Author: Liam Mcdonald

I think when I wrote the charter for this site , over 20 years ago now, that we, human beings all, would be growing more and more, evolving into a world view that there is just us. It is not turning out like that, as the us and them view grows stronger every year. I just watched some of the addresses to the general assembly of the United Nations and most of them were calling on unity and condemning the genocide in Gaza and the aggression of Russia in Ukraine there were 2 standout negative addresses, the Netanyahu one where most delegates left the hall and Trump being the most undiplomatic, rude address ever heard within those walls. I recently watched President Kennedy’s address in the same hall, in September 1963, eloquent and full of hope for a better and more unified world. Two months later he was assassinated in Dallas and a lot of that hope was blown away with him. I was 12 at the time but the sixties was a decade of hope springing even with dark violent forces against it, the further assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy both standing up and speaking out for justice and against injustice. The music of that time rang with hope and spoke loudly of love and peace. I was privileged to attend a music festival in Lincoln England in 1971 with about 10,000 other souls and lying back on the grass listening with the feeling of oneness being very palpable, no them, a beautiful experience. This year I attended the Green Man festival in Wales and was blessed and thrilled with that same experience of oneness. With all the horrors happening right now, particularly Gaza, with the growth everywhere of the us and them movement, ultra nationalism and extremism in general and the total opposite of that oneness being pushed by various regimes, particularly the so called United States of America we find ourselves at a crossroads. We have to stand up for justice and peace and the good in humanity. We, and there is only we, need to manifest that truth.

We are living in a time when the very soul of humanity is under attack. It has happened many times before but this time with all our connectivity we can see it unfolding before our eyes. We are human beings. all of us together. Does goodness exist in us? Do we know what justice is? Do we experience love? These are values that we are aware of and yet we choose to ignore them and perpetrate violence, create injustices and sow seeds of hatred. In so doing we are killing our soul, destroying our humanity. We need to wake up, put an end to these horrors and end the suffering

As we witness the ongoing horror of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and after 28 countries sign a statement saying “the war in Gaza must end now”!!! Nothing happens!!!! The Zionist regime is hell bent on continuing the genocide with an horrific blood lust, killing desperate Palestinians as they approach “aid” distribution centres. Meanwhile famine is sweeping through Gaza and if something does not happen right now thousands more will die of hunger. The United States and Germany significantly absent from a list that included UK, France Spain, all Scandinavian countries, Ireland and 20 others. One way is to immediately cut diplomatic relations, expel Israeli ambassadors, and halt any shipments of arms that are being sent to the IDF by any of the above signatories. Time for real action is NOW.

It is getting harder and harder to watch the unfolding horror that is happening to the human beings in Gaza, over 60,000 killed many of them innocent civilians and so many of them children. When will this slaughter stop?! As Mahatma Ghandi very wisely said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”. Never before have these words been so true.

This conflict did not start on October 7th 2023, neither did it start in1948 but way back in time. But taking the latest conflagration when militant Palestinians attacked in Israel on that fateful day. the young men who carried out that atrocity were using the eye for an eye point of view after witnessing many deaths and mutilations that had been perpetrated on their people by the IDF over decades, in 2005 alone over 3,000 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, the year that some of the perpetrators were born. Having grown up with such horror they sought revenge, an eye for eye. Then the beast was released with full military superiority and cause to inflict maximum punishment on the whole population of Gaza. The beast is Zionism, a political movement which wants to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.

When Benjamin Netanyahu, who was under severe pressure from an internal investigation into fraud and bribery, formed his coalition with extreme Zionist parties the die was cast that the IDF would become the Israeli Attack Force. They had the weaponry, now they had the political power and now they needed an opportunity to unleash the onslaught. Where were the IDF, with their super intelligence capabilities, on that fateful day on October 7th and why were they so slow in responding to the attack? It’s a legitimate question. This day and and all the killing that took place and the capture of hostages proved to be that opportunity needed to unleash the genocide of all Palestinians in Gaza.

As it stands now and with no end in sight 17,000 children are among the 60,000 killed mainly in airstrikes by targeted bombing, only last week 9 children of a doctor working in the remnants of a hospital saw their charred bodies coming into her place of work. These kids are human beings, real life human beings. The adults are human beings, real life human beings, capable of and deserving of dignity and love.

When is the international community going to act to stop the slaughter of innocents? Meanwhile in the West bank Zionists are becoming more and more emboldened by this lack of action, committing many more incursions on the Palestinians living there, who are recognised by international law to have that right to live there. Action is needed and needed now.

Being anti Zionist is not being Antisemitic, as people who stand up and condemn the actions of the present Israeli government are labelled by said government. There are many Jews that are appalled by the killings, did not Moses, one of the great prophets of the Jewish faith, bring down the Ark of the Covenant which stated as one of the commandments from God “Thou shalt not kill”. This Zionist regime is far from that law and are the real anti Semites.

Enough enough enough. When will we ever learn that an eye for an eye is not the human being way to peace?.

It has been very hard to remain hopeful that the conflicts that engulf Palestine and Ukraine can be solved. Everyday brings more deaths, over 40,000 killed so far in Gaza alone and the whole area reduced to rubble. In the words of Mahatma Ghandi ” An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”, but when its 30 pairs of eyes, very many young innocent children, for one pair of eyes it means the very heart and soul of humanity is being ripped apart.

There are protests and marches worldwide calling on an immediate ceasefire, but it seems to make no difference. I was on one yesterday in Dublin, a young Palestinian girl leading voices, exhorting people not to lose hope, to carry on the fight for peace, “We will not stop, we will not rest”. We must not lose hope.

Meanwhile the powers that be, the USA for instance, continue to supply vast quantities of arms to Israel which they are using to pulverize Gaza, they are also supplying huge amounts to Ukraine to keep Putin at bay, with over 200, 000 dead in that ongoing conflict. In the case of Israel it seems the arms are for the aggressor whereas the arms for Ukraine seem to be for the defense against the aggressor. The case of October 7th attack by Hamas is not defensible but the conflict between Israel and Palestine did not start on that fateful day. Very sad news regarding 6 hostages taken that day being killed after surviving nearly 11 months in horrendous captivity.

Enough, enough, enough. Lets reignite HOPE.

624 days on from the beginning of the war in Ukraine and no end in sight we now find ourselves engulfed in an even greater conflict, the age old Palestine and Israel border dispute which goes back to before the time of Moses, and which now has erupted into all out war. For how many days has this division been moving backwards and forwards, this did not start on October the 7th 2023.

How many Palestinian lives are equal to one Israeli life? How many have to die in the revenge attack for “justice” to be done? This question should not have to be asked, but on the ground right now there are more than 10,000 Palestinians dead and counting, and 1,400 Israeli dead. Human life should not be counted in numbers dying in such brutality. What makes human beings behave in such an inhumane way? Is it all about ownership of land? It seems that nearly all conflicts between us starts at this point.. To get to the view that there is only us and we don’t own the planet from all the age old tribal identities seems like an impossible dream. AS mentioned in the charter of Humanbeings, we have to move from identifying as Israeli and Palestinian, and on top of that from Jew and Muslim. to being just US, human beings, full of dignity and love. What is the difference between an infant born in Gaza and an infant born in Jerusalem, both beautiful human beings and totally unaware of any differences. All these are acquired as they become aware of their surroundings and the time they were born into.

The time we are in right now is perilous. There is an attitude in the present Israeli government that is totally unjust, sowing seeds of righteousness that is justifying ethnic cleansing and apartheid, demeaning the Palestinian people. There are many Israeli people that can see this and they need to make their voices heard. By continuing to unleash the firepower at their disposal, not only are they murdering innocent civilians but also creating new enemies for the future generations. Enough!!

Be here now. was the message Baba Ram Dass brought back from his visit to India. He went there as Dr Richard Alpert and came back as Ram Dass, with a radically altered view of himself. The ancient wisdom that he found there dated back to Krishna and Arjuna. ” there is you and there is the field you find yourself in. getting to know the field you are in becomes a journey through that field but as you go you forget about you, The journey has to start with remembering and beginning to know the knower of the field”
A rough translation from a passage in the Bhagavad Gita where Lord Krishna is explaining to the warrior prince. Arjuna, who and where he truly is. Practicing being present in the here and now allows awareness of the being, the observer, the knower, to become more manifest in the field which is time and space itself. Beyond time and space lies the ever present Now, that is where our beingness resides and that is the true destiny of all beings.

Watching images of the war from Ukraine, it is hard to believe that this is happening right now, here in our time. There are other wars going on, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Eritrea, all major conflicts but this one is so near to us in Europe. The horrors of war are being delivered into our sitting rooms by a media frenzy, we are kept very well informed of the suffering of the Ukrainian people. But even now, 70 days from the Russian invasion it is fading, going down the list of what is headlines today. The other wars don’t even get a mention anymore. We don’t even talk about the invasion of Iraq by the US and UK and the disastrous consequences of that unjust and ill conceived invasion of West into East.

There is in the Russian psyche a fear, a memory of this happening before and it happening again. Napoleon 200 years ago and Hitler 120 years later. The literature classic “War and Peace” by the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy helped to consolidate this facet of the Russian collective memory.  After the collapse of the USSR the borders between East and West moved decidedly Eastwards and a certain vulnerability was creeping in as NATO gathered more and more allies and the freedoms being experienced in the expanding EU were attracting more and more applicants. Ukraine became the buffer zone. And then within Russia the rise and rise of the strong man with his iron grip on power has led to this terrible conflict in the present.

So many failings in human nature come into play to create such conflict. The classic “absolute power corrupts absolutely” in the case of Putin, the modern day Tsar of Russia, ex KGB himself, used to spreading fear among any potential dissent and quite openly using highly toxic poisons on known dissidents. The rise of a very wealthy elite. by various nefarious activities ably assisted by banking corporations in the West. and generally supported by a greedy capitalist system only too happy to turn a blind eye on the ethics of how all this wealth was acquired. And in the global market of gas and oil Russia had become a key player in the provision of these much “needed” essentials within the western European democracies.

WE have two mighty military powers facing each other off, as has been the case since 1948 with formation of NATO and the huge military capability of the old USSR. With a a massive nuclear arsenal at each others disposal we have entered a phase of human history that again threatens to escalate into something too terrible to contemplate.

We have been going through a tough time this past 16 months or so and we are still going through it. Nearly 150 million human beings infected with a virus and over 3 million fatalities. In that time  different countries have adopted multiple strategies to curtail the spread of this very infectious and dangerous virus. The entire planet has been affected with total lockdowns and health services stretched to breaking point. The virus  does not recognize borders and this has contributed to the realization that we are in this together.

In the background scientists have been working on a vaccine that would provide immunity, and lo and behold we have broken all records and come up with some very effective ones. Now the big issue facing us is supply. Obviously the demand is huge, perfect conditions for vast fortunes to be made by the pharmaceutical companies that developed them. This is where we need to step outside the market forces and use our humanity and common sense to deliver the vaccines worldwide at low cost. World leaders of major nations  and under the auspices of the WHO and the UN, should bring the CEO’s of the vaccine license holders into a joint venture of allowing all available pharma facilities capable of manufacture to get on with ramping up supplies. This way we get to every nation, the poor as well as the rich and this would go down in history as the greatest global cooperation ever seen. The results would be the reopening of society and the whole world, economy included, would benefit.

How come we have ignored this essential part of us since the dawn of human kind. In this present time of crisis, and sometimes it takes a crisis, we need to wake up and move inwards in the direction of Beingness. We have many teachers alive in this present day pointing us in this direction. I will list some that I know of.

Eckhart Tolle, author of the Power of Now and active on social media.

Prem Rawat, formerly known as Guru Maharaji, a world renowned ambassador for peace, whose main teaching is “Peace is possible”

Thich Nhat Hanh, a buddhist monk and one of the inspirations of the present day “Mindfulness” movement.

The Dalai Lama, who is about to launch a World Vision Summit online starting October 22nd.

Just some of the human beings alive right now and awake to our vast potential. Only “yesterday” we had Baba Ram Das, who inspired me to look inside, and Ramana Maharshi. And only the day before yesterday we had the likes of Buddha himself, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Socrates, Jesus and Mohammed, all pointing us towards the truth of Life. Now existed then, exists now and always will. All we need to do is See, clear insight is the answer and the cure for our ignorance.