sunday afternoon, may 20th, 2007, Amsterdam

It is a perfect day. what does that mean!?

i am sitting near my balcony and the sun is shining and the birds are
singing a symphony, the roses i planted last summer are in bloom and my
daughter has just left to 'go shoping' with her friend. children are
playing in the garden downstairs

12 weeks ago i was shot and wounded in the field. I am almost fully
recovered, if i pass the physical in 6 weeks i will be back in Chad.

today my daughter asked me, "what would you wish for", ?
i said, "no more weapons, no more guns"

and so i began to break it down....but instead of getting simpler,
hahahhahaa, it has taken on HUGE proportions!


sigh


weapons.

what are our weapons.........?


for me i began with guns, it was a line that would not be crossed, no
guns , not water pistols, not laser guns, no war toys period.

i am a war child, i have seen what guns are, and am faced with the
reality of them in my personal life, i am not speaking of stories
told....it's my experience.

now i am involved with them in my professional life as well, and tho i
refuse to carry, i am armed with body guards and my team,

i have weighed the advantages and disadvantages and i still am
overwhelmingly certain that if by some magic there were no more guns of
any kind at all anywhere on the planet and all concept and knowledge of
them was vanished....

we would have a better world


we would still find a way to kill each other i guess


what weapons would you use if there were no more guns?

My mind...knowledge.

My heart...love.

My words...truth.

My integrity...as my shield.


They are the only weapons I would choose.

I am aware of the parts of this body, that are capable of being weapons,
to defend, or attack...but I choose not to use them.

And good morning...

in an ideal world lol.... i guess i am painting one as well ...DOH

The pen is mightier than the sword, but diplomacy only works when
everyone believes in it.

I dont own a gun bl8ant...and being an ex marine that is an oddity I
think...
although it is a struggle internally I have thought recently about
getting a pistol
or rifle..and the funny thing about this change in me lies in the fact
that it is a fear response to
my own government rather than some perceived bad guy on the evening
news..
that is a sad fact of life in america...

weapon?...large knife or crossbow...would probably do the trick

i have a sickle

what would we come up with...
would we have evolved a society with more diplomacy?

what would we do if just poof!!! all the guns were gone and we were
forced to figure it out

Hmmm...fists, knives, sticks, rocks.

Sounds kind of familiar.


Me? I will go back to my knitting.

I have a watch cat, does that count as a weapon????

alex-war is politics by lethal means. If all the weapons suddenly
disappeared we'd find a way to make them again...

That is so true, nus, before we had guns we had weapons,
and we will have them when all gun disappear.

yup...

You have me thinking, Alex.

Without that sense of 'power', no guns, no cannons, missiles, bombs,
etc...that 'power' removed..

Perhaps the fear would be seen more clearly..even perhaps, acknowledged.

And once fear is acknowledged, there becomes a foothold, to
understanding, and maybe even dispelling the fears.

Which would reduce the defensiveness, and the 'power' base.


hmmm..I wasn't planning on sleeping for the next week or two,
anyways...

or if we could recognize the abundance and redistribute our resources so
that poverty would be the first priority and begin with feeding the
world.

we have it....we do and look at what gets spent on a friday night in
movie theatres across any country...we have it


i am in one of my episodes with futility... but i will never be able to
stop

but ok ...so we would make new ones...guns but that would take time....

maybe we would jump on the chance to rethink why and how we defend
ourselves.


would everyone go out and study self defense? would it be eastern based?
or military?

would we look at each other differently with more reserve

for many their gun is their power, their right, to strip them of this
could be creating a can of worms...

would we use psycology as our weapon and manipulate our whole
environment differently and choose to settle disputes strictly through
whatever justice system was in place

i know we will always be violent but how else could we do this without
guns...

MONEY SOLVES EVERY THING IF YA HAVE HEAPS OF MONEY YOU CAN BUY YOUR WAY
OUT OF ANY CONFRONTATION SO LONG AS IT GETS TO THE PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT IN
NEED OF ANY THING.IF WE MAKE SURE THE GREEDY ARE WELL FED NO PROBS.THE
WORLD BANK IS A WONDERFULL EXAMPLE AS TO HOW THIS WORKS

Nuslaor wrote:
"The pen is mightier than the sword, but diplomacy only works when
everyone believes in it."

The only people who need to believe in diplomacy are those who are in a
position to implement it.

It doesn’t really matter much what everyone else believes.

If everyone believes in diplomacy except for the leaders who’s job it is
to implement it then that isn’t going to do much good.

On the other hand, if the world leaders understand how to affectively
use diplomacy then it doesn’t really matter what the rest of the people
believe, they’ll benefit from it anyway.

In short, the masses are held hostage by the actions of a few world
leaders.

last night i watched a pack of young wolves defend their kill against a
young bear.... the bear was clearly overpowered but the wolves didn't
realize their power as a collective force and in the end the bear took
their kill....

the narrator said that if this was how they handled the situation as a
pack they would perish and the stronger wolves would survive, the ones
that would organize

Interesting bit of new.

It's no secret that chimpanzees have a knack for using stones to crack
nuts. Still, it came as a shock to Iowa State University anthropologist
Jill Preutz when she recently observed chimpanzees in Senegal make and
use wooden spears to hunt smaller primates.

Are we rubbing off on them?

Or is this an indication of evolution?

OMG! You were shot, Alex? I'll go back into that country and kick
whoever pulled the trigger in the head! Or let him/her meet a certain
evil white ball of fluff known as Snowball and see how many ribbons can
come out of an arm!

Now I'm too emo to answer the question, damnit