Truth & Justice - The "Path to Peace"

by Ken Nichols O'Keefe

FOR THE RECORD: I side with those who are the victims of oppression and those who resist oppression. I have never liked bullies and yet the world before me is a bullies paradise. I see the West in general, especially American's, as the greatest of hypocrites. I feel genuine shame for our collective complicity with the rape and plunder carried out in our name. If the same crimes we continue to commit against others (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, bombing Southeast Asia, invading Panama, destroying Nicaragua and El Salvador, etc, etc, etc) were turned on us there would be rage and violence just as intense as that which we are witnessing in Palestine. Yet because it is dark skinned peoples in distant lands resisting our imperial rule, we simply call them "terrorists" and murder them at will.

Gandhi on the Palestine Conflict - 1936
"Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French...What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct...If they [the Jews] must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs... As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them. I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regard as an unacceptable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds." Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in "A Land of Two Peoples" ed. Mendes-Flohr.

I guess Gandhi was an "anti-semite as well." Hypocrisy is a luxury primarily for the West and it is the greatest hypocrite who speaks of peace while speaking of it alone. When talk lacks physical action, and therefore no remedy, it is more a means to pacify the conscience than it is to achieve peace. This world demands justice and in order to achieve that we must have action. There is no greater example of the power in this philosophy in action than Mahatma Gandhi, a skinny little man who defeated perhaps the "greatest" empire the world had ever known, until of course the arrival of the American empire that replaced it.

GANDHI ON FAITH
"Faith gains in strength only when people are willing to lay down their lives for it....Faith is not like a delicate flower which would wither away....Robust faith in oneself and brave trust of the opponent, so-called or real, is the best safeguard....A living faith cannot be manufactured by the rule of [the] majority....What is faith if it is not translated into action?...Faith is not imparted like secular subjects. It is given through the language of the heart....Every living faith must have within itself the power of rejuvenation if it is to live. Just as the body cannot exist without blood, so the soul needs matchless and pure strength of faith....My effort should never be to undermine another's faith but to make him a better follower of his own faith....Even as a tree has a single trunk but many branches and leaves, there is one religion-- human religion--but any number of faiths."

MALCOLM X ON REVOLUTIONMALCOLM X ON REVOLUTION
"It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a radical conflict of black against white or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter."

ALBERT EINSTEIN ON WAR
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal chord would suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn by shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak is nothing more than an act of murder."

ANNE FRANK ON HUMANITY
"It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."

NOAM CHOMSKY ON HUMANISM
"People who believe in a better way of life know that the way we live now is criminal. Denial of freedoms, death by starvation and exploitation, denigration of people's capabilities everywhere. If you see that these outcomes are socially produced, then you understand that every person who dies as a result was effectively murdered. Once you accept the possibility of attaining a humanist alternative, you have to be a terrible hypocrite, coward or cynic to live passively with the contrast between what is and what could be."

JANE GOODALL ON INDIVIDUALISM
"Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference."

JACQUES COUSTEAU ON THE OCEANS
"If human civilization is going to invade the waters of the earth than let it be first of al to carry a message of respect - respect for all life."

ALBERT SCHWEITZER ON INSPIRATION
"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit."

14TH DALAI LAMA OF TIBET ON IGNORANCE
"I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion, and elimination of ignorance, selfishness, and greed."

PAUL WATSON ON BEING WHO YOU ARE
"Over the last two and a half decades, I myself have been called many things. The capitalists have called me a communist, and the communists and socialists have called me a capitalist imperialist. I have in fact been called a cultural imperialist, an ethnocentric imperialist, an elitist, a fascist, an anarchist, an atheist, an alien, a faggot, and a homophobe. I've been condemned as a pacifist, an eco-terrorist, a pirate, a criminal, a monkey-wrencher, and a luddite. Oh yes, I am also a racist, a bigot, and a sexist. I've been called a murderer although I can't recall ever killing anyone. I've been called a smuggler, a killer of baby seals, an oil polluter, a hypocrite, and of course an asshole, jerk, creep, nutcase, moran, jackass, yada, yada yada."

 

KEN NICHOLS O'KEEFE ON MYSELF
"I am merely the result of influence by those I respect most, when I fall short of them, it will not have been for lack of trying."

Sign the "World Peace Now - Not With Bush" Petition authored by Ken Nichols O'Keefe by clicking on the above link