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TechnoratiMarching Round the World for Peace
MADRID - Activists from many nations will set out from New Zealand Saturday on a march for peace and non-violence that will cover more than 90 countries on five continents, winding up on Jan. 2 at the foot of Mount Aconcagua, in western Argentina.
![[Some 400 people gathering at New Zealand's parliament building in Wellington for the start of a world march for peace that will criss-cross the globe over the next three months, passing through 90 countries. (AFP/World Without Wars/Ho/Geard Hourdin)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/worldmarchforpeace.jpg "worldmarchforpeace.jpg")
The coordinator of the march activities in Spain, José Manuel Muñoz Felipe, told IPS celebrations were held simultaneously Friday in more than 300 cities in about 100 countries, "calling for nuclear disarmament, an end to war and the elimination of all forms of violence, whatever pretext or argument is used to justify it."
Oct. 2 is the 140th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas Gandhi, India's most renowned practitioner of non-violent resistance, and has been declared International Day of Non-Violence by the United Nations.
Muñoz Felipe stressed that the march has been organized to condemn all forms of violence, including the use of force by the military or police and economic, political, racial, religious, sexual or psychological violence.
The World March for Peace and Non-Violence, organized by the humanist group World Without Wars, was launched in Spain at a Sept. 12 rally in Madrid attended by Bolivian President Evo Morales and Federico Mayor Zaragoza, the head of the Foundation for a Culture of Peace and chair of the board of directors of the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency.
In addition to Mayor Zaragoza, a former head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the World March has the backing of personalities such as the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, and Guatemalan indigenous activist Rigoberta Menchú, both Nobel Peace Prize winners.
Portuguese writer José Saramago, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano and renowned U.S. scholar and linguist Noam Chomsky are among the many supporters of the March for Peace.
Montserrat Ponsa, a journalist and justice of the peace in Catalonia, one of the 17 autonomous provinces of Spain, will be representing Mayor Zaragoza on the World March starting in New Zealand.
She was honored in Catalonia at a Sept. 20 event organized by three local municipalities, as the sole Catalonian member of the March for Peace base team, who will undertake the entire journey.
On Saturday an event will be held in Madrid, including speeches as well as activities, audiovisual presentations and artistic and musical performances for peace. Live coverage of the base team's departure from New Zealand will be broadcast, and the start of their journey will be marked by releasing 1,000 balloons of all colors.
Rafael de la Rubia, the head of World Without Wars, spoke to IPS before he left for New Zealand about some of the issues raised in the document he read there on Friday, which will be given to the heads of state of nearly 100 countries to be visited by the marchers on their quest for world peace.
After speaking out, of course, against violence and for peace, de la Rubia said he would be asking whether the global direction towards "human calamities of untold dimensions" can be changed.
Such a shift in direction is unlikely without policy changes, the document says, because this year - despite the severe global financial crisis, whose effects have been felt by everyone- a new record was set for military spending.
He said he would be signaling for everyone to join their voices with those of "millions of human beings of different languages, races, creeds and cultures, to ignite human consciousness with the light of non-violence."
The document says it is "beyond absurd" to argue that nuclear weapons are a means of dissuasion.
It also reminds the leaders of the nuclear states - the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel - that "It is you 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 polluted desert. You will be responsible for the social atmosphere that we breathe in the coming years."
One of the goals of the World March is to "demand the dismantling of weapons of mass destruction, and reconvert an economic system that generates poverty, discrimination and death. It is necessary to safeguard life in order to build a world with equal rights and opportunities for all," he said.
The March for Peace manifesto demands "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 and the renunciation by governments of the use of war as a means to resolve conflicts."
De la Rubia's document finishes on an upbeat note, looking towards the future: "There are thousands of us, and there will be millions, and the world will change."
The call for peace and non-violence is linked to demands for sustainable and equitable development. As World Without Wars indicates, it is completely irrational that three billion dollars are spent every day on weapons, while nothing is done for the more than 165,000 people in the world who daily die from hunger, a total of 60 million people a year, according to United Nations figures for 2008.
19 Comments so far
Show AllThis was an amusing article. Walk all you want, and you will get results. Namely, worn out shoes and sore feet.
I was born in the late 1940's. One of my earliest memories was reading articles in the newspaper about the Korean war. In the over 60 years that I have been around, the US has constantly been at war. Sometimes big ones like Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, and mostly little ones (the only ones we can apparently win) like Panama, Grenada, etc. Through it all we stayed on a full war economy with the so called Cold War. My entire life, I have watched the US export their only product, death and destruction, to the rest of the planet.
America's business is war. That is the only thing it is good for. There is no possibility of peace in the world as long as the US exists, because the MIC will not allow their employees in congress and the white house to endanger their profits.
As for the suckers who think that the US can change through political action, that only works if the people have a say in their government. They don't.
After nine months of complete democratic control of the government, the Bush administration policies remain intact. If you can't figure out by now that there is no difference between the parties, you never will.
I do enjoy reading the comments of the Obama apologists who try to explain away the fact that the impotent fool they put into the white house, because he promised to take the country in a new direction, turned out to be nothing more than a pathetic lawn jockey. Although I suppose it's hard for them to accept the fact that they were taken for the naive suckers they are.
"As for the suckers who think that the US can change through political action, that only works if the people have a say in their government. They don't."
Proof? What about the 2006 elections? They're proof enough.
I'd go for the world march though. Heh, even if the march wasn't politically fruitful, then I'd still get to visit countries I'd probably never get to visit, otherwise, and the exercise wouldn't be bad for the legs.
Marching around the world, from NZ to Arg. Yah, right, sure, any day. Do these people walk on water, or ... what? I'll march with them on land, and sail with them on seas (if we can fish and/or dive for other seafood, and grab some sea weeds, for [food], in hopefully safe waters, pollution-wise), but don't ask me to walk on water. Heh; let's get real here. How about floating in the air above the water? No, it's not that I could do that, but if I could, then the soles of my poor boots wouldn't get wet and corrosively salty. Salt, ya know. :)
Don't mind the above "wise-guy" stuff. The exercise could do me a lot of good though and getting away from computer screens wouldn't hurt. Traveling would be great, if it wasn't expensive. But then that's not the purpose of the worldwide march. "Man", am I out of touch.
I hope it's a truly revolutionary sort of "march", for marching we need, like on Feb. 15, 2003, f.e. We need human earthquaking that causes our governments to really tremble or [crumble], and since that Feb. 15th was not enough, we clearly need quaking of a greater magnitude. Pessimistically (?), I doubt that this worldwide march will do or achieve real good, but we can certainly wish that it would. When we wish for things, however, then it's always good to be realistic. Nevertheless, I'll hope it does good, instead of having a purely pessimistic view.
But we need to revolutionarily correct our own governments and marching around the world is not work for correcting governments; it's just an international message that governments can and will (as usual) very much ignore, not feel threatened by.
We're always back at square one. It's our governments that we need to correct most of all; although this means that voters have to wake up and stop voting for evils, too. Okay, so we're always back to double-square one, and this requires marching alright, massive, huge marches on government capitals, national or federal and state (provincial in Canada, f.e.). And these protests need to be [maintained]; f.e., the Hondurans who went on for over [80] days of persistent demonstrations, large ones, too! Notice that they still haven't won, yet, though. Definitely do not expect that a weekend afternoon or even whole weekend of demonstration(s) will correct our governments! Such demonstrations are mostly entertainment for the ruling "elites".
Maybe they can have greater beneficial effect outside of the USA. While I don't know about that, the USA's "elites" would just be entertained. After all, they know that large demonstrations in the U.S. are only momentary and can therefore use or allow these events for entertainment; nothing they really worry about.
They'd worry, however, if the demonstrations were indeed LARGE and maintained. There'd be (some, anyway) state and military crackdown, but if the demonstrators continued to increase in number(s), then the crackdown forces, therefore government, would diminish in their relative abilities to do their control "work". They'd have to work to try to keep the size of the demonstrations down to what they believed to be controllable scope and once this'd be surpased, then they'd be confused, run for shelter, .... Don't worry. They don't have enough cages for all of us ... birds. And the USAF won't be sent in to bomb protest demonstrations in the U.S.; wedding parties in Iraq and Afghanistan are another matter, evidently much less politically troublesome to ... massacre, so much less that we hardly ever hear or read of these incidents. Bombing large demonstrations in the U.S., however, now this would be a politically risky thing to do.
That's if voters aren't so dumb that they'd re-elect people who bombed them, anyway. Oh-oh, given voter track record, ... HEAD FOR THE HILLS!
Yes, sure, somewhat sarcastic; ... some. Let's not split hairs about how much is sarcastic vs not; there are variables and their values (speaking like in computer programming or algebra) can vary, leaving ... plenty of variations using the same variables (containers, parameters, which can be objects, but which always are represented in bits and bytes, as everything else is, until pulling the electrical plug). The calculations over very variable topics can be a little complex.
But voters screwedly screwing up rather repeatedly has become a non-variable; it's become a constant! It's something voters have proven that we can unfortunately count on, them f*cking up every time. Consistency is nice when it's good, but voters don't wake up.
No more so-called "lesser evils"; NO more evils at all! No more fear of a good candidate not winning if he or she doesn't get enough votes; instead, work to gather the votes! Be a driver instead of a slave or serf! Stop looking for only free lifts and learn to drive!
Sorry to be so darn prosaic, but I cannot find a list of cities and dates on the website. Does anyone know where to get that information?
Joe
yes joe, click on the 'route of the march' in the leftside column and a map appears. then click on the little pins and the cities (and sometimes dates - i guess they cannot be that specific) appear in a little window. also there are little 'i' (information) icons that give email addresses for people in different countries.
hope this helps.
Thanks coco. US information on the map is still sketchy. Maybe it will fill out later.
Joe
"it is completely irrational that three billion dollars are spent every day on weapons, while nothing is done for the more than 165,000 people in the world who daily die from hunger, a total of 60 million people a year"
With less than 5% of the world's population, the USA consumes 50% of the world's military expenditures, so US military consumption per capita is perhaps ten times the world average. Meanwhile USans waste 1/3 of their food. Given USan food overconsumption, without even cutting into the USA's gargantuan military expenditures, USans could feed 150 million of the world's hungry ongoingly, without spending an extra penny. That they do not sets an extremely bad example, and contributes to the USan worldwide reputation as not such a beacon of hope after all, but rather, a beacon of greed, fear and loathing.
Good morning to all. This time I would like to post a question to the MANAGEMENT Of COMMON DREAMS, Why have we not seen or heard a word in any news article about the upcoming PEACE RALLY'S against the occupations all over this country?
In just a few days there is a Washington DC gathering to protest the Afghan situation on the 9th anniversary of this national disgrace--WHERE ARE THE PROGRESSIVES GOING TO KNOW ABOUT THESE EVENTS??? PLEASE SUPPLY US WITH THAT KIND OF IMPORTANT NEWS LIKE WHAT, WHERE, WHO, HOW, WHY. AND WHEN--we know for sure it will not be supplied by anyone else--please help us here CD. THANKS. IS THERE REALLY GOING TO BE A NATIONAL STRIKE THIS WEEK IF SO HOW CAN WE JOIN IN?
ONLY THREE DAYS AND COUNTING...
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Breaking News: Common Dreams a progressive "feel good" site. Old hippeis, out dated socialist, Obama Kool-aid drinkers who wanna feel good about doing nothing as they sip their Starsmuck's coffee. Hey don't want to remind the old folk that they are too old to carry a sign and walk at the same time because they donate to keep the site running. Remember young hearts run free!
This is the inconvenient truth about Common Dreams.
And why don't you include links to where you learned of this upcoming activism in the U.S. from? It could be helpful to some readers of your post to be able to read what you read. CD could post on this, but it might be helpful to CD providers if you provided links for resources you saw; instead of only being possibly useful to CD readers. If you provided the link(s), then CD providers could look into what these resources say and if they prove to be valid enough, then we might see something at CD about the demonstrations, besides seeing only one or a few reader posts referring to these activities without schedule, etc., such details.
You may be right about the activities planned, but am wondering why you did not provide any links.
Odoco is wise. Obama,s heart is in the right place but he can not transcend the corporate controlled system he is part of. The world march for world disarmament is inspiring. It is one answer to the hatemongering Becks, Limbaughs et al.
1. I am not wise.
2. If Obama's heart was truly in the right place he would be more vocal and more demonstrative and legislatively active in truly pursuing justice for past war crimes committed by this country, in holding criminal corporations accountable, in being more aggressive with respect to climate change, and less inclined to bow before the military/industrial/congressional complex that now rules this country.
And the earlier comment about the police tactics used in Pittsburgh and Obama's silence / condoning of said tactics is right on.
Again, I note - do not simply attack the man ad nauseum; attack specifically what he has not done / refused to do since being elected. And more importantly, work with groups that absolutely refuse to let this government off the hook for its incredible incompetence.
You think Obama's heart is in the right place? check to see how many of the old Goldman Sachs boys he has hired in various places in his administration - including overseas ambassadorships. He is more and more like the good little church boy who prays every Sunday, but sneaks out the window Saturday nights to play with his real friends. A true tragedy for this country.
I didn't read the earlier post by Odoco yet and the above seems to be overall fine, however it says, "Again, I note - do not simply attack the man ad nauseum; attack specifically what he has not done / refused to do since being elected", and this is lacking. Instead, let's look at what Obama hasn't done, what he refuses to do, what he has done and is doing, as well as what his admin. is planning on doing.
We should account for all angles, say.
"...Obama's heart is in the right place but he can not transcend the corporate controlled system he is part of..."
- The childlike naivete of this remark is as astonishing as its self-contradictory nature. If Obama is "part of" the corporate-controlled system, as the poster openly acknowledges, how can his "heart be in the right place"?
Obama is just another cog in the machine of corporatism & militarism. In the larger picture, it's the very same machine that the Becks & Limbaughs are part of, despite the fact that their function in this machine is harassment of so-called "liberals."
Obama's significance is defined by his expansion of US wars of aggression, his trillions of support for Wall St gangsters, his craven sellouts on health care & EFCA, his refusal to prosecute Bush admin criminals, & his continuation of the essentials of all Bush policies. With his ridiculous lies about Iran's "nuclear ambitions" last week, he's now even performing his very own version of Bush's "Saddam has WMD" campaign.
To say that "Obama's heart is in the right place" is every bit as foolish as claiming that Bushs' heart was in the right place.
Wow. You have to be kidding me.
Obama is no liberal, no matter how many times the corporate controlled media says he is. He's a Corporatist, just like Bush, Clinton, Daddy Bush, and all the way back to Reagan.
Obama has done everything to enrich the wealthiest by providing a stream of cash from generations of stressed out strapped middle class Americans. And he continues to do this in every decision he puts forward.
The BS about Obama being one man against the system is pathetic. These people are sharks. How do you think he got to be president? Obama is the system! His race is the greatest ruse they've had in a long time, he knows it, and it's all fine.
Screw Beck, Limbaugh, and GOP vs Democrats. Pure theatre. It's all BS. Distractions they create to keep people divided. The idea is to use anything, even disgusting racism, to keep people bickering instead of recognizing the full blown decimation of their own jobs, homes, bank accounts, health, and natural resources.
Obama is right on board.
Wait till they get to the US and start marching without a permit.
Obama's Corporate Goon Squad will quash that shit, right quick.
odoco
We need to quit blaming a man who was elected with 53% of the vote 9 months ago and begin talking about how we can actually change the system. Denouncing Obama does nothing except give credence to idiots like Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, et al. Analyzing the system, educating our children into a different and more humane mindset, bringing lawsuits against injustices perpetrated by the government, supporting those that have the means and wherewithal to challenge the system - that is where you should put your energy.
And no - I am not a supporter of Obama.
One word from Obama would have given permits to marches throughout pittsburgh. He is the president, right? If they can handle assault rifles at presidential rallies then they should be able to handle people with signs.
Why would Obama tolerate this group that threatens military industrial media complex profits when he allowed Senator Max Baucus to arrest nurses and doctors who wanted to include single-payer in "health care reform" discussion?