THE AMBASSADORS
Summer Issue
EDITORIAL
Summer Issue
EDITORIAL
Volume 2,
Issue 3
July 1999
The Self-destructive Species
So what’s the millennial craze all about. Technicians’ prophesizing a electronic doomsday that could undo much of what we’ve accomplished in the last hundred years. Historians threaten of the possible loss of all computerized records of history. Theologians and religious leaders extract the revelations of mass destruction and the termination of life, evidences of an approaching apocalypse.
In reality, the change in millennia is a mere passage in time. The difference between one moment and the next. We often forget that the time measurement is an artificial construct crafted by humanity to chronicle its work and schedule its events. When the clock strikes midnight on December 31st in Sydney, Australia, cities in North America will still be setting up their fireworks extravaganza. So what does this illusionary phenomenon we call Y2K mean. In tangible terms, nothing.
If it were to mean anything at all, it is a rite of passage, much like an initiation into another frame of cognition. Like a young adult celebrating his/her twenty-first birthday as a transition into the livelihood of the grown-up, it is but a change in the hours and minutes which constitute time. Nonetheless, this celebration holds a very particular value to the young adult; a value of change, of responsibility, independence, of hope and aspiration.
In the very same way, our precious earth is going through a similar period which will be profound in determining how it will perform throughout its adult years. For this reason, a vision of retrospect is crucial in constructing a more fruitful future.
Only months before the crackers sound, the preparation for this initiation is far from complete. As wars erupt in every continent, we are lead to question whether anything has been learnt from the many years past. Conflicts over territory and resource, membership and ethnicity, religion and ideology threaten to tip us over the last hurdle and scar the clean white sheet of the time to come.
Many historians and politicians have explained that the problems our world is suffering are historically innate. The same way feudalist societies were crippled by the improper distribution of wealth, today’s world is engrossed in inequalities. A situation which triggered an international campaign to breach the ever-growing gap between the elite world and the impoverished one, the north and the south.
Fifty two Africo-Asian and Latin American countries are with total debt burden amounts to around $371 billion!!! This challenged Dr. Kamran Abbasi, assistant editor of the British Medical Journal, to write in the editorial of the July issue (BMJ 1999, 318: 1568-1569) about "Third World" debt relief. I quote from his article entitled, "Free the Slaves: Debt relief for the world's poorest is feasible but may not happen." the following:
[For the world's poorest countries debt burden is "the new slavery." Jubilee 2000, a coalition of over 90 organizations including Oxfam, Christian Aid, and the British Medical Association, is demanding that those financial clains are broken as a celebration of the new millenium. By clamouring for the cancellation of the "unpayable" debt of the world's poorest countries, Jubilee 2000 has focussed the spotlight firmly on the creditors, the world's richest countries, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The campaign has gathered an irresitible momentum, with support from a mixed bag of international celebrities. Rock stars Bono and Annie Lennox, former boxer Mohamed Ali, writer Harold Pinter, actor Ewan McGregor, Noble prize winners Adolfo Perez Esquinel and Amaryta Sen and the Pope are among the many public figures who have voiced support.
Earlier this year Jubilee 2000's campain cajoled a positive response from the government of Britain, Canada, Germany and the United States, as well as encouraging noises from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The G-8 countries has to take an urgent decision.]
The Ambassadors supports the BMJ and Jubilee 2000 on their views and hopes of removing international debt, what often seems to represent a new form of "slavery". This adds to our strong belief in the importance of global peace and of creating a new world order without aggression, hatred, hostility, poverty and violence.
Adel Iskandar
Indiana, USA,
10 July 1999
