Peace
“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.”
John Lennon [1]
Official narrative
Wikipedia reports that is the Global Peace Index (GIP) is "now considered the benchmark study in measuring peace". This list attempts to measure (i) the level of safety and security in society, (ii) the extent of domestic and international conflict, and (iii) the degree of militarization. It ranks 162 countries, and has been produced annually since 2007. The 2014 list correlates pretty highly with GDP, though USA receives an intermediate ranking.
Problems
The 2015 GIP rates Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Iraq as the least peaceful nations, due to ongoing conflict. The nation most widely perceived as a threat to peace, the USA[2] ranks 94 out of 162. This discrepancy is no doubt in part connected to the methodology of the index assignment. This makes broad use of fairly subjective assignments such as the "political terror scale" carried out by Western-backed institutions, such as the US State Department.
Related Quotations
| Page | Quote | Author | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| John Lennon | “Peace is not something you wish for; it’s something you make, something you do, something you are and something you give away.” | John Lennon | |
| Salmon Levinson | “The real disease of the world is the legality and availability of war. We should have, not as now, laws of war, but laws against war; just as there are no laws of murder or of poisoning, but laws against them.” | Salmon Levinson | August 1917 |
| Love | “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” | MLK | |
| James Schlesinger | “Someone once said that war is hell, and peace is heaven. But we know that the opposite is true: War is heaven, and peace is hell.” | James Schlesinger | |
| Nadia Whittome | “To support arming Ukraine isn’t to oppose the idea of peace talks. The question is what position Ukraine would enter them from. It’s right to avoid escalation into a direct conflict between Moscow and Nato. However, arming the resistance is a way to allow Ukraine to negotiate from a position of strength, not surrender.” | Nadia Whittome | February 2023 |
| Howard Zinn | “They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is we're disturbing the war.” | Howard Zinn |
Related Documents
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:Afghanistan is not about you | Article | 19 August 2021 | Ella Whelan | Neocon MPs are concerned about the Afghanistan/2021 withdraw. The only problem is that they only care about themselves, and thereby show us the narcissism of Western intervention. |
| Document:Twenty Years On, We’ve Learned Nothing From 9/11 | Speech | 17 September 2021 | Ron Paul | 20 years on from 9/11, Ron Paul says that The Establishment in the United States has learned nothing since the attacks. |
