One World, Many Peaces

A Visual History of Airline Terrorism and the TSA

Source: Online Universities

Math Makes Counter-Terrorism More Effective, Less Pervasive

Who would have thought that math club members in high school would have turned out to be the next counter-terrorism superheros? Anything that keeps our blossoming police state from bearing more fruit deserves widespread attention and support.

New models to dismantle terrorist networks, set to make current (and, some would say, not working) ones obsolete, have been put forth by ultra-high-level mathematicians at the New England Complex Systems Institute. Luckily for us mere mortals, no numbers are required to understand how their mathematical improvements can keep us safer, cheaper and less pervasively.

They published their breakthroughs in the most recent issue of the International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, what all the cool kids are reading these days. In laymen's terms, their new counter-terrorism strategy goes something like this.

Terrorist networks today are taken on as whole through a series of short-term battles. Think of trying to go after Osama bin Laden here, then there, then there, and still never finding him while killing lots of innocent people in several host countries along the way. (Note: Apparently, this method has also been superseded by the U.S. giving $2 billion in military aid to the Pakistani so they can do it themselves.)

What these magician-mathematicians have shown is that it is much, much more effective and less resource-intensive to isolate hubs within a terrorist network rather than try to eliminate them, which goes against centuries of military strategy, including the one currently used to pursue Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups globally. This math-based counter-terrorism strategy is also much less pervasive than its predecessors.

Philip Vos Fellman, an expert in mathematical modeling and strategy, explains that "the nature of a dynamic [terrorist] network is akin to the robust Internet but contrasts starkly with the structure of the armed forces or homeland security systems, which tend to be centralized and hierarchical." His sophisticated computer simulations of real-world terrorist networks show that isolation rather than removal of terrorist cells is the key to successfully defeating terrorists networks as a whole.

Then again, those math club members in high school could also have gone on to be the next software multi-billionaire software developers. But where is the glory in that?

Photo Credit: trindade.joao

Dissenting Against the Nobel Peace Prize Committee

So the Nobel Peace Prize Committee members have a thing for dissenters like laureates Liu Xiaobo (2010), Aung San Suu Kyi (1991), Lech Walesa (1983), Andrei Sakharov (1975) and Carl von Ossietzky (1935), eh? Here's some dissent against them: Your recent award choices do more harm than good as far as furthering peace is concerned, your membership should be revoked immediately, and you should be replaced by people who can carry out their legal duties adequately, at least. Here’s why.

To be clear, I am not dissenting against the Nobel Peace Prize itself, though its domination of the global popular imagination when it comes to peace is debilitating, nor am I downplaying the dissenters they have honored, who though icons limit social change as such. What I am saying is that its members and all those worldwide who look up to  their choices (to say nothing of the nominators, who in-breed bad decisions as former laureates) would do well to take an extra-large dose of their own medicine when it comes to dissent. There are two main reasons why I am calling for the impeachment of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee.

First, they have betrayed the legally-binding intent of Alfred Nobel (inventor of dynamite and an arms manufacturer) in his will and testatment, which created the Nobel Peace Prize, and so should be class-action sued by his heirs and estate, not to mention honest fans of the award worldwide and rejected (worthy) awardees. Second, they have and continue to ill-advisedly reinforce peace work as the amorphous enterprise it already is in the minds of most people globally, to its severe detriment. Then there's China's reaction to this year's laureate, but I will leave that for last.

“The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows... one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” That's what Mr. Nobel wanted done with his money, what the Nobel Peace Prize Committee is legally bound to do because it's his will, and what they have not been doing in their recent choices.

Mr. Nobel's definition of peace is as limited as it was for most members of his class, culture and historical moment. It is equally unfortunate that this definition still dominates how peace is thought about and acted upon worldwide, in large part thanks to the Nobel Peace Prize itself. But in trying to expand this definition, Nobel Peace Prize Committee members have not only negligently not carried out their legal duties, they have confused and confounded what peace means beyond Nobel's narrow-minded definition without ever explicitly tying their choices to it. Might as well give Heinz the Chemistry Prize for inventing ketchup.

Take just two recent examples of the Nobel Peace Prize being wrongly awarded. One is to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007) for their environmental work, the other to Muhammad Yunus for his microlending work. In the case of Gore, he should have received one of the science Prizes; in the case of Yunus, the Economics Prize; in the case of neither the Peace Prize. Why? Not because their transformational work isn't important and doesn't contribute to peace, but simply because neither of them meet the criteria that Alfred Nobel set for the Nobel Peace Prize, which the Committee's and commentators' attempts to rationalize the choices in itself makes clear.

The same self-evidently goes for this year's laureate, Liu Xiaobo (who should have received the Literature Prize, not that this year's choice of Mario Vargas Llosa wasn't fully worthy), which brings me to my response to China's response. Political statements poor Nobel Peace Prize laureates make, just think back to last year's disastrous choice of Barack Obama, who has since carried out the largest weapons deal in U.S. history and stationed some 100,000 troops in Afghanistan in an imperial war now entering it's tenth year. Oh, and certinaly no one in the world did more for peace according to Nobel's terms before he won the Prize, as even President Obama himself less sarcastically admitted.

And instead of giving the Nobel Peace Prize to a dissenter against these international travesties, which would at least have had some vague relation to Nobel's dying wishes and bring them into a light from which they are systematically hidden, the Committee members give it to a dissenter against a dometic travesty that is already globally acknowledged, effectively covering the tracks of (or at best creating a distraction tactic away from) their choice of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who is our early century's biggest warmonger after his predecessor.

Unfortunately for eligible laureates, Obama's America generally doesn't yet throw dissenters in jail like China does, so they don't become living martyrs easily glorified by lazy ga-ga journalists and activists abroad; rather, Obama's officials just raid such dissenters' houses, and prevent them from steering terrorists towards peace. China's response was appropriately furious, if also for reasons we like Liu Xiaobo should all dissent to in our own backyards, and not expect a Nobel Peace Prize because doing so is called thinking.

Photo Credit: Rankingranqueen

Finish Ratifying the START Treaty Already

 "October 1st marks 18 years since the U.S. Senate approved President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START. It also marks the 300th day since that treaty expired, cutting off U.S. weapons inspectors' access to Russian nuclear sites. Conservatives in the Senate are now blocking the restart of Reagan's inspections." So begins a recent article by Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, which invests in peace and security around the globe. The irony is not lost to anyone.

The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee were to vote in mid-September on whether to send the new START Treaty to the Senate floor for ratification. The START Treaty passed that test, to Obama's approval, but it most likely won't be thought of until after the consequential mid-term elections in November, if then at all. The treaty would cut US and Russian deployed strategic nuclear warheads by about one-third, to 1,550 each.

Since the original START Treaty expired, on-site monitoring of Russia's nuclear weapons and facilities was suspended, to say nothing of those of the U.S. Now that it's open knowledge that Russia is giving Iran nuclear materials, you would think that the U.S. Congress would show a bit more urgency and concern.  In addition to removing hundreds of warheads from US and Russian nuclear arsenals and renewing and enhancing verification protocols, "New START" would also help improve cooperation to prevent nuclear terrorism, a vital international security priority.

Will the U.S. Congress suddenly realize what is at stake in ratifying the START Treaty and permit a floor vote? Kevin Martin, the leader of Peace Action, says "the New START is a modest step forward toward the realization the President Obama's goal (and ours!) of ridding the world of nuclear weapons.  It's a step that should be taken without further delay so the administration can begin work on the steps that must follow." It is that, but it is also a dangerous election-year gamble which no politician, especially conservative ones, can afford to lose.

So doing nothing makes sense for them and them only, even if it puts domestic and global security at risk. Please continue to contact U.S. Senators and ask them to support the New Start Treaty.  Call 202-224-3121, or write your Senators at: US Senate, Washington DC 20510; or email them at Senate.gov. Your vote this November can make a world of difference.   

Selenium Cells: The Secrets of Next-Generation Solar Energy Revealed

By Rosalind Sanders

Scientists at the American Institute of Physics are seeking to identify superior light-catching substances in order to better transform more of the sun's power into carbon-free electric power. And their learned labors are now bearing fruit that could change the way the world gets its energy forever: cheaper, faster and less harmfully to the environment.
 
A new study in Applied Physics Letters (published by the American Institute of Physics) describes how solar energy could potentially be collected by using oxide materials that have the element selenium. A team at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, inserted selenium in zinc oxide, a relatively low-priced component that could make more cost-efficient use of the sun's power.
 
The research team determined that even a relatively small level of selenium, just nine per-cent of the mostly zinc-oxide base, dramatically enhanced the material's performance in absorbing light.
 
The principal author of this analysis, Marie Mayer (a fourth-year College of California, Berkeley doctoral student) says that photo-electrochemical water splitting, that signifies employing energy from the sun to cleave water into hydrogen and oxygen gases, could potentially be the most revolutionary future application for her work. Using this reaction is key to the eventual creation of zero-emission hydrogen powered automobiles, which hypothetically will run only on water and sunlight.

The conversion effectiveness of a PV cell is the proportion of sunlight energy that the solar cell converts to electricity. This is very important when discussing Photovoltaic products, because boosting this efficiency is vital to making Pv electricity competitive with more standard sources of energy (e.g., fossil fuels).
 
For comparison, the very first Photovoltaic products converted about 1%-2% of sunlight power into electric energy. Today's Pv devices convert 7%-17% of light energy into electric power. Of course, the other side of the equation is the dollars it costs to make the PV devices. This has been reduced over the years as well. In fact, today's PV systems generate electricity at a fraction of the cost of first PV systems.
 
In the 1990s, when silicon cells were twice as thick, efficiencies were much smaller than today and lifetimes were reduced, it may well have cost more energy to produce a cell than it could generate in a lifetime. In the meantime, the technological know-how has progressed significantly, and the energy repayment time (defined as the recovery time required for generating the energy spent to produce the respective technical energy systems) of a modern photovoltaic module is normally from 1 to 4 years depending on the module type and location.
 
Normally, thin-film technologies - despite having comparatively low conversion efficiencies - obtain considerably shorter energy repayment times than standard systems (often < 1 year). With a normal lifetime of 20 to 30 years, this signifies that current solar cells are net energy producers, i.e. they generate significantly more energy over their lifetime than the energy expended in producing them.
 
Rosalind Sanders is the publisher of, and writes for, The Solar Panel Review, which focuses on helping homeowners reduce expenses with solar energy.

A Turning Point in China-U.S. Relations, But Too Late?

Below the global mainstream media radar, an urgent meeting between Chinese and U.S. officials recently took place in Beijing. The topics discussed amongst the senior officials included the now obstinately standard currency and trade disputes on both sides, but also and more importantly the underlying military tensions and arms race between the two countries. This was, fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective, a get-to-know-you meeting, though inasmuch it can be considered a turning point in early 21st-century China-U.S. relations. But has it come too late?

"The key point of the talks is not to make significant agreements, but to improve understanding of each other's stance. If tensions can be reduced to some degree and confidence increased, that is an achievement," said Shi Yinhong, an expert on the U.S. at Renmin University in Beijing. He emphasized that U.S.-China relations are troubled, but the worst seems to be over and both sides are headed toward reconciliation. Many in the international relations field would consider this outlook overly optimistic and especially premature, given the preliminary nature of the discussions.

What's most troubling is that they are still preliminary. It has been obvious for decades that China is the rising global superpower along with India, yet relations between the two are strained, as are those with the declining superpower, the U.S. China becoming the world's second largest economy, beating Japan, was a wake up call, but only because almost everyone was sleeping. Chinese state media has criticized U.S.-South Korea military exercises in the Yellow Sea and U.S. claims about South China Sea territory, in addition to U.S. arms sales to Chinese rival Taiwan and an Obama meeting with Chinese nemesis the Dalai Lama. For it's part, China's increases in military spending dwarf that of others globally.

There can be no doubt that the peace and prosperity of the world in the 21st century depends on open communications channels and cooperation between China and the U.S., and as a step in that direction this meeting is indeed a turning point. Even if it is too early to determine their outcomes, it has come both too late and at last. "Continuing to develop a positive and comprehensive China-U.S. relationship contributes to our two countries' major interests in peace, security and development," China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said. We couldn't agree more.

Mutiny at the Highest Levels of U.S. Military: General Petraeus

Commander-in-Chief, the title and responsibilities accorded to the President, don't matter for the once again new military commander of the Afghanistan War, in a munity that is punishable by death according to U.S. military law. In two separate addresses recently, General Petraeus said that only he will decide when to withdraw from Afghanistan, flying in the face of the already too distant withdrawal start date set by the President upon election, and that he won't carry out his delegated duties of running the military operations there as a "graceful exit" from the country, even if the Secretary of Defense says otherwise.

Putting himself at striking odds with both his bosses, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and President Obama (not to mention their bosses too, us), General Petraeus apparently thinks he's calling the shots, even if the U.S. Constitution says differently. This is nothing short of a mutinous military takeover of wartime chains of command punishable by death according to the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), Article 94. And it makes General Petraeus the number one obstacle to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and a highly dangerous one at that considering the tens of thousands of troops and sophistacated weaponry he now has under his direct command.

To be precise, Article 94 of the UCMJ states that any person "with intent to usurp or override lawful military authority, refuses, in concert with any other person, to obey orders or otherwise do his duty or creates any violence or disturbance is guilty of mutiny… shall be punished by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct." If what Petraeus said and is doing accordingly don't fit this definition, nothing does or will. We are not advocating that he should be killed, but he should be removed from his post immediately and court-marshaled to the same military tribunals as Guantanamo inmates still are if the U.S. military is to maintain any semblance of legitimacy domestically or globally. And the story only starts there, with the the withdrawal from Afghanistan in the balance.

In an interview that aired last week on NBC's Meet the Press, Petraeus had the gall to say that: "Oil spot is a term in counterinsurgency literature that denotes a peaceful area, a secure area. What you're always trying to do is extend that, push that out." This is more than a doublespeak message at the highest levels of the U.S. military which everyone should be able to identify and decode for themselves by now, it is an outright duplicitous public relations campaign to dupe the American people into continued, complacent support of the war in Afghanistan.  This, despite the fact that Afghan, U.N., U.K. and even certain high-ranking U.S. officials have made it clear that the only viable solution is a political one, not military.

Now for the bad news. According to the same article in the UCMJ, if we don't do anything to stop this mutiny, we are as much to blame as Petraeus himself. Any person who "fails to do his utmost to prevent and suppress a mutiny or sedition being committed in his presence, or fails to take all reasonable means to inform his superior commissioned officer or commanding officer of a mutiny or sedition which he knows or has reason to believe is taking place, is guilty of a failure to suppress or report a mutiny or sedition." We need to stop this military takeover of our political processes before it's too late, and you can start by signing the petition to pressure the President to withdraw responsibly from Afghanistan, legally by Congress passing binding legislation to do just that.  

If the U.S. military doesn't follow it's own rules, we cannot expect it to follow any others either.

Photo credit: Hector Alejandro

World Report on the Decade for a Culture of Peace Submitted to U.N. Secretary General

Capping the United Nations' Decade for a Culture of Peace (2001-2010) efforts to catalogue ongoing peace work globally, the World Report on the Decade for a Culture of Peace has been submitted to the U.N. Secretary General for a General Assembly debate in October. We are proud to say that One World, Many Peaces was included in the report for its pioneering peace journalism.

Over 1,000 peace organizations worldwide contributed to the final report, according to David Addams, leader of the global youth team who helped prepare it. According to Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury, who begins the report with a foreword:

"The adoption in 1999 by the United Nations General Assembly of the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace was a watershed event. Nine months of negotiations, which I had the honor to chair, led to the adoption of this historic, norm-setting document now considered one of the most significant and enduring legacies of the United Nations.

During the last ten years, the UN’s work in this area has been particularly spearheaded by the broad-based advocacy and activism of numerous non-governmental organizations throughout the globe. The International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-violence for the Children of the World (2001-2010), which was proclaimed by the United Nations, is galvanizing a global movement for the culture of peace."

The movement for a "Culture of Peace" was originally spearheaded by peace activist and scholar Elise Boulding, who just recently passed away. More about Elise Boulding is available from One World, Many Peaces in an article remembering her pioneering work. The Culture of Peace Working Group of the NGO Committee on Spirituality, Values and Global Concerns, a Committee of the Conferences of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations (CSVGC NY) has sponsored this Report "in the name of all civil society organizations worldwide," notes Chowdhury.

But as Antony Adolf has recently showed in a major new article, "Globalizations of Cultural Criticism and the Transformative Roles of Critics," there are serious problems with trying to establish a single, dominant "culture of peace" when peace cultures always exist and are the result of plural peace traditions, and there are one billion starving people worldwide.  He argues that only the combined efforts of cultural critics and peacebuilders can bring about cultures of peace.

The World Report on the Culture of Peace members include Marcos Estrada (Brazil), Meghann Villanueva (Philippines), Cécile Barbeito (Spain), Lillian Solheim (Norway), Mayte Roitenburd (Mexico), Johanna Ospina (Colombia), Nikki Delfin (Philippines), Shreya Jani (India), Oliver Rizzi Carlson (Switzerland) and Himali Jinadasa (Sri Lanka). Support was provided by Alicia Cabezudo, the Associação Brasileira dos Organizadores de Festivais de Folclore e Artes Populares (ABrasOFFA), the United Network of Young Peacebuilders (UNOY), the Centre Unesco de Catalunya (UNESCOCAT), the Fundación Cultura de Paz, the Escola de Cultura de Pau of the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Fundació Privada Catalunya Voluntària and Generation Peace Youth Network among others.

Faster Exit Strategy for Afghan War Wanted by U.K., Not U.S. Yet

You'd think top U.S. military and government officials were playing a demented kind of bingo reading the headlines about possible timelines for withdrawing from Afghanistan: 2012, 2014, 2017. We lose!

The British, still  America's closest ally in the war even if ties between the countries are strained, are going about it quite differently. That the new U.K. Premier who is leading the push for a faster withdrawal strategy, David Cameron, is a Conservative globalizes the startling fact that people on his side of the fence, so to speak, are becoming more anti-war than liberals.

Cameron's inspiring comments need to be contextualized in order to be properly understood, and there are two immediate frames of references. First is the largest-ever peace conference about Afghanistan that took place this week, hardly reported on by mainstream U.S. media, which is for this writer so unbelievable that it can only be true. Second is Cameron's meeting with President Obama, which received a much higher profile both within the U.S. and abroad than the 60-nation Afghan peace conference.

Speaking to the BBC, Cameron said: "No timetable can be chiselled in stone but we are absolutely determined - given how long we have been in Afghanistan, given that we are six months into an 18-month military strategy, embarking on a new political strategy - that we must be out in a combat role by 2015." Words like that coming out of Obama's mouth could be called "flip flopping," but that doesn't mean I and those like me worldwide who want peace would not welcome them and action upon them. The U.S. government is obstinately refusing to set firm (let alone faster) withdrawal dates, trying the trust of Americans.

The bad news is that still means four more years of war in Afghanistan, at least. The good news, as Daniel J. Gerstle of Change.org recently reported, what "war" means during that period is likely to continue to change dramatically, from killing to training others to kill, and hopefully soon to keeping the peace that will emerge under Afghan President Hamid Karzai's diligent and tireless efforts.

But the key part of Cameron's statement is his emphasis on a switch from military to political approaches to ending the war, or parallel at least, which Karzai and the U.N. Counter-Terrorism Chief have also been pushing for months. There's an old anti-war saying that goes "fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity." With this switch to political from military action fully consummated, it could change to "war during peace talks is like adultery in chastity."

Anti-War Activists: Stop Panicking, Start Thinking Critically and Acting Strategically

"Panicked thinking was shared by many of us then, and it led to the kind of disastrous short-term actions that began to characterize the antiwar movement." So writes the legendary anti-Vietnam War, pro-women's liberation activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz in her monumental memoir, Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960-1975. Unfortunately, not much has changed in the few decades since her, her entourage and their supporters worldwide nonetheless made considerable headway in turning the tide of public opinion. Unfortunately, they and we have failed today even if we need not to in the future

The Afghanistan War is now the United State's longest military engagement, ever. The war in Iraq is rapidly approaching second place after it, too. The burst of anti-war energy that soon fizzled first in 2001 with the Afghan, then the so-called "Summer of Peace" with Iraq in 2003, has never been regained. This is not a eulogy, it's a reproach and recommendation to those who led and participated in those protests globally, thinking they would make a difference in doing so, then went back to their complacent daily lives and let the two wars continue, costing hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.

What is "panicking" in an anti-war context and why should it be stopped? Exactly what and why Dunbar-Ortiz claimed it is:  disastrous short-term actions. What's so disastrous about panicking? Aside from that it has achieved absolutely nothing in regards to ending the wars, it has also alienated a lot of the people who would have otherwise worked to end it, while giving those who do it a false sense of accomplishment in the self-centered, self-satisfaction of acting like an angry teenager, or worse yet a two year old in their "terrible phase." As such, it needs to be stopped, but stopping without doing anything different would be like not stopping at all.

We propose two alternatives. First, thinking critically. Not in the sense of armchair philosophizing, but deeply scrutinizing the following, among other things: Why we want the wars to end; why others might want them to end too and why they should join us; it means learning from the long history of peace and anti-war activism dating back centuries, rather than reinventing the wheel; what has worked in the past and can be repeated effectively today; what has not worked in the past and should not be repeated today; how to take advantage of resources like social media that were not previously available;  how to build bridges (not burn them) with related organizations. These last two bring us to the second alternative.

Start acting strategically. If there's an opposite to panicking, this is it. Anti-war strategizing includes planning in the short, medium and long terms; it takes the shape of coordinating the human, economic and technological resources that are already in place, not competing; it means setting egos aside to make the causes succeed;  it requires reaching out to opponents and potential partners to come up and implement solutions that make sense. Anti-war panicking is a deadly disease; critical thinking and acting strategically are its cures and, with them, an end to the war epidemic.