My grandma had sayings like that too, WmTrevor.

>>Well that's nice isn't it, as my grandma used to say.<<

One of her favourites was, "if you can't say anything nice, Pericles, it's better you don't say anything at all".

So, with apologies to grandma...

There are so many false notes in this article, it's a cacophony.

"...one challenge we face is to celebrate his life in a way that Gandhi himself would have found meaningful. Gandhi was not a man of token gestures."

Which presumably means that it is beholden upon us to make a non-token gesture.

And the best we can come up with is this?

"'The People's Charter to Create a Nonviolent World' invites people and organisations to consider publicly declaring their commitment to work to end human violence by signing an online pledge".

So everyone, stop playing Candy Crush Saga, and sign that online pledge. That sort of non-token gesture should sort it once and for all, and allow you to feel at one with Ghandi. After all...

"The Nonviolence Charter has been signed by many great people, even if you have never heard of them."

It's ok, I'll stop now. It's just that after many years of study, I can safely be assured of three things in this world. One, is that we are all going to die at some undefined point in the future. Two, that mankind will also cease to exist in a recognizable form, at some undefined point in the future - quite possibly in the next few hundred years, well before our sun turns into a white dwarf. And three, that mankind is chemically disposed to live in conflict.

Always has been, always will be.

But go ahead, knock yourselves out and sign the charter, if it makes you feel all warm inside. It is of course a completely honourable gesture of utter futility, but hey, the world needs earnest and well-meaning people. They will, of course, never have greater force than the mean and nasty folk. Simply because they are not mean and nasty.

Our very survival relies on universal cooperation!
When we all finally get that! We as a species, may still have a chance!
Rhrosty.

I've signed it lots of times and will a few more, it was such a sacrifice. Makes me feel SOOOOO nice that I have done something meaningful, much nicer than the rest of you meanies. Is there a pretty plastic wrist band available?

Such nice people always love State violence.

Dear Rhrosty,

<<Our very survival relies on universal cooperation!>>

I must assume that you include the worms in this universal cooperation!

<<When we all finally get that! We as a species, may still have a chance!>>

Sorry to be your messenger of gloom, but either us as species or the laws of physics do not stand a chance: these two cannot survive together indefinitely - one or the other must give way and go.

Oh god, don't these people take themselves so seriously. Talk about airs & graces, you'd have to reckon they think their manure doesn't stink.

There is no reason to expect the human race to survive, so stop worrying about it. You & us are not that important.

The only one reason for us being here is to harvest lots of the earths resources, pile them up in big piles called cities, then p1ss off out of here.

This will give the cockroaches, who will inherit the earth, a nice pile of raw materials to go on with, without having to gather them.

Please stop thinking you are something special. You're not, you are just the cockroaches mining work force, to be eliminated after your task is complete.

It sounds to me from reading this article that the real problem is overpopulation and that what we need is a really decent war to reduce the world population to manageable levels.

This is despite the fact that the combined efforts of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Tojo and Mao-Tse-Tung were unable to reduce the world population in 1945 to below the level it reached in 1939.

Hopefully new technology, particularly nuclear technology would achieve a greater outcome. We can expect more trouble, as the standard technique for the last 100,000 years when there is a shortage of any material, is to have a little war to see who gets the material, and who gets nothing.