By Riccardo Petrella*
The current rulers (political, economic and socio-technocratic…) are mentally and emotionally incapable of wanting to change “their” power system. What motivates them is the perennialization and expansion of their security and domination. That is why even diplomacy is powerless.
For them, war, due in part to the tremendous acceleration and explosion of technological change, especially Artificial Intelligence, is increasingly the key tool for survival and their domination It is, however, a solution that does not solve problems, as evidenced by the temptation or nuclear threat peeping into the heads of the belligerents of the ongoing global war in Ukraine. Imbued to the point of intoxication with the idea that peace is imposed only by force, they are already ready for a new war which, according to them, should ensure for a time the absence of war within the framework of a new, planetary phase of imperial domination.
Given also the fact that the opposition forces against the system remain or have become too scattered and disunited again after the brief and exciting phase of the World Social Forum, only forces within the system, culturally, socially and ethically powerful but carrying alternative visions and projects, will be able today to trigger possible short-term changes such as imposing the truce in Ukraine.
In my opinion, it is necessary for influential people today – such as Nobel laureates (all disciplines included, but especially the Nobel Peace Laureates), the UN Secretary General, the Pope and his counterparts from religious and moral denominations, and thinkers/women globally esteemed for their credibility and humanity – to come together by disassociating themselves from the system and make an act of dissent against the Russians, Americans and NATO Europeans who are the main authors of the ongoing destruction. They must together decide to come together, by invitation or under the chairmanship of the UN Secretary, without asking permission from others. Not to make yet another appeal but to make an act of commitment intended also to foster a worldwide mobilization of peaceful civic disobedience. An affirmation of liberation of the Earth’s inhabitants and other living beings on the planet from global war and the dominant destroyers of life on the Planet.
It would involve a commitment on their part to promote new rules of world institutions and new socioeconomic horizons by adopting a planetary Declaration of Earth’s Rights to PEACE and Justice and intended for the world and the great nebula of civil society associations and movements.
The broad outlines of the declaration of commitment should/could be as follows:
We, human beings, declare that:
1.- war is illegal and continuing it in Ukraine and elsewhere is a criminal act. We pledge to end it, to act for an immediate ceasefire,
2.-the production and use of all kinds of weapons, including nuclear and bacteriological ones, are illegal. States that do not ratify the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty approved by the UN General Assembly, or obstruct its implementation, put themselves outside international law,
3.- armed peace is a nonsense, the international community must abandon the war principle “si vis pacem para bellum”,
4.- states must cease military expenditures which we now consider illegitimate,” and therefore a theft of peoples’ resources,
5.- a gigantic positive work, must be carried out by the Inhabitants of the earth of demilitarization of human and social relations, and reconversion of the monstrous military technological, economic industrial and cultural world machine,
6.- the goal is to begin to transform from tomorrow morning our global economies of war, producing tools and means of robbery and squandering of natural and human resources for the benefit of the few, into “local” economies of prosperity in interdependence, cooperation and solidarity, thanks also to new technologies. put at the service of all. The real” transition” that matters is not the “ecological”‘ one (i.e., promoting the “green, for nature” capitalist market economy), nor that of the digital transition (building a global authoritarian regime under GAFAM protection…). But the transformation of a society of war and exclusions into a society of peace, sharing and common welfare,
7.- we commit ourselves to no longer let the dominant, illegitimate, destroy our lives, our territories, our past solely in the name of their power and money (disguised behind the hypocritical mystification of “national” security and independence).
All this will seem pure fantasy,and it is true that it will be difficult for the above-mentioned forces to come together with such “rebellious” intentions and objectives But, in the face of the ongoing and announced disasters, unique in the history of Humanity in terms of amplitude, size and drama, realistic solutions prove ineffective, On the contrary, the “games” orchestrated by the dominants prove to be pure acts of the absurd: the dominants continue to believe and impose on the world that there will be THE PEACE only with the defeat and destruction of the enemy !!!
The producers of this absurdity cannot be allowed to “govern” the becoming of all of us, the living beings of the Earth. Brussels, January 1, 2023.
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*Riccardo Petrella, professor emeritus, University of Leuven (B)