If there is war where you live, there can be only 3 reasons:
1. You live on oil or minerals
2. You live on a trade route or on a frontier
3. You live on agricultural land
Other explanations seek to make you join the war.
https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/war-theft-takeover-ukraine-agricultural-land
L'amour n'est jamais "payé en retour", toujours asymétrique, sinon ça ne serait pas de l'amour, mais aussi toujours réciproque, aussi sûr que la respiration n'existe que lorsqu'il y a de l'air.
Speech of Roger Waters at the United Nations, 8 February 2023
https://www.pressenza.com/2023/02/roger-waters-full-speech-at-the-un-security-council/
https://worldbeyondwar.org/fr/vidéo-roger-waters-discours-des-nations-unies/
Roger Waters, co-founder of
Pink Floyd, addressed the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting
today, Wednesday 8, 2023 in New York.
Madame/Mr President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen.
I feel profoundly honoured to be afforded this singular
opportunity to brief your excellencies today. With your forbearance, I shall
endeavour to express what I believe to be the feelings of countless of our
brothers and sisters all over the world, both here in NY and across the seas. I
shall invite them into these hallowed halls to have their say.
We are here to consider possibilities for peace in war-torn
Ukraine, especially in light of the increasing volume of weapons arriving in
that unhappy country. Every morning when I sit down at my laptop, I think of
our brothers and sisters, in Ukraine and elsewhere, who, through no fault of
their own find themselves in dire and often deadly circumstances. Over there,
in Ukraine they may be soldiers facing another deadly day at the front, or they
may be mothers or fathers facing the awful question how can I feed my child
today, or they may be civilians knowing that today the lights will go out, for
sure, as they always do in war zones, knowing that there is no fresh water,
that there is no fuel for the stove, no blanket, just barbed wire and watch
towers and walls and enmity. Or, they may be over here, in a big rich city like
NY, here brothers and sisters can still find themselves in dire straights.
Maybe, somehow, however hard they worked all their lives, they lost their
footing on the slippery tilting deck of the neo-liberal capitalist ship we call
life in the city and fell overboard to end up drowning.. Maybe they got sick,
or maybe they took out a student loan, maybe they missed a payment, the margins
are slim, who knows, but now they live on the street in a pile of cardboard,
maybe even within sight of this United Nations building. Anyway, wherever they
are, all over the world, war zone or not, together they make up a majority, a
voiceless majority. Today I shall endeavor to speak for them.
We the people wish to live. We wish to live in peace in
conditions of parity that give us the real opportunity to look after ourselves
and our loved ones. We are hard workers and we are ready to work hard. All we
need is a fair crack of the whip. Maybe that’s an unfortunate choice of idiom,
after five hundred years of imperialism, colonialism, and slavery.
Anyway Please help us.
To help us you may have to consider our predicament, and to
do so you may have to take your eye off the ball for a moment, to put your own
goals momentarily to one side. What are your goals by the way? And here maybe I
direct my inquiries more to the five permanent members of this Council. What
are your goals? What is in the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Bigger
profits for war industries? More power globally? A bigger share of the global
cake? Is mother earth a cake to be gobbled up? Does not a bigger share of the
cake mean less for everyone else? What if today, in this place of safety, we
were to look in another direction, to look at our capacity for empathy for
instance, to put ourselves in other’s shoes, like, right now, for instance, the
shoes of that chap on the other side of this room, or even the shoes of the
voiceless majority, if they have any shoes that is.
The Voiceless Majority is concerned that your wars, yes your
wars, for these perpetual wars are not of our choosing, that your wars will
destroy the planet that is our home, and along with every other living thing we
will be sacrificed on the altar of two things, profits from the war to line the
pockets of the very, very, few and the hegemonic march of some empire or other
towards unipolar world domination. Please reassure us that that is not your
vision for there is no good outcome down that road. That road leads only to
disaster, everyone on that road has a red button in their briefcase and the
further we go down that road the closer the itchy fingers get to that red
button and the closer we all get to Armageddon. Look across the room, at this
level we’re all wearing the same shoes.
So back to Ukraine. The invasion of Ukraine by The Russian
Federation was illegal. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms. Also, The
Russian invasion of Ukraine was not “unprovoked”, so I also condemn the
provokateurs in the strongest possible terms. There, that’s got that out of the
way.
When I wrote this speech yesterday, I included an observation
that the power of veto in this council only lay in the hands of its permanent
members, I was concerned that that was was undemocratic and rendered This
Council toothless…. This morning I had a revelation……..TOOTHLESS! maybe
toothless is in some ways a good thing……..If this is a toothless chamber……..I
can open my big mouth on behalf of the voiceless without getting my head bitten
off……. How cool is that. I read in the paper this morning, some anonymous
diplomat quoted as saying, “Roger Waters! To address the Security Council?
Whatever next?….. Mr Bean! Hwah! Hwah! Hwah! For those of you who don’t know,
Mr Bean is an ineffectual character in an English comedy show on TV. So it’s a
penny to a pound the anonymous diplomat is an Englishman, Hwah! hwah! hwah! To
you too Sir! Ok, I think it’s time to introduce my mother, Mary Duncan Waters,
she was a big influence on me, she was a school teacher, I say was, she’s been
dead for fifteen years. My father, Eric Fletcher Waters, was a big influence on
me too, he too is dead, he was killed on the 18th of February 1944 at Aprilia
near The Anzio Bridgehead in Italy, when I was only five months old, so I know
something about war and loss. Anyway back to my Mum. When I was about thirteen
I was struggling with some knotty adolescent problem or other trying to decide
what to do, it doesn’t matter what it was, I can’t remember anyway, but my mum
sat me down and said, “Listen, you’re going to be faced with many knotty
problems during your life and when you are here’s my advice, read, read, read
find out everything you can about whatever it is, look at it from all sides,
all angles, listen to all opinions, especially ones you don’t agree with,
research it thoroughly, when you’ve done that you will have done all the heavy
lifting and the next bit is easy, “Is it? Ok mum what’s the easy bit?”…….”Oh,
the easy bit is, you just do the right thing.“ Hmm!
So speaking of doing the right thing brings me to human
rights.
We the people, want universal human rights for all our
brothers and sisters all over the world irrespective of their ethnicity,
religion or nationality. To be clear, that would include but would not be
limited to the right to life and property under the law for, for instance,
Ukrainians, and for instance Palestinians. Yup, let that sink in. And obviously
for all the rest of us. One of the problems with wars is that in a war zone or
anywhere where the people live under military occupation, there is no recourse
to the law, there are no human rights.
Today our brief is the possibility of peace in the Ukraine,
with special reference to the arming of the Kiev regime by third parties.
I’m running out of time so,
What do the Voiceless millions have to say?
They say
Thank you for hearing us today
We are the many who do not share in the profits of the war
industry.
We do not willingly raise our sons or daughters
To provide fodder for your cannons.
In our opinion
The only sensible course of action today
Is to call for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine.
No ifs, no buts, no ands.
Not one more Ukrainian or Russian life is to be spent.
Not one.
They are all precious in our eyes.
So, the time has come to speak truth to power. You all
remember the story of the Emperor’s new clothes? Of course you do. Well the
leaders of your respective Empires stand, in one degree or another, naked
before us. We have a message for them. It is a message from all the refugees in
all the camps, a message from all the slums and favelas, a message from all the
homeless, on all the cold streets, from all the earthquakes and floods, on
earth. It is also a message from all the people, not quite starving but
wondering how on earth to make the pittance they earn, meet the cost of a roof
over their head and food for their families. My mother country England is,
thank god, an Empire no more, but in that country now, there is a new catch
phrase “Eat or Heat?” you can’t do both. It’s a cry echoing round the whole of
Europe.
Apparently, the only thing the Powers that Be think we can
all afford is perpetual war. How crazy is that?
So, from the four billion or so brothers and sisters in this
Voiceless Majority who together with the millions in the international anti-war
movement represent a huge constituency, enough is enough! We demand change.
President Biden, President Putin, President Zelenski,
USA, NATO, RUSSIA, THE EU, ALL OF YOU.
PLEASE CHANGE COURSE NOW,
AGREE TO A CEASEFIRE IN UKRAINE TODAY.
That, of course, will only be the starting point. But
everything extrapolates from that starting point. Imagine the collective global
sigh of relief. The outpouring of joy. The international joining of voices in
harmony singing an anthem to peace! John Lennon pumping the air with his fist
from the grave. We have finally been heard in the corridors of power. The
bullies in the schoolyard have agreed to stop playing nuclear chicken. We’re
not all going to die in a nuclear holocaust after all. At least not today. The
powers that be have been persuaded to drop the arms race and perpetual war as
their accepted modus operandum. We can stop squandering all our precious
resources on war. We can feed our children, we can keep them warm. We may even
learn to cooperate with all our brothers and sisters and even save our
beautiful planet home from destruction. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Your Excellencies,
I thank you for your forbearance.
Roger Waters
In the face of the wave of misinformation and emotionally charged arguments that have overwhelmed Western societies and their followers in various parts of the world, it was difficult to find a rational response, and one was tempted to restrict their opinions and advices to themselves.
However, when the decision was taken worldwide to vaccinate children, at the end of 2021, this self-centered attitude was not viable anymore. Children are different.
I was, literally speaking, the only person in my children's entire environment, who was opposed to their covid vaccination. The other elders in our family, in their extended family, their teachers, their classmates, all were already vaccinated and asking my children what they were waiting for, with an air of responsibility and moral superiority.
My authority and credibility as a father was reduced to zero. Just speaking was useless.
When I realised, because she was still in bed late in the morning, that one of my daughter had taken the day before one shot of covaxin at a vaccination camp organised in her school - exceptionally open for vaccination, even as it was still closed for teaching - and furthermore, when I realised that I was the only person whom she kept in the dark, my world collapsed. I decided to to do what I should have done much before:
Follow the scientific method.
As my daughter was in bed for 3 days, too weak to get up, I asked her, on the 3rd day when she was better, to collect covid, vaccination and population data from 3 government websites:
1) Cowin Portal:
https://www.cowin.gov.in/
2) State-Wise Covid Status:
https://www.mygov.in/corona-data/covid19-statewise-status/
3) Census of India:
https://censusindia.gov.in/census.website/
She took screenshots of each state number of vaccinations (1 and 2 doses) from the Cowin dashboard, and wrote down the figures in an excel sheet. She then wrote the number of covid cases and covid deaths of each state, in a different column, as per the State-wise Covid Status. In the next column she wrote the population of each state, as per the Census.
Then, dividing the number of vaccinations and number of cases and deaths by the population of each state, she obtained the numbers per capita.
She then sorted the columns by number of 1st dose per capita, and put the result in an x-y graph.
The result is below:
I then asked my daughter if she could see in this graph any relation between the number of vaccinations and the number of deaths. She was hesitant. It was not very clear, she said. There were very high variations between states. But there was a slight correlation: Higher the number of doses, higher the number of deaths. I then asked her, is it clear from the government data that vaccinations reduce the number of deaths? She said, "No. It is rather the opposite".
By the time she reached this conclusion, after 4 hours of tedious work, her younger brother and elder sister had joined us and were also observing the data.
She decided to not go to school for the second dose. She would return to school only when the classes would restart. Her brother and sister also decided to not go to school get their shot. Their main worry was what to tell to their friends and to their teachers. But they felt confident they would be able to say something and to face them.
I am not sure what had the more influence, my daughter experiencing bad side effects (for more than a week) or assembling and studying government data. But to this day, my kids are the only ones in their entire school to not have been vaccinated.
It took 4 hours of boring, tedious clerical job: making screenshots, saving them in folders, writing the values in the excel sheet.
4 hours. The speed of science?
Links to my daughter's files:
One thing is guaranteed: a new gold rush of “defense” spending is a disaster in the making for all of us not in that complex.
Guerre d'Ukraine
Une lettre
ouverte demande à Scholz d'arrêter les livraisons d'armes à l'Ukraine
Une lettre
ouverte signée par Daniela Dahn et Konstantin Wecker appelle à l'arrêt des
livraisons d'armes à l'Ukraine.
BLZ/kuri, 22
avril 2022 - 11h21
Compte tenu de la
pression croissante exercée sur le chancelier Olaf Scholz pour répondre à la
demande de livraison d'armes lourdes à l'Ukraine, un groupe de personnalités de
la science, de la politique, de la culture et d'autres domaines de la société
civile ont écrit une lettre ouverte au chancelier.
Dans ce document,
ils ont appelé à l'arrêt des livraisons d'armes aux troupes ukrainiennes et à
encourager le gouvernement de Kiev à mettre fin à la résistance militaire
contre les promesses de négociations sur un cessez-le-feu et une solution
politique.
Les soussignés
critiquent le fait que l'Allemagne et d'autres pays de l'OTAN se sont érigés en
belligérants en fournissant des armes et mettent en garde contre une escalade
nucléaire.
Les livraisons
d'armes et le soutien militaire de l'OTAN prolongeraient la guerre et
rendraient une solution diplomatique très éloignée. Indépendamment du succès,
le prix d'une résistance militaire prolongée serait plus de villes et de
villages détruits et plus de victimes parmi la population ukrainienne.
Par leur
initiative, les signataires veulent également envoyer un signal aux membres du
Bundestag, qui devraient discuter de nouvelles livraisons d'armes à l'Ukraine
dans la semaine à venir. Voici le texte intégral de la lettre ouverte.
Cher Chancelier
Scholz,
nous sommes des
gens d'origines, d'attitudes politiques et de positions différentes vis-à-vis
de la politique de l'OTAN, de la Russie et du gouvernement fédéral. Nous
condamnons tous profondément cette guerre injustifiable menée par la Russie en
Ukraine. Nous sommes unis pour mettre en garde contre une escalade
incontrôlable de la guerre aux conséquences imprévisibles pour le monde entier
et pour nous opposer à une prolongation de la guerre et des effusions de sang
avec des livraisons d'armes.
En fournissant
des armes, l'Allemagne et d'autres pays de l'OTAN se sont, de facto, érigés en
partie belligérante. Ainsi, l'Ukraine est également devenue le champ de
bataille du conflit entre l'OTAN et la Russie sur l'ordre sécuritaire en
Europe, qui s'intensifie depuis des années.
Cette guerre
brutale au cœur de l'Europe se déroule aux dépens du peuple ukrainien. Dans le
même temps, la guerre économique qui a maintenant été déclenchée met en péril
l'approvisionnement en personnes en Russie et dans de nombreux pays pauvres à
travers le monde.
Les rapports sur
les crimes de guerre s'accumulent. Bien que difficile à vérifier dans les
conditions qui prévalent, on peut supposer que dans cette guerre, comme dans
d'autres avant elle, des atrocités seront commises et que la brutalité
augmentera avec sa durée. Une raison de plus pour en finir rapidement.
La guerre recèle
un véritable danger d'escalade et d'escalade militaire qui ne peut plus être
maîtrisée - semblable à celle de la Première Guerre mondiale. Des lignes rouges
sont tracées, qui sont ensuite franchies par les acteurs et les joueurs des
deux côtés, et la spirale continue un pas de plus. Si des personnes
responsables comme vous, cher Monsieur le Chancelier fédéral, n'arrêtent pas ce
développement, la fin sera une autre grande guerre. Seulement cette fois avec
des armes nucléaires, une dévastation généralisée et la fin de la civilisation
humaine. Eviter de plus en plus de victimes, de destructions et une nouvelle
escalade dangereuse doit donc avoir la priorité absolue.
Malgré les
rapports de succès de l'armée ukrainienne entre-temps : elle est bien
inférieure à l'armée russe et a peu de chances de gagner cette guerre. Le prix
d'une résistance militaire prolongée, quel que soit son succès éventuel, sera
davantage de villes et de villages détruits et davantage de victimes parmi la
population ukrainienne. Les livraisons d'armes et le soutien militaire de
l'OTAN prolongent la guerre et rendent la solution diplomatique encore plus
lointaine.
Il est juste de
demander « A bas les armes ! » principalement à la partie russe. Mais en même
temps, de nouvelles mesures doivent être prises pour mettre fin au plus tôt
possible aux effusions de sang et aux déplacements de population.
Aussi amer qu'il
soit de se retirer de la violence qui viole le droit international, c'est la
seule alternative réaliste et humaine à une guerre longue et épuisante. La
première étape, et la plus importante, serait d'arrêter toutes les livraisons
d'armes à l'Ukraine, combinées à un cessez-le-feu immédiat à négocier.
Nous appelons
donc le gouvernement allemand, l'UE et les pays de l'OTAN à cesser de fournir
des armes aux troupes ukrainiennes et à encourager le gouvernement de Kiev à
mettre fin à la résistance militaire - contre la promesse de négociations parle
d'un cessez-le-feu et d'une solution politique - pour en finir. Les offres à
Moscou déjà discutées par le président Zelenskyi - éventuelle neutralité,
accord sur la reconnaissance de la Crimée et référendums sur le futur statut
des républiques du Donbass - offrent une réelle chance de le faire.
Les négociations
sur le retrait rapide des troupes russes et la restauration de l'intégrité
territoriale de l'Ukraine doivent être soutenues par les propres propositions
des pays de l'OTAN concernant les intérêts de sécurité légitimes de la Russie
et de ses pays voisins.
Afin d'arrêter le
plus rapidement possible de nouvelles destructions massives des villes et
d'accélérer les négociations de cessez-le-feu, le gouvernement fédéral devrait
suggérer que les villes actuellement assiégées, les plus menacées et jusqu'à
présent largement épargnées, telles que Kiev, Kharkiv et Odessa, deviennent
"villes non défendues", le Premier Protocole additionnel à la
Convention de Genève de 1949. Grâce au concept déjà défini dans la Convention
de La Haye sur la guerre terrestre, de nombreuses villes ont pu empêcher leur
dévastation pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale.
La logique de
guerre dominante doit être remplacée par une logique de paix courageuse et une
nouvelle architecture de paix européenne et mondiale doit être créée, incluant
la Russie et la Chine. Notre pays ne doit pas rester sur la touche, mais doit
jouer un rôle actif.
Sincèrement,
Dr PD Johannes M.
Becker, politologue, ancien directeur général du Center for
Recherche sur les
conflits à Marburg
Daniela Dahn,
journaliste, écrivain et publiciste, membre du PEN
docteur Rolf
Gössner, avocat et publiciste, Ligue internationale des droits de l'homme
Jürgen Grässlin,
porte-parole fédéral DFG-VK et Aktion Aufschrei ‒ Arrêtez le commerce des armes
!
Joachim
Guilliard, publiciste
docteur Luc
Jochimsen, journaliste, rédacteur TV, député 2005-2013
Christoph Kramer, chirurgien, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War IPPNW (section allemande)
Prof. Dr. Karin
Kulow, politologue
docteur Helmut
Lohrer, docteur, conseiller international, IPPNW (section allemande)
Prof. Dr. Mohssen
Massarrat, politologue et économiste
docteur Hans
Misselwitz, Commission des valeurs fondamentales du SPD
Ruth Misselwitz,
théologienne protestante, ancienne présidente d'Action Réconciliation
services de paix
Prof. Dr. Norman
Paech , expert en droit international, ancien membre du Bundestag allemand
Prof. Dr. Werner
Ruf, politologue et sociologue
Prof. Dr. Gert
Sommer, psychologue, ancien membre du conseil d'administration du Center for
Recherche sur les
conflits à Marburg
Hans Christoph
Graf von Sponeck, ancien secrétaire général adjoint de l'ONU
docteur Antje
Vollmer, ancienne vice-présidente du Bundestag allemand
Konstantin
Wecker, musicien, compositeur et auteur
https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesellschaft/offener-brief-fordert-von-scholz-stopp-der-waffenlieferungen-an-die-ukraine-li.223704
