The real world’s competition this week is on the streets of Georgia

August 11, 2008

To Amer­i­can eyes the news of the esca­lat­ing war in the Cau­ca­sus nation of Geor­gia almost reads as farce: a break­away region of a break­away region, tanks rolling to main­tain con­trol of… well, not that much real­ly. We won­der how it could be in either Rus­sia or Geor­gia’s inter­ests to pick a fight over all this? Why does it seem like Rus­si­a’s de fac­to leader-for-life Vladimir Putin is still fight­ing the Cold War? And what must be going through the mind of Geor­gia’s Pres­i­dent Mikheil Saakashvili to be taunt­ing the giant to its north?
But the farce turns to weari­ness as we real­ize just how famil­iar this all is. Tiny eth­nic enclaves with cen­turies of ani­mosi­ties and well rehearsed sto­ries of atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted by the oth­er set fight­ing by the break­down of an empire that had uneasi­ly unit­ed them in repres­sion. Change a few details and we could be talk­ing recent con­flicts in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Rwan­da, the Sudan, Palestine/Israel and Iraq. Blood mon­ey from the drug trade, from oil bil­lions and human traf­fick­ing add fuel to the fire. We’ve been fight­ing these same wars since at least 1914. Why haven’t we learned how to stop them?
Seri­ous­ly: oth­er­wise strong economies col­lapse under the chaos that these ter­ri­to­r­i­al wars bring. Most of the wars seem to be fought in mar­gin­al areas and all sides would be bet­ter off if the politi­cians stopped wor­ry­ing about these con­test­ed ter­ri­to­ries and just focused on build­ing a econ­o­my attrac­tive to inter­na­tion­al trade.
Why has­n’t the world learned the mech­a­nisms to end these con­flicts before they erupt into open war­fare? Where is the polit­i­cal will to end this class of war once and for all? Dis­ease and ter­ror­ism are the invari­able fruits of these con­flicts and strike us all across nation­al bound­aries. The “inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty” needs to be mean more than impres­sive chore­og­ra­phy and a few thou­sand ath­letes in Bei­jing. This week’s real gold met­al will go to the lead­ers that can tran­scend macho pos­tur­ing and weak-willed apol­o­giz­ing and get those Russ­ian tanks out of Georgia.

Snipers shoot democracy yet again: the assasination of Benazir Bhutto

December 27, 2007

The bul­lets and bombs have final­ly found their mark. It is no sur­prise to learn of yet anoth­er assas­i­na­tion attempt against Pak­istani oppo­si­tion leader Benazir Bhut­to. Details are still sketchy and con­flict­ing but the only thing we real­ly need to know is that this attempt was suc­cess­ful and that Bhut­to is dead less than two weeks before Par­lia­men­tary elec­tions that might well have brought her into pow­er for the third time.

Pak­istan is a coun­try who’s top gov­ern­ment sci­en­tist export­ed atom­ic bomb-making across the world for decades. It still hosts Osama bin Laden. Afghanistan’s Tal­iban are still more-or-less head­quar­tered in its West­ern provinces. The stand­off with India has spawned war after war over the decade, now nuclear-enabled should either coun­try get so embold­ened. Bil­lions of dol­lars of Unit­ed States mon­ey has left Wash­ing­ton for Islam­abad since 9/11 and a pop­u­lar politi­cian can’t even cam­paign there with­out dead­ly assas­si­na­tion attempts. Pak­istan is one of the world’s hot spots, a nexus of ter­ror­ism, nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion, reli­gious extrem­ism. It is a very sad day today indeed.

Soldier against the war gets mistrial

February 7, 2007

Just over the wires: “Mis­tri­al declared court-martial of war objector”:http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2007 – 02-08T000024Z_01_N05474363_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-IRAQ-OFFICER.xml&WTmodLoc=PolNewsHome_C1_%5BFeed%5D‑3. Details:
bq. A mil­i­tary judge declared a mis­tri­al on Wednes­day in the court-martial of a U.S. Army offi­cer, who pub­licly refused to fight in Iraq and crit­i­cized the war.
It’s great to see that some sol­diers are seri­ous­ly debat­ing the ethics of this war.

Warriors against the War

January 16, 2007

In the news:  more than 1,000 ser­vice mem­bers sign peti­tion to end Iraq War (Stars and Stripes), orga­nized by the Appeal for Redress cam­paign spon­sored by a hand­ful of mil­i­tary anti­war groups includ­ing Non​vi​o​lence​.org alums Vet­er­ans for Peace. The sim­ple peti­tion reads:

As a patri­ot­ic Amer­i­can proud to serve the nation in uni­form, I respect­ful­ly urge my polit­i­cal lead­ers in Con­gress to sup­port the prompt with­draw­al of all Amer­i­can mil­i­tary forces and bases from Iraq. Stay­ing in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home.

Sup­port­ing the troops means mak­ing sure Amer­i­can lives aren’t being wast­ed in dead-end wars. Their ser­vice and their sac­ri­fice has been too great to con­tin­ue the lies that have fueled this con­flict since the very begin­ning, start­ing with the myth­i­cal Saddam/Al Qae­da con­nec­tion and the phan­tas­mic weapons of mass destruc­tion. The cur­rent esca­la­tion (euphemised as a “surge”) of troop lev­els is sim­ply an esca­la­tion of a badly-run war plan. When will this all end?
*Update*: Pres­i­dent Bush has admit­ted that the Iraq gov­ern­ment “fum­bled the executions.”:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/washington/17prexy.html. Mean­while, the UN puts the “2006 Iraqi death toll at 34,000”:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/world/middleeast/17iraq.html. When will Bush admit he’s fum­bled this whole war?

Stepping up the violence in Somalia again

January 10, 2007

Unit­ed States air strikes in Soma­lia were meant to kill spe­cif­ic al Qae­da lead­ers. Whether the bombs achieved this effect is still uncer­tain but we know one thing: that it will be much eas­i­er for al Qae­da to recruit the next gen­er­a­tion of Soma­li ter­ror­ists. From the NY Times, “Airstrike Rekin­dles Soma­lis’ Anger at the U.S.”:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/10/world/africa/10somalia.html?_r=2&ref=world&oref=slogin&oref=slogin. Sigh.

Resources on the Lebanon conflicts

August 11, 2006

Voic­es for Cre­ative Non­vi­o­lence is doing some orga­niz­ing around the fight­ing in Lebanon/Israel/Gaza. Check out “Beyond the Esca­la­tion of Injustice”:vcnv.org/beyond-the-escalation-of-injustice which calls for “direct engagement.”
Through them I found a link to “Jihad Against Hezbollah”:www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3412, the new piece from Steven Zunes, a very knowl­edgable writer for For­eign Pol­i­cy in Focus. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet (this after­noon on the train) but it looks like good back­ground mate­r­i­al on the group.

Forsaking Diplomacy

August 10, 2006

In the New York Times, a “glimpse behind the scenes of the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion’s sup­port for war in Lebanon”:www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/washington/10rice.html:
bq.. Washington’s resis­tance to an imme­di­ate cease-fire and its staunch sup­port of Israel have made it more dif­fi­cult for [US “Sec­re­tary of State”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/secretary%20of%20state] Rice to work with oth­er nations, includ­ing some Amer­i­can allies, as they search for a for­mu­la that will end the vio­lence and pro­duce a durable cease-fire.…
Sev­er­al State Depart­ment offi­cials have pri­vate­ly object­ed to the administration’s empha­sis on Israel and have said that Wash­ing­ton is not talk­ing to Syr­ia to try to resolve the cri­sis. Dam­as­cus has long been a sup­port­er of “Hezbollah”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/hezbollah, and pre­vi­ous con­flicts between the group and Israel have been resolved through shut­tle diplo­ma­cy with Syria.
p. The wars in “Lebanon”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/lebanon and “Iraq”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/iraq are caus­ing irrepara­ble harm to the U.S. image in the Mid­dle East. High-sounding words about democ­ra­cy ring hol­low when we for­sake diplomacy.

Pass the hummus, please, and by the way: are you a fed?

December 22, 2005

It seems that every day brings new rev­e­la­tions from main­stream media about gov­ern­men­tal spy­ing on Americans. 

MS-NBC start­ed the ball rolling on the 14th when they informed us that the Pen­ta­gon had a data­base of “pro­test­ers includ­ing the Rag­ing Grannies and a dozen or so Quak­ers in Florida”:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316. This must have prompt­ed the New York Times to pub­lish a sto­ry they had been sit­ting on for a year: the scoop that Bush had ordered the super-secret “Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency to start eves­drop­ping on Americans”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/politics/15cnd-program.html fol­low­ing the 9/11 ter­ror attacks. It’s rev­e­la­tion was an FBI agen­t’s email com­plain­ing about “rad­i­cal mil­i­tant librar­i­ans [who] kick us around”:http://www.ala.org/al_onlineTemplate.cfm?Section=alonline&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=111469. Two days lat­er we received the almost-humorous news that the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty was hard at work mon­i­tor­ing the “Mass­a­chu­set­t’s inter-library loan sys­tem “:http://​www​.south​coast​to​day​.com/​d​a​i​l​y​/12 [UPDATE: this has been “revealed to be a hoax”:http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/12 – 05/12 – 24-05/a01lo719.htm by the stu­dent]. Try­ing to out­do the DHS in ridicu­lous, we learned on the 20th that “the FBI has been infil­trat­ing veg­an potlucks”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/politics/20fbi.html. Today it turns out the “New York City Police Department”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/nyregion/22police.html has been doing its own exten­sive inves­ti­ga­tions into pro­test­ers. They even appar­ent­ly staged mock arrests in an attempt to incite vio­lence (their con­tri­bu­tion to the self-parody has been to send offi­cers under­cov­er on bicy­cle protests).

Are we sur­prised by all this? Well, not real­ly. The fears unleashed after 9/11 ignit­ed a firestorm of para­noia in the ranks of spy­dom. Non​vi​o​lence​.org got a call from the U.S. Secret Ser­vice when Osama bin Laden post­ed to the board that he want­ed to kill Pres­i­dent Bush (well, actu­al­ly we’re pret­ty cer­tain it was a acne-faced four­teen year old pro­cras­ti­nat­ing on his geom­e­try home­work). When I shot “shot pho­tos of a scuf­fle at a Biodemoc­ra­cy protest a few months ago”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/2005/06/biodemocracy_pr.php a Philadel­phia police detec­tive was in my office an hour lat­er want­i­ng to see it (the “melee” was harm­less except for a police­man with heart con­di­tions who took that moment to have a heart attack).

While some mon­i­tor­ing and pru­dence is indeed nec­es­sary, what ties togeth­er the string of sto­ries this week is the ran­dom­ness of the tar­gets. It’s as if the agen­cies had lost all sense of judge­ment. Any­one crit­i­cal of the war (or even main­stream cul­ture: wit­ness the veg­ans) was con­sid­ered a threat. All leads were inves­ti­gat­ed, no mat­ter how silly. 

While invad­ing Amer­i­can’s pri­va­cy is upset­ting and unwar­rant­ed, the great­est dan­ger is the sheer mass of irrel­e­vant infor­ma­tion that’s been col­lect­ed. What’s an agency to do with reams of data on bicy­cle rid­ers and Quak­ers? Who’s watch­ing the flight schools and fer­til­iz­er depots while Agent Nin­com­poop is trad­ing hum­mus recipes with the cute veg­an with the nosering?