Guantanamo: What's the underlying condition?

Statue of Liberty - January 11, 2018
V @nat_riverascott

Since practically the day I started this blog, I have tried to contribute to reversing the injustices represented by the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

I have organized and participated in many events educating about and protesting against Guantanamo. (See website for The Response film and blog posts on Guantanamo and work with the Chicago Coalition to Shut Down Guantanamo.)

I am coming to realize that what Guantanamo says about the US goes very deep.


What's the underlying condition?

In the past year, I've dealt with a cancer diagnosis, and it's changed the way I look at things.

In June I went to the emergency room with a breathing problem that had been getting worse and worse for over a month. An X-ray quickly showed that I had a "pleural effusion" -- fluid accumulated in the lining of my lung. My left lung, itself, was like a deflated balloon, bunched up in the upper corner of the lung cavity, unable to expand because of the way the cavity wall was pressing up from below with all the fluid.

The quick fix was to drain the fluid. The doctor inserted a needle between the ribs in my back and drained away 3 liters of milky white stuff.

Voila! I could breathe again!

(Problem solved, right?)

And then they started taking more scans . . . .

Within a day, the ER doc dropped by to tell me: "It looks like you have lymphoma. It's a kind of cancer. It's treatable . . . but you've got to get on it."

It turned out the lymphoma I had, though low grade, had generated a troublesome mass in my abdomen. I had heavy-duty chemotherapy for the next few months. Things seem to be getting better, and I'm now on a course of lower-impact drugs.


Looking the other way

Now that I'm past the immediate shock of the cancer diagnosis, I have time to think. One of the things I wonder about is, "What if my cancer hadn't exhibited that lung problem? Maybe I would still be in the dark about the underlying condition . . . . "

I should mention that one of the things that was special about my case is that I had avoided all contact with a doctor for the past decade or so. Because, you know, I'm healthy!

In other words, I was not terribly interested in knowing what might be going on inside me.

Picking up on this detail, my doctors were perceptive enough to understand that they needed to start my treatment immediately, and not let me have a chance to slip out the door with the promise to deal with my condition "soon."


An unpleasant truth about US society

In the case of my cancer, I think my body helped with the process: it figured out a way to send me a message, one that I couldn't ignore.

For those willing to listen, Guantanamo is sending us a message. There is an underlying condition in this country, one that we are trying very hard to ignore.

It is up to each of us to search our hearts to see if we can figure out what it is that we really think is going on in this country.

For my part, I plan to dig deep . . . with a special eye for that which I feel afraid to admit.  I suspect that the underlying condition is going to turn out to be pretty scary.

To be continued . . . .


Please share this post . . . .

Native American Rights: Acknowledge the Occupation

Emblem of Ohlone Costanoan-Rumsen-Carmel tribe native
to the land that is now the Monterey/Carmel area of California.

A growing trend is that people in the US who work for the rights of occupied people elsewhere in the world first acknowledge the American occupation.

As we work to #decolonizelutheranism, we need to be explicit about how concrete the colonialism is.

Maybe the "kairos moment" lies in recognizing that we took this land at the point of a gun . . . and nothing will change until we meaningfully repent of that original sin.

Map of Native American tribes in what is now California.
(Source: Costanoan Rumsen Carmel tribe website)

This sank in recently when I attended the Friends of Sabeel NA (FOSNA) conference on the occupation of Palestine, held in Santa Cruz. The proceedings began with a statement recognizing that the very spot we were sitting in had been taken by force from Native American people:

While we are gathered here today to raise awareness about the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine, we need to first acknowledge the genocidal origins of OUR nation’s history of ethnic cleansing and occupation. The very ground that we are now standing on was once the homeland of the Awaswas and Ohlone people, which was ripped away from them by the Spanish conquistadors and used for building missions and settlements. Our nation as a whole however, took part in and was founded upon the ethnic cleansing of countless Native American peoples. To focus solely on Israel as a war criminal complicit in ethnic cleansing would be hypocritical, as we continue to reap material benefits from the slaughter and marginalization of the Awaswas and Ohlone.

This land was not left to us peacefully. It was stolen. It was expropriated. As we are clearly not the rightful inhabitants of this land, it would do us well to shed our sense of entitlement. We need to realize that we are an intrinsic part of this process of genocide and until we act to concretely and directly abolish it here, our actions to bring justice in occupied Palestine are hypocritical and reflective of our underlying white supremacist attitudes.

This wasn't the first time I had attended an event that began with this recognition -- for instance, I remember similar statements at an anti-drones conference, a conference on police crimes, and the installation of a UCC leader -- but perhaps because I am new to this place, I paid close attention.

I would encourage everyone who welcomes this recognition to go the next step: take a minute now to go online and learn about the people who lived in the place you now occupy, back before someone came and took over. Do you know the names of the original occupants of the land you now claim as "your" home?


Related posts

How do you observe Indigenous Peoples Day?

(See Reflections on Indigenous Peoples Day 2015)











"Missa dos Quilombos" asked for forgiveness and sought healing for the legacy of slavery in Brazil. Dom Helder celebrated the Quilombo Mass. He said: "Mariama [Mother Mary], we aren't here to ask that today's slaves be tomorrow's slave masters. Enough of slaves! Enough of masters! We want liberty!" The beating of the drums was overpowering, they exploded like the screams of our souls!

(See Hélder Câmara and Liberation Theology 101: Where? When? Why? Who? )


Sun Raid is a searing reminder that people in the US have always been happy to welcome immigrants to help make their businesses profitable and make sure they had cheap stuff and cheap labor . . . . but how dare they expect to be treated like people!

(See WELCOME MAT USA: Come in! Come in! (Get out! Get out!))











Can there be any more clear illustration than the one at left to remind us that the work of the Church is liberation?

(See Christian "Church"? How about Christian "Liberation Organization"? )

Regime Change! Intervention! "Kick Out the Bad Guys!" Not so fast ...

Need an anchor for your human rights activism? I recommend everybody read Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder, and "Writing Human Rights ... And Getting It Wrong" by Alex de Waal in the current Boston Review.

Black Earth: The Holocaust as History
and Warning by Timothy Snyder

Snyder details how the Holocaust happened - specifically, the way it proceeded according to the particular conditions in the lands to the east of Germany as occupations and re-occupations unfolded. Snyder encourages us to relinquish our grip on our ideas "good guys" and "bad guys" creating that history, and instead to see the impact of conditions and institutions. (He encourages us to recognize "political resources," "psychological resources," "material resources" -- how they get generated, and how they are taken advantage of.) What happened in Poland? Ukraine? Belarus? Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia? What happened in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, the Balkans, Greece? What happened in Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France?

If, like me, you have a vaguely sick feeling as you read Black Earth, it may that you are learning the lesson that Snyder spells out in the conclusion:

Most of us would like to think that we possess . . . "moral instinct" and "human goodness." Perhaps we imagine that we would be rescuers in some future catastrophe. Yet if states were destroyed, local institutions corrupted, and economic incentives directed toward murder, few of us would be behave well. There is little reason to think that we are ethically superior to the Europeans of the 1930s and 1940s, orfor that matter less vulnerable to the kind of ideas that Hitler so successfully promulgated and realized. If we are serious about emulating rescuers, we should build in advance the structures that make it more likely that we would do so. (p. 320)

I've just finished reading Black Earth -- for the first time. Now I'm going back to page one to read it all over again.

Alex de Waal

De Waal's piece in Boston Review is about much more recent events, told from a much more personal perspective, and is painfully honest about As such, it is a must-read for those who aspire to be effective in their human rights advocacy.

De Waal discusses his work with Human Rights Watch, and later with African Rights, with a focus on events in the 1990s, particularly documenting conflict and human rights abuses in Sudan and Somalia. The key question is where human rights advocacy starts to turn into agitation for interventionism.

After you've read De Waal's piece, you'll have a much clearer idea about the role of the human rights advocate, on the one hand, and the political activist, on the other -- "human rights advocacy is a critique of power, not a directive for exercising it."

Get a copy of Boston Review and read "Writing Human Rights ... And Getting It Wrong" today.


Related posts

Anyone who has had to write a speech knows that the hardest part is to land on the main idea. Once you've got that right, the rest practically writes itself.

(See "The way to respond to ISIS is not through violence." )





Glenn Greenwald gave an outstanding talk in Chicago in May, 2012, in which he warned against humanitarian interventions: "The US -- no, everybody -- always says the reason for military intervention is 'humanitarian.'  . . . "

(See Greenwald Was Right: "Humanitarian" War in Syria? It's Just More War)












It's way too easy to launch U.S. missiles. (Maybe if it were a little more costly, challenging, or painful to carry out these attacks, they would at least require someone to give an explanation that makes sense first.)

(See AMERICAN MIDEAST M.O.: "When in doubt, attack SOMEBODY!" )




Sergey Ponomarev won first prize in the 2016 World Press Photo awards: General News for this November 16, 2015 photo: "Refugees arrive by boat near the village of Skala on Lesbos, Greece."
(See Image to Action: Sergey Ponomarev on the Refugee Crisis)

CHINA: What's Black and White and Lives Behind Bars?

Bei Bei (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

A legendary character in our family was the cat we had in the years before I was born. It was black and white, and was named "Newark News."

My father's father -- also Joseph Thomas Scarry -- had been an editor at the once-prestigious Newark Evening News, and so I guess we felt a kind of protective instinct for the Fourth Estate.

I thought of our beloved Newark News when I saw a picture of another black and white critter this morning -- the newest panda at the National Zoo, Bei Bei.

I guess Newark News leaped to mind because I was holding a clipping entitled, "China Is Leading Jailer of Journalists, Group Says," by Rick Gladstone in yesterday's New York Times, and I had been wondering what to say about it on my blog. I had come up with several ideas, but this crystallized it all for me.

When you hear "panda," think "China jails journalists" . . .

China is brilliant at conducting diplomacy and promoting friendship in "soft" ways. By providing breeding pandas to the National Zoo in Washington, DC, China has assured intermittent reinforcement of the notion that when you think "China," you should think "soft, cuddly, cute, adorable" . . . .

That's fine as far as it goes. I think China's "soft and cuddly" PR provides a necessary counterweight to the idea that China is a military threat, and that the US needs to be an even bigger military threat to "contain" China.  At the same time, it's not fine if people can't also hold in their heads the opposing idea that the Chinese government harms individuals and its whole society by persecuting journalists.

And pandas? The inconvenient thing about symbols is that they can cut both ways.

Yes, pandas are soft, cuddly, cute, and adorable . . . .

They're also black and white and live behind bars.

So, I would suggest, when you hear "panda," think "China jails journalists" . . .

Read the Committee to Protect Journalists 2015 report, and specifics about the 49 journalists who have been jailed in China.

I'll be using social media to spread the story of one of these 49 journalists every day. (Updates to follow . . . . )

Liu Xiaobo

Update: December 17, 2015

Number 4 on the CPJ list is the Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, imprisoned in China since 2009. I wrote about him at that time.

There is a robust social media campaign working for justice for Liu. See, for instance: @free_liu_xiaobo @liuxiaobo and @freeliuxiaobo.




Update: December 18, 2015

There is an especially urgent need today for the world to be able to be able to receive frank reporting about the conflict between people in the western region of China and the Chinese government. Of particular concern to people in the US and Europe is the way in which the Chinese government more and more invokes the "global war on terror" and growing Western anti-Muslim sentiment to get away with abrogating civil rights and trampling press freedoms. (See CHINA: Where Minority Nostalgia is One Thing, Minority POLITICS Quite Another )

Eight of the journalists on the CPJ list are involved in reporting on developments in western China - the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region:

Ilham Tohti

Ilham Tohti
Perhat Halmurat
Shohret Nijat
Luo Yuwei
Mutellip Imin
Abduqeyum Ablimit
Atikem Rozi
Akbar Imin

Tohti is the founder of Uighurbiz/UighurOnline; the other seven are students of Tohti imprisoned after a secret trial for working on Uighurbiz/UighurOnline.

Connect to the social media effort in support of these prisoners via Ilham Tohti's daughter @JewherIlham; the writers' groups @pen_int, @PENamerican, and @chinesepen_org; and human rights organizations like @hrw_chinese and @amnestyHK.

(More on China's state repression of news about Uyghur affairs: "China didn't like Ursula Gauthier's reporting — so it is kicking her out of the country. . . . " see Emily Rauhala in the Washington Post, December 26, 2015: "China expels French journalist for terrorism coverage.")


Update: December 19, 2015

Yesterday I wrote about eight of the imprisoned journalists on the CPJ list who are associated with reporting about the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region via Uighurbiz/UighurOnline.

Gheyrat Niyaz (Hailaite Niyazi)

There are seven more who are also involved in reporting on Xinjiang and Uyghur affairs:

Ekberjan Jamal
Memetjan Abdulla
Tursunjan Hezim
Gulmire Imin
Niyaz Kahar 
Nijat Azat
Gheyrat Niyaz (Hailaite Niyazi)

The common thread in most or all of these cases: reporting about demonstrations in Xinjiang -- including instances of rioting. Apparently reporting about protest is treated as "incitement," and transmitting reportage out of the country is "revealing state secrets."

The silencing of this large number of journalists raises a very fundamental question: What is really happening in Xinjiang? People and businesses with interests in China need to be concerned . . . .

The cases of all of these journalists are monitored by the @UyghurCongress. The Uyghur American Association / Uyghur Human Rights Project (@uaauhrp) is also an advocacy organization in these cases.


Update: December 20, 2015

My principal involvement with China has been through business, and I think the most likely advocate for press freedom in China ultimately should be the business and investment community. That's why I asked several years ago, "Will the global investment community continue to yawn at developments in China? Sadly, they seem to think Liu Xiaobo and a few stray intellectuals are the only victims. Unfortunately, the real prisoner's dilemma is theirs . . . ." (See Merry Christmas, Mr. Liu: The Prisoner's Dilemma in China)

Nine of the journalists on the CPJ list are associated with a specialized business and investment media group - 21st Century Media Group. To be clear: business needs to support all journalism, because all journalism bears on the knowledge needed for business. In any event, if influential businesses need any prodding to push for press freedom in China, the case of these 21st Century Media Group journalists is it.

Shen Hao

The names of the jailed journalists are:

Liu Hui
Zhou Bin
Liu Dong
Wang Zhuoming
Xia Xiaobo
Shen Hao
Chen Bin
Xia Ri
Luo Guanghui

It seems like an appropriate place to mention that a major Chinese corporation, Ali Baba, has purchased the leading English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post. It's time for businesses around the world to read the handwriting on the wall: their sources of truth about China are drying up, and that places them in a position of unacceptable risk.

Want to advocate for these journalists in China? Start by asking your investment adviser whether s/he has any confidence in the news they're receiving about China and its business developments . . . .


Update: December 21, 2015

Kunchok Tsephel Gopey Tsang

Five of the journalists on the CPJ list are associated with Tibet:

Kunchok Tsephel Gopey Tsang
Gartse Jigme
Dawa Tsomo
Druklo
Lomig

Tibet is a very important place. The government of China has long thought so, and observers in the West are beginning to develop a deeper understanding of this fact, as well.

However, Tibet gets intermittent attention in the Western media, at best, and the coverage it does get usually focuses on the exotic aspects of Tibetan culture and religion. Add to that the fact that numerous journalists who might otherwise be reporting on dissent in Tibet proper (as well as ethnic Tibetan areas in other parts of China) are in prison, and it becomes clear that the story is not getting to people.

Advocacy for the cases of the Tibetan journalists is carried out by organizations like @tchrd_, @SaveTibetOrg, @icpc_eng, and @CHRDnet.


Update: December 22, 2015

Jiang Yefei

Today, as the world learns of the devastating mudslide in Shenzhen that has buried dozens, it is an appropriate time to lift up the names of two of the journalists on the CPJ list who symbolize the importance of freedom of the press to report on and question government handling of disasters, and to report on environmental issues.

Number 45 on the list is journalist Ye Xiaozheng. He was prosecuted specifically for reporting on protests about environmental issues in Guangdong -- the southern province of China of which Shenzhen is a part. You can read more about Ye Xiaozheng on the Independent Chinese PEN Center website.

Number 49 on the list is cartoonist Jiang Yefei. A key aspect of his case is that he moved away from his home in Sichuan province after being persecuted for his criticism of the government's handling of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.  You can read about his case in a Human Rights Watch letter and in an Amnesty International campaign.

Yao Wentian

Update: December 23, 2015

At the opposite end of Guangdong province from Shenzhen, in northern Guangdong, lies the city of Shaoguang. Two of the journalists on the CPJ list -- Liu Wei'an and Hu Yazhu -- are jailed in apparent retaliation for their reporting on mineral extraction in Shaoguang.

Also imprisoned in Guangdong is Yao Wentian, head of Morning Bell Press in Hong Kong, which publishes books about government figures in China.


Update: December 24, 2015

It is time to speak of the Epoch Times.

In my neighborhood of Berkeley, California, there are newspaper boxes on many street corners with free copies of the Epoch Times. I read it every week.

Yang Tongyan

The Epoch Times is a publication of Falun Gong. Falun Gong is a group which combines meditation and Buddhist thought, holistic health practices, antagonism to the government of China, and extremely determined devotion. There is a significant history of conflict between the government of China and Falun Gong.

Two journalists who have been jailed in China and are part of the the CPJ list -- Yang Tongyan and Qi Chonghuai -- have apparently been targeted (at least in part) because of pieces they have written for the Epoch Times.

I plan to write in more detail about the Epoch Times and Falun Gong. For now I'll just say: the suppression of voices like those of Yang and Qi underlines the fundamental difference between China and the US with respect to freedom of expression. The government of China doesn't like the message of the Epoch Times, so it seeks to silence it. In the US -- at least in theory -- all kinds of messages get to see the light of day, and audiences get to use their brains to sort it all out.


Related posts

Despite the difficulties associated with engaging in effective solidarity with dissidents in China, it is important to make the effort. A fundamental tenet of all peace and justice activism is that if we have the power to speak we can do anything, and if "they" succeed in shutting us up, it's the beginning of the end.

(See What is the US Peace and Justice Movement Doing for Dissidents in China?)

Beijing has an intuitive understanding that, in a way that is determined by conditions of unequal information, it can monolithically dictate terms, and that other, "distributed," parties will be hard-pressed to stand up to those terms. Specifically, Beijing observes a cynical cost/benefit calculus which says, "Sure, a few players will always wise up and exercise their options to move away from us; but, by and large, everyone else is too paralyzed to move."

(See Merry Christmas, Mr. Liu: The Prisoner's Dilemma in China)

"There's one thing you don't understand," he said. "What you are calling 'the best and the brightest,' the leaders in China call 'troublemakers.; A hundred thousand Ph.D.'s stay behind in the U.S.? Two hundred thousand? A million? Fine! Let them! There's more where that came from! China's got nothing if not people!"

(See Why Beijing Always "Wins")











Make no mistake: Sandy was a high-powered lawyer with a high-powered lobbying firm. In that setting, Sandy was a big mahoff. But what made him really big was his ability to help the rest of us have the confidence to raise our voices.

(See REMEMBERING SANDY: Samuel Berger, 1945-2015 )

The Alpha and Omega of Nuclear Radiation Injury: the Human Nexus

At the World Nuclear Victims Forum, Ashish Birulee exhibited
photographs documenting the impact of nuclear radiation on the
uranium workers of Jadugoda, India. "Deformities and mutations
like these are endemic. It is a heavy price that the people of
Jadugoda are paying for living close to a toxic mining facility."
(See Jadugoda, Drowning in Nuclear Greed)

During my time at the World Nuclear Victims Forum in Hiroshima, I recognized that what makes advocacy on behalf of victims of nuclear radiation, and effective activism, so difficult is that it involves at least six challenging dimensions. Most of these stem from the invisibility of the nuclear radiation, and from the way nuclear radiation has come to be used with people with disproportionate amounts of power. In the end, I think, our biggest challenge is to keep the focus of our advocacy and activism on the human nexus of harm done by nuclear radiation. Hence the focus on the notion of #GlobalHibakusha.

Today is recognized as Human Rights Day around the world. It is a particularly important day for people worldwide to recognize the harm that nuclear radiation does to people, and to lift up the newly-proposed "Charter of World Nuclear Victims' Rights."

The linchpin of the Charter is a simple sentence:

[A]ll persons living in the nuclear age have the right . . . [n]ot to be exposed to ionizing radiation other than that which occurs in nature or is for medical purposes [. . .] ."

(Charter: "Draft Elements of a World Charter of the Rights of Nuclear Victims" [II] Rights Section 1.1)

The subsequent list of rights raise powerful questions about who must bear the cost of reversing the harm done by nuclear radiation.  That's why it's so important that this initial sentence defines an ironclad, fundamental right: people have the right to not be exposed to ionizing radiation . . . and so those responsible must -- at a minimum -- bear complete responsibility for remediating any damage done.

At the forum, Mary Dickson shared this map showing the
extent of nuclear radiation from the 1,000+ nuclear bomb
tests conducted in the US, and described the illnesses
suffered by herself, her family, and her neighbors as a result.
(Image: Richard Miller, “Areas crossed by two or more
radioactive clouds during the era of nuclear testing
in the American Southwest, 1951-62” in Under the Cloud:
The Decades of Nuclear Testing (Two-Sixty Press, 1999))
(From: "Terry Tempest Williams on living with radiation
from the 1,000+ nuclear bomb explosions in North America")

This is especially important because those who cause harm by exposing people to nuclear radiation often hide behind the excuse, "Well, you can't prove that your specific illness was caused by the radiation that I released." The Charter erases that excuse.

"To receive free of charge the best possible medical care and regular examinations for effects related to past, present and future exposure; this right to extend to the 2nd, 3rd and future generations." (II.2.2) -- Yes, the effects of nuclear radiation impact generation after generation. The costs continue to mount. The implication: nuclear radiation release should never be allowed.

"The remediation of radiation contaminated land and domicile, and the renewal of community and local culture." (II.2.4) -- In fact, releases of radiation are practically irreversible. Since true remediation can't be achieved, nuclear radiation release should never be allowed.

I had a powerful reminder of the need to stay focused on the human nexus of nuclear radiation injury when I attended the Peace and Planet conference in New York last April. I was particularly impressed with the example of Taniguchi Sumiteru, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki who has, for the past 70 years, used his body to remind people of the injury caused by nuclear radiation.

"When will the world heed the testimony of Taniguchi Sumiteru?"

At the forum in Hiroshima, I heard testimony from people about the nuclear radiation injuries experienced in Australia, the Marshall Islands, India, Ukraine and Belarus, Iraq, the US, China . . . the hibakusha phenomenon truly is happening everywhere. The Declaration recognizes this:

"We define the nuclear victims in the narrow sense of not distinguishing between victims of military and industrial nuclear use, including victims of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and of nuclear testing, as well as victims of exposure to radiation and radioactive contamination created by the entire process including uranium mining and milling, and nuclear development, use and waste. In the broad sense, we confirm that until we end the nuclear age, any person anywhere could at any time become a victim=a potential Hibakusha, and that nuclear weapons, nuclear power and humanity cannot coexist." (Declaration, 2)

Svetlana Alexievich,
Voices From Chernobyl:
The Oral History of a
Nuclear Disaster

I can think of several corollaries of the focusing on the human nexus of nuclear radiation injury:

* the importance of testimony -- including those who have actually suffered injury themselves, and those who are witnesses. Narratives, photographs, art, data . . . .

* the challenge of epidemiology -- the science of analyzing harm nuclear radiation does at the level of communities (epidemiology - "the study of the patterns, causes, and effects of health and disease conditions in defined populations") is essential.

* trauma and fear -- we should not for a moment discount the massive psychic injury done by nuclear radiation.

A truly human rights-based approach to nuclear issues can point in only one direction: eliminating all possibility of exposing anyone to excess nuclear radiation.


Related posts

Hibakusha is a word that has traditionally been used to refer to people affected by the nuclear blasts in Hiroshima and Nagaski.  It is now being broadened to recognize the many additional victims of acute affects of nuclear radiation (including fallout from tests and radioactivity from mining and processing). In fact, we are all subject to the impact and threat of nuclear radiation spread indiscriminately by nations and corporations.

(See HIROSHIMA: What does it mean to say, "We are ALL 'hibakusha'?")






For each week from March through July, you can see the month and day, followed by the count for "white," "red," and "blood." If you follow closely, as I did, you see the counts rise and fall. You wonder, "What did Sadako think as she read each new set of numbers? Is this week's result good? Or bad?"

(See "May the odds be ever in your favor!" ("Live in fear . . . . ") )

Hundreds gathered in Chicago on Good Friday 2015 to say to the victims of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, "We can hear you are in pain. We can smell your injuries. We don't have the power to restore your health. But we will NOT forget you."

(See "People Will Find the Way to Eliminate Nuclear Injury")

Ayotzinapa43 and Mexico's Disappearances: Breaking the Silence in Chicago

Public forum, Saturday April 4, 2015 - Iglesia San Pio, Chicago

A huge crowd gathered to hear testimony from parents, relatives, and supoorters of the 43 students who were "disappeared" in Ayotzinapa, Mexico, at the end of September, 2014.

Maria de Jesus, mother of Jose Eduardo

They were speaking in Chicago today at as part of the caravan of parents and relatives of the Ayotzinapa 43 who are now touring the US to bring attention to their case, and to the thousands of disappearances that happen each year at the hands of police, military, and other agents of elites in Mexico.

The caravan members made a stark point: Fourteen (14) people every day are "disappeared" in Mexico.

It is striking to me that on the weekend that people in Christian churches everywhere are commemorating the brutal state murder of an activist 2,000 years ago in Palestine -- together with the resistance mounted by his family and friends, their insistence on finding life in the face of death -- these family members of victims of here-and-now state violence are in our midst to demand, "Where have they taken the bodies?" and "Long live the Ayotzinapa 43!"

There are a series of related events Monday -- Chicago people are urged to participate, demonstrate solidarity, and commit to the cause of the oppressed people of Mexico:

Monday April 6 - 9:00 a.m. - Press Conference

Monday April 6 - 10:00 a.m. - March to Mexican Consulate

Monday April 6 - 10:30 a.m. - Protest at Mexican Consulate

More images from April 5:

Related posts

It will take me multiple posts to spell out everything that I feel needs to be said about the Ayotzinapa 43.  People in the US need to work to change their own attitude about Mexico, and about the culpability or all of us here in the US in the wrongs that are being done down there. The Ayotzinapa 43 were persecuted for saying "the future can be different." It's time for us to take up their cry.

(See Ayotzinapa43: US People Need an Attitude Adjustment )

ISRAEL/PALESTINE: Apartheid is to Pluralism as Desktop Computing is to the Internet

Caterpillar tractor being used to demolish Palestinian home.
(Source: Electronic Intifada)

I've just returned from two weeks in Israel/Palestine. The trip was centered in Bethlehem, and was focused on issues of peace and justice in Israel/Palestinian. You can read multiple posts about the trip on the Faith in the Face of Empire blog.

In summing up what we were trying to get at with this trip, our principal host spoke of the Occupation by saying,

“The US provides the hardware;
the churches provide the software.”

The speaker was Mitri Raheb -- Lutheran pastor of Christmas Church in Bethelehm, co-author of the Kairos Palestine document, president of the Dar al-Kalima University College of Arts and Culture, and author of the acclaimed book, Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible through Palestinian Eyes. (See “The churches provide the software”)

I was struck by his summary of the situation, in part because it so closely paralleled a fundamental statement in the recently released "A Global Security System: Alternative to War" from World Beyond War:

[Steps toward] dismantling the war machine and replacing it with a peace system that will provide a more assured common security . . . comprise the “hardware” of creating a peace system. . . . [S]trategies for accelerating the already developing Culture of Peace, provide the “software,” that is, the values and concepts necessary to operate a peace system and the means to spread these globally. [emphasis added]

I find the "hardware/software" analogy extremely helpful. We are dealing with big systems: war, occupation, and Empire. Let's use the insights and organizing concepts of people who have been enormously successful at bending other big systems to useful and humane ends, in order to deal with these systems of war, occupation, and Empire.

We're all familiar with the ways in which the US provides the "hardware" of occupation -- to the tune of $3 billion annually. And certainly churches -- in the US and elsewhere -- provide the "software" of the Occupation in many and diverse ways.

By coincidence, I had the opportunity to attend a public screening of the film, 5Broken Cameras, here in Chicago last night. Much of the film consists of scenes of conflict between Palestinian civilians and members of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), and the discussion led by Prof. Daniel Eisenberg of School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) stressed the ways that evolving technology (including, but not limited to, digital motion photography) changes the terms of engagement between parties to a conflict.

It suddenly occurred to me: "Hardware . . . software . . . yes, and something else . . . . (What is it?)"

The IBM PC 5150
Two floppy disk drives! (What's not to love?)

It came to me in a flash: the Israeli idea of "security" is embodied in hilltop settlements such as Efrat, which are lined up with other settlements in a kind of strategic necklace, using all the old paradigms of security that rely on barriers and isolation, that inevitably lead to a harsh ruler and ruled dichotomy. This is the "desktop computing" of this situation.

But desktop computing is passé. There came a time, several decades back, when the great minds of information technology realized that desktop computing would be surpassed by systems of linked computers. Bill Gates famously sent a wake-up email to his staff about "The Internet Tidal Wave." Internet server supplier Sun Microsystems made the leap with "The network is the computer" -- which in turn meant that the most important attribute of any computer or computer system was its degree of "interoperability" with other computers and computer systems. And today even the least tech-savvy among us have learned to accept that the preponderance of information technology operates communally -- through "the cloud."

So: that "something else"("Hardware . . . software . . . yes, and something else . . . . (What is it?)") is a paradigm - a way of thinking about what constitutes the system, and what enables it to hang together as a system.

The fundamental paradigm of the Internet is actually much older the Bill Gates letter, the Sun Microsystems slogan, and the concepts of interoperability and "the cloud." It was articulated by a man named Paul Baran and it actually had issues of peace and war in mind.

From "What is Packet Switching?" on the Digital fewsure site.

Paul Baran was helping to think about how to provide a communications system that would be adequately "hard" (secure) in the face of potential nuclear attack. By thinking in a new way, Baran was able to help people see that a truly secure communications system -- one that could continue to function even when subjected to devastating attack -- was not the one with the biggest concrete shields surrounding its wires, but rather one that relayed information concurrently along multiple pathways. The key was "n ≥ 3" -- that is, if every message has the opportunity to traverse three (or more) pathways, the likelihood of the entire set of pathways being rendered impassible was reduced to nearly zero. This became the basis of packet switching, i.e. the method by which messages are transmitted over the Internet today.

Robust systems -- ones that are secure and vibrant -- have multiple different ways of doing the same thing.

I don't know exactly what this implies for the desired paradigm -- the way of thinking about war, occupation, and Empire that will supplement the notions of "hardware" and "software" -- but it seems to me that it adheres roughly to the logic,

apartheid : pluralism ::

desktop computing : the Internet

And one thing is for sure: we can't begin to say what the "new and improved" hardware or software looks like until we get our minds around the overarching paradigm that we are all working toward.

Perhaps others will elaborate.

NEEDED: MESSENGERS - Americans Need to Hear the Awful Truth of Nuclear Devastation

Needed: MESSENGERS!

Over the next several days, people from the around the world will gather in Vienna to lay it out in the open: the truth about the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons.

That's important, because:

* The widely-known facts about the fire and blast of nuclear explosions are something just about everybody tries to avoid thinking about.

* In particular, no one ever wants to confront the very real risk that their own city will be obliterated in a nuclear attack.

* It's part of a larger human predicament: most of us are terrible at imagining bad things in advance of them actually occurring, and even worse about taking action to eliminate the risk.

Oh . . . and did I mention the call for a massive mobilization for nuclear disarmament in spring 2015, to coincide with the UN meeting on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)?

Account (with illustration) by
survivor of Hiroshima bombing

The U.S. is one of two nations in the world with massive nuclear arsenals, and the U.S. arsenal needs to be eliminated if we are to escape nuclear devastation. It is the people of the U.S. who will make this happen -- the people, a massive number of them, must push this, because the politicians answer to the people.

So: It's up to those of us with networks in the U.S. to get the word out to people in this country about the what nukes do to people -- and the need for people to become active in the movement to eliminate nuclear weapons.

#NoNukesTuesday is a week-in, week-out social media campaign to build the movement. #HINW14Vienna laid the foundation deep -- #NoNukesTuesday is the place to take the message wide.

TAKE ACTION:

#NoNukesTuesday
Getting the word out every week

* Look at the #HINW14Vienna twitter stream to find

exciting materials from the Vienna conference.

* See more resources on the 

Courage to Ban Nuclear Weapons

conference website.

* Tweet, RT, Follow and build the 

network on #NoNukesTuesday

(Here's my contribution: #GOODBYENUKES: 10 Images I'll Be Sharing From #HINW14Vienna )


Related posts


There are three centers of power that will impact nuclear disarmament: the President, the Congress, and the people. One of them will have to make nuclear disarmament happen.

(See Countdown to U.S. Nuclear Disarmament (With or Without the Politicians) )

How do you formulate a statement that can somehow convince the United States to eliminate its threatening nuclear weapons?  How do you formulate the 10th request? Or the 100th? Knowing all the time that the United States is in the position -- will always be in the position -- to say, "No" ?  At what point does it dawn on you that the United States will never give up its nuclear weapons, because it has the power and the rest of the world doesn't?

(See 360 Degree Feedback in New York (2014 NPT Prepcom and How the World Views the United States))

Elaine Scarry demonstrates that the power of one leader to obliterate millions of people with a nuclear weapon - a possibility that remains very real even in the wake of the Cold War - deeply violates our constitutional rights, undermines the social contract, and is fundamentally at odds with the deliberative principles of democracy.

(See Reviews of "Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom" by Elaine Scarry )