Category: Notices

Historians, like the media on which they often rely, tend to record what happened in terms of conventional categories – the struggles between violent forces, legal and illegal, and the party-political jockeying of adversarial politics. But history is changed by other, deeper forces – fear, hope, a sense of belonging or identity, a sense of meaning in the great mystery of being alive in the first place and ultimately a sense of the sacred without any orthodox codification. It was to these deeper forces that the vision and energy of the Peace People were applied. I make no claim for what was achieved although I know in my own mind and heart that it was vital and has gone on echoing. What is vital today, as the past is honoured,…

Mairead Maguire speaking in Rome Conference on NATO - Friday 29th of Jan 2016 Dear Friends, I believe we, the human family, have no less a task before us, than transforming our thinking and mind-sets of violence and war, and moving to a demilitarized Europe and World. Einstein once said that everything has changed but our thinking. However, there is hope as indeed our thinking is changing and there is a growing consciousness that violence, whether it comes from State or non-state actors, is wrong, violence does not work, violence is not the way. However, around the world, we, the people, are in danger of being overpowered and dis-spirited by increasing violence, militarism and war. Many people can see that many Political Leaders can no longer imagine a just peace,…