KARL JASPERS FORUM

Short Note 49 (reply to N44 by vd Meijden and McCormick)

( DE-MILITARIZATION )
by Hugh Bone
7 January 2003, posted 14 January 2003

How about individuals constructing a scheme to "change the minds of people", the "task of an intellectual", according to Foucault. A challenge - especially to the U.N.'s strongest member governments, and especially to the people in the United States' government?

How about influencing world leaders to refrain from destroying the Planet in order to save it?

Twenty thousand books (in English) were written to explain the causes of World War I. One Hundred and Sixty Million deaths were reportedly caused by WWII.

What if tens of thousands of politicians, scientists and teachers, as well as a multitude of less-famous do-gooders re-invented a Disarmament movement similar to the one that got attention between World Wars?

$350 billion is the U.S. Military Budget, as much as is budgeted for military by the next 15 largest nations, i.e. $700 billion for 16 nations.

Perhaps the rest of the 180 or so members of the United Nations spend $350 billion for military respectability. The total of $1,050 billion would be equal to about 3 years subsistence for a billion of the Globe's poorest, those who somehow get by on $1 per day.

The rewards of de-militarization could be enormous.

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Hugh Bone