Colman McCarthy - Teaching Peace

This is a really inspiring talk by Colman McCarthy about peace and the need for peace education in schools.



He started off righly by saying that all of us got to where we are due to the effort and help given by others. And the best way to repay those debts of gratitude is to become a peacemaker.

He rightly points out that "peace is the result of love, and if love was easy, we'd all be good at it." The great peacemakers that he has interviewed, like Mairead Corrigan,  Desmond Tutu, Muhammad Yunus, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, always told him that in order to decrease violence, you need to go to where people are.

And thus, he started going to local high schools to "teach peace", and to introduce peace studies. He also mentioned that students today graduate from high school peace illiterate, and are therefore vulnerable to cycles of violence. "If we don't teach the children peace, unless we teach them peace, somebody else will teach them violence."

People would ask him. how would "peace" ever work? He cited examples where brutal dictatorships and social systems were brought down by peaceful, non-violent means. He cited Ferdinand Marcos, Augustus Pinochet, and how apartheid was demolished by non-violent means.

This talk, given at the University of California at Santa Barbara,under the auspices of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation headed by David Krieger.

I found it to be a very inspiring talk on how important it is to teach our children peace. The education system is working overtime to teach children "knowledge" and "skills", but not values that enable them to live the right path in life.

Peace studies, dialogue, conflict resolution are among some important studies that ought to be taught to students in the future, and soon.

The Future of Nuclear Weapons

Jayantha Dhanapala is the President of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, and former United Nations Under-Secretary General for Disarmament. In this video, he talks to Steve Paikin of The Agenda on the future of nuclear weapons.

He says that today, "the greatest worries are that we could have a nuclear weapon being used, either by accident, or by design, and by state actors, who have nuclear weapons, or by non-state actors - terrorist groups. It's become much more diversified, much more complex, and much more dangerous than the cold war situation."

He also stressed that dialogue and negotiations are the way towards resolving our nuclear problem, not sanctions and pre-emptive strikes. He also called upon the major nuclear states to show leadership in reducing their nuclear arms. Eventually, nuclear weapons must be outlawed, and a nuclear weapons convention must exist.

He also pointed out the hypocrisy of major powers on allowing the peaceful use of nuclear power, saying that when a regime change occured, their attitudes suddenly changed. He also pointed out that it cannot be proven that nuclear deterrence and the "balance of terror" has helped kept the peace.

The host asked at the end, perhaps with some disbelief, "Is a world without nuclear weapons genuinely achievable? Mr. Dhanapala replied confidently that "It is achievable. We scaled many mountains in international relations. We though that slavery could not ba abolished because it was an institution that fed a lot of economies in the world - but it was abolished.  We thought that women's right to vote would not be achievable, but it was achieved. We thought that apartheid was immutable, but it was destroyed finally. And so, I'm sure that we can, with the right political will and the part of countries, and the leadership of the right people like President Obama, achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons."