'No' more Ms/Mr 'Nice' guy
As the Republic and the North go to vote on the same day (7th June) for different issues, significant matters are at stake. In the North the local and Westminster elections will help to determine whether David Trimble remains at the helm of the Ulster Unionist Party - a bad showing will increase internal opposition in a party always deeply divided on the Good Friday Agreement and could spell wider trouble ahead for this settlement. Meanwhile, three referenda in the Republic will decided three separate issues, one adding a constitutional ban to the death penalty, another deciding the Republic's stance on the Nice Treaty, and the third on the International Criminal Court. While we would welcome the ban on the death penalty no one has been executed for almost five decades. The Treaty of Nice has wider ramifications for the future; complex it may be but it includes simplification of EU decision making and acceptance of the EU's Rapid Reaction Force, the EU's incipient army. As such we would recommend a strong rejection of the Nice Treaty. Irish neutrality has been going downhill long enough and we would identify with the stand taken by AFRI/Action from Ireland and PANA/Peace and Neutrality Alliance against the Nice Treaty. The Republic has benefited massively, in current terms, from the EU but at some stage the direction of power transfer has to be addressed. Recent polls have indicated the no's gaining ground but whether they get a majority on 7th June or not, the EU has to be prevented from developing into a supernational power; internationalism yes, Western European supernationalism no. - Editor [Also see Editorial article]

BLEIC - Belfast and Lisburn Ethical Investment Campaign
The latter part of the name may be similar (think of Foyle/Derry) but the geographical location is different; a Belfast and Lisburn area campaign on local involvement in the arms trade is underway. BLEIC can be contacted at 16 Ravensdene Park, Belfast BT6 0DA, ph/fax 028 - 9064 7106. The next meeting of BLEIC is at 8pm on Monday 11th June in 7 University Avenue, Belfast, anyone interested welcome.

Kilcranny; Training for diversity
Those familiar with the work of american psychologist Jane Elliott will probably know about her training in prejudice awareness through the Brown eye/Blue eye project - participants learn about prejudice by experiencing it in a controlled environment. Following a seminar Ms Elliott gave in Belfast last summer, Kilcranny House is running a trainers course using the Brown eye/Blue eye project and Jane Elliott technique; the training will be facilitated by Dutch organisation Magnenta and will involve a 4-day residential at Kilcranny this autumn. Anyone interested contact; Anne Cummings, Kilcranny House (Coleraine), phone 028 - 70 321816, e-mail info@kilcranny.thegap.com

KADE (míle failte)
KADE, Kerry Action for Development Education, has moved to 11 Denny Street, Tralee, Co Kerry. Other contact points remain the same; Ph/Fax 066 718 1358, e-mail kade@eircom.net

If at first you don't succeed - Triennial, Triennial again
The War Resisters International/WRI Triennial conference takes place at Dublin City University/DCU from Saturday 3rd August 2002 (next year....) through to the following Friday (i.e. 3 - 9 August) with the overall title "Stories And Strategies - Nonviolent Resistance And Social Change". It is expected that 250 - 300 people will attend from outside Ireland plus people from North, South, East and West. There will be 9 theme groups (of which those attending will choose one to be involved in during the conference), a youth programme, plenaries, workshops, cultural programme etc. There will also be a home stay programme around the island of Ireland where overseas visitors get to stay with Irish activists for a few days - and in turn can be used to provide input to local meetings (formal or informal). The Triennial is backed by a number of groups in the Dublin area and by INNATE (which is already linked with WRI). Offers of assistance of any kind, and enquiries, are welcome and can be made to INNATE or WRI or other groups involved. Further information will appear towards the end of this year - watch this space(r)!

En-gendering nonviolence
Two new resources recently out on women and nonviolence come from IFOR/IPB and WRI. The annual pamphlet from IFOR/International Fellowship of Reconciliation and IPB/International Peace Bureau is for International Women's Day for Peace and Disarmament (already passed...) but focuses on 'Latin American Women's Struggles for Peace and Justice' (24 pages A4) and includes a useful directory of women's peace groups. This is available at UK£3.50/NLG10 from IFOR, Spoorstraat 38, 1815 BK Alkmaar, Netherlands. Meanwhile the new issue of the quarterly Peace News is on 'Gender and Militarism' (23 pages on the topic out of 44 total, A4) with plenty to get you thinking; UK£2.50 plus postage, Peace News, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DY.

WRI website: The War Resisters International has a new online address <www.wri-irg.org> with pages divided into 4 categories - programme, news, events and documents. The e-mail address for WRI is now <office@wri-irg.org>

Meanwhile IFOR's magazine 'Reconciliation International' has resumed normal publication with its news, features and resources listings from around the globe; subscriptions are UK£15/NLG50, to the IFOR address above

Amnesty International on racism
Amnesty International Irish Section is involved in an international campaign on racism, particularly focusing on racism in Ireland - which is featured in the current issue of their 'Amnesty Ireland' magazine (No.113, May edition) including the crying need for anti-racism work in schools. Amnesty International, 48 Fleet Street, Dublin 2, ph 01 - 6776361, e-mail amnesty@iol.ie Website www.amnesty.ie

Faith and Politics Group in 'Transitions' shock!
The latest offering from the Faith and Politics Group, an inter-church Christian think tank, looks at the transitions made over recent history and currently being undergone, reflecting on Britishness and Irishness, unionist and nationalist identities...and on Christians and the churches. As usual it reflects usefully on the contradictions and relationships between Christian thinking and local practice in various camps. 36 pages plus cover, A5, £2.50 plus postage (33p) from Faith and Politics Group, 8 Upper Crescent, Belfast BT7 1NT, e-mail admin@fpireland.org

Coexistence Initiative
The Coexistence Initiative is a non-profit organisation committed to 'creating a world safe for difference' and is involved in programmes and information exchange and communication with individuals and groups inside and outside the field. The Board includes Susan Collin Marks, Dekha Abdi, Mari Fitzduff, Stella Sabiiti, Alan Slifka and Paul van Tongeren. The Coexistence Initiative, 477 Madison Avenue, Fourth Floor, New York, NY 10022, USA, ph 1 - 212 - 303 - 9445, fax 980 - 4027, e-mail info@coexistence.net and website www.coexistence.net

26 sentenced for School of the Americas
26 people - ranging in age from 19 to 88 - were sentenced on 24th May to from 3 years probation to 1 year in prison for a nonviolent action last November at the School of the Americas (SOA) in Georgia, USA; 20 people got 6 months in prison including former Belfast resident Clare Hanrahan. The notorious School of the Americas has recently been renamed by the Pentagon as the 'Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation'; it is here that 60,000 Latin American soldiers have been trained over 55 years in counterinsurgency techniques with brutal consequences throughout that continent. SOA Watch, PO Box 4566, Washington DC 20017, ph 1 - 202 - 234 - 3440, e-mail info@soaw.org Web www.soaw.org

Economic, democratic rights
What are human rights? The process has been continuing in Northern Ireland with submissions to the NI Human Rights Commission. One submission which pushes the boat out in the direction of both economic and democratic rights is the New Ireland Group (7 page) submission which will be on The de Borda Institute website at http://members.tripod.co.uk/deBordaInstitute

Trident-ine masses converge
There'll be an action camp for a nuclear free world at Peaton Woods, Scotland near the two main UK Trident bases at Coulport and Faslane, from 27 July to 11 August; activists from various countries will join British campaigners in what is part of the Trident Ploughshares campaign to disarm the UK's nuclear weapons system by nonviolent and accountable direct action. All sorts of involvement is possible. Contact; Trident Ploughshares, phone +44 - (0)1324-880744, e-mail tp2000@gn.apc.org or website www.tridentploughshares.org or For Mother Earth, +32 - 9 - 242 87 52, e-mail international@motherearth.org, and web www.motherearth.org/

Community Exchange
'Community Exchange', the invaluable e-mail newsletter has a new e-mail address; comm-ex@iol due to the departure of Giancarlo from the Public Communications Centre. It is also available on the web at www.pcc.ie/ce/now.html and its directory of Irish non-profit organisations is at www.pcc.ie/irishlinks/

UU International Development post
The University of Ulster is currently advertising for a Lecturer in Education for International Development for their UNESCO Centre with an interview date of 9th July; job details are at http://www.ulst.ac.uk/jobsj01_156.html 

A short report:
Ashis Nandy - Violence and the post-colonial world
Ashis Nandy spoke at a joint UCD Department of English/Pax Christi Ireland lecture in Dublin on 26th April. What follows are some notes about the lecture and the author - this does nor purport to be a full report.

Points from his talk on 'Culture and politics of violence in the post-colonial world';

• Colonisation is a threat to the coloniser as well as the colonised.
• The 20th century will go down in history as the century of violence (208 million dead), a violence the fruit of 'creative skills' dispassionately implemented, e.g. area (not aerial) bombing freed from personal involvement, often the fruit of hard-nosed politics.
• The century produced a refinement of violence; the art that was produced tended towards violence.
• Religious violence was about 2% of the violence statistics though enough money could organise a 'designer' religious war if it suited the agenda.
• Violence has done damage to the human consciousness born of guilt, benumbed and exposed.
• We have not understood the reason of our violence. Our creativity has not feared the result of violence because it has not understood its impact.
• The Japanese cities were chosen as 'testing grounds' for the nuclear experiment because "they were not involved in the war"!
• Our guilt is partial because our atonement is partial.
• The greatest contribution for curing violence has come from psychiatrists.

The 20th century has produced many peace movements who continue to promote a culture of nonviolence.

A short biographical/bibliographical note:
Ashis Nandy, born in 1937, was educated at Calcutta, Nagpur and Gujarat universities in sociology and clinical psychology. His research interests now centre on political and cultural psychology of human violence, cultures of knowledge, utopias and visions, popular culture, and futures.

In a piece in the Irish Times on 18th April, Declan Kiberd wrote; "Nandy says the colonial adventure not only led to injustice overseas but also had a deeply corrupting effect on 'home' European societies. The projection of a despised femininity onto natives damaged the self-image and standing of women at home. Nandy holds that (Oscar) Wilde was one of the first post-colonial theorists and that his androgynous philosophy threatened the basis of Britain's colonial mentality. All of Nandy's books and essays are written in a similar spirit of radical analysis which leads him to criticise both narrow-gauge nationalisms and the shallow consumerist cosmopolitanism that often seeks to replace them."

Ashis Nandy's books include ‘The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism’ (1983) , ‘The Illegitimacy of Nationalism: Rabindranath Tagore and the Politics of Self’ (1994) among others including ‘The Tao of Cricket : On Games of Destiny and the Destiny of Games’ (1989). He is co-author of ‘The Blinded Eye: 500 Years of Christopher Columbus’ (1993) also published as ‘Barbaric Others: A Manifesto on Western Racism’. Oxford University Press is bringing out an omnibus edition of his works of which two have already appeared, ‘Exiled at Home’ and ‘Return from Exile’; the third, ‘A Very Popular Exile’ is due to be published this year.

A fuller biographical/bibliographical note is available from Pax Christi, 52 Lower Rathmines Road, Dublin 6, phone 01 - 496 5293, e-mail paxtdc@indigo.ie