From the Editor

There has been more big news about war and peace lately than we have been able to cover - especially since it has changed from good to bad news and back again almost every day. After Yeltsin's victory at the polls (which we can hardly celebrate) the Chechnya war boiled up and (at this writing) has a chance of cooling down again. Since Natanyahu's victory at the polls, the prospect of peace in the Middle East seems considerably worse. (See page 23.)The World Court ruling against nuclear weapons is mostly favorable but could be construed as leaving a crack of legitimacy open for countries whose very existence might otherwise be at risk. Israel, Pakistan, and India probably will use this excuse . (SeeDaniel MacSweeney's preliminary analysis on page 15.) The Canberra Commission has just announced its report, which we'll cover next time. All these are short-term gains or losses; we also need a longer vision. As Joanna Santa Barbara points out, we need to be looking far enough ahead, and acting far enough in advance, to prevent wars, not just step in while they are going on. See her piece on page 8. Also, see Shirley Farlinger's talk with a peace hero, Doug Roche.

Probably our biggest story is, for the first time, a book review: Derek Paul's review of Angel's Don't Play This HAARP. We asked him, as a physicist, to assess this scary scientific project, which has been poorly covered in the mainstream press. The United States is passing it off as mere research but its military applications are extremely serious and obvious. Many of our readers (as well as the editors) cannot properly comprehend the technical aspects of the project, so we show these separately as an appendix to the understated, but truly hair-raising, main story on page 18. To learn more from the Internet, use a search engine to look up HAARP. They have their own site, and so do their critics.

And on that topic, we are happy to say that Peace Magazine is getting our own home page on the web, and will put some of our back-issue stories there. We 'll keep you posted when we receive a domain name, which will probably be peacemagazine.org. See you in cyberspace!

Peace Magazine Sep-Oct 1996

Peace Magazine Sep-Oct 1996, page 4. Some rights reserved.

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