Many people say they want peace in the world.
But what exactly are we working toward?
The word "peace," I've come to realize over the years of putting Imagine Festival together, is neither concrete nor active in many people's perceptions.
This is important because vocabulary shapes our impression of the world in which we live.
People have words for the things they need to talk about -- or are in the habit of talking about. The Inuit, for example, famously describe snow in very precise terms most likely because precise descriptions are critical to their survival.
But beyond language reflecting our world, one linguistic theory holds we may be able to perceive only what we have language for and not be aware of things we cannot name.
The words of war in our culture are pervasive and concrete: battalion, flank, troops, skirmish, battle. We use them often in our everyday business & sports metaphors: warrior spirit, battle for supremacy, the most dangerous weapon in the offense, shotgun formations, blitz, sacks, my ideas were shot down, your criticisms were on target....
These war phases are familiar and heavily color our view of and approach to our world.
The words of peace could develop as much richness, concreteness and color, if we choose to give them such attention.
I suggest that describing peace more precisely is critical to our survival.
If the word "peace" is nebulous, it will be all the more difficult to figure out how to get there.
If we describe a location as "North America," do we turn north or south from here?
So what exactly do we mean by "peace"?
For me, the form is not the place to start in creating anything. I find it more useful to describe the experience. What would that world feel like to live in?
With that in mind, in the next blog, I will list what I consider to be the top characteristics of this world at peace.
Friday, October 14, 2005
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Yes to Department of Peace
A formal Department of Peace is not only aligned with our country’s core mission, but also would be one of the fastest routes to our own well-being.
Sixty one years ago on D-Day, my uncle, of the 13th-18th Tank Regiment QMO Hussars in the British Army, was on the first tank to land on the shore of Sword Beach, Normandy. His arrival met with a rain of gunfire to drench that sand with blood and scatter the parts of his companions' bodies.
My uncle somehow survived. He returned early last June to the commemoration on the pale cream sand of a peaceful Europe – his country’s former bitter enemy, Germany, participating in the ceremonies.
BBC News reporter Alan Little, commenting on those events, reminded me: "What subsequent generations have taken for granted – peace between the European powers – was not true of the world into which these men were born. It is the achievement of their generation."
The peace in Europe we all now do take for granted was barely conceivable then, after centuries of decimating wars. But it exists now.
How? It was created by leaders who believed it possible and who worked to create the bonds of trust, cooperation and respect that allowed it not just to exist, but to flourish.
Likewise, the global economy did not pop, fully formed, out of thin air. It was built by leaders who believed it possible and worked to make it happen.
It is remarkable to me that most European nations, not long ago hurling cannonballs with frequent ferocity, now trust each other enough to share the same currency and cross borders with little more than a wave.
No less a vision is needed now. We must work toward global peace with the same determination, the same belief in its possibility.
It can be the achievement of our generation.
A formal Department of Peace practically as well as symbolically demonstrates that this country is committed to pursue and intends to build that state we would all choose – that of peace between all.
Practically, a Department of Peace would research and facilitate nonviolent solutions to domestic and international conflict.
It would support and coordinate programs that cultivate respect, that honor the capability of people to create remarkable solutions, that instill the skills necessary to work from cooperation instead of confrontation. It would coordinate proven and effective strategies that reduce violence.
In short, the Department of Peace would guide this nation to nurture the social conditions that result in a positive peace.
Symbolically, a Department of Peace is aligned with our nation's core mission. We were founded on the truth of the unalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Peace would open the doors to the greatest potential expansion of all of these rights.
We are at the moment predominantly a reactive nation. We wait for the heart attack before we examine our way of living. As many are now realizing, cultivating the conditions of health is a more effective strategy than hoping you can recover from a heart attack.
In the same manner, we can actively cultivate conditions of peace. They are well known. It is simply that we have yet to fully commit to them.
Creating this Department of Peace would indicate our commitment and our choice to actively pursue a more effective strategy for our long-term security that happens to coincide with our highest ideals, our grandest dream. That, surely, is how any person, and I suggest by extension any nation, feels most fulfilled.
One thing is certain: peace will not arise without the intention to create it.
Setting this intention could be the most majestic legacy this nation could ever leave.
Sixty one years ago on D-Day, my uncle, of the 13th-18th Tank Regiment QMO Hussars in the British Army, was on the first tank to land on the shore of Sword Beach, Normandy. His arrival met with a rain of gunfire to drench that sand with blood and scatter the parts of his companions' bodies.
My uncle somehow survived. He returned early last June to the commemoration on the pale cream sand of a peaceful Europe – his country’s former bitter enemy, Germany, participating in the ceremonies.
BBC News reporter Alan Little, commenting on those events, reminded me: "What subsequent generations have taken for granted – peace between the European powers – was not true of the world into which these men were born. It is the achievement of their generation."
The peace in Europe we all now do take for granted was barely conceivable then, after centuries of decimating wars. But it exists now.
How? It was created by leaders who believed it possible and who worked to create the bonds of trust, cooperation and respect that allowed it not just to exist, but to flourish.
Likewise, the global economy did not pop, fully formed, out of thin air. It was built by leaders who believed it possible and worked to make it happen.
It is remarkable to me that most European nations, not long ago hurling cannonballs with frequent ferocity, now trust each other enough to share the same currency and cross borders with little more than a wave.
No less a vision is needed now. We must work toward global peace with the same determination, the same belief in its possibility.
It can be the achievement of our generation.
A formal Department of Peace practically as well as symbolically demonstrates that this country is committed to pursue and intends to build that state we would all choose – that of peace between all.
Practically, a Department of Peace would research and facilitate nonviolent solutions to domestic and international conflict.
It would support and coordinate programs that cultivate respect, that honor the capability of people to create remarkable solutions, that instill the skills necessary to work from cooperation instead of confrontation. It would coordinate proven and effective strategies that reduce violence.
In short, the Department of Peace would guide this nation to nurture the social conditions that result in a positive peace.
Symbolically, a Department of Peace is aligned with our nation's core mission. We were founded on the truth of the unalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Peace would open the doors to the greatest potential expansion of all of these rights.
We are at the moment predominantly a reactive nation. We wait for the heart attack before we examine our way of living. As many are now realizing, cultivating the conditions of health is a more effective strategy than hoping you can recover from a heart attack.
In the same manner, we can actively cultivate conditions of peace. They are well known. It is simply that we have yet to fully commit to them.
Creating this Department of Peace would indicate our commitment and our choice to actively pursue a more effective strategy for our long-term security that happens to coincide with our highest ideals, our grandest dream. That, surely, is how any person, and I suggest by extension any nation, feels most fulfilled.
One thing is certain: peace will not arise without the intention to create it.
Setting this intention could be the most majestic legacy this nation could ever leave.
Friday, September 09, 2005
Worth of a Human
"We were left behind on the side of the road like yesterday's trash." -- woman in the Houston shelter on Oprah's show Wednesday.
The unfolding truth of the lack of regard for the poor, especially the poor and black, has dramatically revealed itself in New Orleans. Is it right to treat human beings like yesterday's garbage?
The ugliest aspects of our prevailing attitude are coming to light -- we are seeing the consequences of a long standing bias toward wealth, the consequences of long standing racism and self interest and it is sickening most of us. We've found an infestation of cockroaches in our own supposedly pristine cupboard. The cockroaches are the beliefs that money is the only thing that matters, that race is a determinant of the value of a human being.
We knew it was there -- we didn't realize it was that bad. Guess we don't open that cupboard often enough.
Once we see the cockroaches, finally, we get to decide what to do about the infestation. We get to examine what does truly matter and what humans deserve simply because they are human.
History has propelled us toward the conclusion that human beings deserve honor and respect as a consequence of the simple truth that they are human and alive.
If that is the conclusion we draw, then we need to turn to those most disadvantaged and say we are sorry. We have not, by any means, been widely acting on that belief. Not in the day-to-day.
We also need to turn to that part of ourselves that holds the secret belief that we are not worthy of being rescued. What do I possibly have to offer this world? That part of us resides in us still. It occurred to me yesterday that much of religions are based on the very idea of the unworthy human who must be saved or made right. No wonder we feel unworthy at some deep level.
Now this seems at odds with the conclusion that humans deserve respect and honor simply because we are human. We'll have to sort that one out.
In this grand sorting out, let us be kind to one another. Let's loudly demonstrate to those from the Gulf who have been devastated that we believe they do deserve honor and dignity and respect, without condition, because they are human on this earth.
The unfolding truth of the lack of regard for the poor, especially the poor and black, has dramatically revealed itself in New Orleans. Is it right to treat human beings like yesterday's garbage?
The ugliest aspects of our prevailing attitude are coming to light -- we are seeing the consequences of a long standing bias toward wealth, the consequences of long standing racism and self interest and it is sickening most of us. We've found an infestation of cockroaches in our own supposedly pristine cupboard. The cockroaches are the beliefs that money is the only thing that matters, that race is a determinant of the value of a human being.
We knew it was there -- we didn't realize it was that bad. Guess we don't open that cupboard often enough.
Once we see the cockroaches, finally, we get to decide what to do about the infestation. We get to examine what does truly matter and what humans deserve simply because they are human.
History has propelled us toward the conclusion that human beings deserve honor and respect as a consequence of the simple truth that they are human and alive.
If that is the conclusion we draw, then we need to turn to those most disadvantaged and say we are sorry. We have not, by any means, been widely acting on that belief. Not in the day-to-day.
We also need to turn to that part of ourselves that holds the secret belief that we are not worthy of being rescued. What do I possibly have to offer this world? That part of us resides in us still. It occurred to me yesterday that much of religions are based on the very idea of the unworthy human who must be saved or made right. No wonder we feel unworthy at some deep level.
Now this seems at odds with the conclusion that humans deserve respect and honor simply because we are human. We'll have to sort that one out.
In this grand sorting out, let us be kind to one another. Let's loudly demonstrate to those from the Gulf who have been devastated that we believe they do deserve honor and dignity and respect, without condition, because they are human on this earth.
Monday, September 05, 2005
The search for new solid ground
"The people we see suffering on television are our brothers and sisters. It's incumbent on all of us, as American citizens and fellow human beings, to do our part to help them through this terrible tragedy." Chicago Mayor Richard Daley on Sept 2.
The old solid ground is giving way, sinking like New Orleans. What we thought we stood on has crumbled -- we're coming to realize this with the inescapable evidence from New Orleans and the Gulf coast after Katrina. The institutions of government do not support us as they exist now. At every level, government has demonstrated clearly that they cannot care for the most vulnerable. When that happens, we lose faith that they can care for any of us. The rumblings of that realization are vibrating through our entire culture right now. It has woken me up with nausea at 4 AM.
As a writer, I can see the metaphor our subconscious is likely grappling with: Do any of the institutions we've relied on have anything to give us? Or do we find the places we've been ordered to go barren and quickly become hell with no escape? That we're used to relying on institutions for answers makes this question deeply disturbing.
If we needed proof of our concerns about the focus of current institutions, we've received it. If we needed proof that money is the only thing we consistently value, we've got that.
This neglect manifesting dramatically is the direct result of long-standing ways of treating each other -- ways we've grown used to -- but the underlying ugliness is being made clear to us now. One example is excruciatingly painful:
Rescue 'ticket'
Posted: 6:24 p.m. ET Sept 5, 2005
CNN's Drew Griffin in New Orleans, Louisiana
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/05/scene.blog/index.html
"I am stunned by an interview I conducted with New Orleans Detective Lawrence Dupree. He told me they were trying to rescue people with a helicopter and the people were so poor they were afraid it would cost too much to get a ride and they had no money for a "ticket." Dupree was shaken telling us the story. He just couldn't believe these people were afraid they'd be charged for a rescue."
Human beings in New Orleans hold the belief that they are too poor to matter to anyone... that no one would go out of their way... that the only reason they'd be rescued is if they had enough money. Are they far wrong based on what we've seen? The squalid Superdome evacuation was interrupted on Friday when school busses pulled up so 700 well-dressed guests of the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line.
“How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?” exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage. The 700 had been trapped in the hotel, near the Superdome, but conditions were considerably cleaner, even without running water, than the unsanitary crush inside the dome. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9175611/page/2/
Is this the message we want our nation regularly communicating to its citizens with every daily interaction? Is this what we secretly believe too, and it utterly frightens us? Is this how we want to be?
Now we need to own our ability to respond. We need a crash course on how to evaluate and be honest with ourselves about what's going on in our own hearts. You can be sure we are not being taught these skills in school or at work. Perhaps we can make space enough to teach each other anyway.
My deepest wish is that you can make use of this vessel of Imagine Festival to find solace, comfort, connection. New solid ground, if you will. A space within which grows the belief in the capacity of the human heart and soul, a belief that we are perfectly capable and perfectly enough to take up the ability to respond to what we see with our own eyes and know with our own hearts.
The old solid ground is giving way, sinking like New Orleans. What we thought we stood on has crumbled -- we're coming to realize this with the inescapable evidence from New Orleans and the Gulf coast after Katrina. The institutions of government do not support us as they exist now. At every level, government has demonstrated clearly that they cannot care for the most vulnerable. When that happens, we lose faith that they can care for any of us. The rumblings of that realization are vibrating through our entire culture right now. It has woken me up with nausea at 4 AM.
As a writer, I can see the metaphor our subconscious is likely grappling with: Do any of the institutions we've relied on have anything to give us? Or do we find the places we've been ordered to go barren and quickly become hell with no escape? That we're used to relying on institutions for answers makes this question deeply disturbing.
If we needed proof of our concerns about the focus of current institutions, we've received it. If we needed proof that money is the only thing we consistently value, we've got that.
This neglect manifesting dramatically is the direct result of long-standing ways of treating each other -- ways we've grown used to -- but the underlying ugliness is being made clear to us now. One example is excruciatingly painful:
Rescue 'ticket'
Posted: 6:24 p.m. ET Sept 5, 2005
CNN's Drew Griffin in New Orleans, Louisiana
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/05/scene.blog/index.html
"I am stunned by an interview I conducted with New Orleans Detective Lawrence Dupree. He told me they were trying to rescue people with a helicopter and the people were so poor they were afraid it would cost too much to get a ride and they had no money for a "ticket." Dupree was shaken telling us the story. He just couldn't believe these people were afraid they'd be charged for a rescue."
Human beings in New Orleans hold the belief that they are too poor to matter to anyone... that no one would go out of their way... that the only reason they'd be rescued is if they had enough money. Are they far wrong based on what we've seen? The squalid Superdome evacuation was interrupted on Friday when school busses pulled up so 700 well-dressed guests of the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line.
“How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?” exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage. The 700 had been trapped in the hotel, near the Superdome, but conditions were considerably cleaner, even without running water, than the unsanitary crush inside the dome. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9175611/page/2/
Is this the message we want our nation regularly communicating to its citizens with every daily interaction? Is this what we secretly believe too, and it utterly frightens us? Is this how we want to be?
Now we need to own our ability to respond. We need a crash course on how to evaluate and be honest with ourselves about what's going on in our own hearts. You can be sure we are not being taught these skills in school or at work. Perhaps we can make space enough to teach each other anyway.
My deepest wish is that you can make use of this vessel of Imagine Festival to find solace, comfort, connection. New solid ground, if you will. A space within which grows the belief in the capacity of the human heart and soul, a belief that we are perfectly capable and perfectly enough to take up the ability to respond to what we see with our own eyes and know with our own hearts.
Friday, September 02, 2005
Shame
We are a proud lot, we Americans. We think very highly of ourselves and our abilities. It rallies us through much adversity.
But pride becomes arrogance when we ignore our flaws, don't listen, aren't sensitive.
Now we see the third world brought to one of our most beloved cities. Our city. In many ways, one of our most central hearts of culture.
I've heard it said in my travels that New Orleans is so precious it doesn't deserve to be in the United States -- we don't appreciate it.
We, in this country, hang our heads now. We feel shame that these are our citizens, in our country. It looks like a horror in Haiti.
We have failed somewhere and we dread to look at it.
The failure of government manifests broadly, at every level.
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley exclaimed, "I was shocked. We are ready to provide considerably more help than they have requested," the mayor said, barely able to contain his anger during a City Hall news conference. "We are just waiting for the call.
"The people we see suffering on television are our brothers and sisters," Daley said. "It's incumbent on all of us, as American citizens and fellow human beings, to do our part to help them through this terrible tragedy."
According to the Chicago Tribune, in the event of a disaster, the city offered to send 44 Chicago Fire Department rescue and medical personnel and their gear, more than 100 Chicago police officers, 140 Streets and Sanitation, 146 Public Health and 8 Human Services workers, and a fleet of vehicles including 29 trucks, two boats and a mobile clinic.
"So far FEMA has requested only one piece of equipment -- a tank truck to support the Illinois Emergency Response Team, which is already down there," Daley said. "The tank truck is on its way. We are awaiting further instructions from FEMA."
When government cannot care for those most vulnerable, we lose faith that it can care for any of us.
Did it not occur to planners that evacuation plans that relied on private ownership of vehicles would leave 100,000 and more behind? There are those who cannot buy a car. There are those who cannot drive.
Telling prejudices arise: From Harper's Index, August:
Number of bars visited this spring by an undercover team investigating racial discrimination: 40
Percentage of bars that charged black customers more than white customers: 40
That statistic is horrible. Something is very wrong with how we've been treating each other on a daily, basic level.
We now are forced to examine all of it. I pray we find in it a path to a better nation -- to see the brothers and sisters around us, who have always been there, on a daily, basic level.
But pride becomes arrogance when we ignore our flaws, don't listen, aren't sensitive.
Now we see the third world brought to one of our most beloved cities. Our city. In many ways, one of our most central hearts of culture.
I've heard it said in my travels that New Orleans is so precious it doesn't deserve to be in the United States -- we don't appreciate it.
We, in this country, hang our heads now. We feel shame that these are our citizens, in our country. It looks like a horror in Haiti.
We have failed somewhere and we dread to look at it.
The failure of government manifests broadly, at every level.
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley exclaimed, "I was shocked. We are ready to provide considerably more help than they have requested," the mayor said, barely able to contain his anger during a City Hall news conference. "We are just waiting for the call.
"The people we see suffering on television are our brothers and sisters," Daley said. "It's incumbent on all of us, as American citizens and fellow human beings, to do our part to help them through this terrible tragedy."
According to the Chicago Tribune, in the event of a disaster, the city offered to send 44 Chicago Fire Department rescue and medical personnel and their gear, more than 100 Chicago police officers, 140 Streets and Sanitation, 146 Public Health and 8 Human Services workers, and a fleet of vehicles including 29 trucks, two boats and a mobile clinic.
"So far FEMA has requested only one piece of equipment -- a tank truck to support the Illinois Emergency Response Team, which is already down there," Daley said. "The tank truck is on its way. We are awaiting further instructions from FEMA."
When government cannot care for those most vulnerable, we lose faith that it can care for any of us.
Did it not occur to planners that evacuation plans that relied on private ownership of vehicles would leave 100,000 and more behind? There are those who cannot buy a car. There are those who cannot drive.
Telling prejudices arise: From Harper's Index, August:
Number of bars visited this spring by an undercover team investigating racial discrimination: 40
Percentage of bars that charged black customers more than white customers: 40
That statistic is horrible. Something is very wrong with how we've been treating each other on a daily, basic level.
We now are forced to examine all of it. I pray we find in it a path to a better nation -- to see the brothers and sisters around us, who have always been there, on a daily, basic level.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Sinking beneath waters
The devastation of the Gulf is heartbreaking. Hopelessness and despair in the faces of so many. The stories are causing journalists to breakdown -- jaded journalists. My heart goes out to them, to us.
I had read about the catastrophe waiting to happen in New Orleans last year in the Global Warning issue of National Geographic. Here it is almost to the picture.
We could have fixed the levees -- apparently the problems were well known. But we went on with our usual lives instead.
Look folks, the earth isn't kidding around here. With global warming, storms are going to get more severe and more frequent. High water temperatures are a key ingredient in hurricanes, and ocean water temperature is increasing. Katrina was so severe in part because the water all over the Gulf was solidly hot.
We can't walk around in a stupor thinking that what we're in the habit of doing is gonna be just fine forever and ever.
Like the guy who's just had a heart attack, we're gonna have to make some changes to how we're living. The heart attack guy has to change his diet, his exercise routine, how he handles stress. We too need to change what we're doing.
They're just habits. We can form healthier ones. Find other more nurturing ways to interact with this planet.
Collectively, we can identify with the folks in New Orleans. We've had dreams of sinking beneath waters. What are those dreams trying to tell us?
We know what we need to do. We dare not ignore these warnings.
Let us not kick ourselves as the climate collapses, saying we could have averted this disaster, but we went on with our usual lives instead.
I had read about the catastrophe waiting to happen in New Orleans last year in the Global Warning issue of National Geographic. Here it is almost to the picture.
We could have fixed the levees -- apparently the problems were well known. But we went on with our usual lives instead.
Look folks, the earth isn't kidding around here. With global warming, storms are going to get more severe and more frequent. High water temperatures are a key ingredient in hurricanes, and ocean water temperature is increasing. Katrina was so severe in part because the water all over the Gulf was solidly hot.
We can't walk around in a stupor thinking that what we're in the habit of doing is gonna be just fine forever and ever.
Like the guy who's just had a heart attack, we're gonna have to make some changes to how we're living. The heart attack guy has to change his diet, his exercise routine, how he handles stress. We too need to change what we're doing.
They're just habits. We can form healthier ones. Find other more nurturing ways to interact with this planet.
Collectively, we can identify with the folks in New Orleans. We've had dreams of sinking beneath waters. What are those dreams trying to tell us?
We know what we need to do. We dare not ignore these warnings.
Let us not kick ourselves as the climate collapses, saying we could have averted this disaster, but we went on with our usual lives instead.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Social permission to help each other
I woke yesterday at 5:00am California time feeling very uncomfortable. What's going on, I tried to figure out. Pre-earthquake jitters? Oh... then I realized in my groggy anxiety, Katrina is about to hit land.
I turned on the television and saw Katrina's menacing red flames swirling on the radar just off land's edge.
The thought came to me in that state between sleep and wake: Earth looks pretty angry right now.
I acknowledged the anger, since that's what it looked like. God knows, Earth sure has some pretty damn good reasons to be mad, if she is. I'd be mad if I were her.
I meditated -- sent soothing thoughts to Earth and to the people of that area. Prayers for a long while till I fell off to sleep again.
When I woke three hours later, Katrina had been downgraded from a category 4 to a category 3 storm. Earth calmed down a bit.
Another thought came to me: in these huge catastrophes, we give ourselves social permission to be kind to one another, to strangers. We go about rescuing, sharing, sheltering people we don't know. As if they were important to us.
Is that what it takes for us to get it? Disasters?
It takes disasters for us to be compassionate with each other?
Just conjecture here, but since, as I said in my last post, we're set up to expect to be loved without condition, my guess is we are also set up to draw to us what we hunger for. In the current state of the world, expressions of unconditional love are so rare. Virtually the only time we see it expressed in a large way is in the middle of disasters.
If, as quantum physics suggests, the universe responds to what we're subconsciously needing, maybe in this time of widespread shutting off from each other, disasters are the only tried and true mechanism we know of to elicit widespread unconditional love. To open our hearts.
If it is, that is a damn sad state of affairs.
I say we don't need to wait for disasters to give ourselves the social food we are all craving. Let's give ourselves social permission right now to care about each other and act on it, for no other reason than it's what we're all so hungry for.
I turned on the television and saw Katrina's menacing red flames swirling on the radar just off land's edge.
The thought came to me in that state between sleep and wake: Earth looks pretty angry right now.
I acknowledged the anger, since that's what it looked like. God knows, Earth sure has some pretty damn good reasons to be mad, if she is. I'd be mad if I were her.
I meditated -- sent soothing thoughts to Earth and to the people of that area. Prayers for a long while till I fell off to sleep again.
When I woke three hours later, Katrina had been downgraded from a category 4 to a category 3 storm. Earth calmed down a bit.
Another thought came to me: in these huge catastrophes, we give ourselves social permission to be kind to one another, to strangers. We go about rescuing, sharing, sheltering people we don't know. As if they were important to us.
Is that what it takes for us to get it? Disasters?
It takes disasters for us to be compassionate with each other?
Just conjecture here, but since, as I said in my last post, we're set up to expect to be loved without condition, my guess is we are also set up to draw to us what we hunger for. In the current state of the world, expressions of unconditional love are so rare. Virtually the only time we see it expressed in a large way is in the middle of disasters.
If, as quantum physics suggests, the universe responds to what we're subconsciously needing, maybe in this time of widespread shutting off from each other, disasters are the only tried and true mechanism we know of to elicit widespread unconditional love. To open our hearts.
If it is, that is a damn sad state of affairs.
I say we don't need to wait for disasters to give ourselves the social food we are all craving. Let's give ourselves social permission right now to care about each other and act on it, for no other reason than it's what we're all so hungry for.
Sunday, August 28, 2005
What we're doing is well worth doing
The pause in my blogging has been a regrouping, a shift in many things. Ultimately a decision on my part that what I'm doing is worth doing. What I'm pursuing is worth pursuing.
Inspired really by a Kris Kristofferson song I heard anew at a Western Beat tribute night a few months ago in a local joint, Highland Grounds -- a night conceived by Americana list goddess Bliss (www.americanarootsla.net).
"’cause I think what they've done is well worth doin'
And they'’re doin'’ it the best way that they can..."
The song's about all the great musicians in Nashville at the time (1976) that everyone was poo-pooing: Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson.... You know those legends... well, folks didn't all like them back then.
"And if you don't like Hank Williams, honey, you can kiss my ass."
I realized that on another level, the song was talking about now -- in the LA music scene first of all -- LA music is the most invigorated it's been in a decade, according to veterans, and it's all because of the renewed interest in roots and alt-country music, they tell me.
The Vaquetones, James Intveld, Mike Stinson are just a few of the talents I'm blessed to hear in this town every month...
I think that what they're doing is well worth doing.
I also realized that I needed to look at what I was doing in the same light -- that what I was doing was well worth doing and at the end of my life I would be proud of myself for pushing forward with this idea so few fully believe in or act as if it is possible.
Peace among the people on earth.
I know that it is possible. Not only that it's possible, but that it's our birthright. It's what we deserve. That's right -- we human beings deserve to be treated with honor, respect, appreciation. So do animals. So does the planet. All of us, not just some of us.
This is, I'm realizing, a radical idea.
It changes everything.
But I believe it's much more our human nature than the current predominant worldview would have us believe.
I've read psychological theories that describe how, as babies, we're set up from day one to expect to receive love, so we interpret any abuse we receive in early years as "love." Once we're grown, therefore, we create in our lives the very conditions that will recreate the abuse because our early experience wired our brains to subconsciously understand the abuse as nurturing "love."
Yikes.
So it's gonna take some rewiring. We can do that work.
The key here is that we COME IN expecting to be loved without condition.
Marianne Williamson spoke yesterday here in LA and told of a cruise she'd taken recently in Alaska. Some kayakers paddled by. All the folks on the cruise boat happily waved and the kayakers happily waved back. Wait a minute, Marianne thought, how'd you know you'd even like these guys? The observation prompted her thought that it's the natural initial tendency of human beings to treat each other like brothers and sisters.
The millennium, for example, she said, was a worldwide party -- people riding on the Subway in NYC even spoke to each other -- but the day itself wasn't different from any other day, in truth. The sole difference was, on that day, we gave ourselves social permission to treat each other like brothers and sisters. Social permission. That's all that was necessary for the natural tendency to take over.
Here's another radical idea... maybe all that's needed is to drop the BS that stops us from seeing each other as brothers and sisters.
To me, as a rose is a rose is a rose, a human is a human is a human. The species is defined by DNA -- and we all share pretty much all of it.
So I press on. Doing it the best way that I can.
The best way for me is through nurturing self worth and joy in the world. Imagine Festival is one engine for that. To open the possibility that solutions are before us all the time, we simply need to discover how to apply them. To create spaces that perhaps will help people run into the magic that is out there for them and bring it into their lives. To encourage folks to own their power. To take the steps we need to get to peace.
And to imagine beyond that... for me, peace is just the beginning.
Another Kris Kristofferson song caught my ear -- To Beat the Devil
"And you still can hear me singing to the people who don't listen
To the things that I am saying, praying someone's going to hear;
And I guess I'll die explaining how the things that they complain about
Are things they could be changing, hoping someone's goin' to care.
"I was born a lonely singer and I'm bound to die the same
But I've got to feed the hunger in my soul;
And if I never have a nickel I won't ever die of shame
’cause I don't believe that no-one wants to know!"
Thank you Kris -- I've decided not to believe that no one wants to know.
Inspired really by a Kris Kristofferson song I heard anew at a Western Beat tribute night a few months ago in a local joint, Highland Grounds -- a night conceived by Americana list goddess Bliss (www.americanarootsla.net).
"’cause I think what they've done is well worth doin'
And they'’re doin'’ it the best way that they can..."
The song's about all the great musicians in Nashville at the time (1976) that everyone was poo-pooing: Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson.... You know those legends... well, folks didn't all like them back then.
"And if you don't like Hank Williams, honey, you can kiss my ass."
I realized that on another level, the song was talking about now -- in the LA music scene first of all -- LA music is the most invigorated it's been in a decade, according to veterans, and it's all because of the renewed interest in roots and alt-country music, they tell me.
The Vaquetones, James Intveld, Mike Stinson are just a few of the talents I'm blessed to hear in this town every month...
I think that what they're doing is well worth doing.
I also realized that I needed to look at what I was doing in the same light -- that what I was doing was well worth doing and at the end of my life I would be proud of myself for pushing forward with this idea so few fully believe in or act as if it is possible.
Peace among the people on earth.
I know that it is possible. Not only that it's possible, but that it's our birthright. It's what we deserve. That's right -- we human beings deserve to be treated with honor, respect, appreciation. So do animals. So does the planet. All of us, not just some of us.
This is, I'm realizing, a radical idea.
It changes everything.
But I believe it's much more our human nature than the current predominant worldview would have us believe.
I've read psychological theories that describe how, as babies, we're set up from day one to expect to receive love, so we interpret any abuse we receive in early years as "love." Once we're grown, therefore, we create in our lives the very conditions that will recreate the abuse because our early experience wired our brains to subconsciously understand the abuse as nurturing "love."
Yikes.
So it's gonna take some rewiring. We can do that work.
The key here is that we COME IN expecting to be loved without condition.
Marianne Williamson spoke yesterday here in LA and told of a cruise she'd taken recently in Alaska. Some kayakers paddled by. All the folks on the cruise boat happily waved and the kayakers happily waved back. Wait a minute, Marianne thought, how'd you know you'd even like these guys? The observation prompted her thought that it's the natural initial tendency of human beings to treat each other like brothers and sisters.
The millennium, for example, she said, was a worldwide party -- people riding on the Subway in NYC even spoke to each other -- but the day itself wasn't different from any other day, in truth. The sole difference was, on that day, we gave ourselves social permission to treat each other like brothers and sisters. Social permission. That's all that was necessary for the natural tendency to take over.
Here's another radical idea... maybe all that's needed is to drop the BS that stops us from seeing each other as brothers and sisters.
To me, as a rose is a rose is a rose, a human is a human is a human. The species is defined by DNA -- and we all share pretty much all of it.
So I press on. Doing it the best way that I can.
The best way for me is through nurturing self worth and joy in the world. Imagine Festival is one engine for that. To open the possibility that solutions are before us all the time, we simply need to discover how to apply them. To create spaces that perhaps will help people run into the magic that is out there for them and bring it into their lives. To encourage folks to own their power. To take the steps we need to get to peace.
And to imagine beyond that... for me, peace is just the beginning.
Another Kris Kristofferson song caught my ear -- To Beat the Devil
"And you still can hear me singing to the people who don't listen
To the things that I am saying, praying someone's going to hear;
And I guess I'll die explaining how the things that they complain about
Are things they could be changing, hoping someone's goin' to care.
"I was born a lonely singer and I'm bound to die the same
But I've got to feed the hunger in my soul;
And if I never have a nickel I won't ever die of shame
’cause I don't believe that no-one wants to know!"
Thank you Kris -- I've decided not to believe that no one wants to know.
Friday, April 15, 2005
Productivity of Prostitution
The most wrenching moment during the Prevent Impaired Driving Event on Capitol Hill last week for me surprisingly had nothing to do with the event subject itself. It was my overhearing a conversation between two of our guests.
"What do you do?" one asked.
"I'm a lobbyist," said the other.
"What do you lobby for?" asked the first man.
"Whatever they pay me for," said the second.
Whatever they pay me for?! My stomach turned.
I didn't want to see who it was, didn't want to know the prostitute in our midst.
The worst blow came when the man he was talking to didn't even raise a challenge.
Couldn't he respond: "So you are one of those soulless drones who may be bought by the chemical companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the oil companies currently on a path to undermine our planet, our health and life on earth! How can you sleep at night? When you get up in the morning, what do you see in the mirror?"
I wanted to scream and shake the life out of him. Or into him.
But then I realized that's exactly how so many people I know regard their jobs -- they'll do whatever they get paid for.
The country is grinding its productivity out of widespread prostitution.
We accept subsuming our beliefs for money. We accept prostituting ourselves for money. We do what we hate for money. This has become not only acceptable, but the NORM. It's EXPECTED.
People AGREE to become parking-ticket givers. People AGREE to work for collection agencies to call people and pressure them for money they don't have. People AGREE to be attorneys for the tobacco industry.
Who likes parking tickets, or collection agency calls? Who thinks the tobacco industry is a positive force in the world?
Doing stuff we would hate to receive kills us, in my opinion.
Starting wars we would hate to have on our soil kills us too, in my opinion.
I persist in the belief that it cannot remain this way for much longer. It's an energy deficit. We spend much more energy doing stuff we hate than doing stuff we love.
I'd be willing to bet that people who work in the jobs they hate are sick and injured from all causes far more often than people doing jobs they love.
It goes without saying that it affects our souls. More practically, for those in practical mode, I also believe it directly affects productivity in a broad and wide way.
This country is not in a position to afford such effects anymore. We can't afford the depression in productivity. We can't afford the health costs either.
As far as I've read, we are teetering on the edge of economic meltdown.
We must change.
Important change like this can happen only by one person after another making a different decision, a different choice.
Choose to do only what you would agree to do without money. In your mind, take money out of the equation for a minute when choosing your actions today.
Then choose to bring to yourself money for making the choices that sit well in your heart. It's pretty much that simple.
When one person does this, he or she becomes an example and an influence to everyone he or she knows. That's how things shift. That's how the country can shift.
"What do you do?" one asked.
"I'm a lobbyist," said the other.
"What do you lobby for?" asked the first man.
"Whatever they pay me for," said the second.
Whatever they pay me for?! My stomach turned.
I didn't want to see who it was, didn't want to know the prostitute in our midst.
The worst blow came when the man he was talking to didn't even raise a challenge.
Couldn't he respond: "So you are one of those soulless drones who may be bought by the chemical companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the oil companies currently on a path to undermine our planet, our health and life on earth! How can you sleep at night? When you get up in the morning, what do you see in the mirror?"
I wanted to scream and shake the life out of him. Or into him.
But then I realized that's exactly how so many people I know regard their jobs -- they'll do whatever they get paid for.
The country is grinding its productivity out of widespread prostitution.
We accept subsuming our beliefs for money. We accept prostituting ourselves for money. We do what we hate for money. This has become not only acceptable, but the NORM. It's EXPECTED.
People AGREE to become parking-ticket givers. People AGREE to work for collection agencies to call people and pressure them for money they don't have. People AGREE to be attorneys for the tobacco industry.
Who likes parking tickets, or collection agency calls? Who thinks the tobacco industry is a positive force in the world?
Doing stuff we would hate to receive kills us, in my opinion.
Starting wars we would hate to have on our soil kills us too, in my opinion.
I persist in the belief that it cannot remain this way for much longer. It's an energy deficit. We spend much more energy doing stuff we hate than doing stuff we love.
I'd be willing to bet that people who work in the jobs they hate are sick and injured from all causes far more often than people doing jobs they love.
It goes without saying that it affects our souls. More practically, for those in practical mode, I also believe it directly affects productivity in a broad and wide way.
This country is not in a position to afford such effects anymore. We can't afford the depression in productivity. We can't afford the health costs either.
As far as I've read, we are teetering on the edge of economic meltdown.
We must change.
Important change like this can happen only by one person after another making a different decision, a different choice.
Choose to do only what you would agree to do without money. In your mind, take money out of the equation for a minute when choosing your actions today.
Then choose to bring to yourself money for making the choices that sit well in your heart. It's pretty much that simple.
When one person does this, he or she becomes an example and an influence to everyone he or she knows. That's how things shift. That's how the country can shift.
Changing Minds on Capitol Hill
Last week, April 6, I went to Capitol Hill with AWAKE Community to present to Congress an event intended to reinvigorate and bring together the groups involved in the effort to prevent impaired driving, the most prevalent violent crime in the country.
The event was a strong success -- many of the different groups involved in the effort to prevent drunk driving gathered in the same room together -- many for the first time.
I know, it may come as a shock, but the different organizations, due to conflicting opinions of the best approach to solve the issue and a mindset that each is competing for limited donor dollars, hate each other.
Okay, hate may be a strong word, but visceral dislike is pretty accurate.
I worked with AWAKE Community to create a film and music and art performance that would remove the us vs them view and thank personal, everyday heroes who have kept tragedies from happening.
By the end of the evening, minds were changed.
Not only did the various groups acknowledge each other, but also a deeper change occurred.
One man came up to my colleague and said, "You changed my mind -- I drink and drive, and I never listened because the messages were so holier than thou. But you guys are just like me... you've done it too and you're not afraid to be open about that. I can listen to you."
That to me was exactly what I wanted to accomplish with the film.
The event was a strong success -- many of the different groups involved in the effort to prevent drunk driving gathered in the same room together -- many for the first time.
I know, it may come as a shock, but the different organizations, due to conflicting opinions of the best approach to solve the issue and a mindset that each is competing for limited donor dollars, hate each other.
Okay, hate may be a strong word, but visceral dislike is pretty accurate.
I worked with AWAKE Community to create a film and music and art performance that would remove the us vs them view and thank personal, everyday heroes who have kept tragedies from happening.
By the end of the evening, minds were changed.
Not only did the various groups acknowledge each other, but also a deeper change occurred.
One man came up to my colleague and said, "You changed my mind -- I drink and drive, and I never listened because the messages were so holier than thou. But you guys are just like me... you've done it too and you're not afraid to be open about that. I can listen to you."
That to me was exactly what I wanted to accomplish with the film.
Monday, February 14, 2005
Monday, January 31, 2005
Women's rights put to test in Iraq (Boston Globe)
Another article describing the situation for women in Iraq...
Boston Globe: Women's rights put to test in Iraq
By María Cristina Caballer January 30, 2005
THE FATE of Iraqi women's rights rests on the outcome of today's election. Zainab Al-Suwaij and Ala Talabani, two prominent Iraqi women leaders, say the elections will decide whether women will really become equal citizens or lose their voices.
Women are the majority in Iraq: 55 of every 100 citizens. And for the first time, the interim constitution guarantees at least a quarter of the 275 seats in Iraq's new National Assembly to women.
But Al-Suwaij and Talabani have spoken out against the efforts of some conservatives and religious extremists to limit the role of women in the new Iraq, and to impose restrictions on the feminine majority. ''Some are using violence -- shootings and car bombs -- to try to stop women from campaigning and being elected," Al-Suwaij says.
That women's rights are an explosive issue is a bitter reality for Al-Suwaij, 33, who grew up under the harsh rule of Saddam Hussein, took up arms against the Iraqi ruler, and today is working to bring democracy to a country that is struggling both with Hussein's legacy and an age-old authoritarian tradition. With her friend and comrade Talabani, Al-Suwaij has been working to ensure that freedom extends to all the population. This, they say, is a crucial moment for women in Iraq.
Before becoming a peace-wager, Al-Suwaij was a warrior -- and has the bullet scar on her cheek to prove it. At 20, during the 1991 Gulf War, she heeded the words of the first President Bush, who broadcast messages on Voice of America urging the Iraqi people to rebel against Hussein, promising US support. As an armed fighter, she helped open the gates of a prison where there was a human meat grinder for those who didn't confess. The promised support never arrived, and the battle-scarred veteran went into exile in the United States. Lately she has focused on training Iraqi women leaders about democracy. ''I called it Democracy 101," Al-Suwaij says.
As part of the program financed by $1.5 million from USAID, Al-Suwaij recently gathered 70 Iraqi women from nine provinces. Twenty-five of them are running for office in today's elections. ''Some of them have not had the opportunity to study higher education, but they are very smart and capable. Very impressive," she says.
Al-Suwaij especially admires the courage of Bedor Alyassri, 36, from Samwah. After the American occupation, Alyassri organized meetings among women, following her heart and her instincts.
''Bedor has been targeted for her work," says Al-Suwaij. ''She doesn't know exactly who is trying to assassinate her. Could be insurgents, or members of other political parties who don't like the fact that she is mobilizing many people."
Talabani, a civil engineer who has also been struggling to empower Iraqi women, was fired from her job for refusing to join Hussein's Baath party 15 years ago. After joining the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, she was detained by the Iraqi security service. In 1996, she went into exile in England and helped organize the Women's Union of Kurdistan. She recently trained 75 women in political leadership, and hopes that some will be elected today.
Even with some women guaranteed political posts today, the women of Iraq have a long way to go before Iraqi men treat them as political or social equals.
''In this first election, the candidates will be elected based upon religious orientation," Talabani said. ''This will be a party-based election, not based upon their points of view on issues or projects."
Both women fear that if extremists are elected, they might consider it a mandate to resurrect measures such as the infamous ''Resolution 137," an attempt to restrict women's rights ''by making religious Sharia family law into civil law." Al-Suwaij said Resolution 137 would not have allowed women to leave their houses without asking for permission from their husbands, while Talabani pointed out that the resolution would have allowed men to marry several women without going to a court.
Resolution 137 was defeated this past March. But today brings a fresh vote on women's status in Iraq. Talabani pointed out that Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, the man behind Resolution 137, is campaigning to become president. She strongly hopes he doesn't win.
Despite the many battles ahead, both women are hopeful; each would like someday to be president of a democratic Iraq. Then they could get some real work done.
''We, the women, are building bridges among cultural, ethnic, and religious divides," Talabani says.
Supporting Iraqi women leaders who are risking their lives to help rebuild their country should be a higher priority for the United States and the international community. It is necessary to multiply the resources being invested in this vital front. Iraqi women leaders are key players in this nation's struggle toward democracy. When the last US troops pull out, it will the Iraqi women who will try harder to keep the peace.
María Cristina Caballero is a fellow at Harvard University's Center for Public Leadership
Saturday, January 29, 2005
The truth about men and women may be too hot to handle.
I wrote this article today in response to an opinion piece in the Sunday Times.
Andrew Sullivan may be right, the truth about men and women may be too hot to handle.
I understand by his comments that Mr. Sullivan is not a scientist. Mr Sullivan’s nodding in agreement with Harvard president and chief blunderer Larry Summers’ as he raises the possibility that male preponderance at the very top of research science might have something to do with genetics – based on research results showing men were disproportionately represented at the very bottom and the very top of the table of science tests – betrays both Mr. Hopkins and Mr. Summers’ lack of scientific understanding and glaringly reveals their poorly hidden bigotry.
First of all, all the cited research study showed was a gender difference, not a genetic difference. To a scientist, these are completely different things. Genetics is simply one factor in a grand array of cultural, social and aptitudinal differences that emerge between men and women. The cultural conditioning and belief in what and how one “should” be as a boy or girl are introduced to babies at a very early age and reinforced by countless social cues throughout life. The presupposition that women are therefore incapable of reaching the “top” of anything because of their genetics is as absurd an assertion as saying that black men are incapable of great achievements because of their genetics. You do think THAT statement absurd, don’t you Mr. Sullivan? Not to mention that the definition of “top” and the value of achieving it in the first place I would assert are generally measures devised by men, not women, in positions of power.
The reaction of Professor Nancy Hopkins – “this kind of bias makes me physically ill” – is simple to explain: by now we can smell a chauvinist at 20 miles.
Women were kept out of top orchestras for eons on the belief that they couldn’t “handle” the physical strain of high level performance. It wasn’t until the practice of blind auditions was introduced that women were able to enter the male orchestra kingdom.
As another example, the professional organization for film directors in the US, the Directors Guild, is currently only 4% women. Are women genetically unable to tell good stories on film? Surely even a non-scientist can see the absurdity of that.
The only reason I didn’t seriously consider directing as a career until recently was that I didn’t SEE any women directors around. Subconsciously, I didn’t think it was possible. So I became a scientist, and a writer. Well, of course it was possible. Now I am a director, despite lack of role models.
That’s not to say I don’t see differences between men and women. These, however, are the ones you might find too hot to handle….
Since we have been graphically reminded this week, it is men who conjured up, designed and built the facilities for, and carried out the Holocaust, as well as every other genocide we’ve experienced.
It is men who divvied up the Middle East into arbitrary regions without regard for existing tribal affinities, which is at the bottom of the current disastrous continuous conflicts there which continue to threaten our world.
It is men who have been intransigent on both sides of the Israel – Arab conflict, refusing to see how they might live together on the same inhospitable spit of sand.
It is men who organized the original Crusades, men who organized the Inquisition, men who decided slavery was alright.
It is men who designed the burka and who undertake honour killings of “impure” women in many cultures, men who decided that such honour killings are misdemeanours.
Come to think of it, it is men who brought us every war known to this planet. Women – half of the planet – according to esteemed military historian John Keegan, have always and everywhere stood apart. With the rarest of exceptions, women don’t fight.
From such evidence, one can conclude that men are bad for humanity.
It is the spirit of cooperation, not confrontation that makes the world go around. Men, whether for genetic reasons or current gender upbringing, are notoriously confrontational. Surely I don’t need to show you crime data for you to accept that, Mr. Sullivan.
But that’s not all. Men brought us the industrial revolution, and concurrent belief that we could conquer our environment. The result of this path is that we are 10 years or less away from tipping the planet toward unstoppable global warming, a temperature rise beyond which the world would be irretrievably committed to disastrous change. That means widespread agricultural failure, water shortages and major droughts, increased disease, sea-level rise and the death of forests – with the added possibility of abrupt catastrophic events such as "runaway" global warming, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, or the switching-off of the Gulf Stream, according to a major scientific report released this week.
It is easy to conclude from such evidence, that men are bad for the planet.
This grand, prolonged experiment now concludes. Perhaps women were curious to see what would happen to the planet if you took over for a while. The results are in.
Now there’s no time. These are our children you are threatening and their future on this planet. Time for men to get out of the way. Women have a lot of work to do.
Andrew Sullivan may be right, the truth about men and women may be too hot to handle.
I understand by his comments that Mr. Sullivan is not a scientist. Mr Sullivan’s nodding in agreement with Harvard president and chief blunderer Larry Summers’ as he raises the possibility that male preponderance at the very top of research science might have something to do with genetics – based on research results showing men were disproportionately represented at the very bottom and the very top of the table of science tests – betrays both Mr. Hopkins and Mr. Summers’ lack of scientific understanding and glaringly reveals their poorly hidden bigotry.
First of all, all the cited research study showed was a gender difference, not a genetic difference. To a scientist, these are completely different things. Genetics is simply one factor in a grand array of cultural, social and aptitudinal differences that emerge between men and women. The cultural conditioning and belief in what and how one “should” be as a boy or girl are introduced to babies at a very early age and reinforced by countless social cues throughout life. The presupposition that women are therefore incapable of reaching the “top” of anything because of their genetics is as absurd an assertion as saying that black men are incapable of great achievements because of their genetics. You do think THAT statement absurd, don’t you Mr. Sullivan? Not to mention that the definition of “top” and the value of achieving it in the first place I would assert are generally measures devised by men, not women, in positions of power.
The reaction of Professor Nancy Hopkins – “this kind of bias makes me physically ill” – is simple to explain: by now we can smell a chauvinist at 20 miles.
Women were kept out of top orchestras for eons on the belief that they couldn’t “handle” the physical strain of high level performance. It wasn’t until the practice of blind auditions was introduced that women were able to enter the male orchestra kingdom.
As another example, the professional organization for film directors in the US, the Directors Guild, is currently only 4% women. Are women genetically unable to tell good stories on film? Surely even a non-scientist can see the absurdity of that.
The only reason I didn’t seriously consider directing as a career until recently was that I didn’t SEE any women directors around. Subconsciously, I didn’t think it was possible. So I became a scientist, and a writer. Well, of course it was possible. Now I am a director, despite lack of role models.
That’s not to say I don’t see differences between men and women. These, however, are the ones you might find too hot to handle….
Since we have been graphically reminded this week, it is men who conjured up, designed and built the facilities for, and carried out the Holocaust, as well as every other genocide we’ve experienced.
It is men who divvied up the Middle East into arbitrary regions without regard for existing tribal affinities, which is at the bottom of the current disastrous continuous conflicts there which continue to threaten our world.
It is men who have been intransigent on both sides of the Israel – Arab conflict, refusing to see how they might live together on the same inhospitable spit of sand.
It is men who organized the original Crusades, men who organized the Inquisition, men who decided slavery was alright.
It is men who designed the burka and who undertake honour killings of “impure” women in many cultures, men who decided that such honour killings are misdemeanours.
Come to think of it, it is men who brought us every war known to this planet. Women – half of the planet – according to esteemed military historian John Keegan, have always and everywhere stood apart. With the rarest of exceptions, women don’t fight.
From such evidence, one can conclude that men are bad for humanity.
It is the spirit of cooperation, not confrontation that makes the world go around. Men, whether for genetic reasons or current gender upbringing, are notoriously confrontational. Surely I don’t need to show you crime data for you to accept that, Mr. Sullivan.
But that’s not all. Men brought us the industrial revolution, and concurrent belief that we could conquer our environment. The result of this path is that we are 10 years or less away from tipping the planet toward unstoppable global warming, a temperature rise beyond which the world would be irretrievably committed to disastrous change. That means widespread agricultural failure, water shortages and major droughts, increased disease, sea-level rise and the death of forests – with the added possibility of abrupt catastrophic events such as "runaway" global warming, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, or the switching-off of the Gulf Stream, according to a major scientific report released this week.
It is easy to conclude from such evidence, that men are bad for the planet.
This grand, prolonged experiment now concludes. Perhaps women were curious to see what would happen to the planet if you took over for a while. The results are in.
Now there’s no time. These are our children you are threatening and their future on this planet. Time for men to get out of the way. Women have a lot of work to do.
Is the World Safer Now? (The Independent)
A review article of the Iraq war's consequences and outlook.
Is the world safer now?
The Independent
28 January 2005
(excerpts from article:)
As war ended, our correspondents examined key questions about Iraq's future. With the elections looming, the updated answers highlight the global impact of the conflict
Analysis by Rupert Cornwell, Andrew Grice, Patrick Cockburn, Anne Penketh, Andrew Buncombe, Ben Russell, Stephen Castle and Elizabeth Davies
WHERE ARE THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION?
As we know now, they were never in Iraq, cutting away the rationale for going to war. But next door, Iran, the state most feared by Saddam Hussein, is now accused of being less than a year from a "point of no return" in building its own nuclear bomb - a direct result of the Iraq war. It has also emerged since the war that the Americans turned a blind eye to the export of nuclear parts by the top nuclear scientist in Pakistan, a major US ally in the "war on terror". The network of A Q Khan, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear programme, was in the business of selling nuclear technology to the highest bidder, including the arch-enemies of America - Libya and North Korea. Even South Korea has been conducting clandestine nuclear experiments, fearing its northern neighbour may have built six nuclear bombs. Far from shutting down the nuclear peril, the Bush administration has actually increased the global threat.
WHO ARE THE INSURGENTS AND ARE THEY LINKED TO AL-QA'IDA?
The presence of al-Qa'ida in Iraq was cited by President George Bush as one of the main reasons for going to war, even though there was never any proof of a link to Saddam Hussein. Iraq, back then, was devoid of terrorism. How times have changed - again, as a direct consequence of the war.
There is no single resistance movement. It is made up of different groups - many of which only operate in a single district. The US has sought to portray the insurgents as consisting of either foreign fighters or bloodthirsty Islamic fanatics, though US military intelligence admits that 95 per cent of fighters are Iraqi. The common element among the different groups is opposition to the US occupation. And they are bent on disrupting the elections to speed up the Americans' departure.
The military backbone of the resistance which developed with great speed after the fall of Saddam was made up of former members of the security forces and Baath party. But they could not have gathered support and sympathy from the population so swiftly if the US administration, devoid of a post-war plan, had not so rapidly discredited itself. Most Iraqi men have some military training. They are traditionally armed and after the war Iraq was awash with weapons.
The resistance rapidly took on an Islamic colouring, the very aspect the US feared. Since August 2003, there has been a wave of suicide bombing unprecedented in history. Here, the foreign volunteers were important and they appear to have provided the bulk of the bombers. Islamic fundamentalists outside Iraq provided large sums of money.
The insurgents have become more expert. There are greater signs of co-ordination. A few days after the US Marines started their assault on Fallujah in November, the resistance attacked Mosul and captured most of the city.
How sectarian is the resistance? The Salafi or militant fundamentalist Sunni wing of the insurgency has repeatedly targeted Shia with suicide bombs in Baghdad, Najaf and Kerbala, causing horrendous casualties. These attacks ensured that the uprising remains confined to the Sunni Arabs.
Since early 2004 the US has promoted Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as the man behind the uprising. This probably began as a propaganda ploy but Zarqawi revelled in the publicity and American denunciations meant local groups began to call themselves al-Qa'ida.
At any rate, the invasion - and the lack of planning - has created the very conditions the US cited as reason for going to war. Trouble was, they never existed then.
DO IRAQIS FEEL LIBERATED?
The key question, and the one answer showing the biggest change since our investigation in April 2003. Just after the war, polls showed that Iraqis were evenly divided about whether they felt liberated or occupied. We said back then that Iraqis have a strong sense of nationhood, and predicted that any sense of being subjected to American hegemony would be strongly resisted. By the time the US ended direct rule of Iraq through the Coalition Provisional Authority in the summer of 2004, only 2 per cent of Arab Iraqis supported the occupation. The overthrow of Saddam had brought none of the political and economic benefits they expected. Today, the only large group in Iraq which still overwhelmingly feels liberated is the Kurdish community, which makes up about 17 per cent of the population.
Despite the supposed handover of power to an Iraqi interim government last year, Iraqis see the US as the controller of the government. Many of them this week referred to the election as "a movie" staged for the benefit of the outside world. Significantly many of those who say they will vote also blame the US for their woes. This is the greatest mistake made by US analysts: the belief that because the Shia are increasingly hostile to the Sunni this means that they accept the occupation. The prestigious Brussels-based International Crisis Group sees the growth of hostility to the US as the most important development in Iraq since 2003. It says in a recent report: "Of all the many changes that have affected popular attitudes since the fall of the Baathist regime, perhaps the most notable has been the precipitous drop in the confidence in the US."
WHAT WAS THE WAR REALLY ABOUT?
Astonishingly, two years on there is no clear answer. The Bush White House claimed the invasion was to get rid of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, and destroy a regime that was linked to terrorism. When the WMD failed to materialise, the war was justified (on legally shaky grounds) as a mission to remove an odious and repressive regime, the first step in a democratic transformation of the Middle East.
In truth, Iraq was at the top of the administration's hit list long before 9/11. The neo-conservatives in charge of US security policy had been calling for Saddam's overthrow for five years or more. This they argued, would give the US a new strategic base in the Gulf to replace Saudi Arabia. It would place the region's second oil producer firmly within the US orbit. It would step up the pressure on Iran, meeting a longstanding desire of Israel. Finally, there is a family factor: did Bush the son invade to finish the job started by Bush the father? Somewhere in this mixture of fear, grand strategy and blinkered ideology lies the explanation for the war.
IS THIS THE FIRST STEP TO REORDERING THE MIDDLE EAST?
That was, and remains, Mr Bush's goal, as his extraordinary second inauguration address shows. Turn Iraq into a functioning democratic regime, the theory runs, and the Islamic extremists and insurgents "who hate our freedom" would be on the retreat across the Muslim world.
Seduced by a benign version of the domino theory, Washington imagined that other authoritarian regimes would realise there was no alternative to liberalisation and democratisation. Thus would be achieved an economic and political rebirth of the Middle East, including the most elusive prize of all, a peace settlement between Israel and Palestine.
But even if the Iraqi election on Sunday goes (relatively) smoothly, those ambitions now appear to be hopelessly overblown.
The initial goals of Mr Blair's Palestinian conference in March have been watered down under Israeli pressure. Mr Bush's once-trumpeted Greater Middle East Initiative, designed to foster free thinking, free markets and free media across the region, has been drastically scaled back after complaints from allies such as Egypt that the US was trying to impose its views.
WHAT ABOUT SADDAM?
Saddam Hussein is in custody awaiting trial in the US military base at Baghdad airport. But his appearances in court have not benefited the interim government as much as they had hoped. His capture has, surprisingly, highlighted difficulties, and his is the spectre overhanging the elections.
His strong, defiant demeanour before his accusers last year quickly replaced in the public psyche the earlier images of a bedraggled and beaten former Iraqi leader dragged from his hole in December 2003. His trial will be difficult to arrange if it is to appear in any way fair. Nor will it be easy to find evidence of Saddam directly ordering massacres. And controversy has already engulfed the trial. Salem Chalabi, initially in charge, was accused of murder and dismissed.
Saddam's prosecution will cause division. The Kurds want to execute the man who oppressed and slaughtered them. The Shia, too, want him convicted for the killings after their uprising in 1991 and the murder of their leaders. But the Sunni are more ambivalent, not because of loyalty to Saddam, but because they see a trial as a veiled attack on their community. Many Iraqis also feel that however bad conditions were under Saddam they were better than today. The destruction of Fallujah by the US Marines and the torture of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers in Abu Ghraib have made them less willing to condemn Saddam, a feat most would have found incredible two years ago.
IS NORTH KOREA NEXT ON THE AMERICAN HITLIST?
No, for the simple reason that the Americans are more concerned about stopping countries from obtaining a nuclear weapon rather than going after those that have one. Experts agree North Korea probably has half a dozen nuclear bombs, or enough to deter an American attack. So Iran - which is suspected of developing a nuclear bomb - is now "top of the list of potential troublespots", according to the American Vice-President, Dick Cheney.
It is also the reason Iraq was a target in the first place, rather than North Korea, which from a nuclear perspective was a far more dangerous threat. Iran must have realised it would be safer from attack the sooner it developed nuclear capability. In that sense, the invasion of Iraq has made the world much less safe.
The countries that the Americans want quaking in their boots have been branded "outposts of tyranny" by the new US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. The list is Cuba, Burma, North Korea, Iran, Belarus, and Zimbabwe. She did not indicate an order of priority, and left off her list other states which happen to be US allies.
Taking strong-arm action against a geo-strategically important state like Iran will be tricky: Iranian officials say Tehran would respond vigorously to any military attack by the United States or Israel. "Iran is not Iraq, Iran is not North Korea," said an Iranian diplomat.
Is the world safer now?
The Independent
28 January 2005
(excerpts from article:)
As war ended, our correspondents examined key questions about Iraq's future. With the elections looming, the updated answers highlight the global impact of the conflict
Analysis by Rupert Cornwell, Andrew Grice, Patrick Cockburn, Anne Penketh, Andrew Buncombe, Ben Russell, Stephen Castle and Elizabeth Davies
WHERE ARE THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION?
As we know now, they were never in Iraq, cutting away the rationale for going to war. But next door, Iran, the state most feared by Saddam Hussein, is now accused of being less than a year from a "point of no return" in building its own nuclear bomb - a direct result of the Iraq war. It has also emerged since the war that the Americans turned a blind eye to the export of nuclear parts by the top nuclear scientist in Pakistan, a major US ally in the "war on terror". The network of A Q Khan, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear programme, was in the business of selling nuclear technology to the highest bidder, including the arch-enemies of America - Libya and North Korea. Even South Korea has been conducting clandestine nuclear experiments, fearing its northern neighbour may have built six nuclear bombs. Far from shutting down the nuclear peril, the Bush administration has actually increased the global threat.
WHO ARE THE INSURGENTS AND ARE THEY LINKED TO AL-QA'IDA?
The presence of al-Qa'ida in Iraq was cited by President George Bush as one of the main reasons for going to war, even though there was never any proof of a link to Saddam Hussein. Iraq, back then, was devoid of terrorism. How times have changed - again, as a direct consequence of the war.
There is no single resistance movement. It is made up of different groups - many of which only operate in a single district. The US has sought to portray the insurgents as consisting of either foreign fighters or bloodthirsty Islamic fanatics, though US military intelligence admits that 95 per cent of fighters are Iraqi. The common element among the different groups is opposition to the US occupation. And they are bent on disrupting the elections to speed up the Americans' departure.
The military backbone of the resistance which developed with great speed after the fall of Saddam was made up of former members of the security forces and Baath party. But they could not have gathered support and sympathy from the population so swiftly if the US administration, devoid of a post-war plan, had not so rapidly discredited itself. Most Iraqi men have some military training. They are traditionally armed and after the war Iraq was awash with weapons.
The resistance rapidly took on an Islamic colouring, the very aspect the US feared. Since August 2003, there has been a wave of suicide bombing unprecedented in history. Here, the foreign volunteers were important and they appear to have provided the bulk of the bombers. Islamic fundamentalists outside Iraq provided large sums of money.
The insurgents have become more expert. There are greater signs of co-ordination. A few days after the US Marines started their assault on Fallujah in November, the resistance attacked Mosul and captured most of the city.
How sectarian is the resistance? The Salafi or militant fundamentalist Sunni wing of the insurgency has repeatedly targeted Shia with suicide bombs in Baghdad, Najaf and Kerbala, causing horrendous casualties. These attacks ensured that the uprising remains confined to the Sunni Arabs.
Since early 2004 the US has promoted Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as the man behind the uprising. This probably began as a propaganda ploy but Zarqawi revelled in the publicity and American denunciations meant local groups began to call themselves al-Qa'ida.
At any rate, the invasion - and the lack of planning - has created the very conditions the US cited as reason for going to war. Trouble was, they never existed then.
DO IRAQIS FEEL LIBERATED?
The key question, and the one answer showing the biggest change since our investigation in April 2003. Just after the war, polls showed that Iraqis were evenly divided about whether they felt liberated or occupied. We said back then that Iraqis have a strong sense of nationhood, and predicted that any sense of being subjected to American hegemony would be strongly resisted. By the time the US ended direct rule of Iraq through the Coalition Provisional Authority in the summer of 2004, only 2 per cent of Arab Iraqis supported the occupation. The overthrow of Saddam had brought none of the political and economic benefits they expected. Today, the only large group in Iraq which still overwhelmingly feels liberated is the Kurdish community, which makes up about 17 per cent of the population.
Despite the supposed handover of power to an Iraqi interim government last year, Iraqis see the US as the controller of the government. Many of them this week referred to the election as "a movie" staged for the benefit of the outside world. Significantly many of those who say they will vote also blame the US for their woes. This is the greatest mistake made by US analysts: the belief that because the Shia are increasingly hostile to the Sunni this means that they accept the occupation. The prestigious Brussels-based International Crisis Group sees the growth of hostility to the US as the most important development in Iraq since 2003. It says in a recent report: "Of all the many changes that have affected popular attitudes since the fall of the Baathist regime, perhaps the most notable has been the precipitous drop in the confidence in the US."
WHAT WAS THE WAR REALLY ABOUT?
Astonishingly, two years on there is no clear answer. The Bush White House claimed the invasion was to get rid of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, and destroy a regime that was linked to terrorism. When the WMD failed to materialise, the war was justified (on legally shaky grounds) as a mission to remove an odious and repressive regime, the first step in a democratic transformation of the Middle East.
In truth, Iraq was at the top of the administration's hit list long before 9/11. The neo-conservatives in charge of US security policy had been calling for Saddam's overthrow for five years or more. This they argued, would give the US a new strategic base in the Gulf to replace Saudi Arabia. It would place the region's second oil producer firmly within the US orbit. It would step up the pressure on Iran, meeting a longstanding desire of Israel. Finally, there is a family factor: did Bush the son invade to finish the job started by Bush the father? Somewhere in this mixture of fear, grand strategy and blinkered ideology lies the explanation for the war.
IS THIS THE FIRST STEP TO REORDERING THE MIDDLE EAST?
That was, and remains, Mr Bush's goal, as his extraordinary second inauguration address shows. Turn Iraq into a functioning democratic regime, the theory runs, and the Islamic extremists and insurgents "who hate our freedom" would be on the retreat across the Muslim world.
Seduced by a benign version of the domino theory, Washington imagined that other authoritarian regimes would realise there was no alternative to liberalisation and democratisation. Thus would be achieved an economic and political rebirth of the Middle East, including the most elusive prize of all, a peace settlement between Israel and Palestine.
But even if the Iraqi election on Sunday goes (relatively) smoothly, those ambitions now appear to be hopelessly overblown.
The initial goals of Mr Blair's Palestinian conference in March have been watered down under Israeli pressure. Mr Bush's once-trumpeted Greater Middle East Initiative, designed to foster free thinking, free markets and free media across the region, has been drastically scaled back after complaints from allies such as Egypt that the US was trying to impose its views.
WHAT ABOUT SADDAM?
Saddam Hussein is in custody awaiting trial in the US military base at Baghdad airport. But his appearances in court have not benefited the interim government as much as they had hoped. His capture has, surprisingly, highlighted difficulties, and his is the spectre overhanging the elections.
His strong, defiant demeanour before his accusers last year quickly replaced in the public psyche the earlier images of a bedraggled and beaten former Iraqi leader dragged from his hole in December 2003. His trial will be difficult to arrange if it is to appear in any way fair. Nor will it be easy to find evidence of Saddam directly ordering massacres. And controversy has already engulfed the trial. Salem Chalabi, initially in charge, was accused of murder and dismissed.
Saddam's prosecution will cause division. The Kurds want to execute the man who oppressed and slaughtered them. The Shia, too, want him convicted for the killings after their uprising in 1991 and the murder of their leaders. But the Sunni are more ambivalent, not because of loyalty to Saddam, but because they see a trial as a veiled attack on their community. Many Iraqis also feel that however bad conditions were under Saddam they were better than today. The destruction of Fallujah by the US Marines and the torture of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers in Abu Ghraib have made them less willing to condemn Saddam, a feat most would have found incredible two years ago.
IS NORTH KOREA NEXT ON THE AMERICAN HITLIST?
No, for the simple reason that the Americans are more concerned about stopping countries from obtaining a nuclear weapon rather than going after those that have one. Experts agree North Korea probably has half a dozen nuclear bombs, or enough to deter an American attack. So Iran - which is suspected of developing a nuclear bomb - is now "top of the list of potential troublespots", according to the American Vice-President, Dick Cheney.
It is also the reason Iraq was a target in the first place, rather than North Korea, which from a nuclear perspective was a far more dangerous threat. Iran must have realised it would be safer from attack the sooner it developed nuclear capability. In that sense, the invasion of Iraq has made the world much less safe.
The countries that the Americans want quaking in their boots have been branded "outposts of tyranny" by the new US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. The list is Cuba, Burma, North Korea, Iran, Belarus, and Zimbabwe. She did not indicate an order of priority, and left off her list other states which happen to be US allies.
Taking strong-arm action against a geo-strategically important state like Iran will be tricky: Iranian officials say Tehran would respond vigorously to any military attack by the United States or Israel. "Iran is not Iraq, Iran is not North Korea," said an Iranian diplomat.
Women are the new victims of Islamic groups in Iraq
Maybe we should forbid men and allow ONLY women to run for office in Iraq....
The article below flies in the face of assertions by my anti-middle east friends that we need to overthrow Saddam (and the rest of the Middle East) so we can improve the way they treat women. The article below shows that what's happened is the OPPOSITE. Iraq, for all its brutality, was a secular country where women had more rights than any other in the Middle East. We've just thrown it back to the dark ages.
Houzan Mahmoud:
Why I am not taking part in these phoney elections
Women are the new victims of Islamic groups intent on restoring a medieval barbarity
The Independent
28 January 2005
I am an Iraqi woman, and I am boycotting Sunday's elections. Women who do vote will be voting for an enslaved future. Surely, say those who support these elections, after decades of tyranny, here at last is a form of democracy, imperfect, but democracy nevertheless?
In reality, these elections are, for Iraq's women, little more than a cruel joke. Amid the suicide attacks, kidnappings and US-led military assaults of the 20-odd months since Saddam's fall, the little-reported phenomenon is the sharp increase in the persecution of Iraqi women. Women are the new victims of Islamic groups intent on restoring a medieval barbarity and of a political establishment that cares little for women's empowerment.
Having for years enjoyed greater rights than other women in the Middle East, women in Iraq are now losing even their basic freedoms. The right to choose their clothes, the right to love or marry whom they want. Of course women suffered under Saddam. I fled his cruel regime. I personally witnessed much brutality, but the subjugation of women was never a goal of the Baath party. What we are seeing now is deeply worrying: a reviled occupation and an openly reactionary Islamic armed insurrection combining to take Iraq into a new dark age.
Every day, leaflets are distributed across the country warning women against going out unveiled, wearing make-up, or mixing with men. Many female university students have given up their studies to protect themselves against the Islamists.
The new norm - enforced at the barrel of a gun by Islamic extremists - is to see women as the repository of honour and shame, not only on behalf of family and tribe but the nation. Ken Bigley's abductors perversely wanted to redeem the "honour" of Iraq through obtaining the release of female prisoners. Since when did Islamic groups - the very people doing the hostage-taking, torturing and killing - start caring about the rights of Iraqi women?
Take the case of Anaheed. She was suspended to a tree in the New Baghdad area of the capital and then first shot by her father (a solicitor no less) and then by each member of her tribe. She was then was cut into pieces. This to clear the shame on the tribe's honour for having wanted to marry a man she was in love with. This happened in late 2003, months after the "liberation".
In the last six months at least eight women have been killed in Mosul alone - all apparently by Islamic groups clamping down on female independence. Among these, a professor from the city's law school was shot and beheaded, a vet was killed on her way to work, and a pharmacist from the Alkhansah hospital was shot dead on her doorstep.
The occupation has in effect unleashed this new violence against women, while in some cases adding its own particular variety. Iraqi women have been tortured by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib and other prisons. The social taboo against speaking about sexual abuse is so strong in Iraq that these women will almost certainly have no-one to turn to upon release.
Methal Kazem is one woman who has spoken publicly of her treatment at the hands of the occupiers. Last February a US helicopter landed on the roof of her house. She was hooded and handcuffed and taken to Abu Ghraib. Accused of being a former Baathist secret policewoman, she was made to run on sharp gravel, tied up and suspended and made to listen to the screaming of other inmates. She heard one man repeatedly screaming "do not touch my honour", and Methal believes that the man's wife was being raped in front of him.
When Allied forces handed over power to the interim government last June, they should, as Amnesty International has argued, also have handed over prisoners. Instead they have illegally detained over 2,000, without charge. Few of these may be women, but it still leaves thousands of wives, mothers, sisters and other family members in distress and despair.
I also believe that Iraqi women have been raped by American soldiers. They dare not talk about it, however, as they face being killed by their own families if they do. My associates in Iraq have been counselling Liqaa, a former Iraqi female soldier, who was raped by an American soldier in November 2003. The savage truth is that if she returns home, male family members may murder her for her "dishonour".
If Iraqi women take part in Sunday's poll, who are they to vote for? Women's rights are ignored by most of the groupings on offer. The US government appears happy to have Iraq governed by reactionary religious and ethnocentric élites.
The one glimmer of hope is that courageous demonstrations against rape and kidnapping have taken place. In September, a women's protest fused opposition to the occupation, a demand that all Islamic militia forces leave cities, and a call for safe streets for women.This new women-led secular progressive movement is against the interim government and against the violence and restriction of political Islam. Those who support us should publicly renounce these phoney elections and campaign for a truly free Iraq.
The writer, an Iraqi living in Britain, is the UK head of the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq
The article below flies in the face of assertions by my anti-middle east friends that we need to overthrow Saddam (and the rest of the Middle East) so we can improve the way they treat women. The article below shows that what's happened is the OPPOSITE. Iraq, for all its brutality, was a secular country where women had more rights than any other in the Middle East. We've just thrown it back to the dark ages.
Houzan Mahmoud:
Why I am not taking part in these phoney elections
Women are the new victims of Islamic groups intent on restoring a medieval barbarity
The Independent
28 January 2005
I am an Iraqi woman, and I am boycotting Sunday's elections. Women who do vote will be voting for an enslaved future. Surely, say those who support these elections, after decades of tyranny, here at last is a form of democracy, imperfect, but democracy nevertheless?
In reality, these elections are, for Iraq's women, little more than a cruel joke. Amid the suicide attacks, kidnappings and US-led military assaults of the 20-odd months since Saddam's fall, the little-reported phenomenon is the sharp increase in the persecution of Iraqi women. Women are the new victims of Islamic groups intent on restoring a medieval barbarity and of a political establishment that cares little for women's empowerment.
Having for years enjoyed greater rights than other women in the Middle East, women in Iraq are now losing even their basic freedoms. The right to choose their clothes, the right to love or marry whom they want. Of course women suffered under Saddam. I fled his cruel regime. I personally witnessed much brutality, but the subjugation of women was never a goal of the Baath party. What we are seeing now is deeply worrying: a reviled occupation and an openly reactionary Islamic armed insurrection combining to take Iraq into a new dark age.
Every day, leaflets are distributed across the country warning women against going out unveiled, wearing make-up, or mixing with men. Many female university students have given up their studies to protect themselves against the Islamists.
The new norm - enforced at the barrel of a gun by Islamic extremists - is to see women as the repository of honour and shame, not only on behalf of family and tribe but the nation. Ken Bigley's abductors perversely wanted to redeem the "honour" of Iraq through obtaining the release of female prisoners. Since when did Islamic groups - the very people doing the hostage-taking, torturing and killing - start caring about the rights of Iraqi women?
Take the case of Anaheed. She was suspended to a tree in the New Baghdad area of the capital and then first shot by her father (a solicitor no less) and then by each member of her tribe. She was then was cut into pieces. This to clear the shame on the tribe's honour for having wanted to marry a man she was in love with. This happened in late 2003, months after the "liberation".
In the last six months at least eight women have been killed in Mosul alone - all apparently by Islamic groups clamping down on female independence. Among these, a professor from the city's law school was shot and beheaded, a vet was killed on her way to work, and a pharmacist from the Alkhansah hospital was shot dead on her doorstep.
The occupation has in effect unleashed this new violence against women, while in some cases adding its own particular variety. Iraqi women have been tortured by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib and other prisons. The social taboo against speaking about sexual abuse is so strong in Iraq that these women will almost certainly have no-one to turn to upon release.
Methal Kazem is one woman who has spoken publicly of her treatment at the hands of the occupiers. Last February a US helicopter landed on the roof of her house. She was hooded and handcuffed and taken to Abu Ghraib. Accused of being a former Baathist secret policewoman, she was made to run on sharp gravel, tied up and suspended and made to listen to the screaming of other inmates. She heard one man repeatedly screaming "do not touch my honour", and Methal believes that the man's wife was being raped in front of him.
When Allied forces handed over power to the interim government last June, they should, as Amnesty International has argued, also have handed over prisoners. Instead they have illegally detained over 2,000, without charge. Few of these may be women, but it still leaves thousands of wives, mothers, sisters and other family members in distress and despair.
I also believe that Iraqi women have been raped by American soldiers. They dare not talk about it, however, as they face being killed by their own families if they do. My associates in Iraq have been counselling Liqaa, a former Iraqi female soldier, who was raped by an American soldier in November 2003. The savage truth is that if she returns home, male family members may murder her for her "dishonour".
If Iraqi women take part in Sunday's poll, who are they to vote for? Women's rights are ignored by most of the groupings on offer. The US government appears happy to have Iraq governed by reactionary religious and ethnocentric élites.
The one glimmer of hope is that courageous demonstrations against rape and kidnapping have taken place. In September, a women's protest fused opposition to the occupation, a demand that all Islamic militia forces leave cities, and a call for safe streets for women.This new women-led secular progressive movement is against the interim government and against the violence and restriction of political Islam. Those who support us should publicly renounce these phoney elections and campaign for a truly free Iraq.
The writer, an Iraqi living in Britain, is the UK head of the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq
Thursday, January 27, 2005
BP reports "staggering" profits of $25.4 billion
A telling development below, partly a consequence of the leap in oil prices. And what's that point there? Besides the wealth of oil under Iraq, guess who sits on a 10th of the world's oil... what do you know, Iran! Oh what a surprise.
The Sunday Times: Browne admits 'staggering' amounts of cash flowing at BP
by Dan Box
January 23, 2005
LORD BROWNE, chief executive of oil giant BP, has described his company’s performance as “staggering” as he prepares to unveil record profits for a British company.
City analysts expect BP to report pre-tax profits next month of $25.4 billion (£13.5 billion), a rise of about 47% on the previous year.
The bumper figures will dwarf both the £9.2 billion pre-tax profit that the oil group announced for 2003 and the £9.6 billion that HSBC, Britain’s largest bank, is expected to reveal in March.
The increase, which reflects the impact of record oil prices, means the company made about $69.6m (£37.1m) of profit a day.
The Sunday Times: On top of the world
by Dan Box
-- snip --
A few years ago — before the World Trade Center attacks of 2001 — Browne and BP were readying themselves to enter Iran, which sits on almost a tenth of the world’s oil. Now, he regards this as impossible.
“Right now it is impractical for BP, because 40% of BP is in the US and we are the largest producer of oil and gas in the US,” he said. BP currently produces a third more American indigenous oil and gas than its nearest competitor, and that share is growing. “Politically Iran is not a flyer,” he said. “One day I hope it is.”
-- snip --
In the meantime, Browne worries about the public perception of companies and intends to improve the image of the corprate world. “People say that companies put making money above everything — they will do anything to increase their value — that they are of no value to society,” he said. “The best way to do business is to consider the mutual advantage between the company and the people you touch.”
The Sunday Times: Browne admits 'staggering' amounts of cash flowing at BP
by Dan Box
January 23, 2005
LORD BROWNE, chief executive of oil giant BP, has described his company’s performance as “staggering” as he prepares to unveil record profits for a British company.
City analysts expect BP to report pre-tax profits next month of $25.4 billion (£13.5 billion), a rise of about 47% on the previous year.
The bumper figures will dwarf both the £9.2 billion pre-tax profit that the oil group announced for 2003 and the £9.6 billion that HSBC, Britain’s largest bank, is expected to reveal in March.
The increase, which reflects the impact of record oil prices, means the company made about $69.6m (£37.1m) of profit a day.
The Sunday Times: On top of the world
by Dan Box
-- snip --
A few years ago — before the World Trade Center attacks of 2001 — Browne and BP were readying themselves to enter Iran, which sits on almost a tenth of the world’s oil. Now, he regards this as impossible.
“Right now it is impractical for BP, because 40% of BP is in the US and we are the largest producer of oil and gas in the US,” he said. BP currently produces a third more American indigenous oil and gas than its nearest competitor, and that share is growing. “Politically Iran is not a flyer,” he said. “One day I hope it is.”
-- snip --
In the meantime, Browne worries about the public perception of companies and intends to improve the image of the corprate world. “People say that companies put making money above everything — they will do anything to increase their value — that they are of no value to society,” he said. “The best way to do business is to consider the mutual advantage between the company and the people you touch.”
This Pollyanna Army (The Guardian)
Searing commentary by Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Clinton.
Comment
The Guardian: This Pollyanna army
Bush will not admit that his troops are too exhausted to sustain his vengeful global missions
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday January 27, 2005
The most penetrating critique of the realism informing President Bush's second inaugural address, a trumpet call of imperial ambition, was made one month before it was delivered, by Lt Gen James Helmly, chief of the US Army Reserve.
In an internal memorandum, he described "the Army Reserve's inability under current policies, procedures and practices ... to meet mission requirements associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. The Army Reserve is additionally in grave danger of being unable to meet other operational requirements and is rapidly degenerating into a broken force".
These "dysfunctional" policies are producing a crisis "more acute and hurtful", as the Reserve's ability to mobilise troops is "eroding daily".
The US force in Iraq of about 150,000 troops is composed of a "volunteer" army that came into being with the end of military conscription during the Vietnam war. More than 40% are National Guard and Reserves, most having completed second tours of duty and being sent out again.
The force level has been maintained by the Pentagon only by "stop-loss" orders that coerce soldiers to remain in service after their contractual enlistment expires - a back-door draft.
Re-enlistment is collapsing, by 30% last year. The Pentagon justified this de facto conscription by telling Congress that it is merely a short-term solution that would not be necessary as Iraq quickly stabilises and an Iraqi security force fills the vacuum. But this week the Pentagon announced that the US force level would remain unchanged through 2006.
"I don't know where these troops are coming from. It's mystifying," Representative Ellen Tauscher, a ranking Democrat on the House armed services committee, told me. "There's no policy to deal with the fact we have a military in extremis."
Bush's speech calling for "ending tyranny in all the world" was of consistent abstraction uninflected by anything as specific as the actual condition of the military that would presumably be sent scurrying on various global missions.
But the speech was aflame with images of destruction and vengeance. The neoconservatives were ecstatic, perhaps as much by their influence in inserting their gnostic codewords into the speech as the dogmatism of the speech itself.
For them, Bush's rhetoric about "eternal hope that is meant to be fulfiled" was a sign of their triumph. The speech, crowed neocon William Kristol, who consulted on it, was indeed "informed by Strauss" - a reference to Leo Strauss, philosopher of obscurantist strands of absolutist thought, mentor and inspiration to some neocons who believe they fulfil his teaching by acting as tutors to politicians in need of their superior guidance.
'Informed" is hardly the precise word to account for the manipulation of Bush's impulses by cultish advisers with ulterior motives.
Even as the neocons revelled in their influence, Bush's glittering generalities, lofted on wings of hypocrisy, crashed to earth. Would we launch campaigns against tyrannical governments in Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or China?
Of course, the White House briefed reporters, Bush didn't mean his rhetoric to suggest any change in strategy.
Unfortunately for Condoleezza Rice, such levels of empty abstraction could not glide her through her Senate confirmation as secretary of state without abrasion.
With implacable rigidity, she stood by every administration decision. There was no disinformation on Saddam Hussein's development of nuclear weapons of mass destruction; any suggestion that she had been misleading in the rush to war was an attack on her personal integrity. The light military force for the invasion was just right. And it was just right now.
Contrary to Senator Joseph Biden of the foreign relations committee, who stated that there are only 14,000 trained Iraqi security forces, she insisted there are 120,000. Why, secretary of defence Rumsfeld had told her so.
Then, implicitly acknowledging the failure to create a credible Iraqi army, the Pentagon announced that the US forces would remain at the same level for the next two years. Rice's Pollyanna testimony was suddenly inoperative.
The administration has no strategy for Iraq or for the coerced American army plodding endlessly across the desert.
Representative Tauscher wonders when the House armed services committee, along with the rest of the Congress, will learn anything from the Bush administration that might be considered factual: "They are never persuaded by the facts. Nobody can tell you what their plan is and they don't feel the need to have one."
On the eve of the Iraqi election, neither the president's soaring rhetoric nor the new secretary of state's fantasy numbers touch the brutal facts on the ground.
Sidney Blumethal is former senior adviser to President Clinton and author of The Clinton Wars
Comment
The Guardian: This Pollyanna army
Bush will not admit that his troops are too exhausted to sustain his vengeful global missions
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday January 27, 2005
The most penetrating critique of the realism informing President Bush's second inaugural address, a trumpet call of imperial ambition, was made one month before it was delivered, by Lt Gen James Helmly, chief of the US Army Reserve.
In an internal memorandum, he described "the Army Reserve's inability under current policies, procedures and practices ... to meet mission requirements associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. The Army Reserve is additionally in grave danger of being unable to meet other operational requirements and is rapidly degenerating into a broken force".
These "dysfunctional" policies are producing a crisis "more acute and hurtful", as the Reserve's ability to mobilise troops is "eroding daily".
The US force in Iraq of about 150,000 troops is composed of a "volunteer" army that came into being with the end of military conscription during the Vietnam war. More than 40% are National Guard and Reserves, most having completed second tours of duty and being sent out again.
The force level has been maintained by the Pentagon only by "stop-loss" orders that coerce soldiers to remain in service after their contractual enlistment expires - a back-door draft.
Re-enlistment is collapsing, by 30% last year. The Pentagon justified this de facto conscription by telling Congress that it is merely a short-term solution that would not be necessary as Iraq quickly stabilises and an Iraqi security force fills the vacuum. But this week the Pentagon announced that the US force level would remain unchanged through 2006.
"I don't know where these troops are coming from. It's mystifying," Representative Ellen Tauscher, a ranking Democrat on the House armed services committee, told me. "There's no policy to deal with the fact we have a military in extremis."
Bush's speech calling for "ending tyranny in all the world" was of consistent abstraction uninflected by anything as specific as the actual condition of the military that would presumably be sent scurrying on various global missions.
But the speech was aflame with images of destruction and vengeance. The neoconservatives were ecstatic, perhaps as much by their influence in inserting their gnostic codewords into the speech as the dogmatism of the speech itself.
For them, Bush's rhetoric about "eternal hope that is meant to be fulfiled" was a sign of their triumph. The speech, crowed neocon William Kristol, who consulted on it, was indeed "informed by Strauss" - a reference to Leo Strauss, philosopher of obscurantist strands of absolutist thought, mentor and inspiration to some neocons who believe they fulfil his teaching by acting as tutors to politicians in need of their superior guidance.
'Informed" is hardly the precise word to account for the manipulation of Bush's impulses by cultish advisers with ulterior motives.
Even as the neocons revelled in their influence, Bush's glittering generalities, lofted on wings of hypocrisy, crashed to earth. Would we launch campaigns against tyrannical governments in Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or China?
Of course, the White House briefed reporters, Bush didn't mean his rhetoric to suggest any change in strategy.
Unfortunately for Condoleezza Rice, such levels of empty abstraction could not glide her through her Senate confirmation as secretary of state without abrasion.
With implacable rigidity, she stood by every administration decision. There was no disinformation on Saddam Hussein's development of nuclear weapons of mass destruction; any suggestion that she had been misleading in the rush to war was an attack on her personal integrity. The light military force for the invasion was just right. And it was just right now.
Contrary to Senator Joseph Biden of the foreign relations committee, who stated that there are only 14,000 trained Iraqi security forces, she insisted there are 120,000. Why, secretary of defence Rumsfeld had told her so.
Then, implicitly acknowledging the failure to create a credible Iraqi army, the Pentagon announced that the US forces would remain at the same level for the next two years. Rice's Pollyanna testimony was suddenly inoperative.
The administration has no strategy for Iraq or for the coerced American army plodding endlessly across the desert.
Representative Tauscher wonders when the House armed services committee, along with the rest of the Congress, will learn anything from the Bush administration that might be considered factual: "They are never persuaded by the facts. Nobody can tell you what their plan is and they don't feel the need to have one."
On the eve of the Iraqi election, neither the president's soaring rhetoric nor the new secretary of state's fantasy numbers touch the brutal facts on the ground.
Sidney Blumethal is former senior adviser to President Clinton and author of The Clinton Wars
Coming Wars article confirmed despite efforts of Pentagon attack dogs
Despite the efforts of the Pentagon and its attack dogs and their extraordinary smear campaign against Seymour Hersh for his article last week in The New Yorker, (for example, Richard Perle--who thinks of Hersh as "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist"--told Charlie Rose: "It was a typical Sy Hersh piece. That is to say it was full of inaccuracy.") Hersh's allegations have been confirmed this week by the Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN. See excerpts below...
Washington Post: Secret Unit Expands Rumsfeld's Domain
New Espionage Branch Delving Into CIA Territory
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 23, 2005; Page A01
(excerpts from the article:)
The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post.
The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld's written order to end his "near total dependence on CIA" for what is known as human intelligence. Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces.
Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places they declined to name. According to an early planning memorandum to Rumsfeld from Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the focus of the intelligence initiative is on "emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia." Myers and his staff declined to be interviewed.
The Strategic Support Branch was created to provide Rumsfeld with independent tools for the "full spectrum of humint operations," according to an internal account of its origin and mission. Human intelligence operations, a term used in counterpoint to technical means such as satellite photography, range from interrogation of prisoners and scouting of targets in wartime to the peacetime recruitment of foreign spies. A recent Pentagon memo states that recruited agents may include "notorious figures" whose links to the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed.
Perhaps the most significant shift is the Defense Department's bid to conduct surreptitious missions, in friendly and unfriendly states, when conventional war is a distant or unlikely prospect -- activities that have traditionally been the province of the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Senior Rumsfeld advisers said those missions are central to what they called the department's predominant role in combating terrorist threats.
NY Times: Pentagon Sends Its Spies to Join Fight on Terror
By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: January 24, 2005
(excerpts from the article:)
ASHINGTON, Jan. 23 - The Pentagon has created battlefield intelligence units that for the first time have been assigned to work directly with Special Operations forces on secret counterterrorism missions, tasks that had been largely the province of the Central Intelligence Agency, senior Defense Department officials said Sunday.
CNN: Pentagon runs clandestine intelligence-gathering infrastructure
From Barbara Starr
CNN
Monday, January 24, 2005
Posted: 1:32 PM EST (1832 GMT)
(excerpts from the article:)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency since 2002 has run a beefed-up intelligence-gathering and support unit that has authority to operate clandestinely anywhere in the world where it is ordered to go in support of anti-terrorism and counter-terrorism missions, a senior defense official said Sunday.
The official said the role of the Strategic Support Branch -- described first in Sunday's Washington Post -- "is to provide an intelligence capability for field operation units" including the U.S. military's secretive special forces unit.
The Strategic Support Branch (SSB) got its name in 2004 after operating under a different, undisclosed name before then, said the official, who confirmed the unit's existence and mission to CNN.
Washington Post: Secret Unit Expands Rumsfeld's Domain
New Espionage Branch Delving Into CIA Territory
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 23, 2005; Page A01
(excerpts from the article:)
The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post.
The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld's written order to end his "near total dependence on CIA" for what is known as human intelligence. Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces.
Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places they declined to name. According to an early planning memorandum to Rumsfeld from Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the focus of the intelligence initiative is on "emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia." Myers and his staff declined to be interviewed.
The Strategic Support Branch was created to provide Rumsfeld with independent tools for the "full spectrum of humint operations," according to an internal account of its origin and mission. Human intelligence operations, a term used in counterpoint to technical means such as satellite photography, range from interrogation of prisoners and scouting of targets in wartime to the peacetime recruitment of foreign spies. A recent Pentagon memo states that recruited agents may include "notorious figures" whose links to the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed.
Perhaps the most significant shift is the Defense Department's bid to conduct surreptitious missions, in friendly and unfriendly states, when conventional war is a distant or unlikely prospect -- activities that have traditionally been the province of the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Senior Rumsfeld advisers said those missions are central to what they called the department's predominant role in combating terrorist threats.
NY Times: Pentagon Sends Its Spies to Join Fight on Terror
By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: January 24, 2005
(excerpts from the article:)
ASHINGTON, Jan. 23 - The Pentagon has created battlefield intelligence units that for the first time have been assigned to work directly with Special Operations forces on secret counterterrorism missions, tasks that had been largely the province of the Central Intelligence Agency, senior Defense Department officials said Sunday.
CNN: Pentagon runs clandestine intelligence-gathering infrastructure
From Barbara Starr
CNN
Monday, January 24, 2005
Posted: 1:32 PM EST (1832 GMT)
(excerpts from the article:)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency since 2002 has run a beefed-up intelligence-gathering and support unit that has authority to operate clandestinely anywhere in the world where it is ordered to go in support of anti-terrorism and counter-terrorism missions, a senior defense official said Sunday.
The official said the role of the Strategic Support Branch -- described first in Sunday's Washington Post -- "is to provide an intelligence capability for field operation units" including the U.S. military's secretive special forces unit.
The Strategic Support Branch (SSB) got its name in 2004 after operating under a different, undisclosed name before then, said the official, who confirmed the unit's existence and mission to CNN.
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Countdown to global catastrophe (The Independent - UK)
Looks like we've got 10 years to get our shit together:
Countdown to Global Catastrophe
Climate change: report warns point of no return may be reached in 10 years, leading to droughts, agricultural failure and water shortages
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor, The Independent
24 January 2005
The global warming danger threshold for the world is clearly marked for the first time in an international report to be published tomorrow - and the bad news is, the world has nearly reached it already.
The countdown to climate-change catastrophe is spelt out by a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world - and it is remarkably brief. In as little as 10 years, or even less, their report indicates, the point of no return with global warming may have been reached.
The report, Meeting The Climate Challenge, is aimed at policymakers in every country, from national leaders down. It has been timed to coincide with Tony Blair's promised efforts to advance climate change policy in 2005 as chairman of both the G8 group of rich countries and the European Union.
And it breaks new ground by putting a figure - for the first time in such a high-level document - on the danger point of global warming, that is, the temperature rise beyond which the world would be irretrievably committed to disastrous changes. These could include widespread agricultural failure, water shortages and major droughts, increased disease, sea-level rise and the death of forests - with the added possibility of abrupt catastrophic events such as "runaway" global warming, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, or the switching-off of the Gulf Stream.
The report says this point will be two degrees centigrade above the average world temperature prevailing in 1750 before the industrial revolution, when human activities - mainly the production of waste gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), which retain the sun's heat in the atmosphere - first started to affect the climate. But it points out that global average temperature has already risen by 0.8 degrees since then, with more rises already in the pipeline - so the world has little more than a single degree of temperature latitude before the crucial point is reached.
More ominously still, it assesses the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere after which the two-degree rise will become inevitable, and says it will be 400 parts per million by volume (ppm) of CO2.
The current level is 379ppm, and rising by more than 2ppm annually - so it is likely that the vital 400ppm threshold will be crossed in just 10 years' time, or even less (although the two-degree temperature rise might take longer to come into effect).
"There is an ecological timebomb ticking away," said Stephen Byers, the former transport secretary, who co-chaired the task force that produced the report with the US Republican senator Olympia Snowe. It was assembled by the Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK, the Centre for American Progress in the US, and The Australia Institute.The group's chief scientific adviser is Dr Rakendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The report urges all the G8 countries to agree to generate a quarter of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025, and to double their research spending on low-carbon energy technologies by 2010. It also calls on the G8 to form a climate group with leading developing nations such as India and China, which have big and growing CO2 emissions.
"What this underscores is that it's what we invest in now and in the next 20 years that will deliver a stable climate, not what we do in the middle of the century or later," said Tom Burke, a former government adviser on green issues who now advises business.
The report starkly spells out the likely consequences of exceeding the threshold. "Beyond the 2 degrees C level, the risks to human societies and ecosystems grow significantly," it says.
"It is likely, for example, that average-temperature increases larger than this will entail substantial agricultural losses, greatly increased numbers of people at risk of water shortages, and widespread adverse health impacts. [They] could also imperil a very high proportion of the world's coral reefs and cause irreversible damage to important terrestrial ecosystems, including the Amazon rainforest."
It goes on: "Above the 2 degrees level, the risks of abrupt, accelerated, or runaway climate change also increase. The possibilities include reaching climatic tipping points leading, for example, to the loss of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets (which, between them, could raise sea level more than 10 metres over the space of a few centuries), the shutdown of the thermohaline ocean circulation (and, with it, the Gulf Stream), and the transformation of the planet's forests and soils from a net sink of carbon to a net source of carbon."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=603975
Countdown to Global Catastrophe
Climate change: report warns point of no return may be reached in 10 years, leading to droughts, agricultural failure and water shortages
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor, The Independent
24 January 2005
The global warming danger threshold for the world is clearly marked for the first time in an international report to be published tomorrow - and the bad news is, the world has nearly reached it already.
The countdown to climate-change catastrophe is spelt out by a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world - and it is remarkably brief. In as little as 10 years, or even less, their report indicates, the point of no return with global warming may have been reached.
The report, Meeting The Climate Challenge, is aimed at policymakers in every country, from national leaders down. It has been timed to coincide with Tony Blair's promised efforts to advance climate change policy in 2005 as chairman of both the G8 group of rich countries and the European Union.
And it breaks new ground by putting a figure - for the first time in such a high-level document - on the danger point of global warming, that is, the temperature rise beyond which the world would be irretrievably committed to disastrous changes. These could include widespread agricultural failure, water shortages and major droughts, increased disease, sea-level rise and the death of forests - with the added possibility of abrupt catastrophic events such as "runaway" global warming, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, or the switching-off of the Gulf Stream.
The report says this point will be two degrees centigrade above the average world temperature prevailing in 1750 before the industrial revolution, when human activities - mainly the production of waste gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), which retain the sun's heat in the atmosphere - first started to affect the climate. But it points out that global average temperature has already risen by 0.8 degrees since then, with more rises already in the pipeline - so the world has little more than a single degree of temperature latitude before the crucial point is reached.
More ominously still, it assesses the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere after which the two-degree rise will become inevitable, and says it will be 400 parts per million by volume (ppm) of CO2.
The current level is 379ppm, and rising by more than 2ppm annually - so it is likely that the vital 400ppm threshold will be crossed in just 10 years' time, or even less (although the two-degree temperature rise might take longer to come into effect).
"There is an ecological timebomb ticking away," said Stephen Byers, the former transport secretary, who co-chaired the task force that produced the report with the US Republican senator Olympia Snowe. It was assembled by the Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK, the Centre for American Progress in the US, and The Australia Institute.The group's chief scientific adviser is Dr Rakendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The report urges all the G8 countries to agree to generate a quarter of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025, and to double their research spending on low-carbon energy technologies by 2010. It also calls on the G8 to form a climate group with leading developing nations such as India and China, which have big and growing CO2 emissions.
"What this underscores is that it's what we invest in now and in the next 20 years that will deliver a stable climate, not what we do in the middle of the century or later," said Tom Burke, a former government adviser on green issues who now advises business.
The report starkly spells out the likely consequences of exceeding the threshold. "Beyond the 2 degrees C level, the risks to human societies and ecosystems grow significantly," it says.
"It is likely, for example, that average-temperature increases larger than this will entail substantial agricultural losses, greatly increased numbers of people at risk of water shortages, and widespread adverse health impacts. [They] could also imperil a very high proportion of the world's coral reefs and cause irreversible damage to important terrestrial ecosystems, including the Amazon rainforest."
It goes on: "Above the 2 degrees level, the risks of abrupt, accelerated, or runaway climate change also increase. The possibilities include reaching climatic tipping points leading, for example, to the loss of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets (which, between them, could raise sea level more than 10 metres over the space of a few centuries), the shutdown of the thermohaline ocean circulation (and, with it, the Gulf Stream), and the transformation of the planet's forests and soils from a net sink of carbon to a net source of carbon."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=603975
The Coming Wars (New Yorker)
A year or two ago, I was mostly just tolerated with occassional ridicule in my email & discussion circles for insisting that Iraq was just the first stop in the broad neo-con agenda to reshape the middle east. Iran or Syria would be next, I said. And probably Saudi Arabia, though they seem like allies for the moment. No way, was the response 1+ years ago... you're blowing this neo-con stuff way out of proportion.
It seems people just don't see what they don't want to see until it's impossible to ignore.
THE COMING WARS
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
in The New Yorker
What the Pentagon can now do in secret.
Issue of 2005-01-24 and 31Posted 2005-01-17
excerpts from the article:
George W. Bush’s reëlection was not his only victory last fall. The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control—against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism—during his second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.
Despite the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the Bush Administration has not reconsidered its basic long-range policy goal in the Middle East: the establishment of democracy throughout the region. Bush’s reëlection is regarded within the Administration as evidence of America’s support for his decision to go to war. It has reaffirmed the position of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon’s civilian leadership who advocated the invasion, including Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Douglas Feith, the Under-secretary for Policy. According to a former high-level intelligence official, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the election and told them, in essence, that the naysayers had been heard and the American people did not accept their message. Rumsfeld added that America was committed to staying in Iraq and that there would be no second-guessing.
“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”
Bush and Cheney may have set the policy, but it is Rumsfeld who has directed its implementation and has absorbed much of the public criticism when things went wrong—whether it was prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib or lack of sufficient armor plating for G.I.s’ vehicles in Iraq. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have called for Rumsfeld’s dismissal, and he is not widely admired inside the military. Nonetheless, his reappointment as Defense Secretary was never in doubt.
Rumsfeld will become even more important during the second term. In interviews with past and present intelligence and military officials, I was told that the agenda had been determined before the Presidential election, and much of it would be Rumsfeld’s responsibility. The war on terrorism would be expanded, and effectively placed under the Pentagon’s control. The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia.
The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books—free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A. Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees. (The laws were enacted after a series of scandals in the nineteen-seventies involving C.I.A. domestic spying and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders.) “The Pentagon doesn’t feel obligated to report any of this to Congress,” the former high-level intelligence official said. “They don’t even call it ‘covert ops’—it’s too close to the C.I.A. phrase. In their view, it’s ‘black reconnaissance.’ They’re not even going to tell the cincs”—the regional American military commanders-in-chief. (The Defense Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)
In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran. “Everyone is saying, ‘You can’t be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,’” the former intelligence official told me. “But they say, ‘We’ve got some lessons learned—not militarily, but how we did it politically. We’re not going to rely on agency pissants.’ No loose ends, and that’s why the C.I.A. is out of there.”
-- snip --
The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer. Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical, and missile sites, both declared and suspected. The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids. “The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible,” the government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told me.
Some of the missions involve extraordinary coöperation. For example, the former high-level intelligence official told me that an American commando task force has been set up in South Asia and is now working closely with a group of Pakistani scientists and technicians who had dealt with Iranian counterparts. (In 2003, the I.A.E.A. disclosed that Iran had been secretly receiving nuclear technology from Pakistan for more than a decade, and had withheld that information from inspectors.) The American task force, aided by the information from Pakistan, has been penetrating eastern Iran from Afghanistan in a hunt for underground installations. The task-force members, or their locally recruited agents, secreted remote detection devices—known as sniffers—capable of sampling the atmosphere for radioactive emissions and other evidence of nuclear-enrichment programs.
Getting such evidence is a pressing concern for the Bush Administration. The former high-level intelligence official told me, “They don’t want to make any W.M.D. intelligence mistakes, as in Iraq. The Republicans can’t have two of those. There’s no education in the second kick of a mule.” The official added that the government of Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani President, has won a high price for its coöperation—American assurance that Pakistan will not have to hand over A. Q. Khan, known as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, to the I.A.E.A. or to any other international authorities for questioning. For two decades, Khan has been linked to a vast consortium of nuclear-black-market activities. Last year, Musharraf professed to be shocked when Khan, in the face of overwhelming evidence, “confessed” to his activities. A few days later, Musharraf pardoned him, and so far he has refused to allow the I.A.E.A. or American intelligence to interview him. Khan is now said to be living under house arrest in a villa in Islamabad. “It’s a deal—a trade-off,” the former high-level intelligence official explained. “‘Tell us what you know about Iran and we will let your A. Q. Khan guys go.’ It’s the neoconservatives’ version of short-term gain at long-term cost. They want to prove that Bush is the anti-terrorism guy who can handle Iran and the nuclear threat, against the long-term goal of eliminating the black market for nuclear proliferation.”
The agreement comes at a time when Musharraf, according to a former high-level Pakistani diplomat, has authorized the expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons arsenal. “Pakistan still needs parts and supplies, and needs to buy them in the clandestine market,” the former diplomat said. “The U.S. has done nothing to stop it.”
There has also been close, and largely unacknowledged, coöperation with Israel. The government consultant with ties to the Pentagon said that the Defense Department civilians, under the leadership of Douglas Feith, have been working with Israeli planners and consultants to develop and refine potential nuclear, chemical-weapons, and missile targets inside Iran.
-- snip --
In my interviews over the past two months, I was given a much harsher view. The hawks in the Administration believe that it will soon become clear that the Europeans’ negotiated approach cannot succeed, and that at that time the Administration will act. “We’re not dealing with a set of National Security Council option papers here,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “They’ve already passed that wicket. It’s not if we’re going to do anything against Iran. They’re doing it.”
The immediate goals of the attacks would be to destroy, or at least temporarily derail, Iran’s ability to go nuclear. But there are other, equally purposeful, motives at work. The government consultant told me that the hawks in the Pentagon, in private discussions, have been urging a limited attack on Iran because they believe it could lead to a toppling of the religious leadership. “Within the soul of Iran there is a struggle between secular nationalists and reformers, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the fundamentalist Islamic movement,” the consultant told me. “The minute the aura of invincibility which the mullahs enjoy is shattered, and with it the ability to hoodwink the West, the Iranian regime will collapse”—like the former Communist regimes in Romania, East Germany, and the Soviet Union. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz share that belief, he said.
“The idea that an American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would produce a popular uprising is extremely illinformed,” said Flynt Leverett, a Middle East scholar who worked on the National Security Council in the Bush Administration. “You have to understand that the nuclear ambition in Iran is supported across the political spectrum, and Iranians will perceive attacks on these sites as attacks on their ambitions to be a major regional player and a modern nation that’s technologically sophisticated.” Leverett, who is now a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, at the Brookings Institution, warned that an American attack, if it takes place, “will produce an Iranian backlash against the United States and a rallying around the regime.”
-- snip --
The new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what it calls “action teams” in the target countries overseas which can be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. “Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?” the former high-level intelligence official asked me, referring to the military-led gangs that committed atrocities in the early nineteen-eighties. “We founded them and we financed them,” he said. “The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it.” A former military officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagon’s commando capabilities, said, “We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.”The new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what it calls “action teams” in the target countries overseas which can be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. “Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?” the former high-level intelligence official asked me, referring to the military-led gangs that committed atrocities in the early nineteen-eighties. “We founded them and we financed them,” he said. “The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it.” A former military officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagon’s commando capabilities, said, “We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.”
-- snip --
... the first Pentagon adviser told me. “It’s a global free-fire zone.”
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050124fa_fact
It seems people just don't see what they don't want to see until it's impossible to ignore.
THE COMING WARS
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
in The New Yorker
What the Pentagon can now do in secret.
Issue of 2005-01-24 and 31Posted 2005-01-17
excerpts from the article:
George W. Bush’s reëlection was not his only victory last fall. The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control—against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism—during his second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.
Despite the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the Bush Administration has not reconsidered its basic long-range policy goal in the Middle East: the establishment of democracy throughout the region. Bush’s reëlection is regarded within the Administration as evidence of America’s support for his decision to go to war. It has reaffirmed the position of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon’s civilian leadership who advocated the invasion, including Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Douglas Feith, the Under-secretary for Policy. According to a former high-level intelligence official, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the election and told them, in essence, that the naysayers had been heard and the American people did not accept their message. Rumsfeld added that America was committed to staying in Iraq and that there would be no second-guessing.
“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”
Bush and Cheney may have set the policy, but it is Rumsfeld who has directed its implementation and has absorbed much of the public criticism when things went wrong—whether it was prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib or lack of sufficient armor plating for G.I.s’ vehicles in Iraq. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have called for Rumsfeld’s dismissal, and he is not widely admired inside the military. Nonetheless, his reappointment as Defense Secretary was never in doubt.
Rumsfeld will become even more important during the second term. In interviews with past and present intelligence and military officials, I was told that the agenda had been determined before the Presidential election, and much of it would be Rumsfeld’s responsibility. The war on terrorism would be expanded, and effectively placed under the Pentagon’s control. The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia.
The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books—free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A. Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees. (The laws were enacted after a series of scandals in the nineteen-seventies involving C.I.A. domestic spying and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders.) “The Pentagon doesn’t feel obligated to report any of this to Congress,” the former high-level intelligence official said. “They don’t even call it ‘covert ops’—it’s too close to the C.I.A. phrase. In their view, it’s ‘black reconnaissance.’ They’re not even going to tell the cincs”—the regional American military commanders-in-chief. (The Defense Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)
In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran. “Everyone is saying, ‘You can’t be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,’” the former intelligence official told me. “But they say, ‘We’ve got some lessons learned—not militarily, but how we did it politically. We’re not going to rely on agency pissants.’ No loose ends, and that’s why the C.I.A. is out of there.”
-- snip --
The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer. Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical, and missile sites, both declared and suspected. The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids. “The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible,” the government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told me.
Some of the missions involve extraordinary coöperation. For example, the former high-level intelligence official told me that an American commando task force has been set up in South Asia and is now working closely with a group of Pakistani scientists and technicians who had dealt with Iranian counterparts. (In 2003, the I.A.E.A. disclosed that Iran had been secretly receiving nuclear technology from Pakistan for more than a decade, and had withheld that information from inspectors.) The American task force, aided by the information from Pakistan, has been penetrating eastern Iran from Afghanistan in a hunt for underground installations. The task-force members, or their locally recruited agents, secreted remote detection devices—known as sniffers—capable of sampling the atmosphere for radioactive emissions and other evidence of nuclear-enrichment programs.
Getting such evidence is a pressing concern for the Bush Administration. The former high-level intelligence official told me, “They don’t want to make any W.M.D. intelligence mistakes, as in Iraq. The Republicans can’t have two of those. There’s no education in the second kick of a mule.” The official added that the government of Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani President, has won a high price for its coöperation—American assurance that Pakistan will not have to hand over A. Q. Khan, known as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, to the I.A.E.A. or to any other international authorities for questioning. For two decades, Khan has been linked to a vast consortium of nuclear-black-market activities. Last year, Musharraf professed to be shocked when Khan, in the face of overwhelming evidence, “confessed” to his activities. A few days later, Musharraf pardoned him, and so far he has refused to allow the I.A.E.A. or American intelligence to interview him. Khan is now said to be living under house arrest in a villa in Islamabad. “It’s a deal—a trade-off,” the former high-level intelligence official explained. “‘Tell us what you know about Iran and we will let your A. Q. Khan guys go.’ It’s the neoconservatives’ version of short-term gain at long-term cost. They want to prove that Bush is the anti-terrorism guy who can handle Iran and the nuclear threat, against the long-term goal of eliminating the black market for nuclear proliferation.”
The agreement comes at a time when Musharraf, according to a former high-level Pakistani diplomat, has authorized the expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons arsenal. “Pakistan still needs parts and supplies, and needs to buy them in the clandestine market,” the former diplomat said. “The U.S. has done nothing to stop it.”
There has also been close, and largely unacknowledged, coöperation with Israel. The government consultant with ties to the Pentagon said that the Defense Department civilians, under the leadership of Douglas Feith, have been working with Israeli planners and consultants to develop and refine potential nuclear, chemical-weapons, and missile targets inside Iran.
-- snip --
In my interviews over the past two months, I was given a much harsher view. The hawks in the Administration believe that it will soon become clear that the Europeans’ negotiated approach cannot succeed, and that at that time the Administration will act. “We’re not dealing with a set of National Security Council option papers here,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “They’ve already passed that wicket. It’s not if we’re going to do anything against Iran. They’re doing it.”
The immediate goals of the attacks would be to destroy, or at least temporarily derail, Iran’s ability to go nuclear. But there are other, equally purposeful, motives at work. The government consultant told me that the hawks in the Pentagon, in private discussions, have been urging a limited attack on Iran because they believe it could lead to a toppling of the religious leadership. “Within the soul of Iran there is a struggle between secular nationalists and reformers, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the fundamentalist Islamic movement,” the consultant told me. “The minute the aura of invincibility which the mullahs enjoy is shattered, and with it the ability to hoodwink the West, the Iranian regime will collapse”—like the former Communist regimes in Romania, East Germany, and the Soviet Union. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz share that belief, he said.
“The idea that an American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would produce a popular uprising is extremely illinformed,” said Flynt Leverett, a Middle East scholar who worked on the National Security Council in the Bush Administration. “You have to understand that the nuclear ambition in Iran is supported across the political spectrum, and Iranians will perceive attacks on these sites as attacks on their ambitions to be a major regional player and a modern nation that’s technologically sophisticated.” Leverett, who is now a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, at the Brookings Institution, warned that an American attack, if it takes place, “will produce an Iranian backlash against the United States and a rallying around the regime.”
-- snip --
The new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what it calls “action teams” in the target countries overseas which can be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. “Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?” the former high-level intelligence official asked me, referring to the military-led gangs that committed atrocities in the early nineteen-eighties. “We founded them and we financed them,” he said. “The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it.” A former military officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagon’s commando capabilities, said, “We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.”The new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what it calls “action teams” in the target countries overseas which can be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. “Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?” the former high-level intelligence official asked me, referring to the military-led gangs that committed atrocities in the early nineteen-eighties. “We founded them and we financed them,” he said. “The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it.” A former military officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagon’s commando capabilities, said, “We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.”
-- snip --
... the first Pentagon adviser told me. “It’s a global free-fire zone.”
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050124fa_fact
The Politics of Victimization (email)
This is an email I recently received... Mel Gilles (who I don't know) appears to have written the email.
Though I don't recommend identifying with the label "victim" at all, I absolutely agree with taking power back from abusers by standing in the truth of what we deserve and who we are. That's what we as a people, not just democrats, need to do.
The Politics of Victimization
Mel Gilles, who has worked for many years as an advocate for victims of domestic abuse, draws some parallels between her work and the reaction of many Democrats to the election:
Watch Dan Rather apologize for not getting his facts straight, humiliated before the eyes of America, voluntarily undermining his credibility and career of over thirty years. Observe Donna Brazille squirm as she is ridiculed by Bay Buchanan, and pronounced irrelevant and nearly non-existent. Listen as Donna and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer take to the airwaves saying that they have to go back to the drawing board and learn from their mistakes and try to be better, more likable, more appealing, have a stronger message, speak to morality.
Watch them awkwardly quote the bible, trying to speak the new language of America. Surf the blogs, and read the comments of dismayed, discombobulated, confused individuals trying to figure out what they did wrong. Hear the cacophony of voices, crying out, "Why did they beat me?"
And then ask anyone who has ever worked in a domestic violence shelter if they have heard this before. They will tell you, every single day.
The answer is quite simple. They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence. As victims we can't stop asking ourselves what we did wrong. We can't seem to grasp that they will keep hitting us and beating us as long as we keep sticking around and asking ourselves what we are doing to deserve the beating.
Listen to George Bush say that the will of God excuses his behavior.
Listen, as he refuses to take responsibility, or express remorse, or even once, admit a mistake. Watch him strut, and tell us that he will only work with those who agree with him, and that each of us is only allowed one question (soon, it will be none at all; abusers hit hard when questioned; the press corps can tell you that). See him surround himself with only those who pledge oaths of allegiance. Hear him tell us that if we will only listen and do as he says and agree with his every utterance, all will go well for us (it won't; we will never be worthy).
And watch the Democratic Party leadership walk on eggshells, try to meet him, please him, wash the windows better, get out that spot, distance themselves from gays and civil rights. See them cry for the attention and affection and approval of the President and his followers. Watch us squirm.
Watch us descend into a world of crazy- making, where logic does not work and the other side tells us we are nuts when we rely on facts. A world where, worst of all, we begin to believe we are crazy. How to break free?
Again, the answer is quite simple.
First, you must admit you are a victim. Then, you must declare the state of affairs unacceptable. Next, you must promise to protect yourself and everyone around you that is being victimized. You don't do this by responding to their demands, or becoming more like them, or engaging in logical conversation, or trying to persuade them that you are right. You also don't do this by going catatonic and resigned, by closing up your ears and eyes and covering your head and submitting to the blows, figuring its over faster and hurts less is you don't resist and fight back.
Instead, you walk away.
You find other folks like yourself, 56 million of them, who are hurting, broken, and beating themselves up. You tell them what you've learned, and that you aren't going to take it anymore. You stand tall, with 56 million people at your side and behind you, and you look right into the eyes of the abuser and you tell him to go to hell. Then you walk out the door, taking the kids and gays and minorities with you, and you start a new life. The new life is hard. But it's better than the abuse.
We have a mandate to be as radical and liberal and steadfast as we need to be. The progressive beliefs and social justice we stand for, our core, must not be altered. We are 56 million strong. We are building from the bottom up. We are meeting, on the net, in church basements, at work, in small groups, and right now, we are crying, because we are trying to break free and we don't know how.
Any battered woman in America, any oppressed person around the globe who has defied her oppressor will tell you this: There is nothing wrong with you. You are in good company. You are safe. You are not alone. You are strong.
You must change only one thing: stop responding to the abuser. Don't let him dictate the terms or frame the debate (he'll win, not because he's right,but because force works). Sure, we can build a better grassroots campaign, cultivate and raise up better leaders, reform the election system to make it fail proof, stick to our message, learn from the strategy of the other side.
But we absolutely must dispense with the notion that we are weak, godless, cowardly, disorganized, crazy, too liberal, naive, amoral, "loose", irrelevant, outmoded, stupid and soon to be extinct. We have the mandate of the world to back us, and the legacy of oppressed people throughout history.
Even if you do everything right, they'll hit you anyway. Look at the poor souls who voted for this nonsense. They are working for six dollars an hour if they are working at all, their children are dying overseas and suffering from lack of health care and a depleted environment and a shoddy education.
And they don't even know they are being hit.
Though I don't recommend identifying with the label "victim" at all, I absolutely agree with taking power back from abusers by standing in the truth of what we deserve and who we are. That's what we as a people, not just democrats, need to do.
The Politics of Victimization
Mel Gilles, who has worked for many years as an advocate for victims of domestic abuse, draws some parallels between her work and the reaction of many Democrats to the election:
Watch Dan Rather apologize for not getting his facts straight, humiliated before the eyes of America, voluntarily undermining his credibility and career of over thirty years. Observe Donna Brazille squirm as she is ridiculed by Bay Buchanan, and pronounced irrelevant and nearly non-existent. Listen as Donna and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer take to the airwaves saying that they have to go back to the drawing board and learn from their mistakes and try to be better, more likable, more appealing, have a stronger message, speak to morality.
Watch them awkwardly quote the bible, trying to speak the new language of America. Surf the blogs, and read the comments of dismayed, discombobulated, confused individuals trying to figure out what they did wrong. Hear the cacophony of voices, crying out, "Why did they beat me?"
And then ask anyone who has ever worked in a domestic violence shelter if they have heard this before. They will tell you, every single day.
The answer is quite simple. They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence. As victims we can't stop asking ourselves what we did wrong. We can't seem to grasp that they will keep hitting us and beating us as long as we keep sticking around and asking ourselves what we are doing to deserve the beating.
Listen to George Bush say that the will of God excuses his behavior.
Listen, as he refuses to take responsibility, or express remorse, or even once, admit a mistake. Watch him strut, and tell us that he will only work with those who agree with him, and that each of us is only allowed one question (soon, it will be none at all; abusers hit hard when questioned; the press corps can tell you that). See him surround himself with only those who pledge oaths of allegiance. Hear him tell us that if we will only listen and do as he says and agree with his every utterance, all will go well for us (it won't; we will never be worthy).
And watch the Democratic Party leadership walk on eggshells, try to meet him, please him, wash the windows better, get out that spot, distance themselves from gays and civil rights. See them cry for the attention and affection and approval of the President and his followers. Watch us squirm.
Watch us descend into a world of crazy- making, where logic does not work and the other side tells us we are nuts when we rely on facts. A world where, worst of all, we begin to believe we are crazy. How to break free?
Again, the answer is quite simple.
First, you must admit you are a victim. Then, you must declare the state of affairs unacceptable. Next, you must promise to protect yourself and everyone around you that is being victimized. You don't do this by responding to their demands, or becoming more like them, or engaging in logical conversation, or trying to persuade them that you are right. You also don't do this by going catatonic and resigned, by closing up your ears and eyes and covering your head and submitting to the blows, figuring its over faster and hurts less is you don't resist and fight back.
Instead, you walk away.
You find other folks like yourself, 56 million of them, who are hurting, broken, and beating themselves up. You tell them what you've learned, and that you aren't going to take it anymore. You stand tall, with 56 million people at your side and behind you, and you look right into the eyes of the abuser and you tell him to go to hell. Then you walk out the door, taking the kids and gays and minorities with you, and you start a new life. The new life is hard. But it's better than the abuse.
We have a mandate to be as radical and liberal and steadfast as we need to be. The progressive beliefs and social justice we stand for, our core, must not be altered. We are 56 million strong. We are building from the bottom up. We are meeting, on the net, in church basements, at work, in small groups, and right now, we are crying, because we are trying to break free and we don't know how.
Any battered woman in America, any oppressed person around the globe who has defied her oppressor will tell you this: There is nothing wrong with you. You are in good company. You are safe. You are not alone. You are strong.
You must change only one thing: stop responding to the abuser. Don't let him dictate the terms or frame the debate (he'll win, not because he's right,but because force works). Sure, we can build a better grassroots campaign, cultivate and raise up better leaders, reform the election system to make it fail proof, stick to our message, learn from the strategy of the other side.
But we absolutely must dispense with the notion that we are weak, godless, cowardly, disorganized, crazy, too liberal, naive, amoral, "loose", irrelevant, outmoded, stupid and soon to be extinct. We have the mandate of the world to back us, and the legacy of oppressed people throughout history.
Even if you do everything right, they'll hit you anyway. Look at the poor souls who voted for this nonsense. They are working for six dollars an hour if they are working at all, their children are dying overseas and suffering from lack of health care and a depleted environment and a shoddy education.
And they don't even know they are being hit.
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Do not lose heart
From “Do Not Lose Heart” by Clarissa Pinkola-Estes, author of Women Who Run with the Wolves
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take "everyone on Earth" to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.
One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these - to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both, are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take "everyone on Earth" to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.
One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these - to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both, are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.
Mel Gibson thumbs up on Michael Moore
(from a NY Times article on the People's Choice Awards show)
"I feel a strange kinship with Michael [Moore]," Mr. Gibson said."They're trying to pit us against each other in the press, but it's a hologram. They really have got nothing to do with one another. It's just some kind of device, some left-right. He makes some salient points. There was some very expert, elliptical editing going on. However, what the hell are we doing in Iraq? No one can explain to me in a reasonable manner that I can accept why we're there, why we went there, and why we're still there."
"I feel a strange kinship with Michael [Moore]," Mr. Gibson said."They're trying to pit us against each other in the press, but it's a hologram. They really have got nothing to do with one another. It's just some kind of device, some left-right. He makes some salient points. There was some very expert, elliptical editing going on. However, what the hell are we doing in Iraq? No one can explain to me in a reasonable manner that I can accept why we're there, why we went there, and why we're still there."
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