Peace is a serious matter and one we need to assertively learn more about.

We need a national knowledge poole. An institute hub of some kind that can deal with synthesising this kind of knowledge outside foreign affairs, as we know it.

Collective Securities is about Crime Prevention at every level. Community Safe is part of Global Safe and we need to learn more about what this means.

My view is that we are a defensive culture. We spend so much time on thinking defensively, we fail to have the capacity to think about all.

Australia is an innovative nation, and I think we could gain more if we practiced what we preached, on our home soil.

Self Governance begins with us inside the family and works upward toward nation building. Yes, it is about influencing others, eachother, as well as ourselves.

While in Vietnam, where I did my research thesis... I wanted to know how the Vietnamese had survived 30 years after the war.

I was shocked by what I saw and learnt about this... but deeply inspired by their village people's resilience. I was also proud of the Aussies and Kiwi's whom I met, who were assigned at village ground levels. These people were working to help re-build Vietnam's infrastructure,(Telstra, DPI, Community Aid Abroad, UN). Working to teach (knowledge transfer) and empower others at so many basic levels.

This I believe is how we kill militarism.

Our Will to Act as individuals towards a nation building concept, is the key.

http://www.miacat.com/
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Military spending is not just buying and building weapons. What about paying our Defence members? We work we get paid we pay taxes. Don't we have a right? We are the ones fighting for your freedom of speech. Please remember that without the diggers you would all be speaking a foreign language.

HUH ? Pericles and BOAZ on the same page ? yikes.. this is getting scary.....

Plerdsy.. thanx for the additional perspective there mate about 3rd world population etc.. it all adds to the big piccy !

TRTL you rightly point out that I did not address the content.. Ok..I'll try to remedy that now.

Regarding the US defense budget... this is a hard one. I tend to agree that some of the funds might be better allocated to social welfare etc...poverty alleviation and so on. Yet..at the same time, I don't have a full enough picture of the actual expenditure to know how much is concerning keeping technically ahead of CHINA and thus justified, and how much is simply keeping the wheels of the Industrial/defense conglomerates turning for their own sake.

Lets just say.. to the extent that funding is not strictly needed for valid strategic reasons, it should be used elsewhere.

PEACEFUL RESOLUTION TO CONFLICT ? :) mate.. surely with my 3000+ posts thus far you don't have to quizz me on that issue..
If conflict was ONLY related to misunderstandings, and IF people were really concerned with ALL other peoples welfare, it might be possible.

But conflicts are based on a number of major forces.

1/ Greeeeeeeed.
2/ Religious directives.

("Then be it known to you this day that the World and all that is in it belongs to Allah (so far so good) AND HIS APOSTLE" aah..now we have a problem.

3/ Survival in the face of limited (and inadequate) resources.(cf Plerdsy's post)

The only peacefully resolvable conflicts are those between well intentioned people who simply misunderstand the other side.

All the rest are mega BIFFO slash and burn, till last man standing.

This is why I become so 'hysterical and animated' when utter tripe like this article is trotted out. (and trust me.. I loathe tripe as food also....bleaaaaaagghh.. :)

Thats why I have to suspect a malicious intent with articles like this. If their authors are intelligent they are either in denial of reality or simply want to direct our minds in more 'managable' ways.

I like the sentiment of the article... but...

My other reaction is to think that Australia is no more likely to achieve word peace through arms reduction as it was in achieving agricultural free trade by dropping local tariffs.

But I'm just blowing smoke here. Coming to the point, I don't think that if AU reduced expenditure it would have any influence on the US, China, Russia, Iran, the Koreas or even the taliban. We're simply to small and remote. They're not going to care of we buy 70 JTF (aircraft) or 50. Ditto with those bloody tanks surely.

However maybe there's potentially a case to be made for having a more defensive force. Or... investing in cross-cultural/border activities of other kinds. That'd be something that I'd consider as a taxpayer.

BD, cluster bombs do kill children. They're the bombs that spray out showers of bomblets that look like soft drink cans. Most don't explode on impact but sit around waiting for some poor sod to pick them up. Kids pick them up thinking they're in for a fizzy treat.

They were not designed to hit specific military targets, but to do little bits of damage over a wide area and a long period of time. They are not the stuff of trench warfare (blokes fighting blokes) or the technological precision we now like to claim we've risen to.

They are specifically designed to cause what we misleadingly call collateral damage, another term for the mangling and death of civilians.

Militarism is part of the Military Industrial Complex President Eisenhower warned the US about in his farewell address.

Companies for research and development are reliant on the government for funds to continue work and exist. This research and development then needs to be justified, so that the spending is justified, which is why wars are necessary.

It seems to me that the real solution is to make people aware of the symbiotic relationship so that they won't accept or believe the propaganda which is put to them to justify militarism. Otherwise, there is no real pressure on the government to cut back spending.