{"id":79988,"date":"2016-09-26T12:00:14","date_gmt":"2016-09-26T11:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=79988"},"modified":"2016-09-20T13:14:37","modified_gmt":"2016-09-20T12:14:37","slug":"international-meeting-thirst-for-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/09\/international-meeting-thirst-for-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"International Meeting \u2018Thirst for Peace\u2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bpic<\/a> Assisi, 18-<\/strong>20 <\/strong>Sep 2016 – Promoted by Community of Sant Egidio, Diocese of Assisi and Francisco Families<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Future of Europe: Capacity to Integrate, Dialogue, and Generate<\/em><\/p>\n

War is illegal and immoral; it has to end and it can be ended.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dear Friends,<\/p>\n

I am happy to be here at this International Meeting and I would like to thank our hosts, for their invitation to attend.\u00a0\u00a0 I have always been inspired by the lives of St. Francis and St. Clare, whom I believe are Icons of Christian Gospel Peace and Nonviolence.\u00a0 Francis the man of action steeped in empathy and love for all, and Clare a woman of prayer, whose love of God led her into the depth of mysticism and peace.<\/p>\n

Francis and Clare lived in a time of violence and war, yet they choose to live the nonkilling\/ nonviolence of Jesus.\u00a0 Francis as a youth fighting in his local military, knew well how to wield a sword, yet he choose to follow the command of Jesus to Peter, when he told him to put up his sword and healed the Soldier\u2019s ear.\u00a0 He left the military to live in poverty and service, and together with Clare, and his followers refused to take up arms.\u00a0 Francis and Clare, in the midst of much Feudal violence, choose to follow the Christian nonviolence manifesto \u2018the Sermon on the Mount\u2019.<\/p>\n

For many people in Europe and the world, challenged by growing violence and injustice, the lives of these two great 13th<\/sup> century Saints gives us hope and inspiration.<\/p>\n

Pope Francis, following in the steps of\u00a0 St. Francis, gives us all hope as he challenges us to work for the abolition of the death penalty, ending poverty,\u00a0 the arms race, nuclear weapons, and environmental destruction,\u00a0 etc.,\u00a0\u00a0 However, I believe we need a clear renunciation of the \u2018just war\u2019 theory (a phony piece of morality in the words of the late Fr. John L. McKenzie) and I add my voice to those appealing\u00a0 to Pope Francis for an Encyclical on Peace and Nonviolence, calling Christians to rejection militarism and war and to follow a\u00a0 Peace theology in keeping with the teachings of the Nonviolent Jesus.\u00a0\u00a0 This would give great Spiritual leadership not only to Europe but to Humanity.<\/p>\n

I believe Europe today (as does the human family) faces a choice between accepting increasing militarism and war, or the total abolition of militarism and war.\u00a0 We need a new vision of universal and complete disarmament, and a new ambitious start offering hope to the human family suffering under the scourge of militarism and war.\u00a0 Many ills of the world come from these scourges and we all would gain as ordinary people, spiritually, financially, democratically, environmentally, culturally, from global disarmament.\u00a0\u00a0 It is a paradox how much we reject and detest torture of individuals, and how easily at the same time we accept the torture of whole nations in war.<\/p>\n

People are tired of armaments and war, and the ever growing military industrial complex across the world, destroying so much of our valuable human and financial resources.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0They have seen that they release uncontrollable forces of tribalism and nationalism.\u00a0 These are dangerous and murderous forms of identity and above which we need to take steps to transcend, lest we unleash further dreadful violence upon the world.\u00a0 To do this, we need to acknowledge that our common humanity and human dignity is more important than our different traditions.\u00a0\u00a0 We need to recognize our life and the lives of others are sacred and that we can solve our problems without killing each other.\u00a0 We need to accept and celebrate diversity and otherness, and work to heal the old divisions and misunderstandings, give and accept forgiveness, and choose nonviolence as a way to solve our problems.\u00a0 So too as we choose nonkilling and nonviolence, as we disarm our hearts and minds, we can also disarm our countries and our world.<\/p>\n

We are also challenged to build structures through which we can co operate and which reflect our interconnected and interdependent relationships.\u00a0 Power sharing, consensus politics, multi optional preferendums,\u00a0 there are many ways of doing politics we could use, which foster friendships, co operation,\u00a0 inclusion, and win\/win situations.\u00a0 The vision of the European Union founders, to link countries together, economically in order to lessen the likelihood of war amongst the nations, is a worthy endeavour.\u00a0 Unfortunately instead of putting more energy into providing help for EU citizens, we are witnessing the growing militarization of Europe, its role as a driving force for armaments, and its dangerous path, under the leadership of NATO(US) towards a new \u2018cold \u2018war and further wars of aggression.\u00a0\u00a0 The European Union and many of its countries, who used to take initiatives in the UN for peaceful settlements of conflicts, particularly allegedly peaceful countries, like Norway and Sweden, are now one of the US\/NATO most important war assets.\u00a0\u00a0 Instead of the EU focusing more on peace by peaceful means, it is focusing on military means and military strength and is a threat to the survival of neutrality.\u00a0 Many nations have been drawn into being complicit in breaking international law through US\/UK\/NATO illegal wars of aggression in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc., to mention but a few.<\/p>\n

On a recent visit to Afghanistan listening to young Afghan men recall how their friends were killed by USA \u2018drones\u2019 whilst our collecting wood, one asks \u2018what happened to the rule of International Law standards that weapons and methods of war, which do not discriminate between combatants and civilians, should never be used?\u2019.\u00a0 The bombing of hospitals and civilian targets, torture, renditions, proxy wars, all used by Governments whilst those responsible for upholding Human Rights and International Law set them aside to act illegally in the name of national security. The most cruel and horrific weapons, i.e. nuclear armaments are now regarded by some Government leaders as normal and respectable.\u00a0 Why are individuals expected to uphold moral and ethical standards of conduct, and yet many of our Government Leaders and their Policies ignore these standards?<\/p>\n

I believe NATO should be abolished.\u00a0 The United Nations should be reformed and strengthened and the UN should actively take up its mandate to save the world from the scourge of war, and uphold its ban on the use of force.\u00a0 Some politicians, journalists, intellectuals, would have us believe we have an option to choose war!\u00a0\u00a0 We do not, as under International Law, war is criminal and illegal.\u00a0 The Briand-Kellog treaty was a pact to abstain from war, and the Nuremberg trial convicted Nazis for going to war.\u00a0 War is illegal and criminal \u2013 this is international law.<\/p>\n

But there is hope.\u00a0 There is a new consciousness, and people are mobilizing and resisting non-violently against violence in its many forms.\u00a0 They are saying no to militarism and war and insisting on disarmament.\u00a0 Those of us in the Peace Movement can take inspiration from many who have gone before and worked to prevent war insisting on disarmament and peace.\u00a0 Such a person was Bertha Von Suttner, whose book \u2018Lay Down your Arms\u2019 moved many in Europe to work for peace.\u00a0 She was the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in l905 for her activism in the women\u2019s rights and peace movement.\u00a0 She moved Alfred Nobel to set up the Nobel Peace Prize award and it was the ideas of the peace movement of the period that Alfred Nobel decided to support in his testament for the Champions of Peace, those who struggled for disarmament and replacing military power with rights and international law.\u00a0 That this was the purpose of his will, is clearly confirmed by three expressions of Nobel\u2019s will, creating the fraternity of nations, work for abolition of armies, holding Peace Congresses.\u00a0 Alfred Nobel described war as \u2018the horror of horrors and the greatest of crimes\u201d.<\/p>\n

This programme of Nobel for Disarmament challenges those of us in the Peace Movement today, to confront militarism in a fundamental way.\u00a0\u00a0 We must not be satisfied with improvements and reforms, but rather offer an alternative to militarism, which is an aberration and a system of dysfunction, going completely against the true spirit of men and women, which is to love and be loved.\u00a0\u00a0 As the military industrial complex is so strong and influential, in order to dismantle this, we in the Peace Movement in Europe, and elsewhere, will need a broad mobilization of ordinary citizens across the globe to work together towards this vision of Universal and complete Disarmament, driven on by the absolute belief and conviction that \u2018War is illegal and immoral, it has to end, and it can be ended\u2019. Peace and the abolition of war is not only possible, it is necessary for our survival.<\/p>\n

Pace e Bene (Peace and Goodness).<\/p>\n

\"mairead_maguire\"<\/a>_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

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

Assisi, 18-20 Sep 2016 – The Future of Europe: Capacity to Integrate, Dialogue, and Generate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nobel-laureates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79988","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=79988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}