What we want

The following Manifesto is worth reading and sharing with all your friends.  I invite to leave comments!

Manifesto for the Movement for a Free Earth

What we want is not to be normal but to be true.
What we want is not only to fight against the old system but to create a new system.
What we want is the full liberation of love and sexuality from fear.
What we want is to strengthen our will in the conscious decision to serve peace – outside and inside.
We won’t be able to handle the challenges which we will face with only our own power. What we want is to cooperate with the greater forces of life.
What we want is to experience the original form of humans living together: Community

We want these words to become a reality by building concrete life models.
The world has come to a point where it is not enough anymore to point out the change that needs to happen… We must be that change.

To be this change we follow three guidelines in our daily life:
Truth
Mutual support
Responsible participation in the community and in the world

All of this will only succeed in the long term with a base of humanely functioning, grounded community. We cannot realise the highest goals if we are not able to found functioning communities which can survive. Ecological humanism needs new social structures. A new culture arises by reconnecting with the eternal laws of love and community.
There are definately many ways to reach this goal but there is only one key to open the gate: Rediscovering trust.

We dedicate our life to peace work.
The education of a peace worker includes education in love. This is a high task with a high goal. But there cannot be peace on earth as long as there is war in love.

May we, the youth of all countries step out of our pasts and enter into the possibility of a new era of planetary thinking, planetary friendship and planetary joy. May the young people from Toronto, Sydney, Nairobi, from San Francisco and Kiev come together. May we celebrate our new world community in Colombia and with the Zapatistas in Mexico, in Bethlehem and in Tamera. May we draw and actualise the information and forces from the code of life that will lead us to a future worth living on a wonderful planet.
We will do it, the “Movement for a Free Earth“ is underway.

Movement for a Free Earth
Tamera/Portugal, May 2009

Pacifism is the Reconciliation of the Human Being with himself

Today at the anniversary of the uprising in Tibet I want to quote some words by Dieter Duhm about pacifism and nonviolence. They are the deepest words I could find. I want to dedicate them to all those who lost their lives in the years of occupation and suppression and I also want to dedicate them to those who survived and still follow the path of nonviolence.
“Violence is the eruption of blocked life energies. Pacifism does not mean to gently appease violence, nor does it mean overcoming conflict through appeals for peace. True pacifism is the radical and intelligent commitment of the human being to the liberation of all life energies and creative forced that are present in him. Pacifism means taking an uncompromising stand for all living beings An uncompromising stand for achieving inner truthfulness and freedom – for pacifism is the reconciliation of the human being with himself.“
(Dieter Duhm: Towards a New Culture)

The Middle East is about more than the fate of two peoples

by Dieter Duhm
The Middle East is about more than the fate of two peoples. If peace is achievable here then something new will have been achieved for human kind. In this war the potential conflict between all of humanity is revealed. Peace in the Middle East is not only of regional importance but also of planetary significance.

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If we want to put an end to war …

“…we need to end it at the point of where it is created each day anew: in our daily living conditions, in the constant stress of mindless and monotonous work, in the methods of profit maximizing and distribution, in offices and factories, in schools and families, in the tragedies of love, in our ideas about being either man or woman, in sexuality and love and in the cages of our professional, social and sensual life which are all far too small.
Do we want that the youth of the world no longer goes to war?
If so, we need a higher aim in life, a life worth living and better opportunities to put the power of the youth into meaningful action.
Do we wish to end the worldwide sexual violence?
If so, we have to create living conditions under which sexual joy is experienced without violence, without humiliation and without unnecessary restrictions.
Do we want to free the world from despotism, betrayal and lies?
If so, then let us build up concrete conditions under which despotism, betrayal and lies have no longer an evolutionary advantage.
Not only dreaming, talking, wishing, appealing, but building it up, really doing it!

The world will only turn to the better when we demonstrate that it is possible.”

(Excerpt of  “The War Society and its Transformation”. A Manifesto against War. By Dieter Duhm. )

Full text…

Call for Conscientious Objection

by Dieter Duhm

You have no enemies. People of another faith, another culture or another color are not your enemies. There is no reason to fight against them. Those who send you to war do not do for your interest, but for their own. They do it for their profit, their power, their advantage and their luxury. Why do you fight for them? Do you gain from their profit? Do you share in their power? Do you share in their luxury? And against whom do you fight? Did your so called enemies do something to you?

Cassius Clay refused to fight in Vietnam. He said the Vietnamese did not do anything to him. Or you, GIs. Did the Afghanis, the Iraqis, the Iranians and so on, did they do something to you? Or you, young Russians: Did the Chechenyans do something to you? And if yes, do you know what kind of cruelties your government committed against them? Or you, young Israelis: Did the Palestinians do something to you? And if yes, do you know what your government did to them? Who fabricated the injustice you are about to fight against? Do you know what powers you serve when you drive with tanks through conquered areas? Who, for heaven’s sake, fabricated the injustice for whose pretended abatement youth are sent to war? Your governments, your own legislators, the rulers of your own country fabricated it.

It is fabricated by corporate groups and banks, the arms industry and militaries which you serve and whose war commands you obey. Do you want to support their world? If you do not want to serve their world then ignore war service. Ignore it with such insistence and power that they stop recruiting. “Imagine war was declared and nobody showed up.*” No one on earth has the right to force another person to go to war. If they want to draft you into war service, then turn the tables. Write to them and tell them where and when and in which socks, underwear and shirts they must report in. Tell them in no uncertain terms, that they must go to war themselves from now on if they want to fulfill their dirty objectives. Use your connections, your media sources, the power of your youth, and your power to turn the tables. If they want war they must get into tanks and dugouts themselves, they must drive through mine fields and they can get cut by shrapnel themselves.

There would no longer be war on earth if those who fabricate these wars had to fight the battles themselves, and if they had to experience in their own body what it means to be mutilated or burnt, to starve, to freeze to death, or to faint from pain. War is the opposite of all Human Rights. Those who lead war are always wrong. War is an active cause of endless disease: crushed and burned children, bodies, torn to pieces, destroyed village communities, lost relatives, lost friends or lovers, hunger, cold, pain and escape, cruelty against the civilian population – this is what war is. Nobody is allowed to go to war. There is a higher law behind the laws of rulers: “Thou shall not kill.” It is the moral duty of all courageous people to refuse war service. Do it in large numbers, and do it until nobody wants to go to war anymore. It is an honour to refuse war service. Live this honour until everyone recognizes it.

A soldier’s uniform is the fool’s dress of slaves. Command and obedience is the logic of a culture that is afraid of freedom. Those who agree to war, and even if it is only to obligatory military service, are themselves guilty of complicity. To obey military service goes against all ethics. As long as we are human beings we must put all our effort into stopping this madness. We will not have a humane world as long as military duty is accepted as societal duty.

The enemies are always the others. But think about it: If you were on the “other” side, you yourself would be the enemy. These roles are exchangeable. “We refuse to be enemies.” The tears shed by a Palestinian mother for her dead child are the same as the tears of an Israeli mother whose child is killed in a suicide bombing.

The warrior of the new era is a warrior of peace.

One has to have the courage to protect life and to become soft inside if our co-creatures are treated with harshness. Train your body, strengthen your heart and stabilise your mind to achieve the soft power which prevails against all resistance. It is the soft power which overcomes all harshness. You all come from the love between a man and a woman. So love, worship and foster love! “Make love, not war.” This was a profound sentence from American conscientious objectors at the time of the Vietnam War. May this sentence move in all young hearts. And may we all find the intelligence and the will to follow it forever.

* From the Poem “Imagine War Was Declared and No One Showed Up” by Bertolt Brecht