Nonviolence

25. februar, 2007 Jørgen Johansen Arbeiderpartiets forsvarsminister Anne-Grete Strøm-Erichsen vil innføre kvinnelig verneplikt. Det er mangel på soldater og hun bruker argument om likestilling for å få støtte til prosjektet. Dette er enda et forslag om likestilling på menns prinsipper. Å la også menn få velge selv om de skal stille på sesjon eller ikke ville være å likestille menn med kvinner. Og det er selvsagt helt andre årsaker enn likestilling til kvinner nå skal brukes til kanonføde. En gang i tiden var arbeiderbevegelsen en ledende kraft i det internasjonale antimilitaristiske arbeidet. Med første mai paroler som ” Tenk om det ble krig – og ingen kom” og ”Ikke en mann, ikke et øre til militarismen” planla de generalstreik mot krigen. Internasjonal solidaritet og samhold skulle gjøre at når generaler og monarker kaller til krig så skulle ingen stille opp. Det brukne gevær ble symbolet for kampen. Men når den...

February 28, 2006 Martin Smedjeback In the early hours of the 5th of August 2005 a group of planters entered AWE (Atomic Weapons Establishment) Aldermaston and planted vines and fig trees.They were soon arrested for their conversion of a nuclear weapons research facility into a peace garden.This is the story of the trial that followed in Newbury Magistrates Court the 7-9th of February 2006. An invitation arrived A letter came to my apartment in Stockholm in December 2005. It read: I ask you, who can resist such a kind invitation? Our vine and fig tree community, about ten people from five countries, began preparing for the upcoming trial. We sent out invitations to friends to come to the trial. We received good help from the law firm Bindman and Partners. They sent us a CD with pictures from the action and a DVD with a video recording of “the crime...

A multi-tier people’s programme commences the First Phase with ‘Enrolling 100,000 Families Pledged to Nonviolence on August 09, 2004 (Quit India Day)’ – an initiative of Indian Council of Gandhian Studies, New Delhi in association with institutions and organizations promoting peace. VIOLENCE-FREE SOCIETY NATIONAL CAMPAIGN Introduction: The manner in which violence is spreading in the emerging global context should cause concern in every peace-loving individual. While it would be naïve to believe that violence could be totally eliminated, it would be suicidal to accept it as a fact of life and not to respond with creative initiatives to contain this monster so that he will not be allowed to destroy all what humanity has achieved hither to. The emerging scenario is not conducive to nonviolence. Glorification of violence in media, particularly in television and films, is disturbing. The nexus between money and muscle power and the way women are depicted...

Most humans who have ever lived have never directly killed anyone. The global lesson of 9.11 is that we humans must learn to stop killing each other from domestic homicide to war. We must stop praying, planning, training, arming, and threatening to kill. We must stop celebrating killers and the killed and begin compassionately to recognize that they and we are victims of our failure to learn how not to kill. For just as humans can learn to kill, we can learn not to kill. Just as we are capable of killing, we are capable of not killing. But as long as readiness to kill is abroad on our planet no one will be safe in home, community, nation, region, and world. Offensive lethal ingenuity has been able to penetrate every form of lethal defense. In conflict we must make it absolutely credible to each other that we will not...

For over 100 years the Ku Klux Klan, White Citizens Council, other hate groups and individuals used terrorism and all types of violence in the United States. They have produced some of the bloodiest years in United States history. There appeared to be no limits to their hate and violence which included lynching of blacks, castration, and bombing of blacks homes, churches and businesses. This same tactic was used against Dr. Martin L. King, Jr., and others during the Civil Rights Movement. As we examine this era, the weapon of Kingian nonviolence was successful. Therefore, it would behoove us to examine some basic aspects of Kingian nonviolence and its application to terrorism and violence. My paper will examine Dr. King’s experiment with nonviolence in the 1960’s and hopefully stimulate serious discussion concerning the Kingian nonviolence application to terrorism today. We will examine the Kingian nonviolent approach to terrorism and war...

New York Times December 7, 2001 As the Afghan war enters into what may be its final days, and the international community begins discussing its next steps, Americans will be learning more about the warrior people known to the British as Pathans, and more correctly nowadays as Pashtuns. Most of the Taliban were Pashtun – as is the new interim leader of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, to whom Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader, has ceded power. The Pashtuns number upwards of 20 million, and their squat stony villages straddle the Durand Line that nominally demarcates Pakistan from Afghanistan, where Pashtuns form the largest ethnic group. These are the fighters who inspired reams of fearful and admiring verse from Rudyard Kipling, the sharpshooters blessed with perfect sight who picked off the soldiers of the British Raj. But the Pashtuns also produced one of the most remarkable pacifist movements of the 20th...

In response to an urgent Appeal from all the living Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, the General Assembly of the United Nations, on November 1998, unanimously declared the first decade of the twenty-first century to be The Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence. While people are naturally concerned about the amount of violence in our world and how it threatens our future, the Nobel Laureates are right to remind us of the potential of nonviolence and our calling to build a culture of peace and nonviolence.  The twentieth century is instructive in the way that the philosophy and practice of nonviolence have begun to flourish and in the way that nonviolent movements have had an exponential growth across the world. Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. are the most famous nonviolent leaders but many have built upon the paths they charted as in country after country, tyrannies and...

This article is forthcoming in the Gandhi Marg journal, New Delhi Introduction Gandhi’s biographer, Louis Fischer, once said that Gandhi’s greatness “lay in doing what everyone could do but doesn’t.” (1) Gandhi provided a signpost for moral living, he left us with some valuable insights about the way life should be oriented so as not to become dysfunctional to the self, society or planet, and provided valuable guidelines to help us with difficult decisions. For example, his seven social sins warn us against politics without principle, wealth without work, commerce without morality, education without character, pleasure without conscience, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice. (2) In another place he gives us a test to apply when we are in doubt. This “talisman” asks us to consider the poorest and weakest person we have seen and examine our proposed action in light of the consequences for this person. (3) And of course he is...

There are four Gandhis who have survived Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s (1861-1948) death. Fifty years after his assassination, it may be useful to establish their identities, as the British police might have done in the high noon of colonialism. All the four Gandhis are troublesome, but they trouble different people for different reasons and in different ways. They are also useable in contemporary public life four distinct ways.* I say this not in sorrow, but in admiration. For the ability to disturb people – or, for that matter, be useable – one hundred thirty years after one’s birth and fifty years after one’s death is no mean achievement. Frankly, I do not care who the real Gandhi was or is. Let academics debate that momentous issue. Contemporary politics is not about ‘truths’ of history; it is about remembered pasts and problems of fashioning a future based on collective memories. For good...

Building a Peace Structure on the Korean Peninsula Dedication To All soldiers and civilians who were killed, wounded, traumatized, separated, and persecuted in the origins, conduct, and aftermath of the Korean War (1950-53) -victims of 20th century inability to create a powerful theory and practice of nonkilling global political science; and To Korean political leaders President Kim Dae Jung and Chairman Kim Jong Il who during June 13-15, 2000, took first steps toward potentially transforming nonkilling Korean leadership for the 21st century world. ___________________________________________________________________ Special Address, International Conference in Commemoration of the 50thAnniversary of the Korean War, “Fifty Years after the Korean War: From Cold-War Confrontation to Peaceful Coexistence,” co-organized by The Korean Association of International Studies (KAIS) and the Korea Research Institute for Strategy (KRIS); sponsored by the Ministry of Defense, Seoul, Korea, July 14-15, 2000. Is a Nonkilling Korea Possible? Is a nonkilling Korea possible? If not, why...