R Teichmann's blog

This is a cross-post from Transcend Media Services

Nonviolence vs. Nonexistence!

Nearly 50 years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.” That choice is becoming ever more profound as we enter the new year of 2014. For billions of people around the world, and for the earth itself, life is hanging by a thread. The choice is do we foster a world free of war, poverty, and climate crisis through non-violent action, or do we continue on the downward spiral toward nonexistence.

by R. Teichmann

It is a well-known fact in biology that pressures of an existential nature on a species result in two possible outcomes. The first outcome is that the species evolves. It adapts by way of biological evolution to the new conditions and survives. The second is that the species does not evolve and thus perishes. This also is the case if it evolves but the time frame is too short to complete the process. Humanity and the web of life are currently facing existential threats in very many ways. Almost all of them are manmade.

this is a reposting of an article by Jamal Kanj contributed to www.news-beacon-ireland.info

The agreement for the two seas Canal connecting the Red and Dead Sea was summed up best by Israeli water minister Silvan Shalam who jubilantly described it following the December 9 signing ceremony at the World Bank headquarters as “a historic agreement that realises … the dream of (founder of modern Zionism Theodore) Herzl.”

 The canal was another strategic triumph for Israel’s conniving diplomacy even after the project was reduced to about one-tenth of its original size due to serious economic and environmental concerns raised by the World Bank.

 The Zionist-envisioned project was repackaged and sponsored by Jordan as a must to save the Dead Sea, and building a large desalination plant providing each Israel and Jordan with eight billion to 13 billion gallons of fresh water annually.

published on Desertpeace.wordpress.com 27th Dec 2013

Truly a show of International Solidarity

At least 150 Israeli academics and authors, and another 150 American and British television and film professionals, also threw
their support behind the boycott. *

Three Israeli Actors Refuse to Star in West Bank Performance

Three Israeli stage actors asked to be excused from performing in a play staged at a cultural center in the West Bank settlement of Ariel.

by R. Teichmann (first published on www.news-beacon-ireland.info)

The news is just breaking. Isaeli forces are mounting yet another attack on Gaza. See  Palestinian girl ‘dead’ as Israel sends jets, tanks in retaliatory Gaza op

According to unconfirmed twitter reports Israel launched 15 airstrikes in the last 2 hours killing 2 including a 4 year old girl and injuring many others. It claims this is a response to the killing of a worker repairing the fence between Gaza and Israel by a sniper. Even if this was true how can this justify the bombardment of the most densely populated area on earth, a concentration camp with no way out?

Israel has in the past torpedoed all efforts of a peace with the Palestinans. The stealing of Palestinian land continues unabated by establishing illegal settlements. Gaza was recently flooded with raw sewage water. It is selling Palestinian oil. It is shooting at fishing boats in Palestinian waters. It is uprooting olive trees on Palestinian Land. It is flattening Palestinian homes with bulldozers. Is it any wonder that this policy breeds desperation and spawns acts born of desperation?

by R. Teichmann

I am outraged

 Because every second children die of hunger by design
Because every second old people die lonely
Because brother fights against brother
Because children are made sick by force
Because we are deprived of  blue skies
Because lies become truths
Because living beings have become commodities

Today, Monday 16th of Dec. 2013 JUST International released following statement:

OPPOSE DRONE STRIKES ― A WAR CRIME!

On 12 December 2013, 15 civilians who were part of a wedding convoy were killed in an unmanned US drone attack in Central Yemen. A Yemeni official has explained that the air strike was a mistake. The missiles had missed their target.

Three days earlier, another US drone had killed 3 persons driving on a road in Al-Qatan in the Hadramout province of Yemen.  They were also civilians.

The US based Human Rights Watch (HRW) had investigated 6 selected drone strikes since 2009 and concluded that 57 out of the 82 killed were civilians. This included a pregnant woman and her 3 children killed in September 2012.

Another human rights group, Amnesty International (AI), had also examined suspected drone strikes between May 2012 and July 2013 in North Waziristan, Pakistan, and from the evidence available suggested that more than 30 civilians were killed in four of those air attacks.

A report released by the UN Assistance Mission and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights indicates that there were 2,754 civilian deaths and 4,805 injuries from drone strikes in 2012 alone in Yemen and Pakistan.  

In response to various criticisms of these strikes, the US Administration insists that civilian casualties are “rare” in this particular mode of warfare which began in 2004.  But the evidence, as we have shown, tells adifferent story.

The US Administration is also wrong when it argues that drones have been an effective weapon in the fight against terrorism. On the contrary, it is because drone attacks have wiped out innocent civilians, including women and children that terrorism has increased. An example would be the events that constitute the backdrop to the two recent drone strikes in Yemen. The two drone strikes it seems were in retaliation to an Al-Qaeda attack on the Defence Ministry in Sana, Yemen’s capital, on 5 December 2013. The attack killed 56 people. While claiming responsibility for the heinous massacre, Al-Qaeda emphasised that it was carried out because of US drone strikes in Yemen that have been going on for years. This is also true of Pakistan where Al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives on either side of the Pakistan –Afghanistan border become even more determined to commit acts of terror when they see innocent villagers with whom they often share bonds of kinship bombed out of existence by US drones.

It is not surprising therefore that a huge movement against drones has developed in Pakistan in recent years. Both Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Opposition Leader, Imran Khan, are campaigning against drone attacks. The Peshawar High Court has ruled that drone attacks are “illegal, inhumane, violate the UN Charter on human rights and constitute a war crime.” In Yemen too, a significant segment of society is totally opposed to drone strikes though the US backed government of Mansour Al-Hadi acquiesces with them.

There is no sign yet to indicate that President Obama will abandon his drone policy. Both Yemen and Pakistan are vital to the US’s hegemonic power. Yemen is adjacent to the Bab-el-Mandeb which connects the oil fields of the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and Europe. Pakistan is strategically situated in relation to China and Russia and the rich oil fields of Central Asia.

The only way to get Obama to abandon his policy is for more citizen groups in Asia and the West to speak up against US drone strikes. Both the print and electronic media should also do much more to raise the awareness of the people so that they would be persuaded to act against this war crime. Isn’t it a shame that major media channels gave so little attention to the poor and innocent victims of the drone strikes a few days ago?

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar,

President,

International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

Malaysia.

16 December 2013.     

Margaretta Ruth D’Arcy (b. 1934), an Irish actress, writer, playwright, and peace-activist. Margaretta is a member of Aosdána since its inauguration and is known for addressing Irish nationalism, civil liberties, and women’s rights in her work. The Arts Council established Aosdána in 1981 to honour artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland, and to encourage and assist members in devoting their energies fully to their art.