Has violence become a way of life?
If the statistics show that war is declining and criminal violence in most regions is flatlining, how should we read the redoubts of extreme insecurity? Are they holdovers from the past, or signs of the future?
http://www.opendemocracy.net/freeform-tags/killing-times-violent-lives-and-social-change-across-world Harvard professor Steven Pinker's interview and argument on the decline of violence. The latter link is a summary of Pinker, by himself: Here's John Gray's critique of Pinker: Delusions of peace. I posted these to some friends for comments, and will place their reactions here.
Meanwhile here's a link to SIPRI data on the global arms industry.
Reality Denial : Steven Pinker's Apologetics for Western-Imperial Violence:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/freeform-tags/killing-times-violent-lives-and-social-change-across-world Harvard professor Steven Pinker's interview and argument on the decline of violence. The latter link is a summary of Pinker, by himself: Here's John Gray's critique of Pinker: Delusions of peace. I posted these to some friends for comments, and will place their reactions here.
Meanwhile here's a link to SIPRI data on the global arms industry.
Reality Denial : Steven Pinker's Apologetics for Western-Imperial Violence:
It is amusing to see how eagerly the establishment media have welcomed Steven Pinker’s 2011 tome, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,[1] which explains not only that “violence has been in decline for long stretches of time,” but that “we may be living in the most peaceful era in our species' existence.”[2] A professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University since 2002 and a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist in the general nonfiction category,[3] Pinker’s lovable theme coincides with the Nobel Peace Laureate’s current engagement in wars on at least four separate continents (Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America); his regretful partial withdrawal from invaded and occupied Iraq; his victorious termination of the 2011 war in Libya; his buildup and threats to engage in even larger wars with Syria and Iran, both already underway with aggressive sanctions and an array of covert actions;[4] his semi-secret and ever-widening use of remote-controlled aerial gunships and death squads in global killing operations;[5] and his declaration of the right to kill any person anywhere for “national security” reasons—officially making the entire world a U.S. free-fire-zone.[6] The Barack Obama regime, and before it the Bush-Cheney regime, have also supported and protected Israel’s escalated ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and the hostile U.S. actions and threats involving Iran and Syria are closely geared with those of Israel. Whereas in Pinker’s view there has been a “Long Peace” since the end of the Second World War,[7] in the real world there has been a series of long and devastating U.S. wars: in the Koreas (1950-1953), Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia (1954-1975), Iraq (1990-), Afghanistan (2001- or, arguably, 1979-), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1996-), with the heavy direct involvement of U.S. clients from Rwanda (Paul Kagame) and Uganda (Yoweri Museveni) in large-scale Congo killings; and Israel’s outbursts in Lebanon (1982 and 2006), to name a few. There were also very deadly wars in Iran, invaded by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (1980-1988), with Western encouragement and support. And with the stimulus-excuse of 9/11, the U.S. political and “defense” establishment was able to declare a global “War on Terror,” open-ended and still ongoing, to assure that the “Long Peace” would not be interrupted by a conflict that met the Pinkerian standards for a real war... http://www.zcommunications.org/reality-denial-steven-pinkers-apologetics-for-western-imperial-volence-by-edward-s-herman-and-david-peterson-1
