Time for World Peace. Enough of War. What We Can Do

Why are we as a society still allowing war?

Innocent people are starving, maimed, killed on a daily basis.

Below is news of the recent peace talks in Sweden where the UN is introducing confidence-building measures between warring factions in Yemen that could pave the way for successful peace strategies in the future and a poem, from Yemeni, Ali, courtesy of Karen Langlotz, about the horror of war.

Also included below is the story of Marie Colvin, an intrepid, courageous war correspondent and the movie that has been made to honour her.

And finally, what can we do to help stop all war?

Just as Marie would physically go into the war zones to report back what was happening, we, too, can do this with ourselves.

In meditation, seeing and forgiving our own personal wars, helps bring peace to our planet.

As within so without.

Yemen’s Warring Sides Meet
Face-to-face at Sweden Peace Talks

Government delegates say the opposing sides are holding direct negotiations for the first time in two years.

by Faisal Edroos, 9 December 9, 2018, Aljazeera

httpss://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/yemen-warring-sides-meet-face-face-sweden-peace-talks-181209123459715.html

Rimbo, Sweden – Yemen’s warring sides are holding face-to-face discussions over a planned prisoner swap, one of several confidence-building measures aimed at ending more than three years of war that has ravaged the impoverished country.

Since talks began last week, United Nations officials have been shuttling between delegations from President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government and the Houthi rebels.

But on Sunday, officials from the Yemeni government said despite an impasse over the port of Hodeidah, a breakthrough over the release of prisoners was about to be reached following the direct talks.

“This is the first face-to-face meeting between the two committees [government and Houthis] and they will now be discussing the technicalities of releasing prisoners and detainees,” Hamza al-Kamali, a member of the Yemeni government delegation, told Al Jazeera.

Mohammed Askar, Yemen’s minister for human rights, told Al Jazeera, “The agreement included all detainees who were captured by the Houthis since the war erupted.”

One source told Al Jazeera as many as 6,000 prisoners could be exchanged in the coming months.

A second source told Al Jazeera the Houthis were expected to release several high-ranking commanders within the Yemeni army, including the former minister of defence, General Mahmoud Al Subaihi, and relatives of President Hadi.

Mohammed al-Amiri, a member of the delegation and an adviser to the president, said the sides were still discussing “operational mechanisms that would determine the date and place of the release”.

“Since the other side is continuing with arrests and kidnapping, the lists we submitted need to be updated continuously,” he added.

When I Was a Soldier

A Poem by Ali AlNakeeb, Sana’a, Yemen, courtesy of Karen Langlotz

When I was a soldier, the war was at the height of its violence, and the destruction was done in that beautiful city, which replaced its magical white clouds with black clouds expressing tragedy and pain.

Yes, I have passed this city before and I sat under the shade of trees and enjoyed the green mage and I still remember that tree created by God and won my admiration.

While the fire of the war was burning and I was participating in it I passed that city, which I considered a beautiful termite.

I longed to see that tree, which was woven by the strings of the sun and twists from the branches of sunlight.

I myself took a rest between the shadows and I remember the most beautiful memories and

When I reached her, the tragedy was taken and I stared at the tree and told myself that it was not the tree I knew I had sinned, but the bitter reality says it was the tree of my memories.

I wondered where those long branches and where those green leaves and where the pure and where the birds that were flying around and fluttering and where those rivers between those valleys and while I was sad

Look right and north drew a sad scene

I saw a shell falling over a woman and

Between the arms of this woman a baby and I saw a scene I will never forget I saw the wounded mother

Although her wounds were very serious, but still include her baby with all tenderness, shook my feelings that were waged by the war and in those moments renewed fighting and intensified and shots of guns and guns fall here

And there and I had two options either to carry my gun and continue fighting or

To throw the gun and take that woman and her ambulance

The result was that my humanity overcame my gun and tears of my eyes and regret all the moments of war and destruction and loss.

This poem was written March 18, 2003, over 15 years ago.

Accept my sincere greetings,

Your brother,
Ali AlNakeeb
Sana’a, Yemen

Marie Colvin’s Private War

By the time Marie Colvin got herself smuggled into Syria last winter, to report on the slaughter for the London Sunday Times, she was a legend, for her style (the eye patch, the La Perla bra under the flak jacket) as well as her courageous dispatches championing the innocent victims of war. It would be her last story. Marie Brenner reveals the price Colvin paid for the work she couldn’t give up.

By Marie Brenner, Vanity Fair, August 2012

httpss://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2012/08/marie-colvin-private-war

“Why is that guy singing? Can’t someone shut him up?,” Marie Colvin whispered urgently after dropping into the long, dark, dank tunnel that would lead her to the last reporting assignment of her life.

It was the night of February 20, 2012.

All Colvin could hear was the piercing sound made by the Free Syrian Army commander accompanying her and the photographer Paul Conroy: “Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.”

The song, which permeated the two-and-a-half-mile abandoned storm drain that ran under the Syrian city of Homs, was both a prayer (God is great) and a celebration.

The singer was jubilant that the Sunday Times of London’s renowned war correspondent Marie Colvin was there.

But his voice unnerved Colvin. “Paul, do something!” she demanded. “Make him stop!”

For anyone who knew her, Colvin’s voice was unmistakable.

All of her years in London had not subdued her American whiskey tone.

Just as memorable was the cascade of laughter that always erupted when there seemed to be no way out.

It was not heard that night as she and Conroy made their way back into a massacre being waged by the troops of President Bashar al-Assad near Syria’s western border.

The ancient city of Homs was now a bloodbath.

“Can’t talk about the way in. It is the artery for the city and I promised to reveal no details,” Colvin had e-mailed her editor after she and Conroy made their first trip into Homs, three days earlier.

They had arrived late Thursday night, 36 hours away from press deadline, and Colvin knew that the foreign desk in London would soon be bonkers.

The day before she walked into the apartment building in Homs where two grimy rooms were set up as a temporary media center, the top floor had been sheared off by rockets.

Many thought the attack had been deliberate. The smell of death assaulted Colvin as mutilated bodies were rushed out to a makeshift clinic blocks away.

What We Can Do
To End War on Gaia

We can, with deep forgiveness of self for our entire journey, help in the ending of all war on Gaia.

In order to do this, there’s need for consistent quiet time, meditation time, to remember related situations in order to do the work, to gently hear the stories of our sorrow, shame, anger, fear, to be vulnerable.

Allowing our personal past situations to arise is a methodical practise. It’s not something to be rushed and it’s one that can be done on deeper and deeper levels.

When we forgive ourselves in meditation for not expressing and experiencing our Divinity — situations from the past, the feelings held from trauma, the “being right” and the disarray created — we heal, communities and societies heal, war stops within and therefore without.

“I forgive my self for not expressing and experiencing my self
as Divine, for the thoughts and the feelings not of love,
for the  lack of self-worth and lack of self-love.”

Just as a drop in the ocean ripples outwards and affects the entire ocean, with thoughts, mental attitudes, and feelings — directed at the self and one another — we do the same; we affect  the entire world and beyond.

We can call on Sanat Kumara, our Planetary Logos, Keeper of Universal Law, for help:

I invoke Sanat Kumara, the Universal Laws of Transmutation and
of Transformation for all situations out of alignment
with my Divinity. I ask for help l e t t i n g g o,
forgiving my self for the unloving thoughts
and feelings that contribute to all war,
with deep forgiveness of everything
within, and therefore without.
Thank you, Sanat Kumara,
for your assistance.