By
As we painfully overcame preventable war after war that took unbearable lives, properties and our dignity, one would have thought that our governments and media institutions have learned valuable lessons of what not to do. Yet our governments are still grossly and insanely squandering our national resources in endless wars and self-destruct, while our media houses programing are filled with violence, indecency and outright garbage. All hate and violent misfits receive media promotions to sustain and grow their divisive deadly enterprises.
Over fifty seven (57) percent of our federal discretionary budget of over a trillion dollars goes to Pentagon with less than a billion dollars allocated for peace.
Against the back drop of this insanity, Peace December Movement is launching a new project called “Peace Priority”. Peace December will work with elected officials, media and philanthropists to allocate a percentage of their budgets and airtime for communal peaceful coexistence. We did not have “ISIS” a few years ago, now we do. We did not have “Black Lives Matter”, now we do. And if we keep doing the same stupid things, we are too afraid to imagine what comes next. Please work with us to make our environments places to comfortably live, safely work and successfully grow businesses. We can do it!
This stupidity is international. Look at the amount allocated for international peacekeeping from UN.
How much does peacekeeping cost?
The approved budget for UN Peacekeeping operations for the fiscal year 1 July 2015-30 June 2016 is about $8.27 billion [A/C.5/69/24 ].
By way of comparison, this is less than half of one per cent of world military expenditures (estimated at $1,747 billion in 2013).
The top 10 providers of assessed contributions to United Nations Peacekeeping operations in 2013-2015 [A/67/224/Add.1] are:
- United States (28.38%)
- Japan (10.83%)
- France (7.22%)
- Germany (7.14%)
- United Kingdom (6.68%)
- China (6.64%)
- Italy (4.45%)
- Russian Federation (3.15%)
- Canada (2.98%)
- Spain (2.97%)
Many countries have also voluntarily made additional resources available to support UN Peacekeeping efforts on a non-reimbursable basis in the form of transportation, supplies, personnel and financial contributions above and beyond their assessed share of peacekeeping costs.
Although the payment of peacekeeping assessments is mandatory, as of 30 June 2015, Member States owed approximately $4.80 billion in current and back peacekeeping dues.