Tag Archives: North America

Peace Day in San Francisco, A milestone in Cultivating a Culture of Peace

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION

Special to CPNN from David Wick*

“As you think, so you become”, is an ancient and timeless message for humanity. A similar wake-up call is expressed in the preamble of UNESCO (UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization). “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” Both the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace, and the UN International Day of Peace are dedicated to assisting humanity in consciously living this reality.

The United Nations in a series of resolutions and programs for the 21st Century, called for a transition from the culture of war to a culture of peace. In 1999 the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace (A/RES/53/243). During the International Year for the Culture of Peace in the Year 2000, one percent of the world’s population (75 million people) took part in the signature campaign on the Manifesto 2000.

Pathways To Peace (PTP) is an international Peacebuilding, educational, and consulting organization. For over four decades, PTP has been actively making Peace a lived reality. PTP is a UN-designated Peace Messenger Organization and has Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). PTP works locally and globally, inter-generationally and multi-culturally, to support Peacebuilding, Peacebuilders, and to collaborate with other organizations in initiatives that advance the Culture of Peace.

Since its inception in 1981, Pathways To Peace has worked with the UN to expand awareness of and engage in the International Day of Peace (Peace Day), which is held annually on September 21. Peace Day has grown from a single event of a few hundred people in San Francisco on September 18, 1984, into a global movement that reaches hundreds of millions to billions of people. Peace Day provides a globally shared date for all humanity to commit to Peace above all differences and to contribute to building a Culture of Peace. For Pathways To Peace, the overarching mission is cultivating a Culture of Peace for all of humanity with the International Day of Peace serving as a day for all nations and people to honor a cessation of hostilities, and to commemorate Peace Day through all means of education and communication.
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Question(s) related to this article:

What is happening this year (2024) for the International Day of Peace?

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The sound of silence reverberated at high noon in every time zone across the globe on September 18, 1984, as it rode a PeaceWave launched from San Francisco.

On that day, Pathways To Peace (PTP) coordinated a Peace Day in San Francisco (the birthplace of the UN) to celebrate the first large-scale, civil society organized, International Day of Peace. As the PeaceWave circled the globe that first year, citizens from 52 countries responded to the invitation from San Francisco to participate in the celebration of the International Day of Peace.

Those numbers have grown exponentially over the past 40 years. This year, organizers are expecting upwards of three billion people to observe the noon minute of silence and to participate in peace building events held in over 200 countries. Major international cities such as Geneva, Hiroshima, and New York will join San Francisco in livestreaming their Peace Day events to a global audience, with more cities to be announced in the weeks to come.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first United Nations International Day of Peace gathering and the launch of the PeaceWave from The City by the Bay, Pathways To Peace is hosting the Peace Day gathering at the Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco this September 21, 10:30 am – 4:00 pm PDT. Tezikiah Gabriel, Executive Director of PTP, said, “As it was 40 years ago, the purpose of the Peace Day initiative is to foster cooperation at all levels of our local-global communities and to demonstrate the difference each individual, group, organization, or nation makes when acting in concert with one another… enough of a difference to change the course of history!”

Additional information can be found on Pathways to Peace . If you cannot attend in person please register to join us online for the Live Global Broadcast at ptp.events/broadcast and join in virtually.

Our shared goal of cultivating a Culture of Peace is doable and right before us. As international futurist and past President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences Willis Harman said, “Perhaps the only limits to the human mind are those we believe in.”

* David Wick is the President of Pathways To Peace and Executive Director of the Ashland Culture of Peace Commission.

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September 1, 2024FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION, North AmericaNorth AmericaCPNN Coordinator

‘Major Power Milestone’: US Green Groups Cheer Wind, Solar Overtaking Coal

.. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ..

An article by Jessica Corbett from Common Dreams licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

U.S. climate advocates this week are celebrating new federal data that show wind and solar have generated more power than coal during the first seven months of 2024 and are on track to do so for the entire calendar year.

A wind farm is show in front of mountains at sunset. (Photo: Mickey Strider/Loop Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

“This is the kind of news we like to see!” Food & Water Watch said of the data on social media Tuesday. “Ensuring a livable climate for all depends on us making a swift and just transition to clean energy like wind and solar.”

The group shared reporting from E&E News, which noted that “the milestone had been long expected due to a steady stream of coal plant retirements and the rapid growth of wind and solar. Last year, wind and solar outpaced coal through May before the fossil fuel eventually overtook the pair when power demand surged in the summer.”

“Renewables’ growth has been driven by a surge in solar production over the last year,” the news outlet continued. “The 118 terawatt-hours generated by utility-scale solar facilities through the end of July represented a 36% increase from the same time period last year, according to preliminary U.S. Energy Information Administration figures. Wind production was 275 TWh, up 8% over 2023 levels. Renewables’ combined production of 393 TWh outpaced coal generation of 388 TWh.”

Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous said in a statement Wednesday that “wind and solar energy has long been the most cost-effective choice for utilities, but now it has also outpaced coal generation as the top source of energy, further demonstrating that clean energy is critical to a reliable and affordable grid.”

“This historic milestone marks a significant win for clean energy advocates, for ratepayers, and for people and communities across the country that simply want to breathe clean air, drink safe water, and worry less about climate disasters like floods and wildfires,” Jealous continued.

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Question for this article:

Are we making progress in renewable energy?

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“For decades, the Sierra Club has fought to move America Beyond Coal and onto a clean, reliable, and affordable grid,” he added. “To date, the Beyond Coal campaign has secured the retirement of 385 coal plants and counting, and on August 16th, we celebrate the two-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, which made historic investments in clean energy and clean energy jobs. Together, families across the country are saving money, enjoying good paying jobs, breathing clean air, and drinking safe water.”

Along with celebrating the federal legislation signed in 2022 by President Joe Biden, Sierra Club highlighted a state law signed the previous year by Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.

“Illinoisans should be proud of the work we’ve done to close our largest coal plants and leverage the power of clean energy to drive economic growth while reducing pollution that’s harmful to public health and our planet,” said Jack Darin, director of the Sierra Club’s state chapter. “Thanks to the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act of 2021, Illinois workers are now building the clean energy that is replacing old, dirty fossil fuels and bringing a brighter future to communities across our state.”

Celebrations over the “major power milestone” come as Americans prepare for a November presidential election in which Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz—who are endorsed by a range of climate groups—are set to face former Big Oil-backed former Republican President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).

During an April event in Florida, Trump told fossil fuel executives that if they invested just $1 billion into his campaign, he would gut the Biden-Harris administration’s climate regulations. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that billionaire Continental Resources founder then “called other oil executives and encouraged them to attend fundraisers and open their wallets.”

While Hamm is reportedly sharing Big Oil’s priorities with the Trump-Vance team, their approach can be summed up by a phrase they’ve said on the campaign trail: “drill, baby, drill.”

Although the Republican candidates have tried to distance themselves by the Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025, the right-wing policy agenda—crafted by many Trump allies—has also alarmed climate campaigners.

Noting the new energy data, Antonia Juhasz, a senior researcher on fossil fuels at Human Rights Watch, said Tuesday: “This transformation is due in large part to federal government policy which has specifically incentivized renewable energy development and deployment and increased regulation on the harms of fossil fuels. All of which are specifically targeted for removal in Project 2025.”

As Common Dreams reported earlier Wednesday, an analysis from the think tank Energy Innovation shows that a GOP administration implementing the Project 2025 plan would increase U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2.7 billion metric tons by 2030 compared to the current trajectory.

August 27, 2024North America, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENTNorth AmericaCPNN Coordinator

Rev. Al Sharpton: Jesse Jackson Helped Reshape Democratic Party & Paved Way for Kamala Harris

. HUMAN RIGHTS .

An article from Democracy Now licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Reverend Jesse Jackson, the civil rights icon who worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr., ran for president twice, in 1984 and 1988, and founded the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, is expected to appear on stage on the opening night of this year’s Democratic National Convention. We play footage of an event held Sunday in Chicago to honor Jesse Jackson, which featured fellow civil rights activist Al Sharpton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, among many other speakers.

frame from video of the event. Jackson is in the front row, right center

“We learned at his feet,” Sharpton said of Jackson’s impact on civil rights activism. “Every time a Black [person] opens their mouth and talks about democracy, Jesse Jackson is talking. Every time we march, Jesse Jackson is walking. And when you see Kamala Harris get on that stage this week, Jesse Jackson is on that stage.”

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency: Breaking with Convention.” I’m Amy Goodman, here with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, on Sunday, hundreds of people gathered here in Chicago to honor civil rights icon Reverend Jesse Jackson, the founder of Rainbow PUSH Coalition. In the 1960s, Jackson worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In 1984 and ’88, Jackson ran two groundbreaking presidential campaigns.

AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Jesse Jackson is expected to appear on stage tonight at the DNC. In 2017, he announced he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. On Sunday, the Reverend Al Sharpton praised Jackson as Jackson sat in the front row in a wheelchair, hundreds of people around him, family and friends. He praised Jackson for transforming the Democratic Party. This is the Reverend Al Sharpton.

REV. AL SHARPTON: I became a youth organizer under Reverend Jackson when I was 12 years old in New York. Many people do not understand the magnitude of what Jesse Jackson has done for this country. When Martin Luther King was killed in 1968, there was the vacuum of what was going to happen to the movement. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Some of the ministers, even though I was a young minister, seemed like they were not connected to what was going on in the urban North. Jesse Jackson came from the South but organized in Chicago and knew how to organize in urban centers. There would not have been a continuation of that movement had Jesse Jackson not bridged that gap and started fighting for collective economics at that time.

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Questions related to this article:

The struggle for human rights, is it gathering force in the USA?

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Way before we started talking about corporate accountability, he was boycotting Fortune 500 companies, dealing with the economic policy, dealing with the exploitation of the poor. He became a national figure holding corporate America accountable. What people are doing now was started by Jesse Louis Jackson.

But directly, as they start the Democratic convention on tomorrow, let me just talk about his historic reshaping of the party. In 1983, he started saying a Black should run for president. There was, in 1972, the Gary, Indiana, convention, National Black Political Convention. There was the fights between the Black nationalists and those that were in elective office. Reverend tried to bridge that. It led all the way to ’83. He went around the country trying to get certain Blacks to run. In the middle of him doing that, he started a Southern voting crusade. As he was on the bus going through Mississippi, through Louisiana, registering voters, people started saying, “You should run, Jesse.” And we started to chant, “Run, Jesse, run!” Most of the Black elected officials didn’t see it. He ran anyway. And he ran and won many of those primaries, and he put us on the agenda, saying, “Our time has come.” …

It’s a remarkable career to be born in the Deep South, in the back of the bus, and to grow into being a world figure that literally changed the political structures as we knew it, put two of his sons in Congress — Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., who’s a constitutional scholar, Jonathan Jackson now — reshaped the civil rights movement. What we’re doing now with civil rights organization, we learned at his feet.

Let me end by saying there’s some people that say that it’s sad Reverend Jackson, from Parkinson’s, can’t walk like he used to and talk like he used to. But I want you to know that every time a Black opens their mouth and talk about democracy, Jesse Jackson is talking. Every time we march, Jesse Jackson is walking. And when you see Kamala Harris get on that stage this week, Jesse Jackson is on that stage. He’s sitting there watching the results of his work. There wouldn’t be no us if it wasn’t for him. Thank you, and God bless you.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s the Reverend Al Sharpton honoring the Reverend Jesse Jackson last night here in Chicago at a gathering at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters. Hundreds turned out. Jesse Jackson is expected to appear on stage at the Democratic National Convention tonight. He ran twice for president, in 1984 and 1988.

Democracy Now! is broadcasting two hours each day from the Chicago convention as we cover the DNC from the inside out. In our other hour today, we’ll be talking with Osama Siblani, who runs a newspaper in Dearborn, will talk about the “uncommitted” movement. We’ll also be talking about two men who were imprisoned for over 40 years and then exonerated, what that means. That does it for our show from Chicago, from CAN TV. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

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August 27, 2024HUMAN RIGHTS, North AmericaNorth AmericaCPNN Coordinator

John Paul Lederach: How a Civil War Can Be Avoided in the United States?

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY .

A review of The Pocket Guide for Facing Down a Civil War by John Paul Lederach

In this Pocket Guide, internationally renowned peace practitioner John Paul Lederach reflects on his experience across over four decades mediating and transforming conflicts in places including Northern Ireland, Colombia, Nepal, Somalia, South Sudan, Nicaragua, and Tajikistan, among many others. His experiences grant him a unique perspective not only on what precipitates, propels, and sustains violent conflict, but also into key understandings and approaches that help shift dynamics of harm toward practices of social healing.

The Guide is framed to reflect on questions increasingly posed about the likelihood of divisive polarization in the United States leading toward political violence and even civil war. To consider this question, Lederach offers a comparative view. He suggests that despite the tendency in the U.S. to hold to exceptionalism, the country is not exempt from the toxic dynamics that have been faced in other settings where open armed conflict, once unleashed, became nearly impossible to end. In each chapter, Lederach describes a challenging pattern that repeats across contexts and animates toxic polarization and sustained armed conflict. He illustrates these dynamics with stories, observations, and wisdom gathered from his work with local communities and national leaders in places impacted by such toxicity, describing how they faced down and shifted seemingly ceaseless cycles of violence.

This Pocket Guide does not offer quick fixes. Rather, it explores the way ordinary people resisted and countered patterns of violence in their communities. Their curiosity, persistence, and creative innovation suggest that to face down a civil war and heal long-standing wounds that stoke cycles of violence, people must resist the pull of toxic polarization that legitimates violence as the only option. The challenge is to innovate pockets of vitality that embody the basic idea that politics without violence where we live is possible. Such innovation requires a web of courageous relationships that reach across divides, creating the connective tissue that fosters dignity and respect within, between, and across deep political and cultural difference.

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Question related to this article:

How Can a Civil War Be Avoided in the United States?

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In addition to the Pocket Guide, John Paul Lederach has written an op-ed in the Washington Post on this subject.

Based on the analysis above, his op-ed proposes three actions that we should all take:

1. We need to reach beyond our isolated bubbles and open conversations with the perceived enemies in our communities.

2. We have to rehumanize our adversaries; We must have the courage to confront dehumanizing language and behavior, especialy when it comes from within our closest circles.

3. We need to stick with it. We can’t just pull away when difficult issues emerge.

In the article he lists six websites that tell about good initiatives to overcome polarization and develop a peaceful society.

He concludes the op-ed by saying:

The best way to end a civil war is to stop it before it happens.

Will Americans have the courage to nurture these initiatives demonstrating that politics — honest partisan politics — can thrive without violence? I believe we can, and we must.

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(Editor’s note: One is reminded of the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi who said that we never have an enemy, what he have are opponents that we have yet to convince. And we should keep trying to convince them. Gandhi went each week to see the English viceroy who ran the occupation of his country, to tell him of the actions he was going to take for liberation, and to try to convince him that liberation was inevitable and that the British should leave and give India its freedom. In one sense he was successful. The British left without need for a violent revolution. But unfortunately, despite Gandhi’s valiant efforts, India was not able to escape an ensuing civil war between Hindus and Muslims that left a million dead and the division of India into three countries based on religious affiliation.)

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August 20, 2024DISARMAMENT & SECURITY, North AmericaNorth AmericaCPNN Coordinator

Video about Ukraine war by US Presidential Candidate Kennedy

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION .

Text from X video republished on July 12 by Transcend Media Service

(Editor’s note: The following is the text of a video interview with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., independent candidate for President in the United States. It completely contradicts the usual news from the mass media that justifies American involvement in the Ukraine War. We could not find the text anywhere on the Internet, but only a critique of it by the Washington Post.)

You know, Putin every day says, I want to settle the war. Let’s negotiate. And Zelensky said, we’re not going to negotiate. But Zelensky didn’t want to start that way. I don’t want to, you know, belabor the history, but Russia was invaded three times through Ukraine. The last time Hitler killed one out of every seven Russians. They don’t want to have Ukraine join NATO.

So when the wall came down in the Soviet Union, Europe, Gorbachev destroyed himself politically by doing something that was very, very courageous. He went to Bush and he said, I’m going to allow you to reunify Germany under a NATO army. I’m going to remove 450,000 Soviet troops. But I want your commitment. After that, you will not move NATO one inch to the east. And we solemnly swore that we wouldn’t do it.

Well, then in 97, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was the first of the bneocons said, we’re going to move NATO a thousand miles to the east and take 15 countries into it and surround the Soviet Union. So then we not only move it into 14 new nations, but we unilaterally walk away from our two nuclear weapons treaties with the Russians. And we put Aegis missile systems in Romania and Poland 12 minutes from Moscow.

When Russians did that to Cuba in 62, we came this close to nuclear war until they removed them. So the Russians don’t want nukes 400 miles from Moscow.

We then overthrow the Ukraine government in 2014, their elected government, and put in a Western sympathetic government.

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Question related to this article:

Is the media an arm of the culture of war?

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Russia then has to go into Crimea because they have a port, because they’re only warm water port and they know the new government that we just installed is going to invite the US Navy into their port. So Russia then went into Crimea without firing a shot because the people of Crimea are Russian.

Then the new Ukrainian government we installed started killing ethnic Russians in Donbas and Lugansk, and they voted to leave and join Russia. Putin said, I don’t want them. Let’s give them protection and give them semi-autonomy and make an agreement to keep NATO out of Ukraine.

That treaty was written by Germany, France, Russia and England, the Minsk accords. And the Ukrainian parliament, which is controlled by ultra-rightists, and that’s a nice way of talking about them, refused to sign it.

Zelensky runs in 2019. He’s an actor. Why did he get elected, with 70 % of the vote? Because he promised to sign the Minsk accords. He promised peace. He gets in there and he pivots. Nobody can explain why, but we know why. Because he was threatened with death by ultra-rightists in his government and a withdrawal of support by the United States, by Victoria Nuland, who’s the leading Neocon in the State Department. We told him he could not sign it.

So then the Russians go in. They don’t send a big army. They only send 40,000 people. It’s a nation of 44 million people. They clearly do not intend to conquer Ukraine, but they want us back at the negotiating table.

We won’t allow Zelensky to go back, so he goes to Israel and Turkey and says will you please help me negotiate a treaty. The Russians just want a guarantee that Ukraine won’t join NATO. Zelensky signs a treaty. Putin’s people sign the treaty. And Putin starts withdrawing the Russian troops in good faith.

What happens? Joe Biden sends Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, over to Ukraine in April and forces him to tear up the treaty.

Since then, 450,000 kids have died. Not one of them should have died. For every one Russian that dies, five to eight Ukrainians die. They don’t have any men left! You know, we’re giving them all these weapons, but they don’t have men left. It’s a catastrophe! And we look kind of like the aggressor, that’s the way the rest of the world sees us.

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July 29, 2024Europe, FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION, North AmericaEurope, North AmericaCPNN Coordinator

US Labor Unions Call on Biden Administration to Immediately Halt All Military Aid to Israel

. . DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION . .

An article from United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America

A group of 7 unions have sent a letter to President Biden calling on him to “immediately halt all military aid to Israel” in advance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the U.S. next week. The letter states that the unions “believe that immediately cutting US military aid to the Israeli government is necessary to bring about a peaceful resolution to this conflict.”

Union banner against visit of Netanyahu

The unions that signed on to the letter include the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), American Postal Workers Union (APWU), International Union of Painters (IUPAT), National Education Association (NEA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), United Auto Workers (UAW) and United Electrical Workers (UE).
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Question related to this article:

What is the contribution of trade unions to the culture of peace?

How can a culture of peace be established in the Middle East?

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“Our unions are hearing the cries of humanity as this vicious war continues,” said APWU President Mark Dimondstein. “Working people and our unions are horrified that our tax dollars are financing this ongoing tragedy. We need a ceasefire now, and the best way to secure that is to shut off US military aid to Israel.”

The unions expressed hope that President Biden’s three-part ceasefire proposal that he outlined in the final week of May would bear fruit, but expressed concern that it hasn’t been fully accepted yet while the violence continues. The letter states that “large numbers of Palestinian civilians, many of them children, continue to be killed, reportedly often with US-manufactured bombs. Rising tensions in the region threaten to ensnare even more innocent civilians in a wider war. And the humanitarian crisis deepens by the day, with famine, mass displacement, and destruction of basic infrastructure including schools and hospitals. We have spoken directly to leaders of Palestinian trade unions who told us heart-wrenching stories of the conditions faced by working people in Gaza.”

The letter declares that “the time to act decisively to end this war is now. Stopping US military aid to Israel is the quickest and most sure way to do so, it is what US law demands, and it will show your commitment to securing a lasting peace in the region.”

Contact: Media@seiu.org

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July 28, 2024DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION, Mideast, North AmericaMideast, North AmericaCPNN Coordinator

In Remembrance of James Lawson, a Force for Good and Champion of Peace

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION .

An article by Ethan Vesely-Flad in Common Dreams (licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called him “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.” To Rep. John Lewis, he was “the architect of the nonviolence movement.” Jesse Jackson simply called him “the Teacher.” We at the Fellowship of Reconciliation are blessed to have counted him among our core team of organizers. It is with reverence that we remember his life and time with us.

James Lawson at work with the Fellowship of Reconciliation in 1960. (Photo credit: FOR archives)

Rev. James M. Lawson, Jr., who died Sunday at age 95, was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, and moved with his family to Massillon, Ohio, shortly after. As part of a deeply Christian family, James began regularly reading the bible and developed a prophetic and liberatory interpretation of the gospels at an early age. In a 2014 interview published by Fellowship magazine, Lawson told Diane Lefer, “By the end of my high school years, I came to recognize that that whole business – walk the second mile, turn the other cheek, pray for the enemy, see the enemy as a fellow human being – was a resistance movement. It was not an acquiescent affair or a passive affair. I saw it as a place where my own life grew in strength inwardly, and where I had actually seen people changed because I responded with the other cheek. I went the second mile with them.”

While attending Baldwin-Wallace College, Lawson met A.J. Muste, the Fellowship of Reconciliation’s executive secretary, a renowned pacifist and nonviolent direct action strategist. Deeply inspired, Lawson immediately joined the FOR. Graduating college in 1950, as the Cold War grew, Lawson determined that he would refuse the military draft. Instead of Korea, he was sent to prison, where he served 13 months.

In 1953, Lawson accepted an offer from Hislop College in Nagpur, India, to teach and coach athletics, giving him the opportunity to, like FOR members Howard Thurman and Bayard Rustin had done before him, explore the connections between the Indian self-determination movement and the African-American freedom struggle. Lawson spent the next three years on the subcontinent studying Gandhi’s life and the Satyagraha movement. “I combined the methodological analysis of Gandhi with the teachings of Jesus, who concludes that there are no human beings that you can exclude from the grace of God,” Lawson described to Lefer.

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Questions related to this article:

How can we carry forward the work of the great peace and justice activists who went before us?

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Lawson was completing a graduate degree at the Oberlin School of Theology when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., while visiting the campus, recruited him. King insisted to Lawson that his expertise was needed, not eventually, but immediately! “I mentioned to [King] that while in college I had long wanted to work in the South – especially because of segregation – as a place of work, and that I wanted to do that still,” Lawson told Fellowship magazine editor Richard Deats in 1999. “His response was: ‘Come now! Don’t wait! Don’t put it off too long. We need you NOW!”

When Lawson told A.J. Muste of his decision to move South, Muste quickly offered him a position as FOR’s Southern Field Secretary. Basing himself initially in Nashville, Lawson began working throughout the South, initially with FOR and then the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He focused especially on recruiting and training a generation of nonviolent direct-action activists. Those young people then launched the sit-ins and Freedom Rides and founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

In 1965, while representing SCLC on an International FOR delegation to Vietnam, Lawson met Thich Nhat Hanh. This encounter significantly affected Lawson, inspiring him to facilitate a meeting between the Buddhist monk and Dr. King, and ultimately led to King’s dramatic public stance against the U.S. war in Vietnam. Lawson’s profound assessment of U.S. militarism and what he called “plantation capitalism” shaped not only the interweaving of the 1960s civil rights and anti-war struggles but ultimately how our intersectional social movements are shaped today.

In 1974, in Los Angeles, Lawson continued his solidarity with impoverished low-wage workers. He founded Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice to enlist faith communities in this struggle and pushed direct action campaigns for which he was arrested “more [times] than [during] all his work in the South.”

Lawson spent his last decades both working within peace circles while offering critiques that their movements devoted too much of their focus outside U.S. borders. He believed that true change could only come from within. “Only by engaging in domestic issues and molding a domestic coalition for justice can we confront the militarization of our land,” he argued to Lefer in 2014. “We must confront that here – not over there.”

Whether prophetically interpreting the scriptures, challenging America’s original sin with the fierce power of nonviolent direct action, or strategically connecting with other monumental peace leaders, Lawson’s commitment to social justice was relentless and unwavering. We at the Fellowship of Reconciliation are blessed to have worked with and been mentored by him. As we continue to confront the injustices of our times, we know that Lawson’s spirit is walking beside us.

(Editor’s note: You may find a more detailed biography on the website of The Nation, but we have no budget to pay for reproduction.)

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June 21, 2024FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION, North AmericaNorth AmericaCPNN Coordinator

Complicity in Genocide—The Case Against the Biden Administration

. . HUMAN RIGHTS . .

An article from In These Times

Early this month (February 2024), a federal judge dismissed a case brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) charging U.S. President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken with complicity in the Israeli-led genocide in Gaza.

But while many media outlets were quick to report on the case not moving forward, they largely missed a key aspect of the ruling: the judge did not dismiss the case on its merits but rather because it fell “outside the court’s limited jurisdiction,” therefore rejecting it on technical grounds. In fact, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White’s statement appeared to uphold some of plaintiff’s key charges in the case: “Both the uncontroverted testimony of the plaintiffs and the expert opinion proffered at the hearing on these motions as well as statements made by various officers of the Israeli government indicate that the ongoing military siege in Gaza is intended to eradicate a whole people and therefore plausibly falls within the international prohibition against genocide.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, US President Joe Biden, and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin look on during a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on October 2, 2023.
(PHOTO BY BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES)

The judge went further, urging Biden and his administration officials to scrutinize “the results of their unflagging support” for the Israeli government’s assault on Gaza.

Judge White was not alone in his appraisal. The case, first heard on January 26 in front of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, saw roughly 100 human rights and humanitarian aid groups write briefs supporting CCR’s charges against the Biden administration.

These briefs make it abundantly clear that the Biden administration, in its steadfast support of the Israeli government, is complicit in the ongoing genocide, the displacement of approximately 80% of Palestinians from their homes and the deaths of more than 29,000 so far in this latest chapter of a year-long Nakba (catastrophe) that never ended.

CCR’s lawsuit underscored the plight of a Palestinian people asserting their humanity and refusing to be sacrificed at the altar of the 1948 Genocide Convention—which tasks governments with preventing genocides and forbids their complicity in genocides perpetrated by another party — and the U.S. Genocide Convention Implementation Act, passed in 1988, which incorporates this mandate into U.S. law.

As multiple human rights advocates and experts such as Israeli historian and Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies Raz Segal have laid out, Israel is carrying out a textbook case of genocide” in Gaza, backed by clear genocidal intent, laid bare in Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant’s Oct. 9 declaration: “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly.”

In response to the case, the Biden administration countered that CCR’s lawsuit should not move forward because supporting Israel is a foreign policy decision reserved for the executive branch, free from judicial interference; that the United States is not responsible for how Israel, a foreign government, acts; and that there is no federal law allowing the plaintiffs to sue.

CCR noted, first, that the issue is not whether the U.S. can make foreign policy decisions involving Israel but rather that the decision to aid in a genocide violates federal law, and the courts have a duty to uphold the law even against U.S. officials.

Second, CCR explained in detail how the Biden administration, far from a neutral spectator, is actively supporting the genocide through military, economic and diplomatic assistance.

Militarily, Secretary Blinken exercised emergency powers twice in December to approve the sale of armament worth approximately $254 million. According to the Defense Department, these supplies come from the War Reserve Stocks for Allies-Israel (WRSA-I), an obscure U.S. stockpile in Israel containing billions of dollars’ worth of equipment.

The administration now seeks to loosen WRSA-I restrictions for Israel, expanding access to weaponry, increasing the annual stockpile limits, and removing legislative oversight, while adding to the privileges Israel already enjoys such as permission to withdraw WRSA-I items without the prior justification required of all other recipient countries.

The U.S. has provided (or is on track to provide) Israel over 25,000 tons of military supplies: dozens of F‑35 and F-15 fighter jets (to be received in the coming years), a dozen Apache helicopters, two thousand Hellfire missiles, MK‑ 84 bombs and Joint Direct Attack Munitions to guide them, Spice bombs, M141 bunker‑buster munitions, one million rounds of 7.62 mm munitions and thousands of 155 mm artillery shells, 30 mm cannon munitions, night‑vision devices and much more. Meanwhile, the presence of U.S. surveillance drones in Gaza suggests the possibility of greater U.S. military involvement than previously thought.

Financially, President Biden requested an emergency supplemental budget exceeding $14 billion to support Israel. The House of Representatives responded with a bill reflecting this amount plus billions of dollars for joint operations assistance. The Senate has now passed a bill for $14 billion permitting the supply of currently forbidden military items to Israel, as well as waiving WRSA-I caps. These bills are currently being debated in Congress but enjoy broad bipartisan support.

And, diplomatically, the United States exercised its veto privilege at the United Nations Security Council to stall international calls for a cease-fire in Gaza on October 18, December 8 and February 20. The December instance followed UN Secretary General António Guterres’s invocation of Article 99 of the UN Charter to refer to the Security Council a “ matter which, in [his] opinion, may aggravate existing threats to the maintenance of international peace and security.”

Article 99 was last invoked in 1971 preceding the split of Bangladesh from Pakistan. Additionally, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly supported cease-fire resolutions on October 27 and December 12 , both of which the U.S. voted against. And, on December 22 , the U.S. abstained from a Security Council vote to direct humanitarian aid to Gaza after stalling for four days to remove a call for cease-fire from the resolution.

These various forms of support unequivocally constitute aiding and abetting of Israel’s cataclysmic destruction of Gaza, and the CCR argued as much in establishing that the U.S. has been actively complicit in the ongoing genocide.

Relatedly, the CCR referenced this very aiding and abetting in claiming that they do have a federal right to sue under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). As they explained, “aiding and abetting liability, particularly for U.S. defendants,” triggers the ATS goal of “provid[ing] a forum for violations of international law.”

(continued in right column)

Question related to this article:

How can war crimes be documented, stopped, punished and prevented?

(continued from left column)

Therefore, the CCR concluded, the courts do have a constitutional duty to put an end to the executive branch’s complicity in genocide; the executive branch is complicit based on its clear aiding and abetting in the form of military, financial and diplomatic support; and the ATS permits plaintiffs to sue federal officials for their violations of the Genocide Convention.

No conditions

CCR further charged Biden, Blinken and Austin with failure to prevent the genocide. The Genocide Convention and customary international law compel governments to exercise due diligence to prevent genocide, and self-defense is legally insufficient as a justification for eradicating a population. U.S. officials are liable if they could likely influence Israel’s conduct and if they should have known that Israel’s acts raised a serious risk of genocide in Gaza.

In Gaza, the U.S. indisputably can influence Israel’s conduct. The U.S. fills 92% of Israel’s arms imports. Much of this equipment can only originate from the U.S. as it utilizes proprietary technologies. Defense Minister Gallant admitted as much, when the U.S. pressured for humanitarian aid to Gaza, noting that “[t]he Americans insisted and we are not in a place where we can refuse them. We rely on them for planes and military equipment. What are we supposed to do? Tell them no?” The Biden administration similarly boasted about its influence in persuading Israel to pause aggressions for seven days in late November.

And the United States is doubtlessly aware of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The CCR shared its emergency legal briefing paper with Biden, Blinken, and Austin in October explaining these exact points. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in January that there is a plausible risk that Israel is carrying out genocide. Additionally, more than 800 public officials and diplomats across a range of countries, close to 80 of whom are based in the U.S. and work primarily within Blinken’s State Department, warned in February that their governments were at risk of being complicit in genocide.

In a previous case, the ICJ found Serbia to be liable for failing to prevent the genocide of Muslim communities in Srebrenica in 1995 by the Bosnian Serb forces, an independent actor that perpetrated the genocide with the support of the Serbian government. Dr. William A. Schabas, a renowned Professor of Human Rights Law and International Criminal Law, concluded that U.S. complicity in the war on Gaza “ has many parallels” with the Serbian government’s complicity in Srebrenica since, like the relationship between Israel and the U.S., “[t]he Bosnian Serb forces were very dependent upon weaponry and other logistical support from Serbia, and there were strong political and economic ties” between the two. The U.S. acknowledged this very duty to prevent genocide when it commented in support of Ukraine’s case against Russia at the ICJ in 2022.

The Biden administration blanketly denies the genocide charges against Israel while refusing to investigate them altogether. President Biden vowed that his “ administration’s support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering.” Secretary Blinken has stated his view that South Africa’s “ charge of genocide [against Israel before the ICJ] is meritless.” And White House Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said, on behalf of the Biden administration, that “[w]e find [South Africa’s] submission meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact, whatsoever,” later insisting that “ we find that that claim is unfounded.”

More recently, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi baselessly claimed that “ nothing [the U.S. has] sent since Oct. 7 [to Israel] has contributed to this brutality,” despite well recorded evidence to the contrary.

The U.S. State Department ordered officials to refrain from using the phrases “ de‑escalation,” “ cease-fire,” “ end to violence,” “ end to bloodshed,” and “ restoring calm” in press releases, and Secretary Blinken was found to have deleted references to a cease-fire in his posts on X (formerly Twitter) after they had already been sent out.

Conspicuously, a State Department task force on preventing atrocities took a full two weeks into the extremely brutal assault before meeting to discuss Israel and Palestine, and it was nevertheless sidelined by the administration.

According to Kirby, the U.S. imposes no conditions on weapons transfers to Israel even though the Foreign Assistance Act, the Leahy Law, and the Conventional Arms Transfer policy prohibit transfers when the weapons are likely intended to be used for genocide. Notably, transfers to most countries can be put on hold if one stakeholder suspects an item will be used unlawfully. In the case of Israel, multiple stakeholders, including the Bureau of Near East Affairs (NEA) and the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, must first agree that such risk exists, and the hold must be approved by the Deputy Secretary of State.

Moreover, these transfers are shrouded in secrecy. Whereas the U.S. published pages detailing what weapons, and in what quantities, it provided to Ukraine, governmental disclosures concerning Israel amount to one brief sentence. Josh Paul, former director in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, remarks that there is no benefit in this secrecy except diminished oversight.

And the administration insists that it has remained close to the Israeli officials perpetrating the genocide. Kirby claimed that “ we have, since the beginning of the conflict, in the early hours, maintained a level of communication with our Israeli counterparts to ascertain their intentions, their strategy, their aims.” Secretary Blinken has held hours-long conferences with Israeli military officials, and Secretary Austin had near-daily calls with Minister Gallant “ to meet Israel’s needs, which include air defense, precision guided munitions, artillery and medical supplies.”

Responsibility to act

The U.S. District Court in California, spotlighting the ICJ’s finding of plausible genocide, implored the administration to reconsider its course for the welfare of the Palestinian people, finding the judiciary to be lamentably powerless to interfere with foreign policy decisions.

Looking to the future, a group of South African lawyers stated to the Biden administration their intention to sue the U.S. government for “ aiding, abetting and supporting, encouraging or providing material assistance and means to Israel” during a genocide. On February 12 , the South African government urgently requested that the ICJ use its powers to prevent further genocidal acts by Israel in light of the most recent attack on Rafah, “ the last refuge for surviving people in Gaza.”

As the CCR case makes clear, the United States government is currently facilitating the annihilation of Gaza and the Palestinian people. In the face of this massacre, Congress has a responsibility to rein in the abuses of the Biden administration by exercising its review authority to end any further aid to the Israeli government. While recent efforts to condition such aid have failed, that should not prevent members of Congress from taking a clear stand: now is the time to hold the Biden administration accountable for its complicity in the crime of genocide.

(Editor’s note: Recent polling data (May 8) in the United States indicates that 39% believe Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people living in Gaza, 38% saying Israel is not, and 23% saying they don’t know. A majority of Democrats (56%) and a slight plurality of Independents (36%) say they believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.)

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June 18, 2024HUMAN RIGHTS, Mideast, North AmericaMideast, North AmericaCPNN Coordinator

USA: Graduation speeches for the cause of Palestine

. TOLERANCE AND SOLIDARITY . .

Text from You Tube video (transcription by CPNN)

In California, Asna Tabassum, a graduating senior at USC, was selected as valedictorian and offered a traditional slot to speak at the 2024 graduation. She said she supports the pro-Palestinian cause that has grown at college campuses. After on-and-off campus groups criticized the decision and the university said it received threats, it pulled her from the graduation speakers schedule.

In Ohio, the graduating class of the University of Toledo were more fortunate. They were able to hear the speech of their valedictorian on behalf of the people of Palestine. Here is the text of her message.

“Salaam alaikum, meaning peace be upon you all.

“I was born in a beautiful city in Palestine. It is for this moment and this accomplishment that my parents decided to come here and build a life here. So to my mother and father, I’d like to begin by extending my deepest gratitude for their dedication, sacrifices, and love that were cornerstone to my success, as well as my brothers and sisters who have always been there for me. I am not alone in this gratitude. Every single one of you in the audience has sacrificed for a graduate here or contributed to their success in ways that we will never forget. So thank you all.

“Now, it is essential to understand and acknowledge the unique journey that has brought us all to this moment in our time here. In our time here, we have witnessed profound challenges and injustices that have shaken our world like never before. We witnessed and are still witnessing an unprecedented amount of loss of innocent life in Palestine. Over the last seven months, at least 40,000 human beings have been killed by the state of Israel. These people were not only innocent Muslims, but innocent Christians and innocent Jews, as well. These people were civilians, a majority of them children. We have witnessed the demolition of one of the oldest churches in the world, of mosques, of universities, and even of designated safe zones by the United Nations.

“Although today is a day of accomplishments and happiness, this is a difficult reality that we must acknowledge as we proceed to the next chapter of our lives. Why, you may ask? Because we, the people, are funding these horrors with our tax dollars. Every single one of you will continue into your professional lives and be impacted by this.

(continued in right column)

Question related to this article:

Presenting the Palestinian side of the Middle East, Is it important for a culture of peace?

How can just one or a few persons contribute to peace and justice?

(continued from left column)

“Consider the following, the fact that teachers who quite literally shape our future are paid less than a full-time and then an average full-time employee or that 1.2 million veterans who put their lives on the line for this country that they live below the poverty line or that our top health insurance companies made nearly 69 billion dollars in profits the same year that 68,000 Americans died due to a lack of access to health care.

“We are the generation that must address these issues at home. We must ask why we have sent around 320 billion dollars in foreign aid to a state convicted of war crimes, countless violations of international law and who are on trial for genocide while Americans are dying due to lack of access to health care.

“This is the message that I want to leave you all with today that we are the generation. A testimony to that statement is the thousands of beautiful brave students, faculty, and administrators who are camping outside of universities demanding for a better use of our funds.

“If there are any of you here who feel as though you cannot relate or are uninterested in what I have said thus far, I would challenge you to consider this. Growing up we learned about the atrocities of the Holocaust, the horrors of slavery, and we wondered how on earth did these things happen. Well, there is a popular phrase that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. So if you wonder what you would have done during those horrific times, I implore you to take a look at what you are doing right now.

“We are the generation that will not accept being divided based on religion or background. We will not accept unwarranted, uneducated, and hateful labels as we demand a better future for ourselves and for justice.

“I apologise that this is not a typical graduation speech, but there is nothing typical about the times that we are living in. There is nothing typical about 15,000 children live-streamed deaths being watched. And there is nothing acceptable about our institutional complicity, silence, or the gross misuse of police force nationwide.

“The world is in desperate need of change, and we must be the ones to do it. So this goes to everybody here today, my friends and family, professors, deans, and my fellow students. We must use every opportunity we have to make change, no matter how scary it is. As the graduates of today, we have an opportunity to be the heroes of tomorrow.

“If we look to history, we will see that the students have always been on the right side of history. The key to this is solidarity, accepting discomfort at the cost of truth, having difficult conversations to find common grounds, and working together towards Salaam, which if you recall means peace.

“Remember when I leave this stage that my calling was one for peace, so to not support that would not be a reflection of our UT values or our humanity. I will end by sending my Salaam to the struggling teachers and veterans, to my fellow Americans, to my family in Palestine, to the people of Gaza, and to all of those who are fighting for peace.

“Congratulations to you all, and Salaam.”

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If you wish to make a comment on this article, you may write to coordinator@cpnn-world.org with the title “Comment on Gala of Solidarity” and we will put your comment on line. Because of the flood of spam, we have discontinued the direct application of comments.

June 14, 2024Mideast, North America, TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITYMideast, North AmericaCPNN Coordinator

Does military spending lead to economic decline and collapse?

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY .

A press survey and analysis by CPNN

For many years now, CPNN has carried a discussion page on this question, Does military spending lead to economic decline and collapse?

In his 1986 book, The Overburdened Economy, the economist Llloyd J. Dumas argued that in the long run military spending will undermine the ability of the economy to function efficiently; and cause a general decline in economic wellbeing. This is because it does not contribute to the standard of living as consumer goods do, or to the economy’s capacity to produce standard-of-living goods and services in the future, as producer goods do.

This analysis is repeated in his 2005 contribution to a symposium on The Political Economy of Military Spending.

Recent news articles by financial specialists suggest that the Dumas prediction is now coming true, in the form of the ballooning national debt of the United States.

The national debt based on data from the US Department of the Treasury Fiscal Service (click on image to enlarge)

I On May 2, The Economist ran an article with the headline “America’s reckless borrowing is a danger to its economy—and the world’s; Without good luck or a painful adjustment, the only way out will be to let inflation rip.” It blames “the costs of wars, a global financial crisis and pandemic, unfunded tax cuts and stimulus programmes.”

On May 1, Fortune Magazine summarized a number of financial sources as follows:

“The nation’s debt, currently over $34 trillion, is rampantly growing as U.S. lawmakers have been unable to agree to long-term budget reforms that could tame it.

“Officials from several institutions warn a tipping point is near and it will only get worse if it snowballs into a crisis. The national debt is currently almost the same size as the entire U.S. economy, which is roughly $27.3 trillion, according to a Council on Foreign Relations report, and is on track to double within the next thirty years.

(Article continued on the right column)

Question for this article:

Does military spending lead to economic decline and collapse?

(Article continued from the left column)

“In the last few months, officials at several institutions including the International Monetary Fund, Congressional Budget Office and banking giant Goldman Sachs Group have cautioned that the country’s skyrocketing debt is a big problem–literally bigger than ever before–and some fear similar market chaos that derailed former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss’ economy when she was in office in 2022. . .

“In the U.S., IMF officials have warned that public spending and borrowing will “overheat” the country’s economy, while pushing up funding costs in the rest of the world. Phillip Swagel, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, said the country’s debt is on an “unprecedented” trajectory in an interview with the Financial Times, and could risk a Truss-style economic crisis. John Waldron, the president and COO of Goldman Sachs, expressed a similar concern at Semafor’s World Economic Summit on April 18.

With the exception of the passing mention of “the costs of wars” in the Economist article, it is notable that military spending is not mentioned in the many articles quoted here, even though it is the largest contribution to the national debt. It is “forgotten” just as another recent Economist article headlines “Budgetary blindness – America’s fiscal outlook is disastrous, but forgotten.”

The Economist article refers to the fact that the debt problem is “forgotten” by the two main Presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump. They continue to make the problem worse, as Biden increases military spending for the Ukraine, and Trump promises to reduce taxes on the rich.

Not mentioned are the positions of third party candidates Cornel West and Chase Oliver.

As reported in CPNN on April 6, Cornel West would address the debt problem by drastically cutting the military budget and instituting a wealth tax.>

And as reported in CPNN this week (May 29), Chase Oliver calls for “major cuts to the federal budget with an eye toward balancing the budget . . . and the closure of all overseas military bases and ending of military support to Israel and Ukraine.”

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May 30, 2024DISARMAMENT & SECURITY, North AmericaNorth AmericaCPNN Coordinator