Blog

Image: Encouraging the Language of Nonviolence

15/11/2019

Marian Pallister, Pax Christi Scotland chair and Justice & Peace commissioner reflects on the why we need to cut aggressive language out of our day to day lives. Weekly blog.

When a car hurtles past me and three other vehicles just as a timber lorry comes round the blind corner towards us, I sometimes surprise myself with the interesting language that emerges from a folder deep in my brain that I am normally blissfully unaware of.

Where’s it all come from - that level of aggressive language that we encounter and even practise daily? Mainstream and social media are hate-filled. Children use words I never heard till I was an adult and react belligerently in the home, the street and the school – teachers tell me that when children have anger management issues, it’s not unusual to go home bruised and battered.

It’s a sad day when the report of an accident on social media, on a page that aims to help folk negotiate a sometimes hazardous rural route, is greeted with posts that decry the drivers involved, moan about the inconvenience, and suggest the driver must have been a woman or that the person to blame would be riding a motorbike.

All of this when the original post clearly suggests that someone may at best be on their way to hospital in a helicopter and at worst, at least one family could be grieving the loss of a loved one.

We can’t blame it all on aggressive on-line games.

I really don’t think that our senior politicians are playing Fortnite – the online video game in which every character bar the one carrying the first aid kit seems equipped with a deadly weapon. I don’t believe that today’s newspaper subeditors take their inspiration from their Xboxes to write headlines that incite violence against migrants and refugees, or encourage sectarianism and racism.

Violent and aggressive language breeds violence and aggression. When people feel marginalised, patronised, and downright afraid because of the uncertainties in their lives, it is all too easy to play a blame game, encouraged by the words and actions we hear and read.

Pax Christi Scotland became a member of Pax Christi International this year, and our main role (while obviously campaigning against the very existence of nuclear weapons and the proliferation of the arms trade) will be to take the concept of nonviolence into the family, the school, the parish and the wider community. We are already developing resources and planning courses that support Pope Francis and Pax Christi International in mainstreaming nonviolence, in the words of PCI’s co-president Marie Dennis, “…as a spirituality, lifestyle, programme of societal action and a universal ethic”.

In other words, nonviolence isn’t just about seeking peace in a global sense, but seeking to promote dignity and respect in our daily lives. As teacher Roisin King told us at our weekend gathering, when she lets a child know he is loved, respected and cared for, that he is rated with his peers, then he thrives.

And I know my day is better served when I pray for that risk-taking driver than when I let rip with language I shouldn’t know in the first place.

08/11/2019

Hands of Hope

Started by the Good Shepherd Sisters’ as an income-generating project for those living with HIV/Aids, Hands of Hope has grown into an international business, read all about it in this weeks blog by Antonia Symonds.

My recycling pile was rising and I asked Tusak, one of the men who collected and sold on recyclables to meet his family’s basic needs, if he would like me to drop it off. His reply humbled me. “Thank you but you can give it to Amkha. She has three children and a bicycle. I have two children and a motorbike.’

When we opened the doors to Hands of Hope, a new Good Shepherd Sisters’ project in 2005, Tusak’s wife Pit was among the first group of just six women who began. On day three, Pit did not show and we visited her village home to find out why. Tusak informed us that she would not be back – the reason - Pit had never used scissors. She had toiled planting rice, worked in the heat on building sites and was cooking and cleaning for her household but scissors posed a real challenge! Encouraged to return, Pit, who’s delicate health was being compromised outside by heavy physical manual labour, was soon cutting the smallest and most intricate designs.

Hands of Hope started as an income-generating project for those living with HIV/Aids. ARV medicine had become available in Thailand two years previously but it was clear that medicine alone was not going to save lives. It was of paramount importance that people had access to shelter, good nutrition, a livelihood and a social network that would provide encouragement and the will to live. From the outset, what we made was secondary to the life we shared and there has always been greater emphasis placed on relationship, community spirit and well-being, than the amount of work one was able to do.

Some face disabilities due to complications from the virus – cognitive impairment, restricted mobility, hand tremors that necessitate pasting rather than cutting, tiredness – and always the fear of compromised immune systems unable to cope with opportunistic infections.

In view of this, you would be excused thinking it to be a rather a dismal and depressing work environment but Hands of Hope lives up to its name and joy permeates the work rooms. Participants find dignity as they both design and co-produce what now exceeds 650 different cards, decorations, mobiles and gift items, made from saa (mulberry) paper and sold throughout the world.

One of our producers Jiem, celebrates the global connections. “ I will never have the opportunity to travel abroad but as we send my creations to other countries, a small part of me goes with them. In that way, I get to ‘travel’.”

The Good Shepherd Sisters, since coming to Nong Khai, northeastern Thailand, in 1981 to work in the Laos refugee camps, have always provided opportunities by which people can help themselves. However, for those unable to work, welfare assistance and access to services is ensured through the Outreach Programme. This programme relies on grants and donations from those who share the same vision.
Hands of Hope however, does not request donations, for as an income generating project, we want to be sustainable through the work of our hands – and hearts – but to do so, we need continuing sales.

We invite you to view our wholesale website and take delight in the vast number of original designs you will discover. And remember – by placing an order, you will be inviting Jiem, Pit, Dow, Faa, Wasana and many more into your home!
www.handsofhopewholesale.com

01/11/2019

Counting the Nuclear Weapons Money

Steve Hucklesby of the Joint Public Issues Team (JPIT) looks at the vast amounts of money being spent on the maintenance and modernisation of nuclear weapons and a new campaign to ensure that financial institutions are not financing the nuclear weapons industry with our pensions etc. Weekly blog.

A massive $1 trillion is being spent to maintain and modernize the nuclear arsenals of nine countries over the next 10 years. A trillion dollars is a difficult sum of money to imagine. The figure is a 1 with 12 zeros after it. To draw attention to this phenomenal spending on nuclear weapons, a group or people from different nations are counting out 1 trillion dollars in New York. It has taken them 7 days and 7 nights (completing on 30 October) counting continuously at a rate of $100 million per minute using 1 million dollar notes.

Another way to appreciate the scale of $1 trillion is to contextualise it with respect to other government spending priorities. The planned global spending on nuclear weapons is twice that of the global spending on the whole of the work of the United Nations including its development projects and peace-making operations.[1] Or put another way the spending on nuclear weapons is four to five times the total amount that 25 low income countries can afford to spend on their education of children and young adults.[2] Pope Francis aptly describes the spending on nuclear weapons as “theft from the poor”. Investment in ensuring secure access to water and health care, and in a literate and well-educated public, would be a much surer way to build long-term security.

The planned investment in new nuclear weapons by nine nuclear armed states is deeply unhelpful in another way. In the international community, there is a crisis of confidence around the repeated promises of the US, Russia, China, France and the UK. Since 1995, these states have been insisting that they will decrease the prominence of nuclear weapons in their national security strategies and reduce their nuclear arsenals.[3] But $1 trillion of planned spending tells a different story. The UK is building new Dreadnought nuclear weapons submarines at a cost of £41 billion with an in-service life to at least 2065. Yet the UK Government refuses to state what would be done with these purpose-built submarines if, or when, we are successful in negotiating disarmament. The UK government is knowingly painting itself into a corner. There has been no attempt to clearly articulate or cost out a ‘Plan B’. This fundamentally undermines the government’s promise made over and over again to work to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons. The planned spending of billions on new nuclear warheads and submarines by nuclear weapons states risks collapsing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that has been an effective piece of arms control since 1968.

A significant part of the $1 trillion will be allocated to major industrial and defence contractors such as Serco plc in the UK. As well as emptying bins and running the Caledonian Sleeper Service from Edinburgh to London, Serco is part of a consortium that is designing new nuclear warheads (worth a total £1 billion in revenue per year) at Aldermaston, Berkshire. The international ‘Move the Money’ campaign highlights the need for us all to play a part in tackling the investment in nuclear weapons. Our pensions and savings must not prop up companies that are investing in nuclear weapons projects.

The Baptist Union, the Church of Scotland, the Methodist Church and the United Reformed Church have joined a multi-faith initiative to research into the investment of UK banks and pension funds in nuclear weapons producing companies. The findings will be published shortly. Your help in writing to banks and pension funds that handle your money will be vital. We want to ensure that these financial institutions do not finance the nuclear weapons industry. We will launch a campaign in the coming weeks so watch this space! We may not all be able to get to London or New York for the ‘Count the Money’ demonstrations but we do have the opportunity to make our money count.

[1] The total of all regular and voluntary contributions to all the varied aspects of the work of the UN, totals about $48 billion per year.
[2] UNESCO – https://en.unesco.org/gem-report/sites/gem-report/files/11%20-%20Education%20spending.pdf
[3] For example a statement from the meeting of the P5 in Beijing in 2019 https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjbxw/t1634793.shtml

Originally published on the JPIT website on 29th October to find out more about The Joint Public Issues Team (JPIT) see here http://www.jointpublicissues.org.uk/about-us/

Page 34 of 89

First Previous 29 30 31 32 33 [34] 35 36 37 38 Next Last