{"id":274296,"date":"2024-09-23T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T11:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=274296"},"modified":"2024-09-20T04:09:40","modified_gmt":"2024-09-20T03:09:40","slug":"international-peace-day-sat-21-sep-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/09\/international-peace-day-sat-21-sep-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"International Peace Day \u2013 Sat 21 Sep 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

Call to Youth: Reject Militarism and War! <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I would like to thank the Youth of the world for all they do to reject violence, militarism and war.\u00a0 I have been inspired wherever I have travelled by the imagination, courage and resistance of so many young people.\u00a0 They give me great hope for the future of humanity.<\/p>\n

The young are wise.\u00a0 they know that, yet again in our world, we, the people, are being propagandized for war.\u00a0 government leaders, and main stream media, are telling us we must have enemies (Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, etc.,) and prepare for increased military budgets in spite of the fact growing number of countries have \u2018food banks\u2019 and \u2018charity shops\u2019 to try to ease the high cost of living and allow increasing numbers of families to \u2018feed their children\u2019 and the elderly to heat their homes.<\/p>\n

Young people are protesting such policies and are going to prison to say \u2018no\u2019 to killing other humans and destroying (or stealing) their resources and land.\u00a0\u00a0 Government leaders are going one way to militarism and war and young people are going another, asking for a humane way of living together, respecting the environment and solving peacefully the huge problems we all face.<\/p>\n

\u2018Be gentle\u2019 \u2018Stay human\u2019 appear on colourful placards in multiple peace movements from North Korea to North America, Beijing to Belfast, Tehran to Tokyo, Moscow to Palestine.\u00a0\u00a0 People, particularly the youth, are building an alternative to the cruelty of war, often doing so from inside prisons, from their own bedrooms on alternative media, on the streets in civil disobedience to bad laws, an alternative way of human living, \u2018A gentle\u2019 more humane humanity and being in keeping with nature. There is a new consciousness and this will not be \u2018silenced\u2019 or \u2018intimidated\u2019 by those playing power politics with our children\u2019s\u2019 lives and future.<\/p>\n

Young people know what it is to suffer.\u00a0 They know the cost of austerity cuts, pandemics, forever wars, and it all takes a toll on their mental health and sense of despair and hopelessness.\u00a0\u00a0 We, \u2018the elders\u2019 owe it to them to join in their brave efforts to change the world, to make things better for all the children everywhere.\u00a0\u00a0 Let us therefore join our youth as they work for disarmament and peace and refuse to hurt or kill other people and hurt or kill children.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We could join them\u00a0 by demanding an immediate end to the Russian\/Ukraine war, an end to the Gaza genocide by Israel, and dialogue not death.\u00a0 And saying \u2018NO\u2019 to NATO\u2019s preparation for a third world war as we will not, with our youth, be there to fight it.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Mairead Corrigan Maguire, co-founder of Peace People, is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/em><\/a>. She won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace in Northern Ireland. Her book, The Vision of Peace, (edited by John Dear with a foreword by Desmond Tutu and a preface by the Dalai Lama) is available from <\/em>www.wipfandstock.com<\/em><\/a>. She lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. See: <\/em>www.peacepeople.com<\/em><\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I would like to thank the Youth of the world for all they do to reject violence, militarism and war.\u00a0 I have been inspired wherever I have travelled by the imagination, courage and resistance of so many young people.\u00a0 They give me great hope for the future of humanity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":265582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[2914,2009,1474,1074,1776,380,124,2423,2478],"class_list":["post-274296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nobel-laureates","tag-anti-nato","tag-anti-war","tag-international-day-of-peace","tag-nobel-peace-prize","tag-nobel-womens-initiative","tag-solutions","tag-united-nations","tag-youth","tag-youth-against-nato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":274297,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274296\/revisions\/274297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}