Archives: Endorsements

Urgent appeal to support activists in Odessa, Ukraine:

Join Ramsey Clark, Cynthia McKinney,
John Pilger, Sara Flounders & more!

The International Action Center endorses this appeal from the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) on behalf of besieged activists and family members in Odessa, Ukraine. We urge you to support UNAC’s delegation to Odessa and share this information widely.

From UNAC Co-coordinators
Marilyn Levine & Joe Lombardo:

It’s been nearly two years since the world was shocked by reports of the deaths of scores of pro-democracy activists at the hands of extreme right-wing forces in the city of Odessa, Ukraine.

It was barely three months after a violent, right-wing coup overthrew the elected Ukrainian government. The activists had set up a tent city in Odessa’s historic Kulikovo Square to publicize their demand for a national referendum to decide the legitimacy of the coup.

On May 2, a large mob led by organized fascist groups set fire to the camp, forcing the activists to retreat into the nearby five-story House of Trade Unions. The building was then set on fire. Many died of smoke inhalation or were burned alive. Some jumped to their deaths. Some of those attempting to flee the building were shot or beaten to death. One pregnant woman was strangled. At least 46 activists were killed and many more were injured. (You can find many Internet videos. A good overview is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yflMScowPfk)

Every week since the massacre, family members, friends and supporters, organized as the Mothers Committee for May 2, have held memorials in Kulikovo Square. These memorials are often harassed by the same or similar right-wing thugs, many of whom belong to neo-Nazi organizations.

The Mothers Committee is now planning a large memorial for this May 2 to mark the second anniversary of the massacre. The fascist organizations have publicly declared that they will not allow the memorial to take place.

In response to this very serious situation, and in consultation with our contacts in Odessa, UNAC is working to re-focus the world’s attention on Odessa, in the hope that this might help convince the U.S. and Ukrainian governments that allowing an attack on the memorial would not be in their best interests.

As part of this effort, UNAC will be sending a delegation of U.S. human rights activists to Odessa to monitor the memorial. We also sent a statement to the United Nations Human Rights Committee endorsing the call by the Mothers Committee for an international investigation into the 2014 massacre. Significantly, one of the leading fascist organizations, called Maidan, has formally asked the U.N. to deny this request.

YOU CAN HELP!

We also have drawn up the attached statement calling on the city government of Odessa, the federal government of Ukraine and the U.S. government to ensure that the civic rights of those attending the May 2 memorial, including the U.S. monitors, are respected. The statement also again endorses the Mothers Committee’s call for an international investigation into the events of May 2, 2014.

We are now appealing to human rights and progressive organizations and prominent individuals to sign on to this statement. We are asking you to help with this effort. Please send endorsements to:

UNACpeace@gmail.com.

TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE

In order to be effective, we will need to send the statement to the Odessa, Ukrainian and U.S. authorities as soon as possible. At the same time, we will be releasing the statement to the world media.
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Statement in support of May 2 memorial in Odessa and for a United Nations investigation into the tragic events of May 2, 2014

On May 2, 2016, a memorial will be held in Odessa, Ukraine, to honor the memory of scores of pro-democracy activists who were brutally murdered on that date in Odessa two years ago. There is no reason for the City authorities to forbid a peaceful memorial, but right-wing radicals – some of whom are believed to have been involved in the events of 2014 – have declared that they will not allow it to proceed.
Partial list of endorsers:
Ramsey Clark – Former U.S. Attorney General; Human Rights Activist
Cynthia McKinney, Ph.D – Former Member, U.S. Congress;
2008 Green Party U.S. Presidential Candidate
John Pilger – Award-winning Journalist
Marilyn Levin & Joe Lombardo – Co-Coordinators, United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC)
Ray McGovern – Former CIA Analyst; Co-Founder,
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Margaret Kimberley – Editor and Senior Columnist, Black Agenda Report
Bernadette Ellorin – Chairperson, Bayan USA
Ana Edwards – Chair, Virginia Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project, Richmond, Virginia
Sara Flounders, Co-Director, International Action Center
U.S. Peace Council
See full list here: http://nepajac.org/ukrainepetition.htm

This statement was initiated by the United National Antiwar Coalition, a broad coalition of peace and justice organizations in the United States. UNAC encourages the circulation of this petition among human rights organizations all over the world. Please send all new endorsements to: UNAC, PO Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054 USA; Phone: 518-227-6947; Email: UNACpeace@gmail.com; Web: www.unacpeace.org/

International Action Center
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Phone: 212-633-6646
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212-633-6646

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Dear President Park:

We have learned that your government, the South Korean Navy and Samsung Construction division are currently demanding damages from local groups and residents on Jeju Island for the alleged costs incurred due to the residents’ opposition to the Navy base construction: US $2.9 million. Your government has listed the Gangjeong village association, five groups and 116 residents and activists as the defendants.

The insistence that the construction delay was caused by residents is groundless. There are multiple complex reasons for the delay in the construction schedule. The principal reasons include disputes and controversy over the legality of the work, suspension orders issued over illegal construction work, losses and damage to structures caused by the natural environment, the strong wind and waves of Gangjeong’s coastline, Typhoon Bolaven, Typhoon Neoguri, etc. It is sophistry and exaggeration to claim that the residents blocking construction vehicles from entering and leaving the base for only a few minutes at a time caused the delay.

The responsibility lies solely with the state for threatening citizens’ right to a peaceful existence and causing their pain by enforcing this wrongful government policy. There is no one else as responsible for this as the government. The state rather than the residents bears the responsibility. Without mentioning a word about their own responsibility, it is the height of irresponsibility for the state to shift the blame for the delays in the construction onto individual citizens. The state that should be protecting the basic rights of its citizens is instead declaring war against them.

The biggest crime of all is that the ROK government and the Navy rejected the will of the Gangjeong villagers and have destroyed a 500-year old community. In addition the environmental ‘special preservation area’ is being destroyed as well – violating your own government’s environmental protection designation.

Our international membership stands with Gangjeong villagers and we demand that these outrageous and illegal charges be immediately dropped.

We eagerly await your positive response.

In peace,

Bruce K. Gagnon
Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space

Front Page

http://space4peace.blogspot.com (blog)

Your Excellency,

Peace.

I hope this letter finds you well.

I am writing in support of the people of Gangjeong in Jeju Island, South Korea who for many years have been defending their community from destruction brought about by the building of a naval base which will be part of the US military network in the Asia-Pacific region.

The peaceful protest of the villagers is a legitimate form of democratic action. It is an expression of the will of the people. It is therefore wrong of the government of South Korea, the South Korean Navy and the Samsung Construction Division to demand damages from local groups including the Gangjeong village association to the tune of US 2.9 billion dollars for allegedly causing delays in the construction of the base. Democratic protest anywhere in the world should not be subjected to such pressure and punishment.

The lawsuit is a travesty of justice. It is a blatant misuse of the legal process. The International Movement for a Just World (JUST) of which I am President demands that the lawsuit be dropped.

JUST also condemns various unjust measures adopted in the construction of the naval base.

I am attaching a letter sent to Her Excellency the President of South Korea by Bruce K. Gagnon, the Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.

It is my hope that your Excellency will transmit this letter from JUST and the attachment to the President of the Republic of Korea and the Korean government.

Thank you very much for reading this letter.

Warm regards,

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar,

President,

International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

The war on Afghanistan enters Year 15 this week.

We hoped that 250 people would raise their voices in opposition on the Thunderclap planned for Wednesday, but already 1,000 have — and rising! Join here.

Almost 6 years after President Obama’s 2009 “surge,” there remain close to 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with the Pentagon talking up the need to keep those troops there and add more.

Our friends at Voices for Creative Nonviolence are mobilizing activists to gather in front of hospitals around the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, under the message, “Dropping Bombs Here would be a War Crime!” and “The same is true in Afghanistan.”

Our allies will be protesting in Chicago on Tuesday, October 6, at 3 p.m. in front of Stroger Hospital (at Ogden and Damen).

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., CodePink is inviting everyone who’d like to help to protest at the Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on Tuesday. Meet 8 a.m., Tuesday, October 6, 2015, at Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room G-50. Contact: mailto:Michaela@codepink.org?can_id=a4f488f42ad134d4357acc4bfa4bb613&source=email-protest-bombing-hospitals&email_referrer=protest-bombing-hospitals

Listen to a discussion of the hospital bombing and the consciences of soldiers here: Talk Nation Radio: Maria Santelli on Conscience and War.

Read Ruminations of an Afghan Girl Burning to Death in a Hospital Bed.

Watch this video: How ‘Anti-War’ is the United Nations? – David Swanson (World Beyond War)

Sign the Declaration of Peace.

#Enough! : A campaign to abolish war

Building a critical mass of nonviolent relationships for a green and equal world without war.

#Enough!

#Enough wars!

Enough global warming and inequality!

On the 21st of September 2015, the International Day of Peace, we will launch a campaign to abolish war, a campaign called #Enough!

Our hope is to encourage all members of the human family to sign an agreement never to wage war again. In ‘The People’s Agreement to Abolish War’, we’ll work to ban wars person by person. It’s not a petition, because we don’t need permission to live without war. And we won’t wait for the elite, as they’re the ones who keep waging wars.

We’re aware that to abolish war, we must also reverse global warming and inequality, because these crises are driven by the same elite who rule us by force.

We also recognize that abolishing war may take a few generations, and that it’s going to take all of us.

Below is a Flyer for #Enough! and the text for ‘The People’s Agreement to Abolish War’. A multimedia website for #Enough! is under construction – we’ll post an update as we approach the campaign’s launch date on the 21st of September 2015.

#Enough!

We agree to abolish war. We invite you to sign ‘The People’s Agreement to Abolish War’.

We opt out of today’s warring systems by building another world of people who agree to ban weapons and war.

We’re tired of wars.

Wars don’t work.

The Afghan Peace Volunteers are ordinary people with no political agenda.

#Enough! is organized entirely by unpaid volunteers.

We’re tired of wars! Almost every Afghan family has lost a loved one to wars. We have no jobs, our air is polluted and our land has been stripped of trees. Poverty, corruption and terrorism are worsening.

We’ve tried to bring peace by waging war for more than 40 years. War has not worked.

So the Afghan Peace Volunteers have formed a community at the Borderfree Nonviolence Community Centre in which weapons and war are banned!

We reject hatred, revenge and killing because we believe that nonviolent friendships can change Afghanistan and the world.

We’ll wear the Borderfree Blue Scarf to remind ourselves that ‘all human beings live under the same blue sky’.

Person by person, we’ll nurture a critical mass of nonviolent friendships to form another world!

#Enough! The People’s Agreement to Abolish War

#Enough!

We, the people of the human family, agree to abolish war.

Like you, we Afghans are tired of wars. War costs us everything and resolves nothing. War has increased ‘terrorism’. Wars risk spiraling into our destruction by nuclear weapons.

To abolish war, we form small, local peace circles or communities of two or more persons in which we agree to ban weapons and war and to build nonviolent systems for every aspect of life.

With autonomous alternatives, we no longer need to participate in today’s warring systems. We opt out, and we withhold support and money from any individual or group that uses war.

We begin to heal and live differently. Students learn better, laborers and farmers work better, mothers worry less, and basic human resources are better shared.

We nurture egalitarian relationships with nature and all human beings and connect to form a critical mass that’s free of borders, going beyond our separate causes and working together for a green and equal world without war. A critical mass is crucial as we can’t abolish war without reversing global warming and inequality; these are global crises driven by the same elite who rule over us by force. We abolish war person by person. We won’t wait for the elite, because they’re the ones who keep waging wars.

We make no distinction as to who wages the war, the scale of the war or the individual justifications for the war. We renounce all violence and wars and agree never to resort to war in any circumstance.

We, the people of the human family, agree to abolish war.

#Enough!

You won’t believe the response we’ve received from Capitol Hill since we first urged Members of Congress last week to #SkipTheSpeech of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Reps. Keith Ellison (D-MN), Steve Cohen (D-TN) and Maxine Waters (D-CA) circulated a “Dear Colleague” letter calling on House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to delay the speech.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Selma legend Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) publicly pledged to boycott Netanyahu’s speech and Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) called the invitation “close to subversion.”

And both the Democratic Leaders in the Senate and the House—Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)—called the speech respectively “not the right thing to do” and “not appropriate.” Pelosi even hinted that many Democrats will boycott Netanyahu!

Together with Roots Action, Jewish Voice for Peace and Code Pink, nearly 45,000 people have already taken action to urge their Members of Congress to #SkipTheSpeech and it is having a huge impact.

During his State of the Union address, President Obama pledged to veto any new Congressional sanctions against Iran while the United States attempts to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomacy.

The very next day, Boehner invited Netanyahu to address Congress on March 3 to undermine Obama’s diplomacy and build the case for more sanctions and possibly even war against Iran.

Of course Netanyahu won’t pass up the opportunity to justify Israel’s oppression of Palestinians during his speech as well.

But thanks to the activism of people like you, the tide is turning and Members of Congress are agreeing with us that Netanyahu’s speech is a terrible idea.

To sign in please click here.

This declaration in PDF format for printing

In today’s nuclear age, the consequence of a geopolitical policy of confrontation with Russia and China can only be the thermonuclear extinction of the human race. Therefore, every effort must be made to cooperate to solve the multiple crises facing humanity.

The BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have united to pursue a policy of economic development not just for their individual countries, but for the benefit of the people of all nations. To that end, they have created a New Development Bank to invest billions in necessary development projects.

China recently initiated the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), joined by over 20 Asian nations as founding members, and has set up a Silk Road Development Fund.

At the APEC conference in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping invited President Obama to join the efforts of China and other Asian nations, including Russia, in the development of the New Silk Road.

These initiatives are not geopolitical in nature. Contrary to the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) advocated by Obama, which excludes Russia and China, the BRICS-related initiatives including the Chinese proposed Free Trade Area of the Asian Pacific FTAAP) are inclusive. They are based on the concept expressed by the late Pope Paul VI that the “new name of peace is development.” Thus, in Australia at the recent G-20 meeting both Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Modi spoke of the twin goals of achieving global peace and ending poverty through economic development.

There is no problem in the world that cannot be solved by such an approach and conversely no problem that will be solved without it.

Such cooperation between the U.S., Russia, China and India, among other nations, is necessary to defeat the Ebola pandemic in Africa.

The terrorist threat represented by ISIS and Al-Qaeda is aimed equally at Russia, China and India as well as the U.S. and Europe. It can only be defeated through a new security architecture based on cooperation.

The policy of conducting “color revolutions” under the pretext of democracy represents a policy of war, even if that term is not used, because its aim is to topple governments with the aid of foreign money. It has to stop. The campaign to impose sanctions on Russia for its opposition to such “color revolutions” and to a Nazi coup in Ukraine is only exacerbating the global crisis. An approach based on mutual cooperation to achieve the common ends of mankind throughout Eurasia and beyond would instead create the basis for global peace.

While the U.S. has abandoned the Kennedy space program, the Chinese are committed to a lunar program focused on the exploitation of helium-3 for the purpose of generating unlimited fusion energy. With collaboration between the U.S., Europe, Russia, China and India, among other nations, man could finally realize Johannes Kepler’s vision of mastery of the laws of the solar system for the benefit of man.

Only such an approach would restore the United States and Europe to their original purpose as expressed in the European Renaissance and the American Revolution, a purpose which the U.S. and Europe have increasingly abandoned and the rest of the world has now adopted and is now urging them to readopt.

We therefore call upon the U.S. and Europe to abandon the suicidal geopolitical policies of the past which led to the two previous World Wars and are leading to a third and to build a future for all humanity by readopting the principle of the Treaty of Westphalia by basing foreign policy on the principle of “the benefit of the other,” which ended the Thirty Years War in Europe, and on John Quincy Adams’ concept of a “community of principle among sovereign nation states.”

That is the only course coherent with the true nature of man as the only creative species. Any other course is based on a concept of man as an animal and leads to human extinction.

As patriots of our own nations, and as citizens of the world, we call on our fellow citizens and the leaders of our nations to have the courage to break the current cycle of escalating bestiality by accepting the generous offer to collaborate with the BRICS.

(In signing this statement, I authorize my name to be appear in its publication.)

To sign in please click here