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The
Privatisation Of War
by Ian Traynor
Take
No Prisoners (Video)
U.S. Marines Execute A Wounded Iraqi
To The Cheers Of Fellow Marines
Peace
and Nuclear Disarmament:
A Call To Action
by United States
Representative
Dennis Kucinich
". . . Come my friends, 'tis not too late to seek
a newer world," Alfred Lord Tennyson
If
you believe that humanity has a higher destiny, if you
believe we can evolve, and become better than we are;
if you believe we can overcome the scourge of war and
someday fulfill the dream of harmony and peace earth,
let us begin the conversation today. Let us exchange our
ideas. Let us plan together, act together and create peace
together. This is a call for common sense, for peaceful,
non-violent citizen action to protect our precious world
from widening war and from stumbling into a nuclear catastrophe.
The
climate for conflict has intensified, with the struggle
between Pakistan and India, the China-Taiwan tug of war,
and the increased bloodshed between Israel and the Palestinians.
United States' troop deployments in the Philippines, Yemen,
Georgia, Columbia and Indonesia create new possibilities
for expanded war. An invasion of Iraq is planned. The
recent disclosure that Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, Syria,
North Korea, and Libya are considered by the United States
as possible targets for nuclear attack catalyzes potential
conflicts everywhere.
These
crucial political decisions promoting increased military
actions, plus a new nuclear first-use policy, are occurring
without the consent of the American people, without public
debate, without public hearings, without public votes.
The President is taking Congress's approval of responding
to the Sept. 11 terrorists as a license to flirt with
nuclear war.
"Politics
ought to stay out of fighting a war," the President
has been quoted as saying on March 13th 2002. Yet Article
1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution explicitly
requires that Congress take responsibility when it comes
to declaring war. This President is very popular, according
to the polls. But polls are not a substitute for democratic
process. Attributing a negative connotation here to politics
or dismissing constitutionally mandated congressional
oversight belies reality: Spending $400 billion a year
for defense is a political decision. Committing troops
abroad is a political decision. War is a political decision.
When men and women die on the battlefield that is the
result of a political decision.
The
use of nuclear weapons, which can end the lives of millions,
is a profound political decision. In a monarchy there
need be no political decisions. In a democracy, all decisions
are political, in that the derive from the consent of
the governed.
In
a democracy, budgetary, military and national objectives
must be subordinate to the political process. Before we
celebrate an imperial presidency, let it be said that
the lack of free and open political process, the lack
of free and open political debate, and the lack of free
and open political dissent can be fatal in a democracy.
We
have reached a moment in our country's history where it
is urgent that people everywhere speak out as president
of his or her own life, to protect the peace of the nation
and world within and without. We should speak out and
caution leaders who generate fear through talk of the
endless war or the final conflict. We should appeal to
our leaders to consider that their own bellicose thoughts,
words and deeds are reshaping consciousness and can have
an adverse effect on our nation. Because when one person
thinks: fight! he or she finds a fight. One faction thinks:
war! and starts a war. One nation thinks: nuclear! and
approaches the abyss. And what of one nation which thinks
peace, and seeks peace?
Neither
individuals nor nations exist in a vacuum, which is why
we have a serious responsibility for each other in this
world. It is also urgent that we find those places of
war in our own lives, and begin healing the world through
healing ourselves. Each of us is a citizen of a common
planet, bound to a common destiny. So connected are we,
that each of us has the power to be the eyes of the world,
the voice of the world, the conscience of the world, or
the end of the world. And as each one of us chooses, so
becomes the world.
Each
of us is architect of this world. Our thoughts, the concepts.
Our words, the designs. Our deeds, the bricks and mortar
of our daily lives.
Which
is why we should always take care to regard the power
of our thoughts and words, and the commands they send
into action through time and space.
Some
of our leaders have been thinking and talking about nuclear
war. In the past week there has been much news about a
planning document which describes how and when America
might wage nuclear war. The Nuclear Posture Review recently
released to the media by the government:
1.
Assumes that the United States has the right to launch
a pre-emptive nuclear strike. 2. Equates nuclear weapons
with conventional weapons. 3. Attempts to minimize the
consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. 4. Promotes
nuclear response to a chemical or biological attack.
Some
dismiss this review as routine government planning. But
it becomes ominous when taken in the context of a war
on terrorism which keeps expanding its boundaries, rhetorically
and literally. The President equates the "war on
terrorism" with World War II. He expresses a desire
to have the nuclear option "on the table." He
unilaterally withdraws from the ABM treaty. He seeks $8.9
billion to fund deployment of a missile shield. He institutes,
without congressional knowledge, a shadow government in
a bunker outside our nation's Capitol. He tries to pass
off as arms reduction, the storage of, instead of the
elimination of, nuclear weapons.
Two
generations ago we lived with nuclear nightmares. We feared
and hated the Russians who feared and hated us. We feared
and hated the "godless, atheistic" communists.
In our schools, we dutifully put our head between our
legs and practiced duck-and-cover drills. In our nightmares,
we saw the long, slow arc of a Soviet missile flash into
our very neighborhood. We got down on our knees and prayed
for peace. We surveyed, wide eyed, pictures of the destruction
of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We supported the elimination
of all nuclear weapons. We knew that if you "nuked"
others you "nuked" yourself.
The
splitting of the atom for destructive purposes admits
a split consciousness, the compartmentalized thinking
of Us vs. Them, the dichotomized thinking, which spawns
polarity and leads to war. The proposed use of nuclear
weapons, pollutes the psyche with the arrogance of infinite
power. It creates delusions of domination of matter and
space. It is dehumanizing through its calculations of
mass casualties. We must overcome doomthinkers and sayers
who invite a world descending, disintegrating into a nuclear
disaster. With a world at risk, we must find the bombs
in our own lives and disarm them. We must listen to that
quiet inner voice which counsels that the survival of
all is achieved through the unity of all.
We
must overcome our fear of each other, by seeking out the
humanity within each of us. The human heart contains every
possibility of race, creed, language, religion, and politics.
We are one in our commonalities. Must we always fear our
differences? We can overcome our fears by not feeding
our fears with more war and nuclear confrontations. We
must ask our leaders to unify us in courage.
We
need to create a new, clear vision of a world as one.
A new, clear vision of people working out their differences
peacefully. A new, clear vision with the teaching of nonviolence,
nonviolent intervention, and mediation. A new, clear vision
where people can live in harmony within their families,
their communities and within themselves. A new clear vision
of peaceful coexistence in a world of tolerance.
At
this moment peril we must move away from fear's paralysis.
This is a call to action: to replace expanded war with
expanded peace. This is a call for action to place the
very survival of this planet on the agenda of all people,
everywhere. As citizens of a common planet, we have an
obligation to ourselves and our posterity. We must demand
that our nation and all nations put down the nuclear sword.
We must demand that our nation and all nations:
Abide
by the principles of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Stop the development of new nuclear weapons. Take all
nuclear weapons systems off alert. Persist towards total,
worldwide elimination of all nuclear weapons.
Our
nation must:
Revive
the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty. Sign and enforce the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Abandon plans to build
a so-called missile shield. Prohibit the introduction
of weapons into outer space.
We
are in a climate where people expect debate within our
two party system to produce policy alternatives. However
both major political parties have fallen short. People
who ask "Where is the Democratic Party?" and
expect to hear debate may be disappointed. When peace
is not on the agenda of our political parties or our governments
then it must be the work and the duty of each citizen
of the world. This is the time to organize for peace.
This is the time for new thinking. This is the time to
conceive of peace as not simply being the absence of violence,
but the active presence of the capacity for a higher evolution
of human awareness. This is the time to concieve of peace
as respect, trust, and integrity. This is the time to
tap the infinite capabilities of humanity to transform
consciousness which compels violence at a personal, group,
national or international levels.
This
is the time to develop a new compassion for others and
ourselves.
When
terrorists threaten our security, we must enforce the
law and bring terrorists to justice within our system
of constitutional justice, without undermining the very
civil liberties which permits our democracy to breathe.
Our own instinct for life, which inspires our breath and
informs our pulse, excites our capacity to reason. Which
is why we must pay attention when we sense a threat to
survival.
That
is why we must speak out now to protect this nation, all
nations, and the entire planet and:
Challenge
those who believe that war is inevitable. Challenge those
who believe in a nuclear right. Challenge those who would
build new nuclear weapons. Challenge those who seek nuclear
re-armament. Challenge those who seek nuclear escalation.
Challenge those who would make of any nation a nuclear
target. Challenge those who would threaten to use nuclear
weapons against civilian populations. Challenge those
who would break nuclear treaties. Challenge those who
think and think about nuclear weapons, to think about
peace.
It
is practical to work for peace. I speak of peace and diplomacy
not just for the sake of peace itself. But, for practical
reasons, we must work for peace as a means of achieving
permanent security. It is similarly practical to work
for total nuclear disarmament, particularly when nuclear
arms do not even come close to addressing the real security
problems which confront our nation, witness the events
of September 11, 2001.
We
can make war archaic. Skeptics may dismiss the possibility
that a nation which spends $400 billion a year for military
purposes can somehow convert swords into plowshares. Yet
the very founding and the history of this country demonstrates
the creative possibilities of America. We are a nation
which is known for realizing impossible dreams. Ours is
a nation which in its second century abolished slavery,
which many at the time considered impossible. Ours is
a nation where women won the right to vote, which many
at the time considered impossible. Ours is a nation which
institutionalized the civil rights movement, which many
at the time considered impossible. If we have the courage
to claim peace, with the passion, the emotion and the
integrity with which we have claimed independence, freedom
and, equality we can become that nation which makes non-violence
an organizing principle in our society, and in doing so
change the world.
That
is the purpose of HR 2459. It is a bill to create a Department
of Peace. It envisions new structures to help create peace
in our homes, in our families, in our schools, in our
neighborhoods, in our cities, and in our nation. It aspires
to create conditions for peace within and to create conditions
for peace worldwide. It considers the conditions which
cause people to become the terrorists of the future, issues
of poverty, scarcity and exploitation. It is practical
to make outer space safe from weapons, so that humanity
can continue to pursue a destiny among the stars. HR 3616
seeks to ban weapons in space, to keep the stars a place
of dreams, of new possibilities, of transcendence.
We
can achieve this practical vision of peace, if we are
ready to work for it. People worldwide need to be meet
with likeminded people, about peace and nuclear disarmament,
now. People worldwide need to gather in peace, now. People
worldwide need to march and to pray for peace, now. People
worldwide need to be connecting with each other on the
web, for peace, now. We are in a new era of electronic
democracy, where the world wide web, numerous web sites
and bulletin boards enable new organizations, exercising
freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association,
to spring into being instantly. Thespiritoffreedom.com
is such a web site. It is dedicated to becoming an electronic
forum for peace, for sustainability, for renewal and for
revitalization. It is a forum which strives for the restoration
of a sense of community through the empowerment of self,
through commitment of self to the lives of others, to
the life of the community, to the life of the nation,
to the life of the world.
Where
war making is profoundly uncreative in its destruction,
peacemaking can be deeply creative. We need to communicate
with each other the ways in which we work in our communities
to make this a more peaceful world. I welcome your ideas
at mailto;dkucinich@aol.com or at http://www.thespiritoffreedom.com.
We can share our thoughts and discuss ways in which we
have brought or will bring them into action.
Now
is the time to think, to take action and use our talents
and abilities to create peace: in our families. in our
block clubs. in our neighborhoods. in our places of worship.
in our schools and universities. in our labor halls. in
our parent-teacher organizations.
Now
is the time to think, speak, write, organize and take
action to create peace as a social imperative, as an economic
imperative, and as a political imperative. Now is the
time to think, speak, write, organize, march, rally, hold
vigils and take other nonviolent action to create peace
in our cities, in our nation and in the world. And as
the hymn says, "Let there be peace on earth and let
it begin with me."
This
is the work of the human family, of people all over the
world demanding that governments and non-governmental
actors alike put down their nuclear weapons. This is the
work of the human family, responding in this moment of
crisis to protect our nation, this planet and all life
within it. We can achieve both nuclear disarmament and
peace. As we understand that all people of the world are
interconnected, we can achieve both nuclear disarmament
and peace. We can accomplish this through upholding an
holistic vision where the claims of all living beings
to the right of survival are recognized. We can achieve
both nuclear disarmament and peace through being a living
testament to a Human Rights Covenant where each person
on this planet is entitled to a life where he or she may
consciously evolve in mind, body and spirit.
Nuclear
disarmament and peace are the signposts toward the uplit
path of an even brighter human condition wherein we can
through our conscious efforts evolve and reestablish the
context of our existence from peril to peace, from revolution
to evolution. Think peace. Speak peace. Act peace. Peace.
"Forgiveness
is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which
what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is
made clean again."
Dag
Hammarskjold
email:
mailto:info@thespiritoffreedom.com or mailto:Dkucinich@aol.com
Source:
http://www.thespiritoffreedom.com
