Mother's Day Proclamation
by Julia Ward Howe*, 1870
The First Mother's Day proclaimed in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe
was a passionate demand for disarmament and peace.
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!
Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail & commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesars but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
Biography of Julia Ward Howe
US feminist, reformer, and writer Julia Ward Howe was born May 27, 1819 in New York City . She married Samuel Gridley Howe of Boston , a physician and social reformer. After the Civil War, she campaigned for women rights, anti-slavery, equality, and for world peace. She published several volumes of poetry, travel books, and a play. She became the first woman to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1908. She was an ardent antislavery activist who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic in 1862, sung to the tune of John Brown's Body. She wrote a biography in 1883 of Margaret Fuller, who was a prominent literary figure and a member of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Transcendentalists. She died in 1910.
© Nuclear Age Peace Foundation 1998 - 2008
t r u t h o u t | 05.07
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050708F.shtml
Call for Inquiry Into US Role in Somalia
By Steve Bloomfield
The Independent UK
Wednesday 07 May 2008
Nairobi - Amnesty International has called for the role of the United States in Somalia to be investigated, following publication of a report accusing its allies of committing war crimes.
The human rights group yesterday listed abuses carried out by Ethiopian and Somali government forces, and some committed by al-Shabaab, an anti-government militia which the US designated a terrorist group.
According to the report, based on the testimonies of refugees who have fled Somalia 's capital, Mogadishu , in recent weeks, Ethiopian troops have killed civilians by slitting their throats. Ethiopian and Somali forces were also accused of gang-raping women and attacking children.
A refugee, named Haboon, accuses Ethiopian troops of raping a neighbour's 17-year-old daughter. When the girl's brothers - aged 13 and 14 - tried to help her, Ethiopian soldiers gouged out their eyes with a bayonet. The Ethiopian government last night issued a statement strongly rejecting the Amnesty allegations and criticising the organisation's "uncritical use of sources."
Amnesty called for an international commission of inquiry into allegations of war crimes and said the role of other countries that have given military and financial support to perpetrators should also be investigated.
US troops trained Ethiopian forces involved in military operations in Somalia , and the US government supplied military equipment to the Ethiopian military.
"There are major countries that have significant influence," said Amnesty's Dave Copeman. "The US , EU and European countries need to exert that influence to stop these attacks."
After attacks by Ethiopian and Somali forces on civilian areas in Mogadishu last year, European lawyers considered whether funding for Ethiopia and Somalia made the EU complicit. The results of their deliberations were never made public.
The Amnesty report detailed a pattern of attacks. Refugees who fled the violence said al-Shabaab would launch an attack from a residential area. Ethiopian troops would respond with a security sweep, often going from door-to-door attacking civilians. Those who did not flee faced further reprisals.
Increased military activity has turned Mogadishu into a ghost town. About 700,000 people have fled - out of a population of up to 1.5 million. The UN estimates that 2.6 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance - more than one quarter of the population.
Peace talks between the Somali government and the main opposition alliance are scheduled to begin later this month.
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"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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