War & Peace Seem to Exist in Parallel Universes * Tour Travel Hotels
Here's a paradoxical news that even puts the impending US presidential election into perspective: Nuclear weapons are now (or soon will be). . . illegal.
Armageddon is against the law!
Well, sort of. And the Trump administration disagrees. Indeed, no nation armed with nuclear weapons has, as far as I know, anything other than contempt for this attack on its right to blow up the world. (only if necessary, of course). War and peace, it seems, exist in parallel universes.
In the pro-war universe, as succinctly explained byNuclear Ground Zeroin a three-minute video, it takes an American president five minutes to start a war. An aide carries a briefcase full of nuclear codes - that's "nuclear football" - literally everywhere the president goes; and if the President decides the time is right, he issues his encrypted order to the Pentagon War Room, then responds to the "challenge code" the War Room officer presents to him. The correct answer is "on a small card" carried by the president.
"It takes five minutes to start a war. . . . It's as easy as ordering a pizza. And there's no way to stop a missile once it's fired. "The whole process, from the president opening his briefcase to launching the missiles, can take as little as five minutes. Millions of people will die faster than Domino's can with your pizza. "
Human progress! This is the world we have created in our quest to dominate planet Earth and one another over the past ten thousand years. We have come to the brink of emptiness, on the brink of global suicide and non-existence, driven by a sense of glory, power and fear of the enemy, who, it turns out, is none other than us. themselves. Mankind has pursued the opposite as well, but peace - connectedness, "love your enemy as yourself" - is profoundly more complex to grasp and understand, and those who believe in war have successfully contained it until the end. 'now.
This is the context in which I consider theTreaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was approved by the United Nations General Assembly in July 2017 by a vote of 122 votes to 1. The debate on this treaty - which proclaims that no nation can "develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons "and holds nations accountable for remedying the environmental and human damage they have caused by nuclear testing over the past 75 years - has been boycotted by the United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. . . hmmm, what do these countries have in common? Oh yes, they all have nuclear weapons. Their allies also boycotted the debate and the vote, including all NATO countries.
After its adoption, the treaty had to be ratified by 50 countries before it became international law. This happened last week when Honduras became the fiftieth country to do so. This means, according to the International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons: "In 90 days the treaty will enter into force, cementing an outright ban on nuclear weapons, 75 years after their first use."
OK, but what does this actually mean? First of all, the ban on the development and use of nuclear weapons only applies to signatories to the treaty, which only includes countries that are nuclear-weapon-free anyway - meaning that it is not a pragmatic law but rather a commitment. And while I don't denigrate such a commitment, I have to wonder how it gets us the least bit closer to global nuclear disarmament.
Well, according toThe Guardian, "Campaigners hope that the treaty will have the same impact as previous international treaties on landmines and cluster munitions, bringing a stigma to their storage and use, and therefore behavioral change even in those countries. countries which have not signed it. They also suggest that military-industrial companies will begin to feel pressure to stop producing nuclear weapons because financial institutions will stop investing in these weapons.
This adds to a huge imbalance between war and peace. We can start a nuclear war in five minutes, faster than we can order pizza. But it took the world 72 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki to officially declare nuclear weapons illegal (for some), and another three years to ratify that declaration, followed by the hope that this is the start of the sufficient stigma of nuclear weapons. so that one day the nuclear powers will voluntarily surrender their weapons, or at least stop developing new ones.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has declared the treaty "dangerous" and urged signatories to withdraw their support. I also note that the US president is famous for his fear and hatred of potential non-white immigrants, be they Muslims, Mexicans or Africans, and - speaking of stigma - said many of them are from "countries shit ". And he has no problem putting them, or at least their children, in cages.
Think about it! The guy who could start a nuclear war has, in his mind, already dehumanized a huge percentage of the world's population. This makes it so much easier to kill them if necessary.
Creating peace requires enormous growth, politically and in any other way. Those committed to global peace and equality are compelled to work for it in a world which has serious prejudices in favor of war. The path to war is easy and smooth, and nuclear war is the easiest of all. The level of spiritual growth required to embrace nuclear disarmament is perhaps best illustrated bySouth Africa, which played a crucial role in adopting the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
South Africa is also the only country on the planet to have given up its nuclear weapons after gaining full control. When did it happen? At about the same time he went from an apartheid government to a racially equal government.
Is there a lesson to be learned here?
