“YES to PEACE” – “NO to War, Media Propaganda, US/NATO”: Peace People’s Maguire

Hear! Hear!

Insight this week from peace activist Máiread Maguire

Excerpted with minor editing by 

Carolyn Bennett

W

e are at a dangerous point in the history of our human family and it would be the greatest of tragedies for ourselves and our children if we simply allowed the war profiteers to take us into a third world war, resulting in the death of untold millions of people.

While the United States, the United Kingdom and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization push for war with Russia, it behooves people and their governments around the world to take a clear stand for peace and against violence and war – no matter where it comes from.

 

NATO’s decision in Wales in September to create a new 4,000 strong rapid reaction force for initial deployment in the [Baltic States, northeastern region of Europe containing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea] is for all of us a dangerous path to be forced down which, if not stopped, could well lead to a third world war. Cool heads and people of wisdom are needed now; not more guns, more weaponry, more war. From the present conflict in the Ukraine, to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and others – it is the NATO leadership that has been causing ongoing wars.

Provocation, misinformation, demonization, Violence aggression

NATO’s latest move commits its 28 member states to spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product on the military, and to establish a series of three to five bases in Eastern Europe where equipment and supplies will be pre-positioned to help speed deployments among other measures. This US/NATO decision to create a high readiness force with the alleged purpose of countering an alleged Russian threat reminds me of the war propaganda of lies, half truths, insinuations, rumors to which all of us were subjected in order to try to soften us up for the Iraq war and subsequent horrific wars of terror which were wars carried out by NATO-allied forces, causing the deaths of untold millions of people and destroying their countries. 

NATO’s reports including its satellite photos that show Russian combat forces engaged in military operations inside sovereign territory of Ukraine, according to the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) observation team – were based on false evidence. While NATO is busy announcing a counter-invasion to the non-existent Russian invasion of Ukraine, people in Ukraine are calling out for peace and negotiations, for political leadership that will bring them peace – not weapons and war.

Cold War

The spearhead military force will be provided by allies in rotation and will involve also air, sea and Special Forces. We are informed by a NATO spokesperson also that this spearhead military group will be trained to deal with ‘unconventional’ actions – from the funding of separatist groups to the use of social media, intimidation, and ‘black’ propaganda.

USA-NATO

No doubt the current western media demonization of President Putin and the Russian people, by trying to inculcate fear and hatred of them is part of the ‘black’ propaganda campaign.

NATO’s latest proposals of 4,000 soldiers together with a separate force of a 10,000-strong British-led joint expeditionary force is a highly aggressive move and totally irresponsible by the US/UK/NATO forces.

It breaks the 1997 agreement with Moscow under which

NATO pledged not to base substantial numbers of soldiers in

Eastern Europe on a permanent basis.

The North Atlantic Treaty Alliance should have been disbanded when the Warsaw Pact disintegrated (Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, see note below); but it was not and is now controlled by America for its own agenda – One of former President (William Jefferson) Clinton’s officials, when speaking of NATO, said, ‘America is NATO’.

Instead of having been abolished, NATO is re-inventing itself in re-arming and militarizing European states and justifying its new role by creating enemy images of others, be they Russians or ISIS  (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant: ISIL; Islamic State of Iraq and Syria: ISIS).

Alternative Vision without violence, exceptionalism, supremacy

  

In an inter-dependent, interconnected world struggling to build fraternity, economic cooperation and human security, there is no place for the cold war policies of killing and threats to kill and policies of exceptionalism and superiority. The world has changed. People do not want to be divided; they do not want to return to a cold war; they want to see an end to violence, militarism and war.

T

he old consciousness is dysfunctional and a new consciousness based on an ethic of non-killing and respect and cooperation is spreading. It is time for NATO to recognize that their violent policies are counterproductive. The Ukraine crisis and groups such as ISIS and others will not be solved with guns but with justice and through dialogue.

 

Above all, the world needs hope. It needs inspirational political leadership. This could be given if U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin sat down together to solve the Ukraine conflict through dialogue and negotiation, in a nonviolent way.

Though we live in dangerous times, all things are possible. All things are changing – and peace is possible.

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Notes

The Warsaw Pact, more formally the Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance originally composed of the Soviet Union and Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania spanned May 14, 1955 to July 1, 1991. After the democratic revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe, the need for Warsaw Pact declined; and on July 1, 1991, at a final summit meeting of Warsaw Pact leaders in Prague, Czechoslovakia, it was formally declared “nonexistent”. Deployed Soviet troops were gradually withdrawn from the former satellite countries, now politically independent countries; and the decades-long confrontation between eastern and western Europe was formally rejected by members of the Warsaw Pact.

The Warsaw Pact’s initial establishment has been immediately occasioned by the Paris agreement among the Western powers admitting West Germany to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.  It was a “first step in a more systematic plan to strengthen the Soviet hold over its satellites, a program undertaken by the Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolay Bulganin after their assumption of power early in 1955. The treaty (which was renewed on April 26, 1985) provided for a unified military command and for the maintenance of Soviet military units on the territories of the other participating states. The Pact also served as a lever to enhance the bargaining position of the Soviet Union in international diplomacy [Britannica]

“Say NO to War and Media Propaganda, NO to US/NATO and YES to PEACE” by Máiread Maguire, PEACE PEOPLE, September 10, 2014, https://www.facebook.com/peacepeople?fref=nf

Máiread Maguire (aka Máiread Corrigan Maguire) is a Northern Irish peace activist who, with Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown, founded the Peace People originally dedicated to ending sectarian strife in Northern Ireland. With Betty Williams, Máiread Maguire shared the 1976 Nobel Prize for Peace.

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent books in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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