- LET'S TRAVEL -

On the benefits of extended travel. 

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Le pire imbécile se croit le plus sage- apprentimarcv
Ne traitez personne d'imbécile – Jésus

The greatest fool thinks himself wisest - learnermarkv
Call no man a fool. Jesus

Chapters

• 0:06 surplus wealth: rare peace dividend or routine military wastage
• 1:26 America has nothing to gain from civil war
• 3:52 resistance to PeaceWorld
• 7:01 Learner interventions for peace

Transcript

WORLD WAR COVID
From WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld
Learner, begin

- LET’S TRAVEL! -

Learners face a basic dilemma. The info proletariat cannot afford to pay so much attention to empty elite monolog; in turn, the info elite can’t broadcast so much nonsense. Routines that seemed so soothing in the past have wound up being dead-ends. Slowly but surely, we are casting them aside.

Mass cosmopolitanism, urbanity and travel should be promoted in every population. 

In optimizing the threat formula, we have amassed enough “surplus” wealth to arm hundreds of millions of soldiers with modern weapons and dispatch them to smear wasteland for years on end wherever info elites opt to focus their fury ― at least at first. Soon, this martial desolation will crash and burn where least desired, (read your doorstep), swiftly and nonstop.

Had we wisely invested these dividends in peace, we could expect huge profits in return: enough to let anyone travel where they wish, enough to plumb everyone’s lifelong Learning, and enough to introduce a new world language. These projects and many more peace equivalents will generate more wealth and investment opportunities in turn.

Without the monstrous military overheads we have come to expect and their wreckage, Learner Administrations could secure modest comforts for everyone, regardless of origin, credentials or return contribution. Any additional wealth would be gravy: communal riches beyond imagining. See Mencius as to wealth.

Most Americans would concur that Kansas and Missouri have nothing to gain from interstate war and everything to lose. This is so for at least seven reasons. 

1.    War shatters mutual affection, trust and trade: relationships it would take decades to heal. America has yet to heal wounds that fester since its Civil War “ended” seven generations ago. 

2.    An impartial Federal Government provides each State with peaceful means of conflict resolution. Could an honest Kansan complain, “Those Missourians are favored in Congress?” 

3.    In both states, vast majorities remain loyal to the federal ideal. They identify with a larger whole that seems to foster their mutual benefit. They would silence their prismatic minority ― by force if necessary. 

4.    Both states have unlimited access to each other’s workers and resources without additional tariffs and quotas. 

5.    The federal military draws equally from both states and from forty-eight others. It alone boasts a balanced armory and fully trained and equipped, full-strength troops. If push came to shove, it would outmatch any state’s military assets.

6.    From a military standpoint, the whole is stronger than the sum of its parts; it offers greater security from threats foreign and domestic. 

7.    Both states share the same language, culture and constellation of political metaphors. No lesser issues remain to justify interstate war. 

For these reasons, State officials don’t sit up late nights worrying that their neighbor’s National Guard will overrun them during the wee hours. American State legislators needn’t fortify their borders or raise armies to guard them; they needn’t fear cross-state espionage and recruit secret counter-agents. Any crackpot making such insane proposals would be laughed out of office.

So why not between all the nation-states of the Earth? 

Granted, Kansas and Missouri shared brutal conflict in the past. Euro-Americans and Native American Indians couldn’t endure each other’s socio-economic contradictions. Soon, Federal authority lapsed and local battle elites used militant banditry to argue the issue of slavery. Once this madness shut down, the first fight resumed to its genocidal conclusion. 

But any American Hawk could find good reasons to uphold interstate peace. If peace endures between Kansas and Missouri – inviolate yet unenforced – the validity of peace cannot be denied anywhere else. It would then be a question of setting up these preconditions far and wide and forbidding infractions. The United States of the World, above and beyond its American model yet emulating its greatness. 

I cannot understand why Americans (in majority?) find this a threat to their life and liberty. Who fed them this BS? On the contrary, America would become the model for everyone to imitate as best they could. It would rule the world, not by brute force but by shining example. Everything fine about America would be brought forward and everything lesser, abandoned as shameful and worthless.

The powerful States of New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia are better off united; their populations are richer, freer, and more secure than they would be if they faced off against each other. Wouldn’t America, Russia and China find even greater rewards if they united with every other nation?

Where is the harm in that? 

The United States (or other nations?) may reject a future world government, the way rich Americans vetoed British control during the American Revolution, to protect themselves from foreign taxation and lay that burden on the shoulders of their own poor. Otherwise, under British rule, the United States would have become a greater version of Canada or Australia (what a freedom-crushing horror!). 

When Learners consolidate PeaceWorld and guide global populations to new heights of peace, justice and well being, American nationalism could take a turn for the worse ― indeed, its far-right response to World Peace might turn into overt fascism. No surprise there, given Republican tendencies these days. The worst outcome could be world war between Learner progressives and plutocrats entrenched in the U.S.A. and elsewhere. That conflict would probably begin with historically routine U.S. tactics of undercover sabotage, selective assassination and reflexive terrorism aimed against any hint of successful progress. See Iran, Chile, Nicaragua, and others over the past hundred years.

In that case, the U.S.A. should be permitted its resentful isolation from the rest of the world. The best and brightest American volunteers will join Learners to uphold PeaceWorld; just as the best and brightest children born in the Republican heartland flee to the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts once they grow up. Their intellect, youthful ideals and empathy prevail over the hothouse greed, bigotry and self-satisfaction with third-world-style leadership they found fixed at home (smugly called “American exceptionalism”). 

If Learners apply limitless patience and restraint despite bloody provocations inflicted on them, American majorities will eventually appreciate the advantages of PeaceWorld and join up on terms acceptable to both sides ― even if a small minority of wannabe slaveholders has to be beaten down once and for all. 

This Satyagraha promotion of PeaceWorld promises better outcomes than any attack against the richest territories and populations of the Earth to force their conformity with World Peace. Learners will veto this typical WeaponWorld wastage. Learner Satyagraha will be tested to its limit.

No doubt, unresolved water allocations, race/class conflicts and other contentious issues will rekindle militant hostility between these states, especially once global warming takes hold of the world. Talented psychopaths will keep practicing their worst behavior until they’re identified and stopped. As part of its crucial responsibilities, local administrations will head off such conflicts and resolve them peacefully, long before they turn into pretexts for more violence. The World Court will not act except as ultimate umpire.

Another weapon myth demands what healing it may bring. According to some raving militants, their feuds have festered for so long, their wrongs, become so unforgivable and their vendettas, run so deep that no lasting peace can ever be expected. 

In the past, Switzerland (and similar regions) resembled today’s war-torn Balkans: their lovely landscape stained by factional massacre. Swiss cantons fought one another for centuries as Raurics, Sequanians, Uberians, Allobroges and other tribespeople, Helvetians, Celts, Gallo-Romans, Alemanians, Raetians, and Romanche-speaking antagonists swayed by puppet-master imperialists from France, Burgundy, the Holy Roman Empire, Austria, Savoya and the cities of splintered Italy. 

During the battle of Mortgarten, in 1315, highland warriors of rural cantons Uri and Schwyz massacred the steel-clad city dwellers of Zoug, Lucerne and Zurich under the command of Frederic, the brother of Duke Leopold 1 of Austria (killed later on by the Swiss at the battle of Sempach). The difference between an enemy and a countryman seems merely to be a question of letting time unfold their history and broaden their mutual acceptance.

Bitter, Catholic-versus-Protestant disputes supercharged centuries of secular conflict. Before and after Federation, Swiss Cantons fought each other over feudal rights, foreign relations, rural versus urban priorities and issues of class conflict. During hundreds of freezing winters, the Swiss burned Swiss villages, raped Swiss women and starved Swiss children during bouts of organized mayhem. In the years to come, we will come to see likewise the history of every other weapon nation-state on Earth. Unforgivable crimes and unanswerable acts of revenge stacked up higher than the Alps — only to be ground down into ancient history. 

The Swiss hired out their warlike sons as mercenaries who lost a million battle casualties abroad. They fought several civil wars, both in person at home and by proxy abroad. Their mercenaries were famous for their merciless ferocity: they neither asked for quarter nor granted it unless so ordered by their paymaster and not always then.

The serene Swiss of today (and other complex blends of ethnic peoples) could make similar claims just as outrageous: the same ones spit into each other’s face by Croat, Serb and Bosnian aggressors, Northern Irish, Afghan, Sri Lankan, Indonesian, Middle-Eastern … (this list can grow quite long with boring predictability). Each militant thinks he owes his countryman a long-standing blood-debt, or lusts after his neighbor’s land to form a “Greater Ethnic Nation-State” of historical fantasy and suicidal militarism. 

Niklaus von Flüe was a humble monk who took to his alpine cave and preached federation and peace until grieving people opted to hear him out. They concluded they would never settle their disputes by force of arms without enslaving themselves to foreign powers that orchestrated their quarrels. Common sense turned civil war heroes into welcome allies or shunned desperadoes. Their fanaticism and Canton of origin became less important than their devotion to peace and its practical applications. 

After years of trial and error – since they lacked any better idea and, unlike us, did something about it – the Swiss negotiated elaborate pledges of non-aggression that bound each Canton to its neighbors in peace, allied them against foreign aggressors, separated them when they began to wrangle, and arbitrated their disputes. Most importantly, Swiss Cantons signed “sit tight” agreements wherein they pledged not to get caught up in third-party disputes. No Canton, no matter how powerful and dominant in the past, could confront the remainder single-handedly and expect to thrive. 

By criminalizing internal warfare and forbidding adventures abroad, the Swiss nation grew rich, powerful and dependably neutral. The entire planet could expect equal blessings if it did the same thing. Every nation would have to admit to its long history of civil wars, extensive and minor, prior to domestic peace. The whole Earth is merely the latest nation of humankind. To leap into space successfully, it must set up a dependable world peace. 

This outcome might be achieved by tossing a net of peace treaties across the globe. Those easier to negotiate (between the United States and Canada, for example), but especially among countries less amenable (for example, the two Koreas or Turkey and Greece), as well as between suppressed minorities and their repressive national government. This, assuming every violator faced airtight sanctions and endless pursuit for disturbing the peace. 

Vast new Learning Networks will restore trust between suspicious peoples, promote a relaxed form of Swiss confederation and criminalize warfare. Given so much more peace and quiet (and lower military overheads), business opportunities and profits will flourish at every level of enterprise. 

We have been denied this planetary commonwealth by Prism extortionists and the rest of the population they’ve hypnotized into hysterical paralysis. 

Today’s “sovereign states” and their harm forces are hyper-organized street-corner idlers picking their teeth with titanium switchblades. When social progress threatens their dominion, they attack their host population and call this barbarism “internal security.” A global conspiracy of prismatic aggressors resorts to parallel assaults ― quite predictably, despite the range of their geographic and political blah-blahs.

One might see warfare as a public health problem, a global pandemic. In that case, specialized peacekeeping and peacemaking forces will quarantine infected war zones, isolate them from corruptive outside influences and terminate their combat, backed by the entire industrial, military and academic might of the planet. Millions of civil volunteers will rebuild what has been destroyed and work hard to satisfy every demand that drove locals to fight. 

Prototype Learner intervention groups include such organizations as Ruppert Nuedeck’s German group, Cap Anamu; the Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) of French origin, Belgian administration and global commitment; the American organization Witness for Peace. There are millions of potential volunteers out there, all dressed-up but with nowhere to go. We have merely to inspire, organize and deploy these Army Groups across PeaceWorld. 

Administrations can’t resolve their crime problem by flattening entire neighborhoods. Weapon managers rehearsed this alternative in Paris before and after Napoleon III’s downfall, in 1985 Philadelphia, in Palestinian Gaza and anywhere else they thought they could get away with it. Nor can we sell weapons to our half of the perpetrators, though some reactionaries consider this a sound bargain and sound politics: today’s UN’s so-called “Security Council” foremost. 

At a planetary scale, we must duplicate the guidelines of our healthiest cities: thwart organized violence, improve public service and encourage all the private ones that peace requires ― nothing more and nothing less.

Malcolm X waged jihad against his own rage and in defense of brotherly love after his hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca). During his quest, he discovered that white Muslims could show as much friendship to him, a black man, as white Christian bigots had offended him mercilessly in the United States. This observation led him to change his mind about waging total war against the whites. He resolved to promote peace instead of his prior goal the opposite. His martyrdom for peace is a tribute to the benefits of mass travel.

Much like Ho Chi Minh. Despite his unrelenting resistance to French colonial tyranny and bully American militarism for which he felt the same contempt (with good reason), he never let go his love of the American and French peoples, and admiration for their political ideals his European kinsmen taught him during his travels. 

 Also, Martin Luther King. It could be argued that he was not assassinated for preaching racial justice (he had done that for decades without being killed); but because he started preaching the ultimate taboo topic, peace on Earth. It was for that heresy that his death was allowed. His ultimate sermon on  pacifism, carefully censored and forgotten by everyone in his posthumous record. 

During such travels, the average ignorant bigot that humanity seems to mass produce (each of whom I would like to ask: have you ever lived among your ethnic rivals?) could see that the nations and races he had simplified and despised as a whole, are complex agglomerations of individuals much like himself and his loved ones, quite likely to do him spontaneous favors, and fit to be admired or simply tolerated. In this way, he could avoid the bigot’s dilemma: whoever generalizes about humanity, in whole or in part, errs unless he falls in love with it in whole and in part.

To ease this change in attitude, we will have to develop cheap, reliable networks of global travel. International military transport assets and barracks will be demilitarized, refurbished and interlocked for public use on a subsidized basis. Massive student exchange programs will swap the children of recent military antagonists on a semester basis and intermix them with local stay-at-homes during the school year. 

This new melting pot will have to be closely watched. Learners should not flood closed societies with unwelcome and potentially disruptive intruders and thus stir up local xenophobia; nor should they leave innocent youngsters at the mercy of local chauvinists who might retain some grudge at their expense. It will be up to idealistic parents to determine if they can risk the safety of their precious children to uphold this Learner ideal. Local authorities will assure that those in charge of these newcomers (teachers, guides, chaperones and such, along with their police liaisons) are fully qualified for the job – perhaps as a result of their own field trips among former enemies and cultural adaptation to them, prior. 

In addition and above all, wealth, health and learning will need to be more or less equalized across the planet. Otherwise, planet-hopping criminals, economic refugees and bearers of exotic diseases will tend to flood more affluent regions and deter their influential inhabitants from the pursuit of this project. 

Dedicated, sacrificial interventionists may thwart future massacres of the likes of Beirut, Sarajevo, Kigali and Aleppo. Quite often, carefully advertised peace martyrs rocked well-established and brutal weapons elites back on their heels. Examples include the Kalinga casualties of Ashoka’s regret, the wave of saintly martyrs that heralded the bureaucracies of mass religion (those peace martyrs most likely in flight from their weapon religion bureaucrats whether they were Catholic, Islamic or Buddhist); the massacre of Gandhi supporters at Amritsar; non-violent Indian salt marchers at Dharesana near Surat; American Freedom Riders in the 1960’s; Kent State war protesters green troops volleyed in panic; Steve Biko and his beaten companions in South Africa; the Argentine “disappeared” and their courageous mothers; Mr. Aquino of the Philippines, assassinated on his return from exile; Witness for Peace Ben Linder gunned down in 1987 Nicaragua; and religious workers brutalized in El Salvador. Countless martyrs for peace left us their remembrance from Guatemala, Mexico and universal settings. With the connivance of the U.S. Congress and other power brokers, their sacrifice went  shamefully undocumented. 

During future complex disasters, a few carefully publicized, canary-in-the-coal-mine peace martyrs will give witness to local war crimes. They will convert world outrage over their witness, testimony and sacrifice into immediate, concrete intervention. They could dedicate their organization to the sacred memory of Rachel Corrie. Carefully trained peace martyrs would confront weapon sectarians under the bright lights of world publicity. Many human rights abuses will be corrected informally on home ground in this manner. This might reduce the need for foreign military interventions more clumsy, slow, expensive and unreliable in the long run.

Families do their best to conceal in-house squabbles from strangers. Learners will force Prism sectarians to do as much internationally. The World Court will marginalize militant prismatics and support political moderates across the globe. Military intervention will be deferred until every peace initiative has been tried and exhausted, and until a jury of randomly selected peers delivers that verdict in an adversarial court of law. 

Learners will replace the UN’s crisis fumblings with well-rehearsed and fully financed contingency plans. The following complementary instruments should be tested: A) Peace Olympics, B) the World Court Foreign Legion, and C) new planetary religions broadcasting the basic tenets of Peace Jihad: non-violent and sacrificial martyrdom whose only goal is Peace. 

Irhaab haram: “terrorism is forbidden,” as is taught to every Muslim child by their wise Muslim parents.

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COMMENT?  markmulligan@comcast.net