The peace alternative

Building a culture of trust and hope

The Pentagon gets more than 60 percent of the Federal Discretionary budget. The U.S. spends more on its military than the total spent by the next seven countries.

Costa Rica spends its budget on public education, healthcare, sports, and other programs. In December 1948, president José Figueres defunded the military. Costa Rica’s healthy eco-tourism economy, organic farms, and universities have flourished. Unlike their Central American neighbors, Costa Rica has a culture of peace. More than 30 countries around the world have chosen a life without a standing army.

Nuclear threats

Last Thursday was the 75^th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing, the first and only times nuclear weapons have been used. The details of the devastation were kept secret until Japan surrendered. No one had seen the horrors of uranium radiation on people and life.

A week after the bombing, Robert Oppenheimer sent a letter to the U.S. Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, on behalf of the Los Alamos Laboratory nuclear scientists on the use of nuclear weapons. “The safety of the U.S. lays in the prevention of future wars, rather than in its ability to inflict damage,” Oppenheimer wrote.

His advice was ignored. Today, thousands of nuclear weapons around the world threaten our survival. Russia and the U.S. have more than 90 percent of these weapons.

Friends and enemies

The White House claims Vladimir Putin had no reason to interfere in the 2016 election and is not a threat in 2020, but that Communist China steals our intellectual property and must be punished. That is the “official” story, but others say American companies jumped at the opportunity to gain access to the Chinese market and took their operations with their eyes wide open.

The U.S. had many friends, but friends expect respect. Germany, France, the UK, Canada, Mexico, and many others have been abused. North Korea and Russia have gained strategic power. China has been punished for selling countless products to Americans who end up paying higher prices to pay for import tariffs.

2020 Elections

Nations with weapons see wars as solutions to national and international problems. November 3 is coming up, and the White House seems to be ready to rumble. Getting re-elected is all that matters to them.

The current administration has been a total failure dealing with the pandemic. Jared Kushner and an inexperienced team tried to buy Chinese COVID-19 test kits. On March 31, a shipment of 1 million tests showed up at the United Arab Emirates Washington embassy with an invoice for $52 million for 3.5 million tests. The kits were contaminated, and Kushner had nothing to say.

Last February, U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) raised the possibility the COVID-19 virus had originated in a high-security biochemical lab in Wuhan, China. “We don’t have evidence that this disease originated there, but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says, and China right now is not giving evidence on that question at all,” Cotton said.

Last Friday, Donald Trump held a press briefing at his New Jersey Golf Club. “My administration has enacted over $3 trillion in historic relief since China allowed the virus to infect the world… our strategy to kill the China virus has focused on protecting those at greatest risk.”

Build a culture of trust

Honesty, empathy, and compassion are essential to understand other people. We do not have to see them as our enemies. Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with their ears, and feeling with their heart.

Make your voice heard

Your vote and participation are essential. We are a nation divided during a pandemic, with a broken economy, under threat of having unemployment and Social Security benefits taken away. Peace and the issues ripping America apart are in the balance: the climate emergency, COVID-19 pandemic, environmental justice, and economic equality.

To cast your vote with an absentee ballot please visit sos.arkansas.gov as soon as possible. Mail service is slow, so please act now.

Dr. Luis Contreras