Greetings from Atlanta: City of Peace,

Founders of the Global Strategy of Non-Violence,
We celebrate your vision and goals for global service to our global family. Thank you for bringing your peace project to the Internet. We wish you much success.

Peace in...
Atlanta: City of Peace and globally,
John
www.myspace.com/ATLpeace
PS
Enjoy these two quotes:
"If it is our privilege to be independent,
it is equally our duty to be inter-dependent."
--- Gandhi

"Change does not roll in
on the wheels of inevitability,
but comes through continuous struggle."
--- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
--John
<mailto:ATLpeace@gmail.com>

Hi Andre,
Fine site; beautifully done. Your dedication is very commendable. I forwarded it to friends.

Regarding violence: Based on violent deaths per thousand, one may now be safer in Iraq than in Washington DC or Detroit.
Suggestions: translate it into Arabic and attempt to get it to Hezbolah and Al Quada who are training 11 year old children to kill infidels.
Question: What is to be done about Hezbolah's new threatened attack and committment to destroy Israel?
Guy

--Guy
<mailto:guykern@comcast.net>

This is a beautiful site!Andre has set forth a significant challenge for all of us. Let's get to it!

Do we really understand what Nonviolence is? It is far more than "refraining from the use of violence" (Webster). Nonviolence is about the "urge to life" preswent in all sentient beings and, perhaps, best exhibited by women in their natural desire to give birth to children and then to nurture and teach them.

I believe that this awareness is what leads Andre to support women's rights and effeorts to achieve global peace.

let us support these efforts!

A final request for this post: Can we try to leave politics out of this blog. Focus on political battles will not be positive until we are thoroughly grounded in Nonviolence. [Ghandhi completly understood this.]

Peace,
--Homer
<mailto:malahome108@verizon.net>

The world is a violent place. There is no cure-all. I wish there was. The people in their own communities have to change themselves and influence people in their own surroundings. Therefore, if people in Iraq, Iran, or wherever, see others promoting and believing in nonviolence, maybe they will too.

A GS of NV is designed as simply as possible. Mobilize and request, demand, or just hope for change. The governments have to know what the people want.

The quotes above are wonderful!


--Andre Sheldon

Peaceful actions begin with peaceful thoughts. We often stand in judgment of the apparent tragedies of death and discord, but every manifestation begins with a thought. And every thought comes from influences that can be so subtle that a person can react violently without being conscious of why they even considered such an action as a possibility toward their fellow man. That is why stillness is so important. Our quest toward manifesting a world of peace begins with first learning how to take no action. First be still, second listen, third learn. Only then can we do what we believe needs to be done.
--Pedro S. Silva II
<mailto:pedro@comeforitzone.info>

(Wonderful idea! Count me in.

Maybe my letter can be used. Anyone is free to use it if he/she cares to)
……………………………………………………………………………………………

Violence causes dehumanization, and, as we all know, a lot of violence is happening in Afghanistan, Iraq, and in many other places on this planet of ours. In a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, young Calvin questions his father, “Dad, how do soldiers killing each other solve the world’s problems?” Calvin’s Dad has no answer. Killing people, soldiers or not, can be extremely difficult. Let’s remember, people are made in God’s image A soldier wrote home, “It’s so hard when I am up close. When I see the faces of the people, I can’t bring myself to kill them. But when I am farther away just shooting artillery shells then I can do it, as long as I don’t see their faces.” Sad to say, young men, and now sometimes women, too, often not past their teens, are expected to be hardened killers. As George McGovern, during his 1972 presidential campaign put it, "I'm sick and tired of old men dreaming up wars in which young men do the dying.” Or let’s listen to some words from the book Soldiers by John Keegan, et al., “Old soldiers never die, but ninety-nine soldiers in a hundred are pitiably young, and they die in their millions, without beginning to guess why it is that life asks that of them.” Who speaks for them? MOTHERS OF THE WORLD, DON’T ALLOW THAT! SPEAK UP! Don’t let your children die in their millions, and when they’re pitiably young yet, and, according to Keegan, most don’t even know why they’re fighting, killing, and dying. Make friends with mothers in other countries than yours, ask, beg even, the priests and ministers of the Church to speak out boldly against the evils of war (if they are doing this already, thank them for it!), join or create groups for peace, etc., etc. Fathers, of course, too, should speak up but if fathers can’t, or won’t stop wars, maybe the women will. When Dan Rather (former CBS anchor) was on a hospital ship off the coast of Vietnam during the Vietnam War, he went into the hold of the ship and heard only one word from the lips of those wounded young soldiers, some with multiple amputations. What was the word? you may well ask. It was “Mother.” As Dan Rather puts it, “None called for father, or for doctor or nurse. Only mother.” Mothers, the world over, are you listening?

Yours sincerely,

Stan Penner

P.S. Dan Rather’s words are from “THE CAMERA NEVER BLINKS TWICE” by Dan Rather with Mickey Herskowitz in a Reader’s Digest book “Today’s Best Nonfiction.”


--Stan Penner
<mailto:stanp@mts.net>

“The half of humanity that have never bourne arms is today ready to struggle to make the brotherhood of man a reality. Perhaps the universal sisterhood is necessary before the universal brotherhood is possible.”
Bertha von Suttner, Speech to the Federation of Women of America, 1912

“If brains have brought us to what we are in now, I think it is time to allow our hearts to speak. When our sons are killed by the millions, let us, mothers, only try to do good by going to the kings and emperors without any other danger than a refusal.”
Rosika Schwimmer, Speech at International Congress of Women at the Hague, 1915

“Women will soon have political power. Woman suffrage and permanent peace will go together. When a country is in a state of mind to grant the vote to its women, it is a sign that that country is ripe for permanent peace. Women don’t feel as men do about war. They are the mothers of the race. Men think of the economic results, women think of the grief and pain.”
Dr. Aletta Jacobs, (1851-1929) Holland’s first woman doctor and founder of the Dutch suffrage movement.

“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” And, “The work of educating the world to peace is the woman’s job, because men have a natural fear of being classed as cowards if they oppose war.”
Jeanette Rankin, (1880-1973) First woman to enter U.S. House of Representative in 1917. Lost her seat in Congress when she voted against entry in WWI.

“Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace.” ~Charles Sumner

” Sometimes I think it should be a rule of war that you have to see somebody up close and get to know him before you can shoot him.” ~(Colonel Potter “MASH”)

”If you wish to be brothers, drop your weapons.” ~Pope John Paul II

“War is the only game in which both sides lose.” ~ Walter Scott

“War is the blackest villainy of which human nature is capable.”~ Erasmus

“… I had finally become anti any kind of war for whatever reason.” ~ Giles- much beloved (especially by the common soldiers) World War II British cartoonist

“War is not heroics nor is it pride/ It’s a shame to lose all those precious lives…/Where’s the glory? Never again!” ~War Amps of Canada in their theme song, NEVER AGAIN

“As far as I am concerned, war itself is immoral.” ~Omar Bradley, U.S. five star general, known as the “GI’s general.”

This is a FABULOUS idea and a long time coming.
Please include me in your links page, and keep me informed.
www.Meria.net
--Meria
<http://www.Meria.net>