Culture and Media

From October 8 to 11 the island of Rhodes (Greece) hosted the Seventh Annual Session of the World Public Forum, ‘Dialogue of Civilizations’. The World Center of Humanist Studies gave a talk on the theme of nonviolence as the only way out of the current crisis, presenting the World March for Peace and Nonviolence initiative.

The 20 marchers arrived in New Delhi on October 12 to honour several meetings in various provinces of India. After a long march to New Delhi, where the base team was received by Tara Gandhi Bhattacharji, Ghandi’s grand-daughter, the group split up to go to Bombay, Amritsar, Chennai and Trichur (in the province of Kerala).

Members of the Middle East team of the World March have now left Bethlehem following a visit yesterday to the occupied Palestinian territories. Along with them were representatives of the Holy Land Trust association of Bethlehem, a non-profit organisation that has worked for years for the nonviolent development of the Palestinian communities.

The Nobel Peace prize to a president for rhetoric, with no real achievement, is like a peace prize for a movie to a former vice-president, with no real achievement either. People are touched by a rhetoric everybody has heard, but that it does not meet the criteria Nobel states in his will: understanding among nations, reduction of standing armies, and peace conferences.

On October 11th and 12th, the Middle East team of the World March for Peace and Nonviolence passed through Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Among the marchers was Giorgio Schultze, the European spokesperson for the March. The team met the Director of Music and Dance at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Municipal Councillor Margalit of the Meretz party.

Indigenous movements throughout the world have called for a “Global Minga for Mother Earth,” which will take place October 12-16, 2009. Its purpose is a large-scale peaceful mobilization toward the United Nations in order to put an end to global warming. Also, during its stop in Bolivia, it will inaugurate the first Climate Justice Tribunal.

A few kilometers from the Gaza Strip, Peace and Non-Violence Days were organized in cooperation with the socialist kibbutz movement Hashomer Hatzair and members of the World March for Peace. Jayme Fucs Bar declared: “We want to live in peace, Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Muslims, without hatred, we want to watch our children grow up without violence and with a future…”

Gaza children’s artwork, is an exhibition of paintings and drawings done by children in Gaza following the Israeli 22 day assault earlier this year. As a result, over 300 children were killed, many more injured, 1,400 children orphaned of at least one parent, 30 percent of children suffer serious mental health problems and all the children are traumatised.

People the world over must find non-violent ways to oppose American military force lest they suffer the fate of the Vietnamese and the Iraqis. In response to the menace of the U.S. military-industrial complex, non-violent soul force needs to be considered in international conflicts just as it was used by Mahatma Gandhi in India and by the Reverend Martin Luther King in the U.S.

The World March for Peace and Non-Violence definitely experienced one of its emotional highpoints on the morning of October 7th. The base team members were invited to attend the formation, before their very eyes, of the largest human peace sign, executed to perfection by over 12,000 students from schools in the town of Lucena, in the south of the Philippines.