PEOPLE POWER

And elsewhere in India



New Delhi, April 9 : Cheered by tens of thousands, Gandhian Anna Hazare Saturday ended five days of fast for a rigorous anti-corruption law after the government met almost all his demands, turning the diminutive soldier-turned-activist into a national hero.

As the clock struck 10.52 a.m., the 73-year-old activist sipped lemon juice from a glass, triggering delirious celebrations at the protest venue in the heart of the city and ending an unparalleled non-political people's movement against corruption.

It was the culmination of 97 hours when Hazare stayed away from food, sipping only water.

The tens of thousands packing the area near the 18th century Jantar Mantar observatory erupted with joy, shouting full-throated nationalist slogans, cheering Hazare, throwing Holi colours and showering rose petals on the man on the rostrum.

"I have broken the fast because the government has fulfilled our demand by issuing this order," he said, triumphantly flashing the gazette notifying the formation of a 10-member panel that would draft a stringent Lokpal bill to combat corruption in high places.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, criticised for the government's earlier intransigence, sought to placate hurt feelings.

"The fact that civil society and government have joined hands to evolve a consensus to move this historic legislation augurs well for our democracy. I am pleased that Anna Hazareji has agreed to give up his fast," Manmohan Singh said. "(Corruption) is a scourge that confronts all of us."

According to the notification - a point the government was reluctant to agree to but gave in as the civil society leaders insisted on it - the drafting committee of the Lokpal bill would comprise five ministers and five nominees of Hazare, including himself.

Read more here: http://www.newkerala.com/news/world/fullnews-186436.html

For any who might bother to read this thread, I'd just like to say for the record that I stopped updating it because I no longer see it as being a positive, uplifting thread in terms of the original subject it was started on. To explain, I now believe that many of these protests are playing right into the hands, or agenda, of the PTW in terms of them increasing polarity in people's minds and in the world as a whole. 'Us vs Them' is NOT the way to unity consciousness and I believe the latter is what is needed at this time.

At the same time I say good on these people for uniting together to be out from under oppressive regimes, as they should be, but that perspective comes from an ego/personality/3D level, as harsh as that might sound. It's very much 'Us vs Them'. And what this is all escalating into is killing and harming a lot of those people and could lead to all out war, which is exactly what I believe the PTW wanted. I'm sure they'd love the whole world to be fighting each other, and even them, as it takes us all down to the lower levels of human behaviours of fear, anger and hatred..........just like them. It's exactly what they can use to 'justify' going into these battling countries in the minds of those who are still blind to the game.

I believe that each of us is where we're meant to be to learn what we need to learn, as so many great teachers tell us. Many of us have come to believe that when the 'catastrophes' come, we will be 'led' to where we need to be, be it in the centre of the melee to help others or somewhere 'safe'. I believe that is as it's always been for all of us, not just now or in days to come. I was told many years ago that the need is "to learn to be at peace in Hell". In my experience, the only way that is possible is to be in the love of the heart, regardless of outside circumstances. They cease to matter as Love lifts us above those circumstances.

Finally death, obviously, is nothing to fear.

Sanicle wrote: In my experience, the only way that is possible is to be in the love of the heart, regardless of outside circumstances. They cease to matter as Love lifts us above those circumstances.

Finally death, obviously, is nothing to fear.

In human relations when peace is the intention a lot of the trouble we may be running into are avoided.
“Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.”
I really appreciate the way you conducted this thread Sanicle.

Love for you
mudra

The Ironies of Peace

by Michael Nagler
posted Dec 23, 2009

In 1982, Mother Teresa of Calcutta stunned the world by announcing that she was going into a raging conflict in Beirut to rescue disabled children from an abandoned orphanage. It was during the bombardment that Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel called “Operation Peace for Galilee.” It was a stunning gesture, perfectly worthy of her, and the judgment of the Nobel Peace Prize committee that awarded her the coveted honor some years before. What the world didn’t notice is that Prime Minister Begin, author of the carnage, had also been given the Nobel Prize for Peace.

From that day—or even further back if you consider that Alfred Nobel made his fortune by inventing dynamite—the prize has been accompanied by ironies. In December of 2009 in Oslo, those ironies took on a particular form that is of great significance to all of us.

There were many noble thoughts resounding throughout President Obama’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. The knowledge he revealed of some of his great predecessors, particularly Martin Luther King and Aung San Suu Kyi, was astounding for someone in his position; but then he made a fatal mistake, and it is essential to recognize that mistake and to correct it—to make sure that it does not happen again. Obama said, “A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies.” He is wrong.

In March of 1943, Gestapo headquarters in Berlin ordered the arrest and deportation of the remaining Jewish men who had been left out of the roundups so far because they were married to ‘Aryan’ wives. But then a totally unexpected thing happened. First one, then another of those wives began to converge on the detention center on Rosenstrasse demanding their men be released. By the end of the weekend, they were nearly 6,000 strong and refusing orders to disperse though Gestapo headquarters was only a few blocks away.

And the Gestapo caved in—they released the men. Moreover, as we have learned only recently, in Nazi-occupied capitals all over Europe, officials carefully watched the failed experiment and decided to leave their own Jews who similarly had Aryan spouses alone. In other words, an unorganized form of nonviolence carried out spontaneously by untrained people with no organization and no followup “stopped Hitler’s armies” in their most virulent form, saving tens of thousands of people.

On one level, it should come as a surprise that such a sophisticated president, who speaks knowledgeably about King and Gandhi, should come out with the oldest objection in the book, "it wouldn’t have worked against the Nazis" — the most frequently heard cavil, the most knee-jerk reaction that people like me, who advocate the "sweet reasonableness" of nonviolence, can hear in our sleep.

There are several problems with the logic of this apparently imperishable argument, but it will do for now to simply say that it is patently false: nonviolence did work against the Nazis—when it was tried. The issue is not just philosophical.

In the next breath, the president added, “Negotiations cannot convince Al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms.” This is how those who can see no recourse but violence always justify their actions. Was it not Hitler, in Mein Kampf, who said, "We Germans have learned to our cost that the British will not listen to anything but force?" We may as well give this mistake its proper name: dehumanization. You cannot be violent toward another unless you adopt the fatal mistake of denying his or her humanity, and no peace will be possible as long as we persist in doing that.

“We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes,” President Obama said to frame his position; but that is pure speculation. Parallel to that was his projection of that same pessimism onto an imagined past: “War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history.” No, it didn’t. Modern research has shown that there are forms of conflict resolution among our primate ancestors that are more sophisticated than forms used by some groups of Homo sapiens. And the archeological record says that whole civilizations lived on what is now European soil for thousands of years with hardly a sign of large-scale conflict.

President Obama displays more awareness of the nonviolent alternative than anyone who has held that high office in our lifetime. From what other President could we expect to hear these words in a public speech: “As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life's work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak—nothing passive, nothing naïve—in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.” And yet, as he follows out of this logic he runs into a tragic block. He declares without evidence that nonviolence would not have stopped Hitler’s armies and cannot stop a ruthless and determined opponent, although it stopped Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, and about a dozen other ruthless dictators. He likewise bemoans the fact that when a Darfur or a Rwanda happens we have only two choices, to stand by and do nothing or to use deadly force, because “inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That is why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace.”

Yet, for the last 20 years, the practice of unarmed civilian peacekeeping has been steadily growing, saving lives, and moderating conflicts all over the world though only individual donors and a few enlightened governments (not including our own) keep them going. One global effort, called the Nonviolent Peaceforce, says plainly that they represent “what you can say yes to when you say no to war;” but the deafening drumbeat of violence and materialism, blaring at us in every medium, dutifully repeated in most every history book, is overwhelming, and we do not heed them.

Again and again, the contrast between the president’s sophistication and his failure to apply it startles: “security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive.” Yes, this is called “human security” and is a far deeper and more practical promise than the folly of bombing enemies into undying, if helpless enmity. Recently Jeffrey Sachs, along with many other respected writers, pointed out that development has a far, far better track record at stabilizing societies than any amount of military intervention—at a fraction of the cost. As Sachs says, even if we spent $200 on every Afghan villager (which is more than enough to give them the economic security the President cited) we could help 5,000 of them for the cost of a single U.S. soldier stationed in Afghanistan: “That's right,” Sachs concludes, “the approximate trade-off is meaningful help for an entire village versus stationing one more U.S. soldier.”

I am talking about our addiction to violence, an addiction that is fed to satiation and beyond every day by our own mass media—the extremely violent new video game, “Modern Warfare,” which features "players" massacring civilians, sold seven million copies in the first few hours—and has blinded us to the point that we cannot see the way out of our quandary even though it is happening, with a rising tempo, here and there across the planet.

Having watched with admiration how calmly the president delivered his brilliant, albeit often evasive, speeches during his presidential campaign, it was painful for me to see for the first time a numbing strain invade his features. It was painful not just because of the admiration and, yes, affection I still hold for President Obama; it was painful because in that agonizing tension between his personal vision and the tired, clichéd party line on which he is forced to walk, we see reflected the tragedy of our civilization, where more and more of us can see a better world almost taking shape before our eyes but others of us, not always very many, maintain their death grip on the public discourse.

My point is not to criticize President Obama. Far from it. My point is to condemn the culture that has entrapped him, forcing him to betray his high intelligence. And I do so not to stand in judgment of that culture or anyone who has fallen into its clutches, but to alert every one of us to the danger it poses—to encourage each of us to learn all we can about nonviolence and personally begin the shift, as Martin Luther King urged, from a ‘thing oriented’ civilization to one based on the infinite potential of the human being.

The election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States opened a door to a much brighter, nonviolent future. We have to pluck up the courage to walk through that door before it closes once again.

Michael Nagler is professor emeritus of Classics and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, where he co-founded the Peace and Conflict Studies Program, and the founder of the Metta Center for Nonviolence. This article first appeared in the Metta Center blog.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/the-ironies-of-peace

Love Always
mudra

Weapons of Mass Democracy
Nonviolent Resistance Is the Most Powerful Tactic Against Oppressive Regimes

by Stephen Zunes
posted Sep 16, 2009

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/learn-as-you-go/weapons-of-mass-democracy

On the outskirts of a desert town in the Moroccan-occupied territory of Western Sahara, about a dozen young activists are gathered. They are involved in their country’s long struggle for freedom. A group of foreigners—veterans of protracted resistance movements—is conducting a training session in the optimal use of a “weapons system” that is increasingly deployed in struggles for freedom around the world. The workshop leaders pass out Arabic translations of writings on the theory and dynamics of revolutionary struggle and lead the participants in a series of exercises designed to enhance their strategic and tactical thinking.

These trainers are not veterans of guerrilla warfare, however, but of unarmed insurrections against repressive regimes. The materials they hand out are not the words of Che Guevara, but of Gene Sharp, the former Harvard scholar who has pioneered the study of strategic nonviolent action. And the weapons they advocate employing are not guns and bombs, but strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations, tax refusal, alternative media, and refusal to obey official orders.

Serbs, South Africans, Filipinos, Georgians, and other veterans of successful nonviolent struggles are sharing their knowledge and experience with those still fighting dictators and occupation armies.

The young Western Saharans know how an armed struggle by an older generation of their countrymen failed to dislodge the Moroccans, who first invaded their country back in 1975. They have seen how Morocco’s allies on the U.N. Security Council—led by France and the United States—blocked enforcement of U.N. resolutions supporting their right to self-determination. With the failure of both armed struggle and diplomacy to bring them freedom, they have decided to instead employ a force more powerful.

The Rise of Nonviolence

The long-standing assumption that dictatorial regimes can only be overthrown through armed struggle or foreign military intervention is coming under increasing challenge. Though nonviolent action has a long and impressive history going back centuries, events in recent decades have demonstrated more than ever that nonviolent action is not just a form of principled witness utilized by religious pacifists. It is the most powerful political tool available to challenge oppression.

It was not the leftist guerrillas of the New People’s Army who brought down the U.S.-backed Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. It was nuns praying the rosary in front of the regime’s tanks, and the millions of others who brought greater Manila to a standstill.

It was not the 11 weeks of bombing that brought down Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, the infamous “butcher of the Balkans.” It was a nonviolent resistance movement led by young students, whose generation had been sacrificed in a series of bloody military campaigns against neighboring Yugoslav republics, and who were able to mobilize a large cross-section of the population to rise up against a stolen election.

It was not the armed wing of the African National Congress that brought majority rule to South Africa. It was workers, students, and township dwellers who—through the use of strikes, boycotts, the creation of alternative institutions, and other acts of defiance—made it impossible for the apartheid system to continue.

It was not NATO that brought down the communist regimes of Eastern Europe or freed the Baltic republics from Soviet control. It was Polish dockworkers, East German church people, Estonian folk singers, Czech intellectuals, and millions of ordinary citizens.

Similarly, such tyrants as Jean-Claude Duvalier in Haiti, Moussa Traoré in Mali, King Gyanendra in Nepal, General Suharto in Indonesia, and, most recently, Maumoon Gayoom in the Maldives were forced to cede power when it became clear that they were powerless in the face of massive nonviolent resistance and noncooperation.

The power of nonviolent action has been acknowledged even by such groups as Freedom House, a Washington-based organization with close ties to the foreign policy establishment. Its 2005 study observed that, of the nearly 70 countries that have made the transition from dictatorship to varying degrees of democracy in the past 30 years, only a small minority did so through armed struggle from below or reform instigated from above. Hardly any new democracies resulted from foreign invasion. In nearly three-quarters of the transitions, change was rooted in democratic civil-society organizations that employed nonviolent methods. In addition, the study noted that countries where nonviolent civil resistance movements played a major role tend to have freer and more stable democratic systems.

A different study, published last year in the journal International ­Security, used an expanded database and analyzed 323 major insurrections in support of self-determination and democratic rule since 1900. It found that violent resistance was successful only 26 percent of the time, whereas nonviolent campaigns had a 53 percent success rate.

From the poorest nations of Africa to the relatively affluent countries of Eastern Europe; from communist regimes to right-wing military dictatorships; from across the cultural, geographic and ideological spectrum, democratic and progressive forces have recognized the power of nonviolent action to free them from oppression. This has not come, in most cases, from a moral or spiritual commitment to nonviolence, but simply because it works.

Why Nonviolent Action Works

Armed resistance, even for a just cause, can terrify people not yet committed to the struggle, making it easier for a government to justify violent repression and use of military force in the name of protecting the population. Even rioting and vandalism can turn public opinion against a movement, which is why some governments have employed agents provocateurs to encourage such violence. The use of force against unarmed resistance movements, on the other hand, usually creates greater sympathy for the government’s opponents. As with the martial art of aikido, nonviolent opposition movements can engage the force of the state’s repression and use it to effectively disarm the force directed against them.

In addition, unarmed campaigns involve a range of participants far beyond the young able-bodied men normally found in the ranks of armed guerrillas. As the movement grows in strength, it can include a large cross-section of the population. Though most repressive governments are well-prepared to deal with a violent insurgency, they tend to be less prepared to counter massive non-cooperation by old, middle-aged, and young. When millions of people defy official orders by engaging in illegal demonstrations, going out on strike, violating curfews, refusing to pay taxes, and otherwise refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the state, the state no longer has power. During the “people power” uprising against the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines, for example, Marcos lost power not through the defeat of his troops and the storming of the Malacañang Palace but when—due to massive defiance of his orders—the palace became the only part of the country he still effectively controlled.

Furthermore, pro-government elements tend to be more willing to compromise with nonviolent insurgents, who are less likely to physically harm their opponents when they take power. When massive demonstrations challenged the military junta in Chile in the late 1980s, military leaders convinced the dictator Augusto Pinochet to agree to the nonviolent protesters’ demands for a referendum on his continued rule and to accept the results when the vote went against him.

Unarmed movements also increase the likelihood of defections and non-cooperation by police and military personnel, who will generally fight in self-defense against armed guerrillas but are hesitant to shoot into unarmed crowds. Such defiance was key to the downfall of dictatorships in East ­Germany, Mali, Serbia, the Philippines, Ukraine, and elsewhere. The moral power of nonviolence is crucial to the ability of an opposition movement to reframe the perceptions of the public, political elites, and the military.

A Democratizing Force

In many cases, armed revolutionaries—trained in martial values, the power of the gun, and a leadership model based upon a secret, elite vanguard—have themselves become authoritarian rulers once in power. In addition, because civil war often leads to serious economic, environmental, and social problems, the new leadership is tempted to embrace emergency powers they are later reluctant to surrender. Algeria and Guinea-Bissau experienced military coups soon after their successful armed independence struggles, while victorious communist guerrillas in a number of countries simply established new dictatorships.

By contrast, successful nonviolent movements build broad coalitions based on compromise and consensus. The new order that emerges from that foundation tends to be pluralistic and democratic.

Liberal democracy carries no guarantee of social justice, but many of those involved in pro-democracy struggles have later played a key role in leading the effort to establish more equitable social and economic orders. For example, the largely nonviolent indigenous peasant and worker movements that ended a series of military dictatorships in Bolivia in the 1980s formed the basis of the movement that brought Evo Morales and his allies to power, resulting in a series of exciting reforms benefiting the country’s poor, indigenous majority.

Another reason nonviolent movements tend to create sustainable democracy is that, in the course of the movement, alternative institutions are created that empower ordinary people. For example, autonomous workers’ councils eroded the authority of party apparatchiks in Polish industry even as the Communist Party still nominally ruled the country. In South Africa, popularly elected local governments and people’s courts in the black townships completely usurped the authority of administrators and judges appointed by the apartheid regime long before majority rule came to the country as a whole.

Recent successes of nonviolent tactics have raised concerns about their use by those with undemocratic aims. However, it is virtually impossible for an undemocratic result to emerge from a movement based upon broad popular support. Local elites, often with the support of foreign powers, have historically promoted regime change through military invasions, coup d’états, and other kinds of violent seizures of power that install an undemocratic minority. Nonviolent “people power” movements, by contrast, make peaceful regime change possible by empowering pro-democratic majorities.

Indeed, every successful nonviolent insurrection has been a homegrown movement rooted in the realization by the masses that their rulers were illegitimate and that the political system would not redress injustice. By contrast, a nonviolent insurrection is unlikely to succeed when the movement’s leadership and agenda do not have the backing of the majority of the population. This is why the 2002–2003 “strike” by some privileged sectors of Venezuela’s oil industry failed to bring down the democratically elected government of Hugo Chavez, while the widely supported strikes in the Iranian oil fields against the Shah in 1978–1979 were key in bringing down his autocratic regime.

Homegrown Movements

Unlike most successful unarmed insurrections, Iran slid back under autocratic rule after the overthrow of the Shah. Now, hard-line clerics and their allies have themselves been challenged by a nonviolent pro-democracy movement. Like most governments facing popular challenges, rather than acknowledging their own failures, the Iranian regime has sought to blame outsiders for fomenting the resistance. Given the sordid history of U.S. interventionism in that country—including the overthrow of Iran’s last democratic government in 1953 in a CIA-backed military coup—some are taking those claims seriously. However, Iranians have engaged in nonviolent action for generations, not just in opposition to the Shah, but going back to the 1890–1892 boycotts against concessions to the British and the 1905–1908 Constitutional Revolution. There is little Americans can teach Iranians about such civil resistance.

Citing funding from Western governments and foundations, similar charges of powerful Western interests being responsible for nonviolent insurrections have also been made in regard to recent successful pro-democracy movements in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine.

However, while outside funding can be useful in enabling opposition groups to buy computers, print literature, and promote their work, it cannot cause a nonviolent liberal democratic revolution to take place any more than Soviet financial and material support for leftist movements in previous decades could cause an armed socialist revolution to take place.

Successful revolutions, whatever their ideological orientation, are the result of certain social conditions. Indeed, no amount of money could force hundreds of thousands of people to leave their jobs, homes, schools, and families to face down heavily armed police and tanks and put their bodies on the line. They must be motivated by a desire for change so strong they are willing to make the sacrifices and take the personal risks to bring it about.

In any case, there is no standardized formula for success that a foreign government could put together, since the history, culture, and political alignments of each country are unique. No foreign government can recruit or mobilize the large numbers of ordinary civilians necessary to build a movement capable of effectively challenging the established political leadership, much less of toppling a government.

Even workshops like the one for the Western Saharan activists, usually funded through nonprofit, nongovernmental foundations, generally focus on providing generic information on the theory, dynamics, and history of nonviolent action. There is broad consensus among workshop leaders that only those involved in the struggles themselves are in a position to make tactical and strategic decisions, so they tend not to give specific advice. However, such capacity-building efforts—like comparable NGO projects for sustainable development, human rights, equality for women and minorities, economic justice, and the environment—can be an effective means of fostering inter­national solidarity.

Back in Western Sahara, anti-occupation activists, building on their own experiences against the Moroccan occupation and on what they learned from the workshop, press on in the struggle for their country’s freedom. In the face of severe repression from U.S.-backed Moroccan forces, the movement continues with demonstrations, leafleting, graffiti writing, flag waving, boycotts, and other actions. One prominent leader of the movement, Aminatou Haidar, won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award last November, and she has been twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Those in the Western Sahara resistance are among the growing numbers of people around the world struggling against repression who have recognized that armed resistance is more likely to magnify their suffering than relieve it.

From Western Sahara to West Papua to the West Bank, people are engaged in nonviolent resistance against foreign occupation. Similarly, from Egypt to Iran to Burma, people are fighting nonviolently for freedom from dictatorial rule.

Recent history has shown that power ultimately resides in the people, not in the state; that nonviolent strategies can be more powerful than guns; and that nonviolent action is a form of conflict that can build, rather than destroy.

Stephen ZunesStephen Zunes wrote this article for Learn as You Go, the Fall 2009 issue of YES! Magazine. Stephen is a professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco and chairs the academic advisory committee of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

Love Always
mudra

Thank you so much for your kind words Mudra, and for adding these last two posts. They finish off this thread perfectly. You truly are an of peace.