Articles by Peace

We found 1027 results.


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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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.

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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.

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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.”

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#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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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(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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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“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.”

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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.

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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.

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