Australian Wildfires Caused By Severe Drought, Possibly Global Warming The recent wildfires in southern Australia have presented some of the most horrific images in memory, made all the more so by the news that some of those fires were deliberately set by an arsonist.  200 or more victims had little chance to escape the fiery inferno because of the severe drought that has ravaged Australia since 2002.  More than a few scientists attribute this drought, in part, to global warming.  We are just beginning to see the terrible impact of climate change on human beings. Global Warming Will Cause Sea Levels to Rise Over the next century global warming will continue and human beings will see more hurricanes, floods storms of all kinds, but most critically, the melting of polar ice and the rising of sea levels. As the seas rise, coastal areas that are now inhabited will be flooded and whole populations will have to move-islands like the Maldives, Bangladesh, even large cities like New York City and Los Angeles may be submerged.  Large numbers of people will be on the move, in search of new homes, perhaps new countries.  With huge numbers of people migrating you have the ingredients for conflict, a perfect storm of conflict. Displacement of People Equals Perfect Opportunities for Conflict I have even heard it suggested that as the world warms, people will migrate to the colder areas of the world, like Canada and Siberia. Think about that. How happy would Russia and Canada be to welcome huge numbers of people migrating to their countries?

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A Terrible Love of War by James Hillman. The Penguin Press: New York. 2004. The Profound and Terrible Love of War This is one of the most unsettling and important books I have read in a long time.  The book begins with a scene from the movie Patton where Patton walks among a field of burnt tanks and dead men, kisses a dying officer and says, “I love it. God help me I do love it so. I love it more than my life.”  Hillman declares if we would grasp how men could actually love war, it must first be understood.

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Need for Enemies Keeps War in Place Why do we love war so much? I have struggled to understand war most of my life.  If something  was so horrific you would think human beings would stop doing it, but we keep going back for more. I keep returning to the issue of enemy for without an enemy wars would not take place at all. What is it about us that we have to have an enemy? Does this start with monsters under the bed in childhood? As we grow up  we divide the world into good guys and bad guys, the ones who are with us and against us.

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From Celebration to Discord Watching the nation’s legislators slug it out over the stimulus package in Washington D.C. the past week has been painful.  In the end they will cobble something together but it will not be a bill that will do what needs to be done to get Americans working again. Obama’s election and inauguration were one of the highest points of celebration this nation has ever seen. Now we have descended into fighting.  What is going on? Lessons from My Own Life So I step back and ask myself, “What’s this about?”  I only begin to get it when I  look at my own life.  I have been working incredibly hard at two jobs while I also write a blog about peace, the passion of my life, and try to nurture a business in the free hours I have left.  I notice that things in my life are breaking down: my car, my computer, my health.

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Army of Shadows. (aka Armee des Ombres.) Directed and Written by Jean Pierre Melville. Based on a novel by Joseph Kessel. Cast: Lino Ventura, Simone Signoret, Paul Meurisse, Jean Pierre Cassel, Claude Masure and Paul Crauchet. (1969) Grim Film Is a True Masterpiece Jean Pierre Melville’s film about the relationships of a small group of leaders of the French Resistance during World War II was finally released in this country in 2006.  It has been acclaimed as a masterpiece and deservedly so. It is grim, dark and extremely hard to watch.   It is one of the most important films I have ever seen and it has much to teach us about how we humans act when engaged in collective violence.

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Great Op-Ed NYT piece Opens New Ground for Diplomacy A groundbreaking op-ed piece “How Words Could End a War” by Scott Atran and Jeremy Ginges” appeared in the New York Times last week.  For years  I have observed how geo-politicians ignore the way human beings think, feel and behave in the real world.  It’s no wonder that diplomats and political leaders fail to achieve permanent peace. Research Into Moral Values Under I/P Conflict Atran and Ginges’ article, based on some fascinating academic research, validates for the first time that both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are more concerned with deep moral values than they are with accepting compromises based on self-interest.  They note that:  “Diplomats hope that peace and concrete progress on material and quality-of-life matters . . . will eventually make people forget the more heartfelt issues.

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“We Are Not Your Enemy” President Obama offered friendship to the Islamic world in a televised interview on Al-Arabiya this week saying, “We are not your enemy.” This came on the heels of two other important actions by President Obama: using his middle name “Hussein” when he took the oath of office, and calling for a “new way forward” directly to the Muslim world in his inaugural speech.Is there any such thing as the Muslim world? Probably not. There are however, a billion or more people who practice the Islamic faith in the world, and the fact that the western world lumps them together and blames them for terrorism is a huge problem. Developing a New Relationship with the Islamic World Actions like the President’s interview,  even when accompanied by critical steps like the closing of Guantanamo and the renunciation of torture by the U.S., still will not win the hearts  of the Islamic world over to the U.S. These acts are but a drop in the bucket where it really counts: ending the scourge of terrorism. What needs to happen here is not a reconciliation with the Muslim world but a new kind of relationship that has never existed before—a partnership based upon respect.

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Lies of the Mind are Universal Lies of the mind are universal. When a group shares a thinking error it becomes part of the national narrative and is often unchallenged. People who engage in behaviors that support the lie believe they are good, upstanding citizens. Only when the thinking and its behaviors, is repeatedly questioned, does the house of cards collapse. Heyday of Bombing in WW II The idea that one could wipe out one’s enemies probably started in World War II with the heavy bombing of German cities and the use of the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The unbelievable destructiveness of this bombing resulted in the unconditional surrender of both Germany and Japan.

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A Black Child Discovers the Big Lie Actress Phylicia Rashad, appearing on a Martin Luther King day program on CNN, shared a memory from her childhood in Texas. Seeing a water fountain labeled “For Whites Only” and curious about why she, a black child, could not drink there, she took a drink from that forbidden fountain. To her amazement the water tasted exactly the same as that in the “Colored Only” fountain. Instantly she saw the truth: racism was a giant lie, foisted by white America on the former slaves of the south. Black Americans knew this of course, in their bodies and hearts, but it took the rest of America years to wake up and get it. Obama’s Presidency Been A Huge Turning Point With the election of Barack Obama as President, the United States of America has been swept up in a wave of energy as our collective lie of the mind, our racism, has been released at long last.

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Gran Torino. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Written by Nick Schenk. With Clint Eastwood, Bee Vang, Ahney Her and Christopher Carley. (2008). An Unlikeable Racist Learns to Live Again You don’t often see a movie about a bitter, unrepentant old racist coot.

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