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 AFWW Newsletter #36-July 2014 - Four Notable Events 
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Article Headline
Four Notable Events
World Beyond War Fundraiser
People's Climate March
WILPF - 100 Yr. Congress and Conference
Women. Seriously! Compaign
AFWW Hails Women Rising Up
Hand Keynote - "War Not Inevitable"
About AFWW
 
Quotable Quote 
 
It always seems impossible, until it is done. 
Nelson Mandela
 
 

A Good Book

 

War, Peace, and Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views. 
Edited by Douglas P. Fry. 2013. 
An important work. The latest word in how human nature relates to war. From the perspective of AFWW, it does have a serious weakness in that it overlooks the relationship of women to war and the necessary role of women in ending war. 
 

  

 

A Good Video

  

 The Evolution of a Global Peace System. 

20 min. 

A video based on historian Kent Shifferd's book From War to Peace and produced by the War Prevention Initiative of the Jubitz Family Foundation. It outlines over 20 historical events and trends that are part of the  progress we have already made toward a global peace system and the emergence of a global spirit that is reaching out for peace.    

 
 

  

  

  

  

  

  

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A Future Without War

Believe in it.

Envision it.

Work for it.

And we will achieve it.

  

  

  

 
QuickLinks


These three quick links are to Dr. Hand's core articles on paradigm shift:


To Abolish War


Shaping the Future


More Links:
Four happenings from four different groups are a small put powerful sample of the efforts now under way--on all continents and carried forward by people of all races, creeds, and nationalities--to speed us to the rapidly approaching moment when a global movement to end war reaches critical mass.
 
This quote of Victor Hugo speaks of an "idea whose time has come." The NASA photo--Earthrise--speaks to the now global understanding that we are one species and we share one home in the cosmos.

 

And one idea whose "time has come" is that our species now has the knowledge and ability to end war, if we have the will to do so. 

 

This newsletter provides links to the following noteworthy happenings, all of them described in some detail. You may wish to engage with them, attend them, and spread the "good news" that they symbolize: that efforts to end war are well under way.

 

Happening now: a crowd-funding Indigogo effort by the coalescing group World Beyond War.

 

Happening 21 September 2014: a global climate march sponsored by 350.Org and many others at the United Nations. One goal is to make clear the link between the waste and destruction of wars and the urgent needs the global community has for resources to meet the mind-blowing and potentially existential challenges we now face as the global climate shifts.

 

Happening April 27-29, 2015: a global conference in the Hague sponsored by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and the Nobel Women's Initiative (NWI) during which women from all corners of the globe will lay out a Manifesto addressing their move to end war.

 

Happening now and culminating in October 2015: a 16 month Global Campaign on Women, Peace, and Security. Called Women. Seriously! it aims to create a broad-based movement that believes that input and leadership from women is indispensable to peace.

 

 

World Beyond War IndiGoGo Funding Campaign

 

Here is a great cause where your donation, however small, can have a huge impact on the cause of ending war.  Yes, actually ending ALL war!

 

World opinion has shifted against war. It's essential that we seize this moment to crystallize that opinion into a movement that spreads awareness that war can be ended, that its ending is hugely popular, that war should be ended as it endangers rather than protects - and harms rather than benefits.

 

World Beyond War

is a global nonviolent movement to end war and establish a just and sustainable peace. And a first task of the movement is to spread the good news that ending war is possible and that we can build a global peace system that ensures an end to the slaughter. 

 

Such an awareness campaign must be funded. For example, billboards and ads around the world can bring together those ready to work for this transformative, history-altering effort. So this fundraising and advertising campaign is step one to launch this campaign.

 

Visit the campaign's fundraising webpage. View the video explaining in detail the objective of the awareness and outreach effort that will be undertaken with the money raised.

 

Check out this YouTube Video, the powerful Eric Colville song "The End of War." It's one example of what World Beyond War can use the money raised to make widely available via many media outlets.

 

 

Also check out the World Beyond War extensive website

for information, resources, and news.

 

People's Climate March - 21 Sept 2014

 

This march is described by its planners as

"YOUR INVITATION TO CHANGE EVERYTHING"

 

Heads of state from around the world are going to New York City in September for an historic summit on climate change. Global media will be in force. March organizers' intention is to create an unprecedented climate mobilization - in size, beauty, and impact. The intention is to demand a world we know is within our reach: a world with an economy that works for people and the planet.

 

Climate change and war are inextricably linked, twins joined at the hip.  People concerned with one cannot ignore the other because climate change will either unite us in common cause....or put us with weapons at each others throats into the indefinite future.

 

We can waste money on war, or use that money to deal with disappearing shorelines and acidifying oceans. We can have our best and brightest minds inventing and building new weapons of war and using them in mortal combat and destruction, or have those minds focused laser-like on creative ways to counter the climate change monster we have created and are continuing to feed.

 

Massive climate changes are now predicted to grow powerful in ways we cannot predict. They will do things to us that threaten even more wars because within climate change lies the seeds of conflict and violence in at least three ways:

  1. By wiping out coastline cities, even large swaths of many countries, by engendering long droughts in former crop-growing regions, by interfering with the biological life-cycles of important crop species and animals critical to normal functioning of those species, by acidifying oceans in ways that disrupt fisheries upon which livelihoods and food supplies depend....by all of these things and more, climate change will generate massive migrations and refugee problems....wherein lies seeds of war.
  2. War gobbles up financial resources and human brainpower that should be used to deal with climates changes, the fertile grounds for more war.
  3. War destroys infrastructure and ravages land needed to house and feed families and communities, thus sowing the seeds of more war.

To continue to wage war is utter folly in the face of the onrushing potential existential disasters of climate change.

 

Watch the Climate March video - which clearly links climate change to issues of war and justice. 

 

A sign-up page has a countdown clock, links to resources, how to get there and more. 

 

You can read the invitation and a link to the list of the many sponsors, including Bill McKibbin's 350.ORG (as of mid-July there were over 400 sponsors), lists of events leading up to the march and the march itself. For example, there will be monthly events around the country, and a large conference on the Friday evening and Saturday before the march on Sunday.

 

An article by 350.Org founder Bill McKibben, appeared in the June 5th, 2014 issue of Rolling Stone. 

 

Here is how the last line of the invitation reads:

 

"We want this moment to be about us - the people who are standing up in our communities, to organize, to build power, and to shift power to a just, safe, peaceful world."

 

Women's Power to Stop War: a Congress and a Conference

 

One hundred years ago this next April, women from many countries meeting in the Hague, having both vision and hope, founded WILPF - the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. 

 

In April, 2015, WILPF will celebrate this centennial anniversary. On the webpage dedicated to the WILPF Congress and Conference they write: "In light of this monumental event, WILPF has given the name to the movement it has been advocating for the past 100 years Women's Power to Stop War. The Congress and Conference will take place in cooperation with the Nobel Women's Initiative.

 

The Congress, open only to members, takes place April 22-25, in the Peace Palace in the Hague. Registration is now open for WILPF section heads and section delegates. Other WILPF members who sign up now will be put on a waiting list, which will be open on 1 February, 2015.

 

The Conference, open to all, takes place April 27-29, 2015. Registration is already open.

 

WILPF works to achieve through peaceful means world disarmament, full rights for women, racial and economic justice, an end to all forms of violence, and to establish those political, social, and psychological conditions which can assure peace, freedom, and justice for all. The intention of the Congress is to gather and mobilize exactly 1,136 women in the Hague, with the objective to set a new approach on how to stop war and conflicts and promote women's participation and the principles of permanent peace.

 

By joining the movement, you will be part of an international community of courageous activists, who believe conflicts and wars cannot be stopped without the participation of women - and that it is time that women focus on and use their power to stop war.


CONVENERS' GROUP (L-R): Baroness Mary Goudie, Ms. Luz Mendez, Ms. Ruth-Gaby Vermot- Mangold, Ms. Irene M. Santiago, lead convener, Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, Ambassador Melanne Verveer and Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee. Not in picture: Ms. Madeleine Rees

Women. Seriously!
A 16 Month Campaign

 

British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and Angelina Jolie, Special Envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, co-chaired the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict on 10-13 June 2014 at ExCel London. This was the largest gathering ever brought together on the subject, with 1,700 delegates and 129 country delegations including 79 Ministers. The Summit agreed on practical steps to tackle impunity for the use of rape as a weapon of war, and to begin to change global attitudes to these crimes. Find out more in the summit blog.

 

At the summit, social activist Irene Santiago announced the beginning of a 16 month campaign to recognize the indelible role that women play in building peace and security worldwide.  The campaign is called Women. Seriously!  It is a Global Campaign on Women, Peace, and Security.

 

As described in a press release from one of the campaign's sponsors, the Institute for Inclusive Security, the campaign is being convened by a group of eminent leaders from around the world including a Nobel Peace Laureate, activists, and former diplomats who are committed to women playing a leading role in peace and security. The press release lists the many principle, high profile sponsors and notes that both the British Foreign Secretary and Angelina Jolie endorsed this campaign.

 

The campaign will run for 16 months. It aims to create a broad-based movement which believes that women are indispensable to peace. The campaign's web page, just getting organized, will be the place to follow all the action.

 

The culminating activity will be dialogues at the UN and a celebratory event to commemorate Beijing+20 and the 70th anniversary of the UN in October, 2015.

 

 

AFWW Hails Women Rising Up to End War

 

Dr. Judith Hand, the evolutionary biologist who is the founder of the project A Future Without War.org, takes special pleasure in the events planned by WILPF and Women. Seriously!  In her two books--Women, Power, and the Biology of Peace and Shift: The Beginning of War, The Ending of War--and in articles on her website and blog, Dr. Hand makes the strongest case possible for the empowerment of women if we ever want an enduring end to wars. Human biology is such that women, in general much more than men, are the natural allies of peace movements because women are geared by their biology to strongly favor socially stable communities in which to raise their children.  

 

In less than 15 years from the time she began her research into the causes of and cure for war, women have discovered their voice and now are rising to grasp the power to catalyze the next great paradigm shift in human history...the permanent end to war!!!

 
 
"War is Not Inevitable" - Judith Hand Keynote, Vaasa, Finland

 

In 2014, the founder of A Future Without War,
Dr. Judith Hand, delivered a keynote speech at Åbo University in Vaasa, Finland at a conference the theme of which was "To Abolish War." This speech focused on two subjects: why we live in a moment in history that is uniquely poised to actually bring an end to war and establish a foundation for an enduring peace, and how that goal can be pursued and ultimately achieved within two generations, or even less.

 

The speech does the following:

 

  • Explains why our time in history is different and posed for success while people who preceded us could not succeed.
  • Puts the concept of a major social (paradigm) shift - a Nonviolence Revolution - into a broad historical context so we see how such a shift will fit into the story of human history on earth.
  • Explains why a movement to end war can be the engine driving a Nonviolence Revolution.
  • Describes the basics of how a global campaign to end war could be structured and work.
  • Describes the two types of actions needed for success - Constructive and Obstructive Programs - and lists suggested "interest clusters" or cornerstones of Constructive Programs that are necessary for ending war and absolutely essential for building an enduring peace system.
 
 
About A Future Without War

We want to provide newsletter readers with a reminder about our extensive website,  www.afww.org. The materials can be a reference for personal use, something to share with friends or colleagues who doubt that it would ever be possible to abolish war, and as thought pieces to stimulate discussions, for example, by your students, a book group, or peace activist organizations. You will find on the site:

  • A Mission Statement
  • An Action Plan
  • Keynote Speech - Åbo University, Vaasa, Finland 2014 - "War is Not Inevitable"
  • Capstone Essay: "To Abolish War"
  • "Overview" Essays - 7 essays explaining the core rationale for why it is reasonable to believe we could abolish war if we make it a priority.
  • "Cornerstone" Essays - 9 essays explaining each of the broad categories of "good works" that we need to attend to simultaneously in any campaign to abolish war and maintain that state into the future.
  • "The Books" - a Table of Contents, reviews, and FREE download of Women, Power, and the Biology of Peace, links to purchase that book and also A Future Without War: the Strategy of a Warfare Transition"
  • A Link to the AFWW Blog
  • A Map of Nonviolent Cultures
  • A Video of Dr. Hand
  • Several Movie and Book Reviews
  • Archives of AFWW Newsletters
  • Links to over 150 Organizations involved in some aspect of the campaign to abolish war
  • Miscellaneous AFWW Essays

These are titles of and links to current Miscellaneous AFWW Essays 


A Future Without War
Believe in it. Envision it. Work for it.
And we will achieve it.
 





A Future Without War 
Contact Info
A Future Without War Dr. Judith Hand P.O. Box 270074, San Diego, CA 92198 info@afww.org