Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Sihem Bensedrine: I am a defender of human rights I take my choice for a pacifistic fight but I understand that in some situations this choice do not suffice in a situation of the occupation of a countries territory for example. It is clear that the pacifistic fight is absolutely necessairy but it is also insufficant, it its sometimes the proof of powerlessness if it do not accompanied by an armed struggle reponding to an armed aggression and which is able to compensate this armed aggression. Unfortunately something both of them are useful. I prefer the pacifistic fight everytime the situation justifies it, demands it, but I understand at the same time that in certain situations, in the case of Palestine for example, armed resistence is necessairy to fight back an armed aggression. Because today as we consider the situation of the Palestinian gouvernement, of the Palestinian parliament which has been democratically elected, in which situation do they are? They are hostages of an aggressive country, Israel, and nobody is talking about these hostages, it has been forgotten that some members of parliament have been hijacked and that is not shocking for nobody. We talked about it on the first day later it has been forgotten whereas on the other side there is a hoopla about the hijacked israelien soldiers. And there is exactly the failure of a the pacifistic fight as it do not suffices all time to make your voice heard and it is perhaps the voice of armed struggle which enforces a voice of resistance even if it hopes to be pacifistic.

by Sihem Bensedrine

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Sima Wali: War creates more war. It does not solve the problems of humanity. It creates new problems. We have come to the realization that war does not benefit anyone. The cost of war then is, in comparison to social causes, far greater. As it is said, the costliest rebuilding is far cheaper than the cheapest war. When you look at Afghanistan, you see corruption is rampant, and this is caused by war, which did not exist before rebuilding. And there is absolutely very little rebuilding taking place right now. The corrupt Afghans are empowered; and this, of course, leaves the women and their children out of the process. The common Afghans who are suffering they don't have access to society’s resources. We have to change the thinking of the box, or in the same model, in order to solve our solutions. As Armat Levins and Paul Hawkins has said in their book, when you look at the -- when you ask a politician, “give me a list of the --” – actually, first ask an ecologist what the list of environmentally stressed or over-populated countries are. Then the environmentalist will say, for example, Burundi, Iraq, Madagascar, Mongolia, Nepal, the Solomon Islands and plus some others. When you ask the politician the same question, he names the same countries where state government has already been worn down or has collapsed or is now at the risk of collapsing or has been wrecked by civil wars. We first worlders have to send, therefore, the argument that is used. We have to send troops to those countries because they blame their governments, and we have to stop them from emigrating to ours. We have nothing, they kill each other, they start civil wars. As the predictors of modern state failures, i.e. revolutions, violent regime, change, collapse of authority, or genocide, such as high infant mortality, rapid population growth, or population without job prospects, young unemployed men -- is an environment which is ripe to recruit militias into resistance movements. This is not the way to solve our problems. We need to come to an understanding that we need to [audio ends]

by Sima Wali

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Simon Retallack: Well, I would argue that I think the basis of any resistance, in the first instance at least, should be nonviolent; and I think there are examples in history, clearly, of the successful deployment of nonviolent resistance notably, of course, by Mahatma Gandhi in India against the rule of the British. At the time people, I think, thought he was unrealistic to hope to achieve the removal of the British in this way, but he proved to be successful. He paid a personal price; he was locked up as were others of his colleagues but in the end he was successful. And I think there are choices we can make about how we resist. At the moment, the problem is that resistance isn’t even, or protest isn’t even, on the radar screen for people on whose radar screen it should be. I think that’s got to be the starting point actually: to get people to care, to get people that can make a difference and to stand up for themselves; and where they can, use the democratic process to affect change, absolutely first and foremost. And a lot of people don’t, and it’s extraordinary that people fought in the past for the right to vote and now huge proportions of our populations don’t exercise that right; and they ought to, particularly the weak and the marginalized, the poor. I mean I can understand why they may not; they don’t feel there’s a choice but it becomes a self-fulfilling problem if they don’t; and it’s not just them, of course. There’s too much cynicism. I can understand, again, why there is; but I think beyond that there needs to be greater articulation of concern by populations in what whatever way they can peacefully through the media and in their own communities to spread the word and from that we need to see new movements built with civil society at the forefront to put pressure on governments to do the right thing for people and the planet .

by Simon Retallack

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Sohrab Mahdavi: I think the last question is, biodiversity of resistance is the most appropriate answer to the previous questions. I think I was meant to be an answer to the previous questions in the sense that there is no one way of responding to domination. There are many ways of doing it and nothing can be rejected and nothing can be accepted wholly, but certainly that can be rejected including violence.

by Sohrab Mahdavi

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Song Kosal:

by Song Kosal

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Steve Earle: I think within the political system that we live in I think rejecting wholesale at least in some semblance of a democracy rejecting the political system that exists where you live is surrendering the playing field. That being said, I think it's important to vote, to stay involved, to stay informed. I think there are times when that's not enough and you have to get out into the street. I think in times like we are living in now, times of crises, it's really, really important that we take to heart our responsibility in a democracy to make ourselves heard. Not to be concerned any more than we have to be about what people are going to think of us and send social pressures but to take it to heart that living in a democracy means being free to say absolutely anything that you want to say. And people being too passive and too docile and assuming democracy will take care of itself has us in a lot of the trouble that we're in today.

by Steve Earle

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Sulak Sivaraksa: It is an honor to reply to Arundhati Roy’s. I have been admiring her so much. And of course with non-violent resistance and armed struggle, we should go to non-violent resistance, obviously. Not only do we follow Gandhi, I feel that Gandhi’s way of life, the way he did it is still relevant. It’s not old fashioned at all. Unfortunately, Gandhi had been betrayed by Nehru, and all of the Indian government; and I hope Ms. Roy will use Gandhi’s model, resisting Indian government, which unfortunately now follow the American empire. Resist it by using non-violent resistance. I think this will be effective. And we need new leadership, particularly women leadership, with humility, with spirituality. Indeed, we need biodiversity of resistance, too.

by Sulak Sivaraksa

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Susan George: The right thing to do is not allow oneself to be wiped out or allow one’s family to be wiped out, or indeed allow one’s people to be wiped out. So, I think that the response really depends more on the attacker than on the person who is being attacked. The Vietnamese, for example, when they were being attacked by the United States, they had a bio-diversity of resistance. The entire society was organized from top to bottom. Part of it was military, part of it was civilian resistance, and part of it was a very effective intelligence service. But, whatever the means of resistance the goal was the same, the goal was to stop the American war against them. So, I don’t really know how to answer this question, because I think it’s a -- non-violent resistance is, of course, the course that I would follow and that I recommend in all normal situations, where one is not being physically attacked, and that survival is at stake and elimination is the goal. In most normal circumstances one can try civil disobedience and non-violent resistance, and resistance is the point there, and many people will think of good ways to do it, and good ways that are media friendly, and ways that can shame and humiliate the attacker. But, in more serious situations where there is a genuine threat of annihilation, either of oneself, one’s family, one’s community, one’s nation, then the only answer is of course what Arundhati Roy calls with her usual genius, the bio-diversity of resistance. An imagination devoted to protecting oneself through whatever means possible and through not allowing the attacker to gain the upper hand, either militarily, physically, morally, intellectually. And, this is very difficult to do, but we have had some examples where it has been done brilliantly. The ANC is another example of, Nelson Mandela’s struggle against apartheid is another brilliant example of a bio-diversity of resistance. The most heroic struggles are probably the most bio-diverse, just as the most resilient natural systems are the ones that have the most diversity. So, there is a good analogy there, resilience of natural systems, resilience of human systems.

by Susan George

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Swami Pragyapad: In history, every moment requires a resistance in nature, whether it was violent or non-violent. Sooner or later, there were organizations against which resistance grew up. And this is the nature of life. Resistance turns into acceptance. Again turns into resistance and again turns into acceptance. This is the cycle, which is happening in life. And if we really need to, If we really feel that we need to resist, I would recommend a non-violent resistance to be more powerful than violent resistance. Being familiar, you are very well aware that it is only the non-violence of Mahatma Gandhi which could uproot an empire as powerful as Britain. In the first place, we need to understand resistance and acceptance happen in life as a cycle. If only we need to resist, then we [can go for it].

by Swami Pragyapad

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Sydney Possuelo: Well. I am for a non-violant resistance. I am for principles of great persons, for the civil resistance of Torró, the rebel of the Concorde, with no arms. I believe that each human being has the capacity to change the world. We should not abandon this dream of changing things. If we all join us then perhaps we could do a lot of things when the sum of the feelings is to be non-violent and to understand and comprehend others. To understand the feelings that others are subordinated and that achieve us and that hurt us. Only throught this comprehension we can develop non-violent attitudes. I truly believe in non-violence and in a pacific attitude that should exist. I hope that we can develop non-violence in order to counter and to transform, not to counter, to transform the world in this desired world that we all want to have. I think that we need a biodiversity for the proper human balance. A biodiversity, a diversity of all things. Differences keep us in balance and make the world more beautiful, more coloured and capable to be tolerated. Because in this beauty exists the human being which uglifies a little bit the earth. We have to improve us a lot for a perfect balance. If an earthworm could speak, then he would not consider man as a good thing. This tiny little thing that we catch, kill and for which we develop pesticides, and if all those things could speak then they wouldn’t tell good things about us.

by Sydney Possuelo

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Tamas St. Auby: Only Ahinsa – the basic word of Mahatma Ghandi – only Ahinsa, the passive, non-violent resistance between then the disobedience and strike is acceptable and more or less effective.

by Tamas St. Auby

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Tania Bruguera: I think that, again, I don´t think that there is one single solution for everything. I think that it depends on the situation; I believe in the armed struggle, in the armed struggle always has to[inaudible] blood [inaudible] way that there will be dead persons, the armed struggle is a category, is a degree of violence. I think that what they need are different degrees of violence, it seems to me that at this moment there are very few alternatives if there is or the peaceful resistance [inaudible] or the armed struggle there are other degrees of resistance and it seems to me that the interesting thing would be being able to have more and more alternatives of resistance which are not only the traditional alternatives, it would not only be one [inaudible] black or white but that there is a whole range of crisis, a whole range of different degrees of political, ideological resistance which are like a kind of means, of resorts which you can´t take, of a kind of archives, let´s say, where you could choose what is that comes better at which moment. I think that there are some places where the peaceful resistance has led to anything, some places where it has led to anything, some places where the peaceful resistance what it has done is perpetuating certain ..., certain government. It seems to me that it´s maybe the most honourable version in the sense of that it´s more humane, that it´s a bit creation of dialogue etc., but it seems to me that it´s sometimes not effective, sometimes I think that there has [inaudible] the armed struggle as a way of demonstrating the degree of necessity which can [inaudible] for the change, but well, it would be of course always better to try not to come to this. I think that the effective way would be trying to look for the largest quantity of possible ways of dialoguing, the largest quantity of possible ways of understanding what is happening and after all more than anything of planning what you are thinking and planning of the other [inaudible] so that this person can see and understand what it is that they are doing, how the other one is feeling what the other one is doing that it seems to me that many of these things happen because of problems of lack of communication, because of problems of political desire of course, of desire [inaudible] they have the repression as their way of declaring themselves but also often I think that certain reforms can be obtained if a kind of dialogue is obtained in which the person can understand how they affect the people what they are doing. And well, if this does not work then you would have to look for other manifestations, other ways of dialoguing.

by Tania Bruguera

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Tavis Smiley: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote a book called “Where Do We Go from Here?” Where do we go from here? And that’s what I hear in this question. Where do we go from here? And at the risk of sounding stale, the answer to where we go from here is love. We have tried everything else. When you’ve tried everything else and everything else has failed, try love. I’d rather have—well, how about I put this? When you look at the greats—look at the greats that have come through our society and come through our world and what you find is a common thing amongst all of them: respect for the humanity and the dignity of others. Respect for the humanity and dignity of everyday people. We’ve tried everything else. But we haven’t tried respect, dignity, nonviolence. We have to try those things that have not been tried because everything else has failed. That’s where you go from here.

by Tavis Smiley

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Tegla Loroupe: Answertext will be available soon.

by Tegla Loroupe

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Thenmozhi Soundararajan: I answer this question as someone who is a Dalit and an untouchable, and from the country where a lot of people when they look to nonviolence they quote Mahatma Gandhi and his position around Ahimsa and nonviolence. But I actually would want to complicate the conversation, because just as there was Gandhi there was also the Malcolm X of our country, who is a Dalit leader named Dr. Ambedkar. I think when he talked about the question of violence or nonviolence there wasn’t a nobility around nonviolence and, in fact, the conversation around nonviolence in the way that Gandhi framed it was really also about, I think, ghettoizing some of the radical elements of the Dalit movement and trying to put a moral question to what was their legitimate right to actually have armed struggle. And so, when Arundhati Roy asks the questions like this, I think she’s opening up a venue that’s not a binary between nonviolence and violence. Using the frame biodiversity allows us a way to get out of that polarizing conversation. I think it’s really up to every specific political situation and the people engaged in that political situation to decide what are the appropriate tactics for the strategies of self-determination they need on the ground. I think in doing that, we really - we open up our broader conversation. Because I think it’s not - we cannot invest in nobility and nonviolence and romanticize armed struggle. I think we really need to allow people to make the choices that they must make. But I think within that, I think as someone who is an organizer, whatever decision I make and whatever movement I am engaged with I always have to ask myself, can I live with the impact of the tactic that I’m going to use. I think if you engage in nonviolence, there are consequences just as there are consequences with violence. But I think to invest morality with one over the other doesn’t do a justice for the intensity people’s struggles may require for their resistance, and I think also it doesn’t allow us to have a full conversation. So thank you, Arundhati Roy, for being able to open up what’s technically usually a very polar conversation to something that could be very diverse. I also want to honor the memory of Dr. Ambedkar and really dedicate this question and this time to all Dalits that are in resistance and all people who are oppressed and resisting that oppression around the world.

by Thenmozhi Soundararajan

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Tu Weiming: First of all, I really don’t understand what the bio-diversity of resistance is. Presumably, violence has to be understood in terms of the costs. Gandhi’s success of using non-violence in British colonial society may not work, for example in Nazi Germany. And the whole notion of resistance, whether through non-violence method or through certain kind of aggression, depends upon the situation. However, it is important for us to understand the response to violence in highly differentiated manner. The state may become so militarized that the best way out of that situation is not to engage in certain kind of non-violent act because we are not effective. However, if the state is using in certain kind of political mechanism control, then the possibility of mobilizing people through the various kinds of mechanisms, such as the multi-media features, will bring upon some kind of quick results. If we look at the current situation of the world, it is not violent response but non-violent response not necessarily of the Gandhian kind. But that would take advantage of modern technologies in information; modern technologies in broadening the public’s fear, enhancing public reasoning and also mobilize the civil society to force those who are powerful, those who have authority to recognize the limitation and even the futility or their violent act. And I think the time is ripe for us to become much more effective in using non-violent symbolic resources in trying to change the nature, the violent nature, of the state or of the international community. I think the idea of soft power is applicable in this particular context. We can actually use soft power effectively to bring some of the mightiest nations in line, in terms of [audio ends]

by Tu Weiming

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Udi Aloni: This is a great question, and I am not sure that we are the one to answer. Yeah, I would prefer to say I prefer a non-violence resistance. Yeah, I wish it -- this resistance would make it. But, we are not the one who chose to choose the resistance of the oppressed, and probably the oppressed need different kind of resistance. If the oppressed by himself, the group will decide on a non-violence resistant and it work, it will make me much happy. But, the reason I don't want to call for it because this call used many time that we -- that the one who control the oppressor, we maintain violence by calling to the other to do a non-violence resistance. Personally, I will participate only for a non-violence resistance because I cannot be violent. So, personally, when the oppressed will have different kind of resistance, I will take part only on the non-violence one. But, I am not going to say here that you shouldn't use violence because my job is to say that we shouldn't do that. You have to understand I am speaking as American/Israeli citizen. So, my cause that we will reduce violence, the resistant will be non-violent. If we will increase violence, the resistant will choose a violent ways. I will join only to a non-resistance violence act because as one from the side of the oppressor I can have the opportunity to use, I am privileged enough to use a non-violent resistance. But, the one who are not privileged for it, what is the answer for them? It’s for them to answer, not for me. But, I think it’s very, very important question and can be in a dialog. Also, it’s important to know that if I understand there is violence resistant, it doesn’t mean I agree with it. But, we should understand where it’s coming from. So, let’s call for the oppressor to reduce violence and then it will be easier for the oppressed to choose non-violence resistance. And, let’s be sure that the one who privileged enough to speak shouldn’t choose violence. I would add also that there is different kind of violence resistance and some of them are definitely legitimate and we all agree on them that they are legitimate. There are some of them they are keep occupying territories, people have the right to fight the army a [inaudible]. The person who is not what is right and what is wrong I think the question should be what is more effective? What is the kind of resistance that will give us the freedom and justice and [audio ends].

by Udi Aloni

Sep 9, 2006 1:00:00 PM cite

Valentina Melnikova: What does move people to recur to arms? For someone it is the easiest way to achieve his goals, for someone else it is the way out from disappointment, ineffectiveness of non-violent methods. I want to remind of the wonderful experience of the great wise man Mahatma Gandhi who has pronounced nonviolence the best way to achieve aims of the civil society. And he has achieved such aims. Studying of the experience of non-violent actions of several organizations and different civil communities helps us to achieve our aims in Russia using non-violent methods. In any case violence is ineffective. Aims achieved through lives of people, through their death lose their value. The humanity has developed many forms of nonviolent resistance. We should continue to talk about which ways of nonviolent activities could be effective in different situations that occur in our today’s life. Together people are able to find the way out from the most difficult situation using non-violence or civil resistance that is not related to arms and especially not related to terrorism. In my opinion today the humanity is disapointed of its intellectual potential. It is always easier to recur to arms, it’s more simple and habitually. But this is not acceptable because it will lead to destruction of people as such on the Earth. And this is the reason why violence and armed violence is impossible and harmful.

by Valentina Melnikova