Reflections after our meetings...

At times, the participants in our monthlys meetings publish or submit furter reflections after the meeting has ended.  We collect here what we find out about, or they submit, with a reference to the specific conversation  to which they have  added. 

January-February 2026 --  A conversation on line after the presentation by Mark Halle, among the people who participated or sent apologies.  At the bottom are also the highlights from the meeting chat.

Grazia: Thanks so much, Mark!  What a tour de force you pulled together... I am looking forward to go through the recording again, as the second time is always so instructive for me.  The live participation is for the feelings, and the second watching/ listening is for the thoughts...  😊   As of now, however, I am fully with you and the other Mark (Carney) on the different, issue-by-issue coalitions that are needed, and I agree with the many other Elders who participated today on the need for bio-regional coalitions and planetary orientations, the shared desire for a different future.  [...]

I am not sure whether I managed to convey the grain I wanted to add to your castle, Mark, which I would succinctly phrase as follows:  we need a fuller analysis of the system of power that controls us today.  This is fundamental if we wish to make even a slight dent in the situation.  And my sense is that the problem of power goes much deeper than neoliberalism à la Reagan-Thatcher.  That problem is today a pervasive conundrum of mutually sustaining elements.  Yes, the financial and economic elements of neoliberalism are crucial but also the military-industrial-political-academic-media-technological elements and— importantly, and still missing a single word to describe it--  the composite element that relates to the secret service apparatuses that merge with the underworld of gangsterism and illicit traffics (arms, drugs, people, biodiversity...), which feeds, serves and cements all the others.   

The 'issue-by-issue coalitions' called for by Mark Carney does exist in the system of power controlling us all today.  The power rivulets run from phoney academics and think tanks to the corrupt politicians that keep them in place...  from the oil barons to the 'truths of the day' spun by complacent media...  from the CEOs of industries to the military brass that demands ever-more lethal products...   from a few multi-billionaires to the policy makers of warmongering countries...  from the secret services and well-paid gangsters who assassinate leaders, scientists and journalists to the bankers who destroy foreign currencies so that the gangsters can infiltrate protesters...

Yes, we need a vision.  But I'd say that -- equally if not more-- we need clarity on the functioning of the system of power as a self-reinforcing knot of destructive injustice and insanity.  And I would not wait for full clarity and total agreement on the vision of a different future before moving.   I rather see three steps for our group:

1. Analyse the situation as problem – as coherently and completely as possible.

2. Identify where the energies for change are. 

3. Stimulate and encourage those energies and go with them. [My mini poem for the day is"...caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar..." meaning: " you who walk, you should know that there is no path, the path is made by walking"...)

My hope is that we are developing a movement of elders (and elders of the future) like us—lucky, overeducated, overachievers, experienced, well-connected and well-meaning—who can stimulate others to see and unmask our pernicious 'system of power' and encourage the energies for change— of ourselves and of many others.  I believe we have already taken several steps along this path, at time focusing on elements of problem analysis and at others on the energies for change.  I hope that, in the months to come, we'll manage to pull together a coherent and reasonably complete basis for action. 

Mark: Hi Grazia, Thanks for your thoughts and for giving me the opportunity to share some of mine.  I reread the chat, but I recall yesterday's debate after my presentation - one of the richest, in my experience, of all the Elders' meetings.  For that I am grateful.

Paul and Andy believe my analysis is incomplete and needs more work.  That is undoubtedly true, and I received that sort of comment from my schoolteachers throughout my childhood!  I would be grateful for their ideas on how to direct such further work so that I may present a more complete set of thoughts. 

You say that my pointing to the neo-liberal economic system belies the fact that it is but a symptom of a broader and more sinister power system.  Whereas I think Reagan and Thatcher are responsible for incalculable harm to humanity, the problem did not begin and certainly did not end with them.  I introduced the neo-liberal economic system as a cipher for a watershed moment in human history in which we began to abandon defence of the public good and improvement of the quality of human life as the central purpose of human and economic development, replacing it with increasingly unconstrained opportunity for individuals to advance economically.  Securing that opportunity has not only meant abandoning central attention to the poor and underprivileged, but it has also led to a gradual dismantling of the system of checks and balances that we have always counted on, however imperfect they may have been, to keep society focused on protecting the well-being and advancement prospects of all.  It led to a growing gap between rich and poor, and between rich and poor countries, to ever more unbridled competition and a hijacking of public institutions to serve the interest of the elites, including through the use of military power, or the empowering of the increasingly thuggish behaviour of the elite and their black shirts.

During the first half of my life, I was convinced that - despite a frustratingly slow pace and multiple setbacks - the world was moving in the right direction.  I believe Martin Luther King when he said: "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice".  Then came Reagan and Thatcher whose ghastly ideas have dominated the second half of my life.  Now I believe that, if we are unable to get past their legacy, we will find the arc very long, and it will not bend towards justice.  Our job is to help find pathways out of the moral morass the system has left us in.  It will not be easy.

You can trace it back to Mazen's good and bad wolves.  We need to begin starving the bad one and feeding the good one.

Grazia:  Indeed, Mark-ji,  We should adopt Mazin's bad and good wolves as the cypher of our group!    Let me also add that the fact that you-- and I, to be honest -- started believing that the world was going amok after Thatcher and Reagan...  may say more about us than about the world.  I am convinced that a Chilean student would have thought that in the 1970s, an indigenous peasant in Guatemala in the 1960s, a Korean well in the1950s, etc.   C. Wright Mills— who studied and beautifully wrote about the (US) Power Elite— discussed in the 1950s the 'structural immorality' of a society where money is equated with reputation and honour.  The Orwellian situation of today seems to be the ultimate consequence of such unipolarity of values.

Andy: Hi Mark [...]  I am not an economist of course, but I have not read an economic analysis that I found entirely convincing - some economists focus on reducing socioeconomic inequities and others on environmental sustainability (with varying definitions).  Kate Raworth's book on the Doughnut Economy is worth looking at although the title is an anathema to anyone with an interest in public health! I like some of Marianna Mazzucato's work but I am not sure whether she really captures the imperative to protect natural systems and reverse militarism. I am aware of the intense debate between the pro-growth and the degrowth economists and have been intuitively attracted to the degrowth position (for high income countries but not for low income countries) because of the intrinsic difficulty of achieving absolute decoupling between economic growth and environmental footprint.   However its not easy to see how it could be implemented when inequity is entrenched and national debts are increasing in many countries, particularly in the absence of a robust international tax system that supports redistribution of wealth. The use of alternative metrics to complement and ultimately replace GDP, including concepts such as the Wellbeing Economy, seem potentially attractive  but few countries are using such metrics to guide policy. Perhaps different economic approaches to achieving health, equity, peace and protecting nature  would be a topic worth discussing in more detail in some of our future meetings? The Club of Rome is also a great forum to develop such ideas further and Paul may have suggestions about potential resources and speakers.

Faizi:  [...] the Epstein communications released by the US DOJ, by a quirk of fate of the American people, makes me re-think the usefulness of articulating thoughts and treatises on global affairs when things are decided by a bunch of demons in human form operating beyond the realm of visibility. Men who can rape innocent little kids and take delight in their fear are the ones who decides how the world should be run, they can even set research agendas, drive our theoretical debates. And Epstein’s island is not just one, indeed several, and when someone musters the courage to call them out it would be dismissed as conspiracy theory. Unless we the goyem (as Epstein and associates would call us) gain the capacity to see them and purge them all efforts towards peace, sustainability, economic progress etc will be unyielding. Note that even the Greece economic crisis was manufactured by them on behalf of their banks (and its solution too benefited those banks). But it is a truism that we wont be able to gain that capacity as the manipulative power of theirs is enormous; they even make/break democracies, decide winners/losers in elections...

Grazia:  Thanks, Faizi!  And a warm suggestion not to fall into the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ for characteristics (such as being goyim or not, Adivasi or not, white or black, woman or man) that are independent from mature choice.  For the rest I am fully with you, and it would have been crucial to have you with us for what I tried to describe as ‘analysing the system of power’ which is today global and at the root of the disgrace.

Paul: [...]  The neoliberal movement / ideology/ policies have caused much harm... they created huge inequalities globally and locally, brought us the environmental crisis, diluted democracies and its institutions, continued colonial practices under new economic and political guises, etc. ..  we get it.  Now we are here - in the midst of ideological 'rupture', ongoing genocides,  ecocide, authoritarian control by billionaires, enabled by technologies.   What actionable analysis and actions do we need now? Who can act, who has agency?

IMHO, the people are the true Sovereigns. Sovereignty does not reside in leaders, nor Kings, or billionaires, not even in institutions. So one key  question to me is - how can people assert their fundamental sovereignty in their current conditions, getting past all the illusory maze of economic, social, and political arrangements ? Of course there is no single correct answer to this. The good news is that it can be done, it is being done, in many places.   Minneapolis offers one example in one context. And we have had Arab Spring, Tiananmen, Hong Kong, the farmers revolt in New Delhi as past examples of the resurgence of People's sovereignty. It involved modifications in mindsets, beliefs, values, enactment of resistance, repair of policies and institutions, new economic and social policies, new political arrangements.  We probably need many and different approaches for the different tyrannical  circumstances around the planet. Our discussions at the Elders for Peace are contributing positively. They offer analysis, personal courage, safe community, thank you 🙏 all.   Watching the diverse acts of resistance in Gaza, in Minneapolis, among scientists and artists in many countries, by small shop-owners, by NGOs, etc tells me that even in their hectic  and conflicted lives, people are finding time and ways to reassert a measure of their autonomy and sovereignty.   Tyranny  through individuals, institutions and technologies may be a chronic (not acute or short-term) condition of humanity. We are developing immunities slowly but surely. 

Andrea: [...]  I could not attend the last meeting but could watch it on the video and read the following exchanges. It is sooo valuable to have such collaborative and free thinking and also truly caring interactions ! I am really thankful to be able to take part in it ! And really appreciate that each finds room to bring in her and his own experience, sensitivity, competency and point of view !   I can only agree that we need after all to take the time for critical thinking in order to clearly and deeply understand and better withstand the current acceleration to ever more destructive and brutal regimes.  

After your presentation, the rich discussion and listening and especially after listening to Marc Carney’s speech in Davos I agree with Mark Halle’s appreciation of his courage but also with his prudent dissociation from some other of his positions. Especially when Carney’s explains that for supporting the sovereignty of Canada he doubled the country’s military budget. Also, besides saying that Canadian had a sense of values and sustainable development I heard no mention that we were not only at a most critical "rupture point in the world order" considering geopolitics but also considering our planet's wide ecological and climatic conditions. 

Paul’s latest message encourages me to say also that what I miss so far in our discussions is a critical analysis of the nation-state as an institution. I think also that we need to invent diverse more local community-based forms of sovereignty to preserve and foster the common good — which is not to equate with the « public good ». The latter is too often imposed by national governments, like the French government that imposes projects of motorways and the development of nuclear plants, declaring them to be "public utilities » -  .. justifying their promotion be it by force and many claim that they should therefore be also "public goods … ». This seems quite unreasonable considering that a minority of the nation’s citizen have cars and use them regularly and that it is desirable for the future of all that we are less and less numerous and often using motorways to move around.   

We have seen that nation-states are fundamentally hooked to economic growth - however unsustainable it is - without growth no return on investment - and no reimbursement of credit. Meaning that they are fundamentally dependent on a predatory therefore also imperialistic mode of governing (even more so with demographic growth and dwindling resources). It’s systemic, nation states, even if they claim like Canada to cherish values, are caught in the same (bottom less) trap. It seems that almost all can agree from left to right that it is a trap, but only few recognize that none who stays in the arena of national politics can get out of it. And the extremes on either side are just precipitating the fall. Indeed the problem is that we have unlearned to trust in community-based governance, also because national politics have for very long disempowered and harmed community-based processes. So I believe also that we have not only to innovate new modes of organising our societies but also new modes to build trust and re-learn how to cope better with less and in solidarity with others (humans and other species). It is very difficult sometimes too at community level to solve conflicts, to work with denial and anomy,  to motivate more engagement and solidarity. But do we have really other choices .. Also I believe that communities are not only local - but can be also broader - but we see that these are dependent on fragile and largely controlled information technologies, … 

Maybe we could have somebody talking to us about a socio-ecological approach maybe referring to Murray Bookchin to build up our critic of nation-states. We can also draw back on the north/western history of this institutional construct as far back as to the Roman Empire that was very militaristic, macho, segregated - violent and authoritarian  (see the great book on this history by Irene Vallejo : El Infinite en un junco) and we could also listen to the people in our elders4peace community who work on commons ! 

David: I want to pick up on Andrea's latest contribution about the nation states and more. I think that this is what Territories of life is about.. I have just had an essay published written with former students, now colleagues that examines this approach in the context of Mexico, but also quite applicable to many other parts of the Global South and really at the heart of the Territories consortium. Grazia has dedicated her life to this!  The article is available open access until 26 March:  https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1mYxX3Hb%7E0ltHu  I hope that this begins to start the discussion that Andrea calls for :  maybe we could have somebody talking to us about a socio-ecological approach maybe referring to Murray Bookchin to build up our critic of nation-states

Mark: Dear fellow Elders, I am truly grateful for all the comments following my recent presentation. What they all reflect - in addition to deep concern and wisdom - is that the real issue is not identifying the destination but how to get there.  I will offer here some brief reactions to some of the points all of you have raised.  I am necessarily selective but would welcome further exchanges:

• Andy Haines picks up on my point that our current predicament can be traced back to the prevailing economic model and its advanced state of degeneration and wonders what economic model (Donut Economics, degrowth, etc.) might help us return to a better place.  It was, of course, superficial of me to use the neoliberal economic order as my proposed villain, but my central point was different.  We have allowed advancement of the common good as the central purpose of development to be replaced by advancement of individual opportunity.  Even in a market-based system, I believe it is possible to establish a prosperous and equitable system.  This would be one in which markets operate within a strict framework of policies, norms and regulations which ensure that the outcomes of financial and economic activity lead to positive outcomes for planetary health and social equity.  Social democracy is the closest humanity has come to it and still represents the most successful socioeconomic system we have ever had (as in it produced the most positive results for the largest number of people).  Read Tony Judt's Ill Fares the Land if you are interested in the elaboration of that argument.

• Faizi S despairs of the frankly loathsome behaviour of our economic elites, now reaching unheard-of extremes as exemplified  by the Epstein scandal.  I share that disgust, but believe it is nothing more than the final stage in degeneration of a system that is failing and near death.  So I see it as a symptom and not a cause.

• Paul Shrivastava believes the key is not the diagnosis but identifying an adequate response.  How do we turn the ship around?  I agree that is the challenge, but would argue that we know many of the elements of that turnaround and need to ensure they are mustered together.  The key one in my view is to lead a movement for a new narrative, a new framing of the way we apprehend what is going on around us and interpret it.  Read Jonah Sachs' Winning the Story Wars. Strong stories are only replaced by stronger stories.  We can see the narrative battle raging today in the US. lt is essential that we win it.

• Andrea Finger questions our attachment to the nation state and the spurious presentation of elite projects as public goods.  Again I would point to the cyclical nature of the systems that humans put in place, the best rising to a position of domination before beginning to fall to pieces.  On that, read Peak Human by Johan Norberg.  The key is to be ready for the opportunity to reconstruct and have the plans ready to implement.

• David Barkin suggests that the right model is laid out in Territories of Life by our enlightened co-convener Grazia. To that I doff my hat and bow deeply.  I wonder, though, if that dispersed model requires some sort of superstructure to hold the basic rule-book in place?  I well remember in my youth the fear that local identity would fracture the nation-state and lead to chaos.  The movement to recognize Basque identity, for example, was seen as a threat to the integrity of Spain.  The development of the EU structure was meant to contribute to the solution of that problem - the combination of a strong superstructure and a diversity of local identities was, in theory fully compatible.  Not in practice, though.  Too much of what is needed to operate a society effectively is inefficient at the local level, and too easy to corrupt.  And nobody wants Brussels to govern their lives and tell them what can and cannot be called mulled wine.  So we haven't cracked this one yet.  I personally like the Swiss model - subsidiarity taken to extremes - but then I am biased.

Highlights from the chat:

Douglas Nader: For every US$1 the world invests in protecting nature, it spends US$30 on destroying it. This stark imbalance is the central finding of a new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report released today. It calls for a major shift in global financing of nature-based solutions and phasing out harmful investments  to deliver high returns, reduce risk exposure, and enhance resilience.  See The State of Finance for Nature 2026

Geoff Garver:  I’m teaching a class on sustainable development this afternoon in a course at McGill called Environment and the Law.  This is a welcome talk, and I will present a similar critique of how SD is being implemented - Carney’s Canada is definitely not on a good track for SD.  It’s always interesting to review the Earth Charter in these contexts - a different, more hopeful vision that didn’t carry the day back in 1992.

Tom Moore: as a very long time worker for social development, the analogy of 'walking north on a train going south' really resonated for me - thanks

Mazin Qumsiyeh: my take on Davos and Trump https://popular-resistance.blogspot.com/2026/01/davos.html

Paul Shrivastava: Carney may not be the perfect messenger, but his message is timely... agree with Andy that Mark's analysis is incomplete and needs more work.... but folks I see an opening to stop the billionaire-Raj from becoming permanent. Thank you Mark for pointing to the ' economy' where we need to focus. ..... we need an economy of planetary peace'.    Reimagining the Financial-Tech System  see Club of Rome paper 'From Financing Change to Changing Finance'. [...]   A Vision of pluriversal pathways towards ecocivilization already implies a critique of great power rivalries and current structures of power. Accepting that 'people' are the real sovereigns, not institutions, not military,  not governments, and certainly NOT Trump, ....  is a key premise for building a new bottom-up power structure...  it is possible and even happening in some areas ... I point to another Clubof Rome project called COPx - Conference of the People

Corrado Poli:  We all call for new ideas for future development… but ideas are the most scarce resource; it’s very difficult to have ideas… we may have clues, common sense imagination (just a hidden quote of Descartes)  but to construct ideas requires a huge and collective effort. We might begin a process that ignites new ideas. We are in a pre-something situation… or better yet in a post-everything situation

December 2025 -- Ending suffering, sustaining communities— what are we learning from Palestine?  with Mazin Qumsiyeh  and Karima Kadaoui

Biljiama Vankovska on Substack (click to see) 

Karima Kadaoui -- via e mail (see below)

Corrado Poli -- on Facebook (see below)

Olivier Hamerlynck -- via email (see below)

Extracts from the chat of the meeting -- (see below)

From Karima: 

"The madness of normalising genocide does not begin with ignorance; it begins with a severing of feeling from understanding.

 Genocide is never normalised because people do not know. It is normalised because knowing has been stripped of embodied cognisance; of the capacity to feel what is known as real, as present, as happening to bodies like one’s own.

Cognitive knowing alone is insufficient. Facts can be processed, statistics debated, legal definitions refined while the annihilation of a people continues uninterrupted. This is not neutrality; it is dissociation. 

Embodied cognisance is different. It is understanding that passes through the body before it settles in language. It is the painful tightening of the chest when hospitals are bombed, the nausea when doctors are imprisoned for saving lives, the shock when children are burning alive or torn into pieces, the refusal of the nervous system to accept the unacceptable. This is not emotion as reaction; it is discernment. The body knows when a moral boundary has been crossed long before institutions admit it.

The madness lies precisely here: genocide can only be normalised when this felt intelligence is systematically suppressed, when people are trained to mistrust their own somatic recognition of horror and instead defer to procedural language, geopolitical ratiocination, and “complexity.” Complexity becomes a shield against conscience.

Normalisation is therefore not passive. It is an active discipline. It requires the continuous anaesthetisation of embodied understanding: turning massacres into “security incidents,” turning starvation into “logistical constraints,” turning the destruction of hospitals into “operational necessity,” turning tortured doctors into “detainees.”

Each linguistic move distances cognition from sensation. Each move teaches the body to remain still when it should revolt. Understanding is not achieved by adding more information, but by restoring the unity of feeling and knowing. In this sense, intelligent feeling is not subjective; it is ontoepistemic. It is a way of knowing that resists capture by systems invested in denial and the normalisation of abomination.

This is maybe why genocide feels “unreal” to those far from it, and unbearably real to those living it. Reality is not evenly distributed and realised when feeling is policed or polished.

To feel intelligently is therefore an act of being fully alive, an act of resistance that does not exclude but embraces. It refuses the false safety of detached cognition.

And perhaps this is the most dangerous thing of all to systems that depend on normalization: a population that trusts its embodied cognisance, it's knowing of the heart will not accept genocide as policy, precedent, or background noise."

 We are called, as Paul said, to think differently beyond systemically. We can think systemically remaining in the inner architecture of emotional detachment. "That humanity is the indispensable humus where everything else -- system analysis, theories of change, action... you name it—can grow healthy, without distortion and corruption and futile failures..." expresses the "how" with clarity, coherence and beauty. The ultimate paradox: trusting our humanity in a crisis of humanity.

From Corrado:

IL CAMBIAMENTO È POSSIBILE: Il dovere morale di agire

Ieri ho partecipato a una riunione online di “Elders for Peace”, un gruppo di studiosi, attivisti e sostenitori che si riunisce per organizzare azioni a favore della pace.

Abbiamo ascoltato due testimonianze dirette sul genocidio dei palestinesi.

Sono state commoventi e significative, lasciando tutti i partecipanti senza parole; per lunghi minuti nessuno ha osato commentare, né tantomeno porre domande. Più tardi, uno dei partecipanti ha citato: “Quando le parole falliscono, parla il silenzio”.

Dopo essermi disconnesso dalla conferenza Zoom, non riuscivo a scrollarmi di dosso i pensieri cupi. Un senso di impotenza travolgente ha preso possesso della mia mente e della mia anima.

Poi ho reagito perché non abbiamo il diritto di disperarci. Il problema è come agire... così mi sono sentito di nuovo infelice: la risposta alla domanda “Cosa fare?” non è facile oggi. Non lo è mai stata, tra l'altro.

Un amico continua a lamentarsi sui social media di quanto i media siano cattivi e di parte, e di come le potenze occidentali li controllino.

E allora? Che c'è di nuovo? Dico io.

Sappiamo tutti che i media mainstream manipolano pesantemente la maggior parte delle persone. La maggior parte delle persone, ma non “tutte le persone ogni volta”.

Sono fiducioso e dovremmo esserlo tutti!

Il pensiero positivo è un dovere morale e una responsabilità che non possiamo evitare.

Non siamo più soli: ci sono molti media non mainstream e social network che trasmettono informazioni diverse. Creano un'altra cultura, indomabile come la verità stessa.

Possiamo contribuire unendoci all'informazione libera e navigando in rete sulla nuova onda, portando la nostra esperienza e la nostra cultura.

Dobbiamo invece astenerci dall'autocompiacimento e dal predicare ai convertiti. Dobbiamo essere umili e abbastanza coraggiosi da discutere con gli infedeli, coloro che ancora adorano i media mainstream e sminuiscono il nostro impegno.

Sovvertire l'ordine politico e militare occidentale non è facile, ma è necessario ripristinare la libertà, la giustizia e la fratellanza.

Anche se non accadrà dall'oggi al domani, la marea sta salendo ed è inarrestabile.

I BRICS+ stanno sfidando l'egemonia economica occidentale, con ripercussioni sulla geopolitica globale. Il mondo sta cambiando più rapidamente che negli ultimi 50 anni.

In Occidente, chi ha più di 70 anni (circa) ha assistito in prima persona a questi cambiamenti. Abbiamo vissuto una delle rivoluzioni materiali e sociali più rapide e radicali della storia umana. Tra il 1950 e il 1970, sia l'ambiente sia le nostre convinzioni e i nostri comportamenti sono cambiati radicalmente.

Possiamo farlo di nuovo, o almeno prestare attenzione e sostenere la trasformazione in corso. Anzi, dobbiamo credere che una nuova rivoluzione sia possibile e accoglierla.

“Desiderio di cambiamento” era il motto del mio mentore, un atteggiamento molto umano, in effetti.

Pertanto, dateci una battaglia da combattere e noi la combatteremo

From Olivier:

Everything that needed to be expressed has already been written. And, as Orwell formulates it, that everything has to be against totalitarianism. We are currently both in 1933 and in his novel 1984 but with, thanks to Palantir and the other criminal facilitators of our manipulation, a much more sophisticated Big Brother. The 1 % that enslaves us all, through the (anti-)social hate networks and the Newspeak that permeates their FoxNews et al. Hannah Arendt in her treatise on the origins of totalitarianism goes into length on how language is subverted and lies become truths.

So what are we left with? Emotion, but not the hatespawning clickbait type. Real emotion with real people or as Mazin expressed it: I will be emotional as we are among friends. Karima emphasized empathy, another characteristic of real people. It is through that shared emotion, that empathy we are strong, that we can resist.

We are capable of sharing feelings with others because we share values and many of these values were written down before, as Mazin stated in Jesus’ powerful Sermon on the Mount. Briefly: humility, mercy, purity of heart, peacemaking, a hunger for justice, sincerity and radical love (the other cheek). What I loved in Karima’s parable (but a true story as all good parables are) is that it are the young ones that overcame the generations of hate and violence, they were able to see through the lies. The young hearts are the ones that we, as Elders, should try to help opening and, of course, we face stiff competition here as they are very strongly targeted by the influencers on the anti-social networks, e.g. Charlie Kirk’s programme.

But our leaders, the ones that the 1% bestows upon us either through manipulated elections or more open powergrabs, do not adhere to these values, quite the opposite: they more and more openly denounce and abhor them. Why? Well, you already intuitively know the answer: because there is more money to be made that way but also, and Mazin hinted at that “because they are different”. Now these are treacherous waters as that is precisely what the 1% wants us to believe, namely that all problems originate in those that are different, the ones they want us to fear and therefore to hate.

I will come back to this difference after an older story than the magnificent Sermon of the Mount. I want to take you back to the first murder and the shame attached to that event. The (first) farmer Cain slays the (first) livestock keeper (with a stone, we are still in the Neolithic).

YHVH (literally the Name) puts a mark on Cain so that nobody will revenge the murder of Abel. Nor will Cain be killed accidentally in a violent encounter that he might himself create to escape his terrible punishment, which is to be ashamed of his deed (the deed, as in MacBeth I have done the deed, which can only mean one thing: murder). He has to live with this shame as will his descendants for 7 generations. He is an outcast. He has no friends.

The true behavioural rules, the ones that allow us to live together in harmony start with the sixth commandment (the first 5 are “god stuff” plus respect for parents): “Thou shalt not kill”. Thus the Name sets the murderous descendants apart. That is the “they are different” I was referring to earlier.

Mazin hinted to this as a geneticist, there is a violent personality profile in our midst (he referred to chimps) but obviously, in our caveman days, a non-empathic profile was, in evolutionary terms, useful in certain situations, so they are still around. We often call them sociopaths and psychopaths but they are more accurately described in psychiatry these days under the Dark Triad.

Muris, P., Merckelbach, H., Otgaar, H. and Meijer, E., 2017. The malevolent side of human nature: A meta-analysis and critical review of the literature on the dark triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy). Perspectives on psychological science, 12(2), pp.183-204.

It is fairly easy to see that a lot of our leadership fits in here. Like Cain and his descendants, they have no friends with whom they might share the emotions as we shared them with Mazin and Karima.

When I was (1983-1984) in Hazarajat in the Central Mountains of Afghanistan during the Soviet Occupation we had too many dying people coming from “the West”. People from these extremely poor valleys would die on their way to the hospital so I was charged with opening up a dispensary several days march to the West (in an abandoned school building – better not to describe in detail what happened to the teachers, suffice it to say that half of the school was for boys and half for girls, still not a popular concept there).

That hamlet had 7 Arbab families (master of the waters, the ones owning the springs and distributing the irrigation waters) in a strict hierarchy that had completely shifted with the Soviet invasion. To simplify: the numbers 1,2 and 3 were relegated to 5,6,7 and vice versa. As I got to know them better, the former leaders included moderate, well read intellectuals (including my best mate who had a schizophrenic son he treated with such gentleness, with so much love and respect, reading from his “deranged” but very poetic writings, etc.). The new triumvirate were of the Dark Triad. The military commander, number 2 wouldn’t have his mongoloid son circumcised = not human. He was using me to visit the surrounding (Pashtoun) villages – my job (as the locally famous doctor who patches up your bullet holes) included negotiating firewood to keep the dispensary open in winter – to find out what weapons they had and confided to me his plan to murder all of them after the Soviets would have left. I guess the inverse happened as there was a lot of Hazara being murdered afterwards (they are Shia).

So, under threat - and that is why our leaders are all the time fear mongering: fear of the ones that are different - the community chooses the Dark Triad guys as we are doing with Trump, Orban, Marine Le Pen, etc. through the media manipulation.

Our task (as Elders) is to help point out these profiles and against all support critical thinking, especially in the younger generations debunking all these myths through what we have witnessed. Telling stories. We are good at that.

Extracts from the chat of the meeting:

00:58:36 Julie: Religious sects and etno-religious nationalism play an important role in this barbarity.  How can people go to the Church without asking the Pope to make a statement? How do people read the Gospels "love your enemy" and accept that what the US Protestant evangelical churches are supporting in the name of their blind literalist interpretation of the Old Testament? This is a 2000+ years conflict. The Book of Maccabees boasts of exterminating the Samaritans! They happen to be the very people who have the oldest version of the Pentateuch, written in a script that indeed existed before square Hebrew. The current displacements of populations in the Golan, and the attacks in Naplus, are related to the central role of these people, which today are considered as "another religion" by mainstream Israelis. Is it because Christianity and Islam consider that the Old testament is their "foundation myth" that they cannot criticize the literalist interpretation?

00:59:02 Bill Samuel: I was just sent a video from my contact in Gaza (journalist Hind Khoudary) of the flooding today there.

01:04:56 Julie: We also need to question the concept of "resilience" when it means pure and simple acceptation of the idea that "predestination" is the rule rather than free will. It makes perfect sense for ruler to impose the idea that there is a God that pre-ordains everything, but in fact, within the history of the very same Abrahamic religions, there have been currents who promoted free will and explained that good and evil are not the same thing. Supposedly, international justice was based on this principle.

01:09:50 Julie: Basically the question can be reduced to: what is preventing the filthy rich, in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia or Europe, to do an air bridge and save the people in Gaza from being buried under the future Trump/Kushner resort?

01:10:19 Mazin Qumsiyeh: My email mazin@qumsiyeh.org

01:12:43 Bill Samuel: If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. -Mother Teresa

Karima, you are talking about the need to remember that we belong to one another.

01:12:55 Chuck Johnson, IPPNW: It is about expanding our circle beyond just those closest to us to the larger circle.  It is about recognizing our commonality.

01:13:06 Karima Kadaoui: Reacted to "It is about expandin..." with ❤️

01:13:10 Bill Samuel: Reacted to "It is about expandin..." with ❤️

01:13:13 Karima Kadaoui: Reacted to "If we have no peace,..." with ❤️

01:13:36 Jordi Cat: It takes both recognizing and honoring commonality as well as singularity

01:13:47 Karima Kadaoui: Reacted to "It takes both recogn..." with ❤️

01:14:00 Bill Samuel: Reacted to "It takes both recogn..." with 👍

01:16:13 Deivide Oliveira: Agree with u chuck

01:16:26 Julie: Same conclusion was reached by Spinoza about the fairy tales of the Old Testament; same of Luther regarding the corruption of the Catholic church; same of Freud with regard to Judaism as a failed attempt to kill the father (in his book on Moses)

01:17:06 Jordi Cat: Many years ago I was fortunate to attend a small meeting with Hanan Ashrawi. She struck me as the strongest person and also the funniest. Humanity.

01:18:54 Chuck Johnson, IPPNW: Reacted to "Many years ago I was..." with ❤️

01:19:10 Chuck Johnson, IPPNW: Reacted to "Agree with u chuck" with 🫶

01:19:21 Julie: The reason why the Palestinians are hated is precisely because as originally Bedouins, they know how to live together, no matter how many religions have tried to divert them from their love of life and nature. The so-called followers of Jesus have been unable to agree on the books they read (in Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Latin) for 2000 years because they obey priests who in turn obey wordly powers, very much against the message of the Gospels.

01:27:29 Jordi Cat: Many religious crusaders among the new far-right political leadership

01:27:33 Julie: Do we really need Jesus to believe that there were human beings in history, who preached helping the poor and loving all people no matter their ethnicity or religion? Look at religions as "brands" and softpower. When the US funds evangelical sects in Africa or South America, it is only to "sell" Biblical geography, adapted by Christian Zionism. As long as we do not denounce this we are stuck.

01:28:40 Chuck Johnson, IPPNW: Replying to "Do we really need Je..."    No, we don't need Jesus, specifically.  But those who claim to follow him should study what he said and did according to the gospels they profess to believe as God's word.

01:30:29 Bill Samuel: Julie, my nextdoor neighbors are Sudanese refugees. They are Muslim. I look at them and see people who love God and love their neighbors. They are living what Jesus held up. Our church, which took them in, sees them as brothers and sisters, and we don't see our different faith traditions as a barrier. We respect each other.

01:31:28 Christopher Mbanefo: Reacted to "Julie, my nextdoor n..." with ❤️

01:31:44 Karenza-Monica Case: Religions have been corrupted and misused, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.

01:31:53 Julie: Bill, it is also possible for human beings to love each others without having churches. There is plenty of great writers and philosophers who have worked on it and indeed written on it. There is too much corruption in organized religions for the last few millennia to be mentioned.

01:32:38 Julie: How do you address ethno-religious nationalism? Identity politics has been very fine-tuned in the latest decades.

01:33:11 Chuck Johnson, IPPNW: Replying to "Bill, it is also pos..." Yes, do it that way, if it works for you! We should love however anyone wants to live and let live and show kindness and give assistance to those who are the "other."

01:33:57 Christopher Mbanefo: Those who have not reached the mountain top will argue which way is best, and in the worse case may kill each other. Whereas those who have reached the top do not ask which way you took.

01:34:05 Julie: Religion is supposed to connect people above nationalism. But we have seen that there is no transnational solidarity and that 5 percent of extremists can take hostage the rest of the population. They are more organized, more zealots and they have what Ibn Khaldun calls 'asabiyya in this way.

01:34:32 Paul Shrivastava: Thanks Julie... I am afraid religion in the 21st century is not helping peace and harmony

01:35:14 Julie: My point is that Chabad Lubavitch has taken Judaism as a hostage. What is needed is a serious deconstruction of what they claim and how they got allied with the Protestants all the way since the end of the 80s.

01:37:36 Karima Kadaoui: Love is in all religions and love has no religion.

01:37:48 Julie: Please see the recently released film "Soundtrack for a coup d'état". It resonates very much with the current situation. The UN was irrelevant already in the 1960s. But the new element is that we have international officials, such as Albanese and the ICC and ICJ judges who are now under sanctions. We should be thinking about how to get organize for these people to do their work outside of the grid of sanctions and indeed outside of a corrupt UN.

01:39:31 Chuck Johnson, IPPNW: Reacted to "Love is in all relig..." with ❤️

01:39:39 Geoffrey Garver: I’m reading the book Kayanerenkó:wa: The Great Law of Peace, by Kayanesenh Paul Williams, about how the Haudenosaunee Confederacy was created, ending ongoing war among the five Nations and agreeing on a way to sustain peace.  So many lessons for our times in this wonderful book (although my Kanien’kehá:ka friends remind me it was an oral tradition and more fluid than a book would make it seem). I’m grateful to be on this path of learning.

01:39:45 Julie: Love should be in all religions but if you read the Book of Joshua or most of the sections of the OT that call for the destruction of geunine people: Samaritans exist, Moab and Edom are the ancestors of the Palestinians and Arabs of Jordan (as attested by archaeology), you cannot expect people who read this to love their neighbours. And again I do not understand how "Christians" can keep reading these sections without excising them. We all know how books have been gathered and canonized and sanctioned by authorities.

01:40:07 Alberto Cacopardo: Julie, careful! It is not the UN that is corrupt, it is the US that is building its dictatorship over the world. That is the Greatest menace right now! That is the great threat to the victory of Love

01:40:28 floydhomer: Perhaps a key question based Grazia’s comments is how do we weed the ‘good’ wolf in others who can influence a change for the better.

01:40:42 floydhomer: …feed…

01:41:07 Julie: It was the case in 1960 already when they allowed for the kidnapping and assassination of Lumumba. See "Soundtrack for a coup d'état" and all the people responsible boasting on cameras in the interviews they gave in the following decades. We have not moved from there.

01:42:55 Geoffrey Garver: We need to call out as fraudsters those (from Reagan to Trump and beyond) who call for “peace through strength” which amounts to pointing a gun at people and telling them not to make trouble.  Much more powerful is the call for strength through peace - strength within and among communities bound by peace.

01:43:11 Julie: https://roape.net/2024/02/08/myth-busting-dag-hammarskjold-katanga-and-the-coup-against-the-lumumba-government/

01:44:05 Bill Samuel: It is not "religion" but the love that is behind the best in all religions that is what we need.

01:44:40 Mark Halle: Amen brother!

01:45:00 Mazin Qumsiyeh: A Christmas song for you (English lyrics included in description) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4O0sMRd-8s

01:45:59 Julie: Look at how the US has been funding religious wars in Africa for decades. It is not just now. But indeed the Trump team feels sorry the US were not around at the time of the Crusades. More realistically, they understand religion as soft power and know how much money it makes. Anyone who has visited Switzerland has seen all the various sects of the worls that were there. Indeed one of them, a local one, Oxford Group/Réarmement moral, has played a very powerful role in going after NATO officials and high-ranking people...

01:47:31 Julie: Aff to the mix that in a number of European countries, it is the so-called "Christian democrat" parties that are the king makers of coalitions. They are not many in parliaments, but they do hold the keys of power in many places, including most of Northern Europe, Germany and Italy. Mainly protestants, but also catholics.

01:47:39 Mark Halle: As always, I need to drop off now.  Thanks for a moving and inspiring session.

01:48:10 Chuck Johnson, IPPNW: I think it is important to look for commonality and to appeal to people's better wolvers.

01:48:46 tom barton: Emotionally powerful presentations and dialogue - thanks to all.  bye for now

01:49:17 douglas: The recently published Global Environment Outlook tries to bring us to a better world

01:49:44 Julie: In my opinion an answer from the social sciences could be what Iain McGilChrist says about the lateralisation of the brain hemispheres. Contrary to what the Abrahamic religions say, all men and women have the same brain. It is very likely though that we use it differently because of the cultural and multi-generational factor.

01:49:46 Bill Samuel: The answer is not so much in systems but in living out love. If love spreads, systems will change. It does not work through a rational process by itself.

01:50:00 Karima Kadaoui: Peace making doesn’t mean passivity. It is the act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, the act of disarming evil without destroying the evildoer, the act of finding a third way that is neither fight nor flight but the careful, arduous pursuit of reconciliation and justice. It is about a revolution of love that is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressors free.”

Shane Claiborne, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

01:50:15 Bill Samuel: Reacted to "Peace making doesn’t..." with 👍

01:50:16 Alberto Cacopardo: I must also leave. Thanks a lot to you all for the most precious meeting.

01:50:25 Chuck Johnson, IPPNW: Reacted to "Peace making doesn’t..." with ❤️

01:50:48 Julie: Love starts by refusing to have shares in Lochkeed Martin or to work for any of the Big Tech surveillance apparatus. This means that many people are going to be without jobs and therefore what is needed are millionaires to pay for ethical jobs.

01:51:34 Bill Samuel: "abyss of dehumanization" - that captures it. That is the root problem.

01:52:44 Jordi Cat: Education is a key opportunity for trying, especially at a more individual and personalized level, but it’s embedded in the economic, religious/culutral and political systems that are not peace-conducive. Trying is important, but it’s getting harder and harder (even in science).

01:53:56 Geoffrey Garver: Yes, it’s the normalization of so many hate-fuelled practices that is at the heart of what needs to be addressed, starting in the severe, acute cases like Gaza, but all across the world.

01:54:37 Bill Samuel: Replying to "Education is a key o..."  In my country, the USA, the people in education who are feeding the right wolves are being kicked out. They are considered subversive and dangerous.

01:55:09 Geoffrey Garver: Reacted to "In my country, the U..." with 😪

01:55:33 Karima Kadaoui: Reacted to "Yes, it’s the normal..." with ❤️

01:55:39 Andréa Finger: Thank you Mazin and Karima we need humanity, to share and nurture love. But indeed Paul the systemic structure of violence needs also to be analysed and deconstructed.

01:55:49 Bill Samuel: "white" people were created in the 1600's to provide a basis to enslave a whole group of people for economic gain.

01:55:59 Jordi Cat: Replying to "Education is a key o..."   I feel more and more vulnerable on my campus

01:58:56 Beverly Ovrebo: “Let us be human.” - L. Wittgehstein

02:02:15 Karima Kadaoui: "the coloniser is colonised" - "the dehumaniser self-dehumanise"

02:02:55 Jordi Cat: I’m afraid I have to leave. Thanks for the testimonies and the realism about the challenges.

02:03:12 Bill Samuel: Reacted to ""the coloniser is co..." with 👍

02:04:15 Paul Shrivastava: I too need to get off now, Thanks Mazin and Karima  ... for a very thoughtful discussion... let's keep working together on this

02:06:03 Bill Samuel: Reacted to "I too need to get of..." with 👍

02:06:44 Silvia Lelli: The fact that Francesca Albanese is so strongly ostracized means that UN still have the power to say something true and important. able to challange the economic system Mazin Qumsiyeh is talking about

02:08:14 George & Maria: Thank you Mazim and Karima. We have to go now. Till next time

02:09:04 Chuck Johnson, IPPNW: Replying to ""the coloniser is co..."   This is true.  They are not happy

02:09:18 Andréa Finger: Thank you Michel too for these last words thanks to all

02:09:29 Karima Kadaoui: Deeply grateful to all

02:09:34 Beverly Ovrebo: ❤️

02:09:50 Christopher Mbanefo: May Peace be upon us all! ❤️

02:09:55 Mazin Qumsiyeh: mazin@qumsiyeh.org

02:09:56 Julie: Take care all of you and a happy new year, looking forward for some change

02:10:47 Karima Kadaoui:

If I must die, 

you must live 

to tell my story 

to sell my things 

to buy a piece of cloth 

and some strings, 

(make it white with a long tail) 

so that a child, somewhere in Gaza 

while looking heaven in the eye 

awaiting his dad who left in a blaze— 

and bid no one farewell 

not even to his flesh 

not even to himself— 

sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above 

and thinks for a moment an angel is there 

bringing back love 

If I must die 

let it bring hope 

let it be a tale

02:10:58 Christopher Mbanefo: Reacted to "If I must die,  you ..." with ❤️

02:10:59 Karima Kadaoui: Rafaat Alareer