WORLD BEYOND WAR AND THE QUEST FOR PEACE

WORLD BEYOND WAR AND THE QUEST FOR PEACE

Directed by author and international peace activist David Swanson, World Beyond War is an organization whose aim is not only to bolster world peace awareness, but also to actively inspire popular support for ending the scourge of war—an aim that I share and that is the thesis for my latest book. War: A Crime Against Humanity.

Like me, World Beyond War has begun its research and activism by accepting the fact that war is not merely the occasional use of mass violence as the continuation of political and diplomatic processes, but rather—like torture and racism before it—a nefarious institution that has been incorporated, like an indelible stain, into the fabric of society. Therefore, it’s not enough to seek ways of preventing war—although that would at least be a start, instead of always taking the violent path of least resistance—but rather, it is necessary to embrace the need to abolish this pernicious institution entirely. And, I would add, as detailed in my book, it is essential not only to call for the abolition of war, but also to de-mystify, de-glorify and de-legitimize it, and to strengthen and empower international justice so that it can pursue, try and punish all perpetrators of mass aggression.

Part of the stated aim of World Beyond War is the kind of broad-based peace education that I am espousing in my own anti-war project. World Beyond War is striving to promote the replacement of a culture of war with one of peace in which non-violent means of conflict resolution replace bloodshed.

The highly optimistic and inspired proposal of World Beyond War posits that world opinion has already moved against war and that peace activists should be seizing the opportunity to bolster their movements in order to spread awareness that, with massive popular support, war can indeed be eliminated. War, says the organization, “endangers rather than protects and harms rather than benefits” populations worldwide, and it adds that “there are steps that we can and must take to move toward war’s reduction and abolition.”

On this, we couldn’t agree more: As I never tire of repeating, in a world in which between five and nine out of every ten fatalities in wars are innocent civilians, every war today is a crime against humanity.

I urge you to visit World Beyond War to see what they’re doing, and maybe even join up, like I did. http://worldbeyondwar.org As World Beyond War says, “Peace is not free.” We must support it in order to reach those who want peace but don’t know where to start in the struggle to achieve it, and in order to persuade the dubious to take heart and stand with us.

War will only end when we confront it together through mass popular resistance and by learning to empathize with every other endangered civilian on earth. The goal isn’t to withdraw support for this or that war for any of a number of specific reasons while condoning other conflicts on long-touted and pseudo-patriotic grounds, but to reject war on principle as pernicious to the advancement and survival of the human species.

Take the oath against war. Start being part of the solution rather than of the problem.

UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME—INTRODUCTION TO A CONTROVERSY WHOSE DAY IS COMING

For some time now, the warning signs have been clear to anyone studying the evolution of free-market economies worldwide. Job creation is not keeping pace with job attrition and demographic expansion. The tendency is toward a world with ever more people and ever fewer jobs. While most politicians and world leaders praise the technological revolution that has served up extraordinary advances to billions the world over, the dwindling sources of legitimate employment belie optimism for the average individual’s future work possibilities. Among possible solutions, one of the most salient is the controversial idea of some sort of basic “allowance” to ensure coverage of people’s personal needs. But this is an idea that is still in its infancy, while its practical application may be more urgently required than is generally presumed. In Western capitalist society there has long been a conservative idea that the capitalist makes money through investment and that the worker makes a living wi...

THE RISE OF POPULIST NATIONALISM: PART III — ROOT CAUSES

To read Parts I and II, please visit the following links: http://vivoonwarpeaceandjustice.blogspot.com.ar/2016/08/the-rise-of-nationalist-populism.html http://vivoonwarpeaceandjustice.blogspot.com.ar/2016/08/the-rise-of-populist-nationalism-part.html In a recently released documentary video written and directed by Kelly Nyks, Peter D. Hutchinson and Jared P. Scott for PF Films ( http://requiemfortheamericandream.com/ ) , the internationally esteemed dean of US intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, provides, like no one else to date, a clear, concise analysis of how the much-touted American dream has become an American nightmare for all but a privileged elite. And as goes the United States, so too goes the world, often with devastatingly multiplied effect. The failure of the majority of the public to understand the causes behind this dream’s demise and, worse still, their lack of tools for dealing with it, are at the root of the fears and frustrations currently fueling populist nationa...

THE RISE OF POPULIST NATIONALISM: AUTHORITARIANISM 101

Hitler said what beleaguered Germans wanted to hear. Ever since World War II, people in the Western world have been asking rhetorically how a nation of the education and cultural excellence of Germany could have believed in and rallied around such a sinister, bigoted, megalomaniacal and xenophobic leader as Adolf Hitler. Perhaps there is no single, clear-cut response to that question. But part of the answer is that such an autocratic, über -nationalist leader, whose stilted them-and-us world vision led to the most tragic global conflict in the history of the human race, was a product of his era, a supremely-driven opportunist who saw clearly how to take advantage of the widespread sense of discontent, disenfranchisement, humiliation and despair bred in his nation as of the end of World War I, in order to build a witheringly powerful and highly militarized movement “to make Germany great again.” Hitler’s so-called Nazi movement evolved by challenging the democratic syste...

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Peace, Justice and the Ultimate Crime

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