Dear NKARC members and friends,
After a decade as the coordinating editor of online NKARC Letter, I am stepping down from the position. It has been wonderful to curate the Letter defining the seminal field of Nonkilling Arts. I am hoping we will have a new colleague to volunteer to move the Letter forward.

As Professor Glenn D. Paige used to say:  “Nonkilling Culture crosses all the lines."  It is about a Culture that goes beyond nations, nationalities, gender, religion etc, raising us from tribalism to opening our hearts and minds in the broadest sense.  Paige will then add: “Nonkilling art explores the spirit and practice of how to prevent, respond to, and to improve individual, social, and global well-being beyond killing.”

The back issues of the online NKARC Letters with news/articles/essays are posted on the Nonkilling Arts page on CGNK website.  This special issue is in a way both a retrospective and forward looking indicating how far we have come in the decade.  An overview of NKARC related content was also published in an essay, "Aspects of Nonkilling Literature" in the October 2021  issue of the Humanizing Language Teaching (HLT) journal.

In total, around 60 NKARC Letters were released. Focus has been on both new and old, beyond lament and atrocity where the NK creations point to hope and optimism amidst  rapid social, political, and environmental changes.  

The Letter started with Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, Plays, Music, Cinema (features, documentary and animation), and expanded gradually  to Visual Arts, Photography, Museums and Commemoration, Social Activism, Philosophy, Reflections, and Journalism.  Grateful thanks to all for your valued pointers and contributions.

The NKARC Letter is an informal collaborative effort of NKARC members and friends including the support of various like-minded groups, to name a few, Touda, Transcend Media Service, Peace People, Fabricants de futur, ABC Brazil, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Gandhi Smiriti, Soka Gakkai Ikeda,  Min ON, Sarvodaya, IFLAC, Artistes pour la Paix, Mystique, SpiritWrestlers.com, WalkingForPeace.com  Ekta Parishad and Jai Jagat. My gratitude to all. 

1. Nonkilling Poetry

There is a long tradition of Nonkilling poetry in English over the past two centuries originating from such poets as Emerson, Whitman, Yeats, Yates and Tagore. Most of their mystical musings were about nature’s magnificence and wanting to be in harmony with it.  The new poets of NKARC Letter however echoed in their Nonkilling resonance the negative impact of weapons of mass destruction, the climate extinction, the refugee migrations, pandemics, poverty etc. and how to resolve/overcome these adversities by nonkilling peace through their creative expressions. Brazilian poet Francisco Gomes de Matos’ slim book of poems, Nurturing Nonkilling: A Poetic Plantation (2009) spoke through his “rhythmic reflections” from that vantage point – gentle but subversive. George Simson in appreciation of these poems writes “mortality is celebrated, not feared... they demanded intellectual courage with the smile of rational equanimity. These reflections showed that nonkilling thought, act, imagination, art, feeling, commitment, teaching and career can be experienced, thought about, committed to, felt imagined in a whole world of permutations and combinations far beyond innocence. Mythic fictions are nice confections but have to give way to the reality of mortality, hence nonkilling." 

Similarly, David Krieger's poems for the Letter from USA were not a lament or vent  but their No More Killing sentiments were cri de coeur seeking ways to respond to the human tragedy produced by chauvinistic militarism, human apathy and consumerism. His poems wanted us to know-- whether a just and peaceful world without nuclear weapons is possible? As Krieger writes: “The shadow of the bomb still darkens the forests of our dreams.” The titles of David Krieger’s collections speak for themselves:  Banning the Bomb: In the Shadow of the Bomb: Poems of Survival; Portraits: Peacemakers, Warmongers, and People Between; At the Crossroads of War and Peace; Wake Up!:  God's Tears: Reflections on Atomic Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; The Doves Flew High; and Today is no Good Day for War.  

Additionally, there were poems of our shared humanity received from other poets wanting love, empathy, compassion, justice and human dignity. The poems of Ada Aharoni (Israel), Christophe Barbey (Switzerland), Jocelyn Wright (Canada and South Korea), and Katyayani Singh (India) stand out for those concerns.       

Here are three new powerful poems for October-December issue from Francisco Gomes de Matos, Jocelyn Wright, and Ada Aharoni: 

An Epic Poem for Our Times
By Francisco Gomes de Matos

An epic poem for our times?
It would show how the history of humanity climbs
From a history of violent civilizations
To the growth of nonviolent civilizations
From a history of humiliation
To the growth of  humanization
From a history of ecological transformation
To the growth of spiritualization
From a history of imaginative sciencetechnologization
To the growth of interplanetarization
From a history of local 
peaceful/nonviolent/nonkilling communication
To the growth of UNLIMITED LOVE globalization
 An epic poem for our times?
It would show how Humanity wisely
climbs the mountain of humility
thus bringing together all of you and me
— Francisco Gomes de Matos,  peace linguist, Recife, Brazil

Peace, Are You There?
By Jocelyn Wright 

Are you there?
Peace, speak to me
Whisper in my ear
Are you there?
Peace,
Tell me what I need to know
Tell me how to lead the way
Peace,
Only you can save
Us from more tragedy
Amidst the rubble
Amidst the ruins
If you are there, please rise up
As bodies pile up
I find myself sinking
If you are there, please rise up
Don’t come alone
We need support
We need multitudes who believe in you
Who will stand by you
And act through you
Not more who mount and deploy troops
Manufacture, deal, and use arms
And leave chaos in their wake
Not more who degrade environments
And destroy livelihoods
Not more who ruin cultures
Displace communities,
Divide families and take loved ones
And leave hurt and hate to cinder
Not more who pulverize institutions
Sabotage schools
And leave dreams to smolder in the ashes
We need multitudes who believe in social justice
Act in love
Insist on nonviolence
Commit to nonkilling
Invest in peacebuilding
Peace,
Are you there?
We need you urgently
Do you hear?
— Jocelyn Wright, Mokpo National University, South Korea

WILFRED OWEN: We Are Still Deaf!
By Ada Aharoni

Dear Wilfred Owen
you sang
you warned
you died
and we are still deaf.

Our sons’ teeth
are still for laughing
round an apple,
yet now we tie
not only bayonet-blades to them
but also super Super-Sams.
Their trembling limbs
are not only knife-skewed nowadays
but Napalm-roasted beyond recognition -
we have come a long way
in the killing game!
Wilfred Owen, you shouted:
the absurdity of war
the pity of war!
and we are still deaf.
Yet your poems tolling loud
for those who still die as cattle,
roaring loud against deaf drums -
are white flags waving:
The day will come before time falls from the clock,
when war will be a demoded anachronism.

Wilfred Owen, you sang, you warned,
you cried, you died,
and we are still deaf, so deaf,
stupidly, stupidly deaf. 

(Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) is widely recognised as one of the great poetry voices of the First World War era).
— Ada Aharoni, Founder IFLAC (International Forum for Literature and  Culture), Tel-Aviv, Israel 

2. Nonkilling Fiction

Over past two centuries, the wars formed the background for some great nonkilling novels.  Leo Tolstoy’s classic, War and Peace, narrates in detail its protagonists’ emotions and motivations, plots of moral consequences, and collapsing feudal structures heralding a new world. The new classics in the twentieth century took a different shape to narrative and form, a much deeper and layered unravelling of strained relationships: Ernest Hemmingway’s protagonists caught in the Spanish War – For Whom the Bell Tolls and A Farewell to Arms; Albert Camus existentialist fiction – The Plague and The Fall about a pandemic and a suicide; and Nevil Shute’s On the Beach about a nuclear holocaust about to happen in Australia.

“This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper" These lines from T.S. Eliot’s poem "The Hollow Men" appear at the beginning of the On the Beach. Synopsis of the novel from Wikipedia:  It is a   1957 post-apocalyptic novel written by British-Australian author Nevil Shute. It starts with the aftermath of World War III. However, wind currents carrying lingering radiation all but condemn those on the continent to the same fate suffered by the rest of the world. The book details the experiences of a group of people in Melbourne as they await the deadly radiation spreading towards them from the Northern Hemisphere. As the radiation approaches each person deals with impeding death differently…

We had mention of these and many other noteworthy works under Nonkilling fiction/ cinema in the Letter. The most rewarding discovery of the Nonkilling fiction in NKARC Letter came under the fiction written in the first two decades of the new millennium from NKARC friends. To name a few novels mentioned in our Letter: The Chernov’s in the Storm of Time and The Blood in the Eyes by Rifet Bahtijaragic; Natalia’s Peace by Adrian De Hoog, The Artist and the Assassin and A Message for the Emperor by Mark Frutkin. The Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh on climate crisis and human trafficking, and Ghachar Ghochar on domestic violence by Vivek Shambagh.

Short fiction for this issue:

• From Amelia Burke: "The Tea Kettle Sisters" (In English and Spanish).
• From Balwant Bhaneja: Two English girls while in India long for a Rickshaw Ride in Agra. "The Rickshaw Ride" by Balwant Bhaneja. 
  

3. Nonkilling Nonfiction

Many new works were introduced in this category over the decade (there is a long list of very well written and researched books under the Publications tab on CGNK website). Titles of select books mentioned in the Letter below tell their wide ranging themes:  Nonkilling Anthropology: A New Approach to Studying Human Nature, War and Peace by Leslie Sponsel; The Principle of Nonviolence: A Philosophical Path by Jean-Marie Muller; Nonkilling Security and the State by Joam Evans Pim (ed.); Diary of a Kidnapped Colombian Governor: A journey toward Nonviolent Transformation by Guillermo Gaviria Correa;  Captivity: 118 Days in Iraq and the Struggle for a World Without War by James Loney; A Persistent Peace: One Man’s Struggle for a Nonviolent World by John Dear;  Nonkilling Korea: Six Culture Exploration by Glenn D. Paige and Chung-Si Ahn; The Nonkilling Paradigm by Katyayani Singh and Anoop Swarup; Music and Conflict Transformation by Olivier Urbain;  Nonkilling Futures: Visions by James Dator and Joam Evans Pim (eds); Give Nonkillling a Chance: Are Nonkilling Societies Possible by Anoop Swarup (ed); Towards a Nonkilling World: Nonkilling Media by Joam Evans Pim; Festschrift in Honor of Prof. Glenn D. Paige by N. Radhakrishnan, Chaiwat Satha-Anand, Glenda Paige, Glenn D. Paige, Joám Evans Pim, Balwant Bhaneja; Spirit Wrestlers: Doukhobor Pioneers and their Friends by Koozma J. Tarasoff;   and Quest for Gandhi: A Nonkilling Journey and Peace Portraits: Pathways to Nonkilling by Balwant Bhaneja.  

There is a long list of very well written and researched books under the Publications tab on CGNK website.

Two new nonkilling nonfiction works identified for this issue:
1) The Penalty is Death - state power, law and justice By Barry Jones (ed.)
The Penalty is Death was first published in 1968, in the aftermath of the hanging of Ronald Ryan in Victoria - the last man executed in Australia. At the time, capital punishment had been abolished as the penalty for murder in only 30 nations, although there was a moratorium on its use in many more. In 2022, the number of abolitionist nations had risen to 108, and 54 more have longstanding moratoriums. The World Coalition against the Death Penalty reported the number of recorded executions in 2021 at 2,397, with about 2,000 in China…

The book features the views of great novelists such as Charles Dickens, Albert Camus, Arthur Koestler, and George Orwell; philosophers such as Max Charlesworth; legal scholars such as Cesare Beccaria; and rigid enforcers such as J Edgar Hoover. Barry Jones's new introduction brings the story up to date, including the continuing use of the death penalty in the US.

2) Love and Honour? Marriage for Peace By David Evans
The book Love and Honour? Marriage for Peace exposes the ongoing phenomenon of Romeo and Juliet style romance tragedy; families killing their own and other families' daughters, sons, sisters and brothers in the name of family honour. Focused on Northern India and Nepal, the stories illustrate that despite India adopting a progressive democratic constitution in 1950, the public murder of forbidden lovers continues. Media reports of this phenomenon did not surface until 1993, but have increased dramatically. Inspired from research for a doctoral thesis, this book seeks a path from murder to reconciliation, to acceptance and ultimately to marriage for peace. 

4. Nonkilling Theatre and Plays

Over the past decade, the NKARC Letter had significant mention of political playwrights and their works including Bertolt Brecht, Athol Fugard, Vijay Tendulkar, and Habeeb Tanveer. We had a close collaboration with Quebec’s Teesri Duniya Theatre making use of its Alt Theatre periodical's thought-provoking essays as well as commentary on controversial political plays, including that of its founder Rahul Varma. For an insightful assessment of Varma’s work, see “Change the World One Play at a Time: Playwright and Activist Rahul Varma on Socially-engaged Diasporic Theatre in Canada” by Anouck Carsigno. “What stands out in Rahul Varma’s productions is his artistic rendition of historical facts and multi-layered socio-economic issues, staged in different locations and interpreted by a very diverse cast of actors. Through his plays, he contributes to informing a large public on a wide spectrum of inter-connected themes which cover globalized capitalism, environment and development issues (Bhopal 2001), the marginalization of Indigenous people in Canada (The Land where the Trees Talk 1998), migration and exploitation (No Man’s Land 1995), the interplay between domestic violence and racism (Counter Offence 1995), war and occupation in Iraq (Truth and Treason 2017).”

For this Issue, Robert Lepage’s The Seven Streams of the River Ota
The play’s introduction: "Early one August morning in 1945, several kilos of uranium dropped over Japan changed the course of human history. Fifty years later, Hiroshima's vitality is striking: the city where survival itself seemed unimaginable today incarnates the notion of renaissance.

Robert Lepage and Ex Machina's The Seven Streams of the River Ota makes Hiroshima a literal and metaphoric site for theatrical journey through the last half-century. In The Seven Streams, Hiroshima is a mirror in which seeming opposites - East and West, tragedy and comedy, male and female, life and death - are revealed as reflections of the same reality." 

{For more:  Globe2Go }

5. Nonkilling Music

Over the past decade. there have been contributions on Nonkilling Music both commentary in our Letter on theory of music and peacebuilding as well as musical concerts of different genres from across the globe. These have covered folk, jazz, inspirational, spiritual, classical and fusion concerts.

Below are two commentaries on theory from Rashida Khanam (Nonkilling Music) and Olivier Urbain (Min-On Music Research Institute) .

Music Education, Development of Children and Nonkilling World by Rashida Khanam, CGNK, Bangladesh.
In working towards a Nonkilling world, music is the linking power of all emotional, spiritual and physical elements of the Universe. Professor Glenn D. Paige once noted that we may differ on the social uses of nonkilling music, but nonkilling music "in creation or use could not produce atrocities ...or lethal responses to them..." Positive Music throughout human history, since classical period, has fascinated philosophers like Confucius, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Al Farabi, Ibn Sina and many others. Confucius, one of the great philosophers of China promoted music in educational practice. To Confucius, "music was essential to properly accord with the way of heaven and earth. The key result of music is harmony of emotions."

One cannot be knowledgeable without music. According to Socrates, "music is, as we shall see, philosophical music, the music of truth." He promoted an unbending set of ethical values and morals. In his ethical system there is no place for "double standard, dishonesty and dishonor." Plato, the first political philosopher, in his book The Republic gave importance to the necessity of music education for "training of soul." He introduced music in school curriculum at primary level. Similarly, Socrates highlighted the need for music to civilize young guardians. Aristotle also gave importance to positive music and music education. In classical Islamic period, music was viewed significant by Al Farabi and Ibn Sina. What the philosophers thought of music and music education of children more than 2,500 years ago exerts positive influence even today in their development with regards to metacognitive, cognitive, social and behavioral outcomes toward a Nonkilling world in the context of contemporary violence and killings.

Music IN Peacebuilding Research (MOMRI), Olivier Urbain, Japan
Music in peacebuilding is an emergent field with interested scholars representing a variety of intertwined fields, from applied ethnomusicology to sociology, from peace and conflict studies to social movement studies. In addition to scholarly pursuits, there are numerous practitioners and activists who are involved in the work of music in peacebuilding, sometimes explicitly connected through their work to music and peacebuilding and sometimes implicitly. The Min-On Music Research Institute (MOMRI), based in Tokyo, Japan, is possibly the only research organisation in the world dedicated solely to music in peacebuilding. There is a growing interest in music in peacebuilding (and music, conflict and violence). MOMRI has decided to find a common set of reference points and discourses to facilitate collaborative work. This special issue of Music and the Arts in Action on "Keywords for Music in Peacebuilding" is the result of this process. The Keywords of Music on which essays in the issue are written are: Community music, Dialogue, Emotions, Harmony, Indigeneity, Trust and Violence.

We have selected for NKARC from the Music and Arts in Action journal (vol. 6, No.2) an essay on “Music and Violence” by JONATHAN P. J. STOCK, Department of Music  University College Cork, Ireland.  It provides a critical review of a wide cross-section of ethnomusicological research into violence, conflict, and music, leading to proposal of a new model for field researchers. The paper concludes that music is not inherently peaceful: instead, it frames and commemorates conflict, making its impacts resound. Music is put to contrasting, and even conflicting, usages by those in, or recovering from, situations of hurt, hostility, or overt conflict. The article provides examples from research carried out in many parts of the world and in the shadow of numerous types of violence, from the re-imagining of a heroic individual to the systemic antagonisms of colonization or poverty, and from the recruitment of extremists to the self-regulation of inmates. Finally, a new model for applied ethnomusicological involvement in the area is briefly presented. Its component parts – naming, witnessing, intervention, and survival are discussed showing how an ethnomusicologically trained researcher can contribute to peacebuilding via musical research, listening, and participation.

For this Issue, two contributions:

1) Tears For Fears - "Rivers of Mercy" song.
A deep thoughtful composition by Tears for Fears group. Their "Rivers of Mercy" song heals amidst chaos through self-forgiveness, searching for our center. Dialogue with its creators, explaining the meaning and inspiration for this song:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmWXhjHppwI
(Thanks, Manuel.)

2) Multicultural-Multilingual Music group from Quebec Mosaïque’s composition, Make the Bridge.
The group’s new intercultural concert on Youtube – Make the Bridge/ Faisons Le Pont.
(Thanks, Jayant.)

6. Nonkilling Documentary Cinema

NDC is about throwing light on courageous  journeys of filmmakers and their subjects seeking truth in social realities surrounding them. The following are critical works from  filmmakers Werner Herzog, Alvaro Orus, Tony Robinson, and Vishnu Vasu.  We covered their work in earlier NKARC letters, with a special piece on Vasu’s Nonkilling four docu films.

(i) Meeting Gorbachev, a new documentary film by Werner Herzog.  
Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, a champion of nonkilling politics, sits down with filmmaker Werner Herzog to discuss his many path-breaking nonkilling accomplishments. Topics include talks to reduce nuclear weapons, the reunification of Germany and the dissolution of the USSR. I recall reading years ago Gorbachev telling President Reagan, instead of arms race, why not have a competition on which country disarms its nuclear arsenal fastest.

• Meeting Gorbachev (2018) by Werner Herzog and Andre Singer (trailer)
• Review at NY Times.

(ii) The Beginning of the End of Nuclear Weapons (film documentary)
This new documentary from Alvaro Orus tells the story of the positive activism to secure the UN Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons. Through interviews and archival footage, the film relates how the campaign's core message -- "human beings are destroyed by nuclear weapons" -- eventually wins the day. The title, The Beginning of the End of Nuclear Weapons, is a reference to the speech made by Setsuko Thurlow to the assembled throng of dignitaries and International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons (ICAN) campaigners, during her Nobel Laureate Speech in December 2017. The film charts the story of the development of the atomic bomb through to the negotiations to the treaty for banning nuclear weapons, it is told through the interventions of 14 activists and diplomats who played a critical role in the negotiations.

(iii) Nonkilling Doc Films of Sri Lankan film-maker Vishnu Vasu
The thing about the Nonkilling Arts one learnt from Glenn D. Paige was that for authentic Nonkilling creativity, the artist must be imbued in every sense of his or her being with the spirit (passion) of Nonkilling, only then the person can create a genuine piece of nonkilling art.

The 4 docs by Sri Lankan film maker Vishnu Vasu over the past decade reflect that empathetic spirit and commitment both in understanding of subject and the cinematic treatment accorded. The viewer can experience that in his steady narrative and in every frame of his films. Without that nonviolent anchor it would not have been possible to accomplish such meditative realism about our Right to Live. His creative body of work triggers not only empathy, but also coaxes a viewer into seeing our tacit complicity. The following docu films compel us to think about the ways to bring about the change needed. The docs and their url free for watching, are as follows:

• 2011 - Gandhi’s Children (54 mins).
• 2015 - Butterfly (47 mins).
• 2018 - Handful of Leaves (59 mins).
• 2021 - Mother/Amma (30 mins): PASSWORD: Mother2828
  

Additionally, his short videos are insightful comments on contemporary issues, e.g. his 2 min. video Hope for Humanity about the pandemic.

{ Read full article with synopsis of above four films and Vasu’s film-making. }

New docu film for this issue:

1) Report on I AM PEACE short films festival forum from Georgina Galanis:

I AM PEACE Short Film Forum
Grit   Grace   The Goals

As a welcomed highlight of the 7 th GAMIP Summit “Cultures of Peace in Action “ Sept 27+ Oct 3-7,2022 in Tunja Colombia and online.
The I AM PEACE Short Film Forum - launched their Official Selections.
6 Days  and 20 + Hours of fresh + potent screenings including post Forum Fireside Chats with reviewers, peace influencers and solutionaries.

It is our aim to strengthen the original and lasting  purpose of this innovative consciousness raising forum  through film , media + the arts.
Tune in ….Turn on ….
Take Time for Peace

Say it  See it  Be it
”I AM PEACE,  here to  challenge fear + taboo, to overcome war + violence by exercising the Muscles of Peace,  to unite community + create infrastructures aspiring to “the Culture of Peace in action” through the key messages portrayed in the media and films that will be screened herein.

-Georgina Galanis, Forum Director, Cultural Curator:  “We want the films screened to have impact on choices one makes and stands for - To inspire and allow people to feel an emotional commitment to ending the cult of violence we live in, and spur awareness of the nuclear threat and human inhilation potential… to awaken a passion for our planet, exercising ones inner confidence and trust for your new found muscles of peace.  21 century priorities include really making self care in advocacy a priority. Advocacy is not about “unleashing rage against the machine” anymore. It’s about recognizing equity, empathy, for self understanding, healing personal and thus collective historical and cyclical traumas.  It’s about  human evolution , lifting the lowest rung and eliminating the scourge of war.
-To actively advocate for policy change addressing the wounds of our society but beginning with self - quality  of life , mental health and personal agency - We see ourselves in each other’s compassionate gaze.“

Gil Agnew, Futurist + Forum Moderator 2022
“..With a calm reserve instilled that peace comes from within … it is vital to our consciousness evolution.”

Forum Themes covering
Grit -Grace -The Goals

One of the highlights

-Youth - Social Impact + The Goals
Included  shorts from
GREENHEART CULTURAL EXCHANGE
now collaborating with Purpose Earth which is a unification result of 2022 of different changemakers
Has been for years working with, connecting, empowering youth globally
15 countries, 28 grassroots projects. hundreds of hours mentoring projects as well as financial support, environmental restoration, cultural collaboration, community activation
 
Peace is not just the absence of violence,
when you are upset, take a deep breath
and remember that  as long as you have a pulse,
you are the greatest changemeaker
Timotina Boakye-Ghana

Each day’s explorations and screenings

• • Arts Education + Transformation
  • Civil Society Muscles of Peace - Building Infrastructures for Peace
  • Peace + Possibility
  • A New Way of Being
  • Sustainable Peace
  • Give Peace A Chance
  • Nikoraia Awards Ceremony

Visionary Youth 2022  Kasha Sequoia Slavner
Arts + Culture 2022 Colombia - Andrea Rey

Peace Pole Planting - Solidarity for Culture of Peace
In the Gardens of the Universidad Pedagogica y Technological, Tunja Colombia

http://www.gamip.org/

• • Fiscal Sponsor: The Peace  Alliance
  • Grantors: The Biosophical Institute, Purpose Earth

Many blessings,
Georgina

2) Life on the roof of top of the world
From Aga Khan Foundation University: A new docu film for this issue of NKARC Letters – Remedification of water shortages in Karachi: Life on the roof of top of the world.

7. Nonkilling Philosophy

Clay Edwards is a long-time contributor to the NKARC Letter, an insightful observer of US political scene in time of Ukraine-Russia war seen through the lens of classical philosophy of Plato, Socrates and Aristotle.  Two examples below:

• "The sham of non-existence and the Russo Ukrainian war of 2022: philosophy of person-entered accountability in political thought"
  By Clay Edwards
• "Nonkilling Philosophical Reaction: Flattery in Empty Rhetoric and Sophistry sham Politics in the Russia / Ukraine Conflict"
  By Clay Edwards

8. Nonkilling Visual Art, Animation, Cartoon, Graphic Novel

Art inspired by the Doomsday Clock aims to ‘confront the disillusionment of our time’ By Sarah Starkey

Sarah Starkey writes on artist Sam Heydt 's eerie juxtaposition of modern life with nuclear holocaust, in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, see below:

Sam Heydt is an accomplished author, producer, and lifelong activist who has undertaken a range of altruistic, non-profit work. Her art is anchored in social advocacy and attempts to give a voice to the veiled, forgotten, exiled, and silenced. Heydt’s work has been shown in galleries, museums, art fairs, and film festivals worldwide. And, recently, Heydt released a collection of art inspired by the Doomsday Clock that she titled 100 Seconds to Midnight.

In the collection, Heydt combines images of destruction with portrayals of the virtues born from the American Dream to “confront the disillusionment of our time with the ecological and existential nightmare it is responsible for.”

9. Nonkilling Reflections

• Rebranding and Reimagining Peace by Maya Soetero
  NKARC colleague Maya Soetero writes: “Only if you have time and are interested, please watch and share my google talk about Rebranding and Reimagining Peace.  The conversation with Lyn Meheula was organized by Peace Studio but also features ideas from my other nonprofits and endeavors. I hope the conversation will get you thinking about new ways to be active peacebuilders in your communities, the spaces where you live and love.  On this Day of Peace and in the days that follow, letʻs go take action and make strides, beautiful people!“ { Interview on Youtube }

• Taking Action on Climate Change Requires Coming Together by David Korten
  “The deeply flawed economic theory that drives this disaster ignores or denies three foundational truths:
      1. Money has no intrinsic value. It will buy only that which is for sale. It will be useless on a dead Earth.
      2. Science now confirms what thoughtful humans have long recognized: Life exists only in communities of living beings that self-organize to create and maintain the conditions on which life depends. The Indigenous peoples of South Africa call it ubuntu: “I am because you are.”
      3. While we know from daily experience that there are demented souls among us who gain pleasure from harming other people, most people derive their greatest pleasure from caring for and sharing with others…”
• Cowardly scholars by Richard Koenigsberg, Library of Social Science
  Koenigsberg writes: "I have been arguing for many years (3000 newsletters) that the essence of warfare is creating soldiers as sacrificial victims…"
  Full text:
  

....The perpetuation of warfare is based on our belief that sacrifice (the death of soldiers in warfare) is good. Indeed, soldiers are honorable and virtuous because they have taken upon themselves the burden of sacrificing their lives for their nation.

They are the "chosen ones. The essence of their "goodness" is their willingness to "die for their country." The soldier symbolizes the sacrificed Christ, dying for all of us--so that our nation may "live on."

The phrase "dying for one's country" renders this dynamic as a cliché. One puts it more bluntly by saying that we wage war in order to kill our  own soldiers as a demonstration of devotion. Or as Carolyn Marvin puts it, even more bluntly, soldiers become "sacrificial delegates." We "turn men into murderers so that we can kill them more easily."

Where are the arguments refuting this hypothesis? Out to lunch, that bunch. Where is the development of this profoundly important, revolutionary idea?

Agnieszka Monnet writes about the "troubling argument" about modern national cohesion as being dependent upon blood sacrifice. She says that the idea that nations "might actually 'need' members to be will to die for them can appear prima facie as a revolting claim."

A "revolting claim." Imagine if when Darwin proposed that the human beings descended from lower forms of animal life, the best critics could say was that this was a "revolting claim."

Cowardly scholars. Is it the truth that terrifies them? Or fear that the wrath of patriots and nationalists that might descend upon them? Or fear of seeming "politically incorrect;" saying what students and administrators might not like to hear?

—Richard Koenigsberg

10. Nonkilling Journalism

• U.S., Russia Agree to Call for Negotiating New START Successor by Shannon Bugos and Heather Foye
• A Bold Idea: A nuclear weapons trade-off to end the war? By Alyn Ware
  An interesting idea for Diplomacy: A nuclear weapon trade-off to end the war in Ukraine.
• The Ugly Truth About Nuclear Disarmament by Douglas Roche

Deep gratitude to all who contributed and pointed to the material for this Issue.

My special thanks to colleagues webmaster Manuel Casal and CGNK Director Joám Evans Pim for their unrelenting support over the past decade in producing NKARC Letter, with words of wisdom from Olivier Urbain, Tom Fee, and Rich Panter. Finally you readers, grateful thanks for your persistent support to make this a worthwhile project.

In Nonkilling Peace,
Bill

Bill (Balwant) Bhaneja
Coordinator
NonKilling Arts Research Committee (NKARC)
Center for Global Nonkilling (CGNK)
www.nonkilling.org

"Nonkilling Culture crosses all the lines." —Glenn D. Paige

Nonkilling is THE measure of Human progress

[THIS IS AN INTERNAL NEWSLETTER OF THE NKARC. COPYRIGHT FOR ALL MATERIAL IN THE NEWSLETTER REMAINS PROPERTY OF THE SOURCES/WRITERS/ART CREATORS]

[Previous NKARC Letters are available on Nonkilling Arts page of CGNK site]

Stay in contact also on Social Networks

• Please feel free to contact NKARC Letter's coordinator at billbhaneja@nonkilling.org.
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