Brisbane Peace Network planning meeting Saturday 20th January
Annette Brownlie
IPAN Brisbane groups to meet on Saturday 20th January 12.00
BRING A PLATE TO SHARE in the beautiful gardens of the Friends Meeting House followed by discussion about working together for justice, peace and independent foreign policies into the future.
We begin 2018 with a message from the Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who on Sunday issued a “red alert” for more unity in 2018 after what he called a year of setbacks.
"Nationalism and xenophobia are on the rise, inequality is growing, climate change is accelerating and the world is seeing horrific violations of human rights, he said. Global anxieties about nuclear weapons were the highest since the Cold War."
The Independent and Peaceful Australia Network aims to bring together diverse sectors of the Australian community to build a more independent and peace promoting society and tackle some of the issues the Secretary General highlighted.
I hope you will join us for lunch and a conversation on addressing the issues that hold back that vision such as:
- Continuing to enmesh the ADF into the US military-recent data release shows spending of 10.3B$ over the past four years on equipment enabling ‘interoperability’ with US forces and paying for ADF deployment to the conflicts in Syria and Iraq.
- Allowing the use of Australian territory to base foreign troops training and preparing for war and sophisticated surveillance facilities like Pine Gap
- Refusing to sign the UN Treaty to Prohibit the use of Nuclear Weapons
- Actions taken by Governments of both major political persuasions that break international laws Australia has ratified. This includes the continued detention of asylum seekers in offshore islands and the use of Pine Gap to enable drone strikes on people of countries we are not ‘at war’ with, not only killing targeted individuals but often whole families.
- Aggressive foreign policies that threaten the security of people all over the planet such as we have seen over China and North Korea.
- Inaction on climate change with dire consequences destabilising communities all over the world.
- Allocating vast sums of money on defence materiel which is arguably not making Australians more secure, when public services and foreign aid spending is cut.
The last Brisbane peace network meeting in January 2017 was a great opportunity to hear from a range of people in Brisbane organisations about their activity and plans and enabled the IPAN State representatives to pass on ideas of what issues are important and could benefit from a national approach to the IPAN Strategy development meeting in Sydney over the weekend of 4/5 February.
The next IPAN planning meeting again is in Melbourne on the weekend of January 26/27th.
Thanks to all who sent an RSVP to the previous email- please let me know if you or a representative of your organisation can come along.
All the best for the year ahead, for peace, for justice and strong healthy communities.
Annette and Ross (IPAN State reps)
Annette-0431597256 or Ross-0408782983
Annette Brownlie
Annette Brownlie
Hi All who were able to come to the Brisbane Peace Groups meeting last saturday- please find notes from the meeting attached for your perusal. If I have forgotten anything please let me know.
Cheers
Annette