Saturday, August 8, 2009

Vancouver Peace Prize

I just read that Sydney has a Sydney Peace Prize. This year they named John Pilger as the 2009 recipient.
http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=541 It got me thinking though and I checked out the internet to see if Vancouver had a peace prize. It turns out we have a PEACE SUMMIT http://dalailamacenter.org/conference/vancouver-peace-summit-2009.
The Dalai Lama and 5 other Nobel Peace Prize recipients will be here in September. It's being held at the Chan Center and Orpheum.
Vancouver is an awesome city of Peace . I saw that the last Tommy died this year at age 111. He was in the WWI trenches but in his latter years would always go to the memorials of England and Germany and was known for asking why the waste. Growing up I so admired Prime Minister Pearson for his diplomacy. Bicycling across Europe I loved that the Canadian Flag was respected as a symbol of strength and peace. Canadians are a nation of 'defenders' and even socially we are known for our efforts at not taking offence. I don't quite understand the Canadian military's role right now as a vassal of the American empire but I do know Canadians were once pre eminent 'peaceniks'. Canadians are pragmatists too and given that their American neighbour tried to invade them once and we beat them off in the 1800's we're not likely to make Tibet's errors of relative 'unilateral disarmament'. Still I think we should consider a Peace Prize. It's something I'm putting on my wish list. I know a lot of veterans who support our military who like Harry Patch preferred peace to war and questioned the waste.

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