MC New Year(nings)--5

Loving Truth and Peace

A new year's toast--to loving truth and peace.  
Napa Valley, California. ErinOD (c) 2012

In our lives:

Love truth and peace.

In our hearts:

Love truth and peace.

In our relationships:
Love truth and peace.

In our spheres of influence:

Love truth and peace.

Even when it is scary and risky:

Love truth and peace.

Even when there are negative consequences:
Love truth and peace.

Love truth and peace
and people.

*****

Do not fear. These are the things which you should do: speak the truth to one another; judge with truth and judge for peace in your courts. Also let none of you devise evil in your heart against another, and do not love perjury, for I hate all these things, declares YHWH....Therefore, love truth and peace. (Zechariah 8:14-19, excerpts, circa 520 BC)

MC New Year(nings)--4

War Was

Make War History

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsO5myuk6xs

 

Some Stats of deaths due to wars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll

 

 

40,000,000	700772000000000000072,000,000	World War II	Worldwide	1939	1945
700730000000000000030,000,000	700760000000000000060,000,000	Mongol Conquests	East Asia, Eastern Europe, West Asia	1207	1472
700730000000000000030,000,00]	700730000000000000030,000,000	Late Yuan warfare and transition to Ming Dynasty	China	1340	1368
700725000000000000025,000,000	700725000000000000025,000,000	Qing dynasty conquest of the Ming Dynasty	China	1616	1662
700720000000000000020,000,000	7008100000000000000100,000,000	Taiping Rebellion	China	1851	1864
700715000000000000015,000,000	700765000000000000065,000,000	World War I (High estimate includes Spanish flu deaths)[16]	Worldwide	1914	1918
700715000000000000015,000,000	700720000000000000020,000,000	Conquests of Timur-e-Lang	West Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, Russia	1369	1405
700713000000000000013,000,000	700736000000000000036,000,000	An Lushan Rebellion	China	755	763
70068000000000000008,000,000	700712000000000000012,000,000	Dungan revolt	China	1862	1877
70065000000000000005,000,000	70069000000000000009,000,000	Russian Civil War	Russia	1917	1921
70063800000000000003,800,000	70065400000000000005,400,000	Second Congo War	Democratic Republic of the Congo	1998	2003

***** 

Sean Lennon et al, 1991

Give Peace a Chance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD0RTawcIwg

 

 

MC New Year(nings)--3

Out of the Slums

Taking a two-minute stroll

through the Nehru Nagar slums of Mumbai

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIaq_5GNI1I

 .

"Globally, there are over 1 billion slum dwellers in informal housing. By 2030, one in four people will be an urban squatter, rising to one in three by 2050, according to United Nations predictions."

 .

"Though scenes of squalor, rubbish and polluted waters look like destitution, shanty towns could provide rich seedlings for the urban revolution."

 .

Out of the Slums, Future, Smart Planet

Online report by Gaia Vince, 14 January 2013, BBC

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130114-slums-and-the-future-of-cities

. 

More excerpts from the online report by Gaia Vince:

 .

"I visited Khulna, a city in southern Bangladesh, where shrimp farming had brought considerable wealth to local landowners and the country as a whole – it was the second most important GDP generator after the garment industry. However, the city's success gathered misery in its outskirts as migrants were drawn to Khulna’s apparently gold-paved streets – around 40,000 people a year were moving there.

 .

In the town’s slums I met some of these fortune seekers. Sleeping seven-to-10 in one-room hovels, many of these people had been forced from their villages by river erosion, by increasing flooding due to sea-level rise, loss of subsistence farming due to increased salinity, and crippling poverty. Everyone came hoping for a better life for themselves and opportunities for their children."

. 

 And on a more positive note, a few urban and rural scenes

from Kuhlna, Bangladesh and the region:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ahQv0WDPbw

MC New Year(nings)--2

We the peoples of the United Nations determined

· to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

· to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

· to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and

· to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

.

And for these ends

· to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and

· to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and

· to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and

· to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples…

From the Preamble, Charter of the United Nations, 1945
.
United Nations

2012 Year in Review

 http://webtv.un.org/search/united-nations-year-in-review:-looking-back-at-major-events-of-2012-in-english/2033490684001?term=year_in_review

MC New Year(nings)--1

I once thought
     my feet were shod
          with winged sandals:
               Olympian footwear
                    to help me soar
                         as a special person.

I now think
     my feet are shorn
          with iron nails:
               Golgothian footgear
                    to help me limp
                          as a common pierced-one.

Illuminated portrayal of Christ as an eagle, with body piercing.

Gospel of John, Book of Kells, Ireland, circa 800