Steady​Foot​steps​.org

June 22, 2007

Steady Footsteps

Blog by an Amer­i­can cou­ple liv­ing in Viet­nam and advo­cat­ing for greater motor­bike safe­ty. The tech­ni­cal aspects are pret­ty straight-forward but the neat part about it was watch­ing the client learn about blog­ging and online photo
shar­ing as we worked on the site: I intro­duced her to Fli­crk, Picasa
and Gmail! She took to it like a fish to water and the site is full of great
pho­tos tak­en by her hus­band David. Read more about their
work doing phys­i­cal ther­a­py in Viet­nam and their posts about life in Da Nang.
. Tech­nol­o­gy: Mov­able Type, Flickr. Vis­it Site.

Deep Throat Gargles Up

June 1, 2005
Deep Throat in an 1958 FBI pub­lic­i­ty pho­to. “From Wikipedia”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Felt1958.jpg

One of the great­est polit­i­cal mys­ter­ies of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry was revealed this week as “Van­i­ty Fair revealed the iden­ti­ty of Deep Throat”:http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/articles/050530roco02, the gov­ern­ment informer who led Wash­ing­ton Post reporters onto the full scope of the Water­gate Scan­dal. Here’s the “Post’s own arti­cle on the revealing”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/31/AR2005053100655.html.
Although I was far too young to fol­low the events at the time, the _Washington Post_ sto­ries com­bined with the fol­lowup book and movie to cre­ate a pop­u­lar images of the fear­less inves­tiga­tive reporter, the show­dowy gov­ern­ment insid­er with unclear motives and the news­pa­per pub­lish­ers tak­ing a risk for the big story.
So it seems iron­ic that Deep Throat – no excuse me, W. Mark Felt, the num­ber two man at the FBI in the ear­ly 1970s – was a close assis­tant of the noto­ri­ous FBI head J. Edgar Hoover and was him­self con­vict­ed in 1980 for autho­riz­ing gov­ern­ment agents to break into homes of sus­pect­ed anti-Vietnam war pro­test­ers (look­ing for sus­pects from the rad­i­cal Weath­er Under­ground bombings).

QuaCarol: You Don’t Want to Be Ranters Anymore

March 11, 2005

By QuaC­arol
Some­times I have to lift up com­ments and make them their own posts. Here’s one of QuaC­arol’s reply to “Uh-Oh: Beppe’s Doubts”:/martink/archives/000544.php: “I see this com­mu­ni­ty of blog­gers, reach­ing out to each oth­er and con­nect­ing, when meet­ings (and here I ven­ture to say “all”) are focused on keep­ing their pam­phlet racks filled, rather than post­ing URLs on their bul­letin boards or cre­at­ing a newcomer’s URL handout.”

Con­tin­ue read­ing

Four More Years (Let’s Roll Up Our Sleeves)

November 3, 2004

Pres­i­dent George W. Bush has been re-elected for four more years. The man who led the Unit­ed States to “two wars in four years”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/cat_iraq_antiwar.php and whose poli­cies in Afghanistan and iraq con­tin­ue to cre­ate chaos in both coun­tries will get four more years to pur­sue his war of ter­ror­ism against the world. Amer­i­cans will not sleep any safer but will dream ever more of con­quer­ing and killing ene­mies. We’ll con­tin­ue to sow the seeds of wars for gen­er­a­tions to come.
I was wor­ried when Sen­a­tor John Ker­ry unex­pect­ed­ly picked up in the pri­maries to become the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. In his patri­cian upbring­ing he was very much like Pres­i­dent Bush, and they actu­al­ly agreed on many of the big issues — war, gay mar­riage, stem cell research. But in his per­son­al­i­ty, style and tem­pera­ment Ker­ry was too much like for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Al Gore.
Yes, I know Gore won the pop­u­lar vote in the 2000 elec­tion and that his loss was declared by mys­te­ri­ous chads and a hand­ful of senior cit­i­zen judges in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. But an elec­tion as close as that one should have been seen as a resound­ing loss, no mat­ter what the Supreme Court ver­dict. As Vice Pres­i­dent, Gore had helped lead the nation to one of its great­est eco­nom­ic recov­ers in our life­times. He was also clear­ly smarter in the Pres­i­dent, more knowl­edge­able and far­sight­ed, with more care­ful­ly artic­u­lat­ed visions of the future. But he bare­ly won the pop­u­lar vote, mak­ing the elec­toral col­lege vote close enough to be debated.
Ker­ry is intel­lec­tu­al and aloof in the same way that Gore was. And clear­ly there are a num­ber of Amer­i­can vot­ers who don’t want that. They want a can­di­date who can speak from the heart, who isn’t afraid to talk about faith. They also want a can­di­date who can talk in sim­ple, moral­ly unam­bigu­ous ways about war.
And what about war? Would a Pres­i­dent Ker­ry have real­ly pulled out troops soon­er than Pres­i­dent Bush will? Who knows: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­dents have pur­sued plen­ty of wars over the last cen­tu­ry and when Ker­ry pro­claimed he would hunt down and kill the ene­my, he spoke as the only one of the four men on the major tick­ets who actu­al­ly has hunt­ed down and killed fel­low humans in wartime.
We can make an edu­cat­ed guess that a Kerry-led Amer­i­ca would leave iraq in bet­ter shape than a Bush-led Amer­i­ca will. Ker­ry has the patience and the plan­ning fore­sight to do the hard coalition-building work in iraq and in the world that is nec­es­sary if U.S. mil­i­tary pow­er will trans­late to a real peace. But a Ker­ry plan for paci­fi­ca­tion and rebuild­ing of iraq could eas­i­ly have fol­lowed the path that Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­dent Lyn­don B. John­son’s did in Viet­nam: an unend­ing, constantly-escalating war.
Did Amer­i­cans offi­cial­ly approve the coun­try’s past two wars yes­ter­day? It’s hard to con­clude oth­er­wise. Despite the lies of mass destruc­tion and despite the “will­ful mis­lead­ing of the Amer­i­can people”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000194.php that Sad­dam Hus­sein was some­how involved in the 9/11 attacks and “pos­sessed weapons of mass destruction”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/cat_iraq_weapons_of_mass_destruction_scandal.php, some­thing over 50% of Amer­i­cans thought the Bush/Cheney Pres­i­den­cy was worth keep­ing for anoth­er four years.
But there’s noth­ing to say a pop­u­lar vote grants wis­dom. In the next four years, those of us want­i­ng an alter­na­tive will prob­a­bly have many “teach­able moments” to talk with our neigh­bors and friends about the dete­ri­o­rat­ing sit­u­a­tion in iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe those of us whose “paci­fism is informed by reli­gious understandings”:www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000462.php can cross the intel­lec­tu­al divide some more and talk about how our faith gives us a sim­ple, moral­ly unam­bigu­ous way to argue against war. The coun­try needs “strong paci­fist voices”:http://www.nonviolence.org/issues/philosophy-nonviolence.php now more than ever. Let’s get talking.
ps: …and donat­ing. Non​vi​o​lence​.org is a nine years old peace resource guide and blog. It’s time it gets reg­u­lar fund­ing from its mil­lion annu­al read­ers. “Please give gen­er­ous­ly and help us expand this work”:http://www.nonviolence.org/support/. We have a lot to do in the next four years!

Images of Patriotism and the Swift Boat Controversy

August 23, 2004

The U.S. elec­tion cam­paign has many ironies, none per­haps as strange as the fights over the can­di­dates’ war records. The cur­rent Pres­i­dent George W. Bush got out of active duty in Viet­nam by using the influ­ence of his polit­i­cal­ly pow­er­ful fam­i­ly. While sol­diers killed and died on the Mekong Delta, he goofed off on an Alaba­ma air­field. Most of the cen­tral fig­ures of his Admin­is­tra­tion, includ­ing Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney also avoid­ed fight­ing in Vietnam.
Not that I can blame them exact­ly. If you don’t believe in fight­ing, then why not use any influ­ence and loop­hole you can? It’s more coura­geous to stand up pub­licly and stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with those con­sci­en­tious objec­tors who don’t share your polit­i­cal con­nec­tions. But if you’re both anti­war and a cow­ard, hey, loop­holes are great. Bush was one less Amer­i­can teenag­er shoot­ing up Viet­nam vil­lages and for that we com­mend him.
Ah, but of course George W. Bush does­n’t claim to be either anti­war or a cow­ard. Two and a half decades lat­er, he snook­ered Amer­i­can into a war on false pre­tences. Nowa­days he uses every photo-op he can to look strong and patri­ot­ic. Like most scions of aris­to­crat­ic dynas­ties through­out his­to­ry, he dis­plays the worst kind of poli­cial cow­ardice: he is a leader who believes only in send­ing oth­er peo­ple’s kids to war.
Con­trast this with his Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty rival John Ker­ry. He was also the son of a politically-connected fam­i­ly. He could have pulled some strings and end­ed up in Alaba­ma. But he chose to fight in Viet­nam. He was wound­ed in bat­tle, received met­als and came back a cer­ti­fied war hero. Have fought he saw both the eter­nal hor­rors of war and the par­tic­u­lar hor­rors of the Viet­nam War. It was only after he came back that he used his polit­i­cal con­nec­tions. He used them to punc­ture the myths of the Viet­nam War and in so doing became a promi­nent anti­war activist.
Not that his anti­war activ­i­ties make him a paci­fist, then or now. As Pres­i­dent I’m sure he’d turn to mil­i­tary solu­tions that we here at Non​vi​o​lence​.org would con­demn. But we be assured that when he orders a war, he’d be think­ing of the kids that Amer­i­ca would be send­ing out to die and he’d be think­ing of the for­eign vic­tims whose lives would inevitably be tak­en in conflict.
Despite the stark con­trast of these Pres­i­den­tial biogra­phies, the pecu­liar log­ic of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics is paint­ing the mil­i­tary dodger as a hero and the cer­ti­fied war hero as a cow­ard. The lat­ter cam­paign is being led by a shad­owy group called the Swift Boat Vet­er­ans for Truth. Today’s Guardian has an excel­lent arti­cle on the “Texas Repub­li­cans fund­ing the Swift Boat controversy”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1288272,00.html. The New York Times also delves the “out­right fab­ri­ca­tions of the Swift Boat TV ads”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/20/politics/campaign/20swift.html?ex=1094018686&ei=1&en=691b4b0e81b8387f. A lot of Bush’s bud­dies and long-time Repub­li­can Par­ty appa­ratchiks are behind this and its lies are trans­par­ent and easy to uncov­er. It’s a good primer on dirty pol­i­tics 2004 style.
One of the big ques­tions about this elec­tion is whether the Amer­i­can vot­ers will believe more in image or sub­stance. It goes beyond pol­i­tics, real­ly, to cul­ture and to a con­sumerism that promis­es that with the right clothes and affect­ed atti­tude, you can sim­ply buy your­self a new iden­ti­ty. Pres­i­dent Bush put on a flight jack­et and land­ed a jet on an air­craft car­ri­er a mile off the Cal­i­for­nia beach. He was the very pic­ture of a war hero and strong patri­ot. Is a pho­to all it takes anymore?

John Sayles Looks at “Men with Guns”

May 1, 1998

John Sayles is one of the most tal­ent­ed inde­pen­dent direc­tors film­ing today. In movies such as “Broth­er from Anoth­er Plan­et,” “Mate­wan” and “Lone Star,” he’s told sto­ries about every­day peo­ple as they live their lives, try to build bet­ter worlds and find them­selves caught in their human frailty. His lat­est movie, “Men with Guns,” fol­lows a wealthy but dying city doc­tor as he search­es the inte­ri­or of his coun­try for the stu­dents he had trained to treat the indige­nous poor. Like Dorothy fol­low­ing the yel­low brick road, he col­lects a car­a­van of lost souls along the way and learns what his igno­rance has wrought, both per­son­al­ly and for the life of his country.

The tale is set in an anony­mous Latin Amer­i­can coun­try and the ambi­gu­i­ty serves its pur­pose well. This is not the sto­ry of a par­tic­u­lar set of abus­es or a spe­cif­ic gov­ern­ment or army. It is a tale of what hap­pens when cap­i­tal­ism, mil­i­tary rule, rhetoric and human fal­li­bil­i­ty come togeth­er. It is a sto­ry of what hap­pens when good peo­ple refuse to con­front atroc­i­ties being com­mit­ted in their name and instead opt for a will­ing naiveté.

In inter­views, Sayles said he got the image of “men with guns” when he imag­ined the lot of Viet­nam’s “rice peo­ple”, politically-simple peas­ants who went on har­vest­ing rice for hun­dreds of years as a suc­ces­sion of “men with guns” came through in waves of ter­ror. It did­n’t so much mat­ter if the armies were Chi­nese, French, Amer­i­can or from North Viet­nam: all men with guns rule with what seems an arbi­trary bru­tal­i­ty. The most that the locals can do is stay out of the way.

At it’s heart, “Men with Guns” is a paci­fist and anar­chist movie, though assign­ing such labels dimin­ish­es the work and threat­ens to turn Sayles into anoth­er man­i­festo writer. He’s too inter­est­ing for that and uses story-telling to show us the world and how it works. Ulti­mate­ly, the movie blames every­one for their role in the ter­ror – the sol­diers, the rebels, the priests and our good-hearted but naive doc­tor. But Sayles also absolves them and pulls them from their car­i­ca­tures as he shows us the larg­er forces that drove them to their roles.

Last Fri­day, Bish­op Juan Ger­ar­di Coned­era, a lead­ing human rights activist in Guatemala, pub­lished a scathing report doc­u­ment­ing abus­es from Guatemala’s 36-year civ­il war; two days lat­er he was mur­dered in his own home by unknown assas­sins. The real-world mod­el for Sayles’ doc­tor was Guatemalan and it’s hard not to see Con­der­a’s mur­der as anoth­er inci­dent of bru­tal­i­ty by men with guns, fig­u­ra­tive­ly if not lit­er­al­ly (his mur­der­er report­ed­ly used a cin­der block). See­ing John Sayles’ lat­est movie would be a fit­ting trib­ute to Con­der­a’s work and that of oth­ers strug­gling for jus­tice in the world.

A Look Back at the Peace Movement’s Response to the Gulf War

November 20, 1997

It is safe to say that the peace move­men­t’s largest cam­paign in the past decade took place around oppo­si­tion to the mil­i­tary build-up and con­flict in the Per­sian Gulf in 1990 – 1. New peo­ple became involved, old peaceniks became reac­ti­vat­ed and every peace group in the coun­try went into over­drive to orga­nize and edu­cate about the issues.

Recent­ly I have heard sev­er­al peo­ple bemoan the fail­ure of the peace move­ment dur­ing that peri­od, a fail­ure because the war was­n’t stopped. But there were suc­cess­es beyond any­one’s wildest dreams. The week the war start­ed saw two mas­sive protests in Wash­ing­ton. It took almost a decade of involve­ment in Viet­nam before protests that large were ever seen. The peace move­ment mobi­lized incred­i­bly quick­ly and (in ret­ro­spect) effi­cient­ly, and we sure­ly defined the options avail­able to U.S. Pres­i­dent Bush.

The after­math of the war brought a cri­sis to many orga­ni­za­tions. Their fundrais­ing efforts dried up and bud­get deficits led to cut­backs in staff and pro­gram out­reach. It was as if a sort of pub­lic amne­sia set in and no one want­ed to think about peace. This is a nat­ur­al human response per­haps, but it’s rever­ber­a­tions on the infra­struc­ture of the peace move­ment con­tin­ue to this day.

Let’s start a dia­logue about the peace move­ments response to the Gulf War. What were it’s effects on your lives and the orga­ni­za­tions you were a part of? Was the peace move­ment a suc­cess, a fail­ure, or some­thing in between?