Category Archives ⇒ Nonviolence

From 1995 – 2008 I was the pub­lish­er of Non​vi​o​lence​.org, a ground-breaking por­tal and blog about peace. Many of these arti­cles are archived from that period. 

Impor­tant Posts:
* The Rev­o­lu­tion will be Online (1995)
* NYTimes Pro­file of Non​vi​o​lence​.org (1998)
* The Ear­ly Blog­ging Days (2005)
* The His­to­ry of Non​vi​o​lence​.org, 1995 – 2008 (2008)

Christian peacemaker Teams News

March 23, 2006
· Martin Kelley

On Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 26, 2005 four mem­bers of “Chris­t­ian peace­mak­ers Teams”:www.cpt.org were abduct­ed in iraq. On March 20th the body of Amer­i­can Quak­er Tom Fox was found; on March 23rd, the remain­ing three hostages were freed by U.S. and British mil­i­tary forces.
Here at Non​vi​o​lence​.org, we have always been impressed and high­ly sup­port­ive of the deep wit­ness of the Chris­t­ian peace­mak­ers Teams. Their mem­bers have rep­re­sent­ed the best in both the peace and Chris­t­ian move­ments, con­sis­tent­ly putting them­selves in dan­ger to wit­ness the gospel of peace. Not con­tent to write let­ters or stand on pick­ett lines in safe west­ern cap­i­tals, they go to the front­lines of vio­lence and pro­claim a rad­i­cal alternative.
While we can be grate­ful for the release of the three remain­ing hostages, we should con­tin­ue to remem­ber the 43 for­eign hostages still being held in iraq and the 10 – 30 iraqis report­ed­ly tak­en hostage each and every day. As iraq slips into full-scale civ­il war we must also orga­nize against the war-mongerers, both for­eign and inter­nal and finde ways of stand­ing along­side those iraqis who want noth­ing more than peace and freedom.

Here’s links to recent articles on the situation: https://​deli​cious​.com/​m​a​r​t​i​n​_​k​e​l​l​e​y​/​n​e​w​s​.​c​p​t​-​f​o​u​r​.​f​o​x​m​e​m​o​r​ial

And a per­son­al note from Nonviolence.org’s Mar­tin Kel­ley: I myself am a Chris­t­ian and Quak­er and one of our folks, Tom Fox, of Lan­g­ley Hill (Vir­ginia) Friends Meet­ing is among the hostages. I don’t know Tom per­son­al­ly but over the last few days I’ve learned we have many Friends in com­mon and they have all tes­ti­fied to his deep com­mitt­ment to peace. Some of the links above are more explic­it­ly Quak­er than most things I post to Non​vi​o​lence​.org, but they give per­spec­tive on why Tom and his com­pan­ions would see putting them­selves in dan­ger as an act of reli­gious ser­vice. I am grate­ful for Tom’s cur­rent wit­ness in iraq – yes, even as a hostage – but I cer­tain­ly hope he soon comes back to his fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty and that the atten­tion and wit­ness of these four men’s ordeal helps to bring the news of peace to streets and halls of Bagh­dad, Wash­ing­ton, Lon­don and Ottawa.

Action Step:

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peace movement humanitarian among iraq abductees

November 28, 2005
· Martin Kelley

The UK “News Tele­graph is confirming”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/29/nirq29.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/29/ixnewstop.html what many of us in the peace move­ment have been wor­ry­ing about all day: that at least some of the four west­ern­ers abduct­ed in iraq over the week­end were mem­bers of the “Chris­t­ian peace­mak­ers Teams”:http://www.cpt.org/
bq. A British anti-war activist abduct­ed in iraq was inves­ti­gat­ing human rights abus­es with a group called the Chris­t­ian peace­mak­ers Team when he was held.
Nor­man Kem­ber, 74, the only publicly-named abductee, is a for­mer sec­re­tary of the Bap­tist peace Fel­low­ship in Eng­land and a board mem­ber of the Eng­lish Fel­low­ship of Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. He’s been an out­spo­ken oppo­nent of the war in iraq. In the “April/May 2005 edi­tion of FOR’s newsletter”:http://www.for.org.uk/plinks0405.pdf (pdf) he talked about chal­leng­ing him­self to do more:
bq. Now per­son­al­ly it has always wor­ried me that I am a ‘cheap’ peace­mak­er (by anal­o­gy with Bonhoeffer’s
con­cept of ‘cheap’ grace). Being a CO in Britain,talking, writ­ing, demon­strat­ing about peace is in no
way tak­ing risks like young ser­vice men in iraq. I look for excus­es why I should not become involved with
CPT or EAPPI. Per­haps the read­ers will sup­ply mewith­with some?
Here at Non​vi​o​lence​.org, I’m occas­sion­al­ly cha­tised for being more con­cerned about west­ern vic­tims of vio­lence (indeed, how many iraqis were abduct­ed or killed this week­end alone?). It’s a fair charge and an impor­tant reminder. But per­haps it is only human nature to wor­ry about those you know. I’ve prob­a­bly met Nor­man in pass­ing at one or anoth­er inter­na­tion­al peace gath­er­ing; I might well know the three uniden­ti­fied abductees. I sus­pect a peace move­ment vet­er­an like Kem­ber would be the first to tell me that paci­fists should­n’t sit con­tent­ed­ly in middle-class com­fy arm­chairs sim­ply sout­ing slo­gans or dash­ing off emails (Quak­er Johan Mau­r­er, wrote an “impas­sioned blog post about this just last week”:http://maurers.home.mindspring.com/2005/11/saturday-ps-nancys-questions.htm). Part of the rea­son folks put them­selves on the lines for orga­ni­za­tions like Chris­t­ian peace­mak­ers Teams is that they want to do their peace wit­ness among those fac­ing the vio­lence. When the vic­tims aren’t just “them, over there” but to “us, and our friends, over there” it becomes more real. This is what the fam­i­lies of the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary casu­al­ties have been telling us. Now, with Kem­ber and the three oth­ers miss­ing, our wor­ry is made more real. For bet­ter or worse, the peace move­ment is scan­ning the head­lines from iraq with even more wor­ry tonight.
Our prayers are with Kem­ber, as they are with all the miss­ing and all the vic­tims of this hor­ri­ble war.

Smoking gun: the oil companies did write America’s energy policy

November 16, 2005
· Martin Kelley

Short­ly after the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion took office, Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney held a series of secret meet­ings in the White House that have guid­ed Amer­i­ca’s ener­gy pol­i­cy over the last four years. The White House has refused repeat­ed requests for a list of par­tic­i­pants at the “task force” meet­ings. All we’ve known for sure is who was­n’t invit­ed: eniron­men­tal­ists and any­one else who might bring a per­spec­tive crit­i­cal of Amer­i­ca’s depen­dence on fos­sil fuels.
We’ve long sus­pect­ed that Cheney’s spe­cial guests were top oil com­pa­ny exec­u­tives and that these con­sul­tants large­ly wrote the ener­gy guide­lines that came out of the meet­ing. The pol­i­cy strong favor the eco­nom­ic inter­ests of “Big Oil” over envi­ron­men­tal or nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns. The oil com­pa­nies have repeat­ed­ly denied being at the meet­ings: Just last week, oil indus­try offi­cials from Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Cono­coPhillips tes­ti­fied at a joint hear­ing of the Sen­ate Ener­gy and Com­merce com­mit­tees that their employ­ees had been part of Cheney’s ener­gy task force.
Liar liar, pants on fire.
The Wash­ing­ton Post has obtained a White House doc­u­ment that exec­u­tives from Big Oil did indeed meet with the ener­gy task force in 2001. Inves­ti­ga­tions are in order. Sen­a­tor Frank Laut­en­berg of New Jer­sey said “The White House went to great lengths to keep these meet­ings secret, and now oil exec­u­tives may be lying to Con­gress about their role in the Cheney task force.” This issue is impor­tant not only to Wash­ing­ton Belt­way insid­ers but to all of us. Dis­as­ters like Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na and the ongo­ing quag­mire in iraq are fueled by Amer­i­can ener­gy needs. As long as we have Big Oil dic­tat­ing our ener­gy pol­i­cy we will con­tin­ue to have these wars and cli­mate tragedies. Peo­ple will die, lives will be ruined and we will all be taxed for our oil misadventures.

Katrina bin Laden and Our Public Enemies

October 24, 2005
· Martin Kelley

We now know that while Osama bin Laden and Sad­dam Hus­sein did­n’t con­spire togeth­er, they did have one thing in com­mon: their pow­er was fund­ed by our depen­dence on their oil. But even as Sad­dam’s show tri­al begins, tele­vi­sions are watch­ing Amer­i­ca’s new nation­al secu­ri­ty ene­mies: Kat­ri­na and Wilma. Al Qaida’s 9/11 attacks and the Sad­dam Hus­sein’s dic­ta­tor­ship were “pow­ered by” oil indus­try for­tunes and short-sighted glob­al ener­gy poli­cies, the same poli­cies now bring­ing us glob­al warm­ing and mon­ster storms.
Before mak­ing land­fall in Mex­i­co’s Yucatan and pound­ing Flori­da, Hur­ri­cane Wilma was declared the most pow­er­ful Atlantic hur­ri­cane in his­to­ry. That we got to a W‑name itself is cause for con­cern: the first trop­i­cal storm of the year gets a name start­ing with “A” and so forth through the alpha­bet. This sum­mer has been the “most active hur­ri­cane season”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Atlantic_hurricane_season since record-keeping start­ed 150 years ago. We’ve seen so many storms that weath­er offi­cials have now run through the alpha­bet: mete­o­rol­o­gists are now hav­ing to track Trop­i­cal Storm (now Depres­sion) Alpha 350 miles north of the Bahamas. In 2004, “five dev­as­tat­ing hur­ri­canes ripped across Florida”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Atlantic_hurricane_season, each one com­ing so fast on the heels of the last that few of us could even name them a year lat­er. As I write, Wilma is pound­ing West­ern Flori­da, one of the fast-growing regions in the coun­try. And of course Kat­ri­na dev­ast­ed New Orleans and the Gulf Coast just two months ago.
Glob­al cli­mate change is here. After decades of polit­i­cal hem­ming and haw­ing, only the most slimy of oil indus­try apol­o­gists (and Pres­i­dents) could argue that glob­al warm­ing has­n’t arrived. We’ve built a nation­al cul­ture built on inef­fi­cient burn­ing of fos­sil fuels. Devel­op­ers put more and more peo­ple on unpro­tect­ed sand­bars built, main­tained and insured by tax dol­lars. Some­day is here and our weath­er is only going to be get­ting worse. We could be prepar­ing for the inevitable adjust­ments. We could be invest­ing in con­ser­va­tion, in renew­able ener­gies. We could change our tax codes to encour­age sus­tain­able hous­ing: not just get­ting new devel­op­ment off beach­es but also build­ing urban and semi-urban com­mu­ni­ties that reduce auto­mo­bile dependence.
Instead we spend bil­lions of dol­lars on our oil addic­tions. We’re now wait­ing for the “announce­ment of the 2,000th U.S. mil­i­tary casu­al­ty in iraq”:http://www.afsc.org/2000/. Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials used Kat­ri­na to roll­back envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion reg­u­la­tions in Louisiana. The arc­tic ice cap is rapid­ly melt­ing away (the North Pole is now ice-free for part of the year) but oil indus­try offi­cials point to the good news that we will soon be able to put “year-round oil rigs in the ice-free seas there”:http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1010 – 07.htm.
How many Kat­ri­na bin Laden’s and Sad­dam Wilma’s does it take before we get the news.

Biodemocracy Protests

June 21, 2005
· Martin Kelley

melee
Pro­test­ers and police scuf­fle at the “Biodemoc­ra­cy Rally”:http://www.biodev.org/ in Philadel­phia. The well-dressed (and hat­ted) peo­ple are the civ­il affairs police offi­cers. Appar­ent­ly one of them suf­fered a heart attack in the meele and had to be evac­u­at­ed on stretch­er. “See the full pho­to set here”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/martin_kelley/sets/483452/.
*Update:* The Philadel­phia Inquir­er is report­ing that one of the “police offi­cers at the cen­ter of this scuf­fle has died of an appar­ent heart attack”:http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/business/special_packages/bio2005/11949070.htm

The Early Blogging Days

June 17, 2005
· Martin Kelley

I start­ed Non​vi​o​lence​.org in late 1995 as a place to pub­li­cize the work of the US peace move­ment which was not get­ting out to a wide (or a young) audi­ence. I built and main­tained the web­sites of a few dozen host­ed groups (includ­ing the War Resisters League, Fel­low­ship of Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and Pax Christi USA) but I quick­ly real­ized that the Non​vi​o​lence​.org home­page itself could be used for more than just as a place to put links to mem­ber groups. I could use it to high­light the arti­cles I thought should get more pub­lic­i­ty, whether on or off the Non​vi​o​lence​.org domain.

The home­page adapt­ed into what is now a rec­og­niz­able blog for­mat on Novem­ber 13, 1997 when I re-named the home­page “Non­vi­o­lence Web Upfront” and start­ed post­ing links to inter­est­ing arti­cles from Non​vi​o​lence​.org mem­ber groups. In response to a com­ment the oth­er day I won­dered how that fit in with the evo­lu­tion of blog­ging. I was shocked to learn from Wikipedi­a’s that the term “weblog” was­n’t coined until Decem­ber of that year. I think is less a coin­ci­dence than a con­fir­ma­tion that many of us were try­ing to fig­ure out a for­mat for shar­ing the web with others.

The ear­li­est edi­tion stored on Archive​.org is from Decem­ber 4, 1997. It focused on the hun­dredth anniver­sary of the birth of Catholic Work­er co-founder Dorothy Day. To give you an sense of the ear­ly independently-published arti­cles, the Jan­u­ary 2, 1998 edi­tion includ­ed a guest piece by John Steitz, “Is the Non­vi­o­lence Web a Move­ment Half-Way House” that sounds eeri­ly sim­i­lar to recent dis­cus­sions on Quak­er Ranter.

Below is an excerpt from the email announce­ment for “Non­vi­o­lence Web Upfront” (typ­i­cal­ly for me, I sent it out after I had been run­ning the new for­mat for awhile):

NONVIOLENCE WEB NEWS, by Mar­tin Kel­ley Week of Decem­ber 29, 1997

CONTENTS

Intro­duc­ing “Non­vi­o­lence Web Upfront”

New Pro­ce­dures
New Web­site #1: SERPAJ
New Web­site #2: Stop the Cassi­ni Fly­by
Two Awards
Num­bers Avail­able Upon Request
Week­ly Vis­i­tor Counts

With my trav­el­ling and hol­i­day sched­ule, it’s been hard to keep reg­u­lar NVWeb News updates com­ing along, but it’s been a great month and there’s a lot. I’m espe­cial­ly proud of the con­tin­u­ing evo­lu­tion of what I’m now call­ing “Non­vi­o­lence Web Upfront,” seen by 1800 – 2200 peo­ple a month!

INTRODUCING “NONVIOLENCE WEB UPFRONT”

The new mag­a­zine for­mat of the NVWe­b’s home­page has been need­ing a name. It need­ed to men­tioned the “Non­vi­o­lence Web” and I want­ed it to imply that it was the site’s home­page (some­times referred to as a “front­page”) and that it con­tained mate­r­i­al tak­en from the sites of the NVWeb.

So the name is “Non­vi­o­lence Web Upfront” and a trip to http://​www​.non​vi​o​lence​.org will see that spelled out big on top of the weekly-updated articles.

There’s also an archive of the week­ly install­ments found at the bot­tom of NVWeb Upfront. It’s quite a good col­lec­tion already!

Now that this is mov­ing for­ward, I encour­age every­one to think about how they might con­tribute arti­cles. If you write an inter­est­ing opin­ion piece, essay, or sto­ry that you think would fit, send it along to me. For exam­ple, “War Toys: Re-Action-ist Fig­ures” FOR’s Vin­cent Romano’s piece from the Nov. 27 edi­tion, was an essay he had already writ­ten and made a good com­pli­men­ta­ry piece for the Youth­Peace Week spe­cial. But don’t wor­ry about themes: NVWeb Upfront is meant not only to be time­ly but to show the breadth of the non­vi­o­lence move­ment, so send your pieces along!

Deep Throat Gargles Up

June 1, 2005
· Martin Kelley
blank
Deep Throat in an 1958 FBI pub­lic­i­ty pho­to. “From Wikipedia”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Felt1958.jpg

One of the great­est polit­i­cal mys­ter­ies of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry was revealed this week as “Van­i­ty Fair revealed the iden­ti­ty of Deep Throat”:http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/articles/050530roco02, the gov­ern­ment informer who led Wash­ing­ton Post reporters onto the full scope of the Water­gate Scan­dal. Here’s the “Post’s own arti­cle on the revealing”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/31/AR2005053100655.html.
Although I was far too young to fol­low the events at the time, the _Washington Post_ sto­ries com­bined with the fol­lowup book and movie to cre­ate a pop­u­lar images of the fear­less inves­tiga­tive reporter, the show­dowy gov­ern­ment insid­er with unclear motives and the news­pa­per pub­lish­ers tak­ing a risk for the big story.
So it seems iron­ic that Deep Throat – no excuse me, W. Mark Felt, the num­ber two man at the FBI in the ear­ly 1970s – was a close assis­tant of the noto­ri­ous FBI head J. Edgar Hoover and was him­self con­vict­ed in 1980 for autho­riz­ing gov­ern­ment agents to break into homes of sus­pect­ed anti-Vietnam war pro­test­ers (look­ing for sus­pects from the rad­i­cal Weath­er Under­ground bombings).

Is it getting warmer in here?

May 23, 2005
· Martin Kelley

One of the rea­sons I like “non­vi­o­lence” as a catch-all orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple is that it let you range across to some of the root issues that need to be addressed. One of these is the cli­mat­ic effects that humans are hav­ing upon the Earth. The _New Yorker_ has been run­ning some arti­cles: check out part one of Eliz­a­beth Kol­bert’s “The Cli­mate of Man (part one)”:http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050425fa_fact3 (“part two is here”:http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050502fa_fact3).
One of the more use­ful set of links and dis­cus­sions I’ve read late­ly comes from a post titled “Cli­mate Change Activism”:http://www.am464.net/archives/2005/05/climate_change.html on a blog called The Pub­lic Quak­er. It’s not enough to know that the cli­mate is going to hell in a hand­bas­ket and shout­ing the warn­ings out from the rooftops is often inef­fec­tive. The PQ talks about how we can help get a move­ment togeth­er that moti­vates peo­ple to build the world we want. Cool stuff and she has links to the work of oth­ers as well.