By Mairead Maguire
BELFAST, Dec 18 2014 (IPS)

I recently visited Assisi, the home of St. Francis and St. Clare, two great spirits whose lives have inspired us and millions of people around the world.

St. Francis, a man of peace, and St. Clare, a woman of prayer, whose message of love, compassion, care  for humans, animals and  the environment comes down through history to speak to us in a very relevant and inspirational way.

Mairead Maguire

Today, in the 2lst century, as we the human family face increasing violence, we are challenged to admit that we are on the wrong path, and that we need to find new ways of thinking and doing things from a global perspective.

Peace is a beautiful gift to have in life, and it is particularly treasured by those who have known violent conflict, war, famine, disease and poverty.  I believe that Peace is a basic human right for every individual and all people.

Love for others and respect for their rights and their human dignity, irrespective of who or what they are, no matter what religion – or none – that they choose to follow, will bring about real change and set in motion proper relationships.  With such relationships built on equality and trust, we can work together on so many of the threats to our common humanity.“For the first three hundred years after Christ, the early Christian communities lived in total commitment to Jesus’s non-violence. Sadly, for the next 1700 years, Christian mainline churches have not believed, taught or lived Jesus’s simple message: love your enemies, do not kill”

Poverty is one such threat and Pope Francis challenges us to take care of the poor, and has declared his desire that the Catholic Church be a church of the poor and for the poor. To meet this challenge, we can each ask ourselves ‘how will what I do today help the poor’?.

Pope Francis also has spoken about the need to build fraternity amongst the nations. This is important because building trust amongst people and countries will help bring peace to our interdependent, inter-connected world.

Violence begets violence as we witness every day on our television screens, so the choice between violence and non-violence, is up to each one of us.  However, if we do not teach non-violence in our education systems and in our religious institutions, how can we make that choice?

I believe that all faith traditions and secular societies need to work together and teach the way of non-violence as a way of living, also as a political science and means for bringing about social and political change wherever we live.

A grave responsibility lies with the different religious traditions to give spiritual guidance and a clear message, particularly on the questions of economic injustice, ‘armed resistance‘, arms, militarism and war.

As a Christian living in a violent ethnic political conflict in Northern Ireland, and caught between the violence of the British army and the Irish Republican Army, I was forced to confront myself with the questions, ‘do you ever kill?’ and ‘is there such a thing as a just war?’.

During my spiritual journey I reached the absolute conviction that killing is wrong and that the just war theory is, in the words of the late Fr. John L. McKenzie, “a phony piece of morality”.

I became a pacifist because I believe every human life is sacred and we have no right to kill each other. When we deepen our love and compassion for all our brothers and sisters, it is not possible to torture or kill anyone, no matter who they are or what they do. 

I also believe that Jesus was a pacifist and I agree with McKenzie when he writes: “if we cannot know from the New Testament that Jesus rejected violence absolutely, then we can know nothing of Jesus’ person or message. It is the clearest of themes.”

For the first three hundred years after Christ, the early Christian communities lived in total commitment to Jesus’s non-violence. Sadly, for the next 1700 years, Christian mainline churches have not believed, taught or lived Jesus’s simple message: love your enemies, do not kill.

During the last 1700 years, Christians have moved so far away from the Christic life of non-violence that we find ourselves in the terrible dilemma of condemning one kind of homicide and violence while paying for, actively participating in or supporting homicidal violence and war on a magnitude far greater than that which we condemn in others.

There is indeed a longstanding defeat in our theology. To help us out of this dilemma, we need to hear the full gospel message from our Christian leaders.

We need to reject the ‘just war’ theology and develop a theology in keeping with Jesus’ non-violence.

Some Christians believe that the ‘just war’ theory can be applied and that they can use violence – that is, ‘armed struggle/armed resistance’ – or can be adopted by governments to justify ongoing war.

It is precisely because of this ‘bad’ theology that we need, from our spiritual or religious leaders, a clear message and an unambiguous proclamation that violence is not the way of Jesus, violence is not the way of Christianity, and that armaments, nuclear weapons, militarism and war must be abolished and replaced with a more human and moral way of solving our problems without killing each other. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Mairead Maguire
BELFAST, Oct 13 2014 (IPS)

How can we explain that in the 2lst century we are still training millions of men and women in our armed forces and sending them to war? 

There are more choices than war or peace, there are multi-optional choices and a civilian-based non-military diplomatic-political policy has more chance of succeeding in solving a violent conflict.

In war, the cost in civilian lives is incalculable, not to mention the many military personnel whose lives are destroyed.  Then there is the cost to the environment and the cost to human potential as our scientists waste their lives planning and researching even more horrific weapons which increasingly, in modern war, kill more civilians than combatants.

Mairead Maguire

For example, the United States and the United Kingdom committed genocide against the Iraqi people when, between 1990 and 2012, they killed 3.3 million people – including 750,000 children – through sanctions and wars.

We all also watched our television screens in horror in July and August this year as the Israeli military bombarded civilians in Gaza for 50 days.

But, why are we surprised at this cruelty of military when they are doing what they are trained to do – kill, at the behest of their politicians and some people?

It is shocking to listen to politicians and military boast of their military prowess when in lay persons’ terms what it means is killing of human beings.

Every day through our television and local culture, we are subjected to the glorification of militarism and bombarded with war propaganda by governments telling us we need nuclear weapons, arms manufacturers, and war to kill the killers who might kill us.

However, too many people do not have peace or the basics to help them achieve peace. “Every day through our television and local culture, we are subjected to the glorification of militarism and bombarded with war propaganda by governments telling us we need nuclear weapons, arms manufacturers, and war to kill the killers who might kill us”

They live their lives struggling with the roots of violence, some of which are poverty, war, militarism, occupation, racism and fascism. They have seen that they release uncontrollable forces of tribalism and nationalism. These are dangerous and murderous forms of identity which we need to transcend.

To do this, we need to acknowledge that our common humanity and human dignity are more important than our different traditions; to recognise that our lives and the lives of others are sacred and we can solve our problems without killing each other; to accept and celebrate diversity and otherness; to work to heal the ‘old’ divisions and misunderstandings; to give and accept forgiveness, and to choose listening, dialogue and diplomacy; to disarm and demilitarise as the pathway to peace.

In my own country, in Northern Ireland, when faced with a violent and prolonged ethnic/political conflict, the civil community organised to take a stand, rejected all violence and committed itself to working for peace, justice and reconciliation.

Through unconditional, all-inclusive dialogue, we reached peace and continue to work to build up trust and friendship and change in the post-conflict era. The civil community took a leading role in this journey from violence to peace.

I hope this will give an example to other countries such as Ukraine, where it is necessary for an end to the war, and a solution of the problem on the basis of the Charter of the United Nations and the Helsinki Accords.

We are also challenged to continue to build structures through which we can cooperate and which reflect our relations of interconnection and interdependence.  The vision of the founders of the European Union to link countries together economically in order to lessen the likelihood of war among nations is a worthy endeavour.

Unfortunately instead of putting more energy into providing help for E.U. citizens and others, we are witnessing the growing militarisation of Europe, its role as a driving force for armament and its dangerous path, under the leadership of the United States/NATO, towards a new ‘cold’ war and military aggression.

The European Union and many of its countries, which used to take initiatives in the United Nations for peaceful settlements of conflict, are now one of the most important war assets of the U.S./NATO front.  Many countries have also been drawn into complicity in breaking international law through U.S./U.K./NATO wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and so on.

It is for this reason that I believe NATO should be abolished and that steps be taken towards disarmament through non-violent action and civil resistance.

The means of resistance are very important. Our message that armed groups, militarism and war do not solve our problems but aggravate them challenges us to use new ways and that is why we need to teach the science of peace at every level of society.

The whole of civilisation is now facing a challenge with the growth of what President Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961) warned the U.S. people against – the military/industrial complex – saying that it would destroy U.S. democracy.

We know now that a small group made up of the military/industrial/media/corporate/academic elite, whose agenda is profit, arms, war and valuable resources, now holds power worldwide and has a stronghold on elected governments.  We see this in the gun and Israeli lobbies, among others, which wield great power over U.S. politics.

We have witnessed this in ongoing wars, invasions, occupations and proxy wars, all allegedly in the name of “humanitarian intervention and democracy”. However, in reality, they are causing great suffering, especially to the poor, through their policies of arms, war, domination and control of other countries and their resources.

Unmaking this agenda of war and demanding the implementation of justice, human rights and international law is the work of the peace movement.

We can turn our current path of destruction around by spelling out a clear vision of what kind of a world we want to live in, demanding an end to the military-industrial complex, and insisting that our governments adopt policies of peace, just economics and cooperation with each other in this multi-polar world. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Excerpt:

There are conflicts old and new crying for solution and reconciliation, not violence, with reasonable, realistic ways out.

Take the South Sudan conflict between the Nuer and the Dinka. We know the story of the borders drawn by the colonial powers, confirmed in Berlin in 1884. Change a border by splitting a country – referendum or not – and what do you expect opening Pandora’s box? More Pandora.

There is a solution: not drawing borders, making them irrelevant. The former Sudan could have become a federation with much autonomy, keeping some apart and others together in confederations-communities, also across borders. Much to learn from Switzerland, EU and ASEAN.

Johan Galtung, rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University. Credit: IPS

Take the Maghreb-Mali+ complex: a road to peace runs through Tuareg high autonomy and confederations of the autonomies, in addition to the state system. Proceeds from natural resources – oil, uranium, gold, metals – should benefit the owners, not former colonisers. The United Nations’ task is to make the West comply with socioeconomic human rights.

Take what is called the last colony (well, Ulster? Palestine?): Sahrawi, Spain’s shame for not having decolonised; the United Nations Charter Article 73 formula is not perfect but differential treatment is unacceptable.

Take Ceuta and Melilla, “Spanish” enclaves in Morocco, and Gibraltar, an “English” enclave in Spain: use the Hong Kong formula with sovereignty for the owners, flag and garrison, and leave the system as it is.

Geography and history matter; sovereignty for one, system for the other. Not a bad formula for the Falkland/Malvinas islands or Northern Ireland, with a reborn Republic of Ireland in a Confederation of British Isles.

Back to Berlin 1884, institutionalising the outrageous sociocide, with genocide and ecocide, perpetrated on Africans on top of centuries of Arab-West slavery. But do not forget the Congress of Berlin six years earlier, in 1878, doing the same to the Balkans, with the infamous Article 25 giving the Dual Monarchy, Austria-Hungary, the right to occupy and administer Bosnia-Herzegovina temporarily.

On Oct. 6, 1908 they did exactly that, Turkey and Russia both being weak. What do you expect when annexing someone’s land? A resistance movement of course, and ultimately, on Jun. 28, 1914, the sacred date to the Serbs, having been defeated by the Turks 525 years earlier: Two shots rang out in Sarajevo.

One century later “historians” (who pay their salaries, states?) see the shots as the cause of World War I, not what caused the shots; like seeing the terrorists, not what causes terrorism.

Then as now the same two stories, nations made prisoners of states, and states-peoples made prisoners of empires. Sarajevo used against terrorism.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson used self-determination to dismantle the beaten Prussian, Habsburg and Ottoman empires; but not the victors’ empires as a young Vietnamese in Paris experiences, chased away from the U.S. Embassy: Ho Chi Minh, claiming the same for his people.

And the U.S. Versailles delegation rejected that claim by Sudeten Germans against Czechoslovakia; accepted by England, not to “appease” Adolf Hitler, but to rectify a wrong.

What a fantastic chance for German-Austrian foreign policy!

Start this 2014 centenary year preparing 150 anniversary conferences, in 2028 and 2034, apologising for 1914, undoing some harm, letting Africans be Africans and Balkans be Balkans of various kinds, stop blaming their victims for being unruly, restless, terrorist and so on. The peaceful century 1815-1914: some peace! Don’t miss the chance.

But they were not alone. In 1905 the U.S.-Japan, Taft-Katsura (later president and prime minister, respectively) agreed to U.S. rule in the Philippines and Japanese rule in Korea, in the interest of “peace in East Asia” – their peace, meaning rule. A good century later the Obama-Abe (president and prime minister, respectively) uneasy agreement on Japan’s aggressive policy.

The solution to the Korean Peninsula conflict is a peace treaty and normalisation with North Korea, a Korean nuclear free zone and work on the open border-confederation-federation-unitary state continuum.

If the U.S. fails to go along, why not go ahead, also multilaterally and via United Nations.

But they were not alone: in 1917 Balfour Jewish homeland followed the Sykes-Picot treason with four disastrous colonies. With a major difference, however: the Jews had been there before; some title to some land, but not to an ever-expanding Jewish state (just one word away from “only Jewish”).

The road to peace must pass through a pre-1967 Israel with Jewish characteristics, Palestine recognised, a Middle East Community of Israel with border countries, an Organisation for Cooperation and Security in West Asia, with Syria (an upper chamber for the many nations with cultural autonomy – Ottoman millet), Iraq (maybe confederation, with no U.S. bases), the Kurds (autonomy in the four countries for some land, a confederation of autonomies), Iran (an end to Benjamin Netanyahu extremism), a moderate Israel, and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection.

Afghanistan? Full U.S.-NATO withdrawal, an end to foreign bases, coalition government, Swiss-style constitution with much autonomy for villages and nations, and gender parity. But let Afghans be Afghans.

China’s claims on sea and air space? Too much, but the Chinese had been there before, 500-1500; some title to some sea, some air.

And U.S.-China: direct cooperation for mutual benefit, make it more equal; the U.S. is cheating itself, building warehouses, not factories.

U.S. spying on the world: the point is not clemency for Edward Snowden but to drop the NSA and punish those, also allies, who violated human rights.

The West tries to claim the moral high ground by changing discourse to something they think they have and others do not: democracy. Running a huge colonial-imperial system against the will of others? Some democracy.
(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)