Campaign for Peace Education
Culture of Peace News Network – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Aug 2016

The Global Campaign for Peace Education provides coverage of peace education from around the world, including original articles, research and stories cultivated from journals and independent and mass media sources.

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August: This Month in Nuclear Threat History
Jeffrey W. Mason | Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Aug 2016

August 8, 1994 – – In one of the twenty known incidents of the attempted illicit sale of Russian bomb-grade fissile materials in the last 25 years since the breakup of the Soviet Union, security officials at Munich International Airport in Germany arrested individuals who were caught in possession of 363.4 grams of plutonium – enough to make one or more radiological weapons or dirty bombs.

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Our Deteriorating Environment: Is Anybody Listening?
Mel Gurtov | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Aug 2016

6 Aug 2016 – While the scientists have been doing their job in calling attention to the multiple ways in which environmental decline threatens the planet, we hear less and less from political leaders. Their focus is on the here-and-now—terrorism, jobs, immigration—and not on commitments to the future. Last year’s Paris Agreement on climate change seems like a distant memory.

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Five Things Scarier Than a Nuclear-Armed Trump
Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Aug 2016

A lot of the scariest stuff about nuclear weapons is discussed in classified briefings, things too devastating for our tender ears to hear—even though the policies and plans being discussed could turn our tender ears and the rest of our tender bodies to ash in a millisecond. Here are five things worth worrying about more than Donald Trump’s crazy.

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International Conference: Gandhian Perspectives on Contemporary Conflicts and Peace
Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra, Ph.D. - Mahatma Gandhi Center for Nonviolence, Human Rights and World Peace, 8 Aug 2016

November 3-4, 2016 ~ Orlando [Florida] Campus of the Hindu University of America ~ The Conference aims at exploring Gandhian principles, their problem solving potentials, and relevance of Gandhi for addressing global problems such as inter-state and intra-state conflicts, international peace, religious extremism, degeneration of human values, social and religious discord and violation of human rights.

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Proactive Philanthropy: Don’t Wait, Reach Out!
Robert J. Gould | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Aug 2016

If you have money to give, don’t wait for a call, an email, or a formal proposal, please reach out to a local community organization that is working on a cause you believe in, and get involved with what they do, and when you are convinced that they are doing good work, fund them!

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Real Cooperation with Nations Is the Best Survival Tactic [for the USA]
John M Repp | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Aug 2016

In the face of this blatantly illegal activity by the highest levels of government, we have the right to rebel. We should do it nonviolently, and we should do it now. The people of America can make agreements with all our supposed enemies and order our military to stand down.

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What We Wear: Another Way to “Vote”
Andrew Moss | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Aug 2016

The exploitation and violence associated with the globalized garment industry that produces more than 95 percent of our clothes. Exposures highlight the persistent use of child labor, the absence of living wages, and the prevalence of unsafe working conditions. The latter issue was thrust dramatically into public awareness by the collapse in April, 2013 of an eight-story building in Bangladesh, which housed garment companies supplying Children’s Place, Benetton, Cato Fashions, and the parent company of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger. The collapse of the building killed 1,139 workers and injured 2,500 more.

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Africa/America
Tom H. Hastings | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Aug 2016

Recently I have had the great privilege to work with some of the 1,000 Mandela Washington Fellows, a select group of young sub-Saharan African leaders ages 25-35 placed for six weeks at about 40 universities around the US. The young leaders are electrifying.

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The Clintons Celebrated – But Likely Disastrous for the World
Jan Oberg - Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research, 1 Aug 2016

I can only hope that I am wrong but I fear that Hillary Clinton – if she becomes the next President of the United States – is likely to be yet another militarist disaster for the world. And for the US itself whose manifest destiny is now manifest decline, caused mainly by all the failed wars, the cost of militarism and their consequences and blowback effects.

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The Power of One Peace Activist in Pakistan: Sail’s Story
Ruth Tidy | Peace Direct – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Jul 2016

Have you ever been a situation you wanted to challenge, but did not know how? When you live in a violent, conflict affected area, the stakes are even higher. After attending Aware Girls’ training course Sail began his own peace activist network and has helped young people turn away from extremism in his community.

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Radiation Along Fukushima Rivers Up to 200 Times Higher Than Pacific Ocean Seabed
Greenpeace | EcoWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Jul 2016

A radiation survey team, supported by the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior, conducted underwater survey along the Fukushima coastline from Feb. 21 to March 11 this year, as well collecting samples in river systems. The samples were measured at an independent laboratory in Tokyo.

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China’s Bad Day in Court
Mel Gurtov | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Jul 2016

Perhaps in the South China Sea case China and the Philippines, now under a new president, will find their way back to the negotiating table and work out a deal that skirts the always-difficult sovereignty issue. That would be fine; but it would not address the fundamental problem of how law-abiding behavior can be promoted and enforced in an often anarchic world.

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Nonviolent History: South Africa’s Port Elizabeth Boycott Begins July 15, 1985
Rivera Sun | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Jul 2016

The Port Elizabeth boycott was a powerful moment of consolidating and demonstrating the power of nonviolent action to place economic sanctions on white South Africans. This piece of the long South African anti-apartheid struggle helps us remember the scope, arc, and duration of working for change. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and every step counts.

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Unintended Consequences and the Warfare State
Mel Gurtov | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jul 2016

As the Chilcot Commission has just concluded after a seven-year long investigation of British policy, bad judgment was multiplied by hubris, a deeply flawed decision-making process, and an unquestioned faith in the ability of military power to resolve political and economic problems…. At bottom the arrogance of power is the enemy, and the Chilcot Report provides no antidote for it.

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Campaign Nonviolence: A Growing Movement for a Culture of Nonviolence
Rivera Sun | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jul 2016

From the increased involvement in Campaign Nonviolence, the grassroots movement that organized more than 375 actions in a single week in all 50 states and seven countries to end all forms of violence, it appears that many Americans are serious about creating a culture of active nonviolence.

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A New Declaration of Independence
Tom H. Hastings | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jul 2016

The US has entered the Orwellian Era of permanent war—until we decide that it’s over…. Time for a Declaration of Independence from foreign military disasters.

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Fearology and Militarism but the Real Enemy Is Us
Jan Oberg - Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research, 11 Jul 2016

NATO: Why does an alliance with such an overwhelming superiority shout and scream and see ghosts on the horizon when, in reality, there are none? Why does it seem to be intellectually unable to see things from the side of its opponent? Is the show of strength in reality a sign of weakness?

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Cheating Moscow – NATO’s Dangerous Expansion
Jonathan Power - Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research, 11 Jul 2016

On Sunday [26 Jun] the foreign minister of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said, “Anyone who believes the symbolic tank parades on the Alliance’s eastern border will increase security is wrong”. Apart from the appalling fact that the West is contemplating all out war against Russia there is the plain fact that it has expanded NATO in contravention of the solemn understandings given the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War.

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Much Stronger Than During the First Cold War – Why Is NATO So Irrational?
Jan Oberg - Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research, 4 Jul 2016

Why is the new tension rising in Europe between US/NATO and Russia so manifestly dangerous and – with the exception of the Cuban Missile Crisis worse than during the First Cold War?… One must indeed wonder why the West that has much less to fear militarily than ever since 1945 either ‘pretends’ to be so fearful or acts with such out-of-proportion ‘irrationality and alarmism.’

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July: This Month in Nuclear Threat History
Jeffrey W. Mason | Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jul 2016

July 1, 1991 – On this date, the Warsaw Pact (established in 1955 as a response to the 1949 establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), also known in the Soviet bloc as The Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance signed by Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union, formally dissolved as a communist military alliance. Yet NATO, 1949-present, not only continues to exist but has grown and expanded in order to further “contain Russia and protect former Soviet republics and Eastern European nations from Russian military aggression.”

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The Time for Silence is Over: Grasping the Reality of Nonviolence
Stephanie Van Hook | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jul 2016

Myth One: You can’t be angry and be nonviolent.
Myth Two: You have to dislike/hate/disassociate from your opponents.
Myth Three: If you don’t get what you want, your nonviolence didn’t work.
Myth Four: Nonviolence does not have any logic. It’s signing petitions and sit-ins. Nothing else.

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Ten Worst Acts of the Nuclear Age
David Krieger | Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jul 2016

The ten worst acts of the Nuclear Age described below have set the tone for our time. They have caused immense death and suffering; been tremendously expensive; have encouraged nuclear proliferation; have opened the door to nuclear terrorism, nuclear accidents and nuclear war; and are leading the world back into a second Cold War.

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The Brexit Shock – Now All Is Up in the Air!
Jan Oberg - Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research, 27 Jun 2016

24 Jun 2016 – The UK, Europe and the rest of the world will be affected. But there has been no planning for this anywhere. It’s now all up in the air what this Brexit vote will be the starting point of. All we can safely predict is that we are in for interesting times! ”May you live in interesting times” as the English say, considering it a curse.

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The Chilcot Inquiry Report into the Invasion of Iraq
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jun 2016

The foreign policy of the US/UK governments were for regime change and about Iraqi oil, and the method used were genocidal sanctions, wars and invasion of Iraq. The ‘shock and awe’ bombings of unarmed civilians by US/UK/allied forces was not about bringing democracy and human rights to Iraq, it was about regime change, oil, imperial power, arms and total destruction of infrastructure and starvation into submission of Iraq women and children.

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Helen Keller: Socialist, Pacifist, Women’s & Workers’ Rights Advocate
Rivera Sun | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jun 2016

Helen Keller is one of the most beloved figures in American history. Few people, however, remember her as a socialist, pacifist, and activist. Wikipedia reports, “A prolific author, Keller was well-traveled and outspoken in her convictions. A member of the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, she campaigned for women’s suffrage, labor rights, socialism, and other similar causes.”

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Statement on Massacre of LGBTQI and Latino Community Members in Orlando, USA
The Peace People – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

“In loving memory of all who were killed, we pledge not to seek revenge or hatred, but to work for reconciliation and building peaceful ways of living together in all our diversity and plurality as the one human family sharing our one world equally together.”

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Bridges, Not Walls, Foster Peace and Security as Refugees Arrive
Jeff Pugh | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

Calls for the exclusion of refugees ignore basic principles of human dignity while undermining the goal of keeping citizens safe. Extremists have used video clips of U.S. politicians’ xenophobic rhetoric as a recruiting tool, trying to convince Muslims that the United States will never welcome them, and that violence is the only way to deal with Westerners.

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Undeterred: Amid Terror Attacks in Europe, US H-bombs Still Deployed There
John LaForge | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

A little more than 60 miles from Brussels airport, Kleine Brogel Air Base is one of six European sites where the United States still stores active nuclear weapons; these bombs “evade public attention to the extent that a post-terror attack nuclear scare in Belgium can occur without the bombs even being mentioned.” Today, only 180 — out of more than 7000 US nukes once deployed in Europe — are still kept at the ready: in Belgium, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, and Turkey. Soviet nuclear weapons have even been removed from Eastern Europe.

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Why Go to Russia?
Kathy Kelly | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

“Prior to the Wall’s removal, President Reagan assured Secretary General Gorbachev that if he would support bringing down the Wall separating East and West Berlin, NATO would not move ‘a finger’s width’ closer to Russia than East Germany’s border. With this assurance Gorbachev gladly signed on. Little could he or the world have guessed that this promise would soon be broken during the next administration – and that the redeveloping distrust between the countries would threaten to become a second Cold War, due to NATO’s expansion up to Russia’s borders.”

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Message to the Wall
David Krieger | Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

Dear Wall,
Your polished surface deceives.
You appear serene, yet you are bursting with anguish and lost potential.

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Global Peace Index 2016
Institute for Economics & Peace - TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jun 2016

This is the tenth edition of the GPI, which ranks 163 independent states and territories according to their level of peacefulness. This report presents the most comprehensive analysis to date on the trends in peace and violence and includes an updated assessment of the economic value of peace and new research on the systemic nature of Positive Peace.

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Dorothy Day Refuses to Duck-And-Cover
Rivera Sun | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jun 2016

On June 15th, 1955, Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day joined a group of pacifists in refusing to participate in the civilian defense drills scheduled on that day. In this particular case, Operation Alert was a nationwide, mandated, legally enforced drill.

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Building Trust in Afghanistan
Kathy Kelly | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jun 2016

2 Jun 2016 – Here in Kabul, I read a recent BBC op-ed by Ahmed Rashid, urging a “diplomatic offensive” to build or repair relationships with the varied groups representing armed extremism in Afghanistan. Rashid has insisted, for years, that severe mistrust makes it almost impossible for such groups to negotiate an end to Afghanistan’s nightmare of war.

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This Month in Nuclear Threat History
Jeffrey W. Mason | Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jun 2016

June 23, 1942 – The first nuclear weapons-related accident occurred on this date in the city of Leipzig, Germany involving Nazi atomic scientists Werner Heisenberg and Robert Doepel. While demonstrating Germany’s first neutron propagation experiment, workers checked the atomic pile for a heavy water leak. During the inspection, air leaked in igniting the uranium powder inside.

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Hammering for Peace
Kathy Kelly | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 May 2016

Their artistic project embraces a vision from the biblical “Book of Isaiah” which longs for the day when “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they study war anymore.” Our friends quite literally enact this vision.

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Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire Appeals to European Union and President Obama to Remove Shameful Sanctions against War-torn Syria
The Peace People – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 May 2016

“The petitioners support ‘all humanitarian and peace initiatives that the international community is implementing, in particular through the difficult negotiations in Geneva’. But in the meantime with the hope that the expectations find concrete answers, they ask ‘that the sanctions that affect the daily lives of every Syrian are immediately removed”.

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Close Calls: We Were Closer to Nuclear Destruction Than We Knew
Gunnar Westberg – The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Nobel Peace Laureates, 30 May 2016

“The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used — accidentally or by decision — defies credibility.” This unanimous statement was published by the Canberra Commission in 1996. Among the commission members were internationally known former ministers of defense and of foreign affairs and generals.

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