9 Steps to Peace for Obama in the New Year

All good ideas, and all about as likely to happen as Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton joining the Quakers and becoming pacifists.

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Any politician could publicly argue against any of these points and be supported by the majority of Americans. Peace begins within your own heart. Act peaceably yourself, but do not be discouraged when the world fails to follow your lead. Because it most likely won't.

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Elections are unclear in mandates. At the end, the economy appeared to be the major issue.

All the polls showed an anti-war majority, but they only polled about Iraq. They did not go to the broader issues.

Obama's assumption all along, clear in his original Iraq speech in 2002, is that America's way of war and domination is right; it's just Iraq which is wrong. His national security team are all hawks, mostly even on Iraq. His Chief of Staff is a very extreme hawk, a longtime supporter of state terrorism whose father was a terrorist and who was named after a terrorist. Obama ran on a platform of a larger military budget and larger military forces. He spent most of his 2002 speech assuring folks he was not for peace, and everything since then has reaffirmed that.

The proposals are great, but the corporatist political parties and mainstream media fail to even allow these issues to be raised. Obama seems no more likely than Bush to follow any of these proposals. We must redouble our efforts to raise the critical issues and get the people to rise up nonviolently against the perpetual warfare state.

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"ending our dependence on war is far more important than ending our dependency on foreign oil."

No, if it weren't for oil, the war machines wouldn't be propped up so easy in the first place.

On his first solution, 2020 is just nothing but another procrastination idea.

And if he actually took a look at the mess in India and Pakistan in a non-biased manner, he'd see that those so-called "peace talks" are nothing but BULLSHIT talks. "Peace talks" between those two have been going on for years and yet nothing but more terrorist attacks conveniently ignored by the RACIST western media. Even the recent coverage of the Mumbai attacks were RACIST in nature since only folks from US, EU, and Israel were given "special" importance while the media said FUCK YOU indirectly to the rest. Holding the terrorists and their enablers and perpetrators such as the corrupt leadership in US and EU in addition to the dictators in the Arab world enabling and empowering all this is what needs to be done. Otherwise, forget about peace.

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For a viable Peace Economy there must be a viable market. One strength that the defence market has is the fact that the product is maximized if it is not used. IF it is used and it does not work properly the dynamics of war support and the fact that the people for whom it did not work are probably dead mutes normal consumer complaints. The Cold War forged this model of un-acountability.

So, their needs to be a great push for Defence quality and accountability at the same time that there is a push for Peace Markets.

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I'm afraid this is like giving a tiger a list of 10 steps to change its stripes. He's asking an empire to stop being an empire, voluntarily. What empire all throughout history has done that?

I have to give the Pak-Man his props, though, for sticking his neck out. Much of his audience are middle-class Boomers who look to him primarily to maximize their own personal health, wealth, and happiness. Where foreign policy and economics are concerned, Reagan is still their guru of choice. Stepping outside the Boomers' mental boundaries with respect to private/public could be bad for business.

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...would be to simply restore the constitutional requirement, now long ignored, that Congress must formally authorize going into a war. This would, at least, allow the people to have a voice in where and how our military resources were commited. In all likelihood, we would be fighting fewer wars, thus reducing the pressure to continually ramp up "defense" spending. Soon, it would become apparent that we were throwing good money after bad and we could begin to check off the nine points toward peace that Chopra lists.

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I think he needs to awake to "Barack the Magic Negro" each day! thats enough to get you going! LOL

Jess
Online PRivacy when it COunts

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In addition to driving the economy isn't sustaining the US military-industrial complex the continued triumph of human fear over hope?

Didn't our new President-to-be write a book called The Audacity of Hope? Isn't it time to take the audacious leap toward hope with him? After all,the election of Obama alone, is cause for a renewed "run at the triumph of human hope?"

But I believe the best chance for transformation from fear to hope will come about through healthy education of our global youth. I especially like the work of David Boulton

The opposite of healthy global education of our youth is the mind poison of fundamentalist organized religions(note plural please)which sustains the intrapsychic fear and distrust of others necessary for the maintenance of the profit generating, warmongering, military-industrial complexes, not only in the US, but around the globe.

Dr. Rick Lippin
Southampton, Pa

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The road to success is always under construction.

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With just nominal pledges of $10 per month the WTPL could be up and running. Who knows maybe some of the FAT CATS would donate a couple of billion to make that happen having fears of what might come along if not.

What makes WTPL different from the two politcal parties we have right now? You think we are special here cause we read more? So we are elitist? lol....

Personally I'm not fond of new political perties. Our democracy is imperfect and fragile but I like it. Why not get involved and change the two parties we already have, make them work instead of throwing them away? The democratic party is stronger and better than it has been in decades, I am happy there. The dems needed a good shaking up and got it. I'm not only happy, I'm VERY HAPPY!

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We Americans are not the only people on the planet. We probably ARE the only people who have not had 500 Lb. bombs rain down on us on a regular basis. 4.5 Iraqis no longer live in their homes. They have been displaced by a war that was not of their choosing. All Iraqi families have lost someone. We have escaped foreign attacks and death and bloodshed that we can't even imagine. Rather than be grateful, many Americans have become pompous. They become part of the status quo club. Fact is, that the overwhelming population of the world does not want war. What we need is government that includes the people. The parents of the people who are sent to fight the war. Leaders no longer go to war. Chopra has many good ideas, some of which can actually work. Getting used to and confortable with a permanent state of war is dangerous. We're on that track. The difference between the Eisenhower days and today is that we are no longer in charge of the planet. No one listens to us anymore. Europe is acting on their own on the Israeli matter, and not waiting for U.S. approval. We have no choice but to learn to get along. We can't fight everyone. Lately we are making more enemies than we can control. It's no longer about bigger bombs. The rest of the world owns us. We would be wise to keep them as friends while we still have the chance. Obama could turn out to be the best messenger of peace that we've seen in decades, but he can't do it alone. He's inheriting overwhelming problems home and around the world. He doesn't need a country full of cynics and naysayers making his job impossible. Yes, I know all about Israel and yes, I remember 9/11. I also remember that last week a prominent surgeon from New Jersey was killed in Iraq along with several other soldiers. The people should be informed at all times whether they like it or not. Government can't continue to run like a speak easy. But having a president we like is not some form of 'room service'. We have a responsibility here. Thanks, ANNA

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Give peace a chance. No one can say what will happen, the future is ours to see!

Happy New Year boys and girls and especially Happy New Year to Alternet!

It's been one hell of an interesting year. Did anyone even imagine that we would be here talking about PRESIDENT OBAMA this time last year? Nope, but here we are and it is only going to get more interesting, interesting in a good way not a bad way.

The naysayers thought for sure Obama couldn't win, but YIPPEEEE, he did and in no small measure. Millions of new voters infusing new blood into the democratic party from the ground up can only be good for our fragile democracy. Now cynics are saying he won't make the change he promised? You were very wrong before and even more wrong now. These are exciting times and I am glad to be here to witness it.

Toni Morrison, the Nobel and Pulitzer prize winning author endorsed Obama. Her letter is brillant and reads in part:

"Wisdom is a gift; you can't train for it, inherit it, learn it in a class, or earn it in the workplace--that access can foster the acquisition of knowledge, but not wisdom. When, I wondered, was the last time this country was guided by such a leader? Someone whose moral center was un-embargoed? Someone with courage instead of mere ambition? Someone who truly thinks of his country's citizens as "we," not "they"? Someone who understands what it will take to help America realize the virtues it fancies about itself, what it desperately needs to become in the world?"

Yes we can.


Peace Out and God bless everyone!

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Bravo to Deepak Chopra for saying exactly what has to happen to stop the military spending excesses. The minute the Military Industrial Complex discovers that there are actually profits in peace and in saving the planet from pollution, and receives tax incentives to move in those directions, we will be amazed at how quickly they shift. It only takes a vision to accomplish this. Remember WWII when we shifted to a war economy in less than a year. Remember going to the moon. All we lack is vision and will. The economic crisis will be a big help, and I think it's possible and necessary.

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For me,this is not a money or resource problem,it is an experiential dilemma. The problem is that very few [less than one tenth of one percent] of the world population has ever experienced what i would call REAL PEACE. Almost everyone knows peace as the ABSENCE OF WAR. The absence of war requires conflict in order to measure it's worth. Therefore it becomes necessary to have an almost constant reminder of [war] in order for "peace" to seem worthwhile. When "real" peace is experienced, if only for a few moments,it is enough to begin to shatter the attachment to conflict because now it is directly seen that real peace exists independently from conflict. If it is discovered that peace can be realized without using money to aggressively acquire resources then what's the point in fighting for something that we already are in possession of. this real peace is not something that is acquired, it is WHO AND WHAT WE ARE.

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... building a peace-based economy???

Put down the bong. Get a grip. Buy a clue.

I love the first bit in this article...
"1. Scale out arms dealing and make it illegal by the year 2020."

Yea. Sure. That will happen. This is the United States we are talking about, right???

Listen Alternet, I don't come here to read FICTION. Sheesh.

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These are all very fine things to do, Deepak, but they don't address the underlying mentality of war-making in this country. We respond to anger in the world with war and sanctions and police automatically, not questioning the validity of the response, for we have no skills for peace. All of our games and entertainments are war. My parents didn't buy me war toys when I was a kid, but the games around me were war games, so I made my own war toys.

There is a bill before the House to establish a United States Department of Peace and a Cabinet-level Secretary of Peace. Its purpose would be to study peace and teach and implement the skills of peace throughout our society and the world. Without these skills, we will revert to what we know in the next crisis.

Contact your people in Congress to support this bill, and explain the concept to them as you do so. Most of them don't get it.

While we're about it, we should return the Department of Defense to its original name, the Department of War. What is defensive about a Department which operates 761 military bases around the world? Let's get out of denial and call it what it is.

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Linnaeus, who introduced binomial nomenclature (naming plants and animals according to their physical structure) wrote: "Man's structure, external and internal, compared with that of other animals shows that fruit and succulent vegetables constitute his natural food."

The fact that predators exist in the wild does not imply man must imitate them. Cannibalism and rape also occur in nature. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his book In the South Seas, noted that there was little difference between the "civilized" Europeans and the "savages" of the Cannibal Islands:

"We consume the carcasses of creatures with like appetites, passions, and organs as our own. We feed on babes, though not our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear."

Studies indicate flesh-eaters have less endurance than do vegetarians, while vegetarians have two to three times greater stamina and recover five times more quickly from exhaustion. Most kinds of cancer, as well as heart disease, osteoporosis, kidney disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, hemorrhoids, diverticulosis, arthritis, obesity, gallstones and gallbladder disease are all preventable and treatable on a vegetarian diet.

The ill effects of alcohol and nicotine are well-documented. The FBI reports that 60 to 75 percent of all violent crime is alcohol-related. Might there be a similar relationship between meat-eating and violent behavior?

In a letter to a friend on the subject of vegetarianism, Albert Einstein wrote, "Besides agreeing with your aims for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind."

U Nu, the former Prime Minister of Burma, made a similar observation: "World peace, or any other kind of peace, depends greatly on the attitude of the mind. Vegetarianism can bring about the right mental attitude for peace...it holds forth a better way of life, which, if practiced universally, can lead to a better, more just, and more peaceful community of nations."

Thomas Tryon (1634-1703) warned the first Quaker settlers of Pennsylvania that their "holy experiment" in peaceful living would fail unless they extended their Christian precepts of nonviolence to the animal kingdom. "Does not bounteous Mother Earth furnish us with all sorts of food necessary for life?" he asked. "Though you will not fight with and kill those of your own species, yet I must be bold to tell you, that these lesser violences (as you call them) do proceed from the same root of wrath and bitterness as the greater do."

Reverend Basil Wrighton, the chairman of the Catholic Study Circle for Animal Welfare in London, wrote in a 1965 article entitled, "The Golden Age Must Return: A Catholic's Views on Vegetarianism," that a vegetarian diet is not only consistent with, but actually required by the tenets of Christianity. He concluded that the killing of animals for food not only violates religious tenets, but brutalizes humans to the point where violence and warfare against other humans becomes inevitable.

"Who loves this terrible thing called war?" asked Isadora Duncan. "Probably the meat-eaters, having killed, feel the need to kill...The butcher with his bloody apron incites bloodshed, murder. Why not? From cutting the throat of a young calf to cutting the throats of our brothers and sisters is but a step. While we ourselves are living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal conditions on the earth?"

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"I personally believe," wrote Isaac Bashevis Singer, "that as long as human beings will go on shedding the blood of animals, there will never be any peace. There is only one little step from killing animals to creating gas chambers a' la Hitler and concentration camps a' la Stalin--all such deeds are done in the name of 'social justice.' There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is."

The way we treat animals IS indicative of the way we treat our fellow humans. One Soviet study, published in Ogonyok, found that over 87% of a group of violent criminals has, as children, burned, hanged, or stabbed domestic animals. In our own country, a major study by Dr. Stephen Kellert of Yale University found that children who abuse animals have a much higher likelihood of becoming violent criminals.

A 1997 study by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA) reported that children convicted of animal abuse are five times more likely to commit violence against other humans than are their peers, and four times more likely to be involved in acts against property.

Meat-eating contributes to the fear in the world by putting us in a position in which there is not enough to go around. But that's not all. Meat-eaters ingest residues of the animal's biochemical response to the horrors of the slaughterhouse. Programmed to fight or flee when in danger for their lives, the animals react to the slaughterhouse in sheer terror. Powerful biochemical agents are secreted that pump through their bloodstreams and onto their flesh, energizing them to fight or flee for their lives.

Like screaming air rain sirens, these chemical agents produce instinctual panic. Today's slaughterhouses virtually guarantee that the animals will die in terror.

The Maoris would eat the flesh of a slaughtered enemy in order to possess the enemy's courage and strength. The people of the lower Nubia, likewise, would eat the fox, believing that by so doing, they would be possessed of his cunning.

In upper Egypt, the heart of the hoopoe bird was eaten in order to acquire the ability to become a clever scribe. The bird would be caught and its heart would be torn out and eaten while it was still alive. On the other hand, certain Native American tribes would not eat the flesh of an animal who died in fear, because they did not want to take into themselves the terror of such an animal.

When we eat animals who have died violent deaths we literally eat their fear. We take in biochemical agents designed by nature to tell an animal that its life is in the gravest danger, and it must either fight or flee for its life. And then, in our wars and our daily lives, we give expression to the panic in which the animals we have eaten died.

"Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them," said Leonardo da Vinci. "We live by the death of others. We are burial places! I have since an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men will look upon the murder of animals as they look upon the murder of man."

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Few people come out and tell it like it is on this topic. Regrettably, the U.S. has become the world's greatest warmonger, either directly by invading other countries, or indirectly through exporting weapons. Our whole economy is based on war (or "defense spending") in a fundamental way. It would break the hearts of the founding fathers to see the United States in its current form, an empire bristling with weapons and opening military bases pretty much everywhere around the globe. This is not what the USA was supposed to become.

Regarding Obama's choices right now and the obvious -- some say laughable -- idealism of Chopra's suggestions, it is interesting that we become a war-based economy during the Great Depression, as we geared up for WWII. Maybe we can do things differently this time, as Gore and others have suggested, becoming a green-based economy as we gear up to save our environment (that is, preserve an environment in which humans can live). Shifting from a war-based economy to a green-economy in response to the very real emergencies we are facing is not that far-fetched. As water and food shortages, extreme weather events, and other global warming disasters combine with peak oil, we will have to come up with a pretty impressive response. This is what will finally get us off our weapons/oil addiction and help us shift from an industrial age economy to a ecological age economy. Necessity is the mother of invention.

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How about International Nuclear Disarmament? Nuclear weapons are easily capable of extinguishing the human race. Nuclear Disarmament is more important than anything in your list! (except potently 7)

P.S. Prevent the abuse of GNR technologies.

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Tell the new President and the new Congress that the time is now to create a cabinet-level Department of Peacebuilding and Nonviolence. Vote at Change.org and send the message.

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Very beneficial article and comments. Gratitude to all and 'Happy New Year'.

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You have done yourselves proud by allowing the brillance of Deepak Chopra to clear a win-win path by which "peace on earth" can emerge as the ultimate goal. These are reasonable, achievable goals worthy of "the audacity to hope".

I believe that it will be much easier to alter how a group thinks and ultimately how they behave by changing the economic vision and conditions in which that group must survive.

THank you Deepak Chapra for your clear vision.

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Let's look at some of Mrs. Chopra's suggestions a little further:

Scale out arms dealing and make it illegal by the year 2020.

This doesn't seem to be totally outside the realm of possibility as far as our own country is concerned. I was very frustrated by the idea that the Pakistanis and Indians could begin fighting with weapons we sold both of them. Sure, they would have armed themselves someway, but in the event a conflict did break out, that doesn't expunge our moral culpability.

Convert military bases to housing for the poor.

This is fine as long as they are not essential. Too much politics goes into which bases stay open and which ones are closed. I have no doubt that we could close some military bases, and using that oft unused property for public housing is fine with me, as long as it is dormant. If it was donated by the local municipality, they should have first dibs to do something with it. My concern, is that Mrs. Chopra seems to be speaking of ALL bases.

Call a moratorium on future weapons technologies.

Absolute idiocy. If we don't develop the next strategically advantageous weapon, someone else will. It has been shown (and will continue to be) that one cannot contain technology. Just ask China, they are trying mightily to control the flow of cyberspace information right now and aren't succeeding very well. They wouldn't be succeeding at all, if it weren't for American companies' culpability in the effort to make money. In any case, if we hadn't developed the nuclear weapon first, it would have increased the likelihood that our enemies (that don't always share Mrs. Chopra's idealism) would have developed it first, and we could have been the recipient.

Fully fund social services and take the balance out of the defense and homeland security budgets.

We do spend to much on defense. There is little doubt about this, as we have a military budget larger than all others combined. We also need reinvestment in social services, I wouldn't argue that point either. However, one would need to be very careful about what is cut and how much. I favor smart reduced spending versus the current bloated model, but such a drastic cut would probably come back to bite us.

One may ask why I chose to comment so much on an article by someone that I totally perceive to be an uncredible and blatantly callow author. I do this because it was prominently highlighted on two websites that I read daily and which I very much like. This kind of naivete cannot be tolerated by anyone, especially our party, because of the long-term damage that would be done to our overall strategic goals. While our current military structure needs a serious over hall, I would favor the current model over anything Mrs. Chopra suggests. We need not fall back to the time when we had no standing/ready army. I think that discussion/decision by our founders has been vindicated through the prism of history.

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A practical Step 10 would be the establishment of a cabinet-level Department of Peace to seek and advocate for peaceful alternatives to military solutions and defense spending. Obviously, our institutional infrastructure must change as well as our public and personal attitudes.

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to get some sort of control over the military industrial complex, would be to tax more heavily during police actions and wars.

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draft of his farewell address contained the statement warning of the power of the,"Military industrial CONGRESSIONAL complex". Obama has a real fight on his hands if he pursues peace, which of course remains to be seen. Congress is the branch of government answerable to "THE PEOPLE", so as Ralph Nader says, "Hold their feet to the Fire". Only time will tell..........

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"6. Require military personnel to devote part of their time to rebuilding infrastructure."

I really like this idea.

Step 1:
Return control of our National Guard to the States.
They had the mission of emergency support: fighting fires, rebuilding roads, heavy civil engineering, etc.
But Bush moved operational control of the state's Guards to the federal government and sent them to Iraq.

Step 2:
Make peacekeeping training the highest priority.

Step 3:
Have professional military personnel assigned part-time work which deals with the destructive evil of armed conflict; like make service people scrub the blood off the floors in emergency rooms in the Gaza Strip or full military funerals for every collateral civilian killed by our bombs or rebuild every building that is destroyed by a tank or dig water wells in Africa.

Step 4:
Change the curriculum at our Military War colleges and rename them with names like, "The Naval Peace College" or "East Point."

Unfortunately, there'd be plenty of resistance from the civilian for-profit sector. Not only from arms manufacturers, but also little workers who try to get paid for cleaning ER floors.

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There's one major flaw in the article and the thinking behind it and that is that Obama is a peace candidate. Obama IS NOT a peace candidate. Obama believes in WAR. Read anything he's written about war. Look at his voting record on war issues. He believes in WAR.

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The measures the author advocates are mostly worthy, but entirely insignificant, and they certainly are not a "beginning," but rather something we might want to consider after our initial efforts are successful. Here is the beginning:

1) Get the troops home. Immediately, unconditionally, without apology or explanation.

2) HANG THE WAR CRIMINALS. We have at least a million of them in this country and they should all die.

3) This should be relatively easy after number two: reestablish the rule of international law. It's not enough to just hang our own war criminals, we have to hang the entire world's war criminals. The rule of law requires punishment. Appropriate punishment for war crimes is death. International law already prohibits war under almost any circumstance. Enforce the law, and peace will ensue. Then we can worry about reinforcing peace with profit.

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