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Pixels for Peace

I got a lovely email this week from a man who is a Peace Tax Resister. In it, he suggested I spearhead a new website called Peace On. His idea is that our various and sundry War(s) on various and sundry themes—terrorism, drugs, obesity—aren’t working and he wondered about the notion of throwing a little peace on these matters to see if that might work better.

Not so coincidentally, I’d been thinking about ways to use the worldwide web for peace. His idea made me smile.

Then a headline appeared in the Week In Review in this Sunday’s New York Times which made me think seriously about using the web for peace. Here’s how it read:

What to Do About Pixels of Hate

The article was about a self-appointed Internet “cop,” for lack of a better word, who is waging a one-person campaign on militant Islamist websites. What he’s doing to them is knocking them offline. One at a time.

From the article:

“This disappearance mystified American counterterrorism officials. They hadn’t shut them down, they knew, so who had?

“Happily claiming credit for the jihadi blackout is a Christian-Lebanese engineer named Joseph G. Shahda, who is waging a private, and passionate, war on terrorism from his home near Boston.

“These sites are very, very dangerous,” Mr. Shahda said. “And I think we should keep going after them. They are used as recruiting tools for terrorists, arousing emotions, teaching how to hate.”

Oscar Hammerstein II said it more simply in the classical musical masterpiece, South Pacific. “You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear.”

What I want to know is do we have to be taught to love and accept?

Is my email correspondent right? Is it time for a Peace On website? Send me an email to make your pixels stand for peace: seedsdrcorso@comcast.net

In the meantime, Peace On!

posted by Susan Corso on 10/22/2007 11:05 am | COMMENTS (2)
Comments (2)

Dear Susan, what I think we should do is not just knocking those people off the line, but erease the hatetress from their mind and there willing to destroy peace every day in this world, and this go for all the herds of fanatics. Then our task is more serious than net fights, I believe. And yes, we have to be taught some times, but not to do the same thing than evil does, but use a different weapons and tools, If we really want to change things over this planet. My name is Tonatiuh Catal

posted by Mcaguilar on 10/22/2007 2:28 pm

Dear T. C., Thanks for commenting. Interestingly, I think the language we use is a definite part of the peace process. There's a bumpersticker here in the USA, "Wage Peace." It's cute, it paraphrases the better-known wage war and I agree instead with A. J. Muste, "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." We must choose our words consciously. There aren't weapons of peace. Be blest, Susan Corso

posted by Susan Corso on 1/22/2008 8:27 am

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