Usually this bulletin puts the emphasis on positive actions that promote the culture of peace. But this month, it seems that the most important events were negative, and we need to look at them in detail.

In particular, the principal center of the American empire, the budget of the United States, is being almost completely swallowed up by military spending. Last month, the US congress, both Republicans and Democrats voted to adopt a military budget of $738 billion dollars.

As shown by a recent analysis, the military portion of the budget is even higher than reported because much of it is hidden from the eyes of the public. According to the analysis, the US government has spent a staggering $5.4 trillion on its post-9/11 war on terror, with an additional $1 trillion due for veterans’ care in the future. That’s an average of $23.7 billion monthly for the past 228 months.

Every indication says that this spending will continue.

Following the recent drone strike by the US military that killed Iran’s most powerful general, the big US defense companies Lockheed Martin and Raytheon scored huge military contracts worth $1.93 billion and $758 million respectively.

As reported in the CPNN article, “Traditionally, defense stocks tend to outperform the market during periods of budget growth,”  “shares of defense companies outperform the broader market in the six months after a crisis event in the Middle East.”

One can easily see that this is driven by a huge military-industrial-complex, which is perhaps better described as a “military-industrial-congressional complex.”

There is no indication of a political solution in the United States. Senators and representatives in the US tend to receive big campaign contributions from the companies and individuals that profit from military contracts, and this is necessary because their election campaigns are very costly. The vote for the military budget was 377-48 with 188 Democrats joining with 189 Republicans.

And not a single candidate for President in this year’s election campaign has proposed an alternative budget. It seems that the military budget is politically “untouchable.”

Where does this lead? Rather than trying to analyze the historical significance of these events here, I refer the reader to my blog for this month: “Why the bloated military budget threatens to bring down the American empire.”

The world went to Madrid last month in the hope that the countries of the world would finally take serious action to stop global warming.

An example came to us from Lok Raj Joshi in Nepal.

He writes that “a government team from Nepal led by the Minister for Forests and Environment, Shakti Bahadur Basnet, is taking part in COP-25. . . . Nepal is going to propose formulating a plan for coping with the adverse conditions resulting from global warming. Nepal is also lobbying for the Green Climate Fund. Highly affected countries like Nepal are entitled to receive it as compensation from the responsible countries that are releasing large quantity of carbon into the atmosphere.”

Lok explains that “climate change is an urgent matter for Nepalese people. First, its northern region is comprised of the snow-covered Himalaya mountains . . . The region of the Terai which supplies food to the rest of the country depends on water from the north. This relationship makes the adverse effects of global warming even more complex, more intense and more widespread creating a vicious cycle of disasters in Nepal. Second, agriculture and tourism based on natural beauties including the Himalayas, rivers, glaciers, lakes, jungles and wild animals are the major sources of income for Nepal. Hydroelectricity is the most potential area that is expected to contribute to realization of the Nepalese dream of prosperity. Unfortunately, these all have been the first targets of global warming.”

Environmental activists came to Madrid from around the world to urge action, especially young people (See CPNN, A Global Youth Movement ? ) The 500,000 people who marched in Madrid were addressed by Greta Thunberg who told them “We have been striking for over a year, and basically nothing has happened . . . The climate crisis is still being ignored by those in power, and we cannot go on like this.”

Many of those coming to Madrid were representatives of indigenous peoples who are especially threatened by climate change. Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, put it this way:  “We’re here to stand in support of the people of Chile. We’re here to support the people of Colombia and Ecuador and Brazil who are fighting climate capitalism. We have to stand together with the people of the streets and of the forests and the land and the oceans, fighting neoliberalism, fighting imperialism. We’re fighting against the United States and its white supremacy, militarization. We have to look at these things and stand together in solidarity with the people.” CPNN readers might recall Tom Goldtooth from the Peru Climate Summit of 2014.

But those who came to Madrid, and the rest of the world, were to be disappointed by the results of the COP25 conference, as they were after previous COP conferences. In 2009, the rich countries pledged to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 for the United Nations Green Climate Fund. But only $3.5 billion has been committed  out of $10.3 billion pledged. Now not only is Trump attempting to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement, but last year, he straight-up canceled $2 billion in promised climate aid to poor countries.

At the end of this year’s conference, civil society groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, Oil Change International, and Friends of the Earth said, the deal that had been hammered out by the parties included an agenda brought by big polluters “straight to the halls of the U.N.” with the help of countries “historically most responsible for the climate crisis.” The deal as it stands would “condemn those on the frontlines of the climate crisis, while hiding the crimes of polluters . . . And it would lead to increased inequality with no increase in ambition, no real emissions reductions, and no pathway to 1.5 [degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.]”

“I’ve been attending these climate negotiations since they first started in 1991,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the  BBC. “But never have I seen the almost total disconnect we’ve seen here at COP25 in Madrid between what the science requires and the people of the world demand, and what the climate negotiations are delivering in terms of meaningful action.”

The issue of military pollution does not even make it onto the agenda of the COP. According to the study cited by the International Peace Bureau, “The US military is not only the most funded army in the world, it is also “one of the largest polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more climate-changing gases than most medium-sized countries”. The Department of Defence’s daily consumption alone is greater than the total national consumption of countries like Sweden, Switzerland or Chile.”

However, the relation of militarism and pollution is increasingly on the agenda of the global movements for peace and the environment. As we wrote in the November bulletin: The Pope’s propsal “that the money spent for these works of death should be devoted to human development and the struggle for the climate corresponds to the slogan adopted by the 160 or so organizations of the Collective “En marche pour la paix” which called for September 21 (International Day of Peace) to march for peace, climate, social justice and nuclear disarmament.”

Pope Francis is committing the Catholic Church to nuclear disarmament, sustainable development and the rights of indigenous peoples, key components of the culture of peace.

Speaking in Hiroshima on November 23, he said that “The use of atomic energy for the purpose of war is today more than ever a crime not only against the dignity of human beings, but against any possible future for our common home.”

And at the Vatican from October 6 to 27, the Pope hosted an unprecedented meeting of the Roman Catholic Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region that denounced attacks on the environment and the life of indigenous people of the Amazon region and called for radical changes in planetary lifestyles, including:
– to stop excessive consumption;
– reduce dependence on fossil fuels, plastics and consumption of meat and fish;
– and to seek sustainable alternatives in agriculture, energy, and transportation.

According to the spokesmen of Mouvement de la Paix, the Pope’s declaration in Hiroshima is another historic step in the fight for the total elimination of nuclear weapons. His proposal that the money spent for these works of death should be devoted to human development and the struggle for the climate corresponds to the slogan adopted by the 160 or so organizations of the Collective On the Move for Peace, which called for September 21 (International Day of Peace) to march “for peace, climate, social justice and nuclear disarmament”.

In the United States the Pope’s remarks were welcomed by activists who are opposing nuclear weapons, including progressive journalist Amy Goodman, whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and the Plowshares movement, the group of seven Catholic peace activists who are awaiting sentencing for breaking into the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base. Ellsberg reminds us that the Pope is a” powerful voice in the world” and that “he has obviously undergone a considerable education on this, as have the people in Plowshares movement. And if he can pass that requirement on and its urgency to the bishops throughout the world, it will I am sure create conditions in which our own representatives will call on our executive branch at last to . . . negotiate seriously toward a verifiable mutual elimination of nuclear weapons.”

And according to the Climate Change News, the decisions of the Amazon Synod set out a collision course with Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro for the future of the Amazon and the “potential to reach a great audience” given the church’s presence across the region. Whereas Bolsonaro was elected on a campaign pledge to open-up the Amazon for mining and developments, the bishops agreed the need for an alternative development plan for the Amazon, focused on indigenous rights and environmental protection.

Writing in America, the Jesuit Review, Luke Hansen provides “five key takeaways from the synod“:

1. It placed the indigenous communities at the center of the synod process over foreign economic interests. In the two-year preparatory process over 80,000 people participated.

2. It called for “conversion”, challenging Europeans and North Americans to examine and change their lifestyles and engage in political action in solidarity with Amazonian communities.

3. It sought to practice what it preached regarding “integral ecology” and care for our common home.

4. All 120 paragraphs of the synod’s final document (currently available in Spanish only) were approved with the necessary two-thirds majority vote, including proposals related to married priests and women deacons.

5. Since his election as pope in March 2013, Pope Francis has transformed the Synod of Bishops into a privileged place of discernment and conversion.

A similar analysis is made by the Jesuit Michael Shuck from Georgetown University, who adds that a sense of urgency pervaded the testimonies of Indigenous men and women throughout the synod. At the final press briefing, Cardinal Czerny remarked that the ecological and human crisis is so deep that without this sense of urgency “we’re not going to make it.” This bold assertion was matched by the Final Document’s declaration that “integral ecology is not one more path that the Church can choose for the future in this territory, it is the only possible path.”

While these declarations are welcomed by nuclear activists, climate activists and Jesuits, we may see them in an even broader context as a major step in the transition from a culture of war to a culture of peace.

This year, the Nobel Prize for Peace was awarded to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali. Readers of CPNN may be already familiar with his contribution to ending the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, a conflict that had been going on for decades despite a peace deal that was signed some 18 years ago. In announcing the award the Norwegian Nobel Committee stated that they hope that the Prize “will strengthen Prime Minister Abiy in his important work for peace and reconciliation.”

October was not only the month for the Nobel Prize for Peace, but also for many other peace and culture of peace prizes.

Desmond Tutu Announced the Winners of the International Children’s Peace Prize for 2019: Greta Thunberg from Sweden and Divina Maloum from Cameroun: “I am in awe of you. Your powerful message is amplified by your youthful energy and unshakable belief that children can, no must, improve their own futures. You are true change-makers who have demonstrated most powerfully that children can move the world.”

This year’s Seán MacBride Peace Prize, given by the International Peace Bureau, was awarded to Bruce Kent, who was one of the founders and main organizers of the European Nuclear Disarmament Campaign in the 1980s and who has continued to provide leadersip for disarmament even now in his 90th year.

The Peace Prize of the US Peace Memorial Foundation was awarded this year to Ajamu Baraka. In addition to being the national organizer and spokesperson for Black Alliance for Peace, Baraka is also an administrative committee member for the United National Antiwar Coalition and an executive board member of the U.S. Peace Council. He was the Green Party’s nominee for Vice President of the United States in 2016.

The Alfred Fried Photography Awards for world-best pictures on the theme of peace went this year, among others, to photographers of climate protests in Europe, reconciliation in South Africa and animal sanctuaries in Asia.

The 2019 Goi Peace Award was presented this year to Nipun Mehta and ServiceSpace, an incubator of projects that works at the intersection of volunteerism, technology and gift-economy. What started as an experiment with four friends in the Silicon Valley has now grown to a global ecosystem of over 600,000 members from 171 countries that has delivered millions of dollars in service for free.

The 2019 Tomorrow’s Peacebuilders Awards went to Youth for Homeland in Yemen, Open Art Space in Syria (women-led peacebuilding) and the Amani Institute in DR Congo (music and the performing arts for community reintegration).

In Australia, the Sydney Peace Prize honored leaders of the Me Too Movement, and the Jerusalem (Al Quds) Peace Prize honored Antony Loewenstein, journalist, author, and film-maker, co-founder of the Independent Australian Jewish Voices and supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

Moroccan researcher Karima El Azhary was awarded the International Sustainable Development Award for her work developing new sustainable construction and insulation materials, based on alimentary and agricultural waste. The aim of her work is improving thermal insulation and energy efficiency of buildings, mainly in underprivileged areas. Sustainable development is one of the key action areas of the culture of peace.

In the Philippines, the Teach Peace Build Peace Movement was recognized by the 2019 TOWNS awards. Its mission is to Make Every Filipino Child and Youth a Peace Hero.

Speaking of peace heroes, peace prizes can have an important positive effect, especially on young people. For example, Greta Thunberg, winner of this year’s International Children’s Peace Prize, was inspired by the 2018 winners of that prize the March for Our Lives in the United States.