*Ø* Blogmanac | Peace on Earth: The Prospects
By Geov Parrish, WorkingForChange.com
"Remember those quaint, nostalgic times when this season was associated with the phrase 'Peace On Earth'? That is, way back in the days before our born-again leader with the proclaimed personal ear of God started ordering up wars the way other politicians ask for planning studies? Before our nation became so drunken with manufactured bogeymen and antiseptic media invasions and patriotic warmongering fever that war’s unpleasantness made it something people wished absolutely to avoid? When peace was considered a good thing, not the way of cowards?
"I miss those days. A lot of us do ...
"All told, the U.S. military is now active in some 60 countries around the world. The dozen or so examples above [see full text - N] are among the most egregious – and what is the U.S. doing killing people in even a dozen countries? – but they have several factors in common: (1) No war has been declared against any government in any of them. (2) They are not on the same continent as the United States. (3) All target poor countries’ civilian populations. (4) In few of these cases have serious attempts been undertaken, especially by the U.S. government, to find a just and peaceful resolution to the situation. (5) Most Americans know very little about any of them, as national corporate reporting is generally either uncritical or, more commonly, nonexistent. The exception is Iraq, where the “factual” reporting is so markedly different from that in Britain and Europe that it might as well be describing a different conflict.
"Does that feel like an overwhelming list? Here’s a useful counterweight:
"This past year, on one day, tens of millions of ordinary people on every continent and in scores of countries gathered together, in national capitals and town squares, and demanded peace. Not asked for, not petitioned for, or recommended or begged. We demanded it ...
"Now, with extraordinary speed in our unipolar world, we’re seeing a second wave of nonviolent revolutions, one with a more explicitly economic component: rejection of the so-called 'Washington consensus' that imposes neoliberal economic and political straitjackets so as to make poor countries poorer and to send their wealth to the banks and gated communities of North America, Europe, and Japan ...
"The sooner the United States starts behaving like one country among many, rather than a global bully, the better the prospects for peace on earth become. The irony is that the post-9/11 bellicosity of the Bush Administration has been so extreme that in the long run it may lead more directly to a world with a common aversion to wars and empires.
"If we’re willing, much of the rest of the world is ready. It’s in our hands. So here’s to peace on earth in 2004 and beyond."
Full text at Alternet.org
By Geov Parrish, WorkingForChange.com
"Remember those quaint, nostalgic times when this season was associated with the phrase 'Peace On Earth'? That is, way back in the days before our born-again leader with the proclaimed personal ear of God started ordering up wars the way other politicians ask for planning studies? Before our nation became so drunken with manufactured bogeymen and antiseptic media invasions and patriotic warmongering fever that war’s unpleasantness made it something people wished absolutely to avoid? When peace was considered a good thing, not the way of cowards?
"I miss those days. A lot of us do ...
"All told, the U.S. military is now active in some 60 countries around the world. The dozen or so examples above [see full text - N] are among the most egregious – and what is the U.S. doing killing people in even a dozen countries? – but they have several factors in common: (1) No war has been declared against any government in any of them. (2) They are not on the same continent as the United States. (3) All target poor countries’ civilian populations. (4) In few of these cases have serious attempts been undertaken, especially by the U.S. government, to find a just and peaceful resolution to the situation. (5) Most Americans know very little about any of them, as national corporate reporting is generally either uncritical or, more commonly, nonexistent. The exception is Iraq, where the “factual” reporting is so markedly different from that in Britain and Europe that it might as well be describing a different conflict.
"Does that feel like an overwhelming list? Here’s a useful counterweight:
"This past year, on one day, tens of millions of ordinary people on every continent and in scores of countries gathered together, in national capitals and town squares, and demanded peace. Not asked for, not petitioned for, or recommended or begged. We demanded it ...
"Now, with extraordinary speed in our unipolar world, we’re seeing a second wave of nonviolent revolutions, one with a more explicitly economic component: rejection of the so-called 'Washington consensus' that imposes neoliberal economic and political straitjackets so as to make poor countries poorer and to send their wealth to the banks and gated communities of North America, Europe, and Japan ...
"The sooner the United States starts behaving like one country among many, rather than a global bully, the better the prospects for peace on earth become. The irony is that the post-9/11 bellicosity of the Bush Administration has been so extreme that in the long run it may lead more directly to a world with a common aversion to wars and empires.
"If we’re willing, much of the rest of the world is ready. It’s in our hands. So here’s to peace on earth in 2004 and beyond."
Full text at Alternet.org
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