who in the modern world has not heard that great old cliché, "to use my powers for good instead of evil"? well, i think it might well be time to confront our fears and do just that. war is evil. anyone who cares to dispute this should duck out now and read a little history. the world and the resources we depend upon are being devoured by the, loosely in many cases, tethered beast we keep out of our fear of one another. we feed this creature our best and brightest people, a huge chunk of our rapidly diminishing resources and live in fear of it getting loose. how much better off would we all be if this were a thing of the past? i realise there is a lot of fear out there to be countered, but we must realise that most of it is manufactured and/or manipulated by those with much to gain by it. do you not think it likely that the terrorist threat would be less of a threat if either side felt less threatened? all conflict falls into a few categories that we should all be familiar with by the time we leave school. it reflects more than a little badly upon us all that we still have not learned how to deal with these as the two-sided problems that we try to explain to children. people even fear children. why not? fear sells. it sells newspapers, talkback radio, fences, security systems, and best of all, it sells control. who's read the patriot act? free people around the world are being frightened into selling their freedom to anyone who will “protect” them. and protect them from what? in most cases, the consequences of that which their predecessors sold your parents for the same thing. welcome to the wonderful world of compounding interest. as for the "good"? good can only really begin with the removal of evil. and i don't mean some petty dictator. all around the world people are facing some enormous challenges. far to enormous to entrust to petty, wrangling nationstates. if the leader of one nation really desires the demise of another then perhaps they should simply fight it out alone. like the rest of us. televise it. I'm sure it would rate well. there are many types of fight, but if it's not personal, then you have no business in fighting it. if the people of one nation are afraid of the people of another doing the same work for less reward than themselves then perhaps they should ask themselves why it is that they are more deserving, or better yet, how their conditions may be jointly improved. I do not see myself as some kind of peacenik. I write this because I see a ridiculous misallocation of time, energy and resources, which are desperately needed elsewhere, and not to put too fine a point on it – it pisses me off. the military is a blunt, stone age instrument incapable of dealing with the problems of the modern world. I am talking about total de-militarisation. better yet, remove the nation-state. how brave are you?