Masculinity, toxic and otherwise

This post compares two thinkers on the topic of masculinity and whether it is, to coin a phrase, toxic or not. They are Will Storr and Richard Wrangham.

Winter Solstice - the intimacy of darkness, silence and stillness

Sometimes we just need to stop, feel and rest. Just like nature does at this time of the year, when the land becomes dormant, the trees naked, and the birds quiet. Deep underneath, the soil gets ready for new growth.

Hay Festival - Rutger Bregman

Tuned in today to "Hay Festival - Rutger Bregman - chaired by Lily Cole - Humankind: A Hopeful History"

Book Group on Peace News

Our Next Read is the last 2 issues of Peace News:

• Issue 2624 - 2625 | December 2018 - January 2019, especially on #XR
• Issue 2622 - 2623 | October - November 2018, especially on Transgender issues

anti-Israel is not anti-Jewish

I'm outraged by Israel's treatment of the people of Gaza and the other Palestinian territories it occupies. I'm almost as vexed by the special status given to Israel by the West, which results from its position as the USA's outpost in western Asia, from which the USA can try to control the region's oil resources for its realpolitik ends.

Gerald Priestland The Future of Violence

Comments on Gerald Priestland's The Future of Violence, Hamish Hamilton, 1974.

My main problem with this book is that Priestland does not really consider ‘structural’ violence. He dismisses it as ‘injustice’ that does not count as violence because it is not ‘physical’ (page 10-11). On the contrary, economic and social forces can be just as effective as physical forces in perpetrating violence. This is for at least two reasons. Firstly, economic and social forces can starve people into submission or death just as effectively as physical violence. Secondly, they can be - and often are - backed, beneath a thin veneer of civilisation, by physical violence from the same powers as carry out the structural violence.

There are countless examples of structural violence:

• benefit sanctions and unemployment that starve people into submission;
• the soft cops of social services that remove people’s children (and will call in the police if the parents resist)
• schools that punish pupils in all sorts of ways short of coproral punishment. 

And so on.

Priestland is also mistaken about the role of the media in manufacturing consent. He thinks ‘the media have tried to cultivate sympathy for the Biafrans, the Bengalis, Uganda Asians, gipsies, Ulster Catholics and inner-city coloured people’ (page 12). But contrast this with the history of racism towards foreigners in the British media. In the 1930s there was the hatred towards migrants shown by the Daily Mail when it campaigned against allowing Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany into Britain. Most of the media had racist stereotypes of black people in the 1960s and 70s as muggers, druggies and sexual predators. The media today, especially the Daily Mail, are equally vitriolic about Muslims, asylum seekers and EU migrants. The targets may vary, but the racism of the media remains the same. Against that background it is hard to believe that there was a golden age of tolerance to foreigners in 1974 when Priestland wrote ‘The Future of Violence’.

Green Party peace policy

Strangely, there is no mention of peace, war or Trident in the Green Party MiniManifesto of 2015. 

Quaker Testimonies

My take on the Quaker Testimonies (or Quaker Values)

Conversation in a cable car

"Conversation in a cable car" by Ernest Hall, published in May 2016 Southern East Anglia Area Quaker Meeting Newsletter

Brussels Bombings - Frank Barat responds

One of the best reports/comments I've heard so far re Brussels Bombings - Frank Barat in Belgium: More War is Not the Answer to Brussels Bombings

ethical board games

Christmas shopping for ethical board games? (aka social impact games)

1. Paul Lamond - You Be the Judge
2. Really Nasty Bankers Game - Board Game 
3. Rollet £67 - fast ricochet game for 2 to 4 players - aim is to roll steel balls down your chute and knock the wooden ball into your opponents goal - from ethicalshop.org
4. Cyberpeace - online training courses based on the ideas of Johan Galtung, the Norwegian sociologist who founded peace and conflict studies. The Medical Peacework training courses, which were developed with support from the EU’s Leonardo da Vinci Fund, were launched in the UK in 2012. Each of the seven courses covers a different topic, from war and weapons, health and human rights, to refugees, discrimination and problems at work. Each of the 21 chapters consists of textbook lessons, standardized questions and problem-based e-learning cases.
5. ‘Fighter, not Killer’ app for Apple and Android smartphones, launched May 2015, by Swiss group ‘Geneva Call’ to educate armed groups on the humanitarian laws of war.
6. People Power, in which you play a leader of a popular movement - International Centre for Nonviolent Conflict, 2010 - see peoplepowergame.com
7. World Peace Game, invented 1978 by teacher John Hunter. TED talk about the game has over 1.2m views. A hands-on political simulation for 10-year-olds, the game is normally played by 25–35 players for six to 12 weeks. There is no commercial version of the game, but John Hunter does tour the world hosting shorter game sessions.

"The World is My Country": Heritage Open Day, 12 September 2015

"The World is My Country" exhibition:

Heritage Open Day: Saturday 12 September 2015, 10am to 4pm, at Colchester Quaker Meeting House, 6 Church Street, Colchester, Essex, CO1 1NF

No Glory: The Real History of the First World War

Historian Neil Faulkner looks at the real reasons for the outbreak of the First World War. This pamphlet is part of No Glory in War, a national campaign of political, cultural, and educational activities that opposes ‘nationalist’ interpretations of the First World War, and aims to promote international solidarity and peace.

"The World is My Country" Public Meeting Thurs 24 Sep 2015

To co-incide with “The World is My Country” exhibition on Heritage Open Day on Sat 12 Sep 2015 there will be a Public Meeting hosted by Gabriel Carlyle and Emily Johns of Peace News:

"The World is My Country" Sat 12 Sep 2015

Here is the draft web page that I submitted last week to Heritage Open Days. It should appear on the site in due course. Further below are some notes from the Local Meeting for business for worship on Sun 3 May.

Riots Rebellions and Protests – A Walk around Colchester town

The walk on Sat 2 May 2015, 2pm-4pm, was led by Dorian Kelly and started at Slack Space, Old Police Station, 35 Queen Street, Colchester CO1 2PQ. It was part of janeswalk.org 2015, which is hosted locally by Walk Colchester.  It featured the High Street (Castle Park Memorial end, scene of the Poll Tax riots in 1990) and a speech by John Ball and a song about him (both now on my Youtube channel) and much more. Here is the ad for the walk:

I am Malala

I read this over Easter* and broadly agree with this Guardian review. I hadn’t realised Malala was already an international star long before her attempted assassination: she’d already won a national peace prize and written a blog for the BBC that was meant to be anonymous but didn’t really remain so for long.

 

The Taliban shooting must be one of the most back-firing attacks in history. The Taliban catapulted Malala to international superstardom. Violence can sometimes be the most counter-productive thing a terrorist can do. To give another example relevant to this story, it’s like the CIA funding and backing Al-Qaeda (after the 1980 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan) which back-fired in that it helped create both the Taliban and the suicide bombers who were able to bomb the Twin Towers on 9/11/2001. 

Quaker pacifism

There is an old joke about Quaker pacifism in action. It seems there was once a Quaker farmer who could not get his mule to move, no matter how he cajoled, pushed, or pulled. Finally, he looked the mule straight in the eye and addressed him by name. "Josiah," he said, "Thee knows I shall never curse thee, and thee knows I shall never strike thee; but if thee doesn't start moving this very instant, I shall sell thee to a Baptist who will!" Of course, the mule began moving immediately, being an animal of great wit and sagacity.

World War One - the warring cousins

In 1914 the rulers of the world's three greatest nations were all first cousins: they were all grandchildren of Queen Victoria.

• King George V of Great Britain
• Tsar Nicholas II of Russia
• Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany

As the BBC History page says, Queen Victoria was sometimes called the Grandmamma of Europe, and there was hardly a Continental court that did not boast at least one of her relations. During World War One there were no less than seven of the old Queen's direct descendants, and two more of her Coburg relations, on European thrones.

World War One was like a feud among a band of warring brothers: imperialists rather than the capitalists that Marx was referring to when he coined the phrase.

The World is My Country

“The World is My Country” is Peace News' poster exhibition and speaking tour to mark the centenary of the start of the First World War. It highlights the history and stories of the people and organisations that opposed the conflict: police raids, feminist peace initiatives, clandestine printing presses, striking German munitions workers and communities of resistance from Huddersfield to Hackney.