Clarification:

That should have read, The Iraq war was responsible for 141 million metric tons of CO2 from March 2003 to Dec 2007.

Many countries spend more of their budgets
for military purposes that they do for
education or medical care. Altogether,
the international military establishment
employs over 100 million people.
It's interesting that during the "International
Year of Peace" back in 1986 - world military
expenditure was a record $900 billion.

This represents a colossal diversion of funds
from socially useful goals; for example,
a single hour's worth of these expenditures
according to reports done would suffice to
save through immunization over 120,000 children
around the world who die each day from preventable
infectious diseases.

I think part of the problem today is that our
societies have entered the "nuclear age" with
political institutions inherited from a previous era.
The human population is spread among a series of
sovereign independent states - most of them with their
own armed forces and so there is a built in
potential for warfare whenever any two nations have
conflicting interests.

However, there is hope in the two existing vital
elements for international peace-making that
are currently in place. One is the UN, which
although not perfect by any means - does
provide a Forum for world opinion and a mechanism
for conflict resolution.

The second is a growing
body of internation law that specifies the rights
and obligations that nations have towards one
another particularly with respect to aggression.

Of course the UN is most effective when superpowers
are able to agree on a course of action and mobilize
their blocs to support it. Even so, the organization,
despite its critics, provides an influential Forum
for world opinion, and while it may not always
prevent war, it helps towards making it less
likely.

cont'd ...

Dear Arjay,

Of course you're right - once people no
longer take their world for granted, but instead
understand the social authorship of their lives
and futures, they can become an irresistible
force in history.

The Vietnam was came to an end largely as a
result of the antiwar movement, a social movement
that consisted disproportionately of young people,
including many college students. When the anti-war
movement first challenged the war, it received
little support from politicians or the media, and
its goals seemed hopeless. But the tide of public
opinion gradually began to shift.

In the US 1968 presidential primaries, an antiwar
candidate backed by student volunteers did
unexpectedly well and according to my research -
President Johnson decided not to run for re-election.

From that point on, political debate on the war
focused not on how to stay in it, but on how to
get out of it.

Through collective action therefore, ordinary
people with few resources other than their own
determination had changed a national consensus
for war to a national consensus for peace.

Foxy,
900 billion, crickey we could all retire at age 25 with that sort of dough floating around.

Dear individual,

Yeah, it scares the living daylights
out of me - when you think of the good that
could be done globally with that sort of money.

The average person can expect to give up three
to four years of his or her life working to
foot the arms bill, while ever more people suffer
from illiteracy, ill health and chronic hunger.

I remember the huge impact that
the book, "Imagining The Real," by Dorothy Green
and David Headon made on me a few years ago.

As David Headon pointed out in the book,

" We need new ways of thinking to cope with the
nuclear age. It is here that writers, with
their concern for the human condition and their
special skills with language, can enable us to
imagine the horrific reality of nuclear arms and
nerve us to build an alternative future..."

"Somewhere there must be a place
Called Little Peace
Where men with little humanity
Do not have the power
To make great decision.
Where little fears do not lessen
The so small span
Of our lives,
Where
For once
We can know peace.
Just a little.
To know the taste of it."
(Maurice Strandgard - Reading - La Mama Poetica,
La Mama Theatre, Carlton, Melbourne).

Talk about waste,see this video clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU4GdHLUHwU by Donald Rumsfeld.The Pentagon just before 911 could not account for $2.3 trillion.This is almost two and a half times our GDP.911 conviently distracted attention from this scandle.To this day it has not been addressed.

I think there is monumental corruption involving the US Federal Reserve,members of Congress,CIA and the Pentagon.

Foxy,I think that the UN is part of the problem.This will not end well
unless the masses get involved and get some logic and common sense into policies and decision making.

I did not understand the power plays at the time of Vietnam.In the last 12 months I've learnt a lot.