"Here I stand", said Martin Luther, "I can do no other"; My initial image of conscientious objection was rather framed by the Protestant tradition of the individual conscience taking a stand against authority, nailing theses to church doors and going to the stake rather than renouncing their faith. I understood it as a personal moral imperative rather than as a political strategy.
That, too, is how I think states have understood conscientious objection (CO). By the end of the…
The most telling image of my adolescence in 1980s South Africa was the silhouette of a war memorial, like many found all over the world, listing the names of soldiers killed defending our borders. Some of these soldiers were con-scripts. Most white South Africans could ignore the social and political consequences of apartheid, which cre-ated their privilege. “Our boys on the border” were an ever-present reminder to them of where they lived.
The “border” was that ephemeral place, more…
There is nothing more horrendous than sending people off to war. This is what my country is doing. Israel is sending its children to war and it has been doing so for many years now. Indeed we have been warring from the moment we came into being, and have been involved in conflict pretty much ever since.
For many of us who live in Israel, it seems almost natural, almost a necessary part of our lives, that at the age of 18 we will be enrolled into the army and made to fight these wars…
It is complicated enough discussing what it means to be an antimilitarist in a country like Colombia, but even worse because although antimilitarism is something that I share and promote, I'm not really sure how much of an antimilitarist I am. In a diverse range of situations, my actions and language are loaded with militarist symbolism that has become inherent in the cultural practices of Colombian society.
I remember when I was a boy, before entering class, the director of the “…
In October 2001, after taking over parts of the Swat, Dir and Korakoram highway in northern Pakistan, Sufi Mohammad led his 5000-strong army of Tehrik Nifaz Shariat-I-Mohammadi [one of five extremist religious groups currently banned in Pakistan] to attack the US forces operating in Afghanistan, with weapons ranging from World War One antiques to mortars used by modern-day armies.
But the fact is that most of these illiterate and misguided soldiers lost their lives to unfriendly…
At the time of writing, 42 Israeli soldiers - conscripts and reservists - are serving sentences in military prisons after refusing to take part in the campaign of repression against the Palestinian population.
The army has changed its policy towards the refuseniks, and after long pretending they just don't exist, current policy directives to unit commanders have produced a rash of disciplinary actions.
There are now over 1000 refuseniks, over half of whom have already refused…
My son Yinnon Hiller is the first young Israeli to appeal to the Israeli High Court for his human right not to serve in the military on the grounds of his pacifist beliefs and he is one of a fast-growing group of Israeli conscientious objectors.
At a hearing held in February 2002, the panel of judges decreed a second court injunction in favour of Yinnon. The first hearing, held six months earlier, ordered the state to present valid reasons why the military did not accept Yinnon's…
Peace News 2443 (Gender and militarism) began to open the door of a debate within the antimilitarist movement on activist responses to the changing military landscape. As western military forces adapt to new roles, how does that movement respond to the feminisation of the military, as seen in increasing numbers of women in the military, and in the deployment of armies in peace-keeping operations. How too, do we respond to the military's co-option of the traditional - and often…
It seems as though the French army has agreements with all the job centres in France. Every week you can find them in the career and studies information centres (CIO) even in small towns; their presence grows at every school career day and even more so at “le Salon des Etudiants” - a huge fair for companies and schools aimed at attracting students - which is held every year in most of the big French towns.
The army also run huge publicity campaigns on billboards, TV and in the…
As in other European countries, a new peace and anti-war movement emerged in Germany after the brutal terror attacks on New York and Washington and particularly after the start of the war on Afghanistan by US troops, supported by the British military, in October 2001.
And after the German government joined the war and provided troops, the activities of the anti-war and peace movement became a bit stronger again .
Reformism or opposing the system?Most peace and anti-war groups…
About a hundred years ago there was a significant debate in the international workers movement that continues to be relevant today. The discussion involved the connection between capitalism and militarism, the responsibility of the individual, conscientious objection, and striking against war.
It was a controversy between the German social-democrat Karl Liebknecht (1871-1919), a well-known personality in the international social-democratic movement, and the Dutch libertarian…
Roland Meighan is an acknowledged “educational heretic” for his view that mass compulsory schooling is an obsolete and counter-productive learning system which should be scrapped as soon as possible. His latest book, Natural Learning and the Natural Curriculum challenges the very essence of the education system today. It is a devastating critique-and rightly so.
Caroline Austin: In your latest book, Natural Learning, you quote Mark Twain, who “never allowed…
Technology has only become important to utopian proposals recently, but they have always depended on instrumentalist and rationalistic thinking. Plato's Republic, Tommaso Campanella's City of the Sun, and Thomas Moore's Utopia were all based on regimenting and bureaucratic ways of managing people.
We have to notice how these early utopias are incredibly authoritarian and, to our eyes, are really dystopias. Consciously created dystopias based on technologies…
Most radical thought and action about the environment could be described as “utopian”, since it envisages a radically different society with strongly sustainable development where the integrity of “natural” ecosystems is maintained.
Utopianism, popularly associated with a literary genre, is also a “state of mind” found in the constitutions, outlines or blueprints of any ideal republic. It always reflects existing social conflicts, and rejects existing society. The utopias of 1960s…
Harijan: You have said in your article in the Harijan of 15 July, under the caption “The Real Danger”, that Congressmen in general certainly do not know the kind of independence they want. Would you kindly give them a broad but comprehensive picture of the Independent India of your own conception? Gandhi: I do not know that I have not, from time to time, given my idea of Indian independence. Since, however, this question is part of a series, it is better to answer it even…
Oscar Wilde famously observed that he couldn't look at a map without it present among the nations, while Sir Thomas More invented the word with his 1516 treatise on the ideal society, compounding Greek words to mean not a place, literally nowhere.
The small matter of geographical non-existence didn't stop More however. In fact it was a prerequisite in his picturing of the perfect island community. And ever since that first named outing, utopia has spread across the world and beyond,…
During the Second World War, nuclear weapons were developed and used. Obviously they have no part in a utopia, but although these weapons can be taken apart, the materials used to make them will be left behind.
There are high-tech schemes to “zap” away these wastes, but they are enormously expensive and don't actually do the job. In addition, the huge volumes of radioactive wastes left from the manufacture of the weapons will present a threat of cancer for hundreds of thousands of…
It is important to note at the outset that my own intellectual and moral development was profoundly influenced by Martin Buber's writings. Buber's article “What is to be done” in Pointing the Way represents a milestone in the process of my ideological radicalisation. (Uri Davis, Crossing the border)
This, then, is a personal account of a critical Buber disciple. Buber did not live to witness the 1967 war and the cruelty and the violence of the Israeli occupation of…
This short workshop is intended to provide an opportunity to investigate our own utopias: "don't dream about your life, live your dreams".
There are many utopias and some people have written their ideas down and they have become quite well-known, such as Owen, Marx, Bakunin and "p m" (author of Bolo bolo). But everyone has a view of their own utopia and while some of our ideas are similar, in other things we differ. Often we know nothing at all about our dreams and our political…
Why is punishment inflicted? Most people don't even ask themselves that question. For them it is evident that prisons exist, cells in which those who have transgressed the penal laws of this society are locked-up, for weeks or months or even for years. They walk past these prisons, and are not disturbed by their existence.
Others, who have examined this question, find it easy to answer: a sense of justice, they say, demands repayment for injustice committed. Or they put forward the…
