Forgetting
Gandhi On International Non-Violence Day
By Pablo Ouziel
01 October, 2007
Countercurrents.org
October
2nd will mark the birth anniversary of Human Rights Activist, Mahatma
Gandhi and for the first time, the United Nations is officially proclaiming
this day to be the International Day of Non-violence. Hopefully, on
this day we can all spare a little of our time to reflect on how little
we have all understood Mahatma Gandhi's message, after all everyday
we seem to plunge into a worse state of affairs and drift away farther
from Gandhi's respectable message; "I object to violence because
when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it
does is permanent."
I wonder what it means to
have an International Non-violence day. Does it mean that American soldiers,
UN 'peacekeepers', Nato Forces, the Israeli military and Blackwater
USA will put down their weapons for the day and reflect on the horrors
that they are committing in the vague name of an international war on
'terror'? Does it mean that they will all continue killing as a few
peaceful marchers around the world proclaim in total sanity, that the
insanity that prevails is making it hard for peace-loving humans to
coexist with this madness? Or those it mean, that the United Nations
will clamp down on the killings perpetrated by the permanent members
of its own security council?
Whatever happens on that
day we can all rest assured that the day will pass and things will continue
heading into the same almost unavoidable tragic ending, one which the
respectable Professor Noam Chomsky describes in the following way; "The
immediate fear is that by accident or design, Washington's war planners
or their Israeli surrogate might decide to escalate their Cold War II
into a hot one – in this case a real hot war."
Gandhi once said that, "an
error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor
does truth become error because nobody sees it." However since
that now famous speech in 2001 when President Bush declared; "You're
either with us or against us in the fight against terror," our
lives have changed so much in so little time, that one wonders whether
Gandhi's statement makes any difference to the lives of ordinary innocent
people.
With so many dead since Bush's
statement and so many more suffering, with our way of live being put
upside down by secretive prisons, humiliating airport security checks,
increased racism towards our Muslim brothers, students being tasered
for asking inappropriate questions, and the president of a country being
insulted by a University President in the name of freedom of speech,
one wonders how long we will have to put up with this reality until
the people of the world regain their rights and react against this vile
oppression.
We are living in fearful times void of any reason, if one listens to
the words of world leaders and reflects on their actions, one will see
the incoherence which prevails. The ones promoting global democracy
are embracing imperialism and the ones asking for reason to flourish
are being labelled as enemies. Evo Morales the first indigenous president
of Bolivia, who was linked to Osama Bin Laden by the American ambassador
in that country, last week speaking with Amy Goodman of democracy Now!
said; "I think that in this new millennium, we fundamentally should
be oriented towards saving lives and not ending lives."
Yet President Bush continues
to raise the flag of peace and stability as American defence company
stocks continue to rise and people continue to die. According to CNNMoney.com
on September 26th; "The AMEX Defense Index, which tracks 14 major
defence company stocks, rose 14.25 to a high of 1,686.72 in afternoon
trading. Since last year, the index has risen roughly 47 percent, outperforming
the broader S&P 500 index, which has climbed nearly 15 percent over
the same period."
While Hugo Chavez president
of Venezuela, another 'great enemy' of the American people during a
UN address at the General Assembly in 2006, recommends to the assembly,
the presidents of the world and in particular the American people to
read Hegemony of Survival by Noam Chomsky, we learned this week by the
hand of an editorial in The Los Angeles Times that, "the biggest
beneficiary (of the business of war) has been Blackwater USA, a private
security firm with powerful political and personnel ties to an administration
that has awarded it more than $1 billion in contracts since 2002."
So while this real life scenario
remains a despicable reality and some blame Bush, while others blame
corporations, I am inclined to blame the common people who through a
combination of indifference, fear and lack of reason, are allowing their
government representatives and a few corporations to accumulate wealth
and power, while destroying the planet in which we all live. We must
understand that the power is in the hands of the majority as long as
we are all willing to accept that responsibility and turn it into action.
If we use International non-violence
day to reflect on Gandhi's teachings and his struggle for freedom, we
might learn from his own words that, "as human beings, our greatness
lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth
of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves." If this
reasoning can somehow ingrain itself into our thought process, those
Wall Street and industry executives who are trying to assure investors
that there will be little disturbance in military spending over the
next several years, regardless of who succeeds President Bush in the
White House, will be proved wrong. If however the people of the world
have forgotten what Gandhi really stood for, there is nothing that can
be done.
-Pablo Ouziel is an activist and a free lance writer
based in Spain. His work has appeared in many progressive media including
Znet, Palestine Chronicle, Thomas Paine’s Corner and Atlantic
Free Press.
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Comment
Policy
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.