William Michael Hanks : Darkness and Light

Photo by Diego Huerta, from the 31K Portraits for Peace exhibit at the Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin.
Darkness and Light:
31K Portraits for Peace
(31K Retratos por la Paz)

By William Michael Hanks / The Rag Blog / April 19, 2012

See Gallery of Images from 31K Portraits for Peace, Below.

"I saw on that ivory face the expression of somber pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror -- of an intense and hopeless despair ... He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision, -- he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath -- The horror! The horror!”

These were the last words of Kurtz, in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. He may well be speaking of our world today instead of the Belgian Congo of Conrad's time.

Kurtz was a promising young man with just connections enough to get a job as a station chief for a colonial Africa trading company. He became legendary for his profitable management of the most remote station on the Congo. But as his greed for ivory grew he devolved deeper into the primitive, the savage -- deeper into the darkness. In his quest for wealth, he lost his humanity.

It seems much the same has happened today. Our leaders have become consumed with wealth and power. And the world they have made is filled with horror and images of horror.


Every day in Mexico is another day drenched in blood. The cartels have expanded from turf battles to extortion and kidnapping. Daily the warring cartels leave the bodies of their tortured victims in the public streets and squares as a warning to their enemies.

But Mexico's grief did not begin with the cartels. Going as far back as the 70s, before there were any drug cartels in Mexico, U.S. policy was wreaking havoc with the poor of Mexico. As part of U.S.-financed “Operation Condor," the Mexican government sent 10,000 soldiers and police to a poverty-stricken region in northern Mexico plagued by drug production and leftist insurgency. Hundreds of peasants were arrested, tortured, and jailed, but not a single big drug trafficker was captured.

The direct ancestor to “Operation Condor” was the “Night and Fog” decree signed by Adolf Hitler on November 7, 1941. It provided for political prisoners to be arrested, held incommunicado, and removed to undisclosed locations for forced labor or to be tortured and killed.

In his Nuremberg trial, General Keital said of all the atrocities he was ordered to commit, this was the hardest to carry out. Hitler and his upper level staff made a critical decision not to have to conform to what they considered unnecessary rules. This same disregard for human rights was the expressed attitude of George W. Bush's Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. He felt the Geneva Convention rules were “quaint."

In recent years, some agencies of the U.S. government have gone dangerously rogue and persist in developing destructive plans, like “Fast and Furious," without regard for consequences to the Mexican people. The thousands that are dying are paying the price for these ill-conceived and poorly executed operations.

PHOENIX (AP) -- Two people accused of participating in a gun smuggling ring are expected to change their pleas in the federal government’s botched investigation known as “Operation Fast and Furious." Jose Angel Polanco and Dejan Hercegovac are scheduled to change their pleas Monday in Phoenix. Authorities say the two were members of a ring that smuggled guns into Mexico for use by a drug cartel. Two rifles bought by another ring member were found in the aftermath of a 2010 shootout that mortally wounded a Border Patrol agent in southern Arizona.

Operation “Fast and Furious," a scheme conceived by the ATF, was a debacle from the start. First, a plan to allow illegal arms into Mexico with no ability to track them, then a botched attempt to cover it up, has called into question the honesty of both the Homeland Security director, Janet Napolitano, and Attorney General Eric Holder.

Monterrey, one of the most prosperous cities in Mexico, has turned into Mexico's most notoriously violent over the past two years. In 2010, the number of murders leapt to 828 across Nuevo Leon, up from 267 the previous year. The figure jumped once more in 2011, to a total of 2,003. The most infamous incident was the murder of 52 casino patrons in August 2010, the result of a fire set by the Zetas as punishment for an unpaid extortion fee. It was the most deadly single attack in recent Mexican history.

Mass graves have been found where the passengers of bus operators who did not pay the extortion to pass through their territory were murdered and buried. Children are being recruited from school campuses to serve as couriers, lookouts, and enforcers.

Politicians and journalists have long been targets of the cartels but they are moving into the transportation industries now as well. Taxi drivers are being assassinated for not paying extortion or, in the case of drivers recruited by a cartel, by rival gangs. And, the cartels are establishing bases in every major U.S. city along the border and further inland.

In the midst of this bloodbath, the Sixth Summit of the Americas was convened in Cartegena, Columbia. just last weekend.

Reuters, April 16-- President Barack Obama patiently sat through diatribes, interruptions and even the occasional eye-ball roll at the weekend Summit of the Americas in an effort to win over Latin American leaders fed up with U.S. Policies. He failed.

The Sixth Summit of the Americas was to be a means of strengthening ties among the people of North, Central, and South America. There was much to celebrate. Brazil is emerging as an economic powerhouse. Relative peace is seen in Columbia after so many years of conflict. But the Summit was overshadowed by a fundamental disagreement over drug policy. The same drug policy that is responsible for so many deaths and ruined lives throughout the Americas.

CNN reported that Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos compared continuing the existing policies to address this issue to being on “a stationary bike” -- making little progress, despite ample effort.

According to former Presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and César Gaviria of Colombia, the United States-led drug war is pushing Latin America into a downward spiral; Mr. Cardoso said in a conference that "the available evidence indicates that the war on drugs is a failed war." The panel of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, headed by Cardoso, stated that the countries involved in this war should remove the "taboos" and re-examine the anti-drug programs.

Latin American governments have followed the advice of the U.S. to combat the drug war, but the policies had little effect. The commission made some recommendations to President Barack Obama to consider new policies, such as decriminalization of cannabis (marijuana) and to treat drug use as a public health problem and not as a security problem. The Council on Hemispheric Affairs states it is time to seriously consider drug decriminalization and legalization, a policy initiative that would be in direct opposition to the interests of criminal gangs. -- Mexican Drug War, Wikipedia.

In the face of demands from the entire hemisphere for decriminalization to reduce the cartel violence, the U.S. stubbornly refuses to admit that the “War on Drugs” was misconceived, mismanaged, and lost years ago. Mexico is paying the biggest price today for this failed policy. The success of Columbia's offensives against the cartels has moved these operations north to Mexico. Now the people of Mexico are living in a daily horror of violence, cruelty, and death.


Spark of light

But, no darkness is entirely without a spark of light. Diego Huerta, a professional photographer in Mexico, committed himself to do something about it. To counteract the thousands of images of the tortured and murdered he had a vision of thousands of images of ordinary Mexican citizens who took the time to stand for peace. To tie the portraits together visually he made an origami dove called “La Huesteca” and each of the people in the portraits is holding the dove of peace.

“Daily we read bad news and more deaths, another dramatic and horrific number on the paper and it seems that nothing else happens in Mexico. Yet, Mexico is such a lovely country with so many good qualities to talk about. We are convinced that the only way to defeat the bad effect that this has caused on Mexico is by taking action and stimulating positive acts on people. So, this is why we have considered art to do so.” -- Diego Huerta, 31k Project

Diego's portraits of the people of Mexico -- done in collaboration with project partner Daniela Gutiérrez -- are works of art and deserve to be seen for that reason alone. But they should also be seen for what they signify -- people doing what they can do to stand up for peace.

Diego's 31k Project was the 2012 Revolucionario Award Winner at SXSW Interactive. It is a recognition given to Hispanic artists and activists for the creative use of social media. Diego used hashtags, Facebook, Twitter, and a dedicated website to connect with people throughout Mexico and many U.S.and European cities.

In Conrad's Heart of Darkness Kurtz was overwhelmed by the visions of horror -- the light came too late for him. But it's not too late for you to make a statement, to do something, to add your own spark of light to the thousands of others -- together we can brighten the darkness.

Diego Huerta's “31k Portraits for Peace” exhibit will be at the Mexic-Arte Museum, 418 Congress Ave., in Austin, through Sunday, April 22, 2012.

The Mexic-Arte Museum, designated as the "official Mexican and Mexican American Fine Art Museum of Texas" by the Texas state legislature, "is dedicated to enriching the community through education programs and exhibitions focusing on traditional and contemporary Mexican, Latino, and Latin American art and culture..."

There is an area at the museum to make your own origami dove and an Austin background for your portrait. Stop by, make a dove, take your photograph, and become a part of “31k Portraits for Peace."

[William Michael Hanks has written, produced, and directed film and television productions for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the U. S. Information Agency, and for Public Broadcasting. His documentary film, The Apollo File, won a Gold Medal at the Festival of the Americas. Mike, who worked with the original Rag in Sixties Austin, lives in Nacagdoches, Texas. Read more articles by Mike Hanks on The Rag Blog.]

Links:

• Mexic-Arte Museum
• 31K Portraits for Peace
• 31K Facebook page

Fold it!: Spread the message of peace.

Click on image to enlarge.

Images from Diego Huerta's 31K Portraits for Peace:

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Lamar W. Hankins : After Veterans Day, Business As Usual

Photo by John Gomez / AP.
Now, back to Fox News...
Veterans’ Day is over

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. -- Mark Twain

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / November 16, 2010

We Americans remember our history for a few minutes each year, often on days set aside for such matters. There is Presidents’ Day, the MLK holiday, San Jacinto Day (if you are a Texan), Memorial Day (the day set aside to honor those who died in our wars), Independence Day (one of two times a year to sell and buy fireworks in honor of the Chinese, though everything we buy seems to come from them now), Labor Day (one of our shopping and barbecuing holidays mostly), Veterans’ Day (a time to express a few patriotic-sounding thoughts before concentrating on the next holiday), Thanksgiving Day (the day for football and turkey, mostly), Christmas Day (a mixture of the commercial and religious), and New Year’s Day (more football and the honoring of our new calendars).

I admit to being cynical about many of these special days. It seems that their main purpose is to give us an opportunity to believe we are better people than we are by paying lip service to some easily held value that the holiday represents. This has seemed especially true of Veterans’ Day.

While I have not supported the creation of veterans, I have thought it hypocrisy of the highest order to claim with our words to honor our veterans, only to largely ignore them in reality. From discussions with my father, who served over four years in World War II, I understand that he was not pleased to be drafted and have his life interrupted by Hitler’s march across Europe, but he served honorably in an antiaircraft battalion.

He recorded his military journey in a small booklet supplied by the Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania: Camp Wallace, Fort Bliss, Philadelphia, Westville (New Jersey), Camp Kilmer, a troop ship from New York to Scotland, Llanover (Wales), Folkestone (England), May 24, 1944 -- ”fired at first enemy plane,” July 26-27 -- “knocked down 13 robot planes,” Omaha Beach (about 60 days after D-Day), Paris, Borischot (Belgium), Nijlen (Belgium), Lillo (Belgium), Bergen Op Zoom (Holland), Wuustwezel (Belgium), Fort Querqueville (France), Amberg (Germany), Wiesbaden (Germany), Bad Soden (Germany), Camp Herbert Tareyton (near Le Havre, France).

Dad considered himself fortunate that he had not been in the hand-to-hand combat his younger brother had found in the Pacific theater. He had escaped much of the trauma of war. Dad never wanted to visit any of the places he went as a soldier (except maybe Philadelphia, where he got to see a baseball game), but he did so in the service of his country, just as millions of others have done.

America saw fit to thank the men and women (my mother was in the U.S. Army Nursing Corps) who served in World War II by passing the GI Bill, which provided college or vocational education, along with one year of unemployment benefits, and loans to buy homes or start businesses. Over the years, additional provisions were added to assist veterans.

In 2008, educational benefits were greatly expanded thanks to Senator James Webb. Since President Obama has been in office, additional funding and benefits have been approved for veterans: the Department of Veterans Affairs was provided with more than $1.4 billion to improve services to America's Veterans, and $4.6 billion was added to the Veterans Administration budget to recruit and retain more mental health professionals to help veterans, especially those suffering from PTSD.

But all of these improvements have fallen short of adequately addressing the suffering of more than 200,000 Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange. For decades, the Defense Department refused to acknowledge the connection between that defoliant and the dramatically higher incidence of cancer and neurological, digestive, skin, lung, heart, and reproductive defects experienced by these veterans.

Similarly, as many as one-fourth of the 700,000 Gulf War veterans may suffer from what was called Gulf War Syndrome (now Gulf War illness), the causes of which are now believed to be primarily neurotoxins encountered by our troops in the war. Our government has failed to honor its commitment to these service men and women, as well as those affected by IED blasts, toxic exposure in Iraq, and other results of war.

If we are the nation we claim to be, it is essential that something substantial be done for these veterans (as well as those continuing to serve in the military) suffering from PTSD -- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The very name explains that war is traumatic and can create stress long after the trauma has ended. This is a condition that our military services prefer be kept under wraps. To most of our leaders, civilian and military, the less said about the trauma of war and the aftermath, the better.

Discussion of the toll war takes on our sons and daughters continues to be taboo, or at least discouraged in polite company. At the end of October, The Public Editor at The New York Times explained in a column how the Times covered the WikiLeaks release of documents from our two Middle East wars. Many of these documents revealed the sickening details of those wars as experienced by our troops on the ground.

There were many complaints that the documents were doing harm to our troops, but so far no one has been able to provide any evidence of this. The statements of former military personnel and authors who support this position are not evidence, merely opinions. The sub rosa implication of many such criticisms, that publication of the documents may be treasonous, is unsupported by any thorough analysis of exactly how the information leaked has harmed anyone, except for the harm to the reputations of military decision-makers and of the United States.

Aside from the specific details of how we have conducted these wars, what this leaked information reminds us is that war is an inhumane activity that morally degrades its participants, and should be undertaken only in self-defense, not out of retribution, hubris, or notions of exceptionalism.

As a country, we have facilitated and instigated torture and murder and rape, and continue to do so. Neither most of the Congress nor our last president apparently worried much about such matters, allowing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to proceed with little oversight or control. Now our new president is allowing, if not directing, the Afghan War to spread into Pakistan.

And the war hawks among us are drumming up support for a war against Iran for its internal policies relating to the development of its nuclear capabilities. It seems that we support sovereignty only when it is ours or that of our allies. And without doubt, our leaders don’t worry about the consequences of such wars on the citizens we call upon to carry out the fighting and dying and suffering.

Mark Twain observed over a century ago how this process works in “Chronicle of Young Satan”:

Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

When our government uses the services of psychologists and psychiatrists to manipulate the emotions and behaviors of our service men and women so that they will go to war in the mistaken belief that such wars are necessary to protect this country from harm, the government officials responsible degrade the professions they use, and they dishonor the human beings they manipulate to engage in war.

We should do more for our veterans, but whatever we do for them will be too little to make up for the immorality we have pushed, coaxed, bribed, and coerced them into. It is times like these when I hope that there is a God who will exact retribution for the craven disregard of basic decency. Unfortunately, He seems incapable of preventing the immorality that is war. It is up to us to see that this scourge of humankind is ended, along with its inevitable torture, murder, rape, and other suffering.

All of this brings to mind some other words of Mark Twain in “What Is Man?”:

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" -- with his mouth.

Now, it seems, we no longer have even the small benefit of intervals between wars. If we are the apotheosis of creation, whatever caused that creation is a wretched failure.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins.]

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Rabbi Arthur Waskow : Fort Hood and the Prophetic 'IF'

These battle-weary troops from the 1st Air Cav had just staged a "combat refusal" at the PACE firebase in Vietnam. There were also countless instances of "fragging" against officers by Vietnam GI's. Photo from NAM - The Story of the Vietnam War (Issue 8).
How will the community respond?
Fort Hood and the Prophetic 'IF'

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow / The Rag Blog / November 25, 2009

One reader wrote me to ask: "What effect will the Ft. Hood shootings have on the American public's perception of Islam?" That question asks us to be foretellers, fortune tellers, to predict. But The Shalom Center has had the holy chutzpah to call ourselves a "prophetic voice," and that voice is about "forth-telling," not foretelling. About “If,” not “will.”

The Prophets spoke always with an "if" -- "IF the community chooses to oppress its workers into slaves, then the owners will themselves become slaves to Babylonia; IF the slave-owners will free their slaves, they will be freed from the yoke of Babylonia." (That was Jeremiah, as the Babylonian Army besieged Jerusalem, speaking forth a challenge, at once a warning and a promise, to the conventional practices and power structures of his society.)

From that perspective, the Prophetic question today should be a challenge to power and convention: "What effect should the Ft. Hood shootings have on the American public's perception of the Afghanistan War?"

For anyone who lived through the Vietnam War, Fort Hood recalls the epidemic of "fragging" late in the war -- that is, enlisted men throwing fragmentation bombs at the officers who were ordering them into hopeless, senseless battle.

In Fort Hood, if the reports and claims from the police and military are correct (we already know that a number of falsehoods were reported as facts), an officer, a physician, trained to heal traumatized people from the maiming of their souls, was refused an exit from the soul-destroying prison he begged to leave.

If the reports are accurate, it seems that he broke, choosing murder rather than the nonviolent forms of resistance he might have chosen. In that sense he replicated the violence of the war he abhorred and the violence that kept him in the Army against his will –- replicated the violence instead of resisting it in a deeper way.

One of the reasons that "fragging" came near the end of the Vietnam War is that the epidemic of fragging signaled to the higher officer corps that they had better end the war. Coming on top of more and more evidence that the U.S. and NATO military presence in Afghanistan is itself multiplying the violent resistance it claims to suppress, the Fort Hood murders should signal the American public and its military and civilian leadership to take off the hoods we have put over our own eyes, see the truth, and take our soldiers out from Afghanistan.

If -- IF, the Prophetic word -- If we seriously want to help grow a grassroots democracy there, we might send teams of women from American community banks to provide grassroots microloans to those who are prepared to use them, especially including women, while abandoning the self-destructive effort to impose democracy with Predators. Then Fort Hood might help Americans grow into a new relationship with the hundreds of millions of Muslims who seek to shape their own futures in peace.

IF instead the American public chooses to define Fort Hood as proof that Islam is a world of hatred, then the cage of violence that some Muslims, some Christians, some Jews, some Hindus are helping build will clang shut upon us all .

IF.

Shalom, salaam, shantih, peace,

Arthur

[Rabbi Arthur Waskow is director of The Shalom Center and is co-author of The Tent of Abraham; author of Godwrestling, Round 2, Down-to-Earth Judaism and a dozen other books on Jewish thought and practice, as well as books on U.S. public policy.]

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Obama Presidency : One Term if by War, Two if by Peace

Barack Obama and the Afghanistan decision:
One (term) if by war, two if by peace

By Harvey Wasserman / November 17, 2009

As the world awaits Barack Obama's decision on Afghanistan, a lethal myth has spread. It says that standing up to the military will doom him to be a single-term president.

The "one if by peace" myth comes most recently from Garry Wills in the New York Review of Books. Wills mourns that Obama would commit political suicide by pulling out of both Iraq and Afghanistan because "the charges from various quarters would be toxic -- that he was weak, unpatriotic, sacrificing the sacrifices that have been made, betraying our dead, throwing away all former investments in lives and treasure."

Against all that, says Wills, "he could have little defense in the quarters where such charges would originate."

Coming from an astute observer like Wills, this is a stunning analysis -- and dead wrong.

In fact, the only way Obama can begin to think about getting reelected is to leave the Afghan quagmire and do the same from Iraq.

The key phrase here is "the quarters where such charges would originate."

The battle cries originate with the military which, as Will Rogers once put it, "never saw a war it didn't like." General Stanley McChrystal and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have spearheaded an unsavory, unethical media assault to force a quick escalation.

Their core support comes from the Rogue/Rouge Right now shattering the Republican Party. This media-based Palin paramilitary has just driven the GOP to defeat in a New York Congressional district, Republican for more than a century. It's now assaulting Charlie Crist, the very popular moderate Governor of Florida, and others like him. Any Republican caught whispering that Obama is other than a baby-killing Muslim gay terrorist is being condemned in ways not seen since Salem, 1692.

This might seem good for the Democrats. But Obama can blow it all by escalating in Afghanistan. His core support -- a substantial majority of Democrats, and any number of moderate Republicans -- wants out. The California Democrats have formalized the message.

National health care and climate change remain hugely important. They are divisive and difficult. And there will be no meaningful progress on either without a drawdown on our overseas adventurism and the larger military budget.

Thus Afghanistan towers above all. The decline of the Democratic Party and the U.S. as a whole dates directly to March, 1965, when Lyndon Johnson escalated the war in Vietnam. The ensuing decade of futility overflowed with agonized analysis and absurd apologia.

In the end, all the U.S. could do was spend, destroy, kill, die and flee.

So, too, Afghanistan. Be the motive geopolitical, anti-terrorist, petrochemical, feminist, humanitarian, or just plain not wanting to "lose," American bombs from the air and boots on the ground will simply dissolve and disappear in an ocean of shifting sands and ancient enmities.

Whatever his admirers fear might be said about Obama "losing" this hopeless sinkhole will be screamed anyway by the Rogue/Rouge Right, no matter what he does. In their eyes, all ensuing terror attacks, economic downturns, human frailties, stubs of the toe and twists of inscrutable fate will be Barack Obama's fault, no matter what or why.

Standing down in Afghanistan and Iraq would be truly historic. It could end the epoch -- dating to 1492 -- when Europe continually marched throughout the Third World. More narrowly, it would acknowledge, at last, America's inability to shape every corner of the Earth to its overbearing whim.

Perhaps it would finally curb this nation's addiction to squandering blood and treasure on these absurd, hopeless and ultimately suicidal military excursions.

For Obama and 2012, it might make the dream of meaningful health and energy reform financially feasible. It could prevent the liberal base in this country from shattering, as it did in 1968, opening the door to Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Bush... and now to the likes of Limbaugh, Beck, Palin, and Dobbs.

Few things are guaranteed in politics. But one certainty is that an escalation in Afghanistan will again poison the Democratic Party and leave Barack Obama an empty political husk. The brilliant, good-hearted Garry Wills begs Obama to do the right thing for the sake of morality and sanity.

But if Obama has any hope of guiding a coherent administration for the rest of this term, or of winning a second one, he has no choice. The Graveyard of Great Powers awaits yet another misguided imperial attacker.

Let's hope, pray, work and fight to make sure that this time, we step aside.

[Harvey Wasserman's History of the United States is at www.harveywasserman.com, as is Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth. He is senior editor of www.freepress.org, where this article also appears.]

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Rabbi Arthur Waskow : Some Cockamamie Ideas about Afghanistan

Afghani women: Offer micro-loans for economic development. Photo from UNHCR.
Remembering Pharaoh, Plagues and Exodus...
Afghanistan: There has to be a better way

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow / The Rag Blog / October 29, 2009

When some of us outside Washington (and even some inside) say there must be some other way of dealing with Afghanistan, Good Old Official Formal U.S. (GOOFUS) says this is a cockamamie notion. So The Shalom Center is going to put forward four cockamamie plans. Read on!

Present U.S. plans for Afghanistan and present/past U.S. behavior toward fossil fuels and the world's climate share four factors:

• Both are based on top-down control over the "weaker" communities of human beings and the web of life on earth;
• These "weaker" beings turn out to be able to fight back in unexpectedly effective and destructive ways;
• For a moment, decision-makers in the White House (Afghanistan) and Congress (climate) are shuddering as they see the precipice before them and are trying to imagine change. But the pull of "Top-Down" habit is very strong.
• In this moment, We the People can make a difference.

This pattern is a very old story. In the Bible, it is called Pharaoh, Plagues, and Exodus.

On Sept. 10, 2009, Matthew Hoh, a senior U.S. diplomat and former Marine resigned from the U.S. Foreign Service after serving more than five years in Iraq and five months in Afghanistan.

This week the Washington Post published his letter and reported he has been invited to meet with Vice President Biden's staff.

Hoh said:

I fail to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war. The Pashtun insurgency, which is composed of multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups, is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies. The United States military presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency.

The Shalom Center offers four cockamamie ideas for U.S. policy in Afghanistan, two of which are already under official consideration inside the Washington Beltway.

1. ("Counter-insurgency") Send 500,000 U.S. soldiers to occupy the most ornery anti-occupation people on the craggy face of earth, killing thousands of Afghans and Americans along the way and bankrupting any hope of social reform in America;


2. ("Counter-terrorism") Keep flinging lightning bolts from the sky to kill bands of "terrorists" who we then discover are wedding guests, thereby multiplying the reserve army of "terrorists" a thousandfold after every wedding.


3. ("Bribery") Fire all U.S. generals and diplomats in Afghanistan. Send five women U.S. Senators to negotiate with Afghan women and all male Afghan factional leaders (including the varied Taliban factions) with two promises: (a) Any governance agreement they unanimously agree to will be backed up by one billion dollars a month in U.S. "economic aid," delivered as five-dollar bills in suitcases, if requested, and by the withdrawal of all US troops; (b) If no such agreement is reached, or if the agreement breaks down, the money and all other U.S. involvement in Afghanistan ends at once.


4. ("Wild Far Far West," also known as "Grass-roots gamble") Call a conference of the independent women's organizations in Afghanistan. Offer micro-loans for grass-roots economic development to any group of ten women who apply as a group (loans ranging from $1,000 to $5,000). And -- offer ten revolvers and 1000 bullets to each group of women: one gun and 50 bullets for each woman for target practice, 50 bullets for defense against anyone who comes to assail them for being uppity. If any women's group chooses not to receive the guns but to take their chances on nonviolence, their micro-loan doubles. Then the U.S. leaves -- Generals, Predators, Drones, and all -- except for continuing contact with the micro-loan organizations.

Of the four, which plan is least cockamamie -- most likely to save American lives, benefit American society, save Afghan lives, and help self-government grow at the grass roots in Afghanistan?

The Shalom Center is posting this letter on our website at www.theshalomcenter.org and welcomes you to write your own comments there. On the website you will also find a "take action" memo for writing your Senators about Afghanistan, as well as a longer note about urging your Senators to act on global scorching and the climate crisis.

Remember: both issues are at a crossroads, a crucial choice point. We the People can make a difference.

Shalom, salaam, peace!

Arthur

P.S. – For David Hoh's full letter of resignation from the Foreign Service and his analysis of present failures in Afghanistan, go here.

[Rabbi Arthur Waskow is director of The Shalom Center. He can be reached at awaskow@shalomctr.org.]

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Rabbi Arthur Waskow : Let's Help Obama EARN that Nobel

The Nobel Prize, Obama, and Afghanistan
(And especially its women)

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow / The Rag Blog / October 9, 2009

The first person I told this morning that Obama had won the Nobel Prize for Peace said, "For what?"

So -- if I may give a new spin to a saying of the last remarkable presidential candidate before him, Bobby Kennedy:

Some people, shown a piece of work not yet completed, say, ‘How come?’

But I, facing that same piece of work not yet completed, say, ‘The time is now!’

And that is what I would urge us all to say to the President today, and next week:

”Congratulations! And the time is NOW to fulfill this honor -- end the Afghan War!"

To help stop the war, we invite you to act now by clicking here to send a letter to your Senator (or Vice-President Biden if as a DC resident you have none)

The war could and should have begun by tackling Al Qaeda as criminals, not as if they were a country that was at war with the U.S. The minimum amount of force necessary to apprehend them, including deadly force if necessary. That's it. Capturing cop-killers without burning down the neighborhood.

Yes, the Taliban are disgusting. Oppressive. But there are a myriad ways of encouraging reform in other countries. The one that does NOT work is trying to install democracy at the point of a bayonet. Or, even worse, Predator Drones which massacre wedding parties from the sky and turn the survivors into furious enemies.

In a minute I will suggest a couple of ways of thinking outside the Afghan box. Maybe those or other ideas they stimulate should be the way to go. Continuing this war is not. We can already see that we have walked into another quagmire -- an endless war in a country that for centuries has hated all occupations with a burning fury.

And that war would undermine all plans for social reform at home -- exactly what happened to Lyndon Johnson when Vietnam swept away the Great Society.

The moment has come to correct the mistake. President Obama has been told that the warpath "forward" means 500,000 US troops for five years. Many dead, maimed of body, mind, and soul. Forget about health care. Forget education. Forget healing our wounded, choking planet. And he is -- it seems -- thinking twice.

But the mindless pressures of military habit are still pressing. The American people -- surveys show a majority oppose this war -- must act to end it. The other path -- friendship with Islam; economic aid at the grass-roots, micro-loan level; empowering women; drawing on the healing of wind and solar energy instead of addiction to oil -- will do far more to protect America.

As Code Pink, the U.S. women's peace organization, has reported after recent meetings with Afghan women, and as my dear friend Barbara Bick, whose memory is a blessing, and who spent years in Afghanistan working with Afghan women, also reported before her death this year, Afghan women want to be empowered -- but they do not believe American bombs will do it.

Two ideas way outside the box:

1. Send five women U.S. Senators to negotiate with Afghan women and all male Afghan factional leaders (including the varied Taliban factions) with two promises: that any governance agreement unanimously agreed to will be backed up by billions in U.S. economic aid, delivered in suitcases, if necessary. All U.S.military presence and aid ends at once. If no such agreement is reached, all U.S. involvement in Afghanistan ends.


2. Call a conference of the independent women's organizations in Afghanistan. Offer micro-loans for grass-roots economic development to any group of ten women who apply as a group (loans ranging from $1,000 to $5,000), plus offer ten revolvers and 100 bullets to each group of women: one gun and 50 bullets for each woman for target practice, 50 for defense against anyone who comes to assail them for being uppity. Then -- the U.S. leaves, except for continuing contact with the micro-loan organizations.

Whether you like these ideas or not, the US war in Afghanistan should end -- for their sake and for ours.

Again -- we invite you to act now by clicking here to send a letter to your Senator (or Vice-President Biden).

Thanks and blessings that the effort you bring for peace and healing flows back into peace and healing in your own life.

Shalom, salaam, shantih, peace --

Arthur

[Rabbi Arthur Waskow is director of The Shalom Center. He can be reached at awaskow@shalomctr.org.]

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Rabbi Arthur Waskow: Yom Kippur and the Middle East : Our Misdeeds and Theirs

Rabbi Rebecca Alpert blows Shofar at Fast for Gaza event at Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. At right is Rabbi Arthur Waskow.

We are called to reexamine our actions

Jews -- and all others who care for peace -- must act in new ways to turn toward compassion, truth, justice, and peace.

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow / The Rag Blog / September 24, 2009

During these days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Jews are called on to reexamine our own actions -- our "missings of the mark." The emphasis is on OUR sins -- not those of individuals alone, but of the community -- and the sins of ourselves, not of other people, even our enemies. We are also called on not only to confess our misdeeds but CHANGE what we do.

In that light, the Israeli government's recent behavior flies in the face of this profound Jewish wisdom. So Jews -- and all others who care for peace -- must act in new ways to turn toward compassion, truth, justice, and peace.

Two major actions we might take NOW, at this solemn time of year:

• joining the Jewish and Interfaith Fast for Gaza; and
• signing up for the Conference called by 18 pro-Israel, pro-peace organizations, including The Shalom Center, that will be held in Washington DC October 25-28. Links and details are below.

Against the consensus of almost all decent and democratic opinion in the world, the present Israeli government has:

1. Continued the blockade of civilian goods from entering Gaza, imposing malnutrition, homelessness, abysmal poverty, and despair on its people;


2. Denounced the Goldstone report on the commission of probable war crimes by BOTH Hamas and the Israeli government during and since the Gaza War;


3. Continued to destroy Palestinian homes, disrupt Palestinian neighborhoods, and insert Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem;


4. Continued sending more settlers into the Palestinian West Bank.

I want to say a bit more about the Goldstone report. Before Goldstone, it had smelly origins -- commissioned by an anti-Israel corner of the UN. But through the workings of international politics in the direction of justice, the job was handed to an affirmative Jew with strong Zionist connections, a giant of international law, who insisted on studying the possibility of war crimes by both Hamas and the government of Israel.

The report finds high probability that on both sides there were war crimes, cites the evidence in great detail, and asserts the need for formal judicial investigation by both governments. It proposes giving both six months to do this, and if they fail, asking the Security Council to refer the evidence to the International Criminal Court.

Eminently sensible.

As the ancient rabbis said, the glory of human wisdom begins in a smelly drop (of semen). So what? The content of the report is the point. Its 600-plus pages of evidence are the point. Its truth or falsity, not its smelly origins, are the point.

The U.S. government's critique of the Goldstone Report, as voiced by Ambassador Susan Rice, is rooted in this fallacy of origins. It almost signals the silliness of this approach by then urging that all action on the report be confined to precisely this smelly corner of the UN, rather than to other places that are far more just. More likely, beneath this fallacious rhetoric was a policy evasion of the duty of all governments to make sure that if war crimes were committed, they are punished.

Goldstone himself is a distinguished South African Jew whose daughter has called him a Zionist, who took an important role in the truth and reconciliation process in South Africa, and who served as chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda from 1994 to 1996. He was a member of the Commission of Enquiry into the Activities of Nazism in Argentina (CEANA) which was established in 1997 to identify Nazi war criminals who had emigrated to Argentina, and transferred victim assets (Nazi gold) there.

From the beginning, his UN task was to look into possible war crimes by both sides in the Gaza War. He attempted to interview Israelis who had been attacked in Sderot, but his team was denied entry to Israel. So the commission paid to have Israeli witnesses travel to where their evidence could be heard.

The Israeli government's hostility from the git-go seems to me the behavior of a guilty party that did not want even-handed judgment, even if that meant its enemies as well as itself were judged.

The Goldstone Report indeed said there was serious evidence of specific war crimes by both sides, and called for judicial trials. President Shimon Peres of Israel attacked the report in the following terms:

"War itself is a crime. The aggressor is the criminal. The side exercising self-defense has no other alternative.
[….]
"The report legitimizes terrorist activity, the pursuit of murder and death. The report disregards the duty and right of self defense, held by every sovereign state as enshrined in the UN Charter."

There are two falsehoods in this statement. First, far from "legitimizing" terrorist activity, the report describes it as a war crime. Secondly, Mr. Peres ignored the truth of international law that even a war of "self-defense" has limits in how it can be fought. For example, white phosphorus cannot be used against civilians. The Palestinians, of course, claim that their war was one of self-defense. But even if it were, it was forbidden to fight it by attacking civilian neighborhoods.

The Israeli government could have responded by saying it welcomed full judicial process and would live by its result. Its actual response therefore compounds its original misdeeds.


Let me then propose an action agenda for tshuvah (repentance and change) for this sacred time, and beyond:

1. Join the Jewish Fast for Gaza (Taanit Tzedek) -- a one day a month fast to call for an end to the blockade of civilian items and a decision by the U.S. and Israeli governments to negotiate with the Gaza leadership. Four weeks ago, the founders of the Fast -- Rabbis Brian Walt and Brant Rosen -- were personally attacked for their work by an Israeli with words like "borderline anti-Semitic."

In fact, Rabbis Walt and Rosen are Reconstructionist rabbis of great honor and repute. Rabbi Walt founded a vibrant and flourishing congregation in Philadelphia, Mishkan Shalom, and left it to devote full-time work to Rabbis for Human Rights/ North America, directing its support for RHR in Israel and its work to oppose the use of torture by the U.S. government. Rabbi Rosen leads the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation of Evanston Illinois, which among other notable feats, totally rebuilt its building to the level of green effectiveness worthy to receive the LEED Platinum designation, alone among all U.S. synagogues.

Their response to that attack on them and the Fast for Gaza (which has been affirmed by more than 70 rabbis, as well as a number of Christian clergy and Imams and hundreds of others) has now been published by the Jerusalem Post. Notably, it utterly refrains from name-calling or recriminations against their attacker, and focuses on the facts about Gaza that gave rise to the Taanit Tzedek.

To read their response and join the Fast, click here.

2. Sign up for the unprecedented conference on October 25-28 in Washington DC called by J Street and 17 other pro-Israel, pro-peace organizations, including The Shalom Center, to work for US policy to become serious and unremitting for a two-state peace, including support for the Obama Administration's demand for a total freeze on all increase of Israeli settlers or settlements on the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Click here.

Shalom, salaam, shantih -- Peace!

Arthur

P.S. Meanwhile, part of the American Jewish official leadership has urged all American rabbis to use the High Holy Days to emphasize the sins of the present government of Iran against its own people, against the history and legitimacy of the Jewish people, and against international comity and concern. This effort called for tougher sanctions against Iran. Those sins are real and glaring, and should be addressed not only by Jews but by veryone committed to peace.

But focusing only on them at this moment -- when we are wisely taught to address our own misdeeds -- encourages American Jews to turn away from acknowledging and addressing the sins of the two governments that might be considered "ours": the US and Israeli governments.

And when we do turn to the Iranian misdeeds, I think tougher sanctions are likely to unify the Iranian people to support even a government they loathe against what they will see as foreign "oppression," rather than encouraging them to strengthen their resistance to Ahmadinejad. We should discuss ways to do the second.

P.S. 2. I came through my leg surgery last Friday fairly well, and I expect to leave the hospital Wednesday or Thursday. We are once more seeking the insurance company's support to go to an intensive rehab facility. I'll keep you updated. I did make some new discoveries about the relationship of patient pain to physicians' judgments. That deserves its own report.

• Written to chevra, from Hahnemann Hospital, September 22 / 4 Tishrei

[Rabbi Arthur Waskow is director of The Shalom Center. He can be reached at awaskow@shalomctr.org.]

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If There Is a Future of Peace for Humankind, It Will Come From the Artists

Subject: Why Music?

Welcome address to freshman class at Boston Conservatory given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of music division at Boston Conservatory.

"One of my parents' deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn't be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother's remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school - she said, "You're WASTING your SAT scores."

On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren't really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the "arts and entertainment" section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it's the opposite of entertainment.. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture-why would anyone bother with music? And yet-from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn't just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, "I am alive, and my life has meaning."

On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn't this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn't shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn't play cards to pass the time, we didn't watch TV, we didn't shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang We Shall Overcome. Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our
first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section would have us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber's heart-wrenchingly beautiful piece Adagio for Strings. If you don't know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn't know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what's really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings - people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there's some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn't good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can't talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn't happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I'll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in Fargo, ND, about 4 years ago.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland's Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland's, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier - even in his 70's, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn't the first time I've heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: "During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team's planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn't understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?

Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year's freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this:

"If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you'd take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you're going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sell yourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell; being a musician isn't about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I'm not an entertainer; I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You're here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives."

Source / The Musicians of the Columbus Symphony

Thanks to Kate Braun and Jennifer Seth / The Rag Blog

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When Running to Stand Still Isn’t Where Your Joy Lies

In the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno’s arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied.

The Joy of Less
By Pico Iyer / June 9, 2009

“The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active, and yet more peaceful, and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches ... My [life] is one long sequence of inner miracles.” The young Dutchwoman Etty Hillesum wrote that in a Nazi transit camp in 1943, on her way to her death at Auschwitz two months later. Towards the end of his life, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen,” though by then he had already lost his father when he was 7, his first wife when she was 20 and his first son, aged 5. In Japan, the late 18th-century poet Issa is celebrated for his delighted, almost child-like celebrations of the natural world. Issa saw four children die in infancy, his wife die in childbirth, and his own body partially paralyzed.

I’m not sure I knew the details of all these lives when I was 29, but I did begin to guess that happiness lies less in our circumstances than in what we make of them, in every sense. “There is nothing either good or bad,” I had heard in high school, from Hamlet, “but thinking makes it so.” I had been lucky enough at that point to stumble into the life I might have dreamed of as a boy: a great job writing on world affairs for Time magazine, an apartment (officially at least) on Park Avenue, enough time and money to take vacations in Burma, Morocco, El Salvador. But every time I went to one of those places, I noticed that the people I met there, mired in difficulty and often warfare, seemed to have more energy and even optimism than the friends I’d grown up with in privileged, peaceful Santa Barbara, Calif., many of whom were on their fourth marriages and seeing a therapist every day. Though I knew that poverty certainly didn’t buy happiness, I wasn’t convinced that money did either.

So — as post-1960s cliché decreed — I left my comfortable job and life to live for a year in a temple on the backstreets of Kyoto. My high-minded year lasted all of a week, by which time I’d noticed that the depthless contemplation of the moon and composition of haiku I’d imagined from afar was really more a matter of cleaning, sweeping and then cleaning some more. But today, more than 21 years later, I still live in the vicinity of Kyoto, in a two-room apartment that makes my old monastic cell look almost luxurious by comparison. I have no bicycle, no car, no television I can understand, no media — and the days seem to stretch into eternities, and I can’t think of a single thing I lack.


I’m no Buddhist monk, and I can’t say I’m in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I’ve written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn’t want or need, not all I did. And it seemed quite useful to take a clear, hard look at what really led to peace of mind or absorption (the closest I’ve come to understanding happiness). Not having a car gives me volumes not to think or worry about, and makes walks around the neighborhood a daily adventure. Lacking a cell phone and high-speed Internet, I have time to play ping-pong every evening, to write long letters to old friends and to go shopping for my sweetheart (or to track down old baubles for two kids who are now out in the world).

When the phone does ring — once a week — I’m thrilled, as I never was when the phone rang in my overcrowded office in Rockefeller Center. And when I return to the United States every three months or so and pick up a newspaper, I find I haven’t missed much at all. While I’ve been rereading P.G. Wodehouse, or “Walden,” the crazily accelerating roller-coaster of the 24/7 news cycle has propelled people up and down and down and up and then left them pretty much where they started. “I call that man rich,” Henry James’s Ralph Touchett observes in “Portrait of a Lady,” “who can satisfy the requirements of his imagination.” Living in the future tense never did that for me.

Perhaps happiness, like peace or passion, comes most when it isn’t pursued.

I certainly wouldn’t recommend my life to most people — and my heart goes out to those who have recently been condemned to a simplicity they never needed or wanted. But I’m not sure how much outward details or accomplishments ever really make us happy deep down. The millionaires I know seem desperate to become multimillionaires, and spend more time with their lawyers and their bankers than with their friends (whose motivations they are no longer sure of). And I remember how, in the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno’s arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied.

Being self-employed will always make for a precarious life; these days, it is more uncertain than ever, especially since my tools of choice, written words, are coming to seem like accessories to images. Like almost everyone I know, I’ve lost much of my savings in the past few months. I even went through a dress-rehearsal for our enforced austerity when my family home in Santa Barbara burned to the ground some years ago, leaving me with nothing but the toothbrush I bought from an all-night supermarket that night. And yet my two-room apartment in nowhere Japan seems more abundant than the big house that burned down. I have time to read the new John le Carre, while nibbling at sweet tangerines in the sun. When a Sigur Ros album comes out, it fills my days and nights, resplendent. And then it seems that happiness, like peace or passion, comes most freely when it isn’t pursued.

If you’re the kind of person who prefers freedom to security, who feels more comfortable in a small room than a large one and who finds that happiness comes from matching your wants to your needs, then running to stand still isn’t where your joy lies. In New York, a part of me was always somewhere else, thinking of what a simple life in Japan might be like. Now I’m there, I find that I almost never think of Rockefeller Center or Park Avenue at all.

[Pico Iyer’s most recent book, “The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama,” is just out in paperback.]

Source / The New York Times

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Global Peace Index : Nations With More Atheism are More Peaceful

Graphic from Epiphenom.
'It's another blow to the idea that secularization leads to social meltdown. Atheist countries are, in fact more peaceful.'

By Tom Rees / June 4, 2009

The 2009 Global Peace Index has just been released. It's basically a ranking of how turbulent and warlike a country is.

They put it together by assessing 23 criteria, including foreign wars, internal conflicts, respect for human rights, the number of murders, the number of people in jail, the arms trade, and degrees of democracy (Guardian).

You can see a world map of peace at the Vision of Humanity website, and also take a look at country rankings for 2009, as well as earlier years.

New Zealand came out on top this year. Hmm, New Zealand is a pretty non-religious country. In fact, if you eyeball the rankings, the top few countries are all pretty non-religious.

What I've done in the figures here is to take data from the World Values Survey on the percentage of people in each country who say they are a committed atheist, and also on the percentage of people who say that they go to a religious service at least once a month.

World Peace Map from Vision of Humanity.

Click on image to enlarge.

Then I split the sample into two equal groups, based on their score on the Global Peace Index. The ones in the 'Peaceful' group are countries with a GPI score less than 1.8.

Sure enough, peaceful countries have more atheists and fewer regular worshippers. The difference is highly statistically significant (P=0.001 or less) -- in other words it's real, not just a chance finding.

Now, there are several possible reasons for this. It could be that people living in turbulent countries turn to religion, or it could be that religion is not a good way to structure modern society. Or it could be that some other factor or combination of factors (democracy? free speech? education? government welfare?) generates citizens who are both peaceful and non-religious.

Whatever, it's another blow to the idea that secularization leads to social meltdown. Atheist countries are, in fact more peaceful.

Source / Epiphenom

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Spending on Peace Is More Cost Effective

Military spending is set to rise 34% by 2012.
The purchasing power of peace
By Jorn Madslien / June 3, 2009

Purchasing power long ago overtook manpower as the most important lever in the race towards military might.

Currently, personnel expenditure accounts for less than 40% of global defence spending, according to Datamonitor.

As hi-tech machinery continues to reduce the need to use soldiers to fight wars, this proportion is shrinking.

Meanwhile, the amount spent on defence is soaring in every region of the world.

In 2007 alone, global defence spending rose 8.4% to $1,140.5bn, according to Datamonitor, which predicts a near 34% increase to $1,527.6bn by 2012.

Poverty fuels violence

At a time when a deep economic recession is causing much turbulence in the civilian world - buffeting both airlines and aerospace companies - defence giants such as Boeing and EADS, or Finmeccanica and Northrop Grumman, are thus enjoying a reliable and growing revenue stream from countries eager to increase their military might.

Defence spending 2008
   US $374bn
   Asia $173bn
   European Nato $144bn
   Source: IISS.
Defence spending has a tendency to rise during times of economic hardship.

Both geopolitical hostilities and domestic violence tend to flare up during downturns.

Last year, for instance, high food and fuel prices during the first part of the year and the recession later in the year eroded peace, according to the Global Peace Index, published by the Institute for Economics and Peace.

On the domestic stage, meanwhile, "rapidly rising unemployment, pay freezes and falls in the value of house prices, savings and pensions is causing popular resentment", the report says.

Valuable 'violence'

Shareholders and employees in the aerospace and defence industry are clearly the ones who benefit most from growing defence spending.

Armed conflict often intensifies during economic
downturns, a report says.

Defence companies, whose main task is to aid governments' efforts to defend or acquire territory, routinely highlight their capacity to contribute to economic growth and to provide employment.

Indeed, some $2.4 trillion (£1.5tr), or 4.4%, of the global economy "is dependent on violence", according to the Global Peace Index, referring to "industries that create or manage violence" - or the defence industry.

Economic stimulus

Many governments deem defence spending as a useful tool to fend off recessions - another reason why defence spending often rises during downturns.

Take China, which has doubled its defence budget since 2006 and is planning yet another 15% rise in its official defence budget this year to 480bn yuan ($70bn; £43bn).

The hope is that the additional defence spending should act as a fiscal stimulus and thus help to get the Chinese economy's wheels turning even faster.

China is not the only Asian country to boost its defence budgets.

Last year, Asia overtook Europe as the second-biggest military spender ($173bn), after the US ($374bn) and ahead of European Nato members ($144bn), according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

Profitable peace


Bank of England, City of London.

If the cost of investing in proactive peace-creation was minimal compared to the lost potential caused by violence, then would it not be fitting for business to engage with government to create peace in the markets in which they operate? Global Peace Index.

Undoubtedly, such additional cash injections will reap benefits in the economies concerned.

But if "violence", or the threat of such, is economically beneficial, then peace - the "absence of violence" - is even more valuable, according to the Global Peace Index, which has calculated its value in US dollar terms.

"Ideally, living without the threat of instability would mean the violence dollars could be redeployed into areas that would cause other less destructive markets to grow," the report says.

The economic bonus of peace - or the removal of the cost of "lost peace" - would be $7.2tn a year, based on latest data from 2007, the report has found.

"There is a very, very strong correlation between peace and wealth," Steve Killelea, founder of the Global Peace Index.

Peace industry

To reach this figure, the report's authors set out to identify the "peace industry", as distinct from the defence industry.

"The peace industry comprises those companies and industries whose markets improve, or whose costs decrease with improving peacefulness," it says.

"Examples include retail, finance, tourism and insurance."

The report's findings are not as abstract as they may at first seem. Not only does it insist that "wars are no longer economically viable". It also calls for companies to promote peace:

"If the cost of investing in proactive peace-creation was minimal compared to the lost potential caused by violence, then would it not be fitting for business to engage with government to create peace in the markets in which they operate?"

Virtuous cycle

Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, the world has become a more peaceful place, as "more wars have ceased than have started", the Global Peace Index observes.

French engineers practice land mine clearing,
near the Yugoslav border, at Kumanovo, 1999.
Promoting peace may boost economic growth.

"One of the biggest beneficiaries of this has been business."

More recently, between 2000 and 2007, the number of conflicts fell from 40 to 30. Meanwhile, global GDP, or economic output, has risen from $32tn to $55tn.

This is a direct result of what the report calls a "virtuous cycle", where productive employment - which can only arise if there is peace - leads to wealth creation.

"People become motivated by the improved standard of their lives, rather than seeking retribution for past wrongs," it says.

Conversely, when economic development contracts, violence increases, thus harming the business environment.

Military might delivers geopolitical supremacy, but peace delivers economic prosperity and stability.

And that, the report insists, is what is good for business.

For full reports, click here.

Source / BBC News

Thanks to Deva Wood / The Rag Blog

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