PRESS RELEASE
LI ALLIANCE FOR PEACEFUL ALTERNATIVES  
(516)741-4360 – email:longislandpeace@gmail.com – www.longislandpeace.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                  CONTACT: Shirley Romaine, 516-487-3786
August 2, 2011                                                                          Margaret Melkonian, 516-741-4360

 JOURNALIST AMY GOODMAN TO SPEAK
AT HIROSHIMA COMMEMORATION IN MANHASSET ON AUGUST 3

Award-winning journalist and host of Democracy Now, Amy Goodman, is the keynote speaker at the 66th Anniversary Commemoration of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The program on
August 3rd begins at 7 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock, 48 Shelter Rock Road, in Manhasset.
Other speakers include: NY State Assemblywoman, Michelle Schimel and LI Alliance Director,
Margaret Melkonian. The women’s choir, WILLOW, will perform. The evening will conclude with a peace crane ceremony with neighbor children, dressed in Japanese costumes.  North Hempstead Supervisor,
Jon Kaiman and Great Neck Sane/Peace Action’s Stan Romaine are the co-chairs.
The commemoration, sponsored by LI peace and religious groups, is dedicated to the work for a nuclear-free world: NO NUKES! NO WARS! SAVE THE PLANET!               
In 1945, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by the first atomic bombs used in warfare. In Hiroshima, on August 6 at 8:15 AM, an estimated 80,000 people were immediately killed. By the end of the year, injury and radiation brought total casualties to 90,000–140,000. Approximately 69% of the city's buildings were completely destroyed, and about 7% severely damaged. In Nagasaki on August 9, using a plutonium bomb, the death toll from the atomic bombing totaled 73,884, as well as another 74,909 injured, and another several hundred thousand diseased and dying due to fallout and other illness caused by radiation. 
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki released radioactive death and destruction on an unprecedented level. Nuclear power plants from Fukushima to Indian Point have the potential to release far more radioactive material than the weapons of war that were dropped in 1945.  
Long Islanders will also mark the 66th anniversary of Hiroshima at the South Country Peace Group’s annual World Peace Vigil on Saturday, August 6 at 10:15 at Station Road and Head of Neck Road in Bellport.
For more information, contact Margaret Melkonian at 516-741-4360.

The Long Island Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives is a non-profit educational organization founded in 1985 to provide information and to encourage dialogue about U.S. peace and national security issues and America’s role in the world.  Our work focuses on promoting citizen education, responsibility and action for determining national priorities and policies about peace, war and nuclear disarmament. www.longislandpeace.org

LI Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives
516-741-4360
longislandpeace@gmail.com
www.longislandpeace.org

 

Long Island Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives – Statement on Libya
Long Island Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives calls for the immediate end to NATO operations in Libya and to the Libyan government's use of violence to brutally repress nonviolent protests for democracy. 
We call for a nonviolent transition to a democratic regime where the Libyan people chart their own destiny, free from either internal or external coercion. Struggles for democracy are most likely to succeed when they remain nonviolent in the face of violence by powerful adversaries. We note that in Egypt and Tunisia, remarkable change has been achieved in a short time with minimal violence or outside intervention. We support the people of Libya in a nonviolent struggle to transform unjust social and political systems in their country

. U.S. government participation in military action is strategic rather than principled. We demand that the U.S. government respect the pro-democracy movements in Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, where peaceful protesters are also facing repressive violence by States receiving military assistance from the U.S. government. Military operations against Libya with little diplomatic or public pressure on other nations engaged in similar acts of repression are hypocritical at best and a cynical manipulation of the public’s desire to see democracy flourish at worst. 

Military action in Libya undermines the security of the Libyan people. Reliance upon air bombing, including the use of drones, has led to appalling civilian casualties and the destruction of homes and infrastructure. The use of artillery containing depleted uranium creates toxic, radioactive fallout zones likely to cause high levels of cancer for generations.

Military action in Libya also undermines the security of the American people. Already embroiled in an eight year occupation in Iraq and an ongoing war in Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, we can ill afford further loss of the lives of our youth and the loss of billions of dollars that can be used to make our communities healthier, safer, and stronger.

To truly support the self-determination of these popular movements, we call upon the Obama Administration to do the following:

• Call for and abide by an immediate cease-fire to all military action in Libya followed by inclusive, multilateral talks.
• Respect international law and human rights
• Offer nonviolent forms of support to all pro-democracy movements
• Halt all military aid and arms sales to all regimes in the Middle East
• Allow full access for humanitarian agencies to provide urgently needed assistance

Contact the White House today - 202-456-1414

_____________________________________________________________________

Pax Christi Long Island to Honor
Habeeb and Seemi Ahmed
With Builders of the Peaceful Community Award
 On Sunday, March 13 at 5 p.m. at Islamic Center of LI

        On Sunday, March 13 at 5 p.m., Pax Christi Long Island will present a Peace Award to Habeeb and Seemi Ahmed, recognizing them as Builders of the Peaceful Community.

The Award Program will take place at the Islamic Center of Long Island (www.icliny.org), 835 Brush Hollow Road in Westbury at 5 p.m. Music will be performed by the women’s acapella choir, Willow.

 “It will be a time of great celebration and hope as we come together to honor this very special couple who have given so much of their lives in building peace and understanding and being the change we want to see in the world,” says Sister Jeanne Clark, Coordinator of Pax Christi Long.  

Habeeb and Seemi Ahmed are being honored for their contribution to promoting interfaith understanding and tolerance and to building a more peaceful and nonviolent community on Long Island and in the world. Habeeb Ahmed is the Chair of the Islamic Center of Long Island in Westbury and a member of the Nassau County Human Rights Commission. Seemi Ahmed is the New York State co-chair of the Muslim Peace Coalition, which works to counter the rising Islamaphobia in our country.

The Builders of the Peaceful Community Award to Habeeb and Seemi Ahmed of the Islamic Center of LI reads:

For gentle hands quietly working
to create sturdy bridges
of peace and understanding,
gracefully linking communities.

For strong and humble voices,
soaring in powerful harmony,
above the dissonance of our time.

Pax Christi Long Island is part of the national Catholic Peace Movement. For more information, Pax Christi.LongIsland@verizon.net  

____________________________________________________

The national budget deficit: Where to cut?

Published: January 19, 2011 6:16 PM, NEWSDAY

 
More than 40 years ago, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. presciently said, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
In his opinion column, Peter Goldmark makes some wise suggestions about our national spending priorities, such as weaning our nation from foreign oil. But "trimming the rate of growth of entitlement programs, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid," would only make the most vulnerable suffer even more than they are.

Two ideas - a Wall Street tax, and cutting our bloated military/war budget - would be fairer and more constructive.
A national tax of even a fraction of a penny on each dollar traded in stocks, bonds, derivatives and all other such financial instruments would generate hundreds of billions per year without hurting those already suffering.

The military budget can be scaled back to sensible levels of defense, instead of fighting endless, multi-trillion-dollar wars of aggression and occupation, adding more nuclear weapons to our arsenal of nearly 8,000 warheads, and maintaining an expensive empire of more than 800 U.S. military bases in nations all over the planet and nuclear-armed carrier task forces around the world. Only war profiteers and their congressional cronies benefit from such destructive expenditures of blood and dollars.
Ed Ciaccio
Douglaston

Dear friends,
The New York Times has been running a series  "A Year of War" The last installement on Dec 31 was titled: "Families Bear Brunt of Deployment Strains" In response to the article, today, Jan. 8, the Times printed  3 letters to the editor, one of which was S. Mary Beth's which follows:

To the Editor
   
    As his dad returns to Afghanistan, 12 year- Isaac Eisch asks. "Why can't we just, like, end the war?"

    We are in the 1oth year of the war in Afghanistan. Almost 1500 American servicemen and women have been killed, and many more wounded. We have spent more that $350 billion in that desperately poor country. Countless families have been disrupted and dismantled.

    Do President Obama and Gen. David H. Petraeus, or we the people, have the ability to imagine what would be gained by ending the war, now? Sometimes it takes a child to ask the right question.
  MARY BETH MOORE
Wantagh, NY Dec. 31, 2010