by Nona Blyth Cloud

“Your breath first kindled the dead coal of wars
and brought in matter that should feed this fire;
and now ’tis far too huge to be blown out with
that same weak wind which enkindled it.”

William Shakespeare – King John, Act V, scene 2

Governments of Nations are slow and ponderous, they do not move with speed in their day-to-day work.

Only one thing seems to rouse them to fever-pitch action: War.

Whenever war is declared, suddenly leaders become laser-focused and decisive; cabinets, parliaments, and congresses put aside their political squabbles and vote to spend unlimited amounts of their nation’s treasure, and to conscript whatever materials and people will be needed to fight – and above all, to win that war.

Miracles are performed by the giants of industry in retooling from their peacetime production to produce the weapons of war, and to develop new and more terrible weapons before the enemy can – sacrifices are made of luxuries and even necessities by those who will remain at home, all to support the war effort – while citizens-turned soldiers or sailors, hastily trained, are sped off to do battle for their homes, their freedom, and their country. Humankind at its very best – and very worst – united on each side against a common foe.

Well, People of Planet Earth, we are in WORLD WAR THREE, and few of our leaders seem to realize it.

It is a war unlike any other war that humans have ever fought, against an enemy that is not “out there” but within the borders of every nation on Earth. As Walt Kelly said in 1970 in his comic strip POGO: “We have met the enemy and He is US.”

This is truly Global War, and we are all losing, badly.

How is it that, faced with mass extinction which will include most if not all of Humankind, the leaders of the world continue to deliberate as if we were not at war, ignoring the death and destruction escalating all around them, because we have made ourselves the Enemy of Planet Earth.

The time for delays and half-measures is long past. The trumpets have sounded, and the engines of war are grinding up all in their path.

The only way to win this war is to unite all the people of this planet in retooling, and spending all our ill-gotten gains on restoring our only home, Planet Earth, which we have spent so much effort hacking at and polluting. We must collectively negotiate a true and permanent peace, and become, at last and wholeheartedly, her allies and supporters.

Victory or Death!