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WAR OF THE WORLDS

“Our best bet, to keep our children from being caught up in an episode of random violence spawned by comic book foreign policy (the ‘war on terror’ against the ‘axis of evil’), is to use our collective influence. We need to tilt the debate by sheer weight of numbers.”

(Excerpt from “How to Win a Nobel Prize – A Stay-at-Home Mum’s Guide”)

What we can do as Individuals

It is not going to be easy to keep our children safe from a random act of violence associated with the global war on terror. And it is very easy to want to pull up drawbridge and retire to a comfort zone where every stranger is a threat. But is that really the sort of world we want our children to grow up in? And more practically, is it even possible?

I personally don’t think it is either possible or desirable that we bring our children up in a world where we spend most of our time hoping that we don’t get catch the wrong plane or be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The following websites have very useful information on what we can do in terms of peace marches and protests as well as lobbying:

• www.stopwar.org.uk
• www.unitedforpeace.org

The other things we can do, especially programmes that involve outreach, are more community specific but I hope that we can all do our bit within our neighbourhood and community organisations including perhaps religious groups.

Scaling Up

There are two aspects to scaling up:

• putting pressure on governments to address genuine grievances whether the war on Iraq or the Palestinian issue. A good write-up on this is available on the UN website, www.un.org/Depts/dpa/ngo/history.html. Important sites on the Iraq War include www.iraqbbodycount.org and www.costofwar.com.
• supporting broader community initiatives (whether organised through existing grassroots organisations, utilising government initiatives or taking advantage of inter-faith dialogues).