Articles by Peace

We found 1006 results.


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.

→ read full article

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.”

→ read full article

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.”

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.”

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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”.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

North Korea, Following China and India, Pledges No-First-Use of Nuclear Weapons. So Could Obama
John LaForge | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

15 May 2016 – North Korea’s May 7 declaration that it would not be first to use nuclear weapons was met with official derision instead of relief and applause. Not one report of the announcement I could find noted that the United States has never made such a no-first-use pledge. None of three dozen news accounts even mentioned that North Korea hasn’t got one usable nuclear warhead.

→ read full article

Yes to Assertive, No to Aggressive
Tom H. Hastings | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

10 May 2016 – I teach and write in the field of Peace and Conflict Studies, with a special focus on strategic nonviolence. It is a rich field, growing in its scholarship and its widespread usage. I’m so enthused by this—the more we wage our conflicts with nonviolence the lower the costs.

→ read full article

Call on Israeli Government to Free Mordechai Vanunu and End Thirty-Year Persecution: Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate
The Peace People – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

No voices are raised in defence of his freedom and it is to all our shame that the international political/spiritual leadership continue to abide by the rule: ‘WHATEVER YOU SAY – SAY NOTHING’ when it comes to the Israeli government’s persecution of a man of conscience, a good man.”

→ read full article

#TTIPleaks: Confidential TTIP Papers Unveil US Position
Greenpeace – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

Leaked text shows deliberate attempts by the U.S. to undermine EU environment and health protection laws and to change the EU democratic legislative process.

→ read full article

Download the TTIP Leaks
Greenpeace Netherlands – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

Greenpeace Netherlands has released secret TTIP negotiation documents to provide much needed transparency and trigger an informed debate on the treaty, which is threatening to have far reaching implications for the environment and the lives of more than 800 million citizens in the EU and US. TTIP is about a huge transfer of power from people to big business.

→ read full article

President Obama Should Meet A-Bomb Survivors, and Heed Their Call to Ban the Bomb
Kevin Martin | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

5 May 2016 – President Obama is considering a visit to Hiroshima during the G-7 economic summit in Japan later this month. Remarkably, many Hibakusha, atomic bomb survivors, are still alive today, though they often suffer from various radiation-caused illnesses or other physical ailments 71 years after the bombs were dropped.

→ read full article

Remembering Nonviolent History: Freedom Rides
Rivera Sun | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

The Freedom Rides are a powerful example of the use of nonviolent direct action to enforce justice and fair laws.

→ read full article

North Korea’s New Weapons: Full Speed Ahead
Mel Gurtov | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

The best and only chance of dissuading Kim Jong-un from continuing on the path of weapons modernization, which is both dangerous and ruinous in terms of human development, is to put before him a package of alternative incentives— a peace treaty to end the Korean War, security guarantees, sustainable energy options, and meaningful economic aid.

→ read full article

Take Three Gifts on Your Journey
David Krieger – Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 9 May 2016

Mr. President,
The word is out.
You will visit Hiroshima in May.
In Hiroshima, nuclear weapons become real.

→ read full article

May: This Month in Nuclear Threat History
Jeffrey W. Mason | Nuclear Age Peace Foundation - TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

May 1, 1962 – A nuclear test code-named Beryl was conducted in French-occupied Algeria. However, due to improper sealing of the underground shaft, a spectacular mushroom cloud burst through the concrete cap venting highly radioactive dust and gas into the atmosphere. The plume climbed to 8,500 feet high and radiation was detected hundreds of miles away. This was just one of 210 nuclear weapons tests conducted by the French government in north Africa and the Pacific region in the period from 1960-96.

→ read full article

TTIP Leaks [for Download]
Greenpeace – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

Greenpeace Netherlands has released secret TTIP negotiation documents. We have done so to provide much needed transparency and trigger an informed debate on the treaty. This treaty is threatening to have far reaching implications for the environment and the lives of more than 800 million citizens in the EU and US. TTIP is about a huge transfer of power from people to big business.

→ read full article

Remembering Daniel Berrigan, with Gratitude
Ken Butigan | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

Daniel Berrigan has died, and so we have lost our great teacher who, flinty and generous and relentlessly persistent, taught us how to live in a culture of death and madness: “Find some people you can pray with and march with.” He pronounced this simple sentence at the end of a mesmerizing three-hour conversation he and I had in his simple Manhattan apartment in 1981.

→ read full article

Sanctions and Defiance in North Korea
Mel Gurtov, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 May 2016

When all is said and done, the most likely scenario is that the new round of sanctions will produce no better results than previous rounds. This is so not only because North Korea has many ways to procure items needed for its military purposes, and plenty of willing private sellers.

→ read full article

Celebrating Mother Jones and Labor on May Day
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 May 2016

While Mother Jones sometimes used violent rhetoric in her inflammatory speeches, the actions she organized were nonviolent actions – boycotts, strikes, marches, walk-outs, work stoppages, rallies, speeches, and picketing. When she was denounced on the floor of the US Senate as the “grandmother of all agitators,” she replied: “I hope to live long enough to be the great-grandmother of all agitators.”

→ read full article

Can We Feel the Heat?
Cathy Breen, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 May 2016

27 Apr 2016 – I am travelling as a peace witness in Iraqi Kurdistan. We visited a sheikh whom I had met in Fallujah in 2012. He and his family were forced to flee to Kurdistan about two years ago. Fallujah is being held by ISIS. None of the residents is allowed to leave. People are dying of starvation.

→ read full article

Contributing to the Catholic Church’s Understanding of and Commitment to Nonviolence
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 May 2016

Presentation to the International Conference on Nonviolence and Just Peace – Rome, April 11-13 2016 – I would like to see Pope Francis and the Catholic Church call for the total abolition of militarism (an aberration/dysfunction in human history.) Also For Pope Francis and the Church to renounce war and develop a ‘Theology of Nonkilling and Nonviolence’ rejecting the ‘Just War’ theology, which continues to lead people to an acceptance of militarism and war as alleged legitimate ways of solving conflict.

→ read full article

Escalating U.S. Air Strikes Kill Hundreds of Civilians in Mosul, Iraq
Nicolas J S Davies, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 May 2016

The war commander, Lt Gen McFarland, now orders air strikes that are expected to kill up to 10 civilians without prior approval from U.S. Central Command, and U.S. officials acknowledge that air strikes are killing more civilians under the new rules. The fundamental contradiction of the militarized “war on terror” is that U.S. aggression and other war crimes only reinforce the narratives of jihadis who see themselves as a bulwark against foreign aggression and neocolonialism in the Muslim world.

→ read full article

Chernobyl, and Cesium, at 30
John LaForge, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Apr 2016

April 26 is the 30th anniversary of the reactor meltdown and radiation disaster at Chernobyl in Ukraine, which brings to mind cesium. Thirty years is how long it takes for half a given amount of cesium-137 — dispersed in huge quantities from Chernobyl (and Fukushima) — to decay into radioactive barium.

→ read full article

The Church’s Turn toward Nonviolence
Fr. John Dear, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Apr 2016

For the last 1700 years, as we all know, Christians have waged war, led crusades, burned women at the stake, systematically persecuted Jews and Muslims, kept millions of people as slaves, ran concentration camps, blessed conquest, prayed for successful bombing raids, and built and used nuclear weapons. Throughout Catholic history, Jesus’ teachings of nonviolence were rarely discussed, much less implemented.

→ read full article

Did the Vatican Just Throw Out Its Just War Doctrine?
Erica Chenoweth, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Apr 2016

19 Apr 2016 – The just war tradition—which contains numerous doctrines morally justifying violence and war, as well as defining appropriate conduct during war—has served for the past 1500 years as the primary normative basis to validate waging of war. Last week, eighty conference participants recommended that Pope Francis I reject Just War Doctrine as a viable or productive Catholic tradition.

→ read full article

An Appeal for Pope Francis to Share with the World an Encyclical on Nonviolence and Just Peace, and for the Church to Stop Teaching ‘Just War Theory’
The Peace People – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Apr 2016

Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire from Rome: “The appeal to the Pope said that ‘we believe there is no ‘just war’. Too often the ‘just war theory’ has been used to endorse rather than prevent or limit war. Suggesting that a ‘just war’ is possible also undermines the moral imperative to develop tools and capacities for nonviolent transformation of conflict’. I hope also that Pope Francis will unambiguously proclaim that ‘violence is always wrong, it is not the way of Jesus and reject militarism thereby calling upon Catholics not to join armies and take up arms to kill people, thus becoming a true peace church.”

→ read full article

22 April: On Earth Day, Commit to the Great Turning
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Apr 2016

Hold actions to slow the destruction of human-based systems on the Earth and other beings. These activities include all the political, legislative, and legal work required to reduce the destruction, as well as direct actions–blockades, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of noncooperation and nonviolent intervention.

→ read full article

The Panama Papers and the 1%
Mel Gurtov, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Apr 2016

Global companies do not simply “go abroad”; they shift capital, as well as labor and technology, to wherever the advantages are greatest. This reality of globalization is well known, and it is matched by the similar behavior of powerful, wealthy individuals, including present and former top government officials who find tax shelters abroad where their money is completely hidden from public view. It’s what the One Percent do.

→ read full article

World Military Spending Resumes Upward Course in 2015: SIPRI
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Apr 2016

5 Apr 2016 -World military expenditure totaled almost $1.7 trillion in 2015, an increase of 1 per cent in real terms from 2014, according to new figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The data is being released to coincide with the start of the Stockholm Forum on Security and Development.

→ read full article

Ground Zero Is Everywhere
Winslow Myers, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Apr 2016

As President Obama convened an international conference to discuss the sequester of fissile materials against terrorists, he has also quietly agreed to an obscenely expensive long-term renewal of U.S. nuclear weapons systems. Setting an example demands that citizens become more engaged with foreign policy, acknowledge that there is good and evil in all of us, and bear the truth that ground zero is everywhere on one small planet.

→ read full article

Nuclear Insecurity
Mel Gurtov, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Apr 2016

Mel Gurtov has been a nuclear analyst since his early days for the RAND corporation when he and Daniel Ellsberg worked together. Dr. Gurtov’s expertise–and anyone who studies these issues in depth–was affronted by President Obama’s patently false claims in his recent op-ed message in the Washington Post.

→ read full article

April: This Month in Nuclear Threat History
Jeffrey W. Mason – Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 11 Apr 2016

April 10, 1963 – In the past, eight nuclear submarines, six of them Soviet/Russian and the other two American, have sunk with dozens of nuclear ballistic missiles also lost at sea. Some of the nuclear reactors and warheads in these and other military vessels or aircraft lost at sea are leaking highly radioactive toxins affecting flora, fauna, and the health and well-being of millions of people.

→ read full article

Nuclear Age Peace Foundation: A Voice for Peace
David Krieger – Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 11 Apr 2016

I believe that complacency has four principal elements: apathy, conformity, ignorance and denial. Together these four elements form the acronym ACID, and they are corrosive to a decent human future or to any future at all. We must transform apathy to empathy; conformity to critical thinking; ignorance to wisdom; and denial to recognition of the threats that nuclear weapons pose to our common future.

→ read full article

Gandhi’s Salt: How a Fistful of Mud and Seawater Shook the British Empire
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Apr 2016

On April 6th, 1930 at 6:30 a.m. after morning prayers, Mohandas K. Gandhi raised a lump of salty mud and declared, “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire.” Salt was an unexpected choice for the revolutionary nonviolent movement.

→ read full article

Remembering Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Apr 2016

I believe in the Irish people, in people everywhere, that we have a great future when we work together as the human family teaching our children not violence but the nonkilling/nonviolence of our great spiritual traditions and offering them the models of peacemakers such as St. Patrick who in his writings said that ‘killing cannot be with Christ,’ thereby rejecting ‘armed struggles’ militarism and war.

→ read full article

Letter from a Birmingham Jail: Poignant and Timely
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Apr 2016

In Letter From A Birmingham Jail, Dr. King responded to criticisms of nonviolent direct action on religious, moral, legal, historic, and political grounds. He chastised the attitudes of the white clergymen, and other white progressives.

→ read full article

A Sunni-Salafist-Zionist Coalition Changing Middle East?
Jan Oberg - Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research, 4 Apr 2016

Countries that do something good for themselves and for the world – positive sum – will win even where others are playing win-lose – zero sum – games. In today’s world the paradigm of security against others is only for intellectual, political and moral losers. What was meant to secure us all has turned into the greatest threat to us all.

→ read full article

Fools Fighting Terror with Terror
John M. LaForge, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Apr 2016

1 Apr 2016 – April Fools believe suicide bombers can be stopped with more body scanners and police surveillance. April Fools believe the “war on terror” can be won using bombs and bomb threats, and that bombs will end it. . When civilian victims of US military attacks are even noted, the media regularly reports that “coalition forces” caused the death and destruction. This deflects attention from US command of the warfare especially for April Fools.

→ read full article

New Veteran-led Campaign Challenges Islamophobia
Brian Trautman, Veterans For Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Apr 2016

ISIL do not speak for Islam, the vast majority of their victims being Muslims. It commits horrible atrocities against Westerners because it wants us to overreact by stereotyping, dehumanizing, and alienating Muslims. Islamophobia, therefore, has the real potential of strengthening ISIL, especially if left unchallenged.

→ read full article

China: Broken Rice Bowls, Stifled Voices
Mel Gurtov, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Mar 2016

China, no different from any other large country, has a multitude of domestic problems, but those two are especially worrisome in that they have the potential for significant unrest. And for the Chinese leadership, social instability always raises red flags.

→ read full article

Urging UK to End Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia and Saudis to End Their Bombing Campaign in Yemen
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate, Peace People – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Mar 2016

Nobel Peace Laureate, Mairead Maguire, today called for Britain to stop breaking national and international law by selling arms o Saudi Arabia. The British government has sold £2.8 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia since it began bombing Yemen last year and continues to remain silent on the UN reports of Saudi war crimes against the civilian population of Yemen.

→ read full article

Celebrate Boycotts on St. Patrick’s Day
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Mar 2016

There is hardly a nonviolent movement around the world, out of hundreds of case studies, that has not used some form of a boycott! Think of Gandhi’s spinning wheel and concurrent boycott of British cloth imports, the American Independence movement’s boycott of tea, the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the United Farm Workers’ Grape Boycott, the boycott of white-owned stores in South African townships during the anti-apartheid struggle: the examples are numerous.

→ read full article

Russian Withdrawal from Syria: Could It Be the Beginning of the End?
Farhang Jahanpour - Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research, 21 Mar 2016

One of the reasons for the negative and cynical comments about the Russian move is that in five months President Putin has achieved more in halting the advance of the terrorists in Syria than the West had achieved in five years, if indeed it had been the West’s real intention to defeat the terrorists.

→ read full article

Cesar Chavez: When Real Uniters Were Among Us
José-Antonio Orosco, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Mar 2016

California politicians and their agri-business supporters realized that they were facing a major civil rights movement and that its leader, Cesar Chavez, was someone to contend with. The importance of the Sacramento March today is more than just historical, it is a lesson about how to use nonviolence to respond to economic hardship in a way that builds a powerful force for justice.

→ read full article

Will the EU Become a Criminal Union Tomorrow?
Jan Oberg - Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research, 21 Mar 2016

We live in times where little shall surprise us anymore. The answer to the question – will EU become a criminal in international law terms? – will be answered on March 17 and 18 when the EU Council meets to decide whether or not to carry through the agreement with Turkey about how to handle refugees.

→ read full article

The Trillion-Dollar Question
Lawrence S. Wittner, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Mar 2016

Isn’t it odd that America’s largest single public expenditure for the coming decades has received no attention in the presidential debates? It is for a 30-year program to “modernize” the U.S. nuclear arsenal and production facilities. Although President Obama began his administration with a dramatic public commitment to build a nuclear weapons-free world, that commitment has long ago dwindled and died.

→ read full article

Building New “Nonviolent Cities”
John Dear, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Mar 2016

Each city will be summoned to address its violence in all its aspects, structures, and systems; to connect the dots between its violence; and to pursue a more holistic, creative, city-wide nonviolence, where everyone together is trying to practice nonviolence, promote nonviolence, teach nonviolence and institutionalize nonviolence on the local level.

→ read full article

DOD Woe: Pentagon’s War on the Earth
Tom H. Hastings, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Mar 2016

We are waging war. We are the Nation of War. We destroy. We kill. Everyone fears us. Fewer and fewer admire us. The Pentagon is relentless in seeking immunity from federal environmental protection laws.

→ read full article

Dragging Our Feet toward Disaster
Dr. Ira Helfand, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Mar 2016

A new policy-making body called the Open Ended Working Group will consider ways to break the current impasse in efforts to reduce the danger of nuclear war. The group was established by an overwhelming majority at the UN. The U.S. and all of the other nuclear weapons states voted against and are boycotting the meeting. Why?

→ read full article

10 Things to Know about Nonviolent Struggle
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Mar 2016

4. There are more than 200 methods of nonviolent action, including marches, demonstrations, rallies, boycotts, strikes, sit-ins, blockades, noncooperation, civil disobedience, work stoppages and slowdowns, refusal to provide services and much more.

→ read full article

Can We Give Meaning to the Destruction of Syria?
Jan Oberg - Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research, 7 Mar 2016

In 2011 when it all began, an educated conflict analyst or otherwise conflict competent person would have said about the conflict in Syria that it was a very complex thing, caused by history, environment, traumas, external factors, the economic situation, etc. And that al-Assad and his government was certainly an important reason but far from the only one.

→ read full article

March: This Month in Nuclear Threat History
Jeffrey W. Mason – Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 7 Mar 2016

March 11, 2011 – After a large magnitude earthquake and a powerful tsunami struck northeast Japan, three of the six nuclear reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) Fukushima Dai-chi facility suffered partial meltdowns resulting in the evacuation of tens of thousands of nearby residents. Five years later, the disaster which has claimed more than 15,000 lives so far is an ongoing catastrophe.

→ read full article

Dark Spots, Light Spots, and Apple’s Protest
Mel Gurtov, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Feb 2016

By their logic, 1984 is finally here, and embedding security (i.e., surveillance) chips in toothbrushes, children’s toys, and everywhere else The Enemy might lurk is both necessary and proper. You’d better consider flossing regularly and having your kids play with sticks and stones. Barbie is watching, and even Tim Cook can’t stop her.

→ read full article

WAAAHHHH…but we don’t wanna get arrested!!
Mike Ferner, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Feb 2016

As the macho, gun-toting, testosterone-addled cowboys who took over the wildlife refuge in Oregon call it quits, their pitiful whine can be heard all the way to Florida: “Waaahhh…but we don’t wanna get arrested…” Seems they could use a few lessons in toughness from nonviolent peace and justice activists.

→ read full article

The List of True Nobel Candidates 2016
Nobel Peace Prize Watch – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Feb 2016

Letter Feb. 2, 2016 to the Nobel Committee – LIST OF QUALIFIED CANDIDATES FOR THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE 2016

→ read full article

Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire Agrees with the UN Expert Panel Decision on Julian Assange’s Arbitrary Detention
The Peace People – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Feb 2016

Maguire, who visited Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London several times and has been a long time supporter of Freedom and Justice for Julian Assange, said she was delighted that the UN Panel had found his arbitrary detention for over five years to be unlawful and said this decision has vindicated Julian Assange. However, she expressed her disappointment at the governments of UK and Sweden’s rejection of the verdict.

→ read full article

Why Our World Needs Peace Literacy
Paul K. Chappell, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Feb 2016

Peace literacy is the next step in the development of our global civilization, because peace literacy is necessary in an interconnected world where the fate of every nation is tied to the fate of our planet. Because of the dangers posed by nuclear weapons, war, and environmental destruction, being preliterate in peace puts humanity and our planet at great risk. During an era when humanity has the technological capacity to destroy itself, peace literacy means survival literacy.

→ read full article

North Korea: How Many Wake-Up Calls Will It Take?
David Krieger, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Feb 2016

North Korea has been roundly condemned for its nuclear tests, including this one. To put this in perspective, however, the U.S. has conducted more than 1,000 nuclear tests, continues to conduct subcritical nuclear tests, has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, is in breach of its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, regularly tests nuclear-capable missiles, and plans to spend $1 trillion modernizing its nuclear arsenal.

→ read full article

Taking on Nukespeak
Andrew Moss, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Feb 2016

“Nukespeak” is a highly militarized discourse that obscures the moral consequences of our policies and actions used by military officials, political leaders, and policy experts – as well as by journalists and citizens. The language creeps into our public discussions like an invasive species, casting shadows on the way we think about our collective present and future.

→ read full article

Deadlock: North Korea’s Nuclear Test and US Policy
Mel Gurtov, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Feb 2016

Serious engagement with North Korea remains the only realistic policy option for the United States and its allies. To be effective, however, engagement must be undertaken strategically—as a calculated use of incentives with expectation of mutual rewards, namely in security and peace. And it should be undertaken in a spirit of mutual respect and with due regard for sensitivity in language and action.

→ read full article

Letter to the Canadian Government
Veterans For Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Feb 2016

We are writing you on behalf of Veterans For Peace, with chapters in 14O U.S. cities, United Kingdom, Ireland, Mexico, South Korea and Vietnam. Our urgent mission is to abolish war once and for all and to build a culture of peace. Our primary purpose in writing you today concerns some unfinished business stemming from the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

→ read full article

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

February 1, 1958 – As part of the U.S. strategy of massive (nuclear) retaliation, the UK agreed to station 60 nuclear-armed Thor intermediate-range ballistic missiles at four U.K. military bases. Royal Air Force personnel staffed the bases, but all the nuclear weapons that were provided remained in full U.S. ownership, custody, and control. These same missiles were put on high-alert status during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

→ read full article

The Deeper Reason Syria Negotiations Are Doomed
Jan Oberg - Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research, 1 Feb 2016

Governments are still so much more professional and resourceful when it comes to wars and militarism than they are when it comes to conflict-resolution and peace. The main reason everywhere is the vested elite interests in MIMAC, the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex – a cancer that kills hundreds of thousands of people, create refugees and work against both democracy and peace.

→ read full article

(Castellano) Bachelet crea Ministerio de Pueblos Indígenas en Chile
Culture of Peace News Network – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Feb 2016

15 Jan 2016 – La Presidenta de Chile, Michelle Bachelet, firmó hoy en el Palacio de La Moneda las leyes que crean el Ministerio de Pueblos Indígenas, el Consejo Nacional y los Consejos de Pueblos Indígenas.

→ read full article

Nuclear Weapons and Nuclearism: Abolish or Be Abolished
Jan Oberg - Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research, 1 Feb 2016

The nuclear age is an age of terror. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate weapons of terror. You can’t use them without killing millions of innocent people. Targetting innocent people, people who are not part of a conflict, is a central defining characteristics of terrorism.

→ read full article

Rome Conference on NATO – January 2016
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Feb 2016

I believe we, the human family, have no less a task before us, than transforming our thinking and mind-sets of violence and war, and moving to a demilitarized Europe and World. We have imagination and genius and with confidence and trust in ourselves and each other, we can move away from nationalism and war, towards Regional solutions built on demilitarized societies of peaceful co-existence.

→ read full article

President Creates Ministry of Indigenous People in Chile
Culture of Peace News Network – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Feb 2016

15 Jan 2016 – Chilean President Michelle Bachelet signed today at La Moneda Palace the laws that create the Ministry of Indigenous People, the National Council and the Indigenous People”s Councils.

→ read full article

“Modernizing” the Opportunities for Nuclear War
Lawrence S. Wittner, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Jan 2016

A fight now underway over newly-designed U.S. nuclear weapons highlights how far the Obama administration has strayed from its commitment to build a nuclear-free world. The fight concerns a variety of nuclear weapons that the U.S. military is developing or, as the administration likes to say, “modernizing.”

→ read full article

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Timeless Vision
Michael Nagler, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Jan 2016

He came out against the war. Against all advice. Just as Gandhi honed his nonviolence in South Africa and then felt that he was ready to carry the struggle into the heart of the empire, King here announced that he had enlarged his passion from those of his own race in one region of the country to the policies of that country itself.

→ read full article

The US Tiger and the North Korean Mouse
John LaForge, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Jan 2016

The Environmental Protection Agency has recommended increased radiation exposure limits. It would save the industry a bundle to permit large human exposures, rather than shut down rickety reactors. The EPA proposal is a knock-off prompted by Fukushima, because after the triple meltdown Japan increased — by 20 times — the allowable radiation exposures deemed tolerable for humans.

→ read full article

Relationships – Reflections on Refugees
Dr Hakim, Afghan Peace Volunteers – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Jan 2016

As relationships are built on various aspects of love, they are powerful. If we build more and more relationships, they will be an alternative power to the abusive power of governments and corporations, and that’s when governments and corporations will become more obvious in their efforts to sabotage relationships.

→ read full article

How Does It End?
Winslow Myers, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Jan 2016

What makes our own arrogant and pompous leaders one whit less adolescent than theirs? We are subject like the North Koreans to the same self-perpetuating paranoia, the same lack of moral imagination, the same suppression of truth-telling, the same wildly unnecessary secrets and lies, the same demagogic rationalizations of the status quo, the same folly of an endless arms race, the same nuclear dictatorship that leaves citizens without a voice when world-ending decisions are made.

→ read full article

Surveillance and Surveys in Kabul
Kathy Kelly, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Jan 2016

Billions of dollars have been invested in a variety of blimps which various vendors such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Aeros have shipped to Afghanistan. All of this surveillance purportedly helps establish “patterns of life” and bring security to people living here …tax money to the insatiable appetite of the “defense” corporations and their illusions of omniscient security.

→ read full article

We Are Living at the Edge of a Nuclear Precipice
David Krieger, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

With nuclear weapons, what could possibly go wrong? The short answer is: Everything. The ever-present dangers of nuclear proliferation, nuclear accidents and miscalculations, nuclear terrorism and nuclear war. Instead of nuclear deterrence and modernization of arsenals, we need to negotiate in good faith for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons. That is, we need to break free of our acidic complacency and commit ourselves to achieving a nuclear zero world.

→ read full article

This Month in Nuclear Threat History
Jeffrey W. Mason – Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 11 Jan 2016

January 9, 1987 – Dean Rusk (1909-1994), a former Secretary of State (1961-69) under presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson who received many awards during his career including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, spoke out against nuclear weapons with a statement that, “Nuclear war not only eliminates all the answers, but eliminates all the questions.”

→ read full article

A Review of Stephen Prothero’s ‘Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars (Even When They Lose Elections)’
James A. Haught, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

Social progress occurs because liberal-minded reformers defeat conservative resistance.

→ read full article

You Say ISIL, I Say ISIS, Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off
Tom H. Hastings, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

Who benefits? Who loses? US elites benefit. Owners of military contractors benefit the most ($711,000,000 the last day of 2015 alone, nearly $40 million per hour around the clock), and they share their largesse with those who serve them best—friendly bellicose politicians, persuasive media, high-level military officers.

→ read full article

Syria – A Light to the World
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

In November 2015 I visited Syria together with an International Peace delegation. This was my third visit to Syria in the last three years. There is hope and Syria is a light to the world as there are many people working for peace and reconciliation, dialogue and negotiations, and this is where the hope lies and what we can all support by rejecting violence and war in Syria, the Middle East and our World.

→ read full article

Got Fascism? The 1942 Norwegian Teachers’ Nonviolent Resistance to Nazis Has Answers
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

In April 1940, the Nazis invaded Norway and occupied the country. In 1942, as part of an attempt to implement a fascist curriculum in the schools, Minister-President Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian collaborator, disbanded the existing teachers’ union and required all teachers to register with the new Norwegian Teachers’ Union by February 5.

→ read full article

What the Women of Berlin’s Rosenstraße Protest Can Teach Us about Trump
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Dec 2015

The parallels between the 1930s-40s in Germany and the United States in 2015 are frightening. It is clear to many citizens that the rise of bigotry and fascism in our nation cannot be allowed to continue unchallenged. Organized resistance is essential. In this effort, revisiting the history of resistance to the Nazis offers us some tantalizing concepts.

→ read full article

Sanctuary for Refugees: André Trocmé and Le Chambon-sur-Lignon
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Dec 2015

What are we going to do? The moral obligation of compassion is clear. U.S. governors, like the officials in Europe, like the Vichy government and the Nazis, and all the cruel oppressors throughout history, must be resisted nonviolently. Like André Trocmé and Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, we must make our communities havens for those fleeing violence and death.

→ read full article

How Our Naive Understanding of Violence Helps ISIS
Paul K. Chappell, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Dec 2015

During the era of the Internet revolution, it is naive to believe that we can use violence to defeat the ideologies that sustain terrorism. ISIS and Al Qaida are global movements, and with the Internet and social media, they can recruit people from all over the world, including people on American and European soil. And they only have to recruit a tiny amount of Americans and Europeans, initiate a single attack, and kill a few people to cause the huge overreactions that they want from their opponents.

→ read full article

No to War! Call for Peaceful Nonviolent Resistance to United Kingdom’s Air Strikes against Syria
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Dec 2015

On 2nd December, 2015 the United Kingdom Parliament voted to bomb Syria and the world watched as British planes, equipped with the latest bombs aptly named ‘Brimstone’ were dropped on Syrian targets.

→ read full article

Reflections about the Dam Burst in Brazil and the (In)Visibility of Structural Violence
Roberta Holanda Maschietto, Peace Reflections – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Nov 2015

In a 1969 article, Johan Galtung stated that violence is “the cause of the difference between the potential and the actual, between what could have been and what is”. If a political system allows corporate interests to determine the path of a country’s economic development, this system is not democratic. It is a privatized political system that responds to the interests of a rich minority.

→ read full article

International Peace Delegation to Syria 24-30 Nov. 2015
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Nov 2015

These are the findings of our delegation, consisting of eleven peace and human rights advocates from six countries. Over the course of five days, we met with internally displaced persons, refugees, affected communities, religious leaders, combatants, government representatives and many others in Syria.

→ read full article

Montgomery
Andrew Moss, Peace Voice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Nov 2015

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a Montgomery city bus on her way home from work, and, fatigued, refused to give up her seat to a white man when the bus had filled up. Parks was arrested for violating the city’s segregation statutes, and within a few days, the African-American leaders of Montgomery responded with a highly successful boycott of the city’s bus system.

→ read full article

An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind
John Dear, Peace Voice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Nov 2015

To start paying for nonviolent solutions, we can close all our nuclear weapons plants, disarm our nuclear arsenal, and allocate those many billions of dollars to the many problems we face in the world. We have spent some seven trillion dollars on nuclear weapons since Hiroshima. It’s time we instead spent serious money on nonviolent conflict resolution instead.

→ read full article

Dam Collapse in Brazil Destroys Towns and Turns River into Muddy Wasteland
Bruno Weis – Greenpeace, 18 Nov 2015

On Thursday, November 5th, two dams holding millions of cubic meters of mining waste gave way – launching one of the worst environmental disasters in Brazilian history. Over 25,000 Olympic swimming pools worth of mud – full of dangerous metals like manganese and mercury – quickly overtook the nearby mining community of Mariana in Minas Gerais state.

→ read full article

Ending the Era of Wars
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Nov 2015

15th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates – Barcelona, 13-15 November 2015

→ read full article

Arming Dictators: An American Tradition
Mel Gurtov, Peace Voice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Nov 2015

10 Nov 2015 – Recently the Obama administration announced another military aid package for Pakistan: eight F-16 fighter jets. Once again considerations of human rights and democratic values have been sacrificed to strategic calculations.

→ read full article

(Português) Madeira ilegal da Amazônia chega impunemente à Europa
Greenpeace Brasil – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Nov 2015

Nova investigação expõe 26 empresas europeias que estão importando produtos de fornecedor ligado ao comércio de madeira ilegal da Amazônia.

→ read full article