Category: The Struggle for Peace

Vijay Prashad: When Guns Are in Museums – Consortium News

In the aftermath of the war, Virginia Woolf wrote in her novel Mrs. Dalloway of a former soldier who, overcome by fear, uttered, “The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames.”

Those words resonate today, as NATO’s provocations in Ukraine put the possibility of nuclear winter on the table and the U.S. and Israel commit genocide against the Palestinian people as the world watches in horror.

We are tired of carnage and death. We want a permanent end to war.

The McCloy-Zorin Accords on the Agreed Principles for General and Complete Disarmament made two important points: first, that there should be “general and complete disarmament” and, second, that war should no longer be “an instrument for settling international problems.”

None of this is on the agenda today, as the Global North, with the U.S. at its helm, breathes fire like an angry dragon, unwilling to negotiate with its adversary in good faith.

Peace can be understood in two different ways: as passive peace or as active peace. Passive peace is the peace that exists when there is a relative lack of ongoing warfare, yet countries around the world continue to build up their military arsenals. Military spending now overwhelms the budgets of many countries: even when guns are not fired, they are still being purchased. That is peace of a passive kind.

Active peace is a peace in which the precious wealth of society goes toward ending the dilemmas faced by humanity. An active peace is not just an end to gunfire and military expenditures, but a dramatic increase in social spending to end problems such as poverty, hunger, illiteracy, and despair.

Wealth, which is produced by society, must not deepen the pockets of the rich and fuel the engines of war but fill the bellies of the many.

We want ceasefires, certainly, but we want more than that. We want a world of active peace and development.

We want a world where our grandchildren have to go to a museum to see what a gun looked like.

Source: Vijay Prashad: When Guns Are in Museums – Consortium News

A year of violence and women excluded from what comes next | Women’s Agenda

Today marks one year since Hamas inflicted its horrific attack on Southern Israel on October 7.

Today also marks one year and three days since 1500 Israeli and Palestinian women came together on the shores of the Dead Sea, demanding an end to the “cycle of bloodshot” and for peacemaking to be elevated.

The gathering that occurred between the Israeli group Women Wage Peace, and the Palestinian group Women of the Sun, is especially tragic when you consider what was to come just days later. A brutal attack by Hamas that killed more than 1000 people in Israel, sparking a relentless Israeli retaliation in Gaza and an ever-escalating conflict that continues today.

. . .

A terror rampage organised and perpetrated by men. A relentless retaliation by a male-dominated government, with almost no women involved in any aspect of the attempts at negotiations that have followed.

Source: A year of violence and women excluded from what comes next

‘Inspire Inclusion’ and you’ll get duped again on International Women’s Day

The UN Women theme for 2024 is actually Count Her In: Invest in Women. Accelerate Progress.

This correct theme is getting more traction than in previous years. But if you Google ‘International Women’s Day,’ the first result will push you to a domain encouraging you to ‘Inspire Inclusion.’ Ask ChatGPT, and you’ll also be told the theme is to “Inspire Inclusion’.

If you leverage the ‘Inspire Inclusion’ theme for your marketing or event efforts, you are complying with a UK-based firm that runs the internationalwomensday.com domain but offers no transparency on who is behind it and how they chose their themes, charities and partners.

The corporate-theme hijacking of IWD first bothered me in March 2022 when UN Women’s official theme, which centred around climate change, was drowned out by calls to “break the bias” instead. Especially frustrating given Australia was experiencing significant flooding and weather events during that period. At the time, I described themes like ‘break the bias’ as weapons of mass distraction.

As I also wrote in 2022 and remains true today, when you Google ‘International Women’s Day’ you come across this official-looking, we-own-this-IWD-thing website that claims to determine each year’s theme and resources to support messaging and ideas around the day.

The website, in 2024, continues to share very little information on who is behind it, how it is funded and how and why it determines the theme. There is no ‘About Us’, only an ‘About IWD’. There are no names listed or clear contact information given, other than a form you can fill out regarding sponsorship opportunities, which are now positioned as a place to submit a ‘partnership proposal’.

While a generic email address is given, the physical address is listed as Aurora Ventures (Europe) Limited, based in London. Aurora Ventures lists its work as including delivery of the International Women’s Day (IWD) platform and working “with stakeholders to produce an annual IWD campaign theme.”

As of late 2023, those who own the IWD domain name also featured several “Prime Employers” associated with International Women’s Day that the website writers said “maintain a deep and continuous focus on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) all year round”. Some notable exemplars included Siemens Healthineers, Diageo, Honeywell, John Deer and Northrop Grumman in association with IWD 2023.

The website has since been updated, presumably to focus more on employers that don’t make things like intercontinental ballistic missiles because “weapons and women’s empowerment” doesn’t roll off the tongue so well in 2024.

Source: ‘Inspire Inclusion’ and you’ll get duped again on International Women’s Day

OpenAI’s refreshed board needs women fast

As Sam Altman returns to the CEO post at OpenAI following one of the most high-profile oustings in tech history, the shakeup also sees an all-male board replacing the previous board.

The only two board members to go this week were the two women, including Australian Helen Toner, who specialises in AI safety.

There are suggestions the previous board was split between “accelerants” of AI — those who want to see it developed and deployed quickly — and “decelerationists”, which include those who believe AI should be more slowly developed and with stronger safety mechanisms in place.

The “decelerationists” in this scenario are now gone from the board. Altman is back at the helm, with the board currently falling strongly into the accellerant camp.

Helen Toner had been on the OpenAI board for two years until this Wednesday. Still in her thirties, she is a University of Melbourne graduate who has made a career studying AI and is the director of strategy at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. When initially appointed to the board, Altman described her as bringing an “understanding of the global AI landscape with an emphasis on safety, which is critical for our efforts and mission.” Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that a paper Toner co-authored with CSET and published in October had been a point of discussion between Altman and Toner, with the paper criticising OpenAI for releasing ChatGPT at the end of 2022 for sparking a predicted tech race of sorts, and leading competitors to “accelerate or circumvent internal safety and ethics review processes.”

Getting women on the board of OpenAI to support its future will be essential, along with getting more diversity generally involved. And it must happen fast, given how quickly AI is evolving, especially thanks to OpenAI.

The underrepresentation of women in AI remains a key concern internationally, given rapid advances in AI over the past two years and how quickly the tech is and will continue to disrupt industries and those who work within them. Plenty of examples also show the consequences of bias being embedded in AI, which may have been reduced if there had been more — or at least some — diversity in the teams developing the tech.

Currently, just 12 per cent of AI researchers globally are women, according to stats from the United Nations, while just 20 per cent of employees in technical roles in machine learning companies are female. One area where women do dominate in AI is the ethics space.

On Thursday, news emerged from Reuters of a letter from OpenAI staff researchers to their previous board warning about an AI discovery they believed could threaten humanity. The letter was provided days before Altman was fired.

Source: OpenAI’s refreshed board needs women fast

How women in Israel and Palestine are pushing for peace — together

The joint Women Wage Peace-Women of the Sun initiative unites Israeli and Palestinian women calling for peace. The international community should elevate their voices.

Following the Hamas attack, Women Wage Peace posted an image of a bloodied dove on their social media feed.

A week later, the movement issued a full statement on the rapid escalation of violence in Gaza:

“Every mother, Jewish and Arab, gives birth to her children to see them grow and flourish and not to bury them. That’s why, even today, amid the pain and the feeling that the belief in peace has collapsed, we extend a hand in peace to the mothers of Gaza and the West Bank.”

This was undoubtedly a difficult statement to write through their grief and anguish.

But this statement of cross-community solidarity — steadfastly insisting on peace in the face of war — is emblematic of the power and resolve of feminist anti-war collective action.

If our national commitment to women, peace and security and our feminist foreign policy means anything at all, we must stand together for human rights and justice and endeavour to elevate the many voices of solidarity and peace.

Source: How women in Israel and Palestine are pushing for peace — together

Ukraine’s Transgender Military Spox Fired For ‘Unapproved’ Statements | ZeroHedge

The controversial American transgender spokesperson for Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces Sarah Ashton-Cirillo (born Michael Cirillo) has been suspended indefinitely by the Ukrainian military, also pending an investigation.

Senator JD Vance of Ohio has made formal inquiry as to whether Sarah Ashton-Cirillo (born Michael John Cirillo) is being funded by the US government or has ties to the US intelligence community.

Last week a viral video by Ashton-Cirillo saw him declare on behalf of the Territorial Defense Forces of Ukraine that Russia’s “propagandists” will be “hunted down” around the world.

Revealingly, this was said just as an American journalist, Gonzalo Lira, was due in Ukrainian court on vague charges of “justifying Russia’s aggression.” That video sparked frenzy and anger online, given it seemed an open threat to journalists or anyone that doesn’t toe a pro-Ukrainian line on any given issue related to the war.

Responding to an inquiry form Senator JD Vance of Ohio, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo — born Michael John Cirillo — declared that he answers to three people: “my Ukrainian commanders, the Ukrainian people, and the American taxpayer.”

An hour later, Cirillo posted a video backtracking on the previous statement, insisting that the U.S. government is not funding his Ukrainian military media operation overseas.

Vance later gave some apt and appropriate comments to Breitbart News, saying: “If the Ukrainians want to hire weirdos to threaten Americans and others for speaking their mind, I guess that’s their right. They shouldn’t use our tax dollars to do it.”

He continued: “And we shouldn’t pretend this is a war for freedom when our supposed ally is threatening violence to anyone who opposes the war.”

Source: Ukraine’s Transgender Military Spox Fired For ‘Unapproved’ Statements | ZeroHedge

Opinion | Vienna’s International Summit for Peace in Ukraine Issues a Global Call for Action | Common Dreams

During the weekend of June 10-11 in Vienna, Austria, over 300 people representing peace organizations from 32 countries came together for the first time since the Russian invasion of Ukraine to demand an end to the fighting. In a formal conference declaration, participants declared, “We are a broad and politically diverse coalition that represents peace movements and civil society. We are firmly united in our belief that war is a crime against humanity and there is no military solution to the current crisis.”

Summit organizers chose Austria as the location of the peace conference because Austria is one of only a few neutral non-NATO states left in Europe. Ireland, Switzerland and Malta are a mere handful of neutral European states, now that previously neutral states Finland has joined NATO and Sweden is next in line. Austria’s capital, Vienna, is known as “UN City,” and is also home to the Secretariat of the OSCE (the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), which monitored the ceasefire in the Donbas from the signing of the Minsk II agreement in 2015 until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Surprisingly, neutral Austria turned out to be quite hostile to the Peace Summit. The union federation caved in to pressure from the Ukrainian Ambassador to Austria and other detractors, who smeared the events as a fifth column for the Russian invaders. The ambassador had objected to some of the speakers, including world-renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs and European Union Parliament member Clare Daly.

Source: Opinion | Vienna’s International Summit for Peace in Ukraine Issues a Global Call for Action | Common Dreams

From Simp to Soldier: How the Military is Using E-Girls To Recruit Gen Z Into Service

Amid a crisis in recruitment, the U.S. military has found a new way of convincing a war-weary Generation Z to enlist: thirst traps.

Chief among these attractive young women in uniform posting sexually suggestive content alongside subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) calls to join up is Hailey Lujan. In between the thirst traps and memes, the 21-year-old makes content extolling the fun of Army life to her 731,000 TikTok followers. “Don’t go to college, become a farmer or a soldier instead,” she instructs viewers in a recent video. “Just some advice for the younger people: if you’re not doing school, it’s ok. I dropped out of college. And I’m doing great,” she adds.

If Lujan feels like a psyop (a psychological operation) it is because, technically, she is. Lujan is a psychological operations specialist; one of a small number of Army personnel whose job is to carry out influence and disinfo operations, either on or offline. Thus, she is using her femininity to recruit legions of lustful teens into an institution with an infamous record of sexism and sexual assault against female soldiers.

The United States is a nation addicted to war, spending 229 of its 247 years of existence in some kind of conflict. It controls a network of over 800 military bases spanning the globe, and, according to a Congressional report, has carried out a staggering 251 foreign military interventions since the end of the Cold War in 1991. A new report compiled by the Institute for Policy Studies shows that the U.S. spends more on its military than 144 nations combined.

It is now well-established (if not well-known) that the Department of Defense also fields a giant clandestine army of at least 60,000 people whose job it is to influence public opinion, the majority doing so from their keyboards. A 2021 exposé from Newsweek described the operation as “The largest undercover force the world has ever known,” warned that this troll army was likely breaking both domestic and international law, and explaining that,

These are the cutting-edge cyber fighters and intelligence collectors who assume false personas online, employing ‘nonattribution’ and ‘misattribution’ techniques to hide the who and the where of their online presence while they search for high-value targets and collect what is called ‘publicly accessible information’—or even engage in campaigns to influence and manipulate social media.”

Source: From Simp to Soldier: How the Military is Using E-Girls To Recruit Gen Z Into Service

The People Haven’t Risen Up For The Same Reason Abuse Victims Don’t Leave Their Abusers – Caitlin Johnstone

This is what so few people understand about abusive relationships. People see friends and family members stuck in relationships that are obviously horrible and say “She should leave him! Why doesn’t she just leave??” If the abuse happened in secret the first question your loved ones ask when you escape is “Why did you let it go on so long? Why didn’t you leave sooner?”

Abusive relationships aren’t just one partner doing cruel things to another. If they were, there would be no relationship: there’d just be a woman getting assaulted one time by her boyfriend and then immediately leaving. Abusive relationships necessarily include the construction of psychological barriers to leaving, or else they would not exist. Victims of abuse are kept constantly confused, off-balance, insecure and unsure of themselves, because their abuse always necessarily includes the element of psychological manipulation.

This is why people stay in abusive relationships, whether it’s abusive relationships with significant others or abusive relationships with empires.

Vast fortunes are poured into keeping us from realizing that we are being exploited by powerful wealth hoarders while our nation’s resources are sent to fight wars of planetary domination. That our ecosystem is being destroyed for profit with no real plan for what to do when it’s gone. That we are being increasingly oppressed and impoverished to keep us from having enough awareness and wealth to dethrone our rulers. And that it doesn’t have to be this way at all.

Source: The People Haven’t Risen Up For The Same Reason Abuse Victims Don’t Leave Their Abusers – Caitlin Johnstone

Australia sold weapons to Mali as UN warned violence creating ‘humanitarian disaster’

The Australian government approved a large volume of weapons sales to war-torn Mali in the same year the United Nations warned escalating violence was creating an “unprecedented humanitarian disaster” in the West African nation.

Save the Children Australia chief executive Paul Ronalds said arms exports to nations like Mali and Somalia must cease immediately. He said there was an urgent need for greater accountability and transparency on Australia’s arms sales.“We cannot let vested interests and profits take precedence over the lives of children,” Ronalds told the Guardian.“Australians would be rightly appalled to know we were potentially prolonging devastating wars in places like Yemen and Mali, and in doing so, increasing and prolonging the suffering of millions of children.”

Source: Australia sold weapons to Mali as UN warned violence creating ‘humanitarian disaster’ | Australia news | The Guardian