Many distinguished intellectuals, activists, working people, trade unionists and politicians from all five continents have just pointed out, by signing an appeal to world public opinion, the enormous nuclear, ecological, social and economic dangers for all humanity provoked by the conflict in Ukraine and the unleashed Cold War.
The appeal, drafted by the Initiative for the revival of the Bandung spirit (of the Non-Aligned Movement) and the Delphi International Initiative for the Defense of Democracy, is calling for an immediate end of hostilities in Ukraine and the beginning of negotiations, accompanied by the stopping of the arming of Ukraine and the lifting of sanctions against Russia. You can read the full text at http://www.defenddemocracy.press/an-urgent-appeal
The very composition of the list of signatories, who come from the South and from the North, the East and the West of our world, reflects the need for the unity of humanity in addressing its common and critical questions and challenges. No country and no region of the world, however powerful they may seem, can solve the problems they are facing, based exclusively on themselves.
It is impossible to win a world war after 1945. Even a prolonged Cold War will most probably assure the destruction of human civilization, if not of humans themselves, through ecological factors and the social and economic undoing of whole societies and continents. But, to terminate the war, the legitimate interests of all sides must be recognized.
All signatures bear for us the same weight, irrespective of the position of their holders in society. Often those of “ordinary people” are more important, because they need (and usually have!) more courage, since they do not enjoy the relative protection recognised personalities benefit from.
Still, we feel obliged, for reasons of a moral quality, to express our deep gratitude to the former United Nations special Rapporteur for the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order and a world-recognised authority on international law, Alfred de Zayas; to a leading representative of the Indian science and intelligentsia, the founder and honorary chairperson of the Indian Development Research Institute, Gabeshana Chakra and former head and founding member of the Institute of Chinese Studies of India, Distinguished Professor at the Council for Social Development Professor Manoranjan Mohanty; to the “father” of modern Homeopathy, recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (often referred to as the “Alternative Nobel prize”), Honorary Professor of eight universities and a senior associate member of the Royal Society of Medicine (UK) George Vithoulkas; to the veteran of the US anti-war movement, former Professor of Quantum Mechanics and researcher at Princeton and CERN, Bruno Vitale, as well as to all those distinguished and courageous individuals who supported this initiative.
The spirit of our appeal is best symbolised in its signing by Dr. W. H. D. Ulrich Schneider, the Secretary General of the International Federation of resistance fighters (FIR), which unites people who fought, guns in their hands, Nazism and Fascism.
We consider quite important the fact a small – for the time being – number of very courageous politicians from western countries have supported this initiative. They include the MP, President of the Socialist Party of Cyprus EDEK, Marinos Sizopoulos, the MP, former General Secretary of the AKEL Party of Cyprus Andros Kyprianou, the members of the European Parliament Clare Daly and Mike Wallace from Ireland and Tatjana Zdanoka from Latvia, the Swiss journalist and deputy, former President of the Grand Conseil of the Geneva canton Guy Mettan and the former Senator Lee Rhiannon from Australia.
We hope they are just the pioneers and many more will come and add their voices in opposing the war, especially as its impact on western countries and the whole world keeps growing.
Many more people than those signing the appeal have expressed to us their agreement to its main lines, but explained they feel impossible for them to sign it, given the unpredented “irrational passion and hysteria” reigning now in all western countries, in the words used by a leading western intellectual in his answer to our request.
We spoke of courage because it certainly takes a lot of it to defy the unprecedented political and intellectual atmosphere being imposed now on all Western countries to terrorise and silence any person who disagrees with the relaunching of the Cold War, by describing him/her as some sort of “Putin’s” or “Russia’s agent”, thus deterring any discussion and any debate of his/her ideas before it begins.
It is an oxymoron that freedom of opinion and the right to information, that is the foundations of democracy, are abolished in the name of its defence. A new “witch hunt” has been unleashed across western states, against any person expressing reservations about the official political line, often with ” arguments ” and characterisations that have little to distinguish them from those used by Senator McCarthy (and we hope they will not attain the level of those used by Attorney General Vyshinskiy). Even Russian music and literature is being excommunicated while, for the first time since the persecution of Jews and the Roma, people are being persecuted in today’s Western Europe on the sole criterion of nationality and citizenship. We are descenting into a new and more dangerous Middle Ages. We must stop it before it is too late.
Dimitris Konstantakopoulos
Published at www.konstantakopoulos.gr
