Manifesto of the World March for Peace and Nonviolence
Friday, October 2, 2009
An open letter from an ordinary citizen to the world's powerful.
Violence has embedded itself in human life throughout the planet and there is no way of stopping it. There is no government, nor army, nor religion, nor political party, nor economic group capable of defeating the violence in the world. There is no power capable of ending the violence that grows day by day, infiltrating all of our activities and our most intimate life. The destructive power of violence that is overpowering humanity is becoming increasingly terrible and dangerous. If the rate of growth of violence continues to accelerate together with its destructive capacity, the consequences will be disastrous.
Can we change the direction of events that forewarn of human calamities of never before seen dimensions? There is an enormous quantity of lethal, nuclear, biological, chemical and conventional weapons with the power to annihilate life on the planet. This year in which we had the most serious world-wide financial crisis, in which we all experienced the repercussions of a recession, has once more become the year in which there have been record breaking investments in weapons.
We are all responsible for what is happening and we have to make a profound decision in our interior. Either we continue supporting our governments with their militarist policies, continuously justifying them with fear and vengeance, or we unite our voice and our sentiment to those of millions of human beings of different languages, races, beliefs and cultures to ignite the human consciousness with the light of nonviolence.
Nuclear weapons have proliferated to many countries and are within the reach of groups that are not under the control of Nation States. Today their justification as a deterrent or defence has reached the limit of absurdity and we believe that the only path is Total Worldwide Nuclear Disarmament.
To the Presidents and Prime Ministers of; the United States of America; the Russian Federation; the People's Republic of China; the Republic of France; the United Kingdom; the Republic of India; the Islamic Republic of Pakistan; the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the State of Israel:
The responsibility in this moment in which the future of humanity is decided falls to you. You are those who will decide between history and prehistory, between humanization and animalization, between an earth for all and a world of fear, between a generous earth and a contaminated desert. You will be responsible for the social atmosphere that we breathe in the coming years.
We are in motion, travelling around the planet to strengthen the voice that is clamouring for a human world. We cannot bear more suffering in our fellow man. We don't want any more wars. These aggressions we feel within us. A change has been produced in our consciousness and there is no going back. It is necessary to dismantle the weapons of mass destruction as well as to reconvert the economic system that produces poverty, discrimination, and death. It is necessary to safeguard life in order to construct a world of equal rights and opportunities for all.
Today we demand that you prioritize in your policies of defence and foreign relations:+ nuclear disarmament at a global level
+ the immediate withdrawal of invading troops from occupied territories
+ the progressive and proportional reduction of conventional weapons
+ the signing of non-aggression treaties between countries
+ the renunciation by governments of the use of war as a means to resolve conflicts
We will not allow the World March for Peace and Nonviolence to go unnoticed in ourselves, in our families, in our towns, and in our world.
We will let this determination, which shows the best of each one of us, grow with the best of the human being.
We are thousands, we will be millions and the world will change.
Source: World March for Peace and Nonviolence
3 comments:
Any appeal to our (US, UK, Aus & Z-rael) so-called 'leaders' would be pre-destined to fail, even if such an appeal were to be heard by them. They are not leaders anyway, they are part puppet and part psychopath; more and worst: they brought us to where we now are. Any other so-called 'leaders' have either collaborated or failed to (effectively) resist. Mass-demos have recently been shown to be ineffective (Howard called us "A mob," then totally ignored us.) Since the illegal invasion of Iraq (now morphed into a brutal, neo-colonial occupation), each of the US, UK, Aus & Z-rael have had 'regime' changes, some to 'opposition' parties, some to 'more of the (ugly!) same.' In all cases, nothing much has changed; we're still getting (ever more) war. One thing is "fur shure," that effective countervailing force is required. All else (appeals for justice via truth, say) having been tried & failed, I suggest the only thing we could do (and get away with; a bloody revolution would just see sheople dumped into concentration camps or killed outright) - is economic boycott. Yep; no more cheap (Chinese) junk, the Chinese are part of the problem (industry (mainly US) having migrated there; lowest wages, highest pollution), no more (foul, mind-debasing) Hollywood 'movies,' (detested US-speak; spit!) and no more take-out junk-food. Only necessary expenditure, and pull all heads right in - until we see real improvements happening.
Well, it's an idea.
It's one thing for governments to renounce violence; it's quite another thing for terrorist groups to do so. The manifesto is woefully weak in this area. For a government under siege to announce that it will no longer fight against those attempting to destroy it is to open itself to the possibility of suicide.
Perhaps if a certain government stopped promoting national paranoia and ceased oppressing other people, then it could start to make an effective contribution to the withering away of the terrorist organisations that target it. No oppression = fewer recruits to those organisations established to resist oppression and overthrow the regime that implements an oppressive occupation.
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