Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Grade: Incomplete !!

1978 Anwar al-Sadat, and Menachem Begin shake hands and agree on peace and end up sharing the Nobel Prize. Twenty eight years later, there is still peace on the state level but you wouldn't know it reading the papers or watching TV or the occasional demonstrations.

1989. Berlin Wall falls, Germany is one again. Families reunited. Wonderful news. Unemployment on the rise, competition for resources on the rise, Skinheads and Neo Nazis on the rise, ...

The "Evil Empire" dissolves to give rise to youthful hopeful new nations. Headline- October 02, 2006 : Putin Gives Bush Georgia Warning : Russian President Vladimir Putin told U.S. President George W. Bush during an Oct. 2 phone conversation that any efforts by a third country that encourage Georgia's destructive policy toward Russia are unacceptable, the Kremlin press service said.

Chechnya, Kosovo, Ukrain, ...

Apartheid falls in 1994. Good riddance. Great news. .. Headlines in Oct. 2006: Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu has warned that South Africa is in danger of losing its moral direction. He said it had failed to sustain the idealism that ended apartheid and warned of growing ethnic divisions. Referring to South Africa's high murder rate and the rape of children as young as nine months, he said the African reverence for life had been lost.

India and Pakistan in recent years, are the closest they have ever been, but a few days ago, the BBC headlines read : Indian police have said that Pakistan's intelligence service helped to plan the July Mumbai train bombings.

These are just a few examples of the way it has been in the last few decades, yet I still think that we are making some progress ... however minuscule.

Most people want peace. Most people want a good life for their families and for the rest of the world. We shouldn't be disappointed. Lots of good happening in the world, but what does it take to maintain the momentum so we wouldn't take six steps forward and go back five ?


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Undying Hope

On the lighter side: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times (Wednesday, October 4, 2006)

Dead Bachelors in China Still Find Wives

To ensure a dead son’s contentment in the afterlife, some Chinese parents search out a dead woman to be his bride.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It would be great if everyone wants peace, but unfortunately we are still far from it. One wonders, what would it take to get to that point!?

Faisal said...

If one believes in any of the established religions in the world, one has to believe that peace is not only possible, but inevitable. But that was not your question.

As to what it takes to even 'get to that point'; ... back in 1985, I was introduced to a document called The Promise of World Peace just published that year. The second paragraph on page one says:

"Whether peace is to be reached only after unimaginable horrors precipitated by humanity's stubborn clinging to old patterns of behaviour, or is to be embraced now by an act of consultative will, is the choice before all who inhabit the earth."

I really, ... really hope that we take the second choice. Consultative Will.