About

“All living beings are brothers and sisters, nourished from the same source of life…” Thich Nhat Hanh

In this blog, I try to disseminate information from many sources and write short articles about important issues that concern all of us: human rights, social justice, civil liberties, global peace, the environment — and opposition to tyranny, imperialism, and the neocon/neoliberal agenda of globalisation and nuclear arms race which will inevitably cause the MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) of our planet and its inhabitants.

Perhaps, some of the articles will make you think, ponder, and question that which you thought was unquestionable, while others will make you angry at the inhumanity and injustices we perpetrate upon one another. You may disagree with some of them. That is your right.

However, some of the Action alerts included may motivate you to add your voice, write a letter, learn more about the issues or attend an event. I feel that it is incumbent upon each of us to do our best to help make this a better world. Many of us do not have time in our busy lives to attend rallies or informative events, but we still can do our bit by random acts of kindness and help out in our communities. Those who do have the time, can be involved in the political process at the grassroots level to bring about positive changes. The more time you have, the more active you can be. Every positive action, no matter how small, can make a difference!

All human beings are connected as part of the same race: the human race. Every human being deserves to be treated with dignity, justice, equality and compassion. We must respect the interdependent web of all existence on our planet, of which we are a part. We must respect our Earth. As cognizant beings, each of us must be free to seek for truth and meaning without impinging on the rights and beliefs of others. To live in freedom, justice, equality and peace is the birthright of every human being.

My name is Annamarie Deneen. I am a writer, poet and caregiver. I am also an activist for those issues I have mentioned above, and an ardent voice of Peace. After travelling around the world and living in many places, I now call Brampton, Ontario, Canada my home.

** This site’s graphics are the creative work of April Reign. Her expertise is much appreciated!

Open “The Windows of Dissent, in which activists take down the first fences on the streets and in their minds”
— Naomi Klein, GTA Activist

Internal peace is an essential first step to achieving peace in the world. How do you cultivate it? It’s very simple. In the first place by realizing clearly that all mankind is one, that human beings in every country are members of one and the same family.
— His Holiness the Dalai Lama

I will be adding more of my favourite quotes as I find them. Occasionally, I may alter this page. My blog is fluid, and this will be reflected here.

The very agonies of war and the dark night of suffering that has lasted for centuries are awakening civilization to a new understanding: the peoples of the Earth have a sacred right to peace.

— Senator Douglas Roche

“The saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished freedom is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while there was still time.”

— George Sutherland, eminent US jurist and appointee to the US Supreme court before the Second World War

(Thanks to Anwaar Hussein for finding this gem and posting it on his Fountainhead Forum.)

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“’Security’ doesn’t come from the point of a gun! Not anybody’s gun. Security comes from people getting organized and working together for their common good. Security comes from education and health care and production of food clothing and shelter, and people who understand that we need to look after one another.”

— Fred Williams ( www.fredwilliams.ca )
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day I can hear her breathing”.
— Indian writer Arundhati Roy, World Social Forum, 2003

I found this one on the Audacious Ontology weblog site:

“It is only in folk tales, children’s stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil.

The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them.” —Noam Chomsky

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Of all our dreams today there is none more important – or so hard to realise – than that of peace in the world. May we never lose our faith in it or our resolve to do everything that can be done to convert it one day into reality.

Lester B. Pearson, former Canadian Prime Minister

We do not convert people to think our way by pouring bombs upon them, day after day and week after week.

John Diefenbaker, former Canadian Prime Minister, speaking of the Vietnam War

Campaign to Establish a Canadian Department of Peace

This is an initiative which I strongly support and am working on starting a Brampton-Peel chapter. I urge more people of conscience to form such chapters in your area of Canada, and throughout the world :

Weary of waging war, people everywhere are seeking ways of waging peace. The Working Group for a Federal Department of Peace is part of a growing international movement to establish Departments of Peace and Ministries for Peace within national governments.

The fundamental aim of the Department of Peace would be to reduce violence at home and abroad by implementing a culture of peace. The Minister for Peace would address domestic and foreign issues from the perspective of non-violent conflict resolution, human rights and peacebuilding. LEARN more…

UNDERSTANDING WAR “The established criterion of national legitimacy has long been, it is true, the recognized power of authority to impose its will on a population by demonstrated monopoly of organized armed force. But this underlying measure of national legitimacy and sovereignty operates in accordance with a law of progression: the more military means are developed in command of social labour and resources, range of deployment, and violent effect, and capacity for universal surveillance, the more human existence passes under military control. … the ascension of military, militarily imposed, or militarily expanding governments to control civilian existence is now the established, if hidden, crystallizing pattern of our global social order. … The human struggle to survive is, at this juncture of its history, no longer against natural or foreign enemies as such, but against the military program itself.” — from the conclusion to the book Understanding War by John McMurtry University of Toronto Press and Science for Peace, Toronto, 1989

Thanks to my good friend Gail McCabe of the Mississauga-Streetsville NDP for including this gem in her emails as part of her ‘signature’:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead

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This one was printed on the certificate of appreciation and thanks that I received from the American Red Cross in 1994 for my help with the victims of the Southern California Earthquake in January of that year:

“The best portion of a good man’s life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.” — William Wordsworth
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“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must make wars impossible. You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

Albert Einstein

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“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful
committed citizens can change the world,
indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”
— Margaret Mead
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