IDN InDepthNews

No time is more appropriate than now to build the culture of peace. No social responsibility is greater nor task more significant than that of securing peace on our planet on a sustainable foundation. Today’s world with its complexities and challenges is becoming increasingly more interdependent and interconnected. The sheer magnitude of it requires all of us to work together

“We want a nuclear weapons free world.” More than 80 percent of people around the globe have expressed this overwhelming desire to authors of a new report. But a close look shows that very little is happening rather slowly in terms of reducing nukes and putting a halt to proliferation. This is cause of profound concern also to atomic scientists.

Among countries that have moved from the periphery to the core, China has acquired a place of pride in a world that is no longer steered by the industrialized states of yesteryear. President Hu Jintao surfaced from the G20 summit in Cannes, as sagacious leader of a country whose ascent to the status of a new superpower was speeded up after the financial crisis in 2008.

It sounds like utopia. But it is a “concrete utopia”, very much in the spirit of Ernst Bloch’s philosophy and also with Nichiren Buddhism.
Whereas the former visualises elimination of all forms of oppression and exploitation, the latter envisions transformation of the human spirit – which would enable culture of peace to prevail over culture of violence.

By Farooque Chowdhury*

Across oceans and covering continents people around the world are struggling. There are protest marches, demonstrations, occupations. It’s now global, a globalization of struggle for democracy, for a decent life. It is One Earth One Humanity One Loved, as a placard in the Occupy Wall Street Movement announces.

“Why are Ethiopians starving again? What should the world do and not do?” These are the two enduring questions Time Magazine asked in December 21, 1987. The reply in short was couched as a question: “Is the latest famine wholly the result of cruel nature, or are other, man-made forces at work that worsen the catastrophe?” Something that should strike as déjà vu 24 years later.

Voluntary moratoriums on nuclear weapon tests are not enough. Member states that have not yet ratified the United Nations-backed Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) should therefore urgently do so.

The World Trade Organization member countries are moving towards the Eighth Ministerial Conference in Doha next December, again with no concrete results, even on issues relating to least-developed Countries (LDCs), recognized by the member countries’ ambassadors in the informal meeting of last July 26.

In an unprecedented move, top four military commanders in Turkey stepped down from their posts on 29 July 2011. Chief of General Staff Gen. Işık Koşaner, Land Forces Commander Gen. Erdal Ceylanoğlu, Naval Forces Commander Adm. Eşref Uğur Yiğit and Air Forces Commander Gen. Hasan Aksay asked to be retired with immediate effect.

Pakistan is standing like a rock in the surf resisting growing international pressure to endorse a global treaty that would ban production of fissile material used as fuel for nuclear weapons. Reiterating its adamant opposition, Pakistan has warned that it would boycott any process to negotiate a U.S.-backed treaty outside the deadlocked UN Conference on Disarmament (CD).