Nonkilling Arts Research Committee Letter: Vol. 2, N. 5 (Sep-Oct 2018)

Bimestrially sent from our site: Nonkilling.org.

"Nonkilling art explores the spirit and practice of how to prevent, respond to, and to improve individual, social, and global well-being beyond killing." —Glenn D. Paige

Dear NKARC members and friends,

As Stephen Hawking once said: There should be no boundaries to human endeavour. Where there is life, there is hope.

In NonKilling Arts Research Committee(NKARC), we are always seeking to explore creative space for expressions of possibilities for a sustainable NonKilling world. Creative imagining can play a major role in prevention of lethality. In this issue of the Letter, we have your contributions of poetry, theatre, visual arts, cinema, peace march, nonkilling research, reflections and journalism.

1. Nonkilling Poetry

Below are the poems from NKARC colleagues: "From the essence of Nonviolence to reverence of life" by Christophe Barbey who is the Center for Global Nonkilling Representative at the United Nations.  “Hubris” and “Another Hiroshima Day Has Passed” are from David Krieger. David is the founding President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. 

From the Essence of Non-violence... to Reverence for Life

by Christophe Barbey

Please be my bug, my snake, my scorpion;
Please be my bull, my eagle, my lion;
Please destroy me, ruin me, eat me and hate me;
But please, if it helps, become fully human!
Your heart, loving all,
Your mind, at peace for all,
Your hands, wealth in each of us,
And your humanity, a future for life.

Did you forget your smile? How long ago?
Did you miss the embrace? Can I help?
Did you forsake ecstasy? Please unite!

Unto yourself, the good of your life,
Unto ourselves, all of us, the human destiny!
From reverence for life … to planetary universal well-being!

In Our Hubris

by David Krieger

We have, through our cleverness,
created nuclear weapons and found a way
to live with them.

We risk everything that matters, everything
of beauty and meaning, everything we love.

Science has given us the power of annihilation,
the capacity to destroy ourselves.

With nuclear arms, the gun is loaded and pointed
at the collective head of humanity.
We avert our eyes and pretend not to see.
Have we given up on our common future?

How shall we react? How shall we resist?
How shall we awaken before it is too late?

Another Hiroshima Day Has Passed

by David Krieger

And there are still nuclear weapons in the world.

They are still on hair-trigger alert, weapons
with no concern for you or me or anyone.

They are weapons with steel hearts.
There is no bargaining with them.

They have nothing to say or perhaps
they speak in another language.
They do not speak our language.

They have only one battle plan
and that is utter destruction.

They have no respect for the laws of war
or any laws, even those of nature.

Another Hiroshima Day has passed
and the shadow of the bomb still darkens
the forests of our dreams.

2. Theatre and Nonkilling

Can white artists tell indigenous and black stories of colonialism and slavery?
Well-known Quebec theatre visionary Robert Lepage had to cancel his two shows Slav and Kanata in Montreal and Paris. The cancellation resulted from intense public pressure about the plays that focussed upon the themes of slavery and colonization of indigenous First Nations people of Canada. The main contention was about cultural appropriation, the representation and interpretation of the content acted mainly by white actors. Lepage in the name of artistic freedom of expression refused to consider making any changes to his productions. The history of slavery and colonizing continues to place the people of colour and indigenous background in the arts at a subordinate level. See below an opinion piece by NKARC colleague Rahul Varma, he is the founding artistic director of Teesri Duniya Theatre in Montreal. He writes:

“Cultural freedom is sacred, but it is essential to behave ethically in exercising that freedom. And ethical considerations do not permit the production of a show about black slavery without an equitable participation of black people... An alternative to cultural appropriation is cultural exchange, in which people from diverse cultures and colours would come together as different but equal to learn from each other and create art. Such a cultural exchange would transcend colonial history and beliefs as well as transform misconceptions and misrepresentations into truth.”

Lysistrata and the Temple of Gaia, David S. Craig’s trenchant eco-comedy at Ottawa's commedia dell'arte Odyssey Theatre, reviewed by Peter Robb 
Lysistriata is the classic Greek comedy by Aristophanes known for its women folks banning sex to their men for wanting to stop them from fighting in the Peloponnesian War,  the plot device of sex strike has been used previously for varied themes. The latest adaptation from David S. Craig comes as an eco-comedy.  Peter Robb in his review of the play writes: "The women, warned by the goddess Gaia that things won’t go well for the human race unless a little respect is shown to the planet, decide to hold their mates libidos ransom to force men to do something about climate change. In all this and what follows, Craig employs humour to wonderful effect. An eco-play could be ponderous, but there’s not a whiff of that here. Instead, just as the play edges toward finger-wagging, Craig throws in a joke, easing rather than shoving us toward his point of view... " 

3. Visual Art and Nonkilling

Rachel Kalpana James
In Bright Oriental Star video installation (2011, 2018), UK born Canadian visual artist Rachel Kalpana James explores a significant moment in East-West contact, one that had profound but little-known reverberations in Canadian culture. Bright Oriental Star celebrates the Indian poet and activist Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). It’s currently being exhibited at Ottawa Art Gallery.  Dr. Deepali Dewan, Curator of South Asian Visual Culture, Department of World Cultures, Royal Ontario Museum comments on Kalpana James’ exhibit:  

"Evocative stylized views of walking through the Canadian landscape—which the artist shot herself with a hand-held camera, some of which seem to resemble Group of Seven paintings—are interspersed with flashing text, like a news report or heartbeat. In this way, aesthetic qualities associated with both the documentary and the painterly get mixed together. Rather than a project of historical recovery, this video projection seeks to explore the complex nature of Tagore’s position in the world, East/West interaction, and the nature of colonial/national history. Ultimately, the work is a comment on how historical knowledge gets produced: what is remembered, what is erased, and what constitutes history? It is a work that self-consciously lingers at the thin line between history and fiction, suggesting that the boundaries between the two are always blurred."

In 1929, the Bengali poet and activist Rabindranath Tagore visited Canada for the first time. He was on his tenth world tour after becoming the first non-European person to receive the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. An international household name at the time, Tagore spent many months lecturing about his ideas on educational reform. His work reverberated with philosophical movements around the globe that favoured nature in opposition to the increasing industrialization of society.

Deborah Nehmad 
NKARC colleague Deborah Nehmad is staging another show on the theme of gun violence, this time at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder, Colorado, USA. It’s entitled, What Is Wrong With This Country? Deborah describes her art practice as a way to visualize and raise awareness of the enormous human cost of violence, war and injustice. We reported in previous Letters her abstract and experimental modern art shows in Honolulu and New York. The exhibit at Dairy opened on August 24 and runs through October 7, 2018. The Dairy has organized in conjunction with the show a panel discussion on gun violence and a screening of recent documentary film, Newtown seeking to reconcile those impacted by the killings of young children at the local Sandyhook Elementary School.

John Douglas
John Douglas is a social and political conscious American artist and filmmaker. Two of his controversial pieces: Crushing violence and Homeland Security are cutting edge and blatant right in your face pieces. John considers M16 as the evil of US gun culture. The process of creating Crushing violence is described on his website: "On September 10, Douglas crushed that M16 assault rifle during a steamroller-printing event at Helen Day Art Center in Stowe. He made a print of an assault rifle with an industrial steamroller, the kind used to smooth sidewalks after paving. It's not a new process, but an apt one when you're seeking to make fine-art prints and crush the image of a weaponized society."
Illinois-born John Douglas attended several schools in the late 1950s, including Harvard University, the Museum School of Fine Arts and Boston University School of Fine & Applied Arts, then drafted into the U.S. Army in 1961. After the service he came  to Putney, Vermont in 1965, and was part of Red Clover Collective and FREE VERMONT.

A new Era of Peace and a Peaceful Land: Arts exhibition about Korean unification aspirations, Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement, Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ont. Canada,  July 12 to October 05.
This exhibition seeks to support, the emerging peace process on the Korean peninsula. It addresses the critical issues of the Korean division, including the land, the different economic and governance systems, and separated families/people impacted, so the viewers may better understand both the history and potential of  Korea. 

4. Nonkilling Global Peace March

Jai Jagat 2020 March- On the move for Peace and Justice

Preparations are underway for an extensive Jai Jagat (Victory to the World) Global March. Thousands of marchers committed to nonviolent change from all over the world will walk from India, Belgium, France, Germany, Sweden, Mali, Senegal, Spain and other countries to Geneva (Switzerland) to meet between September 25 and October 3, 2020.  Geneva city and canton have agreed to welcome the marchers for a week-long People's Action Forum to facilitate the dialogue about the conflicts and issues that local people worldwide are facing as a result of a violent, inequitable economy, polarizing politics and an accelerating arms race.

Jai Jagat means "Victory to an Inclusive and Peaceful World" where no one is left behind —no person, no group, no nation, no individual. Jai Jagat is working towards a new global model of bottom-up development, certain that greater social, political, economic, and ecological inclusion is the only way to achieve peace and the foundation for a just way of living together.

The Jai Jagat campaign is built on the legacy of leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, the suffragette leader, Emmeline Pankhurst, the environmentalist Rachel Carson and many others. Nonviolence originated in their individual commitment and led them to fight for justice while sowing the seeds of peace. Jai Jagat also comes out of the contemporary experience of an India’s peoples movement, known as Ekta Parishad (Unity Forum) that has been widely acclaimed for its long marches that bring together the poorest and most marginalized people to challenge existing power relations, and those press governments for policy change through nonviolent action..

People are encouraged to move… to march and to use different channels, such as art, music, drama, social networking, literature, journalism, and education, to counter the violence of politics and the media, with nonviolent and positive action.

The focus of the Geneva action and the marches in 2019-2020 will be on young people who will bring forward the grievances of the most marginalized, with the aim of finding constructive ways to address and engage with the United Nations organizations for creating a more peaceful and just world. The four areas of constructive engagement with people and the United Nations are: (1) reducing poverty, (2) decreasing social exclusion, (3) improving ecological sustainability, and (4) halting conflict and violence.

How You Can Be Involved
Organizations and individuals that share the vision of the Jai Jagat Campaign are welcome to self-organize and engage in the following activities.

• Volunteer and join an action in your country.

• Share: stories and cases about bottom-up nonviolent actions.

• Advocate for policy change.

• Join one of the marches and you can get more information by writing to contact@jaijagat2020.org.

• Join the Geneva action in 2020.

For more information on how you can be involved, contacts: Website: www.jaijagat2020.org ; Email: ichjaijagat2020@gmail.com, contact@jaijagat2020.org; Facebook: jaijagat2020; Twitter: jaijagat2020.

5. Nonkilling Cinema

Film Documentary: Village of Widows directed by Peter Blow (59 mins)
This award winning documentary chronicles the Sahtu Dene peoples’ struggle to come to terms with their Uranium mine’s legacy, and its lasting impact on their traditional homeland on the shores of Great Bear Lake near Arctic Circle. Sahtu Dene people were employed by the Canadian Government in transporting uranium during World War II and for many years after. The ore was sold to the U.S. military and became fuel for the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The film  concludes with a remarkable display of humanity, when members of the Sahtu Dene community decide to visit Hiroshima in August 1998 to express concern and compassion to those affected by the bombing.  { Trailer }

6. Nonkilling and Activism

The month of August was period of two most significant commemorations - the US Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945. Below are some of the events marking that including report from Yoshida Kurita on two related news events from Japan.

(i) From Nagasaki:
 On 9 August, in his speech at the “Peace Ceremony” held on the occasion of the 73rd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, the Mayor of Nagasaki urged the Japanese government to “approve the Nuclear Ban Treaty and lead the world to de-nuclearization” He emphasized that this is Japan’s “moral responsibility”, as a country which actually experienced the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The same point was stressed by Terumi TANAKA, who, in his speech as a representative of the *hibakusha*s, criticized the Japanese government which has “neither signed nor ratified the Nuclear Ban Treaty”.  In contrast, rather conspicuously, the Japanese Prime Minister, Mr. ABE, made no reference to the Ban Treaty in his speech, stating that it was his government’s policy to act only as a “go-between” between the “nuclear states” and “non-nuclear states”.  What a shift from the Article 9 in Japan’s Constitution that once pledged that Japan will never enter war again to PM Abe’s government choosing to eliminate the Article 9.

(ii) From Okinawa:
 On the evening of 8 August, Takeshi ONAGA, the Governor of Okinawa Prefecture, suddenly passed away. Governor ONAGA (died of cancer at the age of 67) was a champion of peace (i.e. anti-military base) movement in Okinawa. Since his election as the governor in 2014 (supported by the overwhelming majority of the population), he had been actively working for preventing building of a new US military base in Henoko ( a village in Okinawa). Starting as a politician of conservative background, and, hence, not particularly anti-US, he nevertheless perceived how the existence of foreign military bases was oppressing the life of local people and having its devastating effects on society, political and economic structures, and the environment of the prefecture. Thus he took recourse to every administrative and legal measures to stop the building of a new US base in Henoko. Governor ONAGA continued his struggle to the very end of his life, based on a firm conviction that Okinawa should not remain an “island of military bases” but should become an " island of peace" that would function as a “bridge of peace” between conflicting powers in the region.

On 11 August, three days after Governor ONAGA’s death, a gigantic meeting against the building of Henoko military base was held in Okinawa, in which nearly 70,000 people took part.

(iii)  From Ottawa:
- Ottawa Quaker Society organized a gathering on August 9  to hold Nagasaki - Hiroshima bombing commemorations and to request the participants to sign the petition for Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty.  Canada remains a non-signatory to UN’s Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty.  { Report by Koozma J. Tarasoff on the gathering }

-  A public lecture entitled, “Into Eternity – Is Canada Ready for the Age of Nuclear Waste?” was delivered by Dr. Gordon Edwards on August 21 at the Ottawa Public Library along with a related atomic photo exhibit by Robert Tredici.  In his lecture, Dr. Edwards pointed to the evidence that though nuclear energy age may be coming to an end, the age of nuclear waste is just beginning.  Canadians will be living with its toxic wastes for eternity with threats of pollution of its land and water.

Dr. Edwards explained what nuclear waste was and pointed to nuclear sites owned by the federal government and the legacy of radioactive wastes on the shores of the Ottawa River, and from Manitoba to Québec. The talk provided an introduction to the best practices being used in other countries such as Finland to keep radioactive waste out of the biosphere. Other speakers included M. Gilles Provost, a scientific journalist and spokesperson for the Ralliement contre la pollution radioactive, and Dr. Ole Hendrickson, researcher for the Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County.

(iv) From Montreal: Armes-nucléaires et 73e anniversaire Hiroshima par Pierre Jasmin.
http://lautjournal.info/20180813/armes-nucleaires-et-73e-anniversaire-hiroshima

7. CGNK News

Center for Nonkilling and Development in Bangladesh initiates lecture series on Nonkilling studies at the University of Chittagong, Bangladesh
By Joam Evans Pim. { Full report }

8. Nonkilling Research

"The Military Draft in Thailand: A Critique from a Nonkilling Global Political Science perspective" by Siwach Sripokangkul, John Draper, C.J. Hinke, & Charles David Crumptom in Global Change, Peace and Security Journal, July 2018, Vol. 30, No.2. { See article }

“The Anthropology of Peace and Nonviolence” by Leslie E. Sponsel, University of Hawai’i, USA in Diogenes, 2017, Vol. 61(3–4) 30–45 . { See PDF attachment }

9. Nonkilling Journalism

End of Capital Punishment: “For the Catholic Church, is an eye still worth an eye?” by Brandon Ambrosino
The Vatican now opposes death penalty in all cases. Brandon Ambrosino in his opinion piece cites the Vatican’s official statement on the topic: “Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.” { See also Global and Mail video: “Vatican now opposes death penalty in all cases” }

Forget the Libya Model. South Africa Shows the Path to Peace With Pyongyang by  Terence McNamee.
McNamee writes: “Still, that didn’t stop the ANC from trading fruitfully on his decision in its diplomacy after coming to power in 1994. South Africa won an enviable reputation as a saintly member of the nonnuclear club — an exemplary convert after years as one of the world’s worst sinners. Nuclear rollback paved the way for the successful continent wide negotiations on declaring Africa a nuclear-weapons-free zone, resulting in a treaty that bears the name of the place where South Africa developed its atomic bombs, Pelindaba. What might all this suggest about the prospects for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula?”

Progress and Potential of UN Peacekeeping in Liberia, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leonne. Peace, progress and potential: The legacy of UN Peacekeeping in Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone by Jean-Pierre Lacroix  
Lacroix writes: “This year UN Peacekeeping marks 70 years since the first peacekeepers deployed as part of the UN Truce Supervision Organization in the Middle East (UNTSO). The nature of peacekeeping has evolved over seven decades: our peacekeeping operations no longer monitor clear ceasefire lines, instead dealing with armed groups and asymmetrical warfare that has made the endeavour a much more challenging one...”

Uri Avnery passes from this world  1923-2018
Rabbi Michael Lerner writes: “Tikkun grieves and mourns the passing of the founder and leader of Israel's peace movement, Gush Shalom, Uri Avnery.  Until the last moment he continued on the way he had traveled all his life On Saturday, two weeks ago, he collapsed in his home when he was about to leave for the Rabin Square and attend a demonstration against the "Nation State Law", a few hours after he wrote a sharp article against that law.”

Last Word

NATURE: A PositiVIEW
by Francisco Gomes de Matos
(Co-founder, ABA Global Education, Recife, Brazil)

Let´s refer to Nature positively;

Let´s avoid speaking of "the fury of Nature,"
or describing the force of winds as "killing"!

Let´s not say that there are *natural disasters,*
rather that there are *unforeseen environmental factors.*

Let´s not blame Nature as a terrible source of destruction,
rather see it as the world of living things and of construction.
Let´s treat Nature with the utmost respect,
and ecolinguistically our messages to redirect.

Significantly, part of Nature all human beings are;
Let´s make that participation humbly go very far.

By ecolinguistically communicating
a dignifyingly global citizenship we`ll be anticipating.

Following the poem OHAU in last Letter, here’s an epigraph on Nonkilling Hawaii by colleague Francisco Gomes de Matos:
​
Nonkilling Hawaii

From deep volcano formations you were majestically created
In your soil and waters, Hawaiians and visitors are elated

By Nonkilling your history will be inspiringly permeated
Through your nonkilling actions, Humankind will be elevated

My deep gratitude to all who contributed and pointed to the material for
the letter.

Looking forward to your inspirations and comments as always.

Warmest Aloha and Nonkillling Regards,
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.]

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