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Camus’ Neither Victims nor Executioners: The World Speeds Up

The Power of Nonviolence Writings by Advocates of PeaceThe eleventh chapter of The Power of Nonviolence: Writings by Advocates of Peace  contains Albert Camus 1946 essay Neither Victims nor Executioners. This week we discuss the sixth part of the essay, The World Speeds Up. Camus wrote this 16-page essay as World War II had just ended, and it seemed as if the Soviet Union and the United States were dragging the planet into the horrors of a third world war. Eleven years later, he would win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

As the title of this section suggests, Camus looks at how the speed of innovation is increasingly outpacing its being put into practice.  He gives examples from the recent wars and political systems putting into place ideas of a generation, or century, past: Continue reading Camus’ Neither Victims nor Executioners: The World Speeds Up

Welcome Wilderside Friends

Update 12/1 at 9:30am: Difficulties solved. Our blog provider accidentally cut off service. We are back up and running, and received an apology.

We are temporarily having difficulties with the onthewilderside blog site.  The urls for our site are temporarily re-directed to this site while we correct the problem. If you have any questions, please contact us at ian.wilder@yahoo.com

#AfghanistanTuesday ITRW 24/7

Janeaddams1
Image via Wikipedia

While I was researching Jane Addams last week, I was fascinated by her attendance at a series of international peace conferences a century ago.  I wondered  if reviving the concept of international peace conferences was the missing piece in opposing all the US oil wars.  It seemed to me that we needed to make the peace movement more solid, the way the #OccupyWallStreet had done for the warping of our political system by a wealthy few.

Scarry Thoughts seemed to be thinking along the same track in proposing a  Virtual Antiwar University to provide continual education about peace.  He writes:  Continue reading #AfghanistanTuesday ITRW 24/7

Occupy #AfghanistanTuesday

October 6, 2011 are the protests on the 10th anniversary of the Afghanistan War.  In the blog post The hour is approaching: Make a commitment!, we are asked to focus this week’s tweets on organizing for that day:

Tuesday October 4#AfghanistanTuesday! We have wide-ranging conversations every week on #AfghanistanTuesday, but I #AfghanistanTuesday tweetswant to suggest that this week we need to give special attention to the protests themselves. With protests just days away, now is the time we must: Get people to find their local action! When people join up with others near them, protesting the war ceases to be solely theoretical and begins to become a reality. There is a list of many actions nationwide (and worldwide) on the website for the Chicago protest; I predict that as the hours pass, the number of local protests will grow too fast for this list to keep up with!

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Am Intl: Top 10 Summer 2011 Books

This is an excerpt from Top 10 Summer Book List for Human Rights Advocates | Human Rights Now – Amnesty International USA Blog.

Here at Amnesty, our staffers have put together a list of books on our summer reading list for human rights. We invite you to read with us as we look to books, non-fiction and fiction alike, on issues in today’s world. Here are our top 10 summer must-reads!

 

1.) Anil’s Ghost by: Michael Ondaatje
Summary: With his first novel since the internationally acclaimed The English Patient, Booker Prize—winning author Michael Ondaatje gives us a work displaying all the richness of imagery and language and the piercing emotional truth that we have come to know as the hallmarks of his writing. Anil’s Ghost transports us to Sri Lanka, a country steeped in centuries of tradition, now forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of civil war. Into this maelstrom steps Anil Tissera, a young woman born in Sri Lanka, educated in England and America, who returns to her homeland as a forensic anthropologist sent by an international human rights group to discover the source of the organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island. What follows is a story about love, about family, about identity, about the unknown enemy, about the quest to unlock the hidden past–a story propelled by a riveting mystery. Unfolding against the deeply evocative background of Sri Lanka’s landscape and ancient civilization, Anil’s Ghost is a literary spellbinder–Michael Ondaatje’s most powerful novel yet.*

 

2.) Chasing the Flame: One Man’s Fight to Save the World by: Samantha Power

The rest  of the AI post can be read at Top 10 Summer Book List for Human Rights Advocates | Human Rights Now – Amnesty International USA Blog.

Royal Song of the Day: Wednesday 7/27/11

"Get Together" in the Village
Image by Tony the Misfit via Flickr

Get Together by The Youngbloods is the Song of the Day.  This was a wedding song of the Duke and Duchess of Peace.  It was performed by their friends at a waterside ceremony.  All the killing and death in the world made me yearn for a life-affirming song about peace, unity and harmony.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WybIhLJjlTY”>watch?v=WybIhLJjlTY] Continue reading Royal Song of the Day: Wednesday 7/27/11