World Beyond War (WBW) is offering an online, self-paced course on the realationship between 2 existential threats: war and environmental catastrophe, culminating in an emphasis on “what can be done”. You can register for the course here: https://worldbeyondwar.org/war-and-the-environment-april-10-may-22-2023-online-course-registration/ .
Check the https://worldbeyondwar.org/ site to see other education & action opportunities.
Starting March 6, 2023, Science for Peace and Voice of Women for Peace will be co-hosting a three-part webinar series: ‘Nonviolence: The Tactics and Strategies of Winning Campaigns’. Each session will feature a brief, documentary film on a significant and effective nonviolent campaign. In the discussion following the film, a Facilitator, supported by a Guest Expert, will assist members of the audience in thinking through the strategic and tactical lessons for effective nonviolent action that the successful campaign suggests.
Register via scienceforpeace.org or at this link: https://tinyurl.com/2s3smewb .
Recent McGill graduate Carley Dove-McFalls writes:”Trudeau’s government is using our tax dollars to exacerbate violence in the world and we will do everything in our power to stop this unacceptable behaviour. People are suffering; the Canadian government must stop using empty words and PR campaigns to absolve themselves from the harm they are inflicting on the entirety of the population (and particularly on Indigenous peoples) and the environment.”
Read her article in full here: https://www.scienceforpeace.org/post/min-guilbeault-there-is-no-canadian-climate-leadership-without-canceling-the-f-35-fighter-jet
Our Peace Tax Return offers a way to challenge this hypocrisy. https://www.consciencecanada.ca/?page_id=132
Conscience Canada has signed the DefendtheAtlantaForest solidarity statement & we encourage others to do likewise. (Sign here: https://defendtheatlantaforest.org/solidarity/ )
On Jan. 18, forest defender Manuel Esteban Paez Teran was killed (shot 13 times by police).
As the statement explains, “The struggle that is playing out in Atlanta is a contest for the future. As the catastrophic effects of climate change hammer our communities with hurricanes, heat waves, and forest fires, the stakes of this contest are clearer than ever. It will determine whether those who come after us inherit an inhabitable Earth or a police state nightmare. It is up to us to create a peaceful society that does not treat human life as expendable.”
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Nonviolence International https://www.nonviolenceinternational.net/ has very useful information on what it’s like for those resisting occupation and war in Ukraine & Russia, and what we can do to help people there build peace and justice.
This includes a report from Dec. ’22 on attitudes towards the war in Russia. It struck me that, although the situation in Russia is, in many ways, more harsh than what we face here, a key recommendation from the report applies to our situation as well as theirs:
This Valentine’s Day, make love not war
Who was Saint Valentine? Stories vary but according to one account he was a third century Roman priest. Rome at this time was ruled by the bloodthirsty Emperor Claudius II. Single men were thought to make better soldiers & only they were subject to the draft. Worrying that men would marry to avoid military service Claudius outlawed marriage. Valentine disobeyed the law & performed marriages in secret. Not only did he unite lovers but he provided war resisters with an alternative to the draft. Valentine was eventually executed for his act of defiance.
Soldiers Fought With Pillows?
(Book recommendation by Eric Unger, Manitoba)
The little girl who wondered aloud where the island was on which people fought the wars now has three children of her own. And this year, for Christmas, she gave me a very special gift: the book ‘What If Soldiers Fought With Pillows?’ by Heather Camlot and illustrated by Serge Bloch.
This book is a collection of over a dozen childlike, but not childish, questions, each one linked to a very short but potent ‘true story of courage and determination.’ Some of these stories would be familiar to a well-informed public and others would be completely new, providing new windows for a mind searching for ideas on peace. I highly recommend it to readers interested in making a difference for a more peaceful planet.
Here are the questions asked:
What if soldiers fought with pillows instead of pistols?
What if fighter pilots dropped seeds instead of bombs?
What if battlegrounds were soccer fields and spectators cheered for every team?
What if Navy SEALS balanced balls on their noses or played horns?
What if battle lines were drawn with paintbrushes and all the colors of the rainbow?
What if everybody showed up to a political party with their dancing shoes on?
What if the rules of war were the same as the rules at school?
What if innocent civilians could be airlifted by music?
What if a theater of war had costumes and musical numbers?
What if rocket launchers fired ping-pong balls instead of ballistic missiles?
What if the realities of war were virtual realities?
What if the balance of power was weighed on a teeter-totter?
What if an air strike was a cry for peace carried by the wind?
What if hand-to-hand combat happened only in boxing rings?
What if words of war became a war of words?
What if we just asked more questions?
What if you could change the world?
What if to make the world you want . . . you must first imagine what it could be?
** Note: There are more book recommendations in the “blog”.
Long time CC secretary (using his “retirement” to keep working for a better world 🙂 Murray Lumley shared this statement with his MP: https://nofighterjets.ca/2022/12/30/dropthef35dealstatement/ , saying, “I agree with the statement and urge you as my MP to speak to the Liberal caucus and cancel this procurement…” Murray offered many reasons; including this: “This purchase goes completely counter to Canada’s commitments to the Paris Agreement, to keep average Earth temperature increases to 1.5C. I have read that one F-35 burns $40,000 worth of fossil fuel per hour and on afterburner uses more fuel per hour than an aircraft carrier. I know that militaries get a free pass but they shouldn’t, given that militaries are among the worst fossil fuel burners in the world, more than many nations… If we keep going in a direction counter to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, my grandchildren and your children will have no future. There are some experts who claim that if we do not change our ways in the next few years, there will be no human civilization worth the name by the end of the 21st century.”
Thanks to World Beyond War for sharing this Veterans for Peace song with British singer Fenya, Christmas Truce: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3yH2iCdpvE
. We can still sign to support the International Peace Bureau appeal for a truce in the Ukraine here: https://www.christmasappeal.ipb.org/ (Conscience Canada has signed on.)
Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta, author of Refusing to Be Enemies, encourages us to read & learn from Gene Sharpe’s book, From Dictatorship to Democracy. Bruna Nota shares reflections on what the book can teach us now:
“Seeing the courage and determination of the people in Iran protesting against the religious dictatorship, and remembering the courage of so many protesters over the years, I went back to Gene Sharp’s “From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation”. This manual is a sober reaffirmation that nonviolence is all but the soft hearted, feebleminded approach of the coward or the timid.
It is a vigorous, full bodies, totally aware and purposeful stance of the person and community who know their powers and their rights. They go about having them honoured in their entirety. It is hard work, needing a lot of preparation and skills at different levels. Gene Sharp says:
Just as military officers must understand force structures, tactics, logistics, munitions, the effect of geography, and the like in order to plot military strategy, political defiance planners must understand the nature and strategic principles of nonviolent struggle. Even then, however, knowledge of nonviolent struggle, attentions to recommendations in this essay, and answers to questions posed here will not themselves produce strategies. The formulation of strategies for the struggle still requires an informed creativity” (pp. 83-84 of the 2012 edition).
I wonder how many lives have been wasted, how many opportunities missed, how often the tumbling of a dictatorship has only made way for another dictatorship due to the lack of preparation and the inner discipline on the part of the ‘democrats’ as Gene Sharp calls those who rebel against dictatorship.
The likelihood is that the social unrests we are seeing now will only increase as the climatic collapse generates increasing numbers of mentally or physically angry and displaced people, of refugees, of famine and homelessness. The almost automatic responses of many of the people presently in power will be to increase repressive security to quell unrests. It is essential that all people of good will, all those for whom violence and injustice are abhorrent, be familiar with the lessons presented in this modest booklet. When the time is right for urgent action it is advance preparation that will make the difference between success and failure.”
