Peaceweb Visitors Book

June 12, 1996 - present

About our Visitors Book

Here we will include all messages which are greetings, requests for information, or simple announcements in the spirit and areas of concern of Peaceweb.
Each message must be 100 words or less.
We try to post at least once a week - have patience, the process is NOT automatic.

• your name
• your city and state or province
• your country
• your monthly meeting (if you are a Quaker or attender at Quaker meetings)

If you wish to have your email address published, please tell us so in the message.
- Carl Stieren, Peaceweb Co-ordinator

Read previous Visitors Books

Wednesday, June 12, 1996

Dear Peaceweb:

At 22:32 11/06/96 -0400, you wrote:

> Dear Joe Latham,
>
> When we started Peaceweb on the World Wide Web
> in April, 1995, it was an exciting time.
> But we had certain expectations about who
> our visitors would be, and from where they would
> come. We based our design on these expectations.
> Now, a year later, we are conducting a survey
> to see if those expectations were true.
>

I will respond shortly.

A suggestion: Why not post your message to Quaker-B?

Joe Latham
University of Glasgow
Scotland

Peaceweb's Reply

Dear Joe Latham:

An excellent idea. I will post the message above to the British Quaker mailing list, Quaker-B (to which anyone can subscribe, but to which this Canadian Friend thinks non-British Friends should refrain from posting, unless it is an information request about Britain Yearly Meeting

Yours in Friendship,

Carl Stieren
Peaceweb Co-ordinator

Dear Peaceweb:

I just filled out the survey. Couple of thoughts:

1. I found out about Peace Web from your posting on Q-L (etc.) That is not an option in the survey.
2. Where you ask for % of meeting with Internet access, size of meeting might be important. We are very small -- 8 recorded members and 4-5 involved attenders (and 8-10 children :-) Two families and one individual *use* their Internet access. Others have access and don't use it for searching/browsing. Only I actively browse.

It would be good to question more about meeting participants' use of the Internet. I suspect that there is a real range of use, both in kind and frequency.

Cheers!

Lary Jones
Binghamton University
Binghamton, NY USA
General email: [email protected]

Thursday, June 13, 1996

Subject: Re: Let us know what you think of Peaceweb

Dear Carl,

I submitted my survey. Now I would love for you to come and participate in the webboard Peaceful Discussions. You can get there through our standard disclaimer:
"http://www.netrus.net/users/peace/dsclmr.htm" from there.
Just click on "Peaceful Discussions".

Peace and Love,

Don "peaceguy" Morris
Florida, USA

WORLD PEACE DAY NOVEMBER 17 "http://www.netrus.net/users/peace" Meditate, pray, think about world peace. Drive with your lights on during the day on November 17. Wear a white ribbon for peace everyday, wear one on your web page. Send a petition for peace to all our world leaders

Friday, June 14, 1996

Dear Friends,

We first started our program after being in a Quaker workcamp in 1968 in Czechoslovakia. We now exchange about 1200 workcamp volunteers in 60 countries. We have workcamps with Quakers this year in Philadelphia and three camps in Alabama. Please check out our website and consider providing a link to it on your home page. We will do the same if mutually agreeable. Please let us know.

Looking forward to cooperation,

Dear Peaceweb:

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Yearbook announces the forthcoming publication of the SIPRI Yearbook 1996, which can be ordered now and which will be available in selected bookstores beginning in September, 1996.

Among the highlights from the new SIPRI Yearbook are the following:

Armed conflicts and global and regional security

• There was no major armed conflict between states in 1995. All 30 major armed conflicts were within states.
• The UNPROFOR debacle in Bosnia and the cash crisis at the United Nations sent peacekeeping into decline. Emphasis at the UN switched to conflict prevention.
• The Dayton peace agreement stopped the fighting in Bosnia abruptly, but numerous pitfalls stand in the way of full implementation of Dayton and the achievement of genuine peace.
• Success and tragedy marked the Middle East peace process. Palestinians gained new rights and responsibilities but Prime Minister Rabin's assassination unsettled Israelis and the region.
• Tension between North and South Korea and between mainland China and Taiwan did not derail their promising economic, political and cultural dialogue.
• The war in Chechnya persisted as the most painful development in Russia. Incoherent peace efforts failed to stop the fighting or to settle Chechnya's future status vis-�-vis the Russian Federation.
• Europe's main security challenge is to revitalize NATO and offer Russia and its western neighbours a new cooperative security arrangement.

Military spending, R&D, arms production and arms trade

• Aggregate world military spending continued to decline in 1995. Many developing countries continued to spend at levels out of proportion to their legitimate security requirements.
• Military R&D spending has decreased by 50-55 per cent since 1987. France, Italy, Sweden and the USA reduced their efforts by 25 per cent or more. Only India, Japan and South Korea increased their spending significantly.
• The production of military equipment is still decreasing in most parts of the world.
• At $22.8 billion (SIPRI trend-indicator value), the volume of the trade in major conventional weapons was unchanged in 1995. The USA remained the largest arms exporter but Russia increased its share of overall deliveries dramatically, from 4 per cent in 1994 to 17 per cent in 1995.

Non-proliferation, export controls, arms control and disarmament

• In a major success for nuclear non-proliferation, the Non-Proliferation Treaty was made permanent. A universal non-proliferation regime appeared to be attainable, but tensions increased over non-compliance and progress towards nuclear disarmament.
• The new Wassenaar Arrangement may become the first forum in which governments coordinate their approaches to the global distribution of conventional military power. Failure to agree specific operating procedures delayed its formal establishment.
• Progress in negotiations on a nuclear test ban made a CTB treaty likely to be concluded in 1996. Progress in nuclear disarmament was mixed: START I cuts in US-Russian nuclear weapons continued but Russian ratification of START II remained uncertain. Pressure grew in the USA to drastically revise or abolish the ABM Treaty.
• The use of the nerve agent sarin in the Tokyo underground system starkly illustrated the need for enhanced national law enforcement and defence measures to make it more difficult for terrorists to manufacture, procure or use chemical or biological weapons or agents.
• The CFE Treaty process for reducing conventional weapons in Europe was completed. Around 50�000 heavy weapons have been cut back by the 30 states parties.
• The *Inhumane Weapons Convention* Review Conference adopted a Protocol that bans the use of non-detectable anti-personnel mines, but with a *grace period* which may exceed a decade.

The SIPRI Yearbook may be obtained through all main bookshops from September 1996, or from Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, the UK. The list price is 60 British pounds sterling.

The book can also be ordered from SIPRI by Internet, at the following URL:

A full copy of SIPRI's press release describing the publication of the 1996 SIPRI Yearbook, with chapter and annex summaries, is available in HTML at:

http://www.sipri.se/pubs/yb96/pr1.html

and in pdf, or portable document format, (viewable with a freeware Adobe Acrobat viewer ) at:

- Don Odom
SIPRI

Dear Peaceweb,

I just submitted the survey, but wanted to add that I think your site is one of the very best things on the net -- a great service to the world and a beautiful Quaker testimony.

I mention on the survey that I wish you had more how-to texts. The stuff that you have from Gandhi and others is great, but (IMO) there's a crying need for more online peacemaking texts. (If there's a site devoted to this, I've not found it -- the Gandhi sites, especially, don't do justice to his writings.)

I'm trying to assemble a same-sex marriage and LGBT inclusion library at q-light, and it's hard to get info in etext. I may buy a scanner just to get more of that stuff online. This page (http://world.std.com/~rice/q-light/texts.html) doesn't get an enormous number of hits in absolute numbers, but it's much used by people who are actively working on same-sex marriage.

Well, that's about it. Thanks again for maintaining the site.

Peace,

Dear Peaceweb,

I did take a few minutes to answer your survey. I hope that you will get the information you need. I realized that I was answering the survey both as an individual and as a representative of the Peace Collection. And that there was no differentiation between those two groups on your form. I would guess that a number of people will be answering the survey are staff of peace orgs.

Do you have any plans to add the Peace Collection web site,
http://www.swarthmore.edu/Library/peace
to your list of peace resources?

Best wishes,

Wendy Chmielewski
Curator
Swarthmore College Peace Collection

Subject: Peace Child

Hello,

I am a college student who is directing a shorty musical through the local 4-H program this summer. I would like to direct Peace Child, a play which we have performed here before, but I have heard it has been rewritten and new music was available. I am looking for any information on the play or ideas about where to find information. If you can help please send me mail at [email protected] or send information to my supervisor, valerie, at [email protected].

Thank you for any help.

K. M. Dolezal
Email: [email protected]

Thanks for asking me for feedback. I have not been on your home page for a long time. I just got on to it but could not find the survey you mentioned. However, the rest of links and information are very interesting.

I may point out that Physicians for Global Survival (previously known as Canadian Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) has set u a home page that may be of interest to you. I am an active member of this group, though not directly involved in setting up this home page. You may wish to review it and establish links to your page.

http://www.web.net/~pgs/

Thank you for getting in touch with me. It's indeed important to work for peace.

Sincerely,

Saturday, June 15, 1996

Dear Peaceweb,

Just checking in.

I'm the Recording Clerk, Exeter Friends Meeting, Caln Quarterly Mtg., PYM, and Secretary-treasurer of Berks Peace Community and our educational arm, Peace Information Center.

Our main effort is an annual peace essay contest open to all senior high students (grades 10-12) in Berks County. Hold periodic potlucks at which we have a speaker lead a discussion of a current issue.

I also belong to the New Call to Peacemaking.

Thanks for your peace work.

Dear Peaceweb,

Just found it (your Web page), Looking for access to Internet Alternatives to violence training for trainers running talk, Can't remember technical words. Just took 3rd course.

Sunday, June 16, 1996

Greetings, Friends

EXCELLENT website!

yours in Friendship

Dear Peaceweb,

My first time on this site. A worthy project!

Best wishes,

Sally Gross

Monday, June 17, 1996

Dear Peaceweb,

I am a freelance journalist/author, and a reg. x-ray technologist. Presently I work from our home computer---no www. home pages, just good old fashioned "quill - driving and post office visits."

My husband and I are attenders---although sprinkled throughout both of our families are Religious Society of Friends connections---usually ancestral.

Congratulations on your efforts. I would certainly encourage you and the group to continue, but do be careful...there are so many ways we can get caught in our expectations, and that can lead to so much confusion and lack of beautiful focus which you seem to have done. I would prefer a little more attention to issues, but thanks for including contact people as well.

May you continue to experience growth, understanding in your work of helping to "shed some LIGHT" on our issues.

Wednesday, June 19, 1996

Dear Peaceweb,

In 1995 the International Romany Union (Uni�n Roman� Internacional), of which our association Presencia Gitana forms part, held a Congress for Peace in Europe in Budapest from 8 - 11 May. People from Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia had the opportunity to sit down and discuss the situation in the former Yugoslavia and drew up a common text on the conditions required for peace.

At that meeting, among other things, it was agreed to hold a further Congress, one year later, where the subjects of peace and armed conflict would be discussed in greater depth. This Second International Congress for Peace in Europe will be held in Vitoria/Gasteiz, the capital of the Basque Country (in Spain), from 9 to 13 July 1996. The work to be carried out at this congress, will be centered around the "Search for conceptual and ideological paradigms on war and peace".

We would very much like anybody from your organization, or known to you, to participate in this event. If you would like to do so, please contact http://paz.eunet.es, o mailto:[email protected]

Would you be so kind to add this link to your server, or to your news service.

Thank you.

Monday, June 24, 1996

Dear Peaceweb:

I would like to issue a note on the PEACEWEB and I think you are the one to con tact. If possible, please place the following note on the line.

*** I am beginning a graduate thesis on the WOMEN WHO SERVED IN VIETNAM and would like to include a section on the work of Quaker women (missionaries, America n Friends etc) Any information or interviews with these women would be appreciated. Please contact me at the following address:
A.Kearney e-mail: [email protected] ***

If you are not the one to contact for this message, please direct me elsewhere. Thank you.

Tuesday, June 25, 1996

Dear Carl,

What a coincidence that you should have seen my message (on the Quaker-B mailing list) about the Service of Peace in Manchester (Editor's note: an ecumenical service on Saturday, June 22 in the Cathedral of St Mary, St Denys and St George, held one week after the timing of a bomb in Manchester City ) and remarked about Rochdale and the Co-op. On Saturday of last week, I was chairing a meeting of the Manchester Area Co-operative Party in Manchester Town Hall, about 400 yards from the site of the bomb. I can't make any comparisons with other bombs because I've never felt the blast from one but this was strong enough to shake the building I was in, bring some pieces off the window frame crashing into the room, fill it with dust and set the alarms off.

We had seen the police clearing people away as we had gone to our meeting but you just think it's going to be another scare. When the blast hit, we thought the police must have the siting wrong. We thought it was right outside and expected to see bodies when we came out of the building. They say it is the biggest bomb that the IRA have set off on mainland Britain.

Our meeting had already responded by send a collection towards the work of the Quaker Peace Cottage in Belfast that tries to bring the two sides together and works with families torn apart by the troubles.

Perhaps we all need to renew our witness to peace in such proactive terms again.

Kind regards

Stephen Moore
Rochdale Meeting, England
UK

Wednesday, June 26, 1996

Dear Peaceweb,

Just surfing around on the Net looking for as much information on Friends as possible, hoping to make contact with other Young Adult Friends and looking into work and volunteer possibilities with the Friends Meeting(s).

Peace to all,

Dear Peaceweb,

Just passing through to meet some Canadian Friends in anticipation of attending The FGC Gathering in Hamilton next week and responding to the survey.

In the Light,

Sunday, July 8, 1996

Dear Peaceweb,

Re: Citizens for Public Justice

Do you have the e-mail address of the above organization? If they are not on the Internet, I would appreciate their snail mail address.

Thanks.

Thursday, July 11, 1996

Dear Peaceweb,

I read your article in Friends Journal, May 1996. Could you please tell me how to subscribe to Quaker-P and Quaker-L?

Please advise.

Thanks in advance.

Don Hollister
Antioch College
Antioch, Ohio, USA
email: [email protected]

Friday, July 12, 1996

Dear Peaceweb,

Hello, this is Udhay Shankar from Bangalore, India.

I'm looking for some details on the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo, Norway. Would you be able to tell me if some resources exist on the Internet, preferably on the web itself?

Thanks,

Friday, July 12, 1996

Dear Peaceweb,

Sorry that I was unable to go to your workshop at FGC Gathering. I am demonstrating the web and used your page as examples. thanks for having it there.

Gene
Eugene Ackerman, Ph.D. --- Retired Professor
email: [email protected]
Web: http://dragon.labmed.umn.edu/~gene/

Saturday, July 13, 1996

Dear Peaceweb,

I'm looking for teenage coresponders for my students. They are primarily Latino- and African American in their ethnic backgrounds.This September we will be doing a live radio show on genocide and will be interviewing survivors of the Holocaust, Bosnia and possibly Ruanda.

In Peace,

Saturday, July 13, 1996

Dear Peaceweb,

Glad to find your site on Sympatico. I'm not a Friend; but I've always wished that there were a Meeting close to me. Are there, by any chance, still some Quakers in Winnipeg? I attended a Meeting for Worship once here about 20 years. I've never been able to find a Meeting in this area since.

Thanks, and peace to you

Peaceweb's Reply

Dear Robert McVety,

Thanks for your message. There was a Monthly Meeting in Winnipeg, but it was "laid down" as a formal Monthly Meeting because there were not sufficient numbers to carry out the functions necessary for a Monthly Meeting. Friends in Winnipeg continue to meet as a worship group, however (often like a Monthly Meeting but without a Clerk, a Meeting for Business, Committees or a bank account).

The contact person is Joe Ackerman, 500 Camden Place, Winnipeg R3G 2V7.

However, a Web phone book lists one J Ackerman for Edmonton and one for Regina, but none for Winnipeg. It is possible he moved since the 1995 CYM Directory was printed. Other Winnipeg Friends listed in the directory are A. and R. Ballentyne, 680 Townsend Ave., Winnipeg, and I. and J. Carr, 186 Lyndale Dr., Winnipeg R3G 2J2.

Sunday, July 14, 1996

Dear Peaceweb,

I'll have to apologize for not responding to your message before. Just found it while doing some "housecleaning" on my disk drive. To answer your questions and address some of your concerns:

The Gene Pool is my personnel web site, designed to share my genealogical findings with others in my family. It has GROWN to what you see now. Especially The Quaker Corner, which is by far the most visited segment of my site.

I am a graphic designer/typographer by trade, so this is just a "new media" for me to explore.

The Gene Pool went on line in August of 1995.

On the Main Page of my site, you'll find "More About JTR"... more than you will ever want about me, including my complete name. I really don't want to put my complete name on the first page. Sorry, if it's confusing.

I am not a "Quaker" but rather have very strong Quaker Roots, hence my interest in the faith and history of the Society of Friends.

I will add a link to your site from the Quaker Corner, can you reciprocate?

J. T. Rabun
Eugene, Oregon
USA

Peaceweb's Reply

Dear J. T. Rabun:

Our visitors can contact your Web site at