The Millennium Summit: World Leaders, Learn From New York City What World Peace is Really All About? [Archives:2000/37/Focus]

World Leaders, Learn From New York City What World Peace is Really All About?

COMMON SENSE
By: Hassan Al-Haifi
The New World Order began a decade ago. However, this beginning produced little indication that, indeed the world was embarking on a new epoch of peace, tranquility and overall human prosperity. In fact, it became clear that we are living in more uncertain times than was ever before, as trends are hard to forecast. World events have yet to fall into a clearly defined pattern of circumstances that could offer hope to the vast majority of the population of the Earth. As it stands now, most of the populations of the Earth remain out of tune with the frequency of human progress, which in many areas they could find enhancement of their living conditions. This goes back mainly to the inequitable opportunities that are availed to most of the populations of the world, for access to the resources of their lands, or, for that matter, even to the right to stay put in their own lands! Most of the people of the Earth are still victims of the clumsiness and selfish arithmetic of many of those leaders, who will be crammed into the plush corridors of the Waldorf Astoria and Plaza Hotels or the other distinctive transient accommodation facilities, which New York City has so many of to offer. It is not expected that this, for all intents and purposes ceremonial conference should ever come out with any meaningful resolutions that will signal a new beginning either for the United Nations itself, which is hosting the summit, or for that matter, for the majority of the discontent and undernourished parents of the world that can motivate them to increase the optimism among the sad eyes of their children, who continuously keep asking these sullen parents, why did you bring us to this world? What is there in this world that can offer hope to such lugubrious faces, many of which can be found in the jungles of South America, as their land is being exploited by the criminal elements of the world, who are thriving on the melancholy of the rich as they trade the deadly poisons that make them get away from the spoiled world they live in. Or those millions of children, whose eyes are about to pop out from the hunger that eats up their bodies, yet they live in the richest continent in terms of the potential agricultural bounty that it can produce Africa. What hope can be brought to the children of Afghanistan, who cannot get a good nights sleep because the guns never stop pounding thanks to a fanatical holy war financed by the ungodly trade of opium and human skeletal parts of the millions that have been killed by the bullets fired by their own fellow countrymen. What hope can be brought to people who wish to enjoy their hard earned money by distributing their wealth to other countries through their travels and vacations, only to find that there are other religious fanatics who, erroneously thought that religion gives them the right to embezzle money and put peoples lives in danger to satisfy their ungodly desire for wealth and plunder?
For sure the summit will not come out of any meaningful decisions that will give hope to millions of undernourished mothers of the world in almost all the continents who are unable to breast feed their children and in many cases have to rely on handouts of the leftovers of the rich countries that feel that the work of some of their philanthropic organizations is sufficient to relieve the conscience of the over-affluent billionaires of the world, who donate peanuts to these organizations.
If there is any significant afterthought to arise from the World Millennium Summit at the United Nations, it is that New York City, that miniature model of the world, which house people from almost all the countries that will be represented in that conference, should enlighten the world leaders that, if all these different kinds of people living in such a small territory seem to have no trouble living as a community and smiling all along, as they trod the streets of the city from their homes to their places of work and back, most of them minding their own business and having no gripes against anyone.
Oh sure, there is crime in the streets of New York, but that seems like childs play when compared to the crimes that are inflicted on the vast majority of the populations of the Third World countries by their leaders and the very rich countries that are happily eating their resources and giving them bread crumbs in return. Perhaps the World leaders should really take long walks on Broadway and into Central Park to see just how many smiling faces they will come across, especially the leaders of the poor countries of the world, who probably have never seen any smiling faces in their own countries. Yes, New York, is that strange cosmopolitan wonderland, where multibillionaires walk alongside people who are content on making $50 dollars a day selling frankfurters, with or without sauerkraut, and where nobody asks who you are, or why you are reading such a book.
The Millennium Summit seems to be a summit of world leaders who really lack the pizzazz that world leaders once had and who captured the spotlight and had reporters from the major media channels chase them everywhere with their microphones and mini-recorders. Gone are the likes of John Kennedy, Mao-tse Tong, Ho Chi Minh, Jawaharal Nehru, King Hussein, Joseph Tito, King Feisal. There were others, of course, who held their weight and moved whole populations, for bad or worse, but mostly they were for worse. We leave their fate with the Al-Mighty to pass judgements on them for having caused so many headaches for mankind. What we have now are leaders of big, and small very rich countries and leaders of big and small very poor countries, all of whom fail to kindle the hope that mankind really needs to be assured that it is alright to bring children into this world. Where are they?
It is hard to say how much the world has changed from the world of imperialism that supposedly has collapsed, as World War II brought the United States as the decisive pivotal powerbroker of the world, with its massive economic machine and heavily consuming population. Yet, to the astonishment of many of the people who felt that the plight of the third world is going to be over with the end of colonialism, the Third World is now probably in the Fourth World, with most of their populations living below the poverty line and, literally, sitting as frozen economies that cannot produce enough to keep them alive, let alone generate economic growth and prosperity. While at the same time, those evil imperialists are having the time of their lives living in better splendor than they could have ever dreamed of as imperialists. What went wrong? Thanks to the domestic substitute for the foreign imperialists, the native populations of the former colonies have now been driven to the loss of human dignity and not just the loss of political freedom. Imagine that most countries of the world have lost the value of interpersonal relationships that lead to respect for one another, because in most Third World countries, poverty driven by political oppression has wiped out any sense of human values and trust in the goodness of man. There are now only very rich and very poor and the former only constitute such a miniscule share of the population. In fact, the very rich in most of the developing countries of the world are so afraid of leaving their wealth at home that they would rather hide it with their very rich friends in the very rich countries that already do not know what to do with all the money they have. It is indeed a paradoxical world that is not to be seen in New York City, where there is so much togetherness and sharing and a lot of people smiling wherever you go.
Even Vladimir Putin was found smiling in New York, which is indeed, another of the very few remarkable achievements of the Millennium Summit that is worthy of recording. He will not find any sunken submarines in the East River or the Hudson River. In fact, he will be surprised to find that there are quite a of mosques in New York City, which probably outnumber the number of remaining mosques in Grozny, since he has destroyed all the others. No, people in New York respect each other, no matter what ethnic or religious affiliation they may be. That is why you will find Arabs dining with Jews, Protestants acting with Catholics, Moslems playing ball with Buddhists, and white men holding hands with black women and vice versa. Is not that what the world leaders should really vie for in the Millennium Summit?. That is what will solve the worlds problems from AIDs to the War on Drugs. New York, show the world leaders what world peace is all about and how easy it is to come by!

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