Toward Democracy

NEW GOVERNMENT? ONE CAN ONLY HOPE

    My stepdaughter Evie recently spent a month in Australia, and sent me an article from the Byron Shire Echo, serving an area on the east coast of the continent.  Ttled “Long overdue but heartfelt apology.” it was issued by newly elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

    “We apologize for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

    “We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their communities and their countries.  For the pain and suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

    “To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers nd the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

    “And for the indignity and degradation on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.”

    The article goes on to say that “With these simple words Prime Minister Kevin Rudd altered the psyche of a nation and set hands clapping with a deafening roar across Australia.

    “For many Austrailians it was an emotional and historic moment but for Aboriginal Australians particularly it signalled the acknowledgement of ‘the stain’ across white Australia’s history and a hopeful new wave of reconciliation.”

    New government, overdue acknowledgement. One can only hope.

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CREATURES OF NATURE

Michael Vick's dogs 

I was profoundly moved by the following article, being all too aware of gratuitous violence in the human part of the animal kingdom – in large part because our species has long separated ourselves from nature and its creatures and systematically exercised power over them and one another. Until we wrap our hearts, minds and will around the question of “who we are as human beings,” quarrels and blaming over culture or country, religion or political philosophy (and who did what to whom) are just so much fiddling while we make our planet inhabitable for ourselves and the other species we use and abuse.

A brief sojourn at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary several years ago was an enormously pleasurable and hopeful experience.  If you are moved to contribute to Best Friends, which spares no effort or expense in caring for each creature that comes into their care, the address is 5001 Angel Canyon Rd., Kanab UT 84741-5000.  And contact them for a spectacular vacation volunteering.

Given Reprieve, N.F.L. Star's Dogs Find Kindness
By JULIET MACUR, New York Times, 2-2-08
The Best Friends Animal Society sanctuary in Kanab, Utah, is a new home for 22 of Michael Vick's former dogs.

KANAB, Utah — A quick survey of Georgia, a caramel-colored pit bull mix with cropped ears and soulful brown eyes, offers a road map to a difficult life. Her tongue juts from the left side of her mouth because her jaw, once broken, healed at an awkward angle. Her tail zigzags.

Scars from puncture wounds on her face, legs and torso reveal that she was a fighter. Her misshapen, dangling teats show that she might have been such a successful, vicious competitor that she was forcibly bred, her new handlers suspect, again and again.

But there is one haunting sign that Georgia might have endured the most abuse of any of the 47 surviving pit bulls seized last April from the property of the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick in connection with an illegal dogfighting ring...

Read the NY Times story here.

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Whadda Way to Run a World

21st Anniversary of that previous Iran fiasco

Greetings on the 21st anniversary of the public revelations that became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Reading the New York Times' original article this morning (excerpt below, with URL to full coverage). I wondered how many US citizens who are being treated to threats to invade Iran know the checkered history of the two countries over the past half century.

In 1953 the democratically elected socialist Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, was overthrown in a coup enabled by the CIA and the its British counterpart. Think oil, which Mossadegh was moving to nationalize.  Imagine the cheek:  Iranian resources controlled by Iranians!  Reza II was brought back from exile and reinstalled on the Peacock Throne.  He ruled with the help of Savak, the notorious secret police, until the Islamic Revolution in 1979 ousted his government and seized the US hostages. They were released the day of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration in 1980, presumably because his campaign operatives struck a better bargain than did President Carter’s negotiators.

This is the kind of realpolitik that propels most international relations today –  including of course the imminent Annapolis talks on Israel-Palestine.  If there is a point to the story below, it’s that, in the words of philosopher George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember [or do not know] their past are condemned to repeat it.”

(In the interest of full disclosure, I had a part-time job with the Shah’s administration in the mid-1970s.)
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Iran Payment Found Diverted To Contras; Reagan Security Adviser And Aide Are Out; Disarray Deepens; Was Not 'Fully Informed' About Secret Moves, President Asserts Iran Payment Is Found Diverted to the Contras; Two Reagan Men Are Out

By BERNARD WEINRAUB  Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES

Washington, Nov. 25, 1986--President Reagan said today that he had not been in full control of his Administration's Iran policy, and the White House said that as a consequence up to $30 million intended to pay for American arms had been secretly diverted to rebel forces in Nicaragua.

At the same time, the President announced that two men he held responsible--Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, the national security adviser, and Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North, a member of the admiral's staff--had left their posts.

With the Administration already in turmoil over the earlier disclosure of clandestine arms shipments to Iran, and with speculation rampant about a major overhaul of the White House staff, the President's statement seemed to deepen a sense of disarray. By all accounts, Mr. Reagan now faces the most serious crisis in his six-year Presidency... NY Times. 

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Beyond Rhetoric

Reflections of a former U.S. history teacher who belatedly learned some history:

Indeed, we are all responsible for defending this country from terrorist attacks, but such easy rhetoric mirrors the administration’s glib and fear-based approach to governance.

First, In the interest of full disclosure, I deplore, denounce and oppose attacking civilians by anyone everywhere, from flying planes into buildings and suicide bombings wherever and by whomever they take place to bombing, raping and shooting civilians in Iraq, a country that was demonstrably not responsible for those who flew planes into buildings. In fact, the U.S. cozied up to Saddam Hussein when it suited  its purposes in the giant board game that is the world’s foreign and military policy.

I also deplore, denounce and oppose sending troops on misbegotten missions where they are brutalized and sometimes brutalize, then are too often discarded when their usefulness is past and their health and financial needs become burdensome.

Second, beyond patriotic rhetoric, what does it mean to be responsible for defending this country?  I’m of the Carl Schurz school of citizenship. Stephen Decatur proposed a toast at a banquet honoring his heroism in the War of 1812, “My country right or wrong!”  Decades later Schurz, the first immigrant cabinet member, added, “My country right or wrong.  When right,  keep it right.  When wrong, put it right.”

The rub is deciding what needs to be put right and how to do it. Of course we citizens often disagree, which is inevitable and even healthy.  However, our divisive and polarized political processes make it difficult to have civil conversations.

Third, my idea of defending the country  includes internal as well as external threats, and accurate information about both. So in the name of “homeland security,” let’s demand that U.S. ports be secured and the Energy Department make their deadlines for hardening and improving security at our nuclear installations, military and civilian  – and devise a coherent plan to stash the enormous amount of nuclear waste.  And how about getting serious about providing health care for all.  

Let’s also oppose bombastic threats to bomb Iran. One can deplore and denounce  President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad  and also understand the lingering and exploitable Iranian bitterness toward the U.S. orchestration of the popularly elected prime minister Mohammed Mosedegh in 1953, and the subsequent reinstallation on the throne of the repressive Shah – which in turn led to the Revolution in 1979.

Remember the Iranian seizure of U.S. hostages (and the deal that released them at the moment of Reagan’s inauguration)?  Some years ago Chalmers Johnson wrote about “blowback,” the chickens that come home to roost as a result of foreign policy machinations.  Longtime foreign correspondent and part-time Truro resident Stephen Kinzer’s “Overthrow” details 14 instances of the U.S. replacing other countries’ rulers, from Hawaii in 1898 to Iraq in 2003.  

If you think such policies are right, support them.  If not, work to make them right – both required of us and doable if this country is truly a democracy. In the words of George Santayana, Spanish-born U.S. philosopher and writer:  Those who do not remember their history are doomed to repeat it.

Good advice for “fighting terrorism.”

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Tortured Logic

TORTURE REDUX

In addition to further shrinking the U.S. supply of moral capital, torture is ineffective, as Diana pointed out.  

Nearly every client at the Center, when subjected to torture, confessed to a crime they did not commit, gave up extraneous information, or supplied names of innocent friends or colleagues to their torturers...According to The Center for Victims of Torture, “Well-trained interrogators within the military, the FBI, and the police have testified that torture does not work, is unreliable and distracts from the hard work of interrogation.  Nearly every client at the Center, when subjected to torture, confessed to a crime they did not commit, gave up extraneous information, or supplied names of innocent friends or colleagues to their torturers...

"The estimate from the Red Cross was that at least 80 percent of those imprisoned at Abu Ghraib, for example, should never have been arrested, but were there because it was easier to arrest persons than to let them go (people feared letting go a terrorist more than protecting the innocent).”  

The innocent torture victim In the film “Rendition” gave the names of his high school soccer team in Egypt.

I oppose not only torture itself, but my administration’s secret shopping around to find regimes to do its dirty work and thus circumvent U.S. laws in the name of protecting freedom and democracy.

More on the attorney general nominee’s confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, in which Michael Mukasey claimed not to know enough about waterboarding to classify it as torture and thus unconstitutional. Do we really want yet another attorney general who is not forthcoming, especially on something that is public knowledge?  Senator Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican on Judiciary, apparently doesn’t think so, reinforcing the committee’s request for written answers to questions about Mukasey’s views on executive power and the administration’s terrorism policies, including interrogation techniques.

For those who believe anything goes in the “war on terror,” I recommend a guest editorial in the October 28 edition of “The New York Times,” by Francois Furstenberg, an author and professor of history at the University of Montreal.

According to Professor Furstenberg, the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, sparked the French Revolution much as September 11, 2001, shaped  the Bush presidency.  The Jacobins “shared a defining ideological feature.  They divided the world between pro- and ant-Revolutionaries – the defenders of liberty versus its enemies.”

“Confronted by a monarchical Europe united in opposition to revolutionary France, the Jacobins rooted out domestic political dissent. It was the beginning of the period that would become infamous as the ‘Terror.’

“Among the Jacobins’ greatest triumphs was their ability to appropriate the rhetoric of patriotism...[They] could not conceive of legitimate dissent.... when the homeland is in danger.”

In describing “the Terreur,” Furstenberg refers to the slogan “No liberty for the enemies of liberty,” comparing it to President Bush’s “We must not let foreign enemies use the forums of liberty to destroy liberty itself.”

Beware lest we accomplish that ourselves, with no help from “les terroristes.”

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Rendition

Waterboarding is torture 

This past Tuesday Michael B. Mukasey, nominated to succeed the ethically challenged Alberto Gonzalez as U.S attorney general, was asked by the Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats to clarify his position on waterboarding.

“Please respond to the following question: Is the use of waterboarding, or inducing the misperception of drowning, as an interrogation technique illegal under U.S. law, including treaty obligations?”

The follow-up letter was sent because in the previous week’s confirmation hearings before the committee, Mr. Mukasey responded to a question about whether waterboarding was torture:  “I don’t know what’s involved in the technique. If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.”

Mr. Mukasey’s reply to the letter if any, has not been reported as of this writing. However, a prospective attorney general who expresses ignorance about the technique of waterboarding is either as duplicitous as the recently departed head of the Justice Department or too ignorant to merit serious consideration, given the long-standing controversy surrounding this and other forms of torture.

For those not familiar with waterboarding (excusable since you haven’t been nominated to be the top attorney in the U.S. government), it reportedly dates to the Spanish Inquisition and involves restraining people being interrogated and pouring water over their covered heads to simulate drowning.  Senator John McCain, himself tortured as a POW in Vietnam, described waterboarding as “very exquisite torture.”

According to “intelligence officials,”  the CIA used waterboarding on El Qaeda suspects following the September 11 attacks. White House statements have “suggested” that the practice has stopped, given complaints from Mr. McCain and other members of Congress.

No matter, there’s “rendition” to fall back on. My dictionary’s definition of “render” includes “to give, hand over, deliver, present, or submit, as for approval, consideration, payment...”  In the interrogation redefinition business, rendition sends suspects to a country unfettered by legal niceties, delivering, presenting and submitting them to exquisite torture of various kinds.  The practice apparently began in the Clinton Administration and was refined and expanded after September 11, 2001.

For a depiction not only of waterboarding itself, but the machinations involved in rendition, the film “Rendition” is in a number of Cape Cod theaters.  The graphic scenes are harsh, but I found the clinically removed renderers far more disturbing.  I only wish Michael Mukasey felt the same.

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Another World is Possible; Another U.S. Is Necessary

The first part of this slogan echoes that of the  World Social Forum; the second reflects the view of organizers and up to 15,000 participants in the first U.S. Social Forum, held in Atlanta June 28-July 1.

The event began with a diverse and colorful march on historic Peachtree Street, music, chants, and signs and banners drawing onlookers from the surrounding stores and office buildings.  

John Nichols, writer for The Nation magazine and author of The Rise and Rise of Richard B. Cheney: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Most Powerful Vice President in American History, appeared on a panel on “A Democracy Movement for the U.S.A.”  Afterwards he posted the following message on his blog:

“At a point when only one in five Americans think the country is headed in the right direction, isn't it time we changed course?  That's the message of the thousands of Americans [including Latin Americans] who have gathered in Atlanta in recent days for the U.S. Social Forum.”

The first World Social Forum was initiated by social movements of oppressed and exploited peoples in the Global South, held for several years in Porto Allegre, Brazil. From there it moved to Mumbai, India; Caracas, Venezuela; and Nairobi, Kenya. Three years ago, Grassroots Global Justice, an alliance of over 50 organizations representing people of color and low-income communities in the US, formed a National Planning Committee that resulted in the USSF.  Atlanta was chosen for its centuries of struggle for racial, economic and gender justice and equality.

Some 900 gatherings – plenaries, workshops and panels, along with informal discussions at organizational tables in the Civic Center and a dozen and a half massive theme tents – dealt with poverty, environmental threats, democracy, war and genocide, water, health care, and issues involving other countries, cultures and diverse peoples. Native American drummers, hip hop artists, and many other groups enlivened the walkways and plaza around the Civic Center, and the farflung nature of many events meant that we learned how to navigate Atlanta in the bargain.

I spent most of my time handing out information and holding conversations in the Democracy Tent, organized by the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy and allied groups like Liberty Tree and the Green Institute, and housing folks as diverse as the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom, the Black Radical Congress, Students for a Democratic Society, and YES! magazine. Our large banner proclaimed DEMOCRACY:  THE LARGE TENT.  We also distributed thousands of our own schedule of some 60 Democracy Track workshops and panels.

In addition to co-facilitating a workshop on “The Democratic Arts: Tools for Social Change,” I attended a disarmament workshop facilitated by WILPF’s Carol Urner, with organizers against war in space, nuclear proliferation, university research, and more.  I also reconnected with WILPFers with whom I organized WILPF’s Cuba campaign in the 1990s, at their workshop on “Why Women, Why Cuba.”  They showed a film
featuring interviews with women of color my age whose only option was domestic work before the resolution, and are now doctors, administrators, lawyers.

A highlight for me was a HealthCare-Now benefit screening of SICKO.  Seeing it in a packed theater of people from around the country reminded me that another world is indeed possible, and right here on Cape Cod many of us are doing our part.

John Nichols again:  “As the diverse range of peace and social justice groups that have organized the U.S. Social Forum recognize, only when the U.S. becomes a more responsible player will the planet become a more functional and humane place. This is not a matter of blaming the U.S. for everything that ails the world; there is plenty of blame to go around. Rather, the point is a positive one: By making the United States live up its founding promises of democracy, respect for the rule of law and avoidance of entangling alliances, this country can both lead by example and by the practice of respecting the right of others for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

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On Memorial Day

        One of my regular walks is in Pine Grove Cemetery in South Yarmouth, and I thought it appropriate to go there early this morning.  I wound back and forth on the parallel paths, noting many flags but few flowers yet.  It reminded me that this holiday was called Decoration Day during my childhood.

    This afternoon I’ll join my Capewide community’s annual Memorial Day commemoration, mindful of this holiday’s origin in a gathering of freed slaves and abolitionists in Charleston, South Carolina – and its current relevance to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mourn the dead; Heal the Wounded; End the War

    Our memorializing began four years ago, when members of Cape Codders for Peace & Justice and the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom held banners at three bridges across the MidCape Highway, saying “Mourn the dead; Heal the Wounded; End the War.”
 
    Since then, on both Memorial Day and Labor Day we’ve waved to Cape Codders and holiday visitors heading west past a rest area on Route 6.  In recent years our numbers have grown and the changing mood of the country is reflected in the increased thumbs up rather than down, and almost no middle fingers.  

    I commend to those who would call us unpatriotic a speech given on the floor of the House on May 22 by Ron Paul, a Republican member of Congress from Texas and an independent candidate for president .

     “The accelerated attacks on liberty started quickly after 9/11. Within weeks, the PATRIOT Act was overwhelmingly passed by Congress. Though the final version was unavailable up to a few hours before the vote. No Member had sufficient time to study it. Political fear of not doing something, even something harmful, drove the Members of Congress to not question the contents, and just vote for it. A little less freedom for a little more perceived safety was considered a fair tradeoff, and the majority of Americans applauded....."

    “Unsound policy can never help the troops. Keeping the troops out of harm's way and out of wars unrelated to our national security is the only real way of protecting the troops. With this understanding, just who can claim the title of ‘patriot’'?”

    I hope to live long enough to join a Memorial Day parade that honors the millions and generations of war dead by resolving to oppose war as an acceptable means of resolving conflict.

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Feliz Cumpleanos, Celia Sanchez

Happy Birthday Celia 

    Happy Birthday to Celia Sanchez, born on this day in 1920 and dying sixty years later.  You can be forgiven if her name doesn’t ring your bell.  It simply means that either you're not steeped in Cuban history or you aren’t in possession of this year’s calendar, featuring “Sheroes,” from the Gustavos Center for the Study of Bigotry & Human Rights.  (The photo on right shows Celia with Fidel in the Sierra Maestra mountains in 1958.)

    I wasn’t familiar with Celia Sanchez until turning the page to May and reading the entry for May 9:  “Warrior in the Sierra Maestra, Fidel Castro’s companion for many years, she was the ‘Eva Peron’ of Cuba.  She created orphanages, organized the Mariana Grajales Women’s platoons, helped to found the Federation of Cuban Women, and responded to all letters for help by the humblest Cubans.”

    I did know about the Federation of Cuban Women, however, since in 1990 I represented the US Section of the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom at the Fifth Congress of Cuban Women.  It was held in a huge convention center in Havana, with some 1400 Cuban women on the vast floor, over 100 foreign guests in the balcony, and Fidel Castro sitting on the dais amidst women officials.

    For three days the delegates reported, discussed and debated the issues they wanted included in the next five year social and economic plan for the country.  This was the culmination of a bottom-up process, with issues select by workplaces, barrios, and organizations in all sectors and locations in Cuba. Delegates from each were local meeting elected to confer and consolidate the issues on the next level and on from there to further refinement until in the case of the the women’s sector, the convention floor was filled in March 1990.  

    I couldn’t help noticing that Fidel Castro didn’t miss a session and didn’t utter a word until his one intervention. He raised a question about the hours of day care centers in Havana, a homely illustration of his fabled micromanaging.  I whispered to the U.S. woman seated next to me, can’t you picture Bush (President H.W. that was) sitting for three days listening to women for a change?”

    My second trip was five years later on a WILPF study tour of women’s medical facilities.  We had to get a license to travel, and many friends, assuming it was a Cuban requirement, were surprised to learn it was a permit from the U.S. Treasury Department under the Trading with the Enemy Act.     

    After my brief experience at the Fifth Congress, it was all the more fascinating to meet with women at the workplace and barrio level, both in Havana and the countryside. I knew that literacy and health care were the first priorities of the revolution. Teachers were sent all over the country to teach reading, and clinics were established in every barrio.  In the face of limited resources for sophisticated equipment and pharmaceuticals, the Cubans trained untold numbers of health professionals.

    “Salud!,” a new DVD, depicts “the urgency of ensuring the universal right of health care.”  It looks at what the BBC called “one of the world’s best health systems,” as well as Cuba’s sending almost 30,000 medical workers to some 70 countries around the world.  For more information, visit www.saludthefilm.net.

    Feliz Cumpleanos, Celia Sanchez!

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WRITING FROM THE HEART

A Black Day in the Blue Ridge

By LUCINDA ROY, April 17, 2007, New York Times

A FEW months ago, when I returned from a trip to Sierra Leone, a country I lived in for years and one still reeling from the effects of a brutal civil war, I was filled with relief to be returning to a crime-free place like Blacksburg. As usual, I was welcomed by the Blue Ridge Mountains, and by the friends I’ve grown to love during my 22 years on the faculty at Virginia Tech.

It’s a quiet place. The town is full of turkeys — statues of our mascot, the Hokie Bird, painted in garish colors — as if being a Hokie were not a sports metaphor but a way of life. There’s a 5-foot-tall turkey just outside the bank; one near the police station; another in the parking lot of a Cleaner World, where I take my clothes. We have a sense of humor in Blacksburg — it’s part of our charm.  Blacksburg is a misnomer, of course. It’s the whitest town I’ve ever lived in...  Read the rest of this NY Times Op Ed here.

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Lucinda Roy, a co-director of the creative writing program at Virginia Tech, is the author, most recently, of  "The Hotel Alleluia."

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