Tuesday, September 26, 2006
10 Prizewinners
Gathered at PeaceJam, held in Denver last weekend, the ten Nobel Peace Laureates, together with three thousand youth from around the world, participated in the largest event of its kind in North America.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa declared that if hunger is eliminated, the world will have stopped terrorism. “If we want to live in peace, we have to realize we are all members of the same family,” said the African Nobel Peace Laureate.
John Dear, a Jesuit priest, peace activist and author of “You Will Be My Witnesses” (Orbis) and “Living Peace” (Doubleday) reported on the meeting. Mairead Maguire, Nobel laureate from Belfast, said war simply doesn’t work.
“Nuclear weapons don’t work. I don’t believe in a just war. The war on Iraq is totally immoral, totally illegal, and totally unnecessary. So we need to say no to war, and no to nuclear weapons. We need to learn the way of nonviolence.”
Said Shrini Ebadi, a judge from Iran proclaimed: “Every nation with nuclear weapons should dismantle them immediately. I wish, for example, that after 9/11 the US had built thousands of schools in Afghanistan in honor of each victim.”
President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica pointed out that “the US spends over half a trillion a year on militarism, but only a tiny fraction on food, medicine and education for the world’s poor. Real security means first of all security against hunger, disease, and poverty.”
And Rigoberta Menchu, the Guatemalan indigenous leader, cut US to the core: “If there were no wars in the world, the US economy would not prosper. Therefore, there must not be any more prosperity in the United States, if the world’s poor are to prosper.”
“When I was tortured by the Argentine Junta,” Adolfo Perez Esquivel told Fr. Dear, “I saw on the ceiling of my cell, written in blood, the words, ‘God does not kill.’ We need to learn that lesson, and resist the forces of death and destruction, and struggle for life and dignity for all. If we focus on this task, we can build peace.”
Archbishop Tutu proposed that countries export generosity instead of bombs and exhorted participants to distance themselves from the cynicism of the old that made a mess of the world. “The world is hurting. Go and heal it,” he said.
Some of the best truest kindest words i have sean writen bless all them with long life for speaking the truth.!!!!!!!!
Just as poverty breeds terrorists, overpopulation breeds further rape of the natural diversity of our planet to make room for our food. Unless this root cause of environmental and civil injustice is addressed the symptoms can only grow more devastating. Policies against contraception and abortion ultimately are the breeding ground for terrorism. I refer you to my post on this, The Dark within which We Whistle. Certainly we must feed those alive, but history and science has proven that a species population is determined by its food supply, no man made rules have effect on that. There will always be a third of mankind starving at the artificial rates of our reproduction and methods of producing food. To stop hunger we must stop population growth, then maybe we can catch up with the hunger without further rape of the planet for more food. Maybe.
Non violence, the only way to true peace. America is the opposite of peace. It is good to see such respected and important people speak out. Why can´t Americans face themselves and realize their own evil, they are their country. The world needs leaders that show peace is the way. America should stand for an example of what a nations power turned wrong will do, it is a land of evil that treatens the world in all possible ways.
There are times when we have to go to war. I do not support the Iraq war. We are borrowing ungodly amounts from the Chinese, which they are buying the debt back. I am unsure of how this will get re-paid. The current president does not care how it will get paid back, it is not going to be his responsibility
Desmond Tutu is a man of substance - he was a thorn in the side of the Apartheid regime during the 80's - they couldn't touch him because of his international position in the church - and he continues to be the voice of conscience; not only for South Africa but (as is demonstrated by this post) for the world.
Who will feed the War Machine if not the empoverished and ignorant? Would the War Machine renounce all the richness and prosperity gatheres throughout centuries of war to feed the starving child who's only sin is to be the "fruit" of another raped mother of another inter-ethnical war?
