Annual Christmas Appeal

Dear friends,                                                                                      December 2014

     I write to ask for your help to sustain the work of Malu ‘Aina. Malu ‘Aina has been planting seeds, sharing food with people in need, and standing up for peace, justice, aloha ‘aina (love for the land) and a living planet for 34 years. You have been an important part of that effort in one way or another, and we thank you for your solidarity in the journey.

     The work for peace, justice, and the environment, like farm work, is never ending. As an all-volunteer organization we do our best to carry on. We know that we can’t do it alone. We can always use more help. We need your financial support and we need the next generation to carry the torch of nonviolence and the spirit of aloha in the work of Malu ‘Aina.

     The widening gap between rich and poor, the growing number of hungry and homeless, the endless wars, private prisons for profit, and corporate GMO domination of agriculture, all speak to a broken system that benefits the few at the expense of the many. It’s a system whose main concern is short term profit despite long term consequences. Catastrophic climate change and poisoning of air, water, and land, and people, plants and animals are secondary concerns to the corporate bottom line.

     Together, we realize that positive change doesn’t come from the top down. It comes from the bottom up. It takes grassroots organizing to clarify vision and unite people for the common good. We have our work cut out. We need to unite issues of peace, justice and preserving the earth realizing that an injury to one is an injury to all. Your support and solidarity helps us from being discouraged by setbacks along the way and to never, NEVER, give up. Blessings of the season to you and your loved ones.

With gratitude and aloha,

Jim Albertini for Malu ‘Aina

PS. Donations are tax deductible if checks are made to Center for Non-violent Education & Action P.O. Box 489 ‘Ola’a (Kurtistown), Hawai`i 96760.  A Pay Pal account (Donate button) has also been setup on our webpage www.malu-aina.org as another convenient way to make donations.  Please click “Subscribe” to receive the Malu ‘Aina weekly peace vigil leaflet (now 690 weeks — see this week’s leaflet below) and other posts for peace, justice and the environment. Other contact information: Phone (808) 966-7622. Email: ja@malu-aina.org  Mahalo. —

It’s the Christmas Season!

What Happened to Silent Night?

“Sleep in heavenly peace!”
It’s War, War, and More War! And Torture Too!

Former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who helped end the Cold War, recently issued a warning on current US-Russia relations:
‘We may not live through these days’

“This is extremely dangerous, with tensions as high as they are now. We may not live through these days: someone could lose their nerve,” he wrote in a commentary entitled “To unfreeze relations”

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2014/1210/Gorbachev-on-current-US-Russia-relations-We-may-not-live-through-these-days

It’s Time for Peace: time to defuse, not inflame, tensions!

1. Mourn all victims of violence. 2. Reject war as a solution. 3. Defend civil liberties. 4. Oppose all discrimination, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, anti-Hawaiian, etc.
   5. Seek peace through justice in Hawai`i and around the world.
   Contact: Malu `Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action P.O. Box 489 Kurtistown, Hawai`i 96760.
   Phone (808) 966-7622. Email:ja@malu-aina.org http://www.malu-aina.org

Hilo Peace Vigil leaflet (Dec. 12, 2014 – 690th week) – Friday 3:30-5PM downtown Post Office

“All Hawaii Stand Together”

      Kaliko Kanaele of the Royal Order of Kamehameha put the matter sharply and spoke for many when he said “We can’t keep on desecrating.” The sacred Mauna is already dominated and desecrated by too many telescopes. Kaliko’s words of wisdom apply equally to the continued bombing at Pohakuloa, the drilling into Pele for geothermal energy, and the overall profit driven pollution of the planet causing a global climate crisis and endless wars.  “We can’t keep on desecrating.”

      It is time for people everywhere to stand together and put the sacred before the almighty dollar in both word and deed. It is time to demonstrate through our actions what God or Gods to whom we pray.  Stopping the desecration by TMT (Too Many Telescopes) on Mauna Kea is an important start.

      It is especially important that people of faith, whose god is not the dollar, — Catholics, Methodist, UCC, New Hope, etc. –all spiritual believers, stand in solidarity with Native Hawaiian practitioners in prayer and action to protect the sacred temple — Mauna Kea. We all have responsibility to aloha one another, especially the host culture’s spiritual beliefs in the place where we live and call home.

 See photos and articles about Mauna Kea Oct. 7, 2014   http://malu-aina.org/?p=2751

“We can’t keep on desecrating.”

1. Mourn all victims of violence. 2. Reject war as a solution. 3. Defend civil liberties. 4. Oppose all discrimination, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, anti-Hawaiian, etc.
5. Seek peace through justice in Hawai`i and around the world.
Contact: Malu `Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action P.O. Box 489 Kurtistown, Hawai`i 96760.
Phone (808) 966-7622. Email:ja@malu-aina.org  http://www.malu-aina.org

Hilo Peace Vigil leaflet (Oct. 10, 2014 – 681st week) – Friday 3:30-5PM downtown Post Office

“A Slaughter of Innocents”

Rabbi Henry Siegman, Leading

Voice of U.S. Jewry, on Gaza

“When one thinks that this is what is necessary for Israel to survive, that the Zionist dream is based on the repeated slaughter of innocents on a scale that we’re watching these days on television, that is really a profound, profound crisis — and should be a profound crisis in the thinking of all of us who were committed to the establishment of the state and to its success,” Siegman says. Responding to Israel’s U.S.-backed claim that its assault on Gaza is necessary because no country would tolerate the rocket fire from militants in Gaza, Siegman says: “What undermines this principle is that no country and no people would live the way that Gazans have been made to live. … The question of the morality of Israel’s action depends, in the first instance, on the question, couldn’t Israel be doing something [to prevent] this disaster that is playing out now, in terms of the destruction of human life? Couldn’t they have done something that did not require that cost? And the answer is, sure, they could have ended the occupation.”

 Rabbi Siegman served as executive director of the American Jewish Congress, one of the nation’s largest Jewish organizations. See full interview with Amy Goodman http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/30/henry_siegman_leading_voice_of_us

It’s “Bombs Away” again for the U.S. in Iraq in the name of “coming to help.” The U.S. helped create the Islamic State (ISIS) by dropping bombs that killed and injured a million Iraqis and made refugees of millions more. And now we are told more bombs will be a solution? Don’t buy it. Stop bombing! Open up the U.S. to refugees fleeing violence and pledge to never bomb again!

 Justice, Peace and Equality

for All!

1. Mourn all victims of violence. 2. Reject war as a solution. 3. Defend civil liberties. 4. Oppose all discrimination, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, anti-Hawaiian, etc. 5. Seek peace through justice in Hawai`i and around the world.
Contact: Malu `Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action P.O. Box 489 Kurtistown, Hawai`i 96760.
Phone (808) 966-7622. Email:ja@malu-aina.org  http://www.malu-aina.org

Hilo Peace Vigil leaflet (August 15, 2014 – 673rd week) – Friday 3:30-5PM downtown Post Office

Hilo Bay Nuclear Warship

Blockade

       July 18, 2014 marks the 30^th anniversary of an historic protest in Hilo Bay to uphold the spirit, if not the letter, of Hawaii County’s Nuclear-Free law (ordinance #665) passed unanimously in 1981. On July 18, 1984 hundreds of people gathered on the Hilo docks in protest of a Pearl Harbor based visiting U.S. nuclear armed warship, USS Ouellet. The ship was coming to Hilo at the invitation of the Hawaii Japanese Chamber of Commerce for its “Let’s Sell Hawaii” Festival of the Pacific.

      For three years, despite numerous requests to respect our law, the Navy repeatedly violated the law. In June of 1984 peace activists announced a non-violent blockade of the next nuclear ship visiting Hilo. In response, the Navy, got federal authorities, to establish a martial law situation in Hilo Bay.

      On July 18 two Coast Guard cutters escorted the warship. Military speed boats, zodiacs, helicopters and Navy Seal teams were also in the harbor. Federal authorities declared that anyone entering Hilo Bay to peacefully protest the nuclear warship would be subject to a felony criminal violation with a federal prison term up to three years and a $50,000 fine. Three people entered the water from the point of pier 2 and 3 swimming toward the arriving warship in the harbor channel. They held their hands up in a symbolic message to the ship –”STOP.” Jim Snyder, Warren Wineman, and Jim Albertini were imprisoned and/or fined for their non-violent protest. Jim Albertini was released from Federal prison after a little more than a year of his 3 year sentence mainly due to international protest. For nearly 10 consecutive years, because of his non-violent protests, Jim had to obtain a federal court order to travel from Hawai`i island.

Aloha Hawai`i – Protest RIMPAC 2014

Sat. July 19^th 10AM- Noon Hilo Airport -Hwy. 11 Intersection

      RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific) is the world’s largest warfare exercise and is now taking place in and around the waters of Hawai`i. Twenty-two nations, 49 ships, 6 submarines, more than 200 aircraft (including killer drones) and 25,000 personnel are participating.

      In short, RIMPAC is an attack on the air, land and sea environment of Hawai`i –it’s people, plants, and animals. It desecrates and contaminates what we hold sacred and sustains our life. All Hawai`i stand together in saying –We want RIMPAC stopped! Now! Ku`e!

(See the lyrics and listen to the song – “The Ballad of Pearl Harbor” at www.malu-aina.org )

Free Hawai`i & the World from the Curse of Militarism!

1. Mourn all victims of violence. 2. Reject war as a solution. 3. Defend civil liberties. 4. Oppose all discrimination, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, anti-Hawaiian, etc.  5. Seek peace through justice in Hawai`i and around the world.
Contact: Malu `Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action P.O. Box 489 Kurtistown, Hawai`i 96760.
Phone (808) 966-7622. Email:ja@malu-aina.org  http://www.malu-aina.org

Hilo Peace Vigil leaflet (July 18, 2014 – 669th week) – Friday 3:30-5PM downtown Post Office

Below are the lyrics to the song:  Jim and Bernard Punikaia of Hale Mohalu recorded the song together in 1985.  A link for the audio is also included.

https://malu-aina.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Taro-Patch-03-Ballad-of-Pearl-Harbor-Folk.wma

The Ballad of Pearl Harbor

by Jim Albertini, composed 12/21/1983

“Do not give what is holy to dogs or toss your pearls before swine. They will trample them under foot at best, and perhaps even tear you to shreds.”

(Matthew 7:6)

 Chorus: Take back the Pearl for the people. Let Mother Pearl shine again, and give life back to the land, and welcome all of her rainbow children that bridge the ocean of peace.

1. We showered you with our pearls, but you wanted even more. You took away our Mother Pearl –raped, plundered, and trampled her.

2. We were blinded by your breath of fire. You made us very proud. We worshiped you not knowing, we were losing our souls.

 Chorus:

 3. You poisoned the waters and destroyed the fish ponds. You killed the fish and the oysters and desecrated holy lands. You put up fences and iron gates. You brought in disease and waves of death.

 Chorus:

 4. We have been fools. But our eyes are now opening. No longer will we worship you or follow in your ways. Depart from us with your poison quills and deadly unhatched eggs.

 Chorus:

 Jim Albertini Malu ‘Aina Center For Non-violent Education & Action P.O. Box 489 Ola’a (Kurtistown) Hawai’i 96760 Phone 808-966-7622 Email ja@malu-aina.org www.malu-aina.org