Global Divide

WWIII
Islamic Crusades
Anti-Americanisation
Jeruselam vs. Babylon

The world has neeeeeever been at peace. Nto since the beginning of time. Not since the second "species" was berthed and came in competition with the first over what the first presumed to be its own resources.
And 21st century is no exception in this endless fight over resources, except that we now have developed into humans and supposedly civilized, enlightened humans over the last 5 thousand years and now we have values that we want to protect and push, as well. Plus, now there are almost 6 billion of us on this planet. So, it should be no surprise that we have as many hostilities and scattered conflicts that are occurring today. The big obvious ones in Iraq, Sudan, Palestine, Lebanon, Somalia, Eastern Congo, former Yugoslavia, Cyprus, recent genocide in Rwanda, and on and on. Then there are the thousands of major social strifes that happen around the world, and they don't just necessarily appear in the form of a hand waving skyward for a pittance, no sir, we've got people swinging Machetes in South Africa, Nigeria, Liberia, Guyana, Zimbabwe and the great Congo with diamonds, oil, and other minerals at stake. There are massive social tears between rich and poor in so many South American countries that its hard to find an exception where the earnings from the sale countries' resources or even the harvests are made equally available to a majority of the countries' citizens. Don't hold me to these numbers cause I'm not an almanac, but I do talk to a lot of folk and read a good bit, half of Brasil is in prison or a favella, 47% of the of other half is on limits trying to stay out, and 3% sit like gluttonous pigs on 90% of the country's wealth. And that country is may be the wealthiest country in the world as far as diversity and quantity of resources!

The major catalyst for the problems of the day, and for those of days past for that matter, is the struggle to gain resources. We've gone through our stone ages, we've gone through the wonderful days of philosophy in Greece, Egypt, and China and seemingly gained some ethical direction, we've been through the dark ages, we've picked up spirituality along the way, we've become enlightened and condemned torture and slavery, we've clumped into Nation-State as we've seen fit, we've colonized blatantly, industrialized, and then made attempts to recognize the faults of our colonial exploitations, we've "granted" independence (ha!) to those whom we exploited, and now we all sit on our little plots of land looking around noticing that there are a lot more of us than we had imagined and realizing that we really are going to need to fight to get a peace of this planet's resources. All the while our appetites and collective level of comfort have risen dramatically.
And then we wonder why there are so many conflicts going on?

We need some kind of guidance to teach true values about how to comport yourself in this situation of planetary over-population. Somebody needs to explain that it's not good to want and to want more and more and more because these desires will naturally conflict with someone else's most basic needs for a resource. Guidance we need. And these modern religions are not the solution. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam's basic principles may esteem to preach kindness and support of the weak, but in reality, the preachers who diffuse the word of God are asking their followers to help them grow in numbers in the pretext of spirituality, but in truth, so as to overwhelm their neighboring religious competition.
This struggle might be as apparent in the US, Sweden, Canada, or wherever there is acceptance of religious freedom AND amassed resources available to any one these religions’s followers. But in the places where they lack food or water, there is a battle over these resources and, therefore it is logical that they seek to convert as many humans as possible.
I don’t' know, I guess Buddhism is a good choice. It asks for peace and harmony with the Earth's being, be they flowers, rocks, or other humans. It is certainly true that in the places where Buddhism’s popularity is greatest, that there many resources to live from. So this may be the reason for the lack of great conflicts between this philosophy and other religions. But I think that there is something great about there ability to perform restraint, to be tolerant, and to practice minimalism.
Here is an interesting article about Tony Blair. He had huge balls to come out and say what he did, I'm not saying that I agree with him about his position (cause I sure as shit don't), but at least he has given lip service to idea that the world is in a conflict over "values" and that these values have their roots in religion. The next is to admit that this has been the case for thousands of years to go to war over another area's resources.