September: Peace Consciousness Month

While filming his movie Air Force One (1997), Director Wolfgang Petersen said, "Real peace is not just the absence of conflict; it is the presence of justice." Petersen would simply want to tell us that real life has come to imitate art but without peace and justice that art could not exist.

The same thing is true with reality. Peace is something that everybody wants-inner peace, peace between us, peace in the family, peace in the country, peace in the world. Is it really peace that we want, or do we want to control the world-your world, my world, their world-and call it peace? Could there be peace when the forests in Brazil are decimated, when the hardwood forests of Southeast Asia are plundered, when tourism in Africa includes the slaughter of elephants and rhinos for ivory?

Can the world be at peace when the super powers bully the small players and hold the rest of the world hostage? There are wars in the continents. We have all witnessed a communist - inspired revolution in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Military coups and countercoups have become common events. We have seen the rise and fall of leaders through bullets. Bloodbath is escalating and we are all crying to capture peace and cage it in our midst. It seems that peace is hard to tame.

Terrorism has become a fad. Time magazine, Newsweek Magazine and Asia Week can never be sellable without terrorism on its main menu. Incredible poverty, especially in the Third World has become synonymous with death. The poor countries have been buried in debts while their leaders have enjoyed the bribe. What world are we trying to build? We cannot afford to feed ourselves to the dogs.

The leaders of America are even contemplating of the idealistic possibilities of a world at peace under the benign leadership of a forum of all nations. The Catholic Church that claims universality wants Christian Social Order. We have to be careful. We are in a struggling society. In our search for peace, we have to know who are the idealists, the dreamers, the manipulators and the gods of money.

World peace is channeled through the Council of Foreign Relations. Who are on top of this? Discover them by yourself. At least, you will have your own shock. If you have to believe my favorite author, Pat Rolestson, he would give you mercurial temperature. Two years before the United States entered World War II, the Council of Foreign Relations was already planning on how to order the world when the war was over. If CFR ruled the past, it rules us now, and it will determine our future.

If we have to follow that line of thinking, the falling of the sky is predetermined and I am not referring to the latest James Bond movie. Our only consolation to attain world peace is what Alice Bailey believed in (Problems of Humanity-1947). "The Kingdom of God will inaugurate a world which will be one in which it will be realized that - politically speaking - humanity, as a whole, is of far greater importance than any one nation." This may be sacred, profane, secular, occult or what. We do not know, not even the LENA of Negros or the LENA of Vice Pres. Binay.

Let us all work for peace. Negrosanons are small players but let us try to do ordinary things for extraordinary circumstances. We know that world capitalism would replace nationalistic business competition as part of the peace process. No more competition!

Let us light a little candle to conquer darkness. Our peace is not far from us. Peace is always made available if we want it. Start owning a small peace. Swallow your own pride. "The peace of the Lord be with you."