Give Peace A Chance...HOW ?

?What is Peace?

Peace is commonly understood to mean the absence of hostilities. Other definitions include freedom from disputes, harmonious relations and the absence of mental stress or anxiety, as the meaning of the word changes with context. However, there are others who would say that the absence of hostilities would refer to only those hostilities which are evident and that true peace only springs from the heart of each individual. Peace may refer specifically to an agreement concluded to end a war, or to a lack of external warfare, or to a period when a country's armies are not fighting enemies. It can also refer more generally to quietude, such as that common at night or in remote areas, allowing for sleep or meditation. Peace can be an emotion or internal state. And finally, peace can be any combination of these definitions. A person's conception of "peace" is often the product of culture and upbringing. People of different cultures sometimes disagree about the meaning of the word, and so do people within any given culture. Peace is not a symbol, peace is a mindset. Wikipedia encyclopedia

Take your passions and

make a better world for the children.

Be remembered as heroes in their history books

Quilt Peacemakers

Why Ending War Hasn’t WorkedPeace movements have tried ways for bringing war to an end: Activism, the approach of putting political pressure on governments that wage war. Activism involves protests and public demonstrations, lobbying and political commitment. Almost every war creates some kind of peace movement opposed to it. Why has it failed? • Because idealism turned to anger and violence.

Practices for Peacemakers
How to end war one person at a time

That war is the major problem in the world is undeniable. The need for a new idea is just as undeniable. The new idea is to bring peace one person at a time until the world reaches a critical mass of peacemakers instead of warmakers.

The ancient Indian ideal of Ahimsa, or non-violence, gave Gandhi his guiding principle of reverence for life. In every spiritual tradition it is believed that peace must exist in one’s heart before it can exist in the outer world.

Personal transformation deserves a chance.

When a person is established in non-violence, those in his vicinity cease to feel hostility.— Patanjali, ancient Indian sage — Practices for PeaceThe program for peacemakers asks you to follow a specific practice every day, each one centered on the theme of peace.

Being for Peace

Thinking for Peace

Feeling for Peace

Speaking for Peace

Acting for Peace

Creating for Peace

Sharing for Peace

Our hope is that you will create peace on every level of your life. Each practice takes only a few minutes. You can be as private or outspoken as you wish. But those around you will know that you are for peace, not just through good intentions but by the way you conduct your life on a daily basis. www.chopra.com

www.heropix.com

There is no way to peace. Peace is the way. - Mahatma Gandhi

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Can you be the change that you wish to see in the world? - Mahatma Gandhi

www.heropix.com/

Heroes of Forgiveness

Mahatma Ghandi (1869-1948), Indian nationalist leader, who established his country's freedom through a nonviolent revolution and whose teachings inspired nonviolent movements elsewhere, notably in the United States under civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.


Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), American clergyman, one of the principal leaders of the civil rights movement in the United States and a prominent advocate of nonviolent protest. King's challenges to segregation and racial discrimination helped convince many white Americans to support the cause of civil rights in the United States.

Nelson Mandela (1918- ), South African activist and statesman, who was elected the first black president of South Africa in 1994. He was born in Umtata. In 1944 Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC), a civil rights group promoting the interests of black Africans. In 1962 he was sentenced to five years in prison; in 1964 he was further sentenced to life imprisonment for sabotage and treason. Mandela soon became a worldwide symbol of resistance to apartheid, South Africa's policy of rigid racial segregation.

Desmond Mpilo Tutu (1931- ), South African clergyman, civil rights activist, and Nobel laureate. Born in Klerksdorp, in what is now North-West Province, Tutu was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1960. He was named dean of Johannesburg in 1975 and bishop of Lesotho in 1977; the following year, he became the first black general secretary of the South African Council of Churches. In 1984 Bishop Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of "the courage and heroism shown by black South Africans in their use of peaceful methods in the struggle against apartheid." Apartheid, South Africa's system of racial separatism, has since been dismantled.

Thomas Takashi Tanemori Recipient of Heroes Award -1999 Thomas Takashi Tanemori, with the Silkworm Peace Institute, is a Hiroshima A-Bomb survivor. He came to America in 1956 as an embittered teenager, trying to contain his anger and seek revenge on the American people. He felt marooned by a dark and bitter past, and wrestled with the persistent ghosts of history, learning what it means to be a minority member in America. Then he experienced his own inner spiritual transformation and discovered the importance of healing the human heart by turning from revenge to forgiveness.

Chief Arvol Looking Horse Recipient of Heroes Award -2000 I am the Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe of Peace, a gift of a sacred bundle given nineteen generations ago to my people providing guidance of teachings for assurance of Peace within our lives. The White Buffalo Calf Woman gave this gift of the Sacred Pipe providing guidance of teachings for assurance of Peace within our lives. Along with these teachings of this Sacred Pipe of Peace, has been prophecies passed down from significant people who walked their harmony. They based their lives on teachings given from sacred bundles, such as the Sacred Buffalo Calf Pipe or many other gifts of bundles and teachings from the Creator. They foretold of these times of great change, which coincide with many other Nations' archives recording their own Prophecies. The reality of the accuracy of these Prophecies which has predicted events upon Mother Earth, as well as the history of our own people, have come to pass, so we have learned to pay attention.

Paul Reed & Nyguyen van Nghia Recipients of Heroes Award - 2001 Two of this year's heroes, American Vietnam War veteran Paul Reed and Vietnamese War veteran Nyguyen van Nghia, formerly bitter foes, tell a compelling story which begins with Reed's taking a small diary as a combat trophy from van Nghia's rucksack after presumably killing him. When Reed had Ngiah's beautifully hand-written words translated 20 years later, he read "Forget about everything. Calm yourself. Listen to the world speak. Love bears no grudge." Realizing that the man he had presumably killed was a feeling human being just like himself, Reed sought out Ngiah's family only to discover that Ngiah himself was still alive.

Aqueela Sherills Aqueela and Daude Sherills Recipient of Heroes Award -2002 Aqueela and Daude Sherills: founders of Community Self Determination Institute. Former members of the Crips, caught up in the vicious cycle of violence and revenge in South Central Los Angeles, these brothers saw many friends die. Together they decided that the violence must stop and they began an historic and determined effort to build a truce between the two rival gangs. Their Institute now employs over 8o people, continues to support their groundbreaking work, has become a positive social and economic force in South Central LA, and is a model for other communities in crisis. Read more about these heroes and others

Forgivenessday.org

We Can Create

A Better World

Every Act of

Compassion

Makes a Difference!

Every Day

Counts for

A Better World

One Heart,

One Day at a time!

www.betterworld.net

Episode #17 the Diggers Story podcast finds Digger leaving the show to go on a quest searching for the great peacemakers in our world. Who are they? Can they stop the insanity of greed, poverty, war, hatred, hunger, global warming, etc.? Digger needs to know along with millions of other concerned citizens of the world. Many thanks goes to Ben Borges of Ya-snyth at:www.buzzworkers.com/

We Do Not See Things The Way They Are

We Do Not See Things The Way They Are

We See Them the Way We Are

We need a new mindset

The children of the world need our help

The use of Children Fight as soldiers by the two fighting parties in the war has become a common practice in much of Africa. The war is over but these children still live in a matter that resembles war however they have no war to fight anymore. They now fight out of the pure enjoyment of it. This practice must be stopped and these children must be deprogrammed for the sake of African civilization and peace.

Child Soldiers Of Sierra Leone

WHAT ON EARTH ARE WE DOING can we get a grip?

Middle East Reality Check

Street children the cloak of invisibility

Read the report

The UN Children’s Fund says one billion children live in poverty

(Pic: Roger Le Moyne) http://www.unicef.org/

One in seven Australian children are battling the disadvantages of poverty. Reuters

The Struggle Against Global Poverty

Orphan boy, sixteen, with arms tied to wooden bench as punishment for attempting to run away. Moscow region, Russia.

Millions of women throughout the world live in conditions of
abject deprivation of, and attacks against, their fundamental human rights for no other reason than that they are women.

Women and children in the sex trade are getting younger


Global sex-trafficking is fast replacing the arms and drugs trades as the preferred activity of criminal networks, an international conference on violence against women in Spain has heard.
Four million women are said to be involved in the trade every year

The sex industry itself makes $52bn annually.
Men create the demand, she said, and women are the supply - often women from countries characterised by poverty, unemployment, war and political instability.
Ms Kelly told the BBC that fighting sexism would help reduce abuse of women.
"Violence against women happens because of gender inequality," she said.
While not ruling out the theory that men abuse women because they are threatened by the changes inherent in globalisation, Ms Kelly said that violence against women is an age-old problem.
"It is not something new that happened with globalisation," she said.

STUCK IN THE BACKSEAT

A misguided look at the plight of India's child prostitutes

Be worried, be very worried

No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill,
but it probably looks a lot like Earth. (time.com)

And with sea ice vanishing,
polar bears are starting to turn up drowned.

Watch the short movie for more info

The Diggers Story Podcast's 16th Episode addresses these issues.
http://www.diggersstory.com/
Thanks goes out to our frappr friend The Black Bond. Earlier in one of our promos we heard his music and his message of diversity was a perfect fit for episode #16.
http://www.theblackbond.com/

All Forms of Bullying Are Abusive and....

All Forms of Bullying Are Abusive

All forms of bullying are abusive and
all are opportunities to teach children how to get along,
how to be considerate people, and how to be part of a community or group.

Bullying is well documented in Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, providing an extensive body of information on the problem. Research from some countries has shown that, without intervention, bullies are much more likely to develop a criminal record than their peers, and bullying victims suffer psychological harm long after the bullying stops.
www.popcenter.org/problems/problem-bullying.htm

In the U.S. The National Education Association reports that every day 6,250 teachers are threatened with bodily harm and 260 are actually physically assaulted. Most children say that they would feel happier and learn better if they felt safer at school. http://www.bullying.com.au/pages/schoolbullying.html

Are British schools really facing an increase in bullying?

At a school in Surrey, a 15-year-old Natashia Jackman was allegedly set upon by three girls in the canteen queue and stabbed numerous times with a pair of scissors, injuring her eye. She'd been the subject of a campaign of bullying in previous weeks, according to her father.
A fortnight earlier Shanni Naylor, 12, was slashed across the face during an English lesson at a school in Sheffield. She needed 30 stitches to repair the damage. The victim had, apparently, intervened the day before to try to stop her attacker bullying another pupil.
But perhaps the most unsettling case was that of a teenager from Cornwall, Tommy Kimpton, sentenced to two years in prison for the manslaughter of a friend who had bullied him repeatedly over a number of years. He was cleared on the far more serious charge of murder after the court heard about the history of bullying.

Bullycide memorial page Cases of bullycideA list of children and young people who have lost their life orbeen driven to suicide because of bullying at school or bullying during their school years http://www.bullyonline.org/schoolbully/cases.htm



"Rats & Bullies" produced by Roberta McMillan and Ray Buffer (official website is http://www.ratsandbullies.com/) probes the suicide of a 14-year-old girl from Mission, BC named Dawn-Marie Wesley, who took her own life by hanging herself with a dog leash in her bedroom after systematic bullying and threats by three teenage girls from her school. Her suicide was discovered by her then-13-year-old brother who had come to her room prior to the family's dinner, to use her TV. The bullies were named in Dawn-Marie's suicide note which prompted an investigation by RCMP and Crown Counsel leading to two precedent setting cases by Canada's provincial court in which the bullies were held accountable for their threats.
Relational Aggression is discussed with a focus on female bullying. An added cultural component to the story is the role of aboriginal sentencing circles, which were utilized in sentencing one of the bullies, since the victim and one of the accused were both Native, or First nations. This form of Restorative Justice is beginning to gain wider appeal by legal systems around the globe.
Actions and their consequences are explored through interviews with Dawn-Marie Wesley's mother, Cindy Wesley and brother D.J., as well as MLA Randy Hawes who was Mayor at the time of the incident, Judge Jill Rounthwaite who presided over one of the trials, Kyla Mae Dunn - one of the bullies who was prosecuted, Dawn-Marie's best friend - Paula Settee, Kevin Gillies - a Mission news reporter, Lee Hanlon - a paralegal who assisted the victim's family, Karen McQuade - a co-founder of a bully prevention activism group named PAVE, which arose from Dawn-Marie's demise; and NY Times best-selling author and co-founder of Washington DC's EMPOWER Program, Rosalind Wiseman
WATCH TRAILER: http://www.ratsandbullies.com/

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The 14th episode of The Digger's Story podcast show cointinues to address the issue on bullies.

click here to listen to 14th episode: www.diggersstory.com

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Many thanks to Blue Audio and their contribution to the podcast. Please visit/join his web site for mp3 samples, lyrics, photos and videos. http://www.blueaudio.com/

Blue Audio is John Wu, a singer, songwriter and producer doing everything from club remixes to acoustic guitar. The official website at www.blueaudio.com has mp3 samples, music videos, photos, and a special backstage area with thousands of members, login now to find out more!