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Published on Wednesday, April 1, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
It's Human Security, Stupid, Not National Security
Jody Williams is an emotional, strong-willed and determined woman. She
is also passionate and not averse to yelling, swearing or pounding on
the podium when it comes to creating a peaceful world.
“We can only be secure when justice and the sharing of resources in the world are present,” said the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize recipient to an audience of nearly 400 at the annual Great Lakes PeaceJam held last weekend at Western Michigan University.
“Human security, not national security will bring security to everyone in the world.”
Williams won the Peace Prize for her work in starting and heading up the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (www.icbl.org) in 1992. Five years later she and a team of activists persuaded 121 nations to sign a treaty called “the Ottawa Convention” to ban the use, stockpiling, production and sale of landmines, which at the time was considered a legal weapon for military arsenals in over 80 countries. As of March 2008, there are 156 member states and 39 states that remain outside the treaty including two signatories that have not yet ratified, according to ICBL. Unfortunately, the United States, China, Egypt, Finland, India, Israel, Pakistan and Russia did not sign the treaty. But that has not stopped Williams from continuing her effort to rid the world of violence.
In fact, she has stepped up her campaign for human security by participating in PeaceJam's “Global Call to Action” (www.peacejam.org). The program involves several Nobel Peace Prize laureates who work with and inspire the youth of the world to be involved in a decade-long quest to effect change by addressing the following needs:
To illustrate the hapless pursuit of national security, Williams noted that on September 10, 2001, the United States had the strongest military presence the world had ever seen. On September 11, after Americans “freaked out” over four hijacked airplanes, $44 billion was allocated to the Pentagon “to make our country more secure.”
“We talk about U.S. interests being advanced by the military,” she said. “The military is supposed to be our last resort when diplomacy has been lost. We make all sorts of calculations and analyses of our military actions but forget to analyze the impact we make on the people we bomb.”
For example, she is concerned about President Obama's decision to step up the war in Afghanistan and send drones to bomb Al Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan.
“Won't the people who are bombed there try to send some drones over here?” she asked.
She also urged the audience to consider the effect gross inequality has on the world.
“There is something wrong when 20 percent of the world's population controls 80 percent of the planet's resources,” she said. “Or when 1.5 billion people are without clean drinking water. There is something wrong when a handful of billionaires have more wealth than all of sub-Saharan Africa. That's why people strap on a bomb and blow it up.”
Williams warned her audience that peace activists are considered by too many people to be “kumbya, guitars, doves and rainbows.” Instead, she urged her audience to commit themselves to a brand of activism that is bigger than just being against war.
“They call us peaceniks and tree-hugging liberals,” she said. “That means that we are little wimps who don't understand what makes peace in the world. It implies that we can't deal with the complexities of national security like the big-time policymakers do.”
Instead, she advised activists that they would get more done if they joined together with activists of different peacemaking causes and “realize that we're all part of the same thing” when we contribute to human security.
PeaceJam participants donned gray t-shirts with a Williams’ quote printed on their backs: “Emotion without action is irrelevant.”
“Emotion is the first step,” said Williams. “But if it's not channeled positively, it is a waste.”
“We can only be secure when justice and the sharing of resources in the world are present,” said the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize recipient to an audience of nearly 400 at the annual Great Lakes PeaceJam held last weekend at Western Michigan University.
“Human security, not national security will bring security to everyone in the world.”
Williams won the Peace Prize for her work in starting and heading up the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (www.icbl.org) in 1992. Five years later she and a team of activists persuaded 121 nations to sign a treaty called “the Ottawa Convention” to ban the use, stockpiling, production and sale of landmines, which at the time was considered a legal weapon for military arsenals in over 80 countries. As of March 2008, there are 156 member states and 39 states that remain outside the treaty including two signatories that have not yet ratified, according to ICBL. Unfortunately, the United States, China, Egypt, Finland, India, Israel, Pakistan and Russia did not sign the treaty. But that has not stopped Williams from continuing her effort to rid the world of violence.
In fact, she has stepped up her campaign for human security by participating in PeaceJam's “Global Call to Action” (www.peacejam.org). The program involves several Nobel Peace Prize laureates who work with and inspire the youth of the world to be involved in a decade-long quest to effect change by addressing the following needs:
· Providing equal access to water and other natural resourcesMany governmental leaders believe that they need a mighty military machine to make their people safe and secure, said Williams. As important as the military is, having “the biggest, most muscular missiles and defense in the world” is not the path to increased security.
· Ending racism and hate
· Halting the spread of global disease
· Eliminating extreme poverty
· Fighting for social justice and human rights
· Promoting rights for women and children and their roles as leaders
· Restoring the earth's environment
· Controlling the proliferation of weapons
· Breaking the cycle of violence
To illustrate the hapless pursuit of national security, Williams noted that on September 10, 2001, the United States had the strongest military presence the world had ever seen. On September 11, after Americans “freaked out” over four hijacked airplanes, $44 billion was allocated to the Pentagon “to make our country more secure.”
“We talk about U.S. interests being advanced by the military,” she said. “The military is supposed to be our last resort when diplomacy has been lost. We make all sorts of calculations and analyses of our military actions but forget to analyze the impact we make on the people we bomb.”
For example, she is concerned about President Obama's decision to step up the war in Afghanistan and send drones to bomb Al Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan.
“Won't the people who are bombed there try to send some drones over here?” she asked.
She also urged the audience to consider the effect gross inequality has on the world.
“There is something wrong when 20 percent of the world's population controls 80 percent of the planet's resources,” she said. “Or when 1.5 billion people are without clean drinking water. There is something wrong when a handful of billionaires have more wealth than all of sub-Saharan Africa. That's why people strap on a bomb and blow it up.”
Williams warned her audience that peace activists are considered by too many people to be “kumbya, guitars, doves and rainbows.” Instead, she urged her audience to commit themselves to a brand of activism that is bigger than just being against war.
“They call us peaceniks and tree-hugging liberals,” she said. “That means that we are little wimps who don't understand what makes peace in the world. It implies that we can't deal with the complexities of national security like the big-time policymakers do.”
Instead, she advised activists that they would get more done if they joined together with activists of different peacemaking causes and “realize that we're all part of the same thing” when we contribute to human security.
PeaceJam participants donned gray t-shirts with a Williams’ quote printed on their backs: “Emotion without action is irrelevant.”
“Emotion is the first step,” said Williams. “But if it's not channeled positively, it is a waste.”
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Show AllWhen small farmers are obliterated, just like the indigenous land loving native peoples, the whole world suffers accordingly. No amount of double-speak and propaganda can remove this fact. I am a small farmer, an earth-loving farmer and I have been treated cruelly. Specifically by the 'good folks' (their impression of themselves and the way they advertise, certainly not my imression of them) at Organic Valley, Family of Farms. Further, I have been subject to mistreatment by the Mn. Dept. of Health, specifically a milk inspector by the name of Vernal Olson and of course, by the USDA, which sanctions and approves all this 'acitivity'.
It is my belief that at one time, Organic Valley was a decent group of concerned individuals, they have humble origins. But in order to compete, survive and to grow, adopted the approved business practices of our present day. Which is to say, GET BIG, GET CALLOUSED and spiral profits up and away from the small producer and into the hands of the corporate giants of industry, research and development. If you are a true 'activist' reading this, please give them a call at 1-888-809-9297 to complain. Because of severe financial duress, I may have no recourse but to TRY to initiate some sort of legal proceedings, but I much prefer public pressure to achieve a fair settlement of my issues on my maltreatment. I have never claimed to, nor could I, be some perfect farmer, but I do not deserve, and neither have the millions of other 'removed'/mistreated smallish farmers deserved, the treatment they have gotten from the system we are forced to live under. Please call and express, personally, your interest in a better agriculture--not one that talks--but one that lives and breathes and is connected and cares and reflects the concerns of all and especially the concerns of our beautiful planet Earth...
Thank you.
nedlud
nedlud;not very good on the phone but if you have a website I can send them something.Tony
Thanks, mustbefree, I appreciate it. E-MAIL: organic@organicvalley.coop
Thanks again.
Great article. This is such an important distinction. "National" security always means the strengthening of the apparatus, the System, the Military-Industrial Complex . . . and that will NEVER bring true security to people. Haven't you noticed how all the people we like to call "peacekeepers" are always carrying guns?
I think we should all STOP listening to the policymakers, government officials and those "in charge" (especially those allowed to carry guns). I think we need to start living peace in everything we do. The "common folk" need to forget everything the ruling elite tells us and start working for peace in OUR way, in our own communities and whenever we may venture out. Smile, laugh, shake hands. True peace will come from within and from the bottom up, not from the top down.
Dan Millman (author of "Way of the Peaceful Warrior") has a great line: "The only real, effective way of defeating your enemy is to make them your friend."
Blessings.
Great post Seventhson. The Way of the Peaceful Warrior sounds like Obama, to the chagrin of people wanting instant gratification after fifty years of reactionary conservative rule.
The National Security State mindset doesn't even achieve that. As an RN I advise people to be a lot more scared about the US Sick System killing them than Osama. Unfortunately, many just give me an idiotic smile as they march toward their deaths {scrip in hand) with the belief that US Medicine is the best in the world. We don't have a lot of understanding in Techno Peasant America about what actually it is to have human security instead of 'national'?
"As an RN I advise people to be a lot more scared about the US Sick System killing them than Osama."
"Al-Qaeda" killed 3000 people in NYC on 09/11/2001.
Doctors kill 18,000 people every year in the United States.
Who are the terrorists?
-- ekaton
Thank you, Olga, for your report on Jody Williams,
an extraordinary woman who inspires all of us.
"There is something wrong when a handful of billionaires have more wealth than all of sub-Saharan Africa."
There is also something wrong when, in the United States, 400 (four hundred) individuals own 22% of the wealth in the country. These are the people who run this country.
-- ekaton
**"Politically speaking, tribal nationalism [patriotism] always insists that its own people are surrounded by 'a world of enemies' - 'one against all' - and that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man." -Hannah Arendt, The Origins Of Totalitarianism
**"Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on his own dunghill." : R. Aldington
**Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. "Patriotism" is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by "patriotism" I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; not the loving interest in one's own nation, which is the concern with the nation's spiritual as much as with its material welfare-never with its power over other nations. Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.: Erich Fromm (1900-1980), U.S. psychologist.
**"Seas of blood have been shed for the sake of patriotism. One would expect the harm and irrationality of patriotism to be self-evident to everyone. But the surprising fact is that cultured and learned [socially conditioned and indoctrinated] people not only do not notice the harm and stupidity of patriotism, they resist every unveiling of it with the greatest obstinacy and passion (with no rational grounds), and continue to praise it as beneficent and elevating." -Leo Tolstoy
**"Blind patriotism has been kept intact by rewriting history to provide people with moral consolation and a psychological basis for denial." -William H. Boyer
**"This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism on command, senseless violence and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism." : Albert Einstein
**"Patriotism means advocating plunder in the interests of the privileged class of your particular country. The time will soon come when calling someone a patriot will be the deepest insult." -Ernest. B. Bax
The next line of that Einstein quote is "How passionately I hate them!"