What was the tipping point?

Michael Stokely, 23, killed in 2000 a few miles south of Baghdad. Read the comments on The 48th goes to war.

What makes a man prepared to kill?

I remember a conversation with a young man. A devout Christian and youth leader, he lived a responsible life. He wanted to take a year “off” after leaving school to work with street kids in another city through his music. His parents expected him to go to university and continue to live at home.

He was passionate about planes; he wanted to fly or to be a doctor, but he is colour blind. He thought about being a paramedic, being flown in to rescue injured in the mountains. His career options were always to serve others.
Finances were tight at home. Family expectations were for a university degree. The armed forces would provide a salary as well as a degree. He joined the army as an officer cadet. He was 18. He reached a point where he had to face the question about whether he was prepared to kill another human being, or order his men to kill.
He signed.

Another student who wanted to fly looked to the air force to get a degree, to have some adventure, to be with his mates. He was told that he would not be able to fly a particular plane because the length of his leg from his hip to his knee was too long. He would lose his legs if he had to eject. He thought a bit more.
He paid his own way through university.

Neither choice was “right” or “wrong”. But I wonder, when a self-declared Christian and pacifist who wanted to help street kids through music signs that he is prepared to kill, what happened along the way?

Does a culture of peace start with an equitable distribution of wealth? Or does it start when love and respect over-rides ambition?

Kay de Lautour Scott

14 years on, has anything changed?

Watch the video

From the blog Gnuwanda Lounge, April 7, 2008.

A mark and a question mark.
Today is the fourteenth anniversary of the "beginning" of Rwandese genocide . "Beginning" is in quotation marks because in reality the genocide began some years before with meticulous attention to detail, today (or rather yesterday evening at 8) brought down the President's plane and from there began the 100 days of collective madness that has pervaded this country [800 thousand people murdered]. 14 years, today the week of memory begins, dim lights, no music, a sense of mourning justifiably permeates the country this week. The country for 14 years has changed and much, I do not have enough information to really understand if there is the famous reconciliation, and there is probably no. Certainly the country is peaceful, certainly it is safe, even at the cost of an African-way democracy, where the leader takes 98% of the Bulgarian votes. But just as certainly there are outbreaks, which will disappear only with another two generations, others will take perhaps 15 years to reach one another or for both to seek reconciliation (with a vision 2020 in the midst). They're taking all the dead from the genocide and slowly are burying them in memorials. Hundreds of thousands of bodies will be moved today and in coming years to gather all the bodies of madness under common roofs. Today it is up to the husband of Valerie too. 14 years ... I do not know if it is enough to hear less pain, if things are safe enough to hold hope for a different future, and I hope for this country that it will be.

(in translation, original blog written in Italian)

The second thing I learnt

Culture of peace is also giving place to other's thinking and opinion. As a matter of fact only from a different opinion we can recognize the mistakes of our thinking.
On Los Angeles Times, March 9th, 2008, I found this very interesting article.

All wars have to be sold, but World War II, within the memory of the pointless carnage that then became known as World War I, was a particularly hard sell. Roosevelt and Churchill did it well, and their lies have been with us ever since.

Nicholson Baker's "Human Smoke" is a meticulously researched and well-constructed book demonstrating that World War II was one of the biggest, most carefully plotted lies in modern history. According to the myth, British and American statesmen naively thought they could reason with such brutal fascists as Germany's Hitler and Japan's Tojo. Faced with this weakness, Hitler and Tojo tried to take over the world, and the United States and Britain were forced to use military might to stop them...

Read the whole article on Los Angeles Times.

Would you like a Coca Cola? No thanks!

In Colombia twenty-two trade unionists were killed since the beginning of the year. The last victim was Jesùs Caballero, kidnapped on April 16 and found lifeless on a side street in a village north of Bogota, with obvious signs of torture.
Caballero, director of syndicated "Servicio Nacionalde Aprendiaje", was among the promoters of a large popular demonstration on March 6 last year against the extreme-right paramilitaries and against the deaths of state, as those of trade unionists killed because demanding rights for workers.
In the first line there is Coca Cola.
7 trade unionists who worked in various factories of Coca Cola were killed in the last ten years. Another 5 survived murder attempts. 61 received death threats. 74 workers were kidnapped and tortured. With these systems Coca Cola Company today buys low-cost Colombians workers and sells us tasty and expensive drinks and an excellent marketing campaign with Santa Claus as a testimonial.
Despite 97% of these murders remaining unpunished, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has put a price on those responsible, saying that the goal of paramilitary guerrillas is to "discredit the country and prevent the approval of the Treaty of free trade with U.S. ' in which he and the U.S. are so much interested.
To underline the words of the President, just yesterday Mario Uribe, cousin of the President, President's adviser and senator of the state was arrested: he will have to respond to conspiring with the death squads of the extreme right, the same that the President claims he wants to fight. At least this is what he says.

Bruno Picozzi (in translation)

Leaders warn on biofuels and food

Today, on the BBCNEWS:

Speaking at the UN in New York, Bolivian President Evo Morales said the development of biofuels harmed the world's most impoverished people. And President Alan Garcia of Peru said using land for biofuels was putting food out of reach for the poor.
Meanwhile UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is hosting a meeting to discuss European policy encouraging biofuels.
But as food prices climb worldwide, there is a fear that development of biofuels could reduce the production of badly-needed basic foodstuffs. The global prices of wheat, rice and maize have nearly doubled in the past year, while milk and meat have more than doubled in price in some countries.
Such rises, combined with high oil prices, are causing increasing political instability in less developed countries across the world. Food riots earlier this month in Haiti, which is highly reliant on imports of food and fuel, led to the deaths of at least six people, including a UN peacekeeper. There has also been unrest in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal.

"Biofuels" have shown great promise in weaning the world away from the use of petrofuels. They are supposed to be less polluting, renewable, and all that acreage (primarily corn and soybeans) will go a long way toward absorbing that excess CO2 in the atmosphere.
Not so fast, say critics in the science community. First of all, they say, there's no proof that "biofuels" are any better than their fossil-fuel counterparts when it comes to greenhouse emissions. The other concern is what it may do the planet's ecology. The rush to plant additional acreage for biofuel production could put rainforests at risk, deplete fresh water supplies, deprive wildlife of habitat and eventually, affect the world's food supply.
It comes down to deciding whose needs are greater: the 800 million people all over the world who own and drive automobiles, or the billions of others who survive on a day and already spend half their income feeding themselves.

The political experience of South America

Once South America was synonymous with dictatorship, bad governance, poverty, exploitation of the poor. Today I do not believe that the reality of the continent has changed. But reading carefully the complexity of the South American politics we discover that something is emerging which we do not understand. While the Western democracies are becoming increasingly 'democraduras' media drowned in the laws of profit, the Latin-American area is experiencing a Spring socialist who was confirmed in elections yesterday in Paraguay, giving power the Patriotica Alianza por el Cambio, a left-wing coalition led by "Red Bishop" Fernando Lugo after 61 years of dictatorship or pseudo-democracy from the very currupted Colorado party.

Today - excluding Uribe of Colombia - Latin America is governed by left-wing radical leaders (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina) or centre-left (Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Peru).
Time will tell if this is good news for Latin America. Lula, in Brazil, has already experienced how difficult it is to reconcile election promises with the reality of government. Chavez, in Venezuela has on his side the popular masses but has suffered an unexpected democratic stop to its programme of constitutional amendment.

Paraguay today is very poor and backward but has enormous wealth in the hands of a few families. We accept bets on the future of this country.

Bruno Picozzi (in translation)

Does anybody know where Western Sahara is?

The image shows a view of Saharawi Dakhla's refugee camp, near Tindouf in southwestern Algeria.

Western Sahara was occupied by Morocco in 1975, starting a war which killed 11.000 people. Saharawi refugees from Western Sahara rarely make it into the news, but for the past 30 years up to 165.000 of them have been living in remote desert camps in Algeria, most of them totally dependent on humanitarian aid.

On December 14-16, 2007, the 12th Congress of the SADR (Saharawi Republic without a land) was held. More than 1,500 Saharawi delegates discussed if resuming armed struggle, pursuing negotiations or starting preparations for the resumption of war while pursuing negotiations at the same time.

Then on January 7-9, 2008, a third round of peace talks (Manhasset III) was held in Manhasset, just outside New York City. UN mediator Peter van Valsum said the parties continued to be far apart on the question of independence. Morocco maintained that its sovereignty over Western Sahara should be recognized and affirmed that independence cannot work as ethnic Sahrawis live in four different countries and a referendum is impossible to stage. The Polisario's position was that the Territory's final status should be decided in a referendum including independence as an option.

In March a fourth round of U.N.-sponsored talks ended without solution.

Someday the newspapers will announce a new war starting and nobody will know who, why and what!!!