"But the question is a trick one, for there is very little violence can do either... Logic says killing does not stop killing; guns don't stop shooting... the instances where armed intervention may have reduced death tolls are few... and such interventions have a particularly disastrous history in Africa. On the record, political and economic pressure work far better, where they can be applied.

"Even in the Congo, however, stopping the flow of arms and calling in the diplomats might well have as much of a chance as armed intervention to bringing a stop to the death toll.

"..to the extent that war is a crime against humanity, those who provide for profit the means to such slaughter share the guilt; if U.S. arms manufacturers hadn't armed every side of every conflict in Africa, tens of thousands of lives would have been saved. Pacifism holds that wars are caused by crises, ruptures in society that can be healed before the shooting starts. The North has caused many of those ruptures in Africa, from the creation of nation-states based on colonial boundaries and continuing through the International Monetary Fund and World Bank "restructuring" that have starved thousands and led to bitter battles for resources..."

Mothersday

"Over the long haul, CodePink is working for a world without war. To join the effort, go to www.code-pink4peace.org" (Jim Hightower and Phillip Frazer. "The Real Mother's Day." The Hightower Lowdown, June 2006: 1).