World Peace can be defined as the end of institutionally organized armed conflict. This will happen when the governments and corporations currently responsible for unleashing war upon our world are forced to stop.
The idea that world peace is not only possible, that peace is in fact sitting right on our doorstep, may seen like a fanciful dream. But it is only a dream because we haven’t made it happen yet. Not because it is impossible and not because it is beyond the limits of human potential.
Sure, it will take a movement of millions upon millions of people like you and me from all around the world, coming together as a combined force. But together we can and will make it happen.
We can rival the trillion dollar empire that is the military industrial complex. We can overcome the thousands and thousands of years of baggage and damage caused by warfare. We have the power to manifest peace on earth as soon as we choose to.
It starts with our own governments, by letting them know that the use of military force is never an option except as a last resort. No longer will we let other innocent humans be treated as enemies, no matter their nationality, religion, culture or color.
Instead, our leaders need to be urged to exercise proven methodologies, like humanitarian aid and cooperation. By building up impoverished nations and strengthening war-torn communities from within, we attack desperation and extremism at its source. And this is ultimately the surest way to disrupt the cycle of violence.
On top of that, we need to strip out the billions in annual profits reaped by the businesses of war. 100% tax on all proceeds from weapons manufacturing. Fines and levies against these industries which perpetuate bloodshed. Class action suits against those who arm the armies, holding them accountable for the suffering they enable.
Yes, it is an uphill battle. So why even try?
For starters, this is an issue that effects you personally. You, your loved ones, your friends and everyone you know stand to reap the benefits of living in a world without warfare… a world of security and prosperity.
On top of that, with medical science moving forward as fast as it is, we are on the brink of being able to extend our lives indefinitely, letting us live as long as we choose. We will be able to witness our species expand to explore the universe.
All that and more can be ours as long as we don’t let the war-mongers screw it up for us. And if that isn’t reason enough for you to make peace a reality, then what is?
Wars and wealth inequality are both social constructs. They exist and persist because we are used to them. We accept them as normal, and can even believe them to be everlasting – an extension of the animal nature of humanity’s greed and violence.
But every single human on earth would be better off if they didn’t have to worry about war or have to contribute to the billions spent every year on armed conflict. And almost every single person on this planet would be experience a higher quality of life if humankind’s wealth were distributed more equitably.
So it’s not a matter of peace and prosperity being an impossibility – because once we have those things we will only wonder why we waited so long to make them happen. Instead, it’s a matter of getting from our old world and our old-world mindset into the new future that awaits.
We will see that wars are being manufactured by for-profit entities and we can stop them as soon as we choose to. We will see that wealth disparity persists because we haven’t yet done anything about it. We will see that we’ve had the power to fix our world all along, and that all it took is for enough of us to coordinate and mobilize on a global scale.
And there is no better tool for this than the Internet. Our glorious Internet, as long as it remains free from censorship and government overreach, will keep connecting and informing us. Within the coming few years, enough of us see and believe that change is not only possible, it is inevitable. And as we speak out in unison with the power of billions of people, our dreams of peace and ending poverty will be real.
War is one of the world’s biggest money-makers. It accounts for over 1.5 trillion dollars in business every year with billions to be reaped by those sitting atop. These multi-millionaires and billionaires are not content to sit idly by and hope more conflict breaks out. No, like any good business-person, they are out there manufacturing their markets!
And they will do this in perpetuity until something comes along to stop them. Fortunately for us, that something… is us! You and me and billions of people just like you and me.
Together, we are enacting a global ban on war – by the people for the people. It’s time for a change, and we are the ones who get to make it happen. Bold measures must be taken, like holding class action lawsuits against those who enable wars on earth. Be they in public or private service, leaders who drive us to war will be held accountable for the blood that gets spilled. No more forgetting their false pretences.
On top of this, we can continually strip away the grease from proverbial the war-machine. Imagine if, on a global scale, we could invoke a 100% tax on all proceeds made from making and selling weapons and arms. How quickly the drums of war would fall silent.
These billions we’ve been pissing away on war every year on defence budgets can find a much better home improving the world in which we live. Let’s end global poverty, eradicate global hunger, and build a renewable-powered, interconnected world. The future is now, so it’s about time we get our collective act together.
The Occupy movement, along with the similarly-themed uprisings around the world, brought into the mainstream consciousness the idea of wealth disparity, and how a tiny fraction of the population control a vastly disproportionate amount of wealth and power. While these movements have lost some steam, the idea of income inequality can be better discussed in the mainstream forums.
What we need to see now is a social movement which impacts the entire world – bringing an anti-war concept into the mainstream consciousness, spreading and growing for months and years, ultimately culminating in hundred of millions of people all speaking out in unison to say that we are all ready for war to be over.
Wow! That sound’s awesome. Better get busy and make sure it comes to fruition.
On behalf of the soldiers who continue to lose their lives, their livelihoods or their sense of well being, discarded after use by a for-profit enterprise built on bloodshed.
On behalf of the children who continue to lose their lives, their families, their sense of wonder at the world, because some group somewhere else gave themselves the authority to remotely execute other humans without due trial, oversight or accountability.
On behalf of the richest and most powerful global population to date, torn apart by an industry whose very existence depends upon our staying divided as a people, when the money being wasted on warfare could finally lift the entire human race out of the grips of desperate poverty.
It is time to enact The World’s People V The World’s Top 100 Defense Earners, for all the pain and suffering they continue to enable. They can still make arms all they want, but the trillions they’ve been reaping in profits will be forfeited.
Maher pleaded with the American people to do some well needed self-reflection on their own warmongering. After two centuries of perpetual war, it’s time Americans realized “We’re the gun country. Come on, we’re the war people.”
After breaking down the history and concluding the problem lies with America itself, Maher went on to say “America needs to start defining peace as strength. Do you know who the role model for every president should be? Jimmy Carter. He was the one out of all of them who figured out how to sit in office for four years and never fire a shot. And every president’s negative example,” he concluded, “should be Dick Cheney, who even shot his friends in the face.”
I cannot express how thrilled I was to hear these words on an influential US show. When a population of 313 million people – most of whom are surrounded by strife and a crumbling infrastructure – look to their sputtering economy, more and more people need to actively point out the giant elephant in the room.
Right now, America’s military industrial complex devours half of its government’s spending. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to see that drastic cuts in military spending would likely yield equally drastic improvements for American families across the land.
But, for the most part, politicians and mainstream media sources remain chillingly silent. This is, as you may well know, due to the entrenched talons of the Military Industrial Complex itself. With billions of dollars to throw around, the war machine can buy both political parties and align all the major news channels, effectively keeping enough anti-war rhetoric from the ears (and off the lips) of the American public.
So, as with all great movements, the struggle to rid our world of war falls on the shoulders of those outside the established seats of power. While it’s great when the Bill Maher’s and John Stewart’s of the world finally vocalize some anti-war sentiments, until there are millions and millions of us doing this every single day, the war machine will keep on rolling.
Fortunately, uniting against war is exactly what we are doing. All it will take is the right spark, the right catalyst, and a Occupy-esque movement can rise against the Military Industrial Complex, and the struggle towards peace will become the latest trendy battle for the masses, maybe even earning the privilege of being trivialized by the mainstream media.
Even though Americans will not be made safer by manufacturing new generations of people to hate them, their government insists upon expanding the militarized drone program. They see it as the future of warfare – it’s faster, cheaper and offers less short-term risks than a boots on the ground war.
The US Defense Department doesn’t care that the program wont make Americans safer, for that’s not actually their objective. Instead, they work to protect their own job security, and the millions employed in their death-dealing business. Stir up the hornets nest, keep poking those bears. Anything to conjure up some fright-inducing yet easily subdued foes to scare up the US population. This way the billions and billions of taxpayer dollars keep rolling in while the war-profiteers can stay fat and happy atop the growing pile of bodies.
The ruling class of America don’t want any wars to stop, and drones offer a new frontier of ongoing bloodshed. Just watch the video above, as protesters expose the suffering inflicted upon fellow humans… the rest of the attendees kept their heads down, in silent shame.
You shouldn’t be able to just kill people with no due process – not on any just and civilized planet. They know it’s wrong, but they do it anyway. That’s why there is so much secrecy surrounding the drone program.
Were too many Americans to find out what their government is doing – engaging in long distance mass murder – the outpourings of dissent might overcome the corrupting influence of an entrenched military industry. Then they will have no choice but to stop cease their crimes against humanity, and peace will gain a stronger foothold over our planet.
While this may be bad for those whose livelihoods depend upon ongoing conflicts, for the rest of us it will be awesome. So let’s keep working to make it happen. Be involved in the movement. Keep spreading awareness about the drone program and give support to others who do the same.
Wars have been on the decline for centuries. A few more years, with enough people involved, war as we know it will be done away with for good.
Americans spend trillions of dollars on warfare every single year. This is an absurd amount of money to spend on anything, let alone using it to blow up your fellow humans on an industrialized scale. With that kind of cash, you could end extreme poverty the world over, give every person a home and an education, and dramatically lift the tide which raises all ships.
The financial costs are an incredible burden, and the emotional scars would take generations to heal even if war ended this very second. The longer these large scale conflicts get prolonged, the worse off our entire world is.
So why aren’t Americans ending war? If the US people, much like the rest of us, just want to live and prosper in peace, why don’t their politicians listen to them and give them what they want?
The sad truth is that they can’t.
The entire American system has, to the detriment of the world, fallen victim to what can only be described as a parasitic entity, a beast that has been around in one form or another for thousands of years.
Whether through anesthetizing concepts like pride and security, the unfettered power of wealth, or, when all else fails, brute force, the war machine of which I speak has been able to keep countless populations within their grasp – and right now their prey is the American public.
In the United States, mainstream newsanchors all dance around the issue ending war, and ‘radical’ concepts like bringing home the troops rarely arise. Politicians are no better, for they too are in the pockets of the military industry, as made evident by a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate who intentionally escalates wars around the world.
So even when the vast majority of Americans want peace, a political system which is mostly theatre combined with a deliberate lack of guidance from the media makes it hard for the anti-war movement to gain the momentum needed to make a significant impact.
But peace-loving Americans won’t stay down for much longer. They simply cannot. Fueled by a crumbling economy, driven by global awareness, and united by social media, a multi-million person strong movement will prove more powerful than the entire military industrial complex. Or so we shall hope.
The world is changing faster than even those who sit atop can control. Unprecedented technology is causing new concepts like transparency and global solidarity to crash down on our world. As the old guard falls away, a newfound democracy is sure to bring to fruition the civilization our species has been cultivating for eons.
One of the world’s leading human rights violators – the State of Israel – is in the headlines once again, positioning their military along the Gaza border while murdering innocent Palestinian civilians.
And yet again we see the blatant double-standards in Western media coverage: “Israel has a right to defend themselves from the Palestine aggressors who’ve been launching hundreds of rockets.” Every time we hear about Israel bombing Gaza, the reporter always – ALWAYS – frames it as if Israel is ‘reacting’ to Hamas’ attacks.
It’s as if history conveniently goes back just to the point when Israel ceased their last attacks and the Palestinians hadn’t. Always neglecting to point out how one side are firing makeshift bottle-rockets in the general vicinity of their targets (Palestine), while the other side uses state-of-the-art weaponry from one of the world’s biggest arsenals (Israel).
But never mind the fact that this battle is egregiously one-sided. It would be nice if the media were to at least acknowledge fault on both sides of the conflict, but we don’t even get that. Every single time, Israel is the good guy simply protecting itself and Palestine is the evil terrorist destroying the peace and threatening the world.
Some of this is due to Israel’s powerful PR campaign which has infiltrated much of the Western world. They’ve bought our support. Somehow we see them as victims and their enemies as bad. As well, it’s likely that there’s some inherent anti-Muslim sentiment tied up in there as well.
Cenk from the Young Turks offers an excellent analysis of this hypocrisy in the video released yesterday. It’s a little long, but well worth watching, especially if you’ve never been exposed to the alternate viewpoint that maybe the State of Israel isn’t exactly worthy of our support:
The best point that Cenk makes – one which so often gets ignored by the press – is that Israel simply refuses to make peace. They stifle the Palestinian’s peaceful attempts at diplomacy through the UN. They are unwilling to accept truces and ceasefires. They do not want the conflict to end.
See, Israel’s true agenda is expansion. For 70 years now, Jewish settlers have been stealing Palestinian land. They bulldoze Palestinian homes, burn their crops, bully their children, and forcefully evict them under the pretence of religious destiny.
And only under the fog of war – by having armed men fighting – can Israel continue to rob their neighbours of land without too much opposition from the International community. If Palestine was recognized by the UN as a state, or if Hamas militants stopped their acts of defiance, Israel would no longer have the pretence they need to further their institutional genocide.
So here’s the sad truth: even if Hamas were to stop firing rockets, it really wouldn’t matter. Israel would simply send their own troops into Gaza, disguise them as Palestinians, and have them fire upon their fellow Israelis. That way their necessary war stays perpetual, and Isreal’s illegal and immoral agenda remains on the table.
This leaves the only practical path to peace as a global awareness campaign. Once enough of the world’s people see Israel for what it is – a warmongering bully – international pressure will continue to mount against them. Then, just like with Apartheid in Africa, Israel will have to stop their campaign of wholesale racism and death if they wish to remain part of the modern world.
Aren’t you sick of war yet? Haven’t you grown tired of the defense sector increasingly siphoning your precious lifeblood, this swollen and diseased parasite latched on to your once great nation’s face?
Sure, the Military Industrial Complex offers up an anesthetic. Concepts like honor, bravery, nationality, and freedom numb the pain for some and blind the truth for others. But in the end, humanity endures no suffering more intense than that caused by war.
War inflicts such a staggering emotional and financial toll on society that you’d think these massive ongoing fights are imperative, but they are not. The world is ready for peace. Yet perpetual armed conflict, the trillion dollar business it is, permits a handful of powerful corporations to pull political puppet strings, pushing military spending to unprecedented heights.
If you are indeed sick of war, as you should very well be, rest assured you are not alone. Most Americans are ready for their troops to come home and for the fighting to stop. But they are waiting. Waiting for government to decide to cease fighting, or counting on the mainstream media to declare wars to be over. But that will never happen on its own.
Instead it is up to you, dear Americans, just as it is the responsibility of every citizen of earth, to stand up against the empire of war and say NO MORE! WE ARE THROUGH FIGHTING OURSELVES! YOU HEAR US? WAR IS OVER!
Doing this in greater and greater numbers will erode the war machine from within. And not long after that, the peace which has been culminating for centuries will finally be set free to envelop the planet.
