Extract from “In Search of Truth” © Fu Ceyi.
In the last one hundred years, we have killed more than a hundred million members of our own species. Many current world political and religious leaders grew up in violent environments. Due mainly to American foreign policy decisions since the end of World War II and more recently the policies of American war presidents Bush I & II, today’s children, teenagers and adults through world wide live television, see genocides frequently and murders being committed on a daily basis.
Humankind is now accustomed to witnessing murders as normal daily occurrences. Most of the peoples living in the more than 250 mega cities in the world are mere spectators becoming more and more immune to the pain and sufferings of innocent civilian victims of the wars in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. As we imperceptibly become accustomed to violence our natural compassion for our fellowmen becomes dull and it diminishes further as our self centered insatiable obsession with the acquisition of wealth fame and influence increases. Unbridled Americanized global capitalism promoting endless economic growth and consumption, reinforced by main stream mass media and the worship of celebrities’ lifestyles have entrenched consumerism as the dominant culture in our world.
Psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank, author of Bush on the Couch did a psychoanalytic study of President George Bush pointing out Bush’s pathological condition in a persuasive manner. He explained clearly Bush’s pathology in relationship to the “dysfunctional family system” of which he is a part. Among other subjects, he explores Bush's false sense of omnipotence, instilled within him during childhood and emboldened by his deep involvement in fundamentalist religion, his untreated alcoholic abuses, his habit and comfort in living outside the law, defying international law in his presidency as boldly as he once defied United States DUI statutes and military reporting requirements, his rigid and simplistic either black or white thought patterns, paranoia, and megalomania -- and how they have driven him to invent adversaries so that he could destroy them. Frank’s conclusions are deeply disturbing and Bush on the Couch sheds new light on an administration whose record of violence and cruelty seems increasingly dependent on the unstable psyche of a president who psychologically may be unfit to run the country.
Justin A. Frank, M.D., is a clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at George Washington University Medical Center. Since 1980 he has been a teaching analyst at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. He is past president of the Greater Washington Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Bush on the Couch is based on a close analysis of Bush's public statements and behavior, as well as historical records provided by journalists, biographers, and those who have known the president well. Frank traces the formation of Bush's character from childhood to the present day, examining closely the influence of the president's parents, especially the influence of his mother Barbara Bush, an acknowledged disciplinarian whose own insecurities may have prevented her from adequately nurturing her son. Frank finds in Bush's childhood the roots of a remarkable psychic split that maintains a prevailing influence on his adult worldview. Frank argues that this problem has obstructed Bush's ability to manage his emotions, filling his mind with agitated, exaggerated anxiety conditioning him to view the world in black-and-white terms that have so patently shaped his administration, hence his call for a “crusade” and ramblings about the “axis of evil”. It is and should be a matter of grave concern to everyone that the most powerful man in the world with his finger on the nuclear button may be motivated emotionally by sincere religious ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
What went wrong? What will happen next? The past may be the key to the future. A great danger to the survival of humankind is the Christian belief in the innate sinfulness of humankind coupled up with the dogma of Armageddon as the inevitable and only way to salvation. It is a bizarre religious dogma to teach that the only way for 144,000 Christians to survive and be saved for eternity is to destroy earth and all non Christian humans, animals and interdependent living things. The goal of literal Chrsitians is in another life, and their home is not of this world. Though they openly profess this belief, none of them, adherents, priests or popes have ever looked forward happily to their deaths. We like all other living things naturally appreciate life here, now and always. Other religions also teach the immortality of the soul but salvation is not conditional upon the destruction of Earth and all its other inhabitants. This Armageddon story does not gel with our conscience, reason and science. It is no longer inspiring and is not working for humankind; we need a new workable story to inspire us into a new era of peace and harmony.
They then believed that earth was flat and according to their history of creation, earth is today 6006 years old. The interdependent community of life on our planet has been evolving for billions of years whereas this story is 2000 years old. Based on our fossil records and aided by present day technology, biochemists, molecular and biological anthropologists using proteins and various forms of nuclei acid in DNA laboratories put the existence of the first member of the human family at around 7.5 million years ago.
Former republican president, Ronald Reagan actually believed that Armageddon would happen in his lifetime. If “Born again” Christian Bush II sees it as his duty to fulfill this prophecy in the bible, the chances of mutual Armageddon increase significantly. Performing one's duty to god can be a scary thing. Many steeled themselves for appalling acts by focusing on duty to god and country by suppressing their innate more normal instincts. Heinrich Himmler, appointed by Hitler to wipe out Jews in a speech to the SS Einsatzgruppen told his special squads that they were called upon to fulfil a "repulsive duty" and that he would not like it if they did such a thing happily. Recalling a scene he witnessed when the SS in cold blood shot dead about 100 Jews, he said he has "been aroused to the depths of my soul" but he justified such an act with the belief that he was only obeying the highest law by doing his duty. This belief is not only unscientific; it is unnatural and destructive as well; Christian devotees see enemies and a devil opposed to their god where there are none. All non Christian out groups are theologically considered devil worshippers.
Though atheists do not believe in God, they are neither inherently evil nor destructive; they are certainly better than religious devotees, because they reason more and see no inherent evil in others, only weaknesses and imperfections. I differ with atheists in the sense that whereas I am awe struck by the grandeur, power and beauty of the One Supreme Being as manifested in nature and the universe through the evolutionary and renewal process, they are unmoved at the most enchanting spectacle and are always seeking a syllogism.
We need to urgently banish from humankind the false ideas that God is an external absolute jealous despotic power, a vengeful one to be feared more than loved, that we humans are unfitted to be loved and unworthy of being loved, that if we are not Christians we would become god’s enemies and he would create eternal hell for such enemies. It is not enough that such enemies will die without salvation, they cannot even remain dead; they will be resurrected against the law of nature and then cast into eternal fire. Such notions are evil in the sense that what you believe becomes real for you and you will enact your life according to your belief. This Christian belief was established without the least evidence, reason and conscience and presented as an "absolute truth".
Piety and devotion driven by fear of such a jealous and vengeful god is not spontaneous and it deprives us of our ability and potential to appreciate and cultivate the beauty, strength and wisdom that is within all of us regardless of our race or religion. Anthropologists have calculated that since the beginning of humanity, more than 100,000 different religions have arisen and most have decayed with their creators; recent ancient casualties being the Sumerian, Egyptian, Babylonian, Mayan, Olmec, Persian, Greek and Incas. The I Ching teaches that religions and cultures through the millenniums come and go like fashions but the elements of nature remain the same. It is therefore more beneficial to pay attention to study the properties of sunlight, air, water, wood, metals, earth and other invisible laws of nature which impact the lives of humankind. Their inherent properties like the laws of gravity and aerodynamics have remained the same since the beginning.
Christian monotheism is an offshoot of monotheistic Yahwehism. Yahweh, the god of Abraham being obsessed with his demand for the exclusive worship of his chosen people admitted that he is a jealous god (I presume he is jealous of other gods, there is no reason for him to be jealous of mere humans whom he created) commanded his people “Thou shall not have other gods before me”.
A jealous god is unacceptable. Jealousy is a destructive emotion, whether in god or men. Life is not a zero-sum game, win all loose all, heaven or hell, “either you are with me or against me” type of choices only. Our chances of happiness and success are greater if we are not envious; psychologically and strategically, the best co-operative partners we can have are those who will share and rejoice in our success as well as their own. Deeply envious people are likely to miss out on opportunities for mutually beneficial co-operation. Envy is inherently opposed to contentment, an emotional preoccupation with unfulfilled wants and is unlikely to lead to happiness. A deeply envious person is often miserable, unable to enjoy what he has and is obsessed rather with what he has not. In extreme forms, it drives people to ruin themselves and their “enemies”, hence some of them dream up all kinds of hellish torture and punishment for their “enemies”. Any entity whether god or men if he depends on the exclusive worship of all others for their happiness is doomed to be disappointed. In a feast of ego, everyone goes home hungry.
This Messiah/Armageddon myth originates from a small Hebrew tribe who after centuries of being slaves to the more powerful Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans psychologically imagined a messiah who would come and liberate them from their prolonged despair and punish their enemies with everlasting fire, thus giving themselves hope to continue living. This is a normal psychological reaction, a mental defense mechanism against madness from extreme disappointment. A new minor Jewish cult then promoted Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus was subsequently by a narrow ballot at the Council of Nicaea in 325 proclaimed as the divine son of god by Emperor Constantine to serve his own private political agenda. Christianity was thus made the official exclusive state religion of the Roman Empire. Christianity then spread to other parts of the world through six centuries of European colonialism. Scholarships were given to Christian converts and their children who subsequently supported and assisted in the administration of their colonial offices. Orthodox Jews do not accept Jesus as the Messiah then and now. Muslims regard Jesus as a wise teacher and not a god.
Any religion or person calling for crusades or jihads is certainly evil and offensive to God. It is insane to believe that god wants and needs us to kill on his behalf all his “enemies”. God does not have enemies, who would make the Almighty Creator his enemy? And why would God who created the universe and everything in it have us mere mortals as enemies just because we do not accept Jesus or any other person or spiritual entity as God or god’s prophet? Are we not mere mortals living on a speck of dust circling a small sun amongst billions of suns in the universe? For those who must believe in a religion and god, is it not better to believe that God is the father/mother of all humans and other living things instead of just the Jews (the original chosen people), Christians (the usurpers) and Muslims (the newcomers)? God does not want nor need his children to kill his other children for him. We are not perfect but we are certainly not unfit or unworthy of loving and being loved by God and other persons of all races and religions.
More disturbing is Frank’s observation of the unconscious collusion in the silence towards Bush’s behavior that permeates a large section of the population in the United States. Though Bush’s psychological profile is peculiar to him, it is also a reflection of the shared common interconnected larger reality of modern westernized cultures, more in particular American culture. Bush’s profile may be typical of an egoistic rich and spoiled American, our problem is that he, a typical ordinary egoistic businessman is elected president of the United States with his finger on the trigger of the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons on earth; more than six trillion dollars stock of nuclear bombs, maintained at high cost and completely without any recurrent economic or spiritual value; its only application and purpose when used is to destroy earth and its inhabitants.
His profile is seen by many Americans as acceptable, hence his ability to get elected, though many other Americans believe that he actually stole the presidency from former democrat vice president Al Gore in 2001. The incredible foolishness was Americans elected him as president for a second term, ignoring George Soros's grave concern about Bush's leadership suitability. Soros in his latest book The Age of Fallibility posited that "The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States. This is a harsh – indeed, for me, painful — thing to say, but unfortunately I am convinced it is true. The United States continues to set the agenda for the world in spite of its loss of influence since 9/11, and the Bush administration is setting the wrong agenda. The Bush agenda is nationalistic: it emphasizes the use of force and ignores global problems whose solution requires international cooperation. The rest of the world dances to the tune the United States is playing, and if that continues too long we are in danger of destroying our civilization."
The other deeply disturbing observation is that other western and westernized national leaders of countries locked in a submissive position in an axis of world power headed by the United States, notably Tony Blair of England were foolish enough to join him in echoing his war rhetoric.
Is this penchant for war an indication of a massive psychopathic epidemic amongst politicians and religious leaders of westernized/Americanized nations world wide? Bush’s public TV appearances often show him as a man under pressure. Visit this link for a recent illustration telecasted live on 19th August 2006 on FOX news amongst many previous ones for a glimpse of his mental profile.
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=13133This video shows Bush obviously stressed, agitated and unable to concentrate. I notice towards the end he walked away with some frustration. A typical viewers’ comment is
“The president is drinking, and doing drugs. He is either doing cocaine, or using a stimulant like meth. I have seen other video footage of him being jumpy, and constantly licking his lips. He is obviously taking stimulants”. There is no happiness within Bush and he appears incapable of communicating happiness to others. It is tough being a "born again" literalist Christian, there is always the "devil" to deal with besides having to watch out for the wrath of a jealous god. There are about 860,000 words in the bible and not a word on laughter.
His policy brings much pain and sufferings to many Americans and more especially innocent Muslim civilians killed in the wars. Seen from the interconnected perspective, Bush is a symbol which represents and reveals the collective psychosis that we have all fallen into, the easy acceptance of open corruption and hypocrisy, violence and cruelties, the ridiculous belief that god would be appeased with the violence inflicted in his name on others. God is neither a sadist nor a racist. Bush is revealing something to us about ourselves that we need to urgently discard or adjust or it may eventually destroy us.
George W Bush, a president under pressure.
George Bush could and did with lies, the support of his few hand picked cabinet officials, American main stream mass media, injudicious members of congress and senate and Tony Blair started the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, he could not possibly continue with the war after having failed to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq without the silent collusion of American citizens at large. Bush by himself no matter how powerful could not have done what he did without the acquiescence of the majority of Americans rendered dysfunctional with neuroses and psychoses in a social system which is fast deteriorating. As Gunnar Myrdal observed in 1944 in An American Dilemma
The individual . . . does not act in moral isolation. He is not left alone to manage his rationalizations as he pleases, without interference from outside. His valuations will, instead, be questioned and disputed . . . The feeling of need for logical consistency within the hierarchy of moral valuations – and the embarrassed and sometimes distressed feeling that the moral order is shaky – is, in its modern intensity, a rather new phenomenon.
Emperor Wu (Liu Che), the sixth emperor of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC - 24 AD) apparently disturbed by the intrigue and corruption of his court officials asked his inner circle advisors on how best he could rule his kingdom. Confucian scholars advised him that “Public opinion is the uncrowned monarch”. He was counseled that his soldiers, wealth and power came from his people, hence it was necessary to follow the hearts of the people, the hearts of the people follow the laws of nature; his strength was the strength of the people, without justice there can be no peace and stability, without stability, his kingdom cannot last. He reigned from 141 BC to 87 BC and his reign is considered as one of the most distinguished in Chinese history and Wu is credited with the opening of the Silk Road which later served as a route for cultural and trade relations between east and west. His reign was characterized by Confucianism as official state ideology and it became the benchmark for future emperors.
Myrdal’s observation that the modern intensity of this need for a consistent universal system of morality is related to increased mobility and communication, and the spread of education. The limited traditional and locally held ideas based on exclusive sectarian, religious and racial dogmas exposed to a plural international merging of cultures and philosophies cannot withstand the wider inclusive spiritual appeal of universal values. The recent surges in Yahwehist fundamentalism is partly a result of centuries of continuous exposure of narrow intolerant dogmas to a larger universal reality and may well be the final struggle that will lead to a further more permanent demise of all intolerant primitive religions in a new era of peace and harmony inclusive of all human species regardless of race and religion and other members of the community of life on earth; a transition phase is always the most difficult.
It is hard to imagine a reversion to intolerant violent primitive theocratic forms of government be it Christian, Muslim or Jewish. I do not foresee the judicial process of any existing secular country in the world reverting back to Christian interpretations of the bible, the Shariah courts or Moses laws. Historically and in harmony with evolutionary human intelligence, every new era achieves dominance over previous ones because of its inherently rational and universal moral appeal. Because of science earth is now one small village and we all have to with our differences and similarities learn to live together. Wherever you are, via a telephone or modem, a conversation or message is only seconds away, likewise a missile is also seconds away.
This struggle amongst and between religious Yahwehist (Jewish, Christians and Muslims) fundamentalists and humanist secularists is being played out mainly in the United States and the Middle East. The United States is the most powerful nation on earth, Opus Die a militant Catholic society, a personal prelature of the pope has shifted its headquarters to New York. If you can influence the government of the United States, you can influence the world. Consequently Americans are divided basically into two camps and many have become extremists. The humanist/secularist position is not anti religion, it simply means that the public administration of a country is based on laws established by consensus of the people regardless of religion, race, creed and gender. Within the law, your religion or philosophy is your own private matter.
You have on the one hand liberals who would support gay marriages (even amongst members of the clergy) and sanction the rights of individuals to excesses at the expense of greater collective security of the community at large and the right wing Christian coalition neo-conservatives who would work religiously with missionary zeal to ban the teaching of Darwin’s evolutionary theory in schools, make bible study mandatory and America a Christian theocratic country, bomb abortion clinics, pray and act fervently to fulfill the prophecies in the bible including Armageddon. Right wing neo-conservative Christian coalition comprising the Catholic north and Southern Protestants have hijacked the Republican Party and with Bush as spokesman for Yahweh, the Republican Party is now also referred to as GOP (God's Own Party), other Americans refer to it as SOP (Satan's Own Party).
George Soros believes that “America has fallen into the hands of extremist ideologues, led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who believe that the truth can be successfully manipulated. They have successfully manipulated a born-again president and a feel-good public.” He proposed “The ultimate objective has to be to recapture the Republican Party from the conservative and religious extremists who now control it. American democracy is built on two parties competing for the middle ground. The system was undermined when extremists captured the Republican Party. If we are to restore the balance, the extremists must be routed. A resounding Democratic victory in 2006 would achieve that.”
In between these two extremes, the silent majority has become indifferent to politics. In Why Americans Hate Politics, author E J Dionne, Jr. did a wonderful survey of American politics in the last several decades describing the frustrations of the public and the paralysis of government in what he calls “politics of false choices”. He provided a seductive broad and detailed intellectual history of liberalism and conservatism since the 1960s – on how liberals and conservatives ended up directionless, drifting aimlessly in a world without the cold war. They may have won the cold war and lost their vision; the middle-class utopian “American Dream” is rapidly fading away.
E J Dionne, Jr., author of Why Americans Hate Politics is also current Opinion Editor/Columnist of the Washington Post.
James K Galbraith, currently a professor at the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs and at the Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin commented: “Why do Americans hate politics? Because they hate the false moralizing, the pandering, the divisiveness, the personal slanders, and the trivialization that now dominate the American election campaigns ….”
Professor James K Galbraith, the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs.
The system of electing the American president is now blemished by the need for big donations from Wall Street conglomerates for the presidential election campaigns. Presidential candidates chosen from both the Democrat and Republican parties are not necessary the ones that are most honest, suitably experienced, competent, caring and wise; but the ones who can raise the most election campaign funds, hence, it is the donors from the Wall Street Conglomerates that chose the two presidential candidates one year in advance before non donor Americans are given the opportunity to choose from amongst the two they have chosen.
Congressmen and Senators likewise depend on donations and American democracy is now dollar democracy. Until this conflict of interest situation is resolved by the people and the courts through more stringent reforms, American politicians will to a larger or lesser degree be beholden to their campaign donors as founding president George Washington cautioned, “It is almost impossible to resist the highest bidder”. The caution imposed by the founding fathers of the United States limiting the presidential term to two terms has been circumvented and rendered ineffective; presidents, congressmen and senators can be bought and it appears many have been bought or compromised by campaign donations.
Democracy like any other creed or ism can be corrupted and abused. Thomas Jefferson when drafting the American Constitution was apprehensive of this problem and cautioned the people to be vigilant always, that democracy in practice must be bottomed up as it is never top down, without vigilance, democracy can easily be subverted. Unfortunately, most people are now overwhelmed by mass consumerism, cynicism or have become dysfunctional to provide sufficient checks and balances on politicians.
When asked about how politics had most changed over the past half century, Bob Dole, former Senate majority leader and Republican presidential candidate in 1992 said: “You’ve got so much money in politics now that the incumbent almost has to fall out of a ten-story building with somebody else’s wife to be defeated.” Dole was candid about the sordid business of asking for money, there is always the question “What bill do you have pending before you? This trading of favors between donors and American politicians is known to all politicians, journalists and many Americans; the incredible thing is that Americans are not demanding for reforms.
Money politics subject politicians to a corruptive and dehumanizing process that in Dole’s opinion makes it almost impossible for any candidate to remain virtuous. Federal Election Commission records show that “people who have business” before politicians heading or are involved in committees, or “people who have legislative interests in front of them” have pumped millions of dollars into their campaigns over the years, hence many congressmen, senators and even presidents are compromised in the performance of their public duties and often ended up serving as proxies of big businesses to the detriment of public interests. This in part explains the folly of some of their foreign policies and the many impractical and inconsistent bills being passed in the United States.
This system creates a situation that disables the virtuous from participating actively in politics and attracts the worst kind of opportunists into the arena. The virtuous would not be prepared to compromise their integrity when it comes to voting on bills that serve the public interests against that of donors. Wall Street conglomerates mostly would not donate to candidates that would act against their interests. Unconditional political donations by businesses are rarities. American politics is a game of “I scratch your back, you scratch my back”. Good people can’t and do not want to run for office if they don’t have enough money and have to raise money knowing full well that large amount of campaign funds would be applied destructively and used to scandalize opponents. Without a big war chest, a virtuous candidate would not be able to defend himself against personal scandalous attacks by his opponents armed with big money; scandals can easily be bought and sold during election times. If good people do not participate in politics, you cannot have a good government. The choices available for American voters under this system become pathetic.
James Galbraith is of the view that Bush II America serves the wealthy “Predatory Class”:
Today, the signature of modern American capitalism is neither benign competition, nor class struggle, nor an inclusive middle-class utopia. Instead, predation has become the dominant feature – a system wherein the rich have come to feast on decaying systems built for the middle class. The predatory class is not the whole of the wealthy; it may be opposed by many others of similar wealth. But it is the defining feature, the leading force. And its agents are in full control of the government under which we live.
Abraham Lincoln’s caution “As a result of the war, corporations have now been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow … until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed” after the civil war has been ignored by Americans and this deceitful corruption in high places have now spread to other parts of the world where Americans have vested interests. In a lawfully governed country, wealth can purchase pleasures only and not political authority.
Galbraith is also highly critical of Bush’s foreign policy and in particular his invasion of Iraq in 2003 which benefit mostly or only the arms and oil industry “predatory class” and “reconstruction contractors” appointed by him:
There is a reason for the vulnerability of empires. To maintain one against opposition requires war – steady, unrelenting, unending war. And war is ruinous – from a legal, moral and economic point of view. It can ruin the losers, as it did the British and the Soviets in the 20th century. Conversely, Germany and Japan recovered well from World War II, in part because they were spared reparations and did not have to waste national treasure on defense in the aftermath of defeat….The real economic cost of Bush’s empire building is twofold: It diverts attention from pressing economic problems at home and it sets the United States on a long-term imperial path that is economically ruinous.
In an exclusive interview as reported in The Telegraph on 27th August, 2006, former US President Carter and 2002 Nobel Peace prize winner spoke out against the Iraq War. Mr. Carter said that the Iraq invasion had subverted the fight against terrorism and instead strengthened al-Qaeda and the recruitment of terrorists. Though Bush did not create radical Islamism, he certainly gave it a boost. Unexpectedly, Carter sees Tony Blair’s lack of leadership as a key factor in the present crisis in Iraq. According to him, “In many countries where I meet with leaders and private citizens there is an equating of American policy with Great Britain - with Great Britain obviously playing the lesser role” and "We now have a situation where America is so unpopular overseas that even in countries like Egypt and Jordan our approval ratings are less than five per cent. It's a shameful and pitiful state of affairs and I hold your British Prime Minister to be substantially responsible for being so compliant and subservient”.
"We've never before had an administration that would endorse pre-emptive war - that is a basic policy of going to war against another country even though our own security was not directly threatened," Mr. Carter believes that the Iraq invasion far from achieving peace and stability has been a disaster on all fronts and that the Iraqi people are now not better off and Americans and Britons are not any safer. In his recently published book, Faith and Freedom, he attacks the American administration for leading the country into insularity and intolerance. America's (and Britain's) disastrous war in Iraq has now lasted longer than the US involvement in the Second World War; this conflict has outlasted a war that ended with total victory over Nazi Germany.
The cost of the current Iraq war II alone has caused American taxpayers more than 300 billion dollars, the lives of more than 2,600 American soldiers and about 300,000 innocent Iraqi civilians. The global corruption of politicians in the world by global capitalism coupled up with the availability of weapons of mass destruction pose the greatest danger on planet earth. Not counting the thousands of covert military operations in the last one hundred years, Americans have been openly involved in wars since their victory in World War II. Sadly, it appears that they may have become addicted to wars as an expression of their “superiority”. Their slogan “War for peace and democracy” is a lie. I feel sorry for the millions of innocent civilian men, women and children of different races and religions who have died as victims of American "war for peace and democracy" in the last few decades.
In an interview with Nathan Gardels, editor of New Perspective Quarterly based in Los Angeles in 1995, Singapore’s former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew expressed the view that America is no longer Asia’s model noting that “. . . after thirty years of experimenting with the great society programs, there is widespread crime and violence, children kill each other with guns, neighborhoods are insecure, old people feel forgotten, families are falling apart.” When asked if he agreed with Zbigniew Brzezinski’s worry that “America’s own cultural self-corruption – its permissive cornucopia – may undercut America’s capacity, not just to sustain its position in the world as a political leader, but even as a systemic model for others” Lee responded, “That has already happened” and added “. . . Those who want a wholesome society where young girls and old ladies can walk in the streets at night, where the young are not preyed upon by drug peddlers, will not follow the American model.”
The FBI recently reported that violent crimes increased in 2005 to its highest rate in 15 years. Brzezinski was a former United State National Security Advisor and currently professor of American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. On the current conflict with Iran, Brzezinski said,
"I think of war with Iran as the ending of America's present role in the world, that they will be dragged into a war that could last 20 to 30 years and that no-one could do it without destroying America's position on the planet.”
George Bush II was born on 6th July 1946, eleven months after Hiroshima was targeted by the first atomic bomb on civilian population in history on 6th August 1945. The United States dropped a second bomb three days later on Nagasaki, killing in total about 250,000 innocent children, women and men. Today, sixty years later, Bush’s finger is on 5,000 missiles armed with nuclear warheads ready to launch on command with a 3 minutes cancellation button. The Americans and Russians came close to nuclear war over the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 and for thirteen terrifying days, the fate of the world rested in the hands of just two men, Kennedy and Khrushchev; likewise, the Indians and Pakistanis came close a nuclear exchange in mid 1999. A miscalculated power play by any leader of a country with nuclear weapons can quickly and easily lead to nuclear winter.
Dr. Helen Caldicott, Founder & President,
Nuclear Policy Research Institute (NPRI) citing a two page article in New York Times narrated how we were only ten seconds away from nuclear winter in 1995. Visit the link below and listen to Dr. Caldicott explains the dangers of a nuclear war, it provides an authoritative analysis of the devastating impact of a looming possible U. S. or Israeli nuclear attack on Iran.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CAL20060728&articleId=2843Dr. Caldicott spoke on 21st June 2006 at the
Perdana Global Conference for World Peace held at Kuala Lumpur. You may also listen to her earlier speech of 15th December 2005 at this link
http://www.perdana4peace.org/materials.html by clicking “video” next to Dr. Caldicott’s name.
This link
http://www.gandhitoday.org/hiroshima.html provides a video presentation of the devastation of nuclear bombs and cruelties of war. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were civilian targets, the argument by the Americans that they were bombed to save the lives of American soldiers is doubtful. Dwight Eisenhower was clearly against the use of the bombs, he twice recommended to Truman not to use them. In a
Newsweek interview in 1963 he bluntly stated that
“It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing … to use the atomic bomb; to kill and terrorize civilians … was a double crime.” According to Curtis E. Lemay, the US Air force general who led the B29 bombings of Japanese cities,
“The war would have been over without the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”
Truman's good friend and chief of staff, Fleet Admiral William Leahy, stated in his memoirs that
“the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.” He lamented,
“In being the first to use the atomic bomb, we adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.” General Douglas MacArthur amongst other US military leaders said it would be unnecessary and immoral. Albert Einstein, Norman Cousins and many other prominent Americans attacked the use of the bomb. After the dropping of the two bombs, the US authorities censored reports and pictures from the devastated cities showing tens of thousands of corpses and mutilated survivors. It was just too dreadful to be viewed.
At that time, the Americans had captured Iwo Jima, landed on Okinawa and bombing Tokyo; the Japanese were clearly losing the war and ready for surrender negotiation; it certainly was not necessary to drop the second bomb on Nagasaki. The bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki were about 15 kilotons. The average U.S. nuclear warhead today is 100 kilotons, some are 250 kilotons, and some are as high as 5 megatons.
Nuclear scientist Leo Szilard recounted to his biographers how Truman's secretary of state, James Byrnes, told him before the Hiroshima attack that “Russia might be more manageable if impressed by American military might and that a demonstration of the bomb may impress Russia”. Peter J. Kuznick, associate professor of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University together with Mark Selden, a historian from Cornell University in New York, studied the diplomatic archives of the US, Japan and the USSR and found that three days before Hiroshima, Truman agreed at a meeting that Japan was “looking for peace”. Truman obviously knew as advised by his top aids that there was no need to use the A-bomb but the bombs were dropped anyway. “Impressing Russia was more important than ending the war”, Selden told the New Scientist.
Only a beast could cold-bloodedly decide to obliterate the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian men, women and children just to demonstrate the awesome power of its new super weapon to its main competitor, the Soviet Union that their cities would suffer the same fate if the USSR attempted to stand in the way of Washington's plans for world hegemony. It was the most ruthless demonstration of raw power and until today it still stands as the single most cruel act in the history of humankind.
It terrified the Japanese politicans so much that until today they have yet to psychologically recover sufficiently from this memory and comes running the moment uncle Sam beckons, all UN representatives know that the Japanese vote in the Security Council belongs to the USA. Emboldened by the success of its nuclear genocides in Japan, Washington planned and threatened the use of nuclear weapons on at least 20 occasions in the 1950s and 1960s, only being restrained when the USSR developed enough nuclear-armed missiles to ensure “mutually assured destruction”, thus urshering in a period of uneasy detente known as the cold war. The breakup of the USSR may have emboldened the Americans to have another go at world hegemony.
Bush II grew up as a child, teenager and adult in the midst of covert and overt wars and conflicts fought by Americans in foreign lands almost all over the world. After the end of World War II, the Americans supported the return of Indochina to the French and eventually got directly involved in the Vietnamese war that lasted for more than twenty years ending only in 1973.
Visit
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6579.htm and listen to John Kerry’s 1971 eloquent testimony speech against the Vietnam War before the Senate, he was then only 28 tears old. He said,
“Because of all that I saw in Vietnam, the treatment of civilians, the ravaging of their countryside, the needless, useless deaths, the deception and duplicity of our policy, I changed”. Mobilizing public opinion against the war, he accused the Nixon administration of lying and termed the war “barbaric”. His question to Americans then
“How do you ask a man to be the last men to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” became a popular slogan for the anti-war protestors.
Innocent villagers were massacred by US soldiers at My Lai.
John Kerry (born 11th December 1943) is a Purple Heart war veteran and democratic presidential candidate in the last presidential election. He lost narrowly to Bush II; history may have been different if he was elected. He is three years older than Bush and as a Vietnam War veteran may have had a different experience and outlook on American wars; his testimony certainly had a significant impact on the decision to withdraw the 500,000 American troops home from Vietnam in 1973. About 58,000 American soldiers sacrificed their lives for a foolish and unnecessary war in Vietnam spread over the presidency of five American presidents.
Senator John Kerry, Purple Heart war veteran and democratic presidential candidate who lost to Bush II in 2004.
The Vietnam War was essentially a Vietnamese civil war, they were never ever a threat to American security, they then and now never possess any air force or navy capable of threatening any nation. They were bombed with massive American air power and chemical weapons. Though 58,000 American soldiers died, comparatively it is a small percentage of the approximate two million Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians that were killed. All five presidents involved in the Vietnam War knew it was a foreign policy mistake but because of their egoistic foolishness non had the courage to stop the war because they did not wish to be recorded as the president that lost the war to a third world country armed with inferior weapons. The Pentagon’s chiefs established position has always been that “Once United States forces and prestige have been committed; disengagement will not be possible short of victory”. Their inflated egos caused the unnecessary death of more American soldiers and innocent Vietnamese civilians.
Finally under pressure from vigorous public opinion, Richard Nixon started talking about American withdrawal with honor and on 15th January 1973 citing progress in peace negotiations in Paris, Nixon announced the suspension of offensive action against North Vietnam to be followed by a unilateral withdrawal of all U S troops in Vietnam.The signing of the Paris Peace Accords won the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for U.S. National Security Adviser and lead negotiator Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese Politburo member and lead negotiator Le Duc Tho.
Former president Lyndon B Johnson. One of the first thing Johnson said when he became president was "I am not going to be the first president of the United States to lose a war."
Symbolically, five days before the peace accords were signed, Lyndon Johnson, an arrogant hawkish president whose presidency had been marred by the war, died. One of the first thing Johnson said when he became president was “I am not going to be the first president of the United States to lose a war”. Right or wrong, the pointless sacrifice of lives and high cost of the war is not as important as the misperceived egoistic prestige of a United States president. There is no honor in waging wars on smaller weaker nations even in victory; there is honor in defending your freedom, families and country from aggressors regardless of the outcome.
Besides the Vietnam War, the Americans were involved in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. In 1948 under the auspices of the United Nations headed by the U S and Britain the state of Israel was created. Soon after, Israel expelled 750,000 Palestinians and created the Middle East crisis and since then we have not had peace in the world. The Americans have been supporting Israel from its creation with arms and money and since the 1967 Six Days War Americans have been active in the Middle East conflict directly or indirectly. In 1991 Bush senior attacked Iraq; this was followed by the recent wars on Afghanistan and Iraq again in 2003 by Bush junior.
Public opinion or people’s power has been known to bring about changes in government either quietly or with vigorous public demonstrations as in the cases of Gandhi’s India, the Philippines, Indonesia and more recently the removal of Thaksin in Thailand. In July 1974, Nixon was impeached by the House of Representatives for obstruction of Justice, abuse of power and contempt of congress in the Watergate Affair. On 17th June, 1972, and prior thereto, agents of the Committee for the Re-Election of the President committed unlawful entry of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, District of Columbia, for the purpose of securing political intelligence. On Friday, 9th August, 1974, Nixon resigned the presidency and avoided the likely prospect of losing the impeachment vote in the full House and a subsequent trial in the Senate. He left office with 2 1/2 years of his second term remaining. A total of 25 officials from his administration, including four cabinet members, were eventually convicted and imprisoned for various crimes.
In August 1998, former president Clinton was impeached for perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power as a result of his inability to control his libido urges in his relationships with Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky, though his ability at multitasking was amply demonstrated in and around his desk in the Oval Office. He was acquitted as the house failed to acquire the two-thirds majority. Despite his ongoing impeachment, opinion polls were showing that Clinton's job approval rating surpassed 70 percent. It was obvious then that many Americans were of the view that what he did was what many Americans did privately, many even admired and sympathized with him for being caught. Nelson Mendala stood up and led other members of the United Nations to welcome Clinton with a standing ovation saying, "The mark of a man is not when he fell down but when he is able to get up again" when Clinton appeared before the UN Assembly to deliver a speech. Anyway unlike Bush II, no one has to die for his unprofessional presidential conduct and the stained Lewinsky’s dress is now a collector’s item and worth a fair bid of money.
In the case of George W Bush, it is strange that untill today he has been able to avoid impeachment. He has lied to the American people, caused an unnecessary war and as a result disrupted, ruined, and killed many American service men and women. He has abused his power and allowed spying on American citizens with illegal wiretaps. There have been many calls by prominent Americans and congressmen for the impeachment of Bush II; the latest coming from former Attorney General Ramsey Clark on 14th August 2006. He drew cheers from the Washington crowd when he called for President Bush's impeachment and added “We've made more enemies during the presidency of George Bush than in the rest of our history combined.”
Is Bush II protected by both democratic and republican congressmen who owe favors to his powerful business conglomerates friends? Now as much as 30 to 40 percent of Americans believe that 9/11 2001 was an inside job engineered by the government to enable them to declare war on Islam and to corner the world oil market. The implication is horrific. In the worst case or rather best case scenario, Bush & Co may be impeached for war crimes against humanity as many Americans are now demanding. Besides the few thousands that died, more than 15,000 Americans have been reported to be suffering from sickness as a result of breathing in the toxic dusts from the three collasped World Trade Center buildings.
Unfortunately, in the United States, the main stream mass media has in the last few decades been acquired by a few Wall Street conglomerates. They are driven more by the need for profit than truth and public wellness, are for big businesses and selling the official Bush II story. Their traditional independence as a democratic safeguard/pillar for public order and truth is now questionable. Modern mass media are most effective in shaping the minds of peoples and have often been used and abused by dictatorial politicians/governments to achieve their own selfish agendas. Main stream mass media no longer provides the essential factual political information necessary for voters to make informed and rational choices; it no longer provides the vigorous checks and balances on corruption and incompetence of governments and businesses.
The Bush policy has produced a codependency of the most extreme elements on all sides - the parties of mutual Armageddon. These are the war parties of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Israeli right, the Iranian ultras, the right wing Christian neo conservatives, Rumsfeld, and Cheney. Right-wing strategist William Kristol and his supporters, who often reflect the thinking of Cheney, are now openly calling for war with Iran.
The recent thirty three days of war in Lebanon, the longest involving Israelis since 1949 has resulted in 154 dead, 117 of them soldiers on the Israeli side. 3970 rockets were launched against Israel resulting in 37 civilian deaths and 422 wounded. On the Lebanese side, Israelis soldiers killed about a thousand civilians and thousands were wounded. Unknown numbers of Hezbollah fighters were killed and wounded. This war on Lebanon resulted in more than a million refugees on both sides. So what has been achieved for this terrible price?
Uri Avnery, an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom after a brief summary of the foolishness, mistakes and futility of the war wrote that “The Israeli public is now in a state shock and disorientation. Accusations--justified and unjustified--are flung around in all directions, and it cannot be foreseen how things will develop. Perhaps, in the end, it is logic that will win. Logic says: what has thoroughly been demonstrated is that there is no military solution. That is true in the North. That is also true in the South, where we are confronting a whole people that has nothing to lose anymore. The success of the Lebanese guerilla will encourage the Palestinian guerilla. For logic to win, we must be honest with ourselves: pinpoint the failures, investigate their deeper causes, and draw the proper conclusions. Some people want to prevent that at any price. President Bush declares vociferously that we have won the war. A glorious victory over the Evil Ones. Like his own victory in Iraq.” Avnery concluded with “When a football team is able to choose the referee, it is no surprise if it is declared the winner.”
It is telling that Bush should take such a posture; that is declaring vociferously that the Israelis have won a "glorious victory" over the "Evil Ones". Now that his popularity is at its lowest and the American military is far stretched, is the Israeli invasion of Lebanon a continuation of his war policy in Middle East? Is this a test run for the looming Iranian operation by Israelis to gauge the performance of their troops to determine its viability and need for adjustment? It serves little purpose just to bomb Iran without ground support.
What price the voice of sanity? What price the value of wisdom? What price the value of earth? These are more than just philosophical questions. And attempting to measure its value in dollar terms would be a most frustrating and hopeless endeavor. High end apartments in Singapore are being sold at S$2,000.00 per square feet. And we will require more than logic to solve this problem. Vigorous world public opinion, especially Americans, Britons, Europeans and Muslims in the Middle East must be mobilized to speak out against wars and be made aware of the following:
All tax havens must be banned in all countries. There is no reason for the rich or anyone to avoid taxes. Tax havens enable corrupted politicians, businesspersons, government employees, judges, illegal drug manufacturers and smugglers, military and police officers to hide their dirty and blood money. Such dirty money would then reappear in the market places and used to legitimately purchase the wealth of nations by nominee companies fronted by lawyers and accountants. Politicians, judges and all government appointees in positions of influence must declare their assets and wealth as a matter of public record before taking up their appointments. Citizens should be weary and concern if their political representatives in governments refused to ban tax havens.
John K Galbraith, world renowned economist and father of James Galbraith.
Arms and military industries must be nationalized, especially the US Defense Industrial Base (DIB). World renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith, father of James Galbraith wrote an article in 1969 for the New York Times entitled The Big Defense Firms Are Really Public Firms and Should be Nationalized. He argued among other things, that it was folly for defense contractors to claim that they were private corporations. “Such claims made a mockery of free enterprise.” Galbraith was a prolific author, producing four dozen books and over a thousand articles on various subjects. He taught at Harvard University for many years, was active in politics and served in the administrations of Franklin D Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson. He was one of the few two-time recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He received one from President Truman in 1946 and the other from President Bill Clinton in 2000.
Recently Charlie Cray and Lee Drutman resurrected and energized Galbraith’s argument in their work entitled Corporations and the Public Purpose: Restoring the Balance (Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Winter 2005). They presented a most persuasive and compelling case for putting the defense industrial base (DIB) into the direct service of the American public through a form of nationalization: federal chartering.
According to Cray and Drutman, “Converting the companies to publicly-controlled, nonprofit status would introduce a key change: it would reduce the entities’ impetus for aggressive lobbying and campaign contributions. Chartering the defense contractors at the federal level would in effect allow Congress to ban such activities outright, thereby controlling an industry that is now a driving force rather than a servant of foreign policy objectives. As public firms, they would certainly continue to participate in the policy fora designed to determine the nation’s national security and defense technology needs, but the profit-driven impetus to control the process in order to best serve corporate shareholders would be eliminated. Thus, by turning defense and security firms into full public corporations, we would replace the criteria by which their performance is judged from quarterly earnings targets to criteria that is more consistent with the national interest.”
There is so much money in DIB; it is the most fertile environment for corruption, abuses, mismanagement and inefficiencies. Citing plenty of evidence to show that the DIB is not functioning in the nation's best interest, they quoted interesting case studies showing the inability of the Pentagon to account for billions in missing funds here at home and in Iraq, of ongoing criminal investigations spread across the entire national security landscape, and sensational resignations, arrests and convictions unprecedented in US history. There is more here than just a few “bad apples.” It is a systemic problem made worse by the absence of leadership at the highest levels. Americans are rapidly discovering that those running the show in the national security machinery are not necessarily interested in what's best for them or the USA.
According to Cray and Drutman, “the growth of private military firms and corporate intelligence contractors in the past decade has created additional profit-making pressures on national security policymaking processes. Interlocking relationships exist between the largest defense contractors and the Pentagon—including corporate representation on key defense planning boards, and the regular passage of Pentagon and industry personnel through the proverbial revolving door; that is, to the private sector companies that they formerly oversaw. The result is a steady stream of abusive contracting practices and a potentially dangerous distortion of American national security objectives. Another result of defense contractors’ influence over Congress and defense policy boards is a long-term commitment to the development of high-tech weapons systems that only specific contractors are able to produce. These weapons systems arguably have little to do with preventing acts of terrorism—one of the nation’s current greatest security concerns.”
The interlocking relationships referred to by Cray and Drutman have led to spectacular levels of corruption. Convictions, resignations, investigations and ethically challenged actions plague the national security machinery. P.W. Singer, who monitors the DIB for the Brookings Institution, puts the issue into perspective:
“The final dilemma raised by the extensive use of private contractors involves the future of the military itself. The armed services have long seen themselves as engaged in a unique profession, set apart from the rest of civilian society, which they are entrusted with securing. The introduction of private military firms, and their recruiting from within the military itself, challenges that uniqueness and the military professional identity. Its monopoly on certain activities is being encroached on by the regular civilian marketplace.”
Ultimately, Americans will have to ask fundamental questions and seek the answers urgently. Questions like what is the US military? What are they defending? Is it the country or the assets and wealth of the owners of the DIB and other super rich Americans? Is it profit or country first? The conflict of interest situation is obvious and begs for an urgent solution if not Americans will be involved in perpetual wars.
The other urgent matter is the UN’s respect and authority demolished by Bush II and Blair must be restored and empowered to deal with the problems facing humankind. There is little hope for humanity if other members of the UN are as submissive and subservient to the USA as Tony Blair of Great Britain. Wars in the last several decades have distracted national and international leaders from paying attention to other urgent problems confronting us like our overburdened ecosystem; over population, global warming, mass starvation, and the super storms and super bugs that are becoming recurrent yearly affairs.
According to some paleontologist estimates, as much as 50 percent of earth’s species will be extinct in a couple of decades, most of it happening in North America. A species once extinct will be destroyed forever. It appears we may be in the midst of the Sixth Extinction on earth. The loss of 50 percent of species is significant, this time round the extinction if it happens would not be due to impacts from asteroids, massive chains of volcanic eruptions or other global natural disaster – this time the problem is ourselves, the inexorable growth of human populations enveloping and destroying our habitats and that of other organisms, when we destroy our environment, we destroy ourselves. There are always the endless demands of human desires and needs against a rapidly shrinking natural world, the growing human populations against dwindling populations of wild creatures and other living things, the insatiable appetite of economic development and growth.
Some paleoanthropologists give us 20 years, some say 50 years, while others say it is already irreversible. They all agree it is important and urgent and needs immediate attention. We are now at a pivotal point in our history; the possibility of self destruction through nuclear military conflagration and or through a slow environmental strangulation is real. Our origins tell us that Homo sapiens is a part of a natural world here on Earth, one species amongst the millions of interdependent species. It does not matter that other species do not possess the degree of consciousness we do, nor do they experience feelings the way we do. Yes, we are way ahead; we have our religions, philosophy, arts and sciences and they do not. But still they are part of our world and we are part of theirs, all co-existing as a community of life on Earth. I am not saying that they have the same equal rights as us and they are not demanding that we treat them as equals but we do have a responsibility to preserve these resources carefully and to be sensitive to the fact that a species, once extinct is destroyed forever. We need to remember that by impoverishing our environment, we impoverish ourselves.
Many social animals share the same altruistic sentiments like us to a lesser or greater degree. Many paleoanthropologists are in agreement with our ancient philosophers that altruistic behavior, high standards of ethics and morality could be derived in the absence of religion; that such standards are an inevitable and predictable product of human evolution whether driven by divine intelligence or natural phenomenon. “Today, we are the beneficiaries of our distant ancestors in a way not experienced by any other species.”
Our species is comparatively a very young species, not more than 100,000 years old. The dinosaurs were the dominant species on earth for about 150 million years before they were wiped out by the last Fifth Extinction on earth 65 million years ago. Paleontologists disagree amongst themselves on whether the Sixth Extinction if it occurs, Earth’s biota will recover. Though this may not be important or relevant to most of us, I am inclined towards the optimist belief that Earth’s biota will recover like the previous five major extinctions. The continents will continue to drift around the globe as they always have, though they may be torn apart and reform again. Organisms of the land, air and sea will go through alternating phases of extinction and recovery. Over the eons of evolutionary time intelligent life forms will emerge once again, consciousness reborn on Earth, the fossils of Homo sapiens and the residues of our cultural relics then may become a subject of scientific scrutiny by future intelligent species. Our sun still has about 6 billion years of light remaining.
More immediately, what will happen next? The problems appear daunting and many acknowledged that there is nothing they can do about it. It is true that as an individual there is very little one can do but collectively we can increase the critical mass of people who at this critical point will be prepared do the necessary to bring about a paradigm shift in the way we perceived our world and each other and transform our world for our mutual benefit and the survival of our species before it is too late. If we wish to do anything, the time is now, the period in which we have the responsibility is now, and now is the time we can make a difference, there may not be another time.
We will have to embrace an alternative way of living as against the narrow, accumulative and competitive pursuits of self-interest that has dominated the West and is now making rapid inroads into former communist nations as well. We need to balance our lifestyles and rein in wasteful consumption. We can and should embrace a universal ethical system of morality regardless of race, creed, religion or gender based on brotherly love, relief and truth; equality, fraternity and justice. From this perspective, the world will be different, our differences are to be enjoyed and not destroyed; we are not inherent enemies to each other but partners in the mutual preservation and protection of Earth now for ourselves and our descendants. Our existence is not essential to God's existence.
If we do not have the political will and desire to save our ourselves, God will not; extinction includes everyone, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and Taoists and it is forever. Armageddon is a myth; our extinction because of nuclear winter or through the gradual destruction of our ecosystem is a real posibility; either way if it happens is a consequent of human folly, greed and ignorance. The best way to predict the future is to create it; we create our reality, self destruction or a new global era of peace and harmony, the choice is ours and God will grand us our wish either way. He has never stopped anyone from killing himself or others. We can and should accept the responsibility for all our actions and its consequences and stop attributing our sucesses or failures to God or the devil - if not we will never be free.
The infinite Universe is before us and its horizon beckons us all equally, there will be plenty of other worthwhile challenges in place of wars and conflicts amongst ourselves. We can jointly explore the universe, and competition amongst Homo sapiens need not be a zero sum, win all or lose all game. In a hundred years, everyone living today with the exceptions of a few centenarians would be dead; the question in life is not whether you will die but how do you live? Most important for me and I believe it can be for you too is that we will have lived and died not for nothing, knowing that we have become a part of the great human tradition of those who have responded to the pains and sufferings in the universe by trying to become better persons and making this our world a better place. As Gandhi said, "We must be the change we wish to see in the world."
Resource Books:
The Buying of the President 2004, Charles Lewis and the Center for Public Integrity, HarperCollins, New York 2004.
The March of Folly, Barbara W. Tuchman, Abacus, 1984.
Why Americans Hate Politics, E.J Dione Jr., A Touchstone Book, by Simon & Schuster, New York 1991.
Origins Reconsidered, Richard Leakey & Roger Lewin, Abacus, London, 1993.
