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(revised 2/21/02)
'Brutality smeared in peanut butter' - Why America must stop the war now.
(Or, "War is Peace")
Arundhati Roy
As darkness deepened over Afghanistan on Sunday October 72001, the US government, backed by the International Coalition Against Terror (the new, amenable surrogate for the United Nations), launched air strikes against Afghanistan. TV channels lingered on computer-animated images of cruise missiles, stealth bombers, tomahawks, "bunker-busting" missiles and Mark 82 high drag bombs. All over the world, little boys watched goggle-eyed and stopped clamouring for new video games.
The UN, reduced now to an ineffective acronym, wasn't even asked to mandate the air strikes. (As Madeleine Albright once said, "We will behave multilaterally when we can, and unilaterally when we must.") The "evidence" against the terrorists was shared amongst friends in the "coalition".
After conferring, they announced that it didnıt matter whether or not the "evidence" would stand up in a court of law. Thus, in an instant, were centuries of jurisprudence carelessly trashed.
Nothing can excuse or justify an act of terrorism, whether it is committed by religious fundamentalists, private militia, eople's resistance movements - or whether it's dressed up as a war of retribution by a recognised government. The bombing of Afghanistan is not revenge for New York and Washington. It is yet another act of terror against the people of the world. Each innocent person that is killed must be added to, not set off against, the grisly toll of civilians who died in New York and Washington.
People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People get killed.
Governments moult and regroup, hydra-headed. They use flags first to shrink-wrap people's minds and smother thought, and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury their willing dead. On both sides, in Afghanistan as well as America, civilians are now hostage to the actions of their own governments.
Unknowingly, ordinary people in both countries share a common bond - they have to live with the phenomenon of blind, unpredictable terror. Each batch of bombs that is dropped on Afghanistan is matched by a corresponding escalation of mass hysteria in America about anthrax, more hijackings and other terrorist acts.
There is no easy way out of the spiralling morass of terror and brutality that confronts the world today. It is time now for the human race to hold still, to delve into its wells of collective wisdom, both ancient and modern. What happened on September 11 changed the world forever.
Freedom, progress, wealth, technology, war - these words have taken on new meaning. Governments have to acknowledge this transformation, and approach their new tasks with a modicum of honesty and humility. Unfortunately, up to now, there has been no sign of any introspection from the leaders of the International Coalition. Or the Taliban.
When he announced the air strikes, President George Bush said: "We're a peaceful nation." Americaıs favourite ambassador, Tony Blair, (who also holds the portfolio of prime minister of the UK), echoed him: "We're a peaceful people."
So now we know. Pigs are horses. Girls are boys. War is peace.
Speaking at the FBI headquarters a few days later, President Bush said: "This is our calling. This is the calling of the United States of America. The most free nation in the world. A nation built on fundamental values that reject hate, reject violence, rejects murderers and rejects evil. We will not tire."
Here is a list of the countries that America has been at war with - and bombed - since the second world war: China (1945-46, 1950-53), Korea (1950-53), Guatemala (1954, 1967-69), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), the Belgian Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-73), Vietnam (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-70), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), El Salvador (1980s), Nicaragua (1980s), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-99), Bosnia (1995), Sudan (1998), Yugoslavia (1999). And now Afghanistan.
Certainly it does not tire - this, the most free nation in the world.
What freedoms does it uphold? Within its borders, the freedoms of speech, religion, thought; of artistic expression, food habits, sexual preferences (well, to some extent) and many other exemplary, wonderful things.
Outside its borders, the freedom to dominate, humiliate and subjugate usually in the service of Americaıs real religion, the "free market". So when the US government christens a war "Operation Infinite Justice", or "Operation Enduring Freedom", we in the third world feel more than a tremor of fear.
Because we know that Infinite Justice for some means Infinite Injustice for others. And Enduring Freedom for some means Enduring Subjugation for others.
The International Coalition Against Terror is a largely cabal of the richest countries in the world. Between them, they manufacture and sell almost all of the world's weapons, they possess the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological and nuclear. They have fought the most wars, account for most of the genocide, subjection, ethnic cleansing and human rights violations in modern history, and have sponsored, armed and financed untold numbers of dictators and despots. Between them, they have worshipped, almost deified, the cult of violence and war. For all its appalling sins, the Taliban just isn't in the same league.
The Taliban was compounded in the crumbling crucible of rubble, heroin and landmines in the backwash of the cold war.
Its oldest leaders are in their early 40s. Many of them are disfigured and handicapped, missing an eye, an arm or a leg. They grew up in a society scarred and devastated by war. Between the Soviet Union and America, over 20 years, about $45bn (£30bn) worth of arms and ammunition was poured into Afghanistan. The latest weaponry was the only shard of modernity to intrude upon a thoroughly medieval society.
Young boys many of them orphans - who grew up in those times, had guns for toys, never knew the security and comfort of family life, never experienced the company of women. Now, as adults and rulers, the Taliban beat, stone, rape and brutalise women, they don't seem to know what else to do with them.
Years of war has stripped them of gentleness, inured them to kindness and human compassion. Now they've turned their monstrosity on their own people.
They dance to the percussive rhythms of bombs raining down around them.
With all due respect to President Bush, the people of the world do not have to choose between the Taliban and the US government. All the beauty of human civilisation - our art, our music, our literature - lies beyond these two fundamentalist, ideological poles. There is as little chance that the people of the world can all become middle-class consumers as there is that they will all embrace any one particular religion.
The issue is not about good v evil or Islam v Christianity as much as it is about space. About how to accommodate diversity, how to contain the impulse towards hegemony every kind of hegemony, economic, military, linguistic, religious and cultural.
Any ecologist will tell you how dangerous and fragile a monoculture is. A hegemonic world is like having a government without a healthy opposition. It becomes a kind of dictatorship. Itıs like putting a plastic bag over the world, and preventing it from breathing. Eventually, it will be torn open.
One and a half million Afghan people lost their lives in the 20 years of conflict that preceded this new war. Afghanistan was reduced to rubble, and now, the rubble is being pounded into finer dust. By the second day of the air strikes, US pilots were returning to their bases without dropping their assigned payload of bombs. As one pilot put it, Afghanistan is "not a target-rich environment". At a press briefing at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, was asked if America had run out of targets.
"First we're going to re-hit targets," he said, "and second, we're not running out of targets, Afghanistan is ..." This was greeted with gales of laughter in the briefing room.
By the third day of the strikes, the US defence department boasted that it had "achieved air supremacy over Afghanistan" (Did they mean that they had destroyed both, or maybe all 16, of Afghanistan's planes?)
On the ground in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance - the Taliban's old enemy, and therefore the international coalition's newest friend - is making headway in its push to capture Kabul.
(For the archives, let it be said that the Northern Alliance's track record is not very different from the Taliban's. But for now, because it's inconvenient, that little detail is being glossed over.) The visible, moderate, "acceptable" leader of the alliance, Ahmed Shah Masud, was killed in a suicide-bomb attack early in September. The rest of the Northern Alliance is a brittle confederation of brutal warlords, ex-communists and unbending clerics. It is a disparate group divided along ethnic lines, some of whom have tasted power in Afghanistan in the past.
Until the US air strikes, the Northern Alliance controlled about 5% of the geographical area of Afghanistan. Now, with the coalition's help and "air cover", it is poised to topple the Taliban. Meanwhile, Taliban soldiers, sensing imminent defeat, have begun to defect to the alliance. So the fighting forces are busy switching sides and changing uniforms. But in an enterprise as cynical as this one, it seems to matter hardly at all.
Love is hate, north is south, peace is war.
Among the global powers, there is talk of "putting in a representative government". Or, on the other hand, of "restoring" the kingdom to Afghanistan's 89-year old former king Zahir Shah, who has lived in exile in Rome since 1973. That's the way the game goes - support Saddam Hussein, then "take him out"; finance the mojahedin, then bomb them to smithereens; put in Zahir Shah and see if he's going to be a good boy. (Is it possible to "put in" a representative government? Can you place an order for democracy - with extra cheese and jalapeno peppers?)
Reports have begun to trickle in about civilian casualties, about cities emptying out as Afghan civilians flock to the borders which have been closed. Main arterial roads have been blown up or sealed off. Those who have experience of working in Afghanistan say that by early November, food convoys will not be able to reach the millions of Afghans (7.5m, according to the UN) who run the very real risk of starving to death during the course of this winter. They say that in the days that are left before winter sets in, there can either be a war, or an attempt to reach food to the hungry. Not both.
As a gesture of humanitarian support, the US government air-dropped 37,000 packets of emergency rations into Afghanistan. It says it plans to drop a total of 500,000 packets. That will still only add up to a single meal for half a million people out of the several million in dire need of food.
Aid workers have condemned it as a cynical, dangerous, public-relations exercise. They say that air-dropping food packets is worse than futile. First, because the food will never get to those who really need it. More dangerously, those who run out to retrieve the packets risk being blown up by landmines. A tragic alms race.
Nevertheless, the food packets had a photo-op all to themselves. Their contents were listed in major newspapers. They were vegetarian, we're told, as per Muslim dietary law (!) Each yellow packet, decorated with the American flag, contained: rice, peanut butter, bean salad, strawberry jam, crackers, raisins, flat bread, an apple fruit bar, seasoning, matches, a set of plastic cutlery, a serviette and illustrated user instructions.
After three years of unremitting drought, an air-dropped airline meal in Jalalabad! The level of cultural ineptitude, the failure to understand what months of relentless hunger and grinding poverty really mean, the US governmentıs attempt to use even this abject misery to boost its self-image, beggars description.
Reverse the scenario for a moment. Imagine if the Taliban government was to bomb New York City, saying all the while that its real target was the US government and its policies. And suppose, during breaks between the bombing, the Taliban dropped a few thousand packets containing nan and kebabs impaled on an Afghan flag. Would the good people of New York ever find it in themselves to forgive the Afghan government? Even if they were hungry, even if they needed the food, even if they ate it, how would they ever forget the insult, the condescension?
Rudi Guiliani, Mayor of New York City, returned a gift of $10m from a Saudi prince because it came with a few words of friendly advice about American policy in the Middle East. Is pride a luxury that only the rich are entitled to?
Far from stamping it out, igniting this kind of rage is what creates terrorism. Hate and retribution don't go back into the box once you've let them out. For every "terrorist" or his "supporter" that is killed, hundreds of innocent people are being killed too. And for every hundred innocent people killed, there is a good chance that several future terrorists will be created.
Where will it all lead? Setting aside the rhetoric for a moment, consider the fact that the world has not yet found an acceptable definition of what "terrorism" is. One country's terrorist is too often anotherıs freedom fighter. At the heart of the matter lies the world's deep-seated ambivalence towards violence.
Once violence is accepted as a legitimate political instrument, then the morality and political acceptability of terrorists (insurgents or freedom fighters) becomes contentious, bumpy terrain. The US government itself has funded, armed and sheltered plenty of rebels and insurgents around the world.
The CIA and Pakistan's ISI trained and armed the mojahedin who, in the 80s, were seen as terrorists by the government in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Today, Pakistan - America's ally in this new war - sponsors insurgents who cross the border into Kashmir in India. Pakistan lauds them as "freedom-fighters", India calls them "terrorists". India, for its part, denounces countries who sponsor and abet terrorism, but the Indian army has, in the past, trained separatist Tamil rebels asking for a homeland in Sri Lanka - the LTTE, responsible for countless acts of bloody terrorism.
(Just as the CIA abandoned the mujahideen after they had served its purpose, India abruptly turned its back on the LTTE for a host of political reasons. It was an enraged LTTE suicide bomber who assassinated former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1989.)
It is important for governments and politicians to understand that manipulating these huge, raging human feelings for their own narrow purposes may yield instant results, but eventually and inexorably, they have disastrous consequences. Igniting and exploiting religious sentiments for reasons of political expediency is the most dangerous legacy that governments or politicians can bequeath to any people - including their own.
People who live in societies ravaged by religious or communal bigotry know that every religious text - from the Bible to the Bhagwad Gita - can be mined and misinterpreted to justify anything, from nuclear war to genocide to corporate globalisation.
This is not to suggest that the terrorists who perpetrated the outrage on September 11 should not be hunted down and brought to book. They must be. But is war the best way to track them down? Will burning the haystack find you the needle? Or will it escalate the anger and make the world a living hell for all of us?
At the end of the day, how many people can you spy on, how many bank accounts can you freeze, how many conversations can you eavesdrop on, how many emails can you intercept, how many letters can you open, how many phones can you tap?
Even before September 11, the CIA had accumulated more information than is humanly possible to process. (Sometimes, too much data can actually hinder intelligence - small wonder the US spy satellites completely missed the preparation that preceded India's nuclear tests in 1998.)
The sheer scale of the surveillance will become a logistical ethical and civil rights nightmare. It will drive everybody clean crazy. And freedom - that precious, precious thing - will be the first casualty. It's already hurt and haemorrhaging dangerously.
Governments across the world are cynically using the prevailing paranoia to promote their own interests. All kinds of unpredictable political forces are being unleashed. In India, for instance, members of the All India People's Resistance Forum, who were distributing anti-war and anti-US pamphlets in Delhi, have been jailed. Even the printer of the leaflets was arrested.
The rightwing government (while it shelters Hindu extremists groups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal) has banned the Islamic Students Movement of India and is trying to revive an anti- terrorist Act which had been withdrawn after the Human Rights Commission reported that it had been more abused than used. Millions of Indian citizens are Muslim. Can anything be gained by alienating them?
Every day that the war goes on, raging emotions are being let loose into the world. The international press has little or no independent access to the war zone. In any case, mainstream media, particularly in the US, have more or less rolled over, allowing themselves to be tickled on the stomach with press handouts from military men and government officials. Afghan radio stations have been destroyed by the bombing. The Taliban has always been deeply suspicious of the press. In the propaganda war, there is no accurate estimate of how many people have been killed, or how much destruction has taken place. In the absence of reliable information, wild rumours spread.
Put your ear to the ground in this part of the world, and you can hear the thrumming, the deadly drumbeat of burgeoning anger.
Please. Please, stop the war now. Enough people have died.
The smart missiles are just not smart enough. They're blowing up whole warehouses of suppressed fury.
President George Bush recently boasted, "When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2m missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive." President Bush should know that there are no targets in Afghanistan that will give his missiles their money's worth.
Perhaps, if only to balance his books, he should develop some cheaper missiles to use on cheaper targets and cheaper lives in the poor countries of the world. But then, that may not make good business sense to the coalitionıs weapons manufacturers.
It wouldn't make any sense at all, for example, to the Carlyle Group - described by the Industry Standard as "the world's largest private equity firm", with $13bn under management. Carlyle invests in the defence sector and makes its money from military conflicts and weapons spending. Carlyle is run by men with impeccable credentials. Former US defence secretary Frank Carlucci is Carlyle's chairman and managing director (he was a college roommate of Donald Rumsfeld's). Carlyle's other partners include former US secretary of state James A Baker III, George Soros and Fred Malek (George Bush Sr's campaign manager). An American paper the Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel - says that former president George Bush Sr is reported to be seeking investments for the Carlyle Group from Asian markets.
He is reportedly paid not inconsiderable sums of money to make "presentations" to potential government-clients. Ho hum. As the tired saying goes, it's all in the family.
Then there's that other branch of traditional family business - oil. Remember, President George Bush (Jr) and Vice-President Dick Cheney both made their fortunes working in the US oil industry.
Turkmenistan, which borders the north-west of Afghanistan, holds the world's third largest gas reserves and an estimated six billion barrels of oil reserves. Enough, experts say, to meet American energy needs for the next 30 years (or a developing country's energy requirements for a couple of centuries.)
America has always viewed oil as a security consideration, and protected it by any means it deems necessary. Few of us doubt that its military presence in the Gulf has little to do with its concern for human rights and almost entirely to do with its strategic interest in oil.
Oil and gas from the Caspian region currently moves northward to European markets. Geographically and politically, Iran and Russia are major impediments to American interests. In 1998, Dick Cheney - then CEO of Halliburton, a major player in the oil industry - said, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It's almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight." True enough.
For some years now, an American oil giant called Unocal has been negotiating with the Taliban for permission to construct an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan and out to the Arabian sea. From here, Unocal hopes to access the lucrative "emerging markets" in south and south-east Asia. In December 1997, a delegation of Taliban mullahs travelled to America and even met US state department officials and Unocal executives in Houston. At that time the Taliban's taste for public executions and its treatment of Afghan women were not made out to be the crimes against humanity that they are now.
Over the next six months, pressure from hundreds of outraged American feminist groups was brought to bear on the Clinton administration. Fortunately, they ma naged to scuttle the deal. And now comes the US oil industry's big chance.
In America, the arms industry, the oil industry, the major media networks, and, indeed, US foreign policy, are all controlled by the same business combines. Therefore, it would be foolish to expect this talk of guns and oil and defence deals to get any real play in the media. In any case, to a distraught, confused people whose pride has just been wounded, whose loved ones have been tragically killed, whose anger is fresh and sharp, the inanities about the "clash of civilisations" and the "good v evil" discourse home in unerringly. They are cynically doled out by government spokesmen like a daily dose of vitamins or anti-depressants. Regular medication ensures that mainland America continues to remain the enigma it has always been - a curiously insular people, administered by a pathologically meddlesome, promiscuous government.
And what of the rest of us, the numb recipients of this onslaught of what we know to be preposterous propaganda? The daily consumers of the lies and brutality smeared in peanut butter and strawberry jam being air-dropped into our minds just like those yellow food packets. Shall we look away and eat because we're hungry, or shall we stare unblinking at the grim theatre unfolding in Afghanistan until we retch collectively and say, in one voice, that we have had enough?
As the first year of the new millennium rushes to a close, one wonders - have we forfeited our right to dream? Will we ever be able to re-imagine beauty?
Will it be possible ever again to watch the slow, amazed blink of a newborn gecko in the sun, or whisper back to the marmot who has just whispered in your ear - without thinking of the World Trade Centre and Afghanistan?
İ Arundhati Roy
- - - - - -- - - - - -- - - - - -- - - - - -- - - - - -- - - - - -- - - - - -- - - - - -
A message from Robert Redford on energy security
Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2001 12:08:03 -0700
From: "Mary L. Dobbs / Global Peace Foundation"
<globalpeace@prodigy.net>
Hello Everyone,
We hope this email finds you and your family doing well during these difficult days. The Global Peace Foundation received this email at our office and wanted to share if with you all. Please take what ever action you feel is appropriate and forward to your colleagues if you feel comfortable doing so.
We are supporting National Resources Defense Councils actions to save the
Alaska Refuge from Oil drilling.
Please let us know if you have any questions regarding this email.
In Peace,
Lou
Lou Dobbs
Executive Director
Global Peace Foundation
Boulder, Colorado
From: "Robert Redford" <earthaction@nrdcaction.org>
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2001 8:44 PM
Dear NRDC Earth Activist,
I wanted to pass along to you the following message describing my
feelings about America's energy security debate in the aftermath of
September 11th. As an NRDC Earth Activist you've most likely already
taken action to help promote oil independence while preserving our
nation's most cherished places, such as the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge -- and I thank you. Now, please do me the great favor of
forwarding my message to everyone you know -- your friends, family,
co-workers, discussion groups -- encouraging them to take action as
well.
Sincerely yours,
Robert Redford
=====
Dear Friend,
It is understandable that we Americans feel an almost reflexive need
for unanimity in trying times like these. As a nation, we are rightly
consumed with responding to the terrorist attacks on September 11th.
But, at some point -- and I think we're beginning to get there -- we
need to take a long-term view even as we are reacting to the current
crisis. Really important domestic issues facing us before all of this
happened -- education, energy and the environment, health care --
still have the same dimension and consequence. But we have to
recognize that it's much more difficult to discuss and debate them in
the aftermath of Sept. 11th. Unfortunately, disagreement is sometimes
characterized as unpatriotic during times such as these and open,
thoughtful discourse is somewhat muted. The gravity of the current
situation is not lost on any of us and we all want to do what's right
to insure our national security. It is with this in mind that I felt
compelled to write you today.
A handful of determined U.S. senators, encouraged by the White House,
are arguing that national security requires the Senate to rush a
pro-oil energy bill into law. They have vowed to hold up normal Senate
business and attach the bill to every piece of legislation that comes
to the Senate floor. So far they have failed in what The Boston Globe
is calling "oil opportunism." But with President Bush, himself, now
calling for rushed passage of this disastrous bill, intense pressure
is building on Senate leaders to succumb to the emotions of the
moment. Using our national tragedy as an opportunity to advance the
narrow interests of the oil lobby would not be in the best interest of
the public. This bill, already passed by the House, would not only
open the Arctic Refuge to oil rigs, it would also pave the way for
energy companies to exploit and destroy pristine areas of Greater
Yellowstone and other gems of our natural heritage. As important, it
would do nothing to address energy security.
I'm asking for your immediate help in stopping this legislation. After
reading my letter I hope you'll take action at
http://www.savebiogems.org/arctic/index.asp?src=ae0110a and then
forward this letter to your friends and colleagues.
Last spring, the Bush administration and some members of Congress said
we had to pass the president's oil-friendly energy bill because we
were facing the most serious energy crisis since 1973. But here we
are, a mere six months later, and the energy crisis has vanished. Due
to a slowing economy and falling demand, the prices for gasoline,
natural gas and home heating oil have plunged. Meanwhile, the
much-feared "summer of blackouts" in California never happened,
largely because consumers and businesses made dramatic cuts in energy
use by launching the most successful statewide conservation campaign
in history.
With no energy crisis to scare us with, the administration and pro-oil
senators are now promoting their "Drill the Arctic" plan under the
guise of national security and energy independence. Don't buy it. It
would take ten years to bring Arctic oil to market, and when it
arrives it would never equal more than two percent -- a mere drop in
the bucket -- of all the oil we consume each year. Our nation simply
doesn't have enough oil to drill our way to energy independence or
even to affect world oil prices.
We possess a mere 3 percent of the world's oil reserves, but we
consume fully 25 percent of the world's oil supply. We could drill the
Arctic Refuge, Greater Yellowstone, and every other wildland in
America and we'd still be importing oil, still be paying worldwide
prices for domestic oil, and still be vulnerable to wild gyrations in
price and supply. As The Atlanta Constitution put it: "Burning through
our tiny oil supply faster will not make our country more secure." I'd
go further: increasing our dependence on oil, whether that oil comes
from the Persian Gulf or the Arctic Refuge, practically guarantees
national *insecurity*. And we know that it will bring more habitat
destruction, more oil spills, more air pollution, and more global
warming. The public health implications will be devastating.
If our nation wants to declare energy independence, then we have no
choice but to reduce our appetite for oil. There's no other way. We
need to rely on smarter and cleaner ways to power our economy. We have
the technology right now to increase fuel economy standards to 40
miles per gallon. If we phased in that standard by 2012 we'd save 15
times more oil than the Arctic Refuge is likely to produce over 50
years. We could also give tax rebates for existing hybrid gas-electric
vehicles that get as much as 60 mpg. We could invest in public
transit. We could launch an "Apollo Project" to bring fuel cells and
hydrogen fuel down to earth, allowing us to begin the mass production
of vehicles that emit only water as a by-product. The list goes on and
on.
In this climate of national trauma and war, it is up to us -- the
people -- to ensure that reason prevails and our natural heritage
survives intact. The preservation of irreplaceable wildlands like the
Arctic Refuge and Greater Yellowstone is a core American value. I have
never been more appreciative of the wisdom of that value than during
these past few weeks. When we are filled with grief and unanswerable
questions it is often nature that we turn to for refuge and comfort.
In the sanctuary of a forest or the vastness of the desert or the
silence of a grassland, we can touch a timeless force larger than
ourselves and our all-too-human problems. This is where the healing
begins. Those who would sell out this natural heritage -- this
spiritual heritage -- would destroy a wellspring of American strength.
What's worse, their rush to exploit the wildness that feeds our souls
won't do a thing to solve our energy problems.
There are plenty of sensible and patriotic ways to guarantee our
nation's energy security, but destroying the Arctic Refuge is not one
of them. Please tell that to your senators. They urgently need to hear
it because the pressure is on to move this pro-oil bill to a vote in
the next few weeks. It will take you only a minute to send them an
electronic message from NRDC's SaveBioGems website.
Go to http://www.savebiogems.org/arctic/index.asp?src=ae0110a
And please forward this message to your family and friends. Millions
of Americans need to know about this cynical attempt to promote the
interests of energy companies at the expense of everyone else.
Sincerely yours,
Robert Redford
For more information about NRDC or how to become a member of NRDC,
please contact us at:
Natural Resources Defense Council
40 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10011
212-727-4511 (voice) / 212-727-1773 (fax)
General email: nrdcinfo@nrdc.org
Earth Action email: nrdcaction@nrdc.org
http://www.nrdc.org
Also visit:
BioGems -- Saving Endangered Wild Places
A project of the Natural Resources Defense Council
http://www.savebiogems.org
Does anybody in this country get it?
In a message dated 11/12/01 12:18:57 AM Eastern Standard Time,
wm@greenworldcenter.org writes:
Geov Parrish, WorkingForChange.com [GOOD SITE!]
November 5, 2001
Does anybody understand what the United States is on the verge of doing?
Experienced, respected food aid organizations warn that even before the
bombing of Afghanistan began on October 7, some 7,500,000 Afghans were going through a gut-wrenching combination of poverty, drought, war, dislocation, and repression -- at risk of starving to death this winter. When the bombing began, almost all delivery of food from the outside world stopped. Now, roads and bridges are destroyed, millions more people are dislocated, and the snow is steadily approaching from higher elevations and from the north.
For weeks, aid organizations, along with voices from throughout the region,
have been begging the United States to call off its bombing campaign, at
least for long enough so that aid agencies can conduct the massive transfer
of food into and throughout Afghanistan that is necessary to prevent death
on a scale the world has not seen in a long, long time. On our newscasts,
it's politely referred to as a "humanitarian crisis." That's a euphemism
that makes "collateral damage" seem humane.
--snip-- [Millions of] people are at risk of dying in a matter of
months. --snip-- [A number that bears comparison to the major acts of
genocide in the 20th century. Vastly more innocent victims than were killed
in the crimes of September 11. Slow, painful, entirely avoidable deaths.
Deaths whose sole cause is not the United States, but most of which can
still be prevented -- ] except that our government is refusing to allow
them to be prevented.
It repulses me to say this, but I suspect a lot of Americans don't care.
They'd rather see the United States "get" Osama bin Laden (though there's
no actual evidence that we're any closer to that today than we were two
months ago, and probably the task is harder as he becomes more popular and
protected). A lot of people in this country do not care that a staggering
number of innocent people are on the verge of being condemned to death, or
that most of the world will blame the United States. Correctly.
We should care. If the object of this war was to thwart terrorism -- to
bring existing terrorists to justice, and to isolate them politically and
culturally so that others won't throw in their lot -- in less than a month,
the United States has perpetrated one of the most abject failures in
military history. It still does not know where any of Al-Qaeda's leadership
even is. It is on the verge of succeeding in its goal of creating a unified
Afghanistan government -- unfortunately, Afghans are uniting behind the
Taliban, as warlord after warlord sets aside long-standing differences to
stand shoulder to shoulder to fight the American invaders. Tens of
thousands more young Muslim men are lining up to cross the borders into
Afghanistan to join them. The ones that survive the experience will carry a
lifetime of hate: living, breathing proof that within a month, America
bombed a country but lost its war in spectacular fashion.
That's today. What will happen if millions of Afghans die this winter? How
much future terrorism will the dunderheads of the Bush Administration have
inspired then? If several million Islamic sisters and brothers starve to
death, innocent civilians trapped between winter and the rage of America,
how many of Islam's 1.2 billion adherents -- or the five billion other
people on earth -- are going to take George Bush's proclamations about
eradicating "terrorists" and "evildoers" to heart, and label him, and us,
as the prime examples?
In less than two months, the United States government has gone from the
moral high ground of being victimized by one of the most heinous crimes in
world history, to being within a week or two of quite visibly committing a
crime so much larger as to obliterate the world's memory of September 11.
Remarkably, almost nobody in the United States seems to have either
noticed, understood, or cared. While even progressives wring their hands
over the ambiguity of a war fought under the auspices of America's
legitimate right to defend itself, a situation is unfolding in which there
is absolutely no moral ambiguity at all, and for which many people will
want to hold each of us as accountable as the world held post-war Germans.
Where were you? What did you say? How could you allow this to happen? Or, a
more likely reaction in the Islamic world: Why should millions of you not
die as well? America will have set out to isolate one man, and instead
killed millions and isolated itself. And much of the world will not rest
until we are brought to our knees.
Seven and a half million people. The snowline is creeping down the
mountainsides. The food is almost gone. The infrastructure is in shambles.
There will be no "independent verification" of the body count. There wasn't
in the Holocaust or Rwanda or Cambodia, either. The judgment of the world
did not need one. The clock is ticking. Where were you?
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Bayer - the maker of Cipro - is refusing to comply with a ban
proposed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the use of
Bayer's antibiotic, Baytril(R), in treating chickens and turkeys.
I'm helping to launch a campaign to tell Bayer that I don't want
them "playing chicken" with our health! Will you help? Just click
here to send a FREE message to Bayer:
http://www.care2.com/go/redirect/2/2585
FDA recommended a ban on Baytril(R) after their scientists found
that using Baytril(R) in chicken farming contributes to the
development of bacterial infections, such as food poisoning, in
humans that are resistant to antibiotic treatment.
Baytril is very closely related to a drug used in human medicine,
known as Cipro, and both are members of a class of antibiotics
known as fluoroquinolones. Though Cipro is currently making
headlines as a treatment for anthrax, it also plays a key role in
treating many other diseases, including severe cases of bacterial
food poisoning.
Bayer has refused to listen to these scientific concerns and
their decision to challenge the ban puts profits over public
health. Because of antibiotic overuse, infectious bacterial diseases are
emerging that we may not be able to cure because antibiotics
won't work. You CAN do something to help.
Just click here to take action:
http://www.care2.com/go/redirect/2/2585
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Use this handy guide to tell the differences between terrorists and the U.S.
government:
by Daniel Solnit, "Dissident Voice," October 9, 2001
TERRORISTS: Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful politician,
from extremely wealthy oil family.
US GOVERNMENT: Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful politician,
from extremely wealthy oil family.
TERRORISTS: Leader has declared a holy war ('Jihad') against his
'enemies';believes any nation not with him is against him; believes god is on
his side,and that any means are justified.
US GOVERNMENT: Leader has declared a holy war ('Crusade') against his
'enemies'; believes any nation not with him is against him; believes god is
on his side, and that any means are justified.
TERRORISTS: Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious leaders who
preach hatred, intolerance, subjugation of women, and persecution of
non-believers.
US GOVERNMENT: Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious leaders who
preach hatred, intolerance, subjugation of women, and persecution of
non-believers.
TERRORISTS: Leadership was not elected by a majority of the people in a
free and fair democratic election.
US GOVERNMENT: Leadership was not elected by a majority of the people in a
free and fair democratic election.
TERRORISTS: Kills thousands of innocent civilians, some of them children,
in cold-blooded bombings.
US GOVERNMENT: Kills (tens of) thousands of innocent civilians, some of
them children, in cold-blooded bombings.
TERRORISTS: Operates through clandestine organization (al Qaeda) with
agents in many countries; uses bombing, assassination, other terrorist tactics.
US GOVERNMENT: Operates through clandestine organization (CIA) with agents in many countries; uses bombing, assassination, other terrorist tactics.
TERRORISTS: Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and undermine
civil liberties.
US GOVERNMENT: Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and undermine
civil liberties.
TERRORISTS: Weapon of choice: a three-dollar box cutter.
US GOVERNMENT: Weapon of choice: a billion-dollar B1 bomber.
A Contrasting View
Dear those who struggle for enlightenment,
We have received several of these e-mails, and we
haven't responded because we respect an individuals'
right to opinion. However, there are large parts of
the pieces missing when the opinions expressed here
are disseminated. The reason for the appalling
conditions in Afghanistan is because, as Americans, we
have ignored the problems for far too long. Clearly,
Osama Bin Laden is not one who will listen to
negotiations. The Al Qaeda's lack of belief in
sanctity of life is clear. It is absolutely necessary
that we stop them NOW. To make the statement that we
have been bombing for 2 mths with no progress is
absolutely false and misleading. Before we can do
anything to help we have to remove the Taliban from
government once and for all. This is not in any sense
of the word, an act of revenge, and those who
perpetuate that myth are sorely mistaken. You cannot
fix this problem with a bandaid. It is not true that
we do not care about the starving people. On the
contrary, we are now showing that we do care. Prior
to 9-11 the plight of the Afghan people was not even a
blip on a radar screen. If anyone is to blame, (which
I do not believe in, by the way) it is the Americans
who have allowed these terrorist regimes to multiply
and become stronger then ever. Why? Well, take a
look at what has been done to our defense budget, and
our intelligence agencies. Then take a look at
Clinton's White House which was so busy hiding its own
weaknesses, that 2 of our embassies were blown up,
killing hundreds of civilians, and there was as good
as no response from our government. The opposition
forces in Afghanistan are finally getting the help
they need to get the Taliban out of Afghanistan once
and for all. So far as I can see this is the only
REAL way to help this country. If we don't see this
through we are as good as saying, here I am Al Qaeda,
we are not very well defended, come and get us again.
No, we don't know where he, or any other of the
thousands of terrorists are at this time, but that is
because we have forced them all into hiding-thank
goodness.
It has been my understanding that there has been a
tremendous amount of relief effort put into trying to
help the Afghans. During the 1st weeks of bombing the
Taliban was confiscating our relief packages, and
killing anyone who was found to have one in their
possesion. Does anyone REALLY think that stopping the
bombing now would allow for relief efforts? Think
about it, would Osama respect our relief workers and
allow them to deliver their food? Would the Taliban?
I don't think so, and neither does the governments of
countries all around the world. In order to help
those people we have to remove, permanently, that
government. The Taliban DOES NOT believe in any sort
of humanitarian aid. If it did they would not be
executing women in the town square because they left
their homes unattended. This war is not about
revenge, it is about keeping our freedoms, and
restoring freedom to the AFghans. The U.S. is not a
cold, heartless government, nor are any of the
coalition governments who are involved in this war,
and I do not believe this war is being waged as simply
a show of good ole' American might (which is an
attitude I abhor). Rather it is a war being waged to
protect all of our futures. We cannot, we must not
stop now, the sooner the Taliban is out of Afghanistan
the sooner we can help the Afghans. Till then it
won't be feasible.
p.s. Robert Redford is mistaken about why California
never had blackouts this summer. The real reason was
that our Democratic Governor installed his cronies to
the energy commission as soon as he got into office.
His cronies happened to own substantial shares in So
Cal Edison, (electricity) and Pacific Gas & Elec (also
known as PG&E). They created a shortage using their
gov't office so that they could gain from their
private holdings.
=====
from the desk of Rob and Susan Hegel
Thanksgiving: Time to Build an alternative to Modernity and Fundamentalism (or saying No to Bush and Bin Laden)
By Rabbi Michael Lerner
Posed as a struggle between the principles of post-Enlightenment democratic Modernity and fundamentalist authoritarianism, the war in Afghanistan wins near universal approval, almost an update of the 2nd world war for a new generation hungering to do the right thing and experience the pleasures of nationalist solidarity denied us in the Vietnam era. Yet President Bush's initial inclination to call this a crusade may have been a more candid and insightful account of what is at stake.
Before we bomb another society into modernity, we might consider ways in which what we call Modernity may in fact function as another religious system, and then understand why history may view this as another in the long series of religious wars that have caused so much pain in human history. This Thanksgiving may be a perfect moment to consider another alternative-by taking the spiritual message of Thanksgiving seriously.
We like to think of modernity as a kind of "neutral" value-free, advance of rationality. Modernity has wonderful aspects-the recognition of the importance of individual freedom and protection from state power, the insistence on a private realm free from public interference by the community, the freedom of individuals to choose our own level of religious belief and observance, the pursuit of science and the rejection of sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic worldviews.
Yet the form of modernity the West has offered to the rest of the world has been tied to a capitalist ethos and economics which has brought not only growing gaps in income between the top 20% of the world's wealthy and the bottom 20% (that gap was 30:1 in 1960, 60:1 in 199-0, and 76:1 in 1998) but also a worldview which has been militantly materialistic, insisting that institutions or social practices be judged rational, productive and efficient only to the extent that they maximize money and power. Though we've told ourselves we were offering economic well being (which is true, for a section of third world populations), and claimed that would bring democracy and human rights as well, the actual experience of many people is that they are being offered a cultural economic package in which consumption is the highest good, and cannot be constrained for the sake of preserving the world's environment or human values. This is a new religion, as much as we once acknowledged communism to be a religion as well, and the human consequences of this religion are already visible in many Western societies: a collection of individuals who know how to "look out for number one" but who are emotionally and spiritually illiterate, narcissistic, and have great difficulty in sustaining lasting relationships or building solid families. Human relationships are frequently reduced to "what's in it for me" and our capacity to respond to nature with awe is replaced by a narrow pragmatism that sees commodities rather than mystery.
This globalization of selfishness and materialism is experienced by practitioners of other religions as a crusade every bit as intense as those which was led by earlier Western invaders, though more subtly executed because this time the West has created local elites (the small upper and upper-middle classes of 3rd world countries) who themselves become beneficiaries and advocates for this new religious system which they impose on their own people with the help of American military and economic assistance. When Jewish fundamentalists in Israel burned bus-stop advertisements for American products displaying scantily dressed women provocatively posed, their anger was not at the product being sold but at the ways that sex is transformed from a holy act of love to a cheapened means of mass manipulation.
Yet the fundamentalist alternative is even worse, articulating the failures of capitalist ethics but then proposing a return to authoritarian, undemocratic, sexist, and anti-Semitic world views. George Bush says we must choose which side we are on, but this is a moment when some people have begun to look for a third path, one which rejects both the corporate version of modernity and the fundamentalist way of resisting modernity.
A first step in developing that third path is to seek A New Bottom Line-so that we judge institutions productive, efficient and rational not only to the extent that they maximize wealth and power but also to the extent that they maximize our capacities to be caring, ecologically aware, ethically and spiritually sensitive, and capable of responding to the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur of creation. A politics that sought to make that its standard of rationality would soon recognize that many of our social, economic and political institutions are irrational, precisely because they do not tend to produce or sustain human beings who are loving, spiritually sensitive, ethically and ecologically aware, or filled with awe and wonder.
I propose the Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as a first step: require that any corporation operating in or from the U.S. with income over $20 million/yr. Be required to get a new corporate charter every 20 years, which would only be granted to those which could prove a history of social responsibility as measured by an Ethical Impact Report and assessed by a grand jury of ordinary citizens. Similar steps should be taken to make every societal institution responsive to a New Bottom Line.
This may seem visionary and impractical to a people obsessed with protecting itself from anthrax and criminal hijackers. Yet its even more impractical to think that we are going to find protection from those who really hate us unless we can dry up the swamps of anger from which these evil people recruit their accomplices. It would be far harder for the Bin Ladens of the world to recruit if they were facing an America which was known in the world for:
a. Leading the effort to redistribute the world' wealth, eliminate poverty, hunger and homelessness (a first step would be to take the $1.4 trillion tax cut and use it to build the economic infra-structure of the third world)
b. Leading the effort to protect the environment rather than blocking environmental treaties.
c. Actually embodying an ethos of open-hearted generosity both to its own poor and to the poor of the world, and changing its social system so that spiritual values were as central as materialism to its conception of the good.
The first step toward building such an America is to overcome the pathological fear that "there is not enough" and that "we are not enough" and instead open ourselves to an attitude of joyful celebration and daily thanksgiving for the goodness that is already there in the human race and in the universe. Instead of letting the terrorists be the frame through which we view the world, we could view the world through the frame of the hundreds of people who risked (and sometimes lost0 their lives on September 11th because they wanted to help others. We are surrounded by huge amounts of goodness, but the religious system of corporate capitalist modernity doesn't really teach us how to appreciate what is there, but only to focus on getting more.
It's time to let genuine Thanksgiving permeate our souls. And allow that attitude to then shape our reactions to the world. We'd quickly begin to see ourselves as connected to all other human beings, not in dead |
