On Barcelona

The events in Barcelona are a crime at the most fundamental level, a crime that offends all that stands for justice and peace.  What was done was profoundly wrong.

Nice on Bastille Day, Germany’s Christmas Market, Stockholm, Westminster Bridge, London Bridge, Finsbury Park, Charlottesville – and now Barcelona. Add to this terrorism by bomb and bullet and the list would seem unending.

Barcelona is unique amongst the cities of the world. Barcelona, the city of hope sheltering under the shadow of the exquisite spires of Gaudi’s fairy-tale church of the Sagrada Família.

In Barcelona they commit this crime? May God forgive them.

This heinous act redoubles our determination to build a world founded on a new kind of social contract, a society that measures progress in terms of our opportunity and freedom to each have a role we find meaningful.

God be with the wonderful people of Barcelona. And God be with this wonderful world. We shall be unbowed. We shall build a new tomorrow, build a world based on love, trust and inclusivity, and turn our backs on madness, hatred and rage. Because we must. Because our children both expect and deserve this of us. Because of Barcelona.

NCF granted UN status

The Next Century Foundation has been granted Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. This enables the NCF to submit written statements on subjects on which it has special competence for circulation by the Secretary General to members of the council. When appropriate the NCF is also enabled to make oral statements to the council. It is our intention to consider making representations on areas in which we have special interest – possibly as early as next month. These areas might well include The Kingdom of Bahrain, Syria, Iraq, Libya, and the Gaza Strip. Issues the NCF may raise in this context may be the treatment of prisoners; the treatment of non combatants by combatants (i.e. collateral damage and / or collective punishment); and matters regarding free and fair elections.

We commend the practice of acquiring consultative status with the UN. If you have links to an NGO that wishes to acquire such status information on how to do so can be found here:

How to apply for Consultative Status

The London Bridge Attack

The tragic incident on London Bridge has given us all pause for thought. This broken world is unbelievably cruel at times. And why? If you are capable of violence do you resort to violence merely because you can?

The concept of deliberately targeting civilians, the innocent, the young, to make a political point, is a familiar one. To merely say it is wrong seems trite but none the less it needs saying. It is wrong. Again and again it needs saying. It is profoundly and utterly wrong, both in the eyes of compassionate humanity and in the eyes of God.

Our hearts bleed for the victims. And at the same time we cherish and admire the response of those that went to their aid, whether from the police force, or from those many bystanders that stepped forward to help, or from the health service (and incidentally one in four of Britain’s doctors and one in six of Britain’s nurses are migrants).

We cannot and must not ever allow terrorism to succeed in its aim. And in this instance the aim is to sow fear and division, to foster hatred and spite. To allow our hearts to be hardened by this venomous act is to allow the perpetrators a frisson of success. Whereas what they deserve is our pity and forgiveness because then they fall subject to the judgment of God, and his judgment is and always will be remorseless when the innocent are the victims.

If we must be angry, better we rage against God for permitting such injustice, if the only other choice is to allow ourselves to become consumed with anger with our fellow man. Can we regard our enemies as our friends? For hatred can we return love? In so doing we break the power of evil and love casts out fear.

Support Timepeace

TimePeace is a not-for-profit refugee help group put together by Alice Carter, an ex-NCF intern, and they are currently building an app which will connect refugees and local citizens based on exchange of skills and activities, for free, and by the hour. They are trying to tackle issues of social integration and shattering preconceptions of refugees in an innovative way, and at a local level.

They have one private donor, and grant money from Trust for London, which has meant they've been able to start building, but they are also using crowdfunding to get the money to complete development. You can find their page here - http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/timepeaceapp

Manchester

It was with profound sadness that we heard the news of the Manchester bombing. This act of cruelty was all the more atrocious because it deliberately targeted the young and vulnerable.

Those who set themselves apart by committing acts of extreme brutality, and those who support them, have often been warned of the consequences of their actions.

Violence spawns violence.

Anger spawns anger.

Hate spawns hate.

Our response, however, will be different. We cherish our values. We stand for compassion. We stand for sincerity. We stand for loyalty. We stand for hope. We stand for an inclusive society rather than a small minded world based on exclusivity. We stand with all of good heart. We stand together, strengthened, not cowed, by this piteous act.

This act redoubles our resolve to protect our vulnerable, most particularly the very young and the very old, the weak and the dispossessed – And to prevent them from all harm. And in so doing build a world founded on love and fellowship and complete freedom from fear.

Congratulations Emmanuel Macron

We at the Next Century Foundation would like to wish the new President of France luck in his quest to unite France after the highly polarizing presidential election. He has a monumental task ahead of him. Macron must appeal to both the disillusioned minorities in France who feel marginalised as well as exasperated French patriots who have looked to the far right for answers to their economic and sovereignty fears.  We hope he continues to uphold the virtues of liberty, equality and fraternity upon which the Republic of France was built.  We also hope that Macron, as an exponent of the European project, adopts a foreign policy that reflects the values of the European Union, the most important of which are the respect for human dignity and human rights, freedom, equality and the rule of law. Whilst there are many domestic problems that need to be resolved, including the stagnant French economy and his weak legislative powers, we are expect that Mr Macron will not turn a blind eye towards the injustices in the Middle-East and the humanitarian crisis that continues to persist on the shores of the Mediterranean.

The attack on Britain’s parliament

We are profoundly saddened, as is everyone we know, by the lone wolf attack on Britain’s parliament by an individual who must presumably be an ISIS / Daesh sympathiser.

What makes a man commit an atrocity of this kind in which innocent civilians are killed? Any attack that deliberately targets civilians is morally repugnant in the eyes of humanity at large, and is to be presumed utterly reprehensible in the eyes of any God the attacker may or may not believe in.

The worst of it is that any atrocity is by definition one of the worst crimes conceivable because atrocity breeds atrocity as retribution breeds retribution and a cycle of violence is spawned.

Forgiveness is difficult; moreso for some of us when we suppress our natural reaction to those that target the innocent. And in this instance a number of the injured were children. And the natural reaction of at least some of us is to wish any such attacker may burn in hell.

However there is a place beyond forgiving – for some acts can never be forgiven except by the righteous and there are precious few of those in this world. But there is a place beyond forgiving in which we show compassion, mercy and love to our enemies and their victims alike.

The enemies of humanity (whether Daesh / ISIS, or Al Qa’idah, or indeed any who deliberately target non-combatants of any kind) expect and deserve our outrage. Indeed they often act as they do in order to provoke our hatred.

We defeat them best, and their entire ideology of exclusivity, when we find it in our hearts to offer them our pity, and face down their self-consuming hatred with our own ideology of inclusivity, compassionate mercy, and love.

God will judge them, we should not. Nor should we allow extremists the satisfaction that their actions may have in some way instilled in us any sense of fear in regard to tomorrow. We have no need to worry about tomorrow. God is already there.