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Living on the Wrong World: A Planetary Cease Fire is Desperately Needed
( Tomdispatch.com ) – On this planet of ours, it almost doesn’t matter who’s right and who’s wrong when it comes to our wars.Actually, let me correct that thought slightly: it certainly does matter, but what matters so much more is that we humans simply can’t stop fighting them. That is (or at least should be) a stunning and deeply saddening reality. What obvious lessons we seem congenitally incapable of learning! In the previous century, after all, there were two truly global wars, World War I and World War II, that were estimated to have left significantly more than 100 million military personnel and civilians dead, while decimating parts of the planet. The second of those conflicts ended with the obliteration of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and 9th, 1945, with the loss of possibly 200,000 dead, and the arrival in our world of a shattering new weapon, the atomic bomb. After so many centuries of endless warfare, it finally brought humanity to the edge of future annihilation.
And since those fateful August days so long ago, ever more nations — with the addition of North Korea early in this century, the number has risen to nine — have acquired nuclear weapons, while the nations that had them only continue to “improve” and expand their arsenals. My own country, in fact, is planning to spend something like $1.5 trillion (yes, trillion!) “modernizing” its already vast arsenal of nukes deliverable from the land, the sea, or the air, and undoubtedly, in the years to come, from space. Russia is doing the same and the Chinese are hustling to “catch up” in their ability to take down this planet in a big-time fashion.
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Living on the Wrong World: A Planetary Cease Fire is Desperately Needed
( Tomdispatch.com ) - On this planet of ours, it almost doesn’t matter who’s right and who’s wrong when it comes to our wars. Actually, let me correct that thought slightly: it certainly does matter, but what matters so much more is that we humans simply can’t stop fighting them. That is (or at...